"No. My promise to you was that I would be your wife, or
the wife of no one. I would have kept that promise. But as long as we
could have seen each other, and been with each other from time to time,
I don't think I could have married against my father's wish. Now it is
quite different. Your going to America has changed it all. Ah, my dear
friend, you don't know what I suffered one or two nights before I could
decide what was right for me to do!"
"I can guess," he said, in a low voice, in answer to that brief sigh of
hers.
Then she grew more cheerful in manner.
"But that is all over; and now, am I accepted? I think you are like
Naomi: it was only when she saw that Ruth was very determined to go with
her that she left off protesting. And I am to consider America as my
future home? Well, at all events, one will be able to breathe freely
there. It is not a country weighed down with standing armies and
conscriptions and fortifications. How could one live in a town like
Coblentz, or Metz, or Brest? The poor wretches marching this way and
marching that--you watch them from your hotel window--the young men and
the middle-aged men--and you know that they would rather be away at
their farms, or in their factories, or saw-pits, or engine-houses,
working for their wives and children--"
"Natalie," said he, "you are only half a woman: you don't care about
military glory.
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