will never learn to examine our emotions with
anything but suspicion. If we are prompted to a course of action by
generous impulses, we are anxious that others shall not be let into
the secret. And so it was that of all the reasons given for offering
their services to France, the first and most important was the last to
be acknowledged, and even then it was admitted by some with a
reluctance nearly akin to shame. There was no man there who was not
ready and willing to give his life, if necessary, for the Allied
cause, because he believed in it; but the admission could hardly have
been dragged from him by wild horses.

But the adventure of the life, the peculiar fascination of it--that
was a thing which might be discussed without reserve, and the men
talked of it with a willingness which was most gratifying to Drew and
me, curious as we were about the life we were entering. They were all
in the flush of their first enthusiasms. They were daily enlarging
their conceptions of distance and height and speed. They talked a new
language and were developing a new cast of mind. They were like
children who had grown up over night, whose horizons had been
immeasurably broadened in the twinkling of an eye. They were still
keenly conscious of the change which was upon them, for they were but
fledgling aviators. They were just finding their wings. But as I
listened, I thought of the time which must come soon, when the air, as
the sea, will be filled with stately ships, and how the air-service
will develop its own peculiar type of men, and build up about them its
own laws and its own traditions.

As we walked back through the straggling village street to the camp, I
tried to convey to Drew something of the new vision which had come to
me during the evening. I was aglow with enthusiasm and hoped to strike
an answering spark from him. But all that I was thinking and feeling
then he had thought and felt long before. I am sure that he had
already experienced, in imagination, every thrill, every keen joy, and
every sudden sickening fear which the life might have in store for
him. For this reason I forgave him for his rather bored manner of
answering to my mood, and the more willingly because he was full of
talk about a strange illusion which he had had at the restaurant.
During a moment of silence, he had heard a clatter of hoof-beats in
the village street. (I had heard them too. Some one rode by
furiously.) Well, Drew said that he almos