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She came flying out of the hospital as if she had been a missile from a catapult, and plunged against Franz Salvator with a velocity that nearly knocked him off his feet. He caught a glimpse of her under the nearest lamp post: a short thick mass of maize-coloured hair; a pair of grey eyes under level brows nearly meeting; a tip-tilted nose and pointed chin, with a wide, sweet, generous mouth set now in lines of fierce pain. She was no more aware of Franz Salvator than if he had been a letter box; she steadied herself by his arm without glancing at him and prepared to dash forward again into the wet windy darkness. ‘Is anything the matter?’ Franz Salvator asked her in English. He felt convinced that she must belong to the least ceremonious of the nations. ‘Ah! you’re English?’ Carol Hunter said, pausing in her flight; ‘Then for God’s sake take me somewhere out of this infernal place—I can’t stand any more of it. It’s pretty near done me in!’ ‘You had better come into this shed,’ Franz Salvator answered. ‘It’s Dr. Jeiteles’ consulting-room and always open. You must, I think, be one of the ladies from the Relief Mission? I was told they were to be here this afternoon. We can wait here till the others join you.’ Carol followed him up the rickety wooden steps into the dispensary. There was nothing in it but locked cupboards, a kitchen table with a green-shaded electric light, and two deal chairs. Franz Salvator pushed one towards her, but Carol Hunter did not sit down. She was not upset as Franz Salvator was accustomed to see young girls upset; she showed no inclination towards tears nor any need for support. She strode up and down the room with her hands in her pockets, kicking her feet out in front of her like a schoolboy in a passion; and to Franz Salvator’s intense astonishment for several minutes she cursed without a pause. She took no notice of his presence, so that he was free to observe her thoroughly. She was small and beautifully made, her feet and ankles, her wrists and hands, the set of her head on her slender throat, were as fine as the points of the Medicean Venus. What, however, was strikingly unlike any Venus was the complete absence in her of any softness. There was no ounce of superfluous flesh on her slender, compact little body. She was all velocity, suppleness and energy. She had an air, that was strange to Franz Salvator in young girls, of perfect independence of her surroundings. She might often have been annoyed in the course of her short life, but it seemed to Franz Salvator that she had never been embarrassed, nor was it likely that she ever would be. When she stopped cursing, she flung round and looked at him. ‘Well,’ she said savagely, ‘I don’t know what you feel, seeing those hundreds of children all minced up and useless, as if they’d been put through a mangle—by our beautiful war for freedom!—but I tell you, I feel pretty cheap! All soldiers’ children, that doctor says—neglect, starvation, bad blood—and they tell me these are the lucky ones! There are hundreds more on the waiting list, babies like little broken dolls hidden away under some rubbish in ice-cold rooms to starve! God, it’s a pretty world! Are you an Englishman?’ ‘No,’ said Franz Salvator; ‘I have the honour—a sad one, but I still hold it an honour—of being an Austrian.’ ‘How you must hate us!’ said Carol Hunter. She stood still now on the opposite side of the table, and looked straight into Franz Salvator’s eyes. ‘I have used up my hate,’ said Franz Salvator slowly, ‘in the four years I spent fighting. The top of a mountain and no diet to speak of—reduces hate.’ ‘I’d hate being beaten,’ said Carol fiercely, ‘and I’d hate what beat me—as long as I lived, I’d hate it!’ ‘You would if you felt beaten, no doubt,’ agreed Franz Salvator, showing his shining teeth in an amused smile, ‘but you see the trench I happened to be in was an Italian trench which we took early in 1916, and as the enemy never did anything to induce us to leave it, although we disliked very much giving it up at the orders of our General when the Armistice was signed, we did not feel particularly beaten. We felt perhaps cheated; but it is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way.’ ‘I don’t see how you can be so calm,’ exclaimed Carol. ‘Don’t you mind seeing your children all spoiled, like so many broken egg-shells? They won’t get better! I don’t know whether the lady in there who looks like the ghost of a Madonna thinks they will—she’s so pleased at having our milk and cocoa to give them that she’s forgotten what the rest of their lives will be like. Her gratitude cut like a knife, that’s why I ran out. She behaved as if we were bringing Paradise straight into those children’s lives, and it was only little tins of food.’ She sat down suddenly, and put her head in her hands. ‘I’d like to be sick!’ she said, ‘sick to my stomach! That’s all there is to it.’ ‘Don’t be too upset,’ Franz Salvator said gently; ‘you have seen the worst all at once and all together. Try to remember that each child has only its own tragedy, and that for the rest of us it is not so bad. We have gone down little by little, our sufferings and our needs increased slowly, and the shock of them wears off. I am not clever—and how do you say it in your English?—but one becomes less and less startled by pain as one’s own vitality decreases. These children do not know how sad their lives are. My sister—for I think it must be my sister whom you describe as the ghost of a Madonna—can nurse them all day long without being at all startled. What might startle us would be if you showed us a room full of healthy children with beautiful colour in their round cheeks; then we should feel the contrast; but in our minds now there are no great contrasts, only a sliding scale of pain.’ Carol Hunter looked at him with eyes that seemed to eat into his face. ‘I’ve got to get this known,’ she said half to herself and half to him. ‘People have got to know about the state of things. It won’t do just to sit down under it. People have got to know, and then they’ve got to act. Don’t you want to do something yourself? But maybe you are doing it?’ Franz Salvator sat down on the other side of the table. He was puzzled by the young girl opposite him; she seemed to speak as if she held the reins of the world. ‘When I can stop thinking about bread,’ he said quietly, ‘and how to get it, perhaps I shall be able to be of some use to my country. At present I work eight hours a day, teaching English at a Berlitz school, in order to provide myself with food. It is an occupation like any other, and I am glad of it, but it leaves remarkably little margin for altruism.’ ‘What are you here for then?’ she asked abruptly. ‘It is a dark night, and I came to take my sister home,’ explained Franz Salvator. ‘I am happy that I came, for this is the first time—since it was my duty to kill them—that I have spoken to one of our late enemies. We are very international here in Wien, and I have missed very much being cut off from those foreigners with whom we have always had most in common.’ ‘I’m American,’ said Carol Hunter; ‘I came over with our ambulances, and drove one for our Army in France. I’m used to soldiers, and I’ve seen wounds and death—but till I came to this country I didn’t know life was so mean. I knew it was terrible—it’s fine though to be able to stand up against terror and get the better of it! but there are things you can’t stand up against——’ Franz Salvator nodded. He pitied her intensely, but as he looked into the brave eyes fixed on his, he would not have her cheated of the truth. Truth is cruel, it is sometimes so cruel that people cannot bear it; but if it knocks the life out of one, at least it does not poison; and those who can stand it are the stronger for it all their lives. ‘I’m twenty-one,’ she went on after a pause. ‘Of course I pretended to be older to get out, and my father helped me. My father was all I’d got—I don’t count a step-mother, and a lot of half kin—a whining set. My father was a sport. He raised Hell to get me to Europe though he couldn’t come with me, and six months after I got here, he died of angina pectoris. I tell you, that hit me! I’m not one of your soft-hearted girly-girlies that wash down on their troubles, but when I do care for a person I care hard. I came out here to succeed, and I’ll do it too—but it’s a queer feeling to find that the person you wanted to make good for is out of it. Like getting to the point of a joke and finding it hasn’t got one. Did I tell you I’m on a paper? No? Well, I am, it’s the New York Meteor, and has the fourth largest circulation in the world. When I got that cable about my father I was in Paris; and I’d got Clemenceau and was fishing for Foch, and then I ran into Dr. J. Simmons just coming out here. I went for an interview, with the cable in my pocket, and I got all balled up. She just took hold of me by the collar—like you might a stray dog—and ran me out here. She said if I kept my eyes peeled I’d find good and plenty going on in Wien—and she was right. I shall stay in this country quite a while. Have you anything to hand over about yourself?’ Franz Salvator hesitated. He was a reserved man, and incapable of quick intimacy; there was probably no form of research from which he shrank so definitely as that of looking into his own mind. What he liked was doing things with people who knew all about him, or with those who knew nothing about him and had no reason to find out. But he did not want this frank-eyed girl to belong to the latter category. Her confidence had touched him, and he wished to make her a response. He pulled out his card and pushed it across the table towards her. She looked at it without recognition. It was apparent that his name—which was three-quarters of his life, meant nothing to her. ‘I am twenty-six,’ he said slowly; ‘I’ve lost all I had; and my job as a soldier has gone too. I thought a good deal of being a soldier. I could ride once; but I shall not be able to afford a horse again. Most of my friends have been killed. It is not a long history; and there are so many like it that it is not even interesting.’ ‘It interests me all right,’ said Carol quickly. Franz Salvator hesitated and looked down. ‘I have a friend,’ he said in a low voice, ‘that I cared for more than those who died. He sold his honour for comfort; and to-morrow perhaps you will find me doing the same thing. All I can safely tell you is that I won’t do it to-day!’ She stretched her hand suddenly towards him. ‘You’re a dear!’ she said with conviction. ‘I guess your honour is pretty safe—I’d stand for it any time.’ Franz Salvator bent his head over her hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I shall remember that.’ Carol stared at him in some surprise at his emotion. She had no idea of how very near this impassive young man had stood to the point of despair. Before she had rushed against him in the dark, he had felt himself slipping away from his own control, his nature itself had not seemed worth while. In giving up his faith in Otto, he had seemed to be giving up everything. Now in a moment he knew, with the resiliency of youth, that there was after all something else. A new turn of the road—a fresh view of life. This young creature before him with her vigour and her incredible optimism had fired his blood afresh. The door behind Carol opened. Dr. Jeiteles, Eugénie, in her white nursing-dress, and Dr. Simmons came in together. Carol turned to face them. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘Well, I stood all I could swallow, Dr. Jeiteles. I’m sorry I couldn’t manage that last ward, but I saw enough. I’ll try to start a real prairie fire about your hospital that’ll bring in money. People in America can feel all right, and when they feel they pay, but I’ve got to get your story hot and running, before it can catch up with them. Will you give me a few facts?’

Franz Salvator stood waiting for Carol to explain his presence, but she gave no explanation of it; that she should have picked up a strange young man and be found alone with him in the Doctor’s dispensary had not seemed to her a cause for comment. It was Eugénie who introduced him to Dr. Simmons, the head of the English Relief Mission. Dr. Jane Simmons was a tall, spare woman dressed in a long khaki overcoat with a cowboy’s felt hat on her head. She looked neither like a man nor a woman, but like some strange sexless hybrid, born to carry out functions which had nothing to do with either emotion or charm. The sights she had just been seeing had not in the least discomposed her—she was used to pain—it was the material upon which she worked. She gave Franz Salvator a perfunctory hand, and looked at him with eyes which were unresponsive to anything but human damage. After this automatic recognition she returned instantly to Eugénie who, flushed and brilliant with renewed hope, poured out to her in a kind of passion the needs and history of the hospital.

