Still she didn't speak. How find words, when at a nearness, a name, a touch, some spell seems snapped and the meanings of all words thereafter seem entirely to have altered? This stranger who had become her friend so soon had even more quickly changed to---- "_What?_" Her lover nodded, saying below his breath, "It will be all right." Then, loosing one of her hands, he deftly unwound the ribbon that was about the other. As he was stuffing the Charm with its ribbons inside the breast of his flyer's coat, words came at last to his love. Laughing tremulously, she asked, "Why, what are you doing that for?" "Putting it by, safely," he smiled at her as he stood just a step away from her on the sand. "It'll never leave me now, not that ribbon that--that tied our hands together for me. I say, I shall fasten it to my 'bus later on, to bring me luck, Girl. It's started already, what?" He jerked his belt straight. "Hasn't it?" And with the words he took that one step nearer that brought her into his arms. "Ah, please," he said, more softly than ever. "Please...." He drew down to his shoulder the face so full of sweet disturbance, he folded her close, close to the wide breast beneath the white-embroidered wings. As if swayed by a Charm, she drew a long breath, then smiled in wonder, nestled, and yielded to his kisses--the first for both of them.... "What about America coming in now, Girl? She will, won't she?... Yes, but say yes; you _must_! Say it!" "No, Bird-boy! I just won't _say_ it," was her last touch of mutiny. "And--and I guess we'll see about that 'belonging' later on." "Yes," triumphed Jack Awdas. "I 'guess' so too!" That was all those months ago. CHAPTER IV THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER "She is singing an air that is known to me; A passionate ballad gallant and gay, A martial song like a trumpet's call." Tennyson. All that had been in November. It was now January--which brings me back to the Phoenix Hut, where Golden van Huysen was preparing to sing. Advancing to the edge of the platform, she said, smiling, but as quietly as if she'd been proposing a game in a room full of children: "What'll I sing you, boys?" An instantaneous chorus of men's voices answered her, and she laughed. Evidently she had heard, though Olwen hadn't caught a word of which song it was they all wanted. It was "the" sentimental song of the moment, that song whose name varies from season to season. As I write, it is called differently from what it will be called by the time you read. Once it was "Until," once "Roses of Picardy." The soul of it remains the same. "Cheap and common," smile the superior. Yes! Cheap as the air we breathe. Common as sunlight. Golden van Huysen pronounced its present name to the accompanist, who struck four cords on the piano. Then, into a dead silence, her voice stole out.