"You are English, mademoiselle?" he said, she thought with a touch of
severity. He was silent for a while. Then: "Ah, none but the English
could do this--"
"What?"
"Drive as you do, alone, mademoiselle, amid such perils."
She did not ask to what perils he alluded, and she knew that his words
were a condemnation, not a compliment. Ah, she knew that story, that
theory, that implication of coldness! She did not trouble to reply, nor
would she have known how had she wished it.
They passed an inhabited village. From a door flew a man in a green
bonnet and staggered in the street. After him a huge peasant woman came,
and standing in the doorway shook her fist at him. "I'll teach you to
meddle with my daughter--"
"Those are the cursed Italians!" said the French lieutenant, leaning
from the car to watch.
A mile further on they came to a quarry, in which men prowled in rags.
"Those are the Russians!" he said. And these were kept behind barbed
wire, fenced round with armed sentries.
She remembered an incident in Paris, when she had hailed a taxi.
"Are you an American?" asked the driver. "For you know I don't much like
driving Americans."
"But I am English."
"Well, that's better. I was on the English Front once, driving for the
French Mission."
"Why don't you like Americans?"
"Among other things they give me two francs when three is marked!"
"But once they gave you ten where three was marked!"
"That's all changed!" laughed the taxi-man.
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