She had returned to the residence before him. He asked for her now.
M. Pourmont, giving a moment more to considering this man, whom he had long regarded with a respect he did not feel toward all the missionaries, wondered, as he sent word to the young lady, what might underlie that strange quarrel of the early morning. The only explanation that occurred to him he promptly dismissed, for it involved the little Mademoiselle's name in a manner which he could not permit to be considered. M. Pourmont was a shrewd man; and he knew that the Mademoiselle was ashamed of nothing. Nothing was wrong there. Like his wife he had already learned to love the busy earnest girl. And then, leaving M. Doane in the reception-room waiting for her, he returned to his study and dismissed the whole matter from his mind. For the siege was cruel business. One by one, some one every day, men and women and children, were dying. The living had to subsist on diminishing rations, for he had never foreseen housing and feeding so large a number. There were problems—of discipline and morale, of tactics, of sanitation, of burying the dead—that must be met and solved from hour to hour.
On the whole, as he settled again into his endless, urgent task, M. Pourmont was not sorry that M. Doane had won his consent to this last desperate effort to reach those inhumanly deliberate white folk up at Peking; men whose minds dwelt with precedents and policies while their fellows, down here at Ping Yang, on a hillside, held off with diminishing strength the destruction that seemed, at moments, certain to fall.
3
Doane, watching Betty as she entered the room attired in a long white apron over her simple dress, knew that he must again beg the question that lay between them. He could no more listen to the burden of her heart than to the agony of his own. Sooner or later, if he lived, he would have to work it out, decide about his life. If he lived....
“My dear,” he said, quickly for him, holding her hand more tightly than he knew, “I have some news which I know you will take bravely.”
He could feel her steady eyes on him. He hurried on. “I am going out again to-night. There seems a good chance that I may get through to Shau T'ing, with messages. I'm going to try.”
His desire was to speak rapidly on, and then go. But he had to pause at this. He heard her exclaim softly—“Oh, Dad!” And then after a silence—“I'm not going to make it hard for you. Of course I understand. Any of us may come to the end, of course, any moment. We've just got to take it as it comes. But—I—it does seem as if—after all you've been through, Dad—as if—”
He felt himself shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “No. It's my job, dear.”