"Fired at by both friend and foe."
She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that——"
CHAPTER II
THE "WHISPER OF WAR"
She said it after the dinner had broken up.
In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams."
And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead.
They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love—the Lad with Wings.