They looked long into each other's faces. “You were wonderful as you of your friend. Did you know that, Peter?”  
He turned away deprecatingly.
 
“Forgive me. Of course you didn't know.”
 
“...And you meant to come all the time?” he asked at last.
 
“Yes.”
 
“I should have known it.... That day—that day across the siding—why, Berthe, it was almost more than I could stand. I had just been thinking of you.”
 
“We were like two spirits who hadn't earned the right to be together,” she said.
 
“I'm afraid it's dangerous now,” he answered. “One mustn't have a , other than to extinguish the enemy. The army is afraid of itself. All day—”
 
Though he checked himself, she knew his thought.
 
“Yes, all day, they murdered white-browed men in the court below.”
 
“Berthe—”
 
“Yes.”
 
“I want you to guard your life—as if it were mine—just that.”
 
All surroundings were melting away from them. She had never seen him like this.... Even Samarc could not hear their whispers.
 
“You came like an angel, Berthe,—all I ever want of an angel. I tell you I am proud.”
 
“Of what, Peter?”
 
“That I had sense enough to go a second time to the Square at Warsaw.”
 
“I'm glad, too.... If we were only in the winter stillness—”
 
They were silent. Samarc's hand came up to Peter, and drew him close. It was clear that he could not bear the woman to hear his struggle for speech. “Tell her about Spenski,” came to Peter's ears in the lipless mouthing.
 
Berthe saw that Peter was ghostly white, as he lifted his head. She thought it had to do with what the wounded man said.
 
Peter began at , his thoughts on the wing. Nothing hurt him in quite the same way as that suggested under the bandage. He steadied himself, and talked of the little lens-maker. Strength came from the joy he was giving Samarc.... It seemed that they were quite alone. He told of the night of stars, of the little man's superb sensitiveness.... She to Samarc at last.
 
“You wanted him to tell me?”
 
He nodded. There was something intensely pathetic in it all. Her eyes were full of light.
 
“The story thrills me,” she whispered. “Oh, this is very far from a hopeless world. What I have seen to-day—even the of men—manhood, black and white—the war within the war. Don't you see, all Russia is out here in the casting her ? We must not mind blood nor death—for the result means the life or death of the world's soul!”
 
Once she would have seemed very far and remotely high to Peter Mowbray.... They had a little apart from the cot.
 
“What made you so white?” she asked.
 
“It's my weakness. We rode together for days and quartered together. He was so clean-cut. It's the way his words come. And he seems so without the little man.”
 
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 .”
 
“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.”
 
Peter was watching her red lips now. It was like that morning in her room, the tall flowers between. He did not hear what she was saying. The room was dim. Samarc's face was turned from them. One man in a near cot flung his arms about his head wearily, but his eyes were toward the wall.... He caught her in his arms and loved the beauty of earth in her face.
 
“...Peter, we must forget ourselves!”
 
“I can't forget you. I want you as you are,” he repeated in . “I want you here in the world—as you are now! We'll stand for what we can't help. There's no use fighting t............