She nodded. 'On the road before you came to Chartres. I will see that he understands that.'
He said doubtfully: 'That should be all right so long as they don't cross-examine the children.'
They sat in silence for a long time after that. Presently she stirred a little by him, shifting to a more comfortable position.
'Go and lie down, Nicole,' he said. 'You must get some sleep.'
'I do not want to sleep, monsieur,' she said. 'Truly I am better sitting here like this.'
'I've been thinking about things,' he said.
'I also have been thinking.'
He turned to her in the darkness. 'I am so very sorry to have brought you into all this trouble,' he said quietly. 'I did want to avoid that, and I thought that we were going to.'
She shrugged her shoulders. 'It does not matter.' She hesitated. 'I have been thinking about different things to that.'
'What things?' he asked.
'When you introduced Focquet - you said I was your daughter-in-law.'
'I had to say something,' he remarked. 'And that's very nearly true."
In the dun light he looked into her eyes, smiling a little. 'Isn't it?'
'Is that how you think of me?'
'Yes,' he said simply.
There was a long silence in the prison. One of the children, probably Willem, stirred and whimpered uneasily in his sleep; outside the guard paced on the dusty road.
At last she said: 'What we did was wrong - very wrong.' She turned towards him. Truly, I did not mean to do wrong when I went to Paris, neither did John. We did not go with that in mind at all. I do not want that you should think it was his fault. It was nobody's fault, neither of us. Also, it did not seem wrong at the time.'
His mind drifted back fifty years. 'I know,' he said. 'That's how these things happen. But you aren't sorry, are you?'
She did not answer that, but she went on more easily. 'He was very, very naughty, monsieur. The understanding was that I was to show him Paris, and it was for that that I went to Paris to meet him. But when the time came, he was not interested in the churches or in the museums, or the picture-galleries at all.' There was a touch of laughter in her voice. 'He was only interested in me.'
'Very natural,' he said. It seemed the only thing to say.
'It was very embarrassing, I assure you, I did not know what I should do.'
He laughed. 'Well, you made your mind up in the end.'
She said reproachfully: 'Monsieur - it is not a matter to laugh over. You are just like John. He also used to laugh at things like that.'
He said: 'Tell me one thing, Nicole. Did he ask you if you would marry him?'
She said: 'He wanted that we should marry in Paris before he went back to England. He said that under English law that would be possible.'
'Why didn't you?' he asked curiously.
She was silent for a minute. Then she said: 'I was afraid of you, monsieur.'
'Of me?'
She nodded. 'I was terrified. It now sounds very silly, but - it was so.'
He struggled to understand. 'What were you frightened of?' he asked.
She said: 'Figure it to yourself. Your son would have brought home a foreign girl, that he had married very suddenly in Paris. You would have thought that he had been foolish in a foreign city, as young men sometimes are. That he had been trapped by a bad woman into an unhappy marriage. I do not see how you could have thought otherwise.'
'If I had thought that at first,' he said, 'I shouldn't have thought it for long.'
'I know that now. That is what John told me at the time. But I did not think that it was right to take the risk. I told John, it would be better for everybody that we should be a little more discreet, you understand.'
'I see. You wanted to wait a bit.'
She said: 'Not longer than could be helped. But I wanted very much that everything should be correct, that we should start off right. Because, to be married, it is for all one's hie, and one marries not only to the man but to the relations also. And in a mixed marriage things are certain to be difficult, in any case. And so, I said that I would come to England for his next leave, in September or October, and we would meet in London, and he could then take me to see you in your country home. And then you would write to my father, and everything would be quite in order and correct.'
'And then the war came,' he said quietly.
She repeated: 'Yes, monsieur, then the war came. It was not then possible for me to visit England. It would almost have been easier for John to visit Paris again, but he could get no leave. And so I went on struggling to get my permis and the visa month after month.
'And then,' she said, 'they wrote to tell me what had happened.'
They sat there for a long time, practically in silence. The air grew colder as the night went on. Presently the old man heard the girl's breathing grow more regular and knew she was asleep, still sitting up on the bare wooden floor.
After a time she stirred and fell half over. He got up stiffly and led her, still practically asleep, to the palliasse, made her lie down, and put a blanket over her. In a short time she was asleep again.
For a long time he stood by the window, looking out over the harbour mouth. The moon had risen; the white plumes of surf on the rocks showed clearly on the blackness of the sea. He wondered what was going to happen to them all. It might very well be that he would be taken from the children and sent to a concentration camp; that for him would be the end, before so very long. The thought of what might happen to the children distressed him terribly. At all costs, he must do his best to stay at liberty. If he could manage that it might be possible for him to make a home for them, to look after them till the war was over. A home in Chartres, perhaps, not far from Nicole and her mother. It would take little money to live simply with them, in one room or in two rooms at the most. The thought of penury did not distress hun very much. His old life seemed very, very far away.
Presently, the blackness of the night began to pale towards the east, and it grew colder still. He moved back to the wall and, wrapped in a blanket, sat down in a corner. Presently he fell into an uneasy sleep.
At six o'oclock the clumping of the soldiers' boots in the corridor outside woke him from a doze. He stirred and sat upright; Nicole was awake and sitting up, running her fingers through her hah- in an endeavour to put it into order without a comb. A German Oberschütze came in and made signs to them to get up, indicating the way to the toilet.
Presently, a private brought them china bowls, some hunks of bread and a large jug of bitter coffee. They breakfasted, and waited for something to happen. They were silent and depressed; even the children caught the atmosphere and sat about in gloomy inactivity.
Presently the door was flung open, and the Feldwebel was there with a couple of privates. 'Marchez,' he said. 'Allez, vite.'
They were herded out and into a grey, camouflaged motor-lorry with a closed, van-like body. The two German privates got into this with them and the doors were shut and locked on them. The Feldwebel got into the seat beside the driver, turned and inspected them through a little hatchway to the driver's compartment. The lorry started.
They were taken to Lannilis, and unloaded at the big house opposite the church, from the window of which floated the Swastika flag. Here they were herded into a corridor between their guards. The Feldwebel went into a door and closed it behind him.