She thought for a time, evidently weighing one thing and another. While she was still silent, I broke in, wisely or unwisely I did not know.
“If Elsa goes into the South, Nordenholt, I go with her to look after her. You must find someone else to take my place. I can’t let her go alone.”
Nordenholt’s voice was as calm as ever.
“You understand, Elsa? If you go, you take away Mr. Flint; and although I can replace you in your department, I doubt if I can get anyone as good as he is in his line. Go South and you cripple one of the essential parts of the Area. Stay here, and you help us all towards safety—and we are not near the safety-line yet. Which is it to be? I put no pressure on you. I only point out what I think is your duty.”
I had expected some angry reply, some hurried decision which might bring disaster in its train; but luckily things took a different turn. I believe that the strain had been too great for her. Now came the collapse; and before I knew what had happened, she had broken into tears. Nordenholt leaned over her, trying to comfort her; but it was useless; and he let her work out her fit of emotion to the end. At last she pulled herself together.
“If you are sure you need me, I will stay. But I hate you both. I hate the work. I hate the Area and everything in it. I’ll keep my promise to you; but things will never be the same again. … And, oh, this morning I was so happy.”
Nordenholt climbed aboard the car without another word, and I drove on into the dark. Now and again I heard a half-suppressed sob from the girl at my side; but that was all. At the door of Nordenholt’s house I stopped. Elsa left me without uttering even “Good night.” I watched her tall, slim figure go up the steps and disappear; and something blinded me. I found Nordenholt standing at the side of the car.
“Poor chap,” he said, with an immense pity in his voice. “So you’re involved too? I wish it had been otherwise. Well, well; I couldn’t hope to keep it from her much longer at the best. But I’m very, very sorry. She’ll take it so hard. Her type never looks at these things the way we do.”
He paused and looked at me keenly in the light of the terrace lamps. When he spoke once more, his voice sounded very weary.
“Stand by me, Jack. Get your part ready in time. Don’t flinch because of this. I’m nearly at the end of my tether.”
I could not trust myself to speak. We shook hands in silence, and he went up the steps into the house.
XVI
In the Nitrogen Area
I have no wish to dwell overmuch upon my own affairs in this narrative; for they formed a mere ripple on the surface of the torrent of events which was bearing all of us along in its course. Yet to exclude them entirely would be to omit something which is of importance; for they must have influenced my outlook upon the situation as a whole and possibly made me view it through eyes different from those which I had used before.
My dreams and desires had come to the ground almost ere they were in being; and what made it more bitter to me was that I felt they had been crushed, not on their merits, but merely as subsidiaries which had shared in the collapse of a more central matter. I guessed that Elsa had, to some extent, at any rate, shared my feelings; and it was this which made the downfall of my hopes all the harder to bear.
Try as I would, I could find no reason behind her attitude; and even now, looking back upon that time, I cannot appreciate her motives. In the whole affair of the Nitrogen Area I had been guided by purely intellectual considerations. Nordenholt himself had advised me to keep a tight rein upon any feelings which might divert me from this course. And I was thus, perhaps, less able to appreciate her standpoint then than I would have been a few months earlier.
On her side emotion, and not intellect, was the guiding star. The picture of starving millions which had broken upon her without warning had overpowered her normally clear brain. Thus there lay between us a gulf which nothing seemed capable of filling. I thought, and still believe, that emotion is a will-o’-the-wisp by which alone no man can steer a course; but it is useless to deny its power when once it has laid its influence upon a mind. Even had she given me a chance, I doubt if I would have tried to reason with her; and she gave me no chance. I never saw her alone; and when she met me perforce or by accident, she treated me practically as a stranger. All the long evenings of planning and dreaming had gone out of our lives.
As soon as I could make an opportunity, I questioned Nordenholt as to the state of affairs. He answered me perfectly frankly.
“Elsa has never said a word to me about the South. I think she shrinks from the idea even in her own mind; and she shrinks from me because of it, as I can see. But she sticks to her work, even if she loathes coming into contact with me daily; and I keep her as hard at
