Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense glass they removed their wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast.
They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled room, with a frieze of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they passed.
Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey, piled-up hair.
"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn't there?" said this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for all in all"—and she gave a little laugh—"we are splendid!"
"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully.
The other woman, about to pass on, stopped for a moment again, and looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it will be by a few."
She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady——" (Something) "the wife of the man who's as responsible as most people for the security of this Empire——"
Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well, Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the Central Hall again, where the guests were assembling. The place seemed as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall, classic, brass tripod things to hold the end of men's cigarettes and ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men. Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her Airman.
"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there weren't going to be a lot of grand people."
"These aren't 'grand,' bless you! People aren't, who are really—well, who 'do things,' as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths, that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm going to bring up Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you——"