She pressed his hand in understanding.
“Berthe, do you sleep? Do you take food? Are you well? Are they good to you? Can you live through?”
“Yes, and what of you?”
“All is quite well with me. I can endure anything with the hope of taking you home afterward.”
“We must be ready to give up that, too. It is hard; it's our ordeal—but if the end should appear, we must find strength to look it in the face. These are the times for heroics. Every real emotion that I have ever known is a lie—if those who love each other well enough to love the world—do not pass on. Why, Peter, you said the same to him—speaking of his friend and Moritz Abel, 'Do you think the good God would let such men die so easily, if it weren't all right?'”
“Did I say that?”
She drew back her head, looking him through and through.
“Peter, it's the child in you that I love. You're so much a man, and they all think of you as a man, man—all your training to be a man—and yet it's the child that a woman's heart sees and wants to preserve for her own.”
“Do you see much of Moritz Abel?” he asked.
“Yes.... It was he who found you for me.”