That was all. She knew the opinions of
military men of neutral countries; she had been talking in Biarritz with
some people of unusual intelligence; she knew what the German papers
were saying about it. Nobody over there believed that yarn about the
Marne. The people did not even know that there had been such a battle.
"Your sister said that?" interrupted Desnoyers, pale with wrath and
amazement.
But he could do nothing but keep on longing for the bodily
transformation of this enemy planted under his roof. Ay, if she could
only be changed into a man! If only the evil genius of her husband could
but take her place for a brief half hour! . . .
"But the war still goes on," said Dona Luisa in artless perplexity. "The
enemy is still in France. . . . What good did the battle of the Marne
do?"
She accepted his explanations with intelligent noddings of the head,
seeming to take them all in, and an hour afterwards would be repeating
the same doubts.
She, nevertheless, began to evince a mute hostility toward her sister.
Until now, she had been tolerating her enthusiasms in favor of her
husband's country because she always considered family ties of more
importance than the rivalries of nations. Just because Desnoyers
happened to be a Frenchman and Karl a German, she was not going to
quarrel with Elena. But suddenly this forbearance had vanished.
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