Nora gave no attention to his words, though she was destined to remember them. She led the way down the narrow stairs into the street where the cab was waiting for them, and a minute later they were rattling out of the little by-street into the busy thoroughfare.
It seemed to Nora that the crowds were denser than usual, that a curious unrest was written on the usually placid, cheerful faces that flashed past the open carriage window. She remembered Wolff's expression as he had entered the room; she felt now that it had been the unconscious reflection from those other faces, and that the one invisible bond of sympathy which unites all men of the same race had passed on the flame of patriotism from one to another, till in all these thousands there burned, above every meaner passion, the supreme Vaterlandsliebe. Only she felt nothing, nothing—though she was bound to them by oath—save fear and horror. She felt alone, deserted. Miles was the one being in the whole seething crowd who felt as she felt, who suffered as she suffered. She turned to him with an impulsive tenderness. He was not looking out of the window, but staring straight before him, with his low forehead puckered into thoughtful lines.
"It's a queer thing," he said, as though he felt her questioning glance. "Here we both are in a foreign country, mixing with people whom we shall be blowing up to-morrow, and to-day not moving a finger to harm them, just because the word has not been given, as it were. If I threw a bomb amongst all those big-wigs to-night, who knows what victories I might prevent?—and yet I suppose it would be murder. And then, there is Wolff stewing over papers that, I bet, the English War Office would give a few thousands just to look at; you and I sit and watch him and never move a hand."
"What do you expect us to do?" she returned listlessly.
"Nothing, I suppose."
The rest of the drive passed in silence, and once in the ball-room, Nora lost sight of her brother completely. He drifted off by himself, whither and with whom she could not think, for she knew that he had no friends in the brilliant crowd. She, too, was friendless, though there were many there who bowed to her and passed on, and for the first time she realised the full extent of her isolation. The Selenecks were not there, and she was glad of their absence: she would have hated them to have been witnesses of her loneliness. Those whom she knew, whose comradeship with her husband should have guaranteed a certain courtesy, passed her by. Nora cared nothing for them, but the humiliation stung her to the quick. She was English, and because she was English they insulted her, tacitly and deliberately. Not all the months in her husband's country had taught her to understand that she had insulted them, that she had trampled on their pride of race, and scorned the customs and opinions which were their holiest possessions. It never occurred to her that the description of the scene of the previous afternoon had passed from lip to lip with the rapidity of lightning, and that in the eyes of that mighty brotherhood of soldiers, and of that still mightier sisterhood of their wives, she was branded as a renegade, as a woman who had spat upon her husband's uniform, and exalted another race above that to which she belonged—a Deutschfeindliche, an enemy who masqueraded among them under a transparent guise of hypocritical friendship. Perhaps some pitied her; but for the most part they were the older men, whose experience taught them to be pitiful—and they were not present on this particular night. Even if they had been they could have done nothing to help her. She was an outcast, and for them she had made herself "unclean." Thus poor Nora, still young and headstrong in all her emotions, her sensibilities raw with the events of the last weeks, stood alone and watched the scene before her with eyes from which the tears were held back by the strength of pride alone.
There must have been considerably over two hundred guests present, almost exclusively officers of lower rank, with here and there a civilian to throw the brilliant uniforms into more striking relief. Nora could not but be impressed by the tall, finely built men, with the strong-cut, bronzed faces, and in each she saw a dim reflection of her husband. There was perhaps no real resemblance, but they were of one type—they were German, and that one similarity aroused in her the old feeling of wild opposition against the man she loved, and whom she had sworn to stand by to the end. Her love for him was as genuine as her admiration for these, his brothers—as genuine as her hatred for him and for them all.
In the midst of her bitter reflections she heard a voice speak to her, and, turning, found Bauer at her side. She had expected him the whole evening, and her humiliation deepened as she saw the cynical satisfaction in his eyes. She knew that he was triumphing in the belief that he had won, that in her loneliness she would turn to him, and the knowledge changed her misery to a desperate pride.
"Well, gnädige Frau," he said. She made no answer, and his smile broadened. "You see, I am very punctual," he went on. "I have come for my answer. What is it to be?"
"I gave it you once," she returned. "Is that not enough?"