That was the end, he knew. He watched them take a train; stood there alone, due at a meeting of the Aeronautical Society, but suddenly not wishing to go, not wishing to go anywhere nor do anything, friendless, bored, driftwood in the city. So easily had the Hawk swooped down into her life, coming by chance, but glad to remain. So easily had he been driven away. * * * * * For three days he planned in a headachy way to make an end of his job and join Bagby, Jr., in his hydroaeroplane experiments. He pictured the crowd that would worship him. He told himself stories unhappy and long about the renewed companionship of Ruth and Phil. He was sure that he, the stranger, had been a fool to imagine that he could ever displace Phil. On the third afternoon, suddenly, apparently without cause, he bolted from the office, and at a public telephone-booth he called Ruth. It was she who answered the telephone. "May I come up to-night?" he said, urgently. "Yes," she said. That was all. When he saw her, she hesitated, smiled shamefacedly, and confessed that she had wanted to telephone to him. Together, like a stage chorus, they contested: "I was grouchy----" "I was beastly----" "I'm honestly sorry----" "'ll you forgive----" "What was it all about?" "Really, I do--not--know!" "I agree with lots of the things you----" "No, I agree with you, but just at the time--you know." Her lively, defensive eyes were tender. He put his arm lightly about her shoulders--lightly, but his finger-tips were sensitive to every thread of her thin bodice that seemed tissue as warmly living as the smooth shoulder beneath. She pressed her eyes against his coat, her coiled dark hair beneath his chin. A longing to cry like a boy, and to care for her like a man, made him reverent. The fear of Phil vanished. Intensely conscious though he was of her hair and its individual scent, he did not kiss it. She was sacred. She sprang from him, and at the piano hammered out a rattling waltz. It changed to gentler music, and under the shaded piano-lamp they were silent, happy. He merely touched her hand, when he went, but he sang his way home, wanting to nod to every policeman. "I've found her again; it isn't merely play, now!" he kept repeating. "And I've learned something. I don't really know what it is, but it's as though I'd learned a new language. Gee! I'm happy!" CHAPTER XXXV