IN WHICH I LEARN THAT COMPETITION IS STILL
THE LIFE OF THE OLDEST TRADE IN THE WORLD
~1~
When I told Dr. Zimmern that I should solve the problem of the increase
of the supply of protium I may have been guilty of speaking of hopes as
if they were certainties. My optimism was based on the discovery that
the exact chemical state of the protium in the ore was unknown, and that
it did not exist equally in all samples of the ore.
After some further months of labour I succeeded in determining the exact
chemical ingredients of the ore, and from this I worked rapidly toward a
new process of extraction that would greatly increase the total yield of
the precious element. But this fact I kept from my assistants whose work
I directed to futile researches while I worked alone after hours in
following up the lead I had discovered.
During the progress of this work I was not always in the laboratory. I
had become a not infrequent visitor to the Level of the Free Women. The
continuous carnival of amusement had an attraction for me, as it must
have had for any tired and lonely man. But it was not merely the lure of
sensuous pleasures that appealed to me, for I was also fascinated with
the deeper and more tragic aspect of life beneath the gaudy surface of
hectic joy.
Some generalities I had picked up from observation and chance
conversations. As a primary essential to life on the level I had quickly
learned that money was needed, and my check book was in frequent demand.
The bank provided an aluminum currency for the pettier needs of the
recreational life, but neither the checks nor the currency had had value
on other levels, since there all necessities were supplied without cost
and luxuries were unobtainable. This strange retention of money
circulation and general freedom of personal conduct exclusively on the
Free Level puzzled me. Thus I found that food and drink were here
available for a price, a seeming contradiction to the strict limitations
of the diet served me at my own quarters. At first it seemed I had
discovered a way to defeat that limitation--but there was the weigher to
be considered.
It was a queer ensemble, this life in the Black Utopia of Berlin, a
combination of a world of rigid mechanistic automatism in the regular
routine of living with rioting individual license in recreational
pleasure. The Free Level seemed some ancient Bagdad, some Bourbon Court,
some Monte Carlo set here, an oasis of flourishing vice in a desert of
sterile law-made, machine-executed efficiency and puritanically ordered
life. Aided by a hundred ingenious wheels and games of chance, men and
women gambled with the coin and credit of the level. These games were
presided over by crafty women whose years were too advanced to permit of
a more personal means of extracting a living from the grosser passions
of man. Some of these aged dames were, I found, quite highly regarded
and their establishments had become the rendezvous for many younger
women who by some arrangement that I could not fathom plied their
traffic in commercialized love under the guidance of these subtler women
who had graduated from the school of long experience in preying
upon man.
But only the more brilliant women could so establish themselves for the
years of their decline. There were others, many others, whose beauty had
faded without an increase in wit, and these seemed to be serving their
more fortunate sisters, both old and young, in various menial
capacities. It was a strange anachronism in this world where men's more
weighty affairs had been so perfectly socialized, to find woman
retaining, evidently by men's permission, the individualistic right to
exploit her weaker sister.
The thing confounded me, and yet I recalled the well known views of our
sociological historians who held that it was woman's greater
individualism that had checked the socialistic tendencies of the world.
Had the Germans then achieved and maintained their rigid socialistic
order by retaining this incongruous vestige of feminine commercialism as
a safety valve for the individualistic instincts of the race?
They called it the Free Level, and I marvelled at the nature of this
freedom. Freedom for licentiousness, for the getting and losing of money
at the wheels of fortune, freedom for temporary gluttony and the mild
intoxication of their flat, ill-flavoured synthetic beer. A tragic
symbol it seemed to me of the ignobility of man's nature, that he will
be a slave in all the loftier aspects of living if he can but retain his
freedom for his vices and corruptions. Had the Germans then, like the
villain of the moral play, a necessary part in the tragedy of man; did
they exist to show the other races of the earth the way they
should not go? But the philosophy of this conception collapsed when I
recalled that for more than a century the world had lost all sight of
the villain and yet had not in the least deteriorated from a lack of the
horrible example.
From these vaguer speculations concerning the Free Level of Berlin that
existed like a malformed vestigial organ in the body of that socialized
state, my mind came back to the more human, more personal side of the
problem thus presented me. I wanted to know more of the lives of these
women who maintained Germany's remnant of individualism.
To what extent, I asked myself, have the true instincts of womanhood and
the normal love of man and child been smothered out of the lives of
these girls? What secret rebellions are they nursing in their hearts? I
wondered, too, from what source they came, and why they were selected
for this life, for Zimmern had not adequately enlightened me on
this point.
