- tween her fingers. She looked up at Wickham Brand
with a deep thoughtfulness in her dark eyes.
"Most men would say that. And all women beyond the war-zone, safe, and shielded. But death does not come quickly from half-starvation, in a garret without fire, in clothes that are worn threadbare. It is not the quick death of the battlefield. It is just a long-drawn misery. . . . Then there is loneliness. The loneliness of a woman's soul. Do you understand that?"
Brand nodded gravely.
"I understand the loneliness of a man's soul. I've lived with it."
"Worse for a woman," said Eileen. "That singing-girl was lonely in Lille. Her family—with that boy Pierre—were on the other side of the lines. She had no friends here, before the Germans came."
"You mean that afterwards"
Brand checked the end of his sentence, and the line of his mouth hardened.
"Some of the Germans were kind," said Eileen. "Oh, let us tell the truth about that! They were not all devils."
"They were our enemies," said Brand.
Eileen was silent for another moment, staring down at those queer beads of hers in her lap, and before she spoke again I think her mind was going back over many episodes and scenes during the German occupation of Lille.
"It was a long time—four years. A tremendous time for hatred to hold out against civility, kindness, and—human nature. . . . Human nature is strong; stronger than frontiers, nations, even patriotism."
Eileen O'Connor flung her beads back, rose from the low chair and turned back her hair with both hands, with a kind of impatience.
