But she refused. "No. Why should I?" For she understood well enough that to Callendar it was a matter of complete indifference. She knew his whole philosophy could be expressed in a single sentence—"If one died, one died." The thing was to live while one was alive. "No," she repeated. "Why should I be afraid? You and Fergus aren't frightened."
"It's not the same," he said softly.
"There's no reason why it shouldn't be."
For a moment it may have seemed to her that she too was playing a part in the spectacle. She too might for once undertake a little of the danger they had known, the one with indifference, the other with a kind of fierce excitement.
"It is much easier," she murmured, "to be with you both than to be here alone, not knowing what may happen to you."
Under the heavy, sensuous lids Callendar's gray eyes revealed a sudden sparkle of admiration for the fierce and sullen defiance of her mood. He must have known that she would have walked carelessly through the street, as carelessly as Fergus had done, that she would in her present mood have gone into an attack with a serene indifference; because she was angry now, angry at the war for which she had such a contempt, at circumstance, at the whole muddled business of living. She was angry and defiant with an Olympian anger, careless of cost or consequence.
There was another crash, nearer this time in the direction of the Trocadéro, and again Callendar's eyelids flickered with slow admiration. She did not move. She still sat with one hand on Hansi's head looking into the fire.
"I am not thinking about myself," she observed suddenly with the air of answering a question which he had not spoken. "It is my brother."
"He must be safe by now at his rendezvous. The Avenue Kléber is not far."
She was thinking too, in a dazed fashion, of all that had happened in the hour before Fergus blundered in upon them. Cal-
