"It's like me," she said. "I lived as a child here."
"You are but little more than that now," said Peyrol, examining her with a feeling that was no longer surprise or curiosity, but seemed to be lodged in his very breast.
"Are you a patriot?" she asked, still surveying the invisible company in the room.
Peyrol, who had thought that he had "done with all that damned nonsense," felt angry and also at a loss for an answer.
"I am a Frenchman," he said bluntly.
"Arlette!" called out an aged woman's voice through the open inner door.
"What do you want?" she answered readily.
"There's a saddled mule come into the yard."
"All right. The man is here." Her eyes, which had steadied, began to wander again all round and about the motionless Peyrol. She moved a step nearer to him and asked in a low confidential tone: "Have you ever carried a woman's head on a pike?"
Peyrol, who had seen fights, massacres on land and Sea, towns taken by assault by savage warriors, who had killed men in attack and defence, found himself at first bereft of speech by this simple question, and next moved to speak bitterly.