It was a cry—the short, shrill cry of an infant.
The man stood still as if turned to stone; his blood-shot eyes, starting from their sockets, stared at the red-draped door from which the sound had come.
Chérie was at his feet, sobbing and wailing, her arms flung round his knees. "Have pity, have pity!" she sobbed, shaking with terror of him, blind with the fear of his violence. "Do no harm, do no harm! Kill me, trample upon me, but do no harm to the child."
And still Florian stood motionless, as if turned to stone. He heard none of the wild words that fell from the terrified woman's lips; he heard nothing but that querulous cry, the cry of the newly-born. The world seemed to ring with it. Above the wailing voice of the woman, above the din of soldiery, the clash of arms, the roar of warfare, rose that shrill cry of life, the cry of humanity. And that cry pierced his heart like a sword. In it was all the helplessness and misery of the world. It seemed to tell him of the uselessness and hopelessness and sadness of all things.
Anger, grief and despair, the passion of vengeance and the desire to kill, all dropped out of his soul and left it silent and empty. The terrified woman before him saw those fierce eyes soften, saw the stern lips tremble.
He bent forward and raised her to her feet. "Poor Chérie!" he said. "Poor little Chérie!" He took her pale, disfigured face between his two hands and looked into her eyes. "Say good-bye to me. Say good-bye. And may the Saints protect you."
"Where are you going? What will you do?" she sobbed as she saw him turning away from her, making ready to go out into the darkness—out of her life for ever.
"There is much for me to do," he said and his eyes wandered to the window whence the sound of the German bugles could still be heard.
And as she looked at him she saw that Florian, the comrade and lover of her youth, had vanished—only the soldier stood before her, the soldier aloof from her, detached from her, the soldier alone with his stern great task to do.
But in her the woman, the eternal, helpless woman, was born again, and she clung to him and wept, for passion and love returned to her soul and overwhelmed her.