"Don't you get any news ever?"
"News! No indeed, no news of anybody in my country. I might not haf a country; all that I ever knew is gone—fader, moder, sisters, broders, all—never any more I shall see them, I suppose, now. The war it breaks and breaks, it breaks hearts." Her little teeth fastened again on her lower lip in that sort of pretty snarl. "Do you know what I was thinkin' when you came up? I was thinkin' of my native town, and the river there in the moonlight. If I could see it again, I would be glad. Were you ever homeseeck?"
"Yes, I have been—in the trenches; but one's ashamed, with all the others."
"Ah! ye-es!" It came from her with a hiss. "Ye-es! You are all comrades there. What is it like for me here, do you think, where everybody hates and despises me, and would catch me, and put me in prison, perhaps?"
He could see her breast heaving with a quick breathing painful to listen to. He leaned forward, patting her knee, and murmuring: "Sorry—sorry."
She said in a smothered voice:
"You are the first who has been kind to me for so long! I will tell you the truth—I am not Rooshian at all—I am German."
Hearing that half-choked confession, his thought was: "Does she really think we fight against women?" And he said:
Her eyes seemed to search right into him. She said slowly: