“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“I have been trying to reach Alsace and the French and American lines.”
“You have done well so far, Mademoiselle,” Fayal said respectfully.
“How do you know?”
“I know that at noon yesterday, Mademoiselle, you were twenty kilometers away. The whole countryside has been warned to find you; but you have come these twenty kilometers in spite of them.”
He coughed and checked himself, a little guiltily, as she startled. “That is, Mademoiselle, if you are that American lady who had accompanied Hauptmann von Forstner.”
“I am that one,” Ruth admitted.
“Then, Mademoiselle, come immediately with me! No moment is to be lost!”
He went to the door of the shed and gazed cautiously about. Ruth arose and began brushing the straw from herself; sleep had restored her nerves, but not her strength, she found. She swayed when she stepped. She was completely at the mercy of this man, as she must have been in the power of whoever found her. But she did not distrust Fayal. His emaciation, his cough, and, more than those, his manner—the manner of a man who had been suffering indignities without letting himself become servile; and together with that, his concern and respect for a woman—seemed to Ruth beyond counterfeit.
“You require food, of course, Mademoiselle!” Fayal exclaimed in dismay. “And I have none!”