It might have been the gushing of honey from a suddenly broken comb. Already her speaking voice could set Olwen's heartstrings vibrating in response to the sound, but Golden's singing voice (a rich mezzo-soprano) was almost more than her little Welsh friend could endure for pleasure. It cleft the middle of the note, the middle of the heart. Olwen sat, her hands clenched under those furs, listening, listening. She could not have told you what the words were about. She only knew that when the immortal nightingale sang to his rose, it must be in some such song as this.... The two verses of the song ended, and the applause that followed them was as much a murmur of deep voices as it was a clapping of hands from Americans, British tars, Canadian, kilties.... Without a pause, the singer whispered to her accompanist. The wonderful voice rose in a second song, of which the words might have been trivial, but which were music because of their singer. Not a man or woman in that hut made a movement.... In all she sang three songs. Just before her last song she took a couple of steps backward, and stood, tall and resplendent, between the two flags with a hand upon each. She had not sung three notes before the audience had risen to their feet, with every soldier and sailor in the hall standing to attention. For it was "The Star-Spangled Banner" that Golden van Huysen was singing now. There are some songs that never age. Of these are those a mother sings to her child; of these, too, are those a Motherland sings to her absent sons. This one----Well, all in that hall had heard it a thousand times before, yet this might have been the first time. Golden sang it as once Sims Reeves sang "Maud," as Patti sang "Home, Sweet Home"--in the perfection of simplicity. At the end she neither bowed nor smiled. She just backed out, as before some Royalty of emotion, between the English and the American flags. With a deep breath the audience felt that it was as though a light had been put out.... It was this radiant personality of hers, as well as her power of holding her hearers spellbound in hut, hospital, theatre, and soldiers' club, that had gained her the name by which half London knew her now--"that wonderful American they call the Sunburst Girl." CHAPTER V THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND "She was Sweet of Heart." Epitaph on the Tomb of an Egyptian Princess, 700 b.c. Olwen, with Golden's furs, hurried through the billiard-room to the outer hall with the "Enquiries" counter, the long bar, and the rows of refreshment-tables crowded by soldiers and sailors. One table was empty, reserved for Mr. Awdas's party, but the young flying officer had been called away on duty just after his _fiancée's_ second song. Olwen was sorry for him, but his loss was her chance; and she saw so little of this friend of hers. As she handed over the great leopard-skin muff, she said, rather appealingly, "Are you staying, Golden?"