Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "Something." It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Works before. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before, anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in and half out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought down with him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... So this was why....
This was it. Aghast, she stared at it.
It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it a wicked-looking little nozzle projected for an inch or so. The other end, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and a pistol-grip.
Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what it was.
A machine-gun.
"A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me—on an aeroplane?"
"No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to the Aeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all."
And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed to be torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil.
Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all this meant.
That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of the ambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps of her Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modern warfare." ...