Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/195

 He had planned wildly, to attempt to join the English fighting to the south of Mirevaux. He couldn't do that now; but, with strength enough in his leg to move a rudder bar, he could fly and fight again as soon as he could procure another "ship." The only way he could reach the rear and another airplane was to continue with these refugees and with this girl.

It was strange that when he had been fighting and had been far from her, he had felt more strongly about her than he did now—more about her as a girl, that was, in relation to him as a man. He was close beside her with her body swaying against his when the car careened in the pits and ruts of the road. He kept observing her—the play of color in her smooth skin in the flush of her excitement, the steady, blue eyes alert upon the road, her full, red little lips pressing tight together after speaking with him and drawing tiny lines of strain at the corners of her mouth. He noticed pretty things about her which he had not before the trimness of her ankles even under her heavy boots, the ease with which that slender, wellformed little body exerted its strength, the way her hair at her temples went into ringlets when effort and anxiety moistened her forehead. But he noticed these as though to remember them later; his thought seemed to store them and save them for feeling at another time; he was almost aware of going through an experience with her which could affect him, fully, only afterwards. In the same manner that subconsciously he had thought about her when all his conscious thought was absorbed in flying and fighting, now his eyes only observed her; his soul was blent in the battle.