And sobs and weeping broke out around her, as though that little handless arm had been a veritable rod of Moses bringing water from the living rock. But no sigh lifted her bosom, nor were her dry eyelids moistened with the dew of tears. Prussian militarism had wrought its work upon her. She and hers had been trodden as grapes in the Hohenzollern Winepress. Those emptied eyes had seen things done that might well make devils laugh in Hell.
The Club walls vanished away as we looked, and behind that stricken figure spread the devastated plains of Belgium, the Sorrowful, the Glorious, who has endured agony and shame unutterable, that her neighbours might go free. We had a vision of the Son of Man descending in a blood-red, rainy dawning, and heard Him saying to the apostles of German Kultur:
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these ... ye have done it unto Me!"
And not a woman among us who had a man with the British Expedition, but prayed in her soul, fervently:
"Vengeance is Thine, for Thou hast said it. But make him Thy scourge, O Lord!"
CHAPTER LVIII
SHERBRAND BUYS THE LICENCE
The spell of silence was broken. Excitement seethed as Patrine escaped out of the crush in the drawing-room and returned to the vestibule. There, subsiding into one of the tall-backed chairs beside the table that held the Members' Register and Visitors' Book, she waited, hoping against hope that the tall figure in khaki might reappear under the Club portico.
"Patrine!"
"Oh, Alan!—you came back after all!"