The coat was off and Captain Fischer was carefully turning up his shirt-sleeve. Yes; the forearm was grazed and bleeding.
The captain examined it very carefully, and so did Von Wedel, bending over it and shaking his head with an air of great concern. The captain looked across at Louise and beckoned to her with his finger.
"Come here, Gnädige, please;" and as she approached him he said, "Your husband is a doctor, is he not? Then you will have some antiseptic in the house. Lysoform? Sublimate? Have you?" Louise nodded assent. "Bring me some," he said. "And a little boiled water if you have it."
Louise turned without a word and left the room.
"She is very stupid," said Von Wedel looking after her.
"She is very pretty," said the captain.
Louise passed the soldiers who stood in the hall talking together in low voices. She went down the stairs feeling dizzy and bewildered. Would these men stay in the house all night? Would they sleep and eat here? Would they order her about, and ogle Chérie, and bully little Mireille? How long would they stay, she wondered. A week? a month?... She entered her husband's surgery and turned on the light. The sight of his room, of his chair, of his book, open on the desk as he had left it, seemed to wring her heart in a vice of pain. "Claude! Claude!" she sobbed. "Come back! Come back and take care of us!"
But Claude was far away.
She found the little blue phial of pastilles of corrosive sublimate; she poured some distilled water into a small basin and found cotton and a packet of lint for a bandage. Then she went upstairs again, past the soldiers in grey, and entered the sitting-room. It was empty.
Where had they all gone to? Where had they taken Chérie and Mireille? She stumbled blindly up the short flight of stairs leading to the drawing-room. There she heard their voices, and went in.