“For some years now,” he replied simply.
He lingered. He was waiting for Steinmetz, who always rose to such emergencies, who understood secrets and how to secure them when they seemed already lost. He did not quite understand what was to be done with Catrina—how she was to be silenced. She had found him out with such startling rapidity that he felt disposed to admit her right to dictate her own terms. On a straight road this man was fearless and quick, but he had no taste or capacity for crooked ways.
Catrina walked on in silence. She was not looking at the matter from his point of view at all.
“Of course,” she said at length, “of course, Paul, I admire you for it immensely. It is just like you to go and do the thing quietly and say nothing about it; but—oh, you must go away from here. I—I—it is too horrible to think of your running such risks. Rather let them all die like flies than that. You mustn’t do it. You mustn’t.”
She spoke in English hurriedly, with a little break in her voice which he did not understand.
“With ordinary precautions the risk is very small,” he said practically.
“Yes. But do you take ordinary precautions? Are you sure you are all right now?”
She stopped. They were quite alone in the one silent street of the stricken village. She looked up into his face. Her hands were running over the breast of the tattered coat he wore. It was lamentably obvious, even to him, that she loved him. In her anxiety she either did not know what she was doing, or she did not care whether he knew or not. She merely gave sway to the maternal instinct which is in the love of all women. She felt his hands; she reached up and touched his face.
“Are you sure—are you sure you have not taken it?” she whispered.
He walked on, almost roughly.