Then she saw herself put her hand on the young man's leathern sleeve. She heard her own voice ascending, as it were, to her. It was saying what seemed to be the most matter-of-fact thing in the world.
"Then don't go. You go later, Mr. Ryan. Follow him on. You go and meet your girl instead; it will be all right."
He was staring blankly at her. She wondered what he saw to stare at.
"What? What d'you mean, Mrs. Dampier? I'm bound to go. Military orders."
"Yes; they are for him, not for you. _You_ aren't under military orders." This was in her own, quite calm and detached little voice with its un-English accent. "You say anybody'd do. He can take--somebody else."
"Isn't anybody else," she heard young Ryan say. Then she heard from her own lips the most surprising thing of all.
"Yes, there's somebody. You give me those things of yours. I'm going instead of you."
Then Mr. Ryan laughed loudly. He seemed to see a joke that Gwenna did not see. "Well, for a film-drama, that takes it!" he laughed.
She did not laugh. She heard herself say, softly, earnestly, swiftly: "Listen to me. Paul is going away and I have never been up with him yet. I was always promised a flight. And always something got in the way of it. And now he's going. He will never----"
"He _may_ never come back. I may never get another chance of flying with him. Let me--let me have it! Say you will!"
But Mr. Ryan, instead of saying he would, became suddenly firm and peremptory. Perhaps it was the change in his voice that brought Gwenna Dampier, with a start, back to herself. She was no longer watching herself. She was watching young Ryan's face, intently, desperately. But she was still quite calm. It seemed to her that since an idea and a plan had come to her out of nowhere, it would be mad to throw them away again untried.
"Let me go; it will be all right! Let me get into your things."
"Quite out of the question," said young Ryan, with growing firmness--the iron mask of the man who knows himself liable to turn wax in the hands of a woman. "Not to be thought of."
She set her teeth. It was life and death to her now, what he refused. She could have flown at him like a fury for his obstinacy. She knew, however, that this is no road to a woman's attainment of her desires. With honeyed sweetness, and always calmly, she murmured: "You were always so nice to me, Mr. Ryan. I liked you so!"