“Oh—but please!” Sylvia turned to me pleadingly. “Do come!”
“I’d rather take you up alone,” said Toby in a stubborn voice, looking up from the mooring-rope he had bent to untether.
She ignored him, laid a hand upon my arm.
“Wont you?” she asked.
“I should infinitely prefer not to,” I replied awkwardly. I cursed myself for my imbecility, but the mere idea of going up in that machine made me feel sick inside, still so powerful was the memory of that moment long ago when, ten thousand feet up with a Hun just below me plunging in flames to destruction, I had felt my nerve suddenly break, my head go dizzy in an awful panic. “Please excuse me.”
She could not, of course, guess my reason.
“I sha’n’t go without you,” she said obstinately. Her eyes seemed to be telling me something I was not intelligent enough to catch. “And I want to go. Please— Jimmy!”
I surrendered.
“All right,” I said, feeling ghastly. “I’ll come.”
Toby stopped in the act of pulling on his flying-coat, and looked at me. His face was livid, his eyes almost insanely malignant in a sudden fury of bad temper.