The children will be safe with me.'
He said quietly, suddenly numb with an old pain:
'Who told you those phrases, mademoiselle?
They are quite up to date.'
She turned away.
'I do not know,' she said awkwardly.
'It is possible that I have read them in a book.'
He went back with her to the salon and helped her to get the children ready to go out, and saw them off together down the stairs.
Then he went back into the little flat; madame had disappeared, and he resorted to the bathroom for his shave.
Then, in the corner of the settee in the salon he fell asleep, and slept uneasily for about two hours.
The children woke him as they came back into the flat.
Ronnie rushed up to him.
'We saw bombers,' he said ecstatically.
'Real German ones, ever so big, and they showed me the bombs and they let me go and touch them, too!'
Sheila said: 'I went and touched them, too!'
Ronnie said: 'And we saw the bombers flying, and taking off and landing, and going out to bomb the ships on the sea!
It was fun, Mr Howard.'
He said, mildly: 'I hope you said "Thank you" very nicely to Mademoiselle Rougeron for taking you for such a lovely walk.'
They rushed up to her.
Thank you ever so much, Mademoiselle Rougeron,' they said.
He turned to her. 'You've given them a very happy afternoon,' he said.
'Where did you take them to?'
She said: To the aerodrome, monsieur.'
She hesitated.
'I would not have gone there if I had realised... But they do not understand, the little ones.'
'No,' he said.
'It's all great fun to them.' He glanced at her. 'Were there many bombers there?'
'Sixty or seventy.
More, perhaps.'
'And going out to bomb the ships of my country?' he said gently.
She inclined her head.
'I would not have taken them there,' she said again.
'I did not know.'
He smiled.
'Well,' he said, 'there's not much we can do to stop them, so it's no good worrying about it.'
Madame appeared again; it was nearly six o'clock.
She had made soup for the children's supper and she had prepared a bed in her own room for the two little girls.
The three little boys were to sleep in a bed which she had made up on the floor of the corridor; Howard had been given a bedroom to himself.
He thanked her for the trouble she had taken.
'One must first get the little ones to bed,' she said.
Then we will talk, and devise something.'
In an hour they were all fed, washed, and in bed, settling for the night.
Howard sat down with the two women to a supper of a thick meat broth and bread and cheese, with a little red wine mixed with water.
He helped them to clear the table, and accepted a curious, thin, dry, black cigar from a box left by his absent host.
Presently he said:
'I have been thinking quietly this afternoon, madame,' he said.
'I do not think I shall go back to Switzerland.
I think it would be better to try and get into Spain.'
The woman said: 'It is a very long way to go.'
They discussed the matter for a little time.