The sergeant clapped the man on the shoulder. "Be a good lad now!" he said. "Promise the young lady you'll behave and we'll have the cords off as quick as we can cut them. Promise her, such a nice young lady and all!"
The prisoner shook his head wearily. The girl, watching him, shivered.
"All this" Jovannic roused himself. "I don't understand. What's going on here? Sergeant, what's it all about?"
The old man made a grimace. "She knows," he said, with a nod towards the girl. "That proves it's spreading. It's got so now that if you only clout one of 'em on the side of the head he'll go out and kill himself. Won't let you so much as touch 'em!"
"What!" Jovannic gaped at him. "Kill themselves? You mean if his hands are untied, that man will?"
"Him?" The sergeant snorted. "Tonight if he can; tomorrow if he can't. He's dead, he is. I know 'em, Herr Leutnant. Dozens of 'em already, for a flogging or even for a kick; they call it 'escaping by the back door.' And now she knows. It's spreading, I tell you."
"Good Lord!" said Jovannic slowly. But suddenly, in a blaze of revelation, he understood what had lurked in his mind since the scene in the village; the smiles that mirth of men who triumph by a stratagem, who see their adversary vainglorious, strong and doomed. He remembered Captain Hahn's choleric pomp, his own dignity and aloofness; and it was with a heat of embarrassment that he now perceived how he must appear to the prisoner.
It did not occur to him to doubt the sergeant; for the truth sprang at him.
"You, you knew this, signorina?"
The girl had moved half a dozen paces to where the shadow of the great yews was deepening on the path. There she lingered, a slender presence, the oval of her face shining pale in the shade.