Lutchester paused for a moment. Sonia, too, seemed suddenly to have awakened into a state of tense and vivid emotion. The cigarette burned away between her fingers. Her great eyes were fixed upon Lutchester. There was something almost like fear in their questioning depths.
"Finish! Finish!" she insisted. "Continue!"
"And yet," he went on, "your very dear friend, the friend for whose sake you are here in America, is your country's enemy."
She raised herself a little upon the couch.
"That is not true," she declared furiously. "Maurice loves France. His heart aches for the misery that has come upon her. It is your country only which he hates. If France had but possessed the courage to stand by herself, to resist when England forced her friendship upon her, none of this tragedy would ever have happened. Maurice has told me so himself. France could have peace today, peace at her own price."
"There is no peace which would leave France with a soul, save the peace which follows victory," Lutchester replied sternly.
She crushed her cigarette nervously in her fingers, threw it away, and lit another.
"I will not talk of these things with you," she cried. "It was not for this that you sought me out, eh? Tell me at once? Were these the thoughts you had in your mind when you sent your little note?--when you chose to show yourself once more in my life?"
For the first time of his own accord, he drew his chair a little nearer to hers. He took her hand. She gave him both unresistingly.
"Listen, dear Sonia," he said, "it is true that I am a changed man. I am older than when we met last, and there are the other things. You remember the Chateau d'Albert?"
"Of course!" she murmured. "And the young Duc d'Albert's wonderful house party. We all motored there from Paris. You and I were together! You have forgotten that, eh?"
"I lay in that orchard for two days," he went on grimly, "with a hole in my side and one leg pretty nearly done for. I saw things I can never forget, in those days, Sonia. D'Albert himself was killed. It was in that first mad rush. Of the Chateau there remains but four blackened walls."
"_Pauvre enfant_!" she murmured. "But you are well and strong again now, is it not so? You will not fight again, eh? You were never a soldier, dear friend."