The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.
Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.
And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message:
"Away till Monday. Wait for me."
She waited with Leslie.
On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport. Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.
Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A new Leslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voice strained as she talked.
"Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. We may not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in this country will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People like the Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything that might get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as much money as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate—I shall turn American—I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps you don't mind because you're Welsh."
Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness over the growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind."
She did not add her thoughts, "He said he hoped the War would come in his time. I know he would think it perfectly awful if England didn't fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean—just looking on at fighting when it came."