She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled suddenly – the first time he had seen her do so. It was an enchanting smile; her whole face lit up like a child’s. Smiley had a fleeting vision of Elsa Fennan as a child – a spindly, agile tomboy like George Sand’s ‘Petite Fadette’ – half woman, half glib, lying girl. He saw her as a wheedling Backfisch, fighting like a cat for herself alone, and he saw her too, starved and shrunken in prison camp, ruthless in her fight for self-preservation. It was pathetic to witness in that smile the light of her early innocence, and a steeled weapon in her
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