'Is it for the children that you want this, or for me?' he asked.
He could not answer that.
'For both,' he said at last.
With clear logic she said: 'In England there will be many people, friends of yours and the relations of the English children, who will care for them.
You have only to write a letter, and send it with them if they have to go without you.
But for me, I have told you, I have no business in England - now.
My country is this country, and my parents are here and in trouble.
It is here that I must stay.'
He nodded ruefully.
'I was afraid that you would feel like that.'
Half an hour later the door of their room was thrust open, and two German privates appeared outside.
They were carrying a table.
With some difficulty they got it through the door and set it up in the middle of the room.
Then they brought in eight chairs and set them with mathematical exactitude around the table.
Nicole and Howard watched this with surprise.
They had eaten all their meals since they had been in captivity from plates balanced in their hands, helped from a bowl that stood on the floor.
This was something different in their treatment, something strange and suspicious.
The soldiers withdrew.
Presently, the door opened again, and in walked a little French waiter balancing a tray, evidently from some neighbouring cafe.
A German soldier followed him and stood over him in menacing silence.
The man, evidently frightened, spread a cloth on the table and set out cups and saucers, a large pot of hot coffee and a jug of hot milk, new rolls, butter, sugar, jam, and a plate of cut rounds of sausage.
Then he withdrew quickly, in evident relief.
Impassively, the German soldier shut the door on them again.
The children crowded round the table, eager.
Howard and Nicole helped them into their chairs and set to work to feed them.
The girl glanced at the old man.
'This is a great change,' she said quietly.
'I do not understand why they are doing this.'
He shook his head.
He did not understand it either.
Lurking in his mind was a thought that he did not speak, that this was a new trick to win him into some admission.
They had failed with fear; now they would try persuasion.
The children cleared the table of all that was on it and got down, satisfied.
A quarter of an hour later the little waiter reappeared, still under guard; he gathered up the cloth and cleared the table, and retired again in silence.
But the door did not close.
One of the sentries came to it and said:
'Sit konnen in den Garten gehen.'
With difficulty Howard understood this to mean that they might go into the garden.
There was a small garden behind the house, completely surrounded by a high brick wall, not unlike another garden that the old man had seen earlier in the day.
The children rushed out into it with a carillon of shrill cries; a day of close confinement had been a grave trial to them.
Howard followed with Nicole, wondering.
It was another brilliant, sunlit day, already growing hot.
Presently, two German soldiers appeared carrying arm-chairs.
These two chairs they set with mathematical exactitude precisely in the middle of a patch of shade beneath a tree.
'Setzen Sie sich,' they said.
Nicole and Howard sat down side by side, self-consciously, in silence.
The soldiers withdrew, and a sentry with a rifle and a fixed bayonet appeared at the only exit from the garden.
There he grounded his rifle and stood at ease, motionless and expressionless.
There was something sinister about all these developments.
Nicole said: 'Why are they doing this for us, monsieur?