Franz Salvator stood stiffly outside the little group of four; he felt troubled and as if perhaps he had given himself away without cause. He had dragged his confidence out of his heart with the utmost difficulty to offer it to this young girl who had so spontaneously given him her own, but she was talking to Dr. Jeiteles with the same intensity and friendliness with which she had talked to Franz. Franz Salvator was not a snob, but he knew there was a good deal of difference between a Jew doctor and a Hohenberg—and that the difference was not in favour of the Jew doctor. But Carol Hunter did not so much as glance in his direction until Dr. Simmons touched her on the arm and told her they must go; and even then it was Dr. Simmons who proposed to drive them home. Eugénie laughed with pleasure. ‘I have not been in a car’, she said, ‘for years; it will be like flying!’ ‘Will you drive or shall I?’ Carol asked Franz as they stood in front of the Mission car. ‘I will drive,’ said Franz Salvator, ‘if you will allow me. I am fond of driving.’ ‘I thought you would be,’ said Carol; ‘you’ve got the hands of a man who likes to do things.’ She had thought about him then, although her dismissal of him had been so casual? She swung herself into the seat beside him and lit a cigarette, protecting the match from the wind carefully in the hollow of her hands. Franz Salvator was used to women upon whom he waited hand and foot. It amused but rather shocked him to see a girl so physically competent. Carol leaned forward, so that the light caught her face. She had the quietness of another man. Franz Salvator felt himself vaguely disturbed by her, not because she was a girl, but because she used her privilege so little. Like most handsome men he was aware of his attraction for women. He was not vain of it, he sometimes disliked it; but he knew he had it. But, upon this girl beside him, he had no influence at all. He had aroused interest in her, not because he was a man and handsome, but because he told her things which she wanted to know. Dr. Jeiteles had interested her quite as much; Eugénie had interested her a good deal more. He had seen the girl’s eyes soften suddenly as they rested on Eugénie’s face. Her interest was as lively as a flame, but it had the purity of flame: nothing existed in it but the force of its own fire. They reached the door of Eugénie’s flat before the silence between them was broken. ‘Shall I see you again?’ Franz Salvator asked hurriedly. She glanced at him speculatively. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘There are several things I’d like to have from you. What’s your number? I’ll ring you up some time.’ ‘1708,’ said Franz Salvator, ‘but I would hardly have suggested a telephone. This is where my sister and I live, but if you will allow me I will drive you to the Mission and walk back.’ Carol leaned across him without answering, and held out her hand to Eugénie. ‘I want to see you again,’ she said impulsively. ‘May I come and see you?’ Eugénie smiled uncertainly. ‘It would be the greatest pleasure,’ she said with gentle cordiality, ‘to see you. Perhaps I may come some Sunday afternoon when I am free and call upon you and Dr. Simmons?’ ‘Why did she say that?’ demanded Carol as Eugénie vanished through the dark gateway. ‘Doesn’t she want me to come to her house? Not that I mind. I want to see her anyway. I’d sit on the steps of a railway station if I couldn’t see her any other way. She’s like something carried in a procession. You just want to watch her pass by with lights and music. Aren’t you proud of her?’ Franz Salvator was prouder of his sister Eugénie than of anything on earth, but he was far too proud to say so. He murmured that he was glad she was appreciated. ‘She is a good woman,’ he added simply. ‘Well, there are good women all over the place,’ said Carol indifferently—‘quite a drug on the market, good women are—that isn’t what grips you about the Princess. She’s so beautiful, she makes you hold your breath. You kind of know she’s that way inside as well as out—she’s so beautiful, she’s safe; you couldn’t break her. I tell you there aren’t many women, or men either, that you couldn’t break. All the same I don’t know why I’m not to go and see her. Is she too grand for visitors?’ ‘On the contrary,’ said Franz Salvator, ‘Eugénie is so humble that she has never been known to get on a tram unless I dragged her on one. She thinks everyone has more right to a convenience than herself. No doubt she wishes to save you time and trouble by coming to see you!’ ‘Well, she can come,’ said Carol briefly; ‘this is where we hop off.’ Franz Salvator guessed by her gesture rather than her words that they had arrived at the Mission, and pulled up the car. Carol jumped off before he could help her. It was Dr. Simmons who thanked him formally for bringing them home.

Franz Salvator found himself strolling back into the Stephansplatz with the feeling that his interests had been tremendously aroused and his personality entirely overlooked. It was a strange but not unpleasant sensation.