"No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her.
"No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"
The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:
"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised."
"Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour."
"I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your[pg 235] friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."
She replied serenely:
"But I ask it—of myself. Do you understand, monsieur?"
"Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves.
"It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis."