She walked on a few steps and then paused again. Her face was serious, compassionate, troubled.
“I seem to have been thinking of myself and of no one else. Do you think me very selfish, Paul?”
Her eyes appealed to him.
“I am troubled. I begin to ask myself, ‘Ought we to pull down those buildings—where people might shelter? Is it fair to snatch things for ourselves, when others will need them?’ ”
Her sudden sensitive hesitation touched Brent. He was being shown another Manon who thought of others as well as of herself. Brent’s heart had gone hungry for many years, craving that spiritual food without which no true man can be happy, and in the hands of this little Frenchwoman he seemed to see the bread and wine of the great human sacrament.
“Let us think it over,” he said.
He lit his pipe, and stood silent for a moment as though he was trying to visualize Beaucourt and all that Beaucourt suggested. The war had taught Brent to reduce life to its elemental facts. He had seen men do incredibly selfish things, and incredibly generous things. In attacking it had been necessary to keep your eyes and your mind on the objective, on some shell-smashed bit of trench that had to be taken—and held. You did not stop to look at the red poppies growing among the weeds.
“How many people were there in Beaucourt before the war?”
“How many? Perhaps two thousand.”
“And how many houses?”