t’other.  I adore the serene grace with which you ignore the ravishing Liane.  Haven’t you any curiosity at all, my Sphinx?  No?  Well, then, just to punish you, I’ll tell you all about it.  She’s married to the best fellow in the world—­a liaison officer working with our squadron—­and she worships the ground that he walks on and the air that he occasionally flies in.  So whenever I run up to the City of Light, en permission, I look her up, and take her the latest news—­and for an hour, over the candles, we pretend that I am Philippe, and that she is Janie.  Only she says that I don’t pretend very well—­and it’s just possible that she’s right.

“Mon petit coeur et grand tresor, I wish that I could take you flying with me this evening.  You’d be daft about it!  Lots of it’s a rotten bore, of course, but there’s something in me that doesn’t live at all when I’m on this too, too solid earth.  Something that lies there, crouched and dormant, waiting until I’ve climbed up into the seat, and buckled the strap about me and laid my hands on the ‘stick.’  It’s waiting—­waiting for a word—­and so am I. And I lean far forward, watching the figure toiling out beyond till the call comes back to me, clear and confident, ‘Contact, sir?’ And I shout back, as restless and exultant as the first time that I answered it—­’Contact!’

“And I’m off—­and I’m alive—­and I’m free!  Ho, Janie!  That’s simpler than Abracadabra or Open Sesame, isn’t it?  But it opens doors more magical than ever they swung wide, and something in me bounds through, more swift and eager than any Aladdin.  Free!  I’m a crazy sort of a beggar, my little love—­that same thing in me hungers and thirsts and aches for freedom.  I go half mad when people or events try to hold me—­you, wise beyond wisdom, never will.  Somehow, between us, we’ve struck the spark that turns a mere piece of machinery into a wonder with wings—­somehow, you are forever setting me free.  It is your voice—­your voice of silver and peace—­that’s eternally whispering ‘Contact!’ to me—­and I am released, heart, soul, and body!  And because you speed me on my way, Janie, I’ll never fly so far, I’ll never fly so long, I’ll never fly so high that I’ll not return to you.  You hold me fast, forever and forever.”

You had flown high and far indeed, Jerry—­and you had not returned.  Forever and forever!  Burn faster, flame!

“My blessed child, who’s been frightening you?  Airplanes are by all odds safer than taxis—­and no end safer than the infernal duffer who’s been chaffing you would be if I could once get my hands on him.  Damn fool!  Don’t care if you do hate swearing—­damn fools are damn fools, and there’s an end to it.  All those statistics are sheer melodramatic rot—­the chap who fired ’em at you probably has all his money invested in submarines, and is fairly delirious with jealousy.  Peg (did I ever formally introduce you to Pegasus, the best pursuit-plane in the R.F.C.—­or out of it?)—­Peg’s about as likely to let me down as you are!  We’d do a good deal for each other, she and I—­nobody else can really fly her, the darling!  But she’d go to the stars for me—­and farther still.  Never you fear—­we have charmed lives, Peg and I—­we belong to Janie.