"You suspect?"
"Yes. And if it is one of our German-American muleteers, we'll lynch him!" he whispered in a white rage.
But Maryette shook her head.
"No," she said in a dull, even voice, "let the gendarmerie take him in charge. Spy or suspect, he must have his chance. That is the law in France."
"You don't give rats a chance, do you?"[pg 340]
"I give everything its chance," she said simply. "And so does my country."
She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, examined it, raised her eyes gravely to the American beside her:
"This is terrible for me," she added, in a low but steady voice. "If it were not for my country—" She made a grave gesture, turned, and went slowly out through the arched stone passage into the main street of the town. A few minutes later the angelus sounded sweetly over the woods and meadows of Sainte Lesse.
At ten, as the last stroke of the hour ended, there came a charming, intimate little murmur of awakening bells; it grew sweeter, clearer, filling the starry sky, growing, exquisitely increasing in limpid, transparent volume, sweeping through the high, dim belfry like a great wind from Paradise carrying Heaven's own music out over the darkened earth.