- rades, and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob in
Lille it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and revealed his agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he was going to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because Brand was naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came.
"I am working hard—speaking, writing, organising—on behalf of the Ligue des Tranchées," said Pierre. "You must come and see me at my office. It's the headquarters of the new movement in France. Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war."
"You're going to fight against heavy odds," said Brand. "Clemenceau won't love you, nor those who like his Peace."
Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war.
"Nous les aurons! Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace has still to be made by the men who fought for a new world."
He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the vortex of the crowd.
Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand's friend who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a little as he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat and skirt, very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair that made me catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a frightened look as she came forward, and she was white to the lips. Thinner, too, than when I had seen her last, so that she looked older and not, perhaps, quite so wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up with intense gladness when Brand stood in front of her, and then, under an electric lamp, with a crowd surging around him, took her in his arms.
