"Lieutenant Rutter." With a snarl the Colonel stood up. "You forget yourself. I am speaking. A truce to this fooling. Mademoiselle"--he turned again on the girl--"we have other things to do beside babble of love. Call it spying if you will, but we want information, and you can help us to get it--_must_ help us to get it."
"And what if I refuse?" Superbly she confronted him; her voice had come back; her head was thrown up.
"In the first place you will not marry Lieutenant Rutter; and in the second place--have you heard that the Comte de St. Jean was taken prisoner at Verdun?"
"Philippe. Oh, monsieur, where is he?" The girl threw herself on her knees before him. "I implore you--he is my only brother."
"Indeed. Well, if you ever desire to see him again you will carry out my suggestion. Otherwise----" he paused significantly.
"Oh, you could not! You could not be so cruel, so vile as to harm him if he is a prisoner. It would break my mother's heart."
"Mademoiselle, there is nothing which I would scruple to do--nothing--if by so doing I advanced the glorious cause of our Fatherland." The man's small eyes gleamed with the fire of a fanatic; revolting though he was, yet was there an element of grandeur about him. Even the Kid, watching silently from the bed, felt conscious of the power which seemed to spring from him as he stood there, squat and repulsive, with the lovely French girl kneeling at his feet. He saw her throw her arms around his knees, and turn up her face to his in an agony of pleading; and then of a sudden came the tragedy.
Discipline or no discipline, a man is a man, and Fritz Rutter had reached the breaking-point. Perhaps it was the sight of the woman he loved kneeling at the feet of one of the grossest sensualists in Europe, perhaps---- But who knows?
"Marie," he cried hoarsely, "it's not true. Philippe is dead; they cannot hurt him now. Get up, my dear, get up." With folded arms he faced the other man as the girl staggered to her feet. Heedless of the blazing passion on the Colonel's face, she crept to Fritz and hid her face against his chest. And as she stood there she heard the voice of her tormentor, thick and twisted with hate.
"For that, Lieutenant Rutter, I will have you disgraced. And then I will look after your Marie. Orderly!" His voice rose to a shout as he strode to the door.