The long hours of the evening passed in bored inactivity.
Nicole and Howard sat on their palliasses, brooding; from time to time exchanging a few words and relapsing into silence.
At about ten o'clock they went to bed; taking off their outer clothes only, they lay down and covered themselves with the blanket.
Howard slept fairly well that night, the girl not so well.
Very early in the morning, in the half-light before dawn, the door of their prison opened with a clatter.
The Gefreiter was there, fully dressed and equipped with bayonet at his belt and steel helmet on his head.
He shook Howard by the shoulder.
'Auf!' he said. He indicated to him that he was to get up and dress himself.
Nicole raised herself on one arm, a little frightened.
'Do they want me?' she asked in French.
The man shook his head.
Howard, putting on his coat, turned to her in the dim light.
This will be another of their enquiries,' he said.
'Don't worry.
I shall be back before long.'
She was deeply troubled.
'I shall be waiting for you, with the children,' she said simply.
They will be safe with me.'
'I know they will,' he said.
'Au revoir,'
In the cold dawn they took him out into the square and along to the big house with the swastika flag, opposite the church, where they had first been interrogated.
He was not taken to the same room, but to an upstairs room at the back.
It had been a bedroom at one time and some of the bedroom furniture was still in place, but the bed had been removed and now it was some kind of office.
The black uniformed Gestapo officer, Major Diessen, was standing by the window.
'So,' he said, 'we have the Englishman again.'
Howard was silent.
The German spoke a few words in his own language to the Gefreiter and the private who had brought Howard to the room.
The Gefreiter saluted and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
The private remained standing at attention by the door.
The cold, grey light was now strong in the room.
'Come,' said the German at the window.
'Look out.
Nice garden, is it not?'
The old man approached the window.
There was a garden there, entirely surrounded by high old red-brick walls covered with fruit trees.
It was a well-kept, mature garden, such as he liked to see.
'Yes,' he said quietly. 'It is a nice garden.'
Instinctively he felt the presence of some trap.
The German said: 'Unless you help him, in a few minutes your friend Mr Charenton will die in it.
He is to be shot as a spy.'
The old man stared at him.
'I don't know what is in your mind that you have brought me here,' he said.
'I met Charenton for the first time yesterday, when you put us together.
He is a very brave young man and a good one.
If you are going to shoot him, you are doing a bad thing.
A man like that should be allowed to live, to work for the world when this war is all over.'
'A very nice speech,' the German said.
'I agree with you; he should be allowed to live.
He shall live, if you help him.
He shall be a prisoner to the end of the war which will not be long now.