The young German clicked his heels and bowed.
“Good night, sir.”
Brand went to bed, in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard a violin being played in the room above his own. By the tune he remembered the words of an old song, as Eileen O’Connor had sung it in Lille, and as he had learnt it in his own home before the war.
There’s one that is pure as an angel,
And fair as the flowers of May,
They call her the gentle maiden
Wherever she takes her way.
Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand somehow envied him.