soldier’s wife.  Mrs. Lawrence was so at odds with her surroundings that Anita, unconsciously, looked questioningly at her.  She stood, shading her eyes from the glare of the snow and the sun, gazing anxiously toward the aviation field.  It was a flying day, and the hearts of the women at Fort Blizzard had no rest or peace on those days.  Anita could not but see that Mrs. Lawrence’s hands, browned and hardened with work, were small and delicately formed, and, that the poise of the head, the fine contours, were not those of a woman bred to toil.

It was not quite time for the ascent and the officers were not yet on the field, although there were a dozen or two soldiers and civilian employes standing about the sheds in the middle of the plain, and working with the huge machines, dragged from their shelter.  Afar off, the voices of the soldiers, singing a service song, were borne upon the crystal clear air.

They were trolling out the song as if there were no more risks in aviation than in tennis.

  We don’t know what we’re here for,
  We don’t know why we’re sent,
  But we’ve brought a few unlimbered guns
  By way of com-pli-ment.

Anita walked quickly out of the entrance, keeping her eyes well away from the flying field.  It was a good half mile along the fir tree walk, and Anita made it twice.  The music was throbbing still in her veins and the thought of playing to Broussard’s singing had in it an intoxication for her innocent heart.  She heard the whirring and clapping of the great aircraft above her head as they flitted across the face of the sun, but Anita would not look; she hated aircraft and wished they had never been invented.  But she was forced to look when she heard cries and shouts, as one of the great machines began to reel about wildly in the air, when it was only twenty feet from the earth, and then came down, with a crash, upon the snow.  She saw Broussard standing on the ground, he was in uniform, with his heavy cavalry overcoat around him, and he was working with the men to drag the aviator from the machine.  They got him out, and putting him on a stretcher, began to run with their burden toward the hospital.  Anita turned her eyes away.  She did not see Mrs. Lawrence run out of the entrance toward the field, her head bare in the icy cold, and no cloak around her delicate shoulders.  Broussard turned to meet her, and taking off his cavalry overcoat, put it around the shivering woman, and half led and half carried her as they followed the stretcher.  Then Anita knew it was Lawrence who was hurt.

Within the entrance there was an excited group of soldiers’ wives.  Some said that Lawrence was only slightly hurt; others that every bone in his body was broken.  The chaplain, passing along, reassured them.

“Nothing but a few bruises and scratches,” he said.  “I asked the surgeon if I was needed and he told me there was nothing doing in my line; I am going to the hospital though, to see the man’s wife—­it is Mrs. Lawrence.  Good afternoon, Anita.  Now don’t let this trifling accident break your little heart.  It’s nothing, I tell you.”