"Do you mean in looks?"
"Not much there, even; but I meant in the tomboy business."
"Ah, you don't know. I have changed. I've grown up, suddenly. It couldn't be otherwise," she answered very seriously. "At one time it looked a certainty that I should be sent to gaol, and the suspense was—well, almost unbearable. No one can tell what it meant to have to appear indifferent and confident, when I knew that any moment might be my last in freedom. That danger seemed to pass away, but only to give way to worse."
"You mean this——"
"Yes," she broke in with a quick nod. "I can't bear even to hear his name mentioned. I soon knew what his real object was; he has a friend, a man like himself, who is in command of one of the concentration camps: the one at Krustadt: and—but you can guess. There was only one thing for me to do, and I prepared for it. I have the poison upstairs."
"Nessa!"
"No woman can go through such an ordeal and come out unchanged. I should have made a fight for it, of course. I told Rosa, and, although she was horrified at first, she saw it afterwards, and then she got Herr Feldmann to get me an identification card as Hans Bulich, and helped me get the disguise. I should have gone by now, if you hadn't come. Oh yes, I'm changed; no one knows how much except myself."
The drawn intentness of her expression at the moment showed this so plainly that I was too much moved to find any words to reply. But she rallied quickly and laughed.
"And then when you came I was mad enough to believe you were a spy! I can't think why I was such a fool. There was no excuse; not the slightest; and I don't expect you ever to forgive me really."
"I don't blame you. I don't, on my honour."