“I had a child who died, as I have told you,” said Bertram. “Sometimes I’m glad. The world is too cruel.”
“Not too cruel for those who have courage,” she said.
She spoke of her desire to have a child.
“Perhaps, if we love each other, you and I may have a child, dear sir. That would give me great happiness.”
Bertram was profoundly moved by those words, spoken with such simplicity.
“I am a stranger to you,” he said. “You do not know my weakness and my character.”
“I knew you,” she said, “when you looked my way in the market place.”
That night they clasped hands in the darkness of the corridor.
“My Russian comrade!” he said to her.
“Dear friend of Russia and of me,” she answered.