ite Doe Inn.

The airman went out to the doorstep, saluted the staff captain who leaned
forward from the tonneau and turned a flash on him. Then, satisfied, the
officer lifted a bundle from the tonneau and handed it to the airman. A
letter was pinned to the bundle.

After the airman had read the letter twice, the staff captain leaned a
trifle nearer.

"Do you think it can be done?" he demanded bluntly.

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Here are your munitions, too."

He lifted from the tonneau a bomb-thrower's sack, heavy and full. The
airman took it and saluted.

"It means the cross," said the staff captain dryly. And to the engineer
chauffeur: "Let loose!"

CHAPTER XIX

HONOUR

For a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the
receding car died away in the night.

Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death,
he went into the inn and through the cafe, where the sleeping innkeeper
sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.

The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table.
Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head
bowed.

He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on
the bare floor.

She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.

"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady
voice.

"He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."

The girl nodded as though preoccupied--an odd, mysterious little nod, as
though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.

Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing
beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the
bundle under his arm.

"Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes.
Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though
lost in thought.

He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the
floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a
bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped.

"Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "--I have seen
worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle."

"That," she said musingly, in her low, even voice, "is now in God's
hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing
them a trifle of that burden. "I hav