The German stared at him for a long time, 'So,' he said at last. 'You are clever, Mr Englishman. You have gained all that you want.'
'So have you,' the old man said.
The German released the automatic and reached out for a slip of paper. 'What address have you in England? I shall send for you when we visit London in August.'
They settled to the details of the arrangement. A quarter of an hour later the German got up from the table. 'No word of this to anyone,' he said again. 'Tomorrow in the evening you will be moved from here.'
Howard shook his head. 'I shall not talk. But I would like you to know one thing. I should have been glad to take your little girl with me in any case. It never entered my head to refuse to take her.'
The German nodded. 'That is good,' he said. 'If you had refused I should have shot you dead. You would have been too dangerous to leave this room alive.'
He bowed stiffly. 'Auf Wiedersehen,' he said ironically. He pressed a button on his desk; the door opened and the sentry took Howard back through the quiet, moonlit streets to his prison.
Nicole was sitting on her bed, waiting for him. As the door closed she came to him and said: 'What happened? Did they hurt you?'
He patted her on the shoulder. 'It's all right,' he said. They did nothing to me.'
'What happened, then? What did they want you for?'
He sat down on the bed and she came and sat down opposite him. The moon threw a long shaft of silver light in through the window; faintly, somewhere, they heard the droning of a bomber.
'Listen, Nicole,' he said. 'I can't tell you what has happened. But I can tell you this, and you must try to forget what I am telling you. Everything is going to be all right. We shall go to England very soon, all of the children - and I shall go too. And you will go free, and travel back to Chartres to live with your mother, and you will have no trouble from the Gestapo. That is what is going to happen.'
She said breathlessly: 'But - I do not understand. How has this been arranged?'
He said: 'I cannot tell you that. I cannot tell you any more, Nicole. But that is what will happen, very soon.'
'You are not tired, or ill? This is all true, but you must not tell me how it has been done?'
He nodded. 'We shall go tomorrow or the next day,' he replied. There was a steady confidence in his tone which brought conviction to her.
'I am very, very happy,' she said quietly.
There was a long silence. Presently she said: 'Sitting here in the darkness while you were away, I have been thinking, monsieur.' In the dim light he could see that she was looking away from him. 'I was wondering what these children would grow up to be when they were old. Ronnie - I think he will become an engineer, and Marjan a soldier, and Willem - he will be a lawyer or a doctor. And Rose will be a mother certainly, and Sheila - she may be a mother too, or she may become one of your English women of business. And little Pierre - do you know what I think of him? I think that he will be an artist of some sort, who will lead many other men with his ideas.'
'I think that's very likely,' said the old man.
The girl went on. 'Ever smee John was killed, monsieur, I have been desolate,' she said quietly. 'It seemed to me that there was no goodness in the world, that everything had gone mad and crazy and foul - that God had died or gone away, and left the world to Hitler. Even these little children were to go on suffering.'
There was a pause. The old man did not speak.
'But now,' she said, 'I think I can begin to see the pattern. It was not meant that John and I should be happy, save for a week. It was intended that we should do wrong. And now, through John and I, it is intended that these children should escape from Europe to grow up in peace.'
Her voice dropped. 'This may have been what John and I were brought together for,' she said. 'In thirty years the world may need one of these little ones.' She paused. 'It may be Ronnie or it may be Willem, or it may be little Pierre who does great things for the world,' she said. 'But when that happens, monsieur, it will be because I met your son to show him Paris, and we fell in love.'
He leaned across and took her hand, and sat there in the dim light holding it for a long time. Presently they lay down on their beds, and lay awake till dawn.
They spent the next day in the garden, as the day before. The children were becoming bored and restless with the inactivity; Nicole devoted a good deal of her time to them, while Howard slept in his arm-chair beneath the tree. The day passed slowly. Dinner was served to them at six; after the meal the table was cleared by the same waiter.
They turned to put down beds for the children. The Gefreiter stopped them; with some difficulty he made them understand that they were going away.
Howard asked where they were going to. The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Nach Paris?' he said doubtfully. Evidently he did not know.
Half an hour later they were taken out and put into a covered van. Two German soldiers got in with them, and they moved off. The old man tried to ask the soldiers where they were being taken to, but the men were uncommunicative. Presently, from their conversation, Howard gathered that the soldiers were themselves going on leave to Paris; it seemed that while proceeding on leave they were to act as a guard for the prisoners. That looked as if the Paris rumour was correct.
He discussed all this with Nicole in a low tone as the van swayed and rolled inland from the coast through the leafy lanes in the warm evening.
Presently they came to the outskirts of a town. Nicole peered out. 'Brest,' she said presently. 'I know this street.'
One of the Germans nodded. 'Brest,' he said shortly.
They were taken to the railway station; here they got out of the van. One of the soldiers stood guard over them while the other went to see the RTO; the French passengers looked at them curiously. They were passed through the barrier and put into a third-class carriage with their guards, in a train which seemed to be going through to Paris.
Ronnie said: 'Is this the train we're going to sleep in, Mr Howard?'
He smiled patiently. 'This isn't the one I meant, but we may have to sleep in this one,' he said.
'Shall we have a little bed, like you told us about?'
'I don't think so. We'll see.'
Rose said: 'I do feel thirsty. May I have an orange?'
There were oranges for sale on the platform. Howard had no money. He explained the requirements to one of the German soldiers, who got out of the carriage and bought oranges for all of them. Presently they were all sucking oranges, the children vying with the German soldiers in the production of noise.
At eight o'clock the train started. It went slowly, stopping at every little local halt on the line. At eight-twenty it drew up at a little place called Lanissant, which consisted of two cottages and a farm. Suddenly Nicole, looking out of the window, turned to Howard.
'Look!' she said. 'Here is Major Diessen.'
The Gestapo officer, smart and upright in his black uniform and black field boots, came to the door of their carriage and opened it. The German sentries got up quickly and stood to attention. He spoke to them incisively in German. Then he turned to Howard.
'You must get out,' he said. 'You are not going on in this train.'