“I told you I’d stand by you,” he reminded her bluntly.
“You have been—kind—Neeland.”
“And you have been very loyal to me, Scheherazade. I shall not abandon you.”
“How can you help me? I can’t get out of this city. Wherever I go, now, it will be only a matter of a few hours before I am arrested.”
“The American Embassy. There is a man there,” he reminded her.
She shrugged her naked shoulders:
“I cannot get within sight of the Trocadero before the secret police arrest me. Where shall I go? I have no passport, no papers, not even false ones. If I go to the lodgings where I expected to find shelter it means my arrest, court martial, and execution in a caserne within twenty-four hours. And it would involve others who trust me—condemn them instantly to a firing 399 squad—if I am found by the police in their company!... No, Neeland. There’s no hope for me. Too many know me in Paris. I took a risk in coming here when war was almost certain. I took my chances, and lost. It’s too late to whimper now.”
As he stared at her something suddenly brightened above them; and he looked up and saw the first sunbeam painting a chimney top with palest gold.
“Come,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of this! We’ve got to go somewhere—find a taxicab and get under shelter––”
She yielded to the pressure of his arm and moved forward beside him. He halted for a moment on the curb, looking up and down the empty streets for a cab of any sort, then, with the instinct of a man for whom the Latin Quarter had once been a refuge and a home, he started across the Boulevard, his arm clasping hers.