"As if that could excuse—it's what Greta says. 'They were warned,' she keeps repeating. 'They disobeyed the warning.' The little children, the babies disobeyed the German warning! Oh-h!" The small tightened fist beat upon one knee to call back the self-control that threatened to desert her. "I've had a horrible morning with Greta. She—something has died in Greta. I'd been feeling ever since—" Again she broke off and seemed to seize upon comparative commonplace to steady her nerves. "It was true about her being married. She admitted it the day she read of Mr. Guedalla's death in the paper. She got some money. It wasn't her not telling us she was married; it was other things. Oh, I've been unhappy enough! But this—this! Gavan, I couldn't get her to say it was horrible. She wasn't even sorry. Oh, Gavan, she was glad!" The locked fingers writhed in her lap. She seemed not to know that she was weeping. "What do you think Greta said at last? 'It would be a lesson,' she said. A lesson! To torture and kill fifteen hundred innocent people. A lesson to the children! To little babies!" She turned her quivering face away a moment. "I think," she said under her broken breath—"I think I should have gone mad if you hadn't come back. Oh, I'm so glad you're back!"
He simply hadn't the courage at that moment to tell her he was going to sail for England the following day. He told her in a very gentle note sent late in the afternoon. They were to dine together.
She met him with steady looks.
"I've cabled to Julian," she said immediately, "that I'm coming back with you."
The Parnassian was to sail at ten.
Napier had stood outside the entrance to the dock, waiting for Nan, since ten minutes past nine. At twenty minutes to ten there she was at last.
"But where is your luggage?" he called out. He had warned her not to trust it to other hands. In that second before the cab drew alongside something in the face at the window prepared him for the answer. "That's why I am late. I had to have everything taken off. And I tried to telephone you. Just as I was leaving—this came." She held a paper toward him as she got out of the cab. She stood there while he read:
I depend on your waiting till I come sailing to-day Olympic.
Julian.
As Napier looked up, speechless in that first moment, she whispered: "Serves me right. Greta said, I was running away." She put out her hand and steadied herself against the window-frame of the cab. "Where you're going they shoot deserters, don't they! Well, I've been shot. Oh, not fatally! just in the leg. Enough to stop me."