Pondering thus on the secret workings in the hearts of these girls, I
sat one evening amid the sensuous beauty of the Hall of Flowers. I
marvelled at how little the Germans seemed to appreciate it, for it was
far less crowded than were the more tawdry places of revelry. Here
within glass encircling walls, preserved through centuries of artificial
existence, feeding from pots of synthetic soil and stimulated by
perpetual light, marvellous botanical creations flourished and flowered
in prodigal profusion. Ponderous warm-hued lilies floated on the
sprinkled surface of the fountain pool. Orchids, dangling from the metal
lattice, hung their sensuous blossoms in vapour-laden air. Luxurious
vines, climatized to this unreal world, clambered over cosy arbours, or
clung with gripping fingers to the mossy concrete pillars.
~2~
I was sitting thus in moody silence watching the play of the fountain,
when, through the mist, I saw the lonely figure of a girl standing in
the shadows of a viny bower. She was toying idly with the swaying
tendrils. Her hair was the unfaded gold of youth. Her pale dress of
silvery grey, unmarred by any clash of colour, hung closely about a form
of wraith-like slenderness.
I arose and walked slowly toward her. As I approached she turned toward
me a face of flawless girlish beauty, and then as quickly turned away as
if seeking a means of escape.
"I did not mean to intrude," I said.
She did not answer, but when I turned to go, to my surprise, she stepped
forward and walked at my side.
"Why do you come here alone?" she asked shyly, lifting a pensive
questioning face.
"Because I am tired of all this tawdry noise. But you," I said, "surely
you are not tired of it? You cannot have been here long."
"No," she replied, "I have not. Only thirty days"; and her blue eyes
gleamed with childish pride.
"And that is why you seem so different from them all?"
Timidly she placed her hand upon my arm. "So you," she said gratefully,
"you understand that I am not like them-that is, not yet."
"You do not act like them," I replied, "and what is more, you act as if
you did not want to be like them. It surely cannot be merely that you
are new here. The other girls when they come seem so eager for this
life, to which they have long been trained. Were you not trained for
it also?"
"Yes," she admitted, "they tried to train me for it, but they could not
kill my artist's soul, for I was not like these others, born of a strain
wherein women can only be mothers, or, if rejected for that, come here.
I was born to be a musician, a group where women may be something more
than mere females."
"Then why are you here?" I asked.
"Because," she faltered, "my voice was imperfect. I have, you see, the
soul of an artist but lack the physical means to give that soul
expression. And so they transferred me to the school for free women,
where I have been courted by the young men of the Royal House. But of
course you understand all that."
"Yes," I said, "I know something of it; but my work has always so
absorbed me that I have not had time to think of these matters. In fact,
I come to the Free Level much less than most men."
For a moment, it seemed, her eyes hardened in cunning suspicion, but as
I returned her intent gaze I could fathom only the doubts and fears of
childish innocence.
"Please let us sit down," I said; "it is so beautiful here; and then
tell me all about yourself, how you have lived your childhood, and what
your problems are. It may be that I can help you."
"There is not much to tell," she sighed, as she seated herself beside
me. "I was only eight years old when the musical examiners condemned my
voice and so I do not remember much about the music school. In the other
school where they train girls for the life on the Free Level, they
taught us dancing, and how to be beautiful, and always they told us that
we must learn these things so that the men would love us. But the only
men we ever saw were the doctors. They were always old and serious and I
could not understand how I could ever love men. But our teachers would
tell us that the other men would be different. They would be handsome
and young and would dance with us and bring us fine presents. If we were
pleasing in their sight they would take us away, and we should each have
an apartment of our own, and many dresses with beautiful colours, and
there would be a whole level full of wonderful things and we could go
about as we pleased, and dance and feast and all life would be love and
joy and laughter.
"Then, on the 'Great Day,' when we had our first individual dresses--for
before we had always worn uniforms--the men came. They were young
military officers and members of the Royal House who are permitted to
select girls for their own exclusive love. We were all very shy at
first, but many of the girls made friends with the men and some of them
went away that first day. And after that the men came as often as they
liked and I learned to dance with them, and they made love to me and
told me I was very beautiful. Yet somehow I did not want to go with
them. We had been told that we would love the men who loved us. I don't
know why, but I didn't love any of them. And so the two years passed and
they told me I must come here alone. And so here I am."
"And now that you are here," I said, "have you not, among all these men
found one that you could love?"
