"You have changed. When one looks into your face, one sees the difference. But to me, of all people in the world! Why talk seriously to me! I am just Sonia, the gipsy nightingale. I know nothing of serious things."
"You carry one very serious secret in your heart," he told her gravely, "one little pain which must sometimes stab you. You are a Frenchwoman, and yet—"
Lutchester paused for a moment. Sonia, too, seemed suddenly to have awakened into a state of tense and vivid emotion. The cigarette burned away between her fingers. Her great eyes were fixed upon Lutchester. There was something almost like fear in their questioning depths.
"Finish! Finish!" she insisted. "Continue!"
"And yet," he went on, "your very dear friend, the friend for whose sake you are here in America, is your country's enemy."
She raised herself a little upon the couch.
"That is not true," she declared furiously. "Maurice loves France. His heart aches for the misery that has come upon her. It is your country only which he hates. If France had but possessed the courage to stand by herself, to resist when England forced her friendship upon her, none of this tragedy would ever have happened. Maurice has told me so himself. France could have peace today, peace at her own price."
"There is no peace which would leave France with a soul, save the peace which follows victory," Lutchester replied sternly.
She crushed her cigarette nervously in her fingers, threw it away, and lit another.
"I will not talk of these things with you," she cried. "It was not for this that you sought me out, eh? Tell me at once? Were these the thoughts you had in your mind when you sent your little note?—when you chose to show yourself once more in my life?"