"No. Don't let's——" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!"
For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to become a clumsy creature of Earth—like that Aeroplane on the Flying Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "Not be engaged? Why on earth? How d'you mean?"
"I mean, everybody gets 'engaged,'" she explained very softly and rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers. "And it's such a sort of fuss, with writing home, and congratulations, and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People at tea-parties and things talking about us! I know they would!" declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks very young' and wondering about us! Oh, no, don't let's have it! It would seem to spoil it, for me! Don't let's call it anything, need we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to—just US."
"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with me, all the time we can."
She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you bring my locket with you to-night?"
"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give it back to you when I could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her. And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could not speak.
She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers, sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams, could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's girl—even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but he and she.
(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.)