“We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would be!”
XI
Our conversation was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the darkness of some doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French.
“You are English officers? May I speak with you?”
It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness—she stood in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight—and I answered her that I was English and my friend American.
“Is there any way,” she asked, “of travelling from Lille, perhaps to Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?”
I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already nine o’clock at night!
“Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from Lille.”