"I told him nothing. It was what he said."
"Well, yes. He said that he was going to die quite soon, that he was going to be killed in a war. Well, that was months before there was any talk of war. Do you know what's happened to him?"
Mrs. Savage shrugged her shoulders a little impatiently, as though such questions were a waste of time.
"He was killed in the war," she said.
She spoke as if she took credit for it, and Barbara shivered.
"Yes.... I saw him just before he went back to barracks. I never saw him again, but I felt then that he was going to be killed. How did you know?"
"He told me, as you heard."
"Yes, but...."
Barbara frowned and sat down, rubbing her forehead gently with her hand.
"I tell nothing, but I persuade people to tell me," explained Mrs. Savage with unconcealed boredom. As she dropped back into the part of "Madame Hilary," "Mrs. Savage" was reviving her old staccato English and giving it a hint of a foreign accent. "People come to me to find out whether their sons and husbands are going to be killed. I do not know. And I tell them so. Then sometimes they allow me to persuade them to tell me. And, in my turn, I can tell them what they have said. But, generally, no! They are afraid of hearing the truth. When their sons and husbands have been killed, when nothing has been heard of them since long, then they come, because they feel that the truth is less hard than the waiting. You have a brother?"