Ruth merely nodded, waiting.
“Then a correction arrives from America, laying bare an extraordinary circumstance, Liebchen. Our people in Chicago sent us in January one Mathilde Igel, and now they have ascertained beyond any possible doubt that two days before they dispatched Mathilde to Paris, she has been interned in America. Who, then, have our Chicago people sent to us and advised us to employ—who is this Cynthia Gail? You would not need to be pretty to pique curiosity now, would you, Liebchen?”
He petted her with mocking protectiveness as he spoke; and Ruth, recoiling, at least had gained from him explanation of much about which she had been uncertain. The Germans in Chicago, plainly, had made such a mistake as she had supposed and had been long in discovering it; longer, perhaps, in communicating knowledge of it to Paris. But it had arrived in time to destroy her. Herr Baron gratuitously continued his explanation.
“So I took it upon me, myself, to have a squint at our Cynthia and I got my good look at you, Liebchen! What a pretty girl—how do you Americans say it? A dazzler; indeed, a dazzler! What a needless pity to add you to the total of destruction, already too great—you so young and innocent and maidenly? I have never been in favor of women’s intrusion in war; no, it is man’s business. For women, the solacing of those who fight—whether with sword or by their wits behind the enemy’s lines! Not so, Liebchen?”
It was broad daylight—a sunny, mild morning amid wooded hills and vales with clear, rushing streams, with the Rhine Valley lost now to the west as the railroad swept more closely to the Black Forest. The train was slowing and, as it came to halt before a little countryside station, Wessels took his arm from about Ruth and refrained, for a few moments, from petting her; he went so far, indeed, as to sit a little away from her so that anyone glancing into the compartment would see merely a man and a girl traveling together. Mad impulses had overwhelmed Ruth when she felt the train to be slowing—impulses that she must be able to appeal to whoever might be at the station to free her from this man; but sight of those upon the platform instantly had cooled her. They were soldiers—oxlike, servile soldiery who leaped forward when, from a compartment ahead, a German officer signaled them for attention; or they were peasant women and old men, only more unobtrusive and submissive than the soldiers. Appeal to them against one of their “gentlemen” and one who, too, undoubtedly was an officer! The idea was lunacy; her sole chance was to do nothing to offend this man while he flattered himself and boasted indulgently.
The train proceeded.
He put his arm about Ruth again. “So I took upon myself the responsibility of saving you, Liebchen! You have yet done us no harm, I say; you mean us harm, of course. But you have not yet had the opportunity.”
Ruth caught breath. He did not know, then, of her betrayal of De Trevenac? Or was he merely playing with her in this as in the rest?
“What is it, Liebchen?” he asked.
“Nothing.”