"Well, there are your friends." She waited while Greta's eyes arraigned her fiercely. "And there are the people who, from their point of view, owe you so much."
"You mean—" Greta waited warily.
"Those who set you on. The people you've run such awful risks for."
"Oh, the powers in Germany! They'll trouble themselves about me!" Her ghost of a laugh was more horrible than cursing. Some of the dullness went out of Greta's eyes for a moment at sight of the impression she was making on the girl. "You think, if we make a single mis-step, 'They' spare us?" The slack hands came up and met in a hard grip on the bare table-top. "They set us superhuman tasks in the midst of strangers. A woman, set to play a lone hand against overwhelming odds, day in, day out. No let up. One false move,"—the locked fingers parted, the hands were lifted a few inches, and fell heavily on the board,—"you are first suspect. Then you lose your liberty. Then you lose your life."
"No! no!" The fascination of horror that had held the girl broke before that evocation of the final doom. "You mustn't be afraid of that! You mustn't—"
"What do you know about it?"
"I am sure, I am sure—"
She ought to have been satisfied with the degree to which she had wrought upon the girl. But that wasn't Greta's way. It didn't suit her that any knowledge of intended clemency should dull the poignancy of Nan's compassion.
"You think I'm afraid I'll lose my life here! Pfui!" She forced out breath too contemptuous to lend itself to word in that first emission. "It isn't my life these creatures want. I'm no good to them dead. I'm no good to them alive if they had the sense to see." She flung it to the wall over Nan's head.
"Oh, if you knew how you've relieved me! Greta! Greta! I wouldn't let myself be afraid of the worst. And yet, deep down,—since I came into this room—I have been afraid. Thank you, Greta, for taking that horror off my mind."