She laughed wildly.
"My home! This isn't my home: it never has been. I have always been a stranger—an exile here. Everything is foreign to me—everything hateful. If you were twenty times my husband, I should say it. I loathe and detest this country and I loathe and detest your people. I am English. I was mad, mad, mad to believe I could ever be anything else!"
She was hysterical with fatigue and excitement, and scarcely conscious of what she was saying. But Wolff, who knew nothing of what had happened at the parade, heard in her words a deliberate and final declaration.
"If you hate my country and my people, you must hate me," he said. "Has it come to that already?"
She sprang to her feet as though goaded by some frightful inner torment.
"No, no, I don't hate you," she cried. "I love you at the bottom—at least, I believe I do. I can't tell. Everything in me is in revolt and uproar. I can't see you clearly as you are, as I love you. You are just one of those others, one of those whom I detest as my deadliest enemy. That is why I must go away. If I stayed, God knows, I believe I should grow to hate you."
Every trace of colour faded out of his face, but he did not speak, and she ran to him and clasped his arm with the old reckless pleading.
"Let me go!" she begged. "Let me go home! Things will be better then. I shall quiet down. I shan't be so constantly maddened and irritated as I am now. I shall have time to think. Wolff, I must go!"
"If you go now, it will be for ever," he said steadily. "The woman who leaves her husband and her country in the time of danger sacrifices the right to return."
"Wolff!" Her hands sank to her side. She stared at him blankly, horror-stricken.