Lyle Tennant worked on. Her fingers were cool--very cool--on his arm. She used the swab gently but the iodine stung like a tongue of flame. In silence she bound up the arm. The cut jumped from the forearm to the bulge of the biceps, so she made two bandages of it, leaving his elbow free. “If you’ll wait a moment I’ll sew up your sleeve,” she said tonelessly. “Thanks, Lyle,” he said, as she finished knitting the bandage. He fumbled at the torn shirt. “Never mind this. I’ve got some other shirts. If I keep on cracking ’em up like this your dad will run out of planes before I run out of shirts.” He grinned at her hopefully, alert for the first symptoms of an answering smile in the corners of her mouth. Suddenly Lyle Tennant flung the roll of bandage onto the desk. Her eyes raised suddenly to meet his. They blazed at him as she lifted her hands in a single gesture of despair. “Oh, I can stand a fool so much better than a man who plays the fool!” she exclaimed. She dropped into the chair that he had sat in and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with sudden, uncontrollable sobs. Startled, utterly bewildered, King Horn stared at her. She looked so much smaller than usual in that attitude of complete abandonment to grief. He touched her on the shoulder feebly, humbly. “Lyle,” he muttered. “Lyle!” “Go away!” she gasped, recoiling from his fingers. “Go away!” She covered her face in her arms on the desk and continued to weep. Every word, every frantic effort King Horn made to soothe her merely intensified her grief and his alarm. Finally, in response to one of those choked commands, he rushed out of the office. Unseeingly he passed Frank Cross at the corner of the hangar, pushed through the crowd and made for the road. He walked down the concrete much more dazed than he had been when the ship had cracked up. Obviously this required thinking out, and yet he didn’t seem to be able to think, except in snatches. Was he in love with Lyle Tennant? Certainly not. He saw her nearly every day and enjoyed seeing her, and felt vaguely uneasy when she did not come to the field. But that wasn’t love--it couldn’t be. Was she in love with him? That was absurd. She was fond of him, of course, just as he was fond of her. Theirs was a pleasant companionship in the rough and not always pleasant business of working for a flying circus. Probably it was just the shock of his crash that had brought from her that emotional outburst.