"Certainly. In the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, when two nations are at daggers drawn over a wretched question of self-esteem, I should not shrink from a lie that appears to me a duty. But I have no need to resort to that expedient. I have truth itself on my side. I was not there."
"Then where were you?" repeated Marthe.
The little sentence rang out again, pitilessly. But, this time, Marthe uttered it in a more hostile tone and with a gesture that underlined all its importance. And she at once added, plying him with questions:
"You did not come in until eight o'clock in the morning. Your bed was not undone. Consequently, you had not slept at the Old Mill. Where did you spend the night?"
"I was looking for my father."
"You did not know that your father had been carried off until Private Baufeld told you, at five o'clock in the morning. Consequently, it was five o'clock in the morning before you began to look for your father."
"Yes."
"And, at that moment, you had not yet returned to the Old Mill, because, I repeat, your bed was not undone."
"No."
"And where did you come from? What were you doing from eleven o'clock in the evening, when you left your father, until five o'clock in the morning, when you heard of his capture?"