he post
doctor's sister who had come from the East on a visit, and of a
riding-test, but their hearts spoke of affection.... Usually it is a
man and a woman that make home; but three men, a stranger one of them,
talking of motors on a porch in the enveloping dusk, made for one
another a home to remember always.

They stayed over Monday night, for a hop, and Carl found that the
officers and their wives were as approachable as Hank Odell. They did
not seem to be waiting for young Ericson to make social errors. When
he confessed that he had forgotten what little dancing he knew, the
sister of the post doctor took him in hand, retaught him the waltz,
and asked with patent admiration: "How does it feel to fly? Don't you
get frightened? I'm terribly in awe of you and Mr. Haviland. I know I
should be frightened to death, because it always makes me dizzy just
to look down from a high building."

Carl slipped away, to be happy by himself, and hid in the shadow of
palms on the porch, lapped in the flutter of pepper-trees. The
orchestra began a waltz that set his heart singing. He heard a girl
cry: "Oh, goody! the 'Blue Danube'! We must go in and dance that."

"The Blue Danube." The name brought back the novels of General Charles
King, as he had read them in high-school days; flashed the picture of
a lonely post, yellow-lighted, like a topaz on the night-swathed
desert; a rude ball-room, a young officer dancing to the "Blue
Danube's" intoxication; a hot-riding, dusty courier, hurling in with
news of an Apache outbreak; a few minutes later a troop of cavalry
slanting out through the gate on horseback, with a farewell burning
the young officer's lips.... He was in just such an army story, now!

The scent of royal climbing-roses enveloped Carl as that picture
changed into others. San Spirito Presidio became a vast military
encampment over which Hawk Ericson was flying.... From his monoplane
he saw a fairy town, with red roofs rising to a tower of fantastic
turrets. (That was doubtless the memory of a magazine-cover painted by
Maxfield Parrish.)... He was wandering through a poppy-field with a
girl dusky of eyes, soft black of hair, ready for any jaunt....
Pictures bright and various as tropic shells, born of music and peace
and his affection for the Havilands; pictures which promised him the
world. For the first time Hawk Ericson realized that he might be a
Personage instead of a back-yard boy.... The girl with twilight eyes
was