"Your province is one of the most patriotic," he said. "Its people are of the purest blood of our race. They have always been loyal. They have always fought determinedly. To no people would a traitor be so abhorrent. Do you want the distinction of being a traitor—one lone traitor in your loyal province?"
Hugo was visibly affected. The twisted corner of his mouth quivered.
"I had thought of that, too, sir," he said.
"Suppose your father and mother knew that your comrades had labelled you a coward before the whole army; that they had thought you worthy only of kicks and to be left to die by the roadside. Suppose that your father and mother knew that the story of Hugo Mallin, coward and traitor, who threw down his rifle under fire is being told throughout the land—as I shall have it told—until your name is a symbol for cowardice and treason. How would your father and mother feel?"
There was an unsteady movement of Hugo's body on his crutches. He swallowed hard, moistening dry lips; and the mobility of feature that could change the mask into the illumination of varied emotions spoke horror and asked for pity.
"I—I—as a matter of mercy, when I have admitted the charge, I ask you not to bear on that, sir!" he stammered. Then the crutches creaked with a stronger grip of his hands and a stiffening of his body as he mastered his feelings. The mask recovered its own, even to the drawing down of the corner of the mouth. "I have reasoned that all out, sir," he went on. "It was the thing which kept me from throwing down my rifle before we made our first charge. I have written a letter to my father and mother."
Marta had been so engrossed in the landscape that she seemed not to have been listening. It was her voice, come out of the distance, that asked, without any inflection except that of tense curiosity:
"May we see the letter?"
As she turned her eyes looked directly into Hugo's, their gaze locked, as it were: hers that of a simple request, his that of puzzled, unsatisfied scrutiny.
"May we?" she repeated to Westerling, looking now frankly at him, "though I don't know as it is in keeping with the situation or with your wishes to grant the whim of a woman. But you see," she added smiling, "that is what comes of having a woman present."