“I’m loyal to the man,” he said. “I’ll back him if he plays straight and big. Bigness, that’s what we want. Bigness of heart as well as bigness of brain. Oh, he’s clever, though not wise in making so many enemies. He has fine ideas and can write real words. Things which speak. True things. I’d like to be sure of his character--its breadth and strength, I mean. The world wants a nobleman, bigger than the little gentlemen of politics; a leader calling to the great human heart of our tribes and lifting them, with one grand gesture, out of the mire of old passions and vendettas and jealousies to a higher plane of--common sense. Out of the jungle to the daylight of fellowship. Out of the jungle.” He repeated those words twice, with a reverent solemnity. He believed that so much emotion had been created in the heart of the world that, when the war ended, anything might happen if a leader came--a new religion of civilisation, any kind of spiritual and social revolution. “We might kill cruelty,” he said. “My word, what a victory that would be!” XI Our conversation was interrupted by a figure that slipped out of the darkness of some doorway, hesitated before us, and then spoke in French. “You are English officers? May I speak with you?” It was a girl, whom I could see only vaguely in the darkness--she stood in the shadow of a doorway beyond the moonlight--and I answered her that I was English and my friend American. “Is there any way,” she asked, “of travelling from Lille, perhaps to Paris? In a motor car, for example? To-night?” I laughed at this startling request, put so abruptly. It was already nine o’clock at night! “Not the smallest chance in the world, mademoiselle! Paris is far from Lille.” “I was stupid,” said the girl. “Not all the way to Paris, but to some town outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing through the streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one----” “It is difficult,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger--in shelled places.” She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that she was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the way she spoke--the accent--as well as by the neatness of her dress, that she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold of my arm with both her hands. “Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way in which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme importance to me.” A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting, laughing, singing the “Marseillaise.” They were civilians, with two of our soldiers among them, wearing women’s hats. Before I could answer the girl’s last words, she made a sudden retreat into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back.