"Voilà!" She taunted. "But it is—oh, so pretty! A French soldier with a leg shot off and a German officer to nurse him. You two—you who spoke of hate, do you still sit hand in hand?"
"The girl from Chalet Corneille!" He had known he would not forget her face.
"The dark has made cowards of you," she mocked. "Before the morning you clung together. But now it is dawn!" Her voice rang out bitterly, brutally clear. "Did not one of you ask, 'Is there anything greater than hate'?"
"Sacré! What you say is just." The wounded man's eyes were raised to glance at the light-quivering firmament. Slowly the eyes caught the sight of something else. Very gradually they took in that unexpected thing. Mechanically the words were jerked out: "It—was—I—who—asked—" A sudden pause—a quick gasp—"God forgive me—it—was—I!"
The uncanniness of the words shocked him. In spite of himself, his own eyes followed the man's wide stare; followed it from the eastern horizon, over the shimmering sky; followed it until he reached the crucifix. The hand, which, at the girl's words, had half-heartedly sought his pistol, shook now as he crossed himself.
Was it the smudging shadows, the still unlighted mass of them up there on the arms of the crucifix? Would shadows take on so the semblance of the human body?
"If there were such things—we'd know it—" Fragments of their talk in the night came vividly back to him. "If these things were real—sometimes—we'd see it!"
The girl dropped to her knees. Her hands were clinched over her heaving breast; her gaze riveted itself upon that mass of shadows, high up on the cross; that mass of shadows so mysteriously like the dimly defined Christ figure.
With a hoarse, racking sob that shook his whole frame, the wounded soldier fell upon his face. Quickly the officer bent over him, his hand on the shaking shoulder, his breath coming and going in short, rasping gasps. Motionless he stood there, moving only to catch hold of the girl's fingers, that reached up and clung to his.
The faint, cold light of early morning tinged across the gray-white of the sky. Daybreak lighted the three grouped figures huddled so close together beneath the crucifix. Dawn showed clearly the brown wooden cross and the great half-ripped out nails that had once held the Christ.