"You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."
He nodded. After a moment he said:
"I'll bet you something. My country is all[pg 246] right, but it's sick. It's
got a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet."
"Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly.
"Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?"
"A—little."
"But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my[pg 247] bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—that ought to be worth while."
In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.
After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:
"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"