ing. They got me much too soon,
though--a swindle!"

She stared at him.

"You laughed?"

"Yes, and what do you think was the first thing I was conscious of next
morning--my old Colonel bending over me and giving me a squeeze of
lemon. If you knew my Colonel you'd still believe in things. There _is_
something, you know, behind all this evil. After all, you can only die
once, and if it's for your country all the better."

Her face, with intent eyes just touched with bistre, had in the
moonlight a most strange, otherworld look. Her lips moved:

"No, I believe in nothing. My heart is dead."

"You think so, but it isn't, you know, or you wouldn't have been crying,
when I met you."

"If it were not dead, do you think I could live my life--walking the
streets every night, pretending to like strange men--never hearing a
kind word--never talking, for fear I will be known for a German. Soon I
shall take to drinking, then I shall be 'Kaput' very quick. You see, I
am practical, I see things clear. To-night I am a little emotional; the
moon is funny, you know. But I live for myself only, now. I don't care
for anything or anybody."

"All the same, just now you were pitying your people, and prisoners, and
that."

"Yes, because they suffer. Those who suffer are like me--I pity myself,
that's all; I am different from your Englishwomen. I see what I am
doing; I do not let my mind become a turnip just because I am no longer
moral."

"Nor your heart either."

"Ni-ice boy, you are veree obstinate. But all that about love is 'umbug.
We love ourselves, nothing more."

Again, at that intense soft bitterness in her voice, he felt stifled,
and got up, leaning in the window. The air out there was free from the
smell of dust and stale perfume. He felt her fingers slip between his
own, and stay unmoving. Since she was so hard, and cynical, why should
he pity her? Yet he did. The touch of that hand within his own roused
his protective instinct. She had poured out her heart to him--a perfect
stranger! He pressed it a little, and felt her fingers crisp in answer.
Poor girl! This was perhaps a friendlier moment than she had known for
years! And after all, fellow-feeling was bigger than principalities and
powers! Fellow-feeling was all-pervading as this moonlight, which she
had said would be the same in Germany--as this white ghostly glamour
that wrapped the trees, making the orange lamps so quaint and
decoratively useless out in the na