"But if you are half English——"
"Irish," she corrected.
"Ah!" I cried. "I see—of course! I was going to ask whether your sympathies were not at all divided. But Irish is very different. Then you hate the English with a double hatred?"
"With one or two exceptions—friends I have made—I abhor the whole race I am fighting against quite as much as you could possibly wish me to! Indeed, I wish it were fighting and not merely plotting!"
There was an earnestness and intensity in her voice and a kindling of her eye as she said this that thrilled and inspired me like a trumpet.
"We shall defeat them—never fear!" I cried. "We shall trample on the pride of England. It will be hard to do, but I have no doubt as to the result; have you?"
"None," she said, quietly but with absolute confidence.
Then that quick smile of hers, a little grave but very charming, broke over her face.
"But let us get away for a little from war," she said. "You aren't smoking. Please do, if you wish to."
I lit a cigarette, and offered one to her, but she said she did not smoke. And I liked her all the better. We talked more lightly for a while, or perhaps I should rather say less earnestly, for our situation did not lend itself to frivolity. It did lend itself however to romance,—we two sitting on either side of the peat fire, with a shaded lamp and the friendly flames throwing odd lights and shadows through the low, primitive room with its sloping attic-like walls and its scanty furniture; and the wind all the while tempestuously booming in the chimney and scouring land and sea. And neither on land nor sea was there a single friend; surrounded by enemies who would have given a heavy price to have learned who sat in that room, we talked of many things.