"Alone!" He looked at her aghast. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you understand? It's so easy—so simple. I am a stranger here. I am hated and distrusted. I suppose it was inevitable. In a few days you will have gone, and if Miles goes too I shall have no one left——"
"Nora!" he interrupted sternly. "There is your husband."
"Wolff—yes, there is Wolff. Robert, they say there will be war. Is it true?"
He frowned with perplexity. For the moment he could not follow her thought, and her question seemed to him erratic and purposeless.
"It is possible. For my part, I hope it may come to that. Things have been drifting to a crisis for a long time, and we must assert ourselves once and for all. These beggars are beginning to suspect us of fear or incompetence, and the sooner they are disillusioned the better." Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her face, and stopped short. "Nora, what is the matter?"
"You forget," she said hoarsely. "I am not English any more."
They walked on in silence, Arnold too startled and overwhelmed by the conflict which she in one short sentence had revealed to him to speak or think.
"I was a thoughtless fool," he said at last. "For the moment I could not imagine you as anything but my own countrywoman. Now I see; and it is terrible for you—terrible. Even marriage cannot blot out one's nationality."
They had reached the door of the Arnims' flat, and she stopped and faced him with wide-open, desperate eyes.