Bob looked into her face and saw that the soft, dark eyes were shining with a sudden hope and joy that illumined her thin, worn face and brought almost a smile to her pale lips.
“I want to stay with you, Mr. Bob. Oh, don’t leave me behind, dear, kind Mr. Bob! Take me back to America! Surely God put me in your path!”
The objections trembling on Bob’s lips were too many to find expression at that moment. He could not bring himself to speak a curt refusal. The little German woman’s face touched him too deeply with all its gentle reminders of old days. He hesitated, glanced around him at the avenue, along the sidewalks and pavements of which disorderly crowds were strolling, arguing, fighting, shouting and gesticulating—occasionally broken up by groups of harassed policemen charging fiercely into their midst. Bob felt Alan’s hand on his arm and put Elizabeth off for the moment by saying:
“Elizabeth, we can’t talk now. Wait until we find a taxi and get to the hotel. You can come that far, anyhow.”
Elizabeth nodded, her habitual patience overcoming her eager longing to be answered. She followed the two young men into the station, where a red-faced, worried-looking police sergeant was seated before a desk, his ear to the telephone, his hand fingering reports lying in scattered heaps in front of him. He spoke into the telephone:
“Ja, ja. You can do nothing? Himmel! Then call out men from the next precinct. There are none? You ass, what is the use in telling me that? Wait? Yes, yes—hurry!”
He hung up, breathing fast, caught sight of his visitors, stared, then rose to his feet, demanding, in a voice still unsteady with anger, “What do you wish, Herrn Officers?”
“A taxi, please, and a policeman to escort us to our hotel,” requested Bob.
“Everybody’s shooting at us. They don’t seem to know the war’s over,” added Alan, looking without any trace of sympathy at the sergeant’s frowning, troubled face.
Alan had suffered much during the war, and, in the course of many gallant exploits, had been three times wounded, and left with a bullet buried in his knee which hurt him atrociously when least expected. Human nature forbade that such mild revenge as this should not be sweet to him.