y. In the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, when
two nations are at daggers drawn over a wretched question of
self-esteem, I should not shrink from a lie that appears to me a duty.
But I have no need to resort to that expedient. I have truth itself on
my side. I was not there."

"Then where were you?" repeated Marthe.

The little sentence rang out again, pitilessly. But, this time, Marthe
uttered it in a more hostile tone and with a gesture that underlined all
its importance. And she at once added, plying him with questions:

"You did not come in until eight o'clock in the morning. Your bed was
not undone. Consequently, you had not slept at the Old Mill. Where did
you spend the night?"

"I was looking for my father."

"You did not know that your father had been carried off until Private
Baufeld told you, at five o'clock in the morning. Consequently, it was
five o'clock in the morning before you began to look for your father."

"Yes."

"And, at that moment, you had not yet returned to the Old Mill,
because, I repeat, your bed was not undone."

"No."

"And where did you come from? What were you doing from eleven o'clock in
the evening, when you left your father, until five o'clock in the
morning, when you heard of his capture?"

The cross-examination, with its unimpeachable logic, left Philippe no
loop-hole for escape. He felt that he was lost.

For a moment, he was on the point of throwing up the game and
exclaiming:

"Well, yes, I was there. I heard everything. My father is right. We must
accept his word...."

This was a display of weakness which a man like Philippe was bound and
fated to resist. On the other hand, how could he betray Suzanne?

He crossed his arms over his chest and muttered:

"I have nothing to say."

Marthe, suddenly dropping her accusing tone and shaking with anguish,
rushed up to him and cried:

"You have nothing to say? What do you mean? Oh, Philippe, I entreat you,
speak!... Confess that you are lying and that you were there ... I
beseech you.... My mind is full of horrible thoughts.... Things have
been happening--I have noticed them--which obsess me now.... It's not
true, tell me that it's not true!"

He thought that he beheld salvation in this unexpected distress.
Disarmed, reduced to silence by a sort of confession which he could
retract at leisure, his wife was making herself his accomplice and
rescuing him by ceasing to attack him.

"You must be silent