"If you would.... There is a man here I have to get word to. And—what French I have is simply technical.... You hardly find it in modern dictionaries—the argot of the engine-shop and the Flying School." "Now I understand...." She smiled in his perplexed face, drinking in deep breaths of the fresh fragrant air that blew about them as they stood together behind the thick wall of bodies that hid the cockpit from their view. A deep dimple von Herrnung had never seen showed low down in one of her pale cheeks. Their whiteness was slightly tinged with delicate pale rose. And her eyes had lost their brilliant enamelled hardness. They shone like dusky stars as she went on: "Now I know why I thought of wide green spaces and a breeze blowing to me over gorse and heather as I looked at you. Sub-conscious memories of Hendon and Brooklands and Upavon. For you’re a Flying Man!" "Just that!" His ruefulness was banished. "And now you know how I come to be in Paris with the clothes I stand up in and not another rag.... Two of us flew the Channel yesterday morning.... If the weather holds decent, we should be on the wing again by four A.M. And my mechanic’s given me the slip. To say he’s taken French leave would be appropriate under the circumstances. Left a line—the cool—beggar!—to say I’d find him here." "Too bad!" she said, as fresh furrows dug themselves into the tanned forehead. "Not fair to leave you in the cart like that. No wonder you followed—hot upon his track." "Combed the whole place—everywhere they’ll let me in. But my aviator’s kit’s against me. I’ve seen some rummy get-ups. But they draw the line at Carberry’s overalls." One hand rested easily on his hip, in the other hand he swung the eared cap with goggles. A pedestal in the moonlight would have suited him. It occurred to her to ask: "What was he like—your runaway mechanic?" "I hardly ... Oh! ... Little black-avised Welshman—barely tips the scale at eight stone. Has to be a light-weight, because I weigh all of eleven. And with the hovering-gear—but that can’t interest you." "Indeed it does. What of the hovering-gear?" His face darkened and hardened. He said: "It’s an invention of mine. And after no end trying—our own people at Whitehall simply wouldn’t have anything to do with me—the chiefs of the French Service Aëronautique consented to give it a test." "Sporting of them, wasn’t it?" He agreed: "No end sporting. So I bucked the tiger over the Channel with Davis—to find that an officer and mechanic of the S. A. were told off to try the hoverer over the selected area. For us to engineer the thing ourselves wasn’t ’_l’etiquette militaire_.’ That’s the French for Government red-tape." "Bother etiquette! I’m beginning to sympathise with Davis!" His vexation broke up in laughter. "That’s what _she_ did. She sympathised with Davis and carried him off here." Patrine said, a light breaking in on her: