He slipped his arm from her quivering shoulders and grasped both her hands, crushing them as though to steady every fibre in her tortured body.
“I want you to live. I want to live, too. But I tell you it’s in God’s hands, and we soldiers of civilisation have nothing to fear except failure to do our duty. Now, then, are we comrades under the United States Government?”
“O God—I—dare not!”
“Are we?”
Perhaps she felt the physical pain of his crushing grip for she turned and looked him in the eyes.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Don’t make me!”
“Will you help your country?”
The terrible directness of her child’s gaze became almost unendurable to him.
“Will you offer your country your soul and body?” he insisted in a low, tense voice.
Her stiff lips formed a word.