She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking about?"
"Oh! Whether they'll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight, I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody's thinking about holidays just now."
Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, passing the willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds, lighted up and homely.
Young Dampier whispered to his girl--"Going on holidays myself, perhaps, presently, eh?"
"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren't going away for a holiday, are you?"
"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day's been the loveliest holiday I've ever had in my life. Hasn't it been perfect?"
"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen."
"Not----?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that he didn't like.
Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! _Don't_ let's go and have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?"
"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren't 'engaged' at all."
"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped and kissed her little ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But----"
"Got to _marry_ me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier seriously.
He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he said must happen in ten days' time from then.
For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not been bargained for, those lovers apart again.
The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.
Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.
And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message:
On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport. Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.