"Dreams!" she thought incoherently. "It's not true what people say about the dream-come-true, and how one's always disappointed in it. I'm not—ah, I'm not! This flying! This is more glorious than I expected—even with him——!"
Then came a thought that checked her singing rapture.
"If only he knew! But he doesn't."
Behind her, Paul, driving, had made no sign to the passenger. She could guess at the busyness of him. His dear, strong hands, she knew, were on the wheel. They were giving a touch to the throttle here and there. His feet, too, must be vigilantly busy; now this one doing something essential, now that. She supposed his whole body must be dipping from time to time, just as that triangle of sunlight dipped and crept. It was all automatic to him, she expected. He could work that machine while he was thinking, just as she herself could knit and think.
"He's thinking of me," she told herself with a rueful little pang. "He's wondering about my not saying good-bye. He must have minded that. That'll be all right, though. I'll let him know, presently; I'll pull down my muffler and look round. Presently. Not yet. Not until it's too late for him to turn back or set me down——"
And again she hummed to herself in her little tune; inaudible, exultant. The shining triangle of sunlight disappeared from the platform. All became level light about her. It seemed growing colder. And beyond her, far ahead, she spied a sweep of monotonous grey.
She guessed what that meant.
"The sea!" she told herself, thrilled. "We'll be flying over the sea soon. Then he can't do anything about sending me back. Then I shall put up these goggles and push this cap off my curls. Then he'll see. He'll know that it's me that's flying with him!" And she held away from herself that thought that even so this flight could not last for ever, there would be the descent in France, the good-bye that she had evaded—No! It must last!
Again she forgot all else in the rushing joy of it.
Suddenly she felt something jolt hard against her left arm, for the first time Paul was trying to attract his passenger's attention. Twice her arm was jolted by something. Then she put out her brown gloved hand to it, grasping what had jolted her. She drew it forward as he loosed it to her clutch.