CHAPTER VIII
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM
Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been her husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed to show any emotion.
As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now, the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calm little face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as they hurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting into that car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss as he held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him, muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing."
At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that.
She was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly at home, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was going off on service, where, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as an Army Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and to be shot at; every instant in peril of his life.
She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him, leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne.
She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a good thing Paul had got most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while she had shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silk stockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlish things that had been all the trousseau she could collect in such a hurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't see him again before he left London, she expected.
She did not see him again.
That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet—it was Leslie Long who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink back starting tears from her eyes—that night there arrived the first note of his that had ever been addressed to: