Unchaperoned she had travelled from the States to join her father in London, where he was attached to the Embassy, and where she meant to continue her special War work. But upon landing at Bordeaux she had found a cable from him stating that he would be out town for some days. She'd had no use for an empty house. So she had decided to stay in France and by the sea for those few days. To young Jack Awdas they were a gift from Destiny! * * * * * Some people consider that the truest and most human touch in the world's greatest love drama is that which pitches the young man already infatuated with one woman into the purest passion for another. There is no hiatus of feeling between the gloomy "_I am done_" of Romeo sighing for Rosaline, and his quick "_What lady's that?_" when Juliet appears; there is no thought of that first lady afterwards. Yet who shall measure what Juliet owes to Rosaline?--what rough ways made smooth, what cold young crudities softened and warmed, what kindling of susceptibility, what speeding-up of passion? And, for all this, what thanks may Rosaline expect? "_Oh, she was just someone he used to think he cared for._" Or, "_I'm sure she couldn't have been a very nice woman._" Or even "_Horrid! Robbing the cradle, I call it; I don't know how any woman can!_" But none of these verdicts would ever be passed by Golden van Huysen, either upon Claudia Cartwright or upon any other woman. She had read of the theory that women are "catty" to their own sex; smilingly she disbelieved it. Like attracts like. Just as her own heart had never known an ungenerous prompting, so her own lips had never uttered a spiteful remark. She therefore never heard one. If she had, she would probably have widened her blue eyes and exclaimed with a little air of discovery, "Why, that's not _kind_!" And this big and innocent creature was the very type which (if she'd had her choice) Mrs. Cartwright would have chosen for the man whom she herself was too old to choose. * * * * * He didn't ask Golden van Huysen to marry him on the first day of their acquaintance. No! He had waited until the third day. "Mustn't rush things," he'd told himself, as if those three days had been three years' duteous service of a knight of old. So he had merely made himself into this young girl's shadow. To her it was no novelty to be attended and worshipped. Wasn't every girl that she cared to know accustomed to this setting of masculine worship? Golden took as naturally as she took air and food the existence of a train of such young knights. Only ... from the first she realized vaguely that this one was somehow different from the others she had known and liked. This tall young man with the small crested head set on his sweeping, wing-like shoulders, who had drawn her first quick glance in the lounge. She admitted it quite frankly to herself this young flying-man _fascinated_ her. Why was it?