Flip lay very quietly on the bed. She didn't dare move, partly because it hurt her head to move, but mostly because it was another of those times when she knew it would be best for Paul if she was very still and very silent.
Paul put his head down so that his cheek pressed against Flip's feet and a lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. "I'll try to be clear, Flip," he said, "but I want to say it as quickly as possible because it's a hard thing to say. My father was a writer. We lived in an old chateau—something like our chateau, Flip—that had always been in our family. During the war my father worked with the maquis. He was the editor of one of the most important of the underground newspapers. I had an older sister, she was fifteen, then, and she helped. So did my mother. Sometimes they let me run errands. Everybody helped who could possibly be used and sometimes I could do things without arousing suspicion that an older person couldn't do." He paused for a moment, and then went on. "One evening I was coming home after dark. I went in through one of the French windows. The room was dark and I stumbled over something. It was my sister. She was lying there just the same way you were lying in the chateau last night when I thought you were dead. I saw you lying there and you were my sister and it wasn't last night at all but the night my sister was shot. It was shortly after that that all of my father's work was uncovered and we were sent to a concentration camp.... I think if you don't mind very much I'll have to let Aunt Colette tell you the rest."
Again Flip wanted to say something that would give Paul comfort, but she knew that she was unable to. She lay there and felt the pressure of his cheek against her feet, until he lifted his head and stared up at her and his eyes were the grey of the lake and seemed to hold in their depths as much knowledge and suffering as the lake must have seen. He stared up at her and now Flip knew that she must say something. She pushed herself up very slowly on one elbow, raised herself up and beyond the pain that clamped about her head, and reached down and gently touched Paul's dark hair. She suddenly felt much older, and unconsciously, she echoed Madame Perceval's words. "It's all right, Paul. Everything's going to be all right."
2
After a while Mlle. Duvoisine came back into the room and sent Paul away and Flip slept again. When she awoke Madame Perceval was in the room and she took Flip into her arms and held her as her mother had held her.
"You were very brave, little one," Madame told her.
Flip started to shake her head but stopped as the abrupt movement sent the pain back again. "I wasn't brave. I was scared. I was—I was like pulp I was so scared, Madame."
"But you went on for Paul's sake, anyhow. That was brave."
"Can you be brave and scared at the same time?" Flip asked.
"That's the hardest and the biggest kind of braveness there is."