"Ah, yes. A bier-karte!" said the German girl, with her good-natured giggle. "Here, I choose this one. View of Hendon. We write 'Es lassen grüssen unbekannter Weise'—'there send greeting to Karl, the Unknown.'"
"Oh, but hadn't we better send him this awfully nice-looking airman, just as a sort of example of what a young man really can do in the way of appearance, what?" suggested Miss Butcher, picking out another card. "Peach, isn't he? Look! He's standing up in the thingamagig just like an archangel in his car; or do I mean Apollo?—Gwenna'd know.... Which are you going to choose, Gwenna?"
Gwenna had picked out three cards. A view of the ground, a picture of a biplane in mid-air, and a portrait of one of the other airmen.
He had been taken in his machine against the blank background of sky. The big, boyish hands gripped the wheel, the cap, goggles in front, peak behind, was pushed back from the careless, clean-shaven lad's face, with its cheeks creased with deep dimples of a smile.
"This one," said Gwenna Williams. And there was no whisper of Fate at her heart as she announced lightly, "This is my love." (She did not guess, as you do, that here was the portrait of the Boy of this story.)
The other girls leaned across her to look as she added: "He's the most like Icarus, I think."
"Who's Icarus, when he's at home?" inquired Miss Butcher. And Gwenna, out of one of her skimmed books, gave a hurried explanation of Icarus, the first flying-man, the classic youth who "dared the sun" on wings of wax.... Together the girls inspected the postcard of his modern type, the Hendon aviator. They laughed; they read aloud the name "P. Dampier;" they compared his looks with those of other airmen, treating the whole subject precisely as they would have treated the dancing or singing of their favourite actresses in the revues....
For it was still May, Nineteen-fourteen in England. The feeling of warm and drowsy peace in the air was only intensified by the brisk, sharp strains of the military band on the left of the flying-ground, playing the "Light-Cavalry" march....
"Dear me! Are we going on like this for ever?" remonstrated Gwenna presently. "Aren't they ever going up?"
She was answered by a shattering roar from the right.