“Ah! no. Do not believe the optimists, my darling,” the man said, seating himself at her side. “Do not believe in the soft words and the self-styled culture of the Germans. They are the natural enemies of Europe, and the camarilla of Potsdam intends now to fight for world-power.”
She was silent, tracing a semicircle on the gravel with the ferrule of her white silk sunshade.
It was a pretty, leafy nook where they were sitting—a spot where it was often their habit to meet in secret when she was in Brussels. That big white mansion of the Baron Henri de Neuville he had passed half-way up the Avenue Louise was one of the largest and most handsome private residences in Brussels, with its imposing gates of ornamental ironwork surmounted by a gilt coronet, and huge glass-covered winter-garden—a place pointed out to messieurs, the tourists of the Agence Cook, who passed daily in the motor char-à-banc, as the “town-house of the Baron de Neuville, the great Belgian millionaire,” as the uniformed guide put it each morning in his parrot-like English, when he conducted his charges on their way to the field of Waterloo.
“Do you know, Aimée,” exclaimed her companion seriously at last, “I have decided to return to my old regiment, and to act my part—the part of a true Belgian. I can at once return as sous-officier.”
“What?” gasped the girl in quick alarm. “But, Edmond—you—you—you might be wounded if war really broke out! You might even be killed! No! For my sake, dear, don’t go,” she implored, placing her trembling little hand upon his arm and looking up appealingly into his eyes.
“War will be upon us, if not to-day, then to-morrow. My place is in the ranks of the defenders,” he said firmly. “I have no money-bags to protect, as your father the Baron has. My profession will be at an end with war, hence I have decided. I have made all arrangements for my friend Verbruggen to take my cases in the Courts.”
“And you will really rejoin the Chasseurs-à-pied?” she asked anxiously.
“I shall. It is only my duty, dearest. Against the great Germany our little Belgium will require every man who can hold a rifle,” replied her lover. “The German Kaiser means war—and war means the shedding of blood in our land.”
“But think—if you were killed, Edmond!” she gasped, staring at him.
“I should at least die knowing that we loved each other, darling,” he answered, taking her hand tenderly in his own and raising it to his lips. “You are mine, and I am yours; only death can part us.”