"No," she said, with a tremor in her voice, "but they say I must."
"And how," I asked, "do they enforce that rule? Does any one require
you--to accept the men?"
"Yes," she replied. "I must do that--or starve."
"And how do you live now?" I asked.
"They gave me money when I came here, a hundred marks. And they make me
pay to eat and when my money is gone I cannot eat unless I get more. And
the men have all the money, and they pay. They have offered to pay me,
but I refused to take their checks, and they think me stupid."
The child-like explanation of her lot touched the strings of my heart.
"And how long," I asked, "is this money that is given you when you come
here supposed to last?"
"Not more than twenty days," she answered.
"But you," I said, "have been here thirty days!"
She looked at me and smiled proudly. "But I," she said, "only eat one
meal a day. Do you not see how thin I am?"
The realization that any one in this scientifically fed city could be
hungry was to me appalling. Yet here was a girl living amidst luxurious
beauty, upon whom society was using the old argument of hunger to force
her acceptance of the love of man.
I rose and held out my hand. "You shall eat again today," I said.
"I would rather not," she demurred. "I have not yet accepted favours
from any man."
"But you must. You are hungry," I protested. "The problem of your
existence here cannot be put off much longer. We will go eat and then we
will try and find some solution."
Without further objection she walked with me. We found a secluded booth
in a dining hall. I ordered the best dinner that Berlin had to offer.
During the intervals of silence in our rather halting dinner
conversation, I wrestled with the situation. I had desired to gain
insight into the lives of these girls. Yet now that the opportunity was
presented I did not altogether relish the rôle in which it placed me.
The apparent innocence of the confiding girl seemed to open an easy way
for a personal conquest--and yet, perhaps because it was so obvious and
easy, I rebelled at the unfairness of it. To rescue her, to aid her to
escape--in a free world one might have considered these more obvious
moves, but here there was no place for her to escape to, no higher
social justice to which appeal could be made. Either I must accept her
as a personal responsibility, with what that might involve, or desert
her to her fate. Both seemed cowardly--yet such were the horns of the
dilemma and a choice must be made. Here at least was an opportunity to
make use of the funds that lay in the bank to the credit of the name I
bore, and for which I had found so little use. So I decided to offer her
money, and to insist that it was not offered as the purchase price
of love.
"You must let me help you," I said, "you must let me give you money."
"But I do not want your money," she replied. "It would only postpone my
troubles. Even if I do accept your money, I would have to accept money
from other men also, for you cannot pay for the whole of a
woman's living."
"Why not," I asked, "does any rule forbid it?"
"No rule, but can so young a man as you afford it?"
"How much does it take for you to live here?"
"About five marks a day."
I glanced rather proudly at my insignia as a research chemist of the
first rank. "Do you know," I asked, "how much income that
insignia carries?"
"Well, no," she admitted, "I know the income of military officers, but
there are so many of the professional ranks and classes that I get all
mixed up."
"That means," I said, "ten thousand marks a year."
"So much as that!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "And I can live here
on two hundred a month, but no, I did not mean that--you wouldn't,--I
couldn't--let you give me so much."
"Much!" I exclaimed; "you may have five hundred if you need it."
"You make love very nicely," she replied with aloofness.
"But I am not making love," I protested.
"Then why do you say these things? Do you prefer some one else? If so
why waste your funds on me?"
"No, no!" I cried, "it is not that; but you see I want to tell you
things; many things that you do not know. I want to see you often and
talk to you. I want to bring you books to read. And as for money, that
is so you will not starve while you read my books and listen to me talk.
But you are to remain mistress of your own heart and your own person.
You see, I believe there are ways to win a woman's love far better than
buying her cheap when she is starved into selling in this
brutal fashion."
She looked at me dubiously. "You are either very queer," she said, "or
else a very great liar."
"But I am neither," I protested, piqued that the girl in her innocence
should yet brand me either mentally deficient or deceitful. "It is
impossible to make you understand me," I went on, "and yet you must
trust me. These other men, they approve the system under which you live,
but I do not. I offer you money, I insist on your taking it because
there is no other way, but it is not to force you to accept me but only
to make it unnecessary for you to accept some one else. You have been
very brave, to stand out so long. You must accept my money now, but you
need never accept me at all--unless you really want me. If I am to make
love to you I want to make love to a woman who is really free; a woman
free to accept or reject love, not starved into accepting it in this
so-called freedom."
