“It’s just this way,” he said—“but will you let me smoke? I have been about the streets all day in this Sunday best, and it’s a little heavy for the nerves.”
She nodded her head quickly, while he filled the pipe and lighted it deliberately. The sense of their danger was more sure every moment that she lingered there. The horrid scene at the doors of the Minster still haunted her eyes. This man at her side might make another scene such as that—and for her sake.
“I am waiting to hear about the parole,” she said.
“Well,” he answered bluntly, “it’s this way. If he will promise not to bear arms against Germany for the rest of the war, they’ll send him back to you. I know Edmond well. He won’t give that promise unless you ask it. And if he gives it, and comes back to Strasburg, a week will find him on the fortifications.”
“In which case?”
“In which case they will shoot him when we take the city.”
He did not speak boastfully, but there was behind his words a soupçon of that arrogance which victory may give even to a man incapable of common emotions. She heard him as one who neither counselled nor dissuaded her, but left everything to her own judgment. Never had she been asked to decide a question so momentous.
“You know that I cannot write it,” she exclaimed hotly; “he would think I did not wish him to return.”
“Very well; but you know what you are risking. He will certainly be shot when we come in.”
“Oh, my God,” she said; “what a cruel thing war is!”