“I’d have such women whipped—yes, whipped in the public market-place.”
From that time forward Mona hates the prisoners as she had never hated them before. She cannot bear to look into their German faces or to hear the sound of their German voices. All the same she has to live among them for her father’s sake and even to serve them twice a day with the milk from the dairy.
Late in the year, at seven in the morning, she is measuring the milk into the cans, which are marked with the numbers of the various compounds. The prisoners come to carry them away, saluting her with the mist about their mouths as they do so, but she makes no answer. When she thinks they have all gone she finds the can of the Third Compound still standing by the dairy door where she had left it.
The pale-faced boy who coughed always came for that, and was generally the last to arrive. After a while, when she has her back to the door, she hears a voice behind her.
“Is this for me, miss?”
She starts. Something in his voice arrests her. It is not harsh and guttural, like that of the other prisoners, but soft, deep and human. For one dizzy moment she almost thinks it is Robbie’s.
She turns. A young man, whom she has never seen before, is on the threshold. He is about thirty years of age, tall, slim, erect, fair-haired, with hazel eyes and a clean-cut face that has an open expression. Can this be a German?
After a moment of silence Mona says:
“Who are you?”