“I am not afraid to stay.”
“And face the brutes who would come here? Do you know why they are coming?”
“Yes. Karasch has told me all—his own belief about me, and that of the others.”
“You are brave, Mademoiselle.”
The words were simple enough in themselves, but I think she read in them something of what was in my thoughts. She kept her head bent down and her interlocked fingers worked nervously. Then she looked up and smiled.
“You know the risk you would run; why would you do it?” I asked.
She threw off the more earnest feeling with a shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know that there would be any risk.”
I took this as her way of avoiding the channel into which we were drifting. I smiled.
“You would be so helpless, too, alone here,” I said.
“Alone?” catching at the word.