"It is all very wonderful," she repeated; "a minute ago I thought you
deceitful, and now I want to believe you. I can not stand out much
longer and what would be the use for just a few more days?"
"There will be no need," I said gently, "your courage has done its work
well--it has saved you for yourself. And now," I continued, "we will
bind this bargain before you again decide me crazy."
Taking out my check book I filled in a check for two hundred marks
payable to--"To whom shall I make it payable?" I asked.
"To Bertha, 34 R 6," she said, and thus I wrote it, cursing the
prostituted science and the devils of autocracy that should give an
innocent girl a number like a convict in a jail or a mare in a breeder's
herd book.
And so I bought a German girl with a German check--bought her because I
saw no other way to save her from being lashed by starvation to the
slave block and sold piecemeal to men in whom honour had not even died,
but had been strangled before it was born.
With my check neatly tucked in her bosom, Bertha walked out of the café
clinging to my arm, and so, passing unheeding through the throng of
indifferent revellers, we came to her apartment.
At the door I said, "Tomorrow night I come again. Shall it be at the
café or here?"
"Here," she whispered, "away from them all."
I stooped and kissed her hand and then fled into the multitude.
~3~
I had promised Bertha that I would bring her books, but the narrow range
of technical books permitted me were obviously unsuitable, nor did I
feel that the unspeakably morbid novels available on the Level of Free
Women would serve my purpose of awakening the girl to more wholesome
aspirations. In this emergency I decided to appeal to my
friend, Zimmern.
Leaving the laboratory early, I made my way toward his apartment,
puzzling my brain as to what kind of a book I could ask for that would
be at once suitable to Bertha's child-like mind and also be a volume
which I could logically appear to wish to read myself. As I walked
along the answer flashed into my mind--I would ask for a geography
of the outer world.
Happily I found Zimmern in. "I have come to ask," I said, "if you could
loan me a book of description of the outer world, one with maps, one
that tells all that is known of the land and seas and people."
"Oh, yes," smiled Zimmern, "you mean a geography. Your request," he
continued, "does me great honour. Books telling the truth about the
world without are very carefully guarded. I shall be pleased to get the
geography for you at once. In fact I had already decided that when you
came again I would take you with me to our little secret library.
Germany is facing a great crisis, and I know no better way I can serve
her than doing my part to help prepare as many as possible of our
scientists to cope with the impending problems. Unless you chemists
avert it, we shall all live to see this outer world, or die that
others may."
Dr. Zimmern led the way to the elevator. We alighted on the Level of Free
Women. Instead of turning towards the halls of revelry we took our
course in the opposite direction along the quiet streets among the
apartments of the women. We turned into a narrow passage-way and Dr.
Zimmern rang the bell at an apartment door. But after waiting a moment
for an answer he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
"I am sorry Marguerite is out," he said, as he conducted me into a
reception room. The walls were hung with seal-brown draperies. There
were richly upholstered chairs and a divan piled high with fluffy
pillows. In one corner stood a bookcase of burnished metal filigree.
Zimmern waved his hand at the case with an expression of disdain. "Only
the conventional literature of the level, to keep up appearances," he
said; "our serious books are in here"; and he thrust open the door of a
room which was evidently a young lady's boudoir.
Conscious of a profane intrusion, I followed Dr. Zimmern into the dainty
dressing chamber. Stepping across the room he pushed open a spacious
wardrobe, and thrusting aside a cleverly arranged shield of feminine
apparel he revealed, upon some improvised shelves, a library of perhaps
a hundred volumes. He ran his hand fondly along the bindings. "No other
man of your age in Berlin," he said, "has ever had access to such a
complete fund of knowledge as is in this library."
I hope the old doctor took for appreciation the smile that played upon
my face as I contrasted his pitiful offering with the endless miles of
book stacks in the libraries of the outer world where I had spent so
many of my earlier days.
"Our books are safer here," said Zimmern, "for no one would suspect a
girl on this level of being interested in serious reading. If perchance
some inspector did think to perform his neglected duties we trust to him
being content to glance over the few novels in the case outside and not
to pry into her wardrobe closet. There is still some risk, but that we
must take, since there is no absolute privacy anywhere. We must trust to
chance to hide them in the place least likely to be searched."
"And how," I asked, "are these books accumulated?"
