human
Well, you have better nerves than I, said Atkins resignedly.
gpt
I confess that during these last eight days I have become really morbid. We were a whole week on this journey to N. which is usually made in twenty-four hours; we have had our night quarters in the most wretched villages, such food I never in my life tasted before. For hours and days, we have had to lie over in half-ruined places on account of broken bridges and impassable roads, and always in danger lest a battle might be fought in our immediate vicinity, and we borne onward with the wave of victory or flight. I should think all this must at last have convinced you how impossible it is to trace out family relationships upon the theatre of war.
human
Impossible? she asked calmly.
gpt
I thought that in spite of all, we had arrived in N., and that, in any event, a decision awaited us here.
human
Or a new deception! This clue misleads us in the most exasperating ways. Scarce do we think we have it, when it suddenly snaps asunder, and darts away to some other quarter of the heavens. At present, we are in France, and I should not wonder if the next thing, we had to direct our course back to America, only to go from there to the Rhine again, and so on.
gpt
It is all the same! declared Jane energetically.
human
I promised my father to find my brother if still alive, and to yield only to impossibilities. I shall keep my word!
gpt
If it were only a direct clue we are following? began Atkins again;
human
And perhaps the only one who can give it! The direct clue is lost; that clergyman is not to be found, neither in his former parish nor anywhere else; all our efforts in this direction have failed; but we have found the artisan who adopted the other boy.
gpt
And from him have received the joyful tidings that his nephew went to France four years ago, and at this moment may be here in N. For the theatre of his highly respectable efforts at the planing bench, he has chosen a place right in the midst of all these accursed military operations.
human
You forget the most important thing, she said,
gpt
I do not dispute all this, replied Atkins;
human
I am only of the opinion that it would be better to defer our investigations until after the end of the war.
gpt
Until the end of the war, echoed Jane.
human
When all present associations are severed, and the soldiers are scattered here and there! These tidings have not come too late; I hope not, at least, but we ought not to delay a moment, to make the best possible use of them, and as an epistolary correspondence was not to be thought of, there was only one resource; I must enter personally into the investigation, and follow the clue. If you suffer from the dangers and deprivations of the journey, Mr. Atkins, it is your own fault--I could have come alone!
gpt
Yes, God knows you would have done so! said Atkins, with a sigh.
human
Jane, you are sometimes terrible in your restless energy! I certainly do not belong to the indolent and the irresolute; but this tireless rushing onward toward one single goal, has at last quite exhausted me.
gpt
But not _me_! replied Jane, with cool determination.
human
I am resolved to go on, I repeat it, to the utmost limits of the possible!
gpt
Well, we have one certainty at least, began Atkins after a brief pause;
human
It is now half-past nine, and I think we ought to get ready to go out.