“This house,” she said, “but we are too late.”
“But no, madame!” I exclaimed. “Go quickly and help!” At the moment I believed in her supernatural powers as firmly as any peasant of the Campine.
She lifted her head. A sad light had come into her eyes. “It is too late. The avenger of Belgium is not to come from this house,” she muttered.
“But yes! Hurry!”
The madness of my words did not occur to me until days afterward: the lunacy of thinking either that she could heal, or that the child of these poor peasant-folk when healed would avenge his nation on her enemies. God knows what wild thoughts were in my mind that night! God knows, and Saint Dympna!
“I will go in then,” she said, rising, giving her hand with a queenly gesture, and stepping from the car. “Thank you, monsieur. You need not wait; indeed you must not wait. I am here with friends. Adieu!”
She clutched my arm in a sudden spasm of fright.
“Listen!” she whispered.
A piercing wail rose from the quiet cottage; a dull lamp flared as it was borne hastily past a window; a man’s deep voice groaned horribly. Children in the loft, wakened by the outcry, began to scream, and a startled dog far away howled in terror.