She gave another glance into the oval mirror that stood on the dressing-table just in front of her.... And there she saw, not the homely, aproned figure of the little maid that she had expected to see, but the last thing that she had expected.
It was a picture like, and unlike, a scene she had beheld long, long ago, framed in the ornate gold-bordered oval mirror in the drawing-room at the Smiths'. Over her pink-clad shoulder, she saw reflected a broad, khaki-covered chest, a khaki sleeve, a blonde boy's face that moved nearer to her own. Even as she sat there, transfixed by surprise, those blue and intrepid eyes of Icarus looked, laughing joyously, full into hers, and held her gaze as a hand might have held her own.
"It's only me," said a deep and gentle voice, almost shyly. "I say——"
"You!" she cried, in a voice that rang with amazement, but not with fright; though he, it seemed, was hurrying out hasty warnings to the Little Thing not to be frightened.... He'd thought it better than startling her with a wire.... Mrs. Crewe had met him at the door ... he'd come straight up: hoped she didn't think he was a ghost—— Not for a second had she thought so!
Instantly she had known him for her granted and incarnate heart's desire, her Flyer, home from the Front, her husband to whom she had that moment been writing as she sat there.
She sprang to her feet.
She could not have told whether she had first flung herself into those strong arms of his, or whether he had snatched her up into them.
All that mattered was that they were round her now, lifting and holding her as though they would never let her go again.
When Reveillé sounded from the Camp on the plain, the sun was bright on that clematis-grown wall outside the window of Gwenna's bridal-room.