"It is the result of years of effort," explained Zimmern. "There are
only a few of us who are in this secret group but all have contributed
to the collection, and we come here to secure the books that the others
bring. We prefer to read them here, and so avoid the chance of being
detected carrying forbidden books. There is no restriction on the
callers a girl may have at her apartment; the authorities of the level
are content to keep records only of her monetary transactions, and that
fact we take advantage of. Should a man's apartment on another level be
so frequently visited by a group of men an inquiry would be made."
All this was interesting, but I inferred that I would again have
opportunity to visit the library and now I was impatient to keep my
appointment with Bertha. Making an excuse for haste, I asked Zimmern to
get the geography for me. The stiff back of the book had been removed,
and Zimmern helped me adjust the limp volume beneath my waistcoat.
"I am sorry you cannot remain and meet Marguerite tonight," he said as I
stepped toward the door. "But tomorrow evening I will arrange for you to
meet Colonel Hellar of the Information Staff, and Marguerite can be with
us then. You may go directly to my booth in the café where you last
dined with me."
~4~
After a brief walk I came to Bertha's apartment, and nervously pressed
the bell. She opened the door stealthily and peered out, then
recognizing me, she flung it wide.
"I have brought you a book," I said as I entered; and, not knowing what
else to do, I went through the ridiculous operation of removing the
geography from beneath my waistcoat.
"What a big book," exclaimed Bertha in amazement. However, she did not
open the geography but laid it on the table, and stood staring at me
with her child-like blue eyes.
"Do you know," she said, "that you are the first visitor I ever had in
my apartment? May I show you about?"
As I followed her through the cosy rooms, I chafed to see the dainty
luxury in which she was permitted to live while being left to starve.
The place was as well adapted to love-making as any other product
of German science is adapted to its end. The walls were adorned
with sensual prints; but happily I recalled that Bertha, having
no education in the matter, was immune to the insult.
Anticipating my coming she had ordered dinner, and this was presently
delivered by a deaf-and-dumb mechanical servant, and we set it forth on
the dainty dining table. Since the world was young, I mused, woman and
man had eaten a first meal together with all the world shut out, and so
we dined amid shy love and laughter in a tiny apartment in the heart of
a city where millions of men never saw the face of woman--and where
millions of babies were born out of love by the cold degree of science.
And this same science, bartering with licentious iniquity, had provided
this refuge and permitted us to bar the door, and so we accepted our
refuge and sanctified it with the purity that was within our own
hearts--such at least was my feeling at the time.
And so we dined and cleared away, and talked joyfully of nothing. As the
evening wore on Bertha, beside me upon the divan, snuggled contentedly
against my shoulder. The nearness and warmth of her, and the innocence
of her eyes thrilled yet maddened me.
With fast beating heart, I realized that I as well as Bertha was in the
grip of circumstances against which rebellion was as futile as were
thoughts of escape. There was no one to aid and no one to forbid or
criticize. Whatever I might do to save her from the fate ordained for
her would of necessity be worked out between us, unaided and unhampered
by the ethics of civilization as I had known it in a freer, saner world.
In offering Bertha money and coming to her apartment I had thrust myself
between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now
to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I
reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation
would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of
love in the world I had known. Until she knew of that world and its
ideals, how could I expect her to understand my motives? How else could
I strengthen her in the battle against our own impulses?
And yet, did I dare to confess to her that I was not a German? Would not
deep-seated ideals of patriotism drilled into the mind of a child place
me in danger of betrayal at her hands? Such a move might place my own
life in jeopardy and also destroy my opportunity of being of service to
the world, could I contrive the means of escape from Berlin with the
knowledge I had gained. Small though the possibilities of such escape
might be, it was too great a hope for me to risk for sentimental
reasons. And could she be expected to believe so strange a tale?
And so the temptation to confess that I was not Karl Armstadt passed,
and with its passing, I recalled the geography that I had gone to so
much trouble to secure, and which still lay unopened upon the table.
Here at least was something to get us away from the tumultuous
consciousness of ourselves and I reached for the volume and spread it
open upon my knees.
"What a funny book!" exclaimed Bertha, as she gazed at the round maps of
the two hemispheres. "Of what is that a picture?"
"The world," I answered.
She stared at me blankly. "The Royal World?" she asked.
"No, no," I replied. "The world outside the walls of Berlin."
"The world in the sun," exclaimed Bertha, "on the roof where they fight
the airplanes? A roof-guard officer" she paused and bit her lip--
"The world of the inferior races," I suggested, trying to find some
common footing with her pitifully scant knowledge.
"The world underground," she said, "where the soldiers fight in the
mines?"
Baffled in my efforