“The American family system is a puzzle to me,” he said.
“You arrange these things better—in Germany?”
“You would be impossible in Germany or France or Russia.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am American.... That’s the terrible truth. I’m American, and I have a traitor for a father and a spy of the enemy for a possible husband. Oh,” she said, with a sudden flux of despair, “why should this thing happen to me—to me?”
He offered no sympathy. “Anyhow,” he said, “you have had to send for me.... And I came. I’m patient, and you are worth being patient for.” His eyes glowed as they rested upon her, perceiving her slender, ardent youth, the fire, the ability to live, the reckless charm of her. “Let it rest so. We will go on as before.”
And so it had been. She recalled that conversation now as the music of bands and the voice of the multitude arose to her ears. So it had been—and there was no change. His patience and persistence were unabated; her power of resistance was undiminished.
He turned to her suddenly. “America imagines she can stand up against Germany’s armies with those.” He pointed downward. “And these men of the Middle West and the West are the best you can give. Look at them.”
She looked at the straggling lines of jaunty men, lacking uniform, lacking bearing, lacking everything that goes to make the soldier, but a something which was invisible to her eyes and to Cantor’s eyes, but which is the thing, when all else is judged and weighed, that carries a man steadfastly, unflinchingly, into a hell of carnage.
“A regiment of Prussians would annihilate an army of them,” Cantor said.
“Wait six months, a year,” she retorted. “Then talk.”