"You have no rooms; they are ours," he said, and bending forward he widened his eyes at her significantly.
Louise looked about her like a trapped animal. She saw Von Wedel and Feldmann who had Chérie between them and were forcing her to drink out of their glasses; she saw Glotz seated on the piano-stool looking on with fat, impassive face; she saw the man before her bending forward and leering suggestively, so close that she could feel his hot, acrid breath on her face. The enemy! The man with mud and blood on his feet ... he was putting out his hand and touching her——
She fell on her knees and dragged Mireille down beside her! she lifted up her hands and raised her weeping face to him. "Your children ... you have children at home ... your little girls are in bed and asleep ... they are safe ... safe, locked in their house.... As God may guard them for you, oh protect us! spare us! Take care of us!... Be kind—be kind!" She dropped forward with her head on his feet—on Claude's slippers—and little Mireille with quick tears rolling down her face looked up at him and touched his sleeve with a trembling hand.
He looked down and frowned. His mouth worked. Yes. He had three yellow-headed little girls in Stuttgart. It was good that they were in Stuttgart and not in Belgium. But they were little German girls, while these were enemies. These were belligerents. Civilians if you will, but still belligerents....
He looked down at the woman's bowed head and fragile heaving shoulders, and he looked at the white, frightened child-face lifted to his. "Belligerents" ... he growled, and cleared his throat and frowned. Then his chin quivered. "Get away," he said thickly. "Get away, both of you. Quick. Hide in the cellar—no—not in the cellar, in the stable—in the garden—anywhere. Don't go in the streets. The streets are full of drunken soldiers. Go."
Louise kissed his feet, kissed Claude's slippers, and wept, while Mireille smiled up at him with the smile of a seraph, and thanked and thanked him, not knowing what she thanked him for.
"But—what of Chérie?" gasped Louise, looking round at the frightened wild-rose figure in its white dress, trembling and weeping between the two ribald men.
"You shall take her with you," said Fischer, and he went resolutely across the room and took Chérie by the arm.
"What? What? You old reprobate," roared Feldmann, digging him in the ribs, with peals of coarse laughter. "You have two of them! What more do you want, you hedgehog, you? Leave this one alone."
"You leave her alone, too. I order her to go away." Fischer frowned and cleared his throat and tried to draw Chérie from Feldmann's and Von Wedel's grasp.