Just a moment's talk in the street—twice interrupted by sentries, as they moved the hundred yards from the courtyard of Judenbach to the house of amputations.
“...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I stepped up quietly behind,” Berthe was saying. “He was wonderful about it, because he had felt the same hopelessness. I wish you could have heard him.”
Moritz Abel said: “He is effective. He is intellect and heart—very sound. His vision will come quickly. He does not wing—that is our trouble. We are carried away. He is still within the comprehension of the average man. We need him greatly. Also he needs us. What a man he would be to steady us—to interpret for us. The new Fatherland must have such men. It has been our destiny always to dream and to pass—another generation to make our vision flesh—”
“You mean such men as Peter Mowbray would be direct interpreters?” she asked.
“Exactly. We are poets and artists and singers. We are the fathers of the new Fatherland in a sense, but we need among us lawgivers and statesmen—men who love men straight and not through the arts—men who have the same zeal for men that the arts give us when we are pure, but who are conservers and constructors, men of great force and acumen and kindness—”
“Oh, I know so well what you mean,” she whispered. “If you could only have heard him with the bandaged man—'I am not a genius or a dreamer, man. I am so slow at dreaming and brotherhood, and all that, that a woman once ran away from me. But I saw to-day that death isn't all.'”
“Yes, that is it,” Moritz Abel said. “That is the quality. And many times among those who do not make claim nor talk of brotherhood, the reality is beaming from their daily service. Yes, that is it. I hope to know him better after the long night.”
They had reached the place of blood and torture.
“And now you must rest a little,” he told her. “You know he asked me to take care of you. I like him for that. A man would see a great deal in that, for he honored me.”
“And me—” she whispered.
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