He drew her head close to his face, and whispered in her ear.
“The man is a Boche. Now do you see light?”
Neither Manon nor Paul had any suspicion that danger was so near to them, nor guessed that they were to be made the victims of a drunken mob. Quiet people do not foresee such catastrophes, nor is happiness a window that opens upon tragedy. The very house they had rebuilt lulled them like a cradle. It was so very precious, so much a portion of their human selves that it shared that immortality that seems part of us when we love. The wholesomeness of the place was unassailable.
Moreover, Paul Brent’s mood of pessimism and self-distrust had passed. To share a secret with a friend is to halve the burden of it, and Lefèbre was more than a friend. He and Durand were at the café early on the morning after Paul and Manon’s visit to the sacristy. They sat in Manon’s kitchen, with the doors and windows closed, and talked the affair over from end to end.
Durand had pretended to be scandalized.
“My favourite Frenchman turning out English! A nice game you have played with us!”
“I am very sorry, monsieur.”
“Well, well, don’t look so miserable. The war has turned the world upside down, and after all—it is this that counts.”
He looked round Manon’s kitchen.
“We ought to judge a man by what he does. A simple rule of life and how rarely we follow it! Now, then—it is for us to provide this Englishman with a French character.”