A woman sees a Czech man at a gathering; sensing his discomfort, she asks him to accompany her home so that he may have a chance to escape as well. He is mostly silent - all her questions are met with curt responses. The woman invites him into her house out of sympathy, but the man only opens up when her dog runs into the room and goes straight to him. He states also that it is impossible for her, a rich and comfortable American, to understand what he suffered in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. However, since she owns a dog, he believes that she will understand some part of his story if he talks about a bond that he once shared with a dog. His story goes back to Czechoslovakia, where he was carrying a message to a person working to resist the Nazis. The man had disguised himself as a Czech peasant to avoid the suspicion of patrols, and a starved dog found him on the streets. They quickly became friends; the man shared what little food he had with the dog and hugged it tightly for comfort. In time, the dog learned to growl every time he heard a German sentry approaching, a skill that was extremely useful for the man who was trying to escape their notice. Unfortunately, this ability turned out to be a detriment to their survival. At a moment when silence was imperative, the dog growled, having sensed the approach of a German. The man begged the dog to be quiet, but it had been praised for the action before and did not understand the command to stop. Unable to think of anything else, the man strangled the dog, hoping to keep it quiet just long enough for the sentry to leave - but the dog, malnourished and weak, did not survive. Upon hearing this, the American woman is shocked, and calls her own dog sharply to get him away from the man - at which he looks saddened, and he observes that the dog he strangled was Czech, not American.