The Leader paused to listen, then nodded with comprehension.
"Forst man say he think you foreign spy because you look nothing like voomans from this country. Other man say he's right because if you var from here you vould haf thick lags like his wife who iss von big slob. Forst man say he can say that again for his vife who iss so big slob you gotta say it twice to describe her." The Leader paused to consider this exchange and suddenly smote his brow. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "Now iss clear! You deganerate product of America sant har to make men unrastful with slobbish female population. So!"
"It's a side-line I hadn't thought of," Toffee said and smiled engagingly at the guards. "But if you think it'll work...."
"Iss no good you viggle around and look saxy," the Leader put in sullenly. "You gonna get shot good, you deganerate boopsy daisy." He turned to the guards and shouted an order which had but one meaning in any language. The men instantly formed a single rank with mechanical precision and raised their rifles toward Toffee, albeit with a certain gleam of reluctance in their eyes.
"Now you gonna gat it," the Leader said.
But Toffee only smiled. "I've told you," she said, "I'm an avenging angel. And we angels are practically indestructible."
"Ve see," the Leader snorted. "So!" He turned to the guards and barked an order that touched off a confusion of explosion and gun smoke. In the moment that ensued, as the smoke settled, there was a tense silence. This was followed by a many-throated cry of alarm.
Toffee, still smiling, and completely unscathed, stepped lightly through the screen of smoke and presented herself to the company at large.
"What would you like for an encore?" she asked.
She did not bother, of course, to explain that she could not possibly be destroyed as long as Marc's mind held the image of her as a live being. She would always be just as Marc imagined her and he quite evidently was not thinking of her as dead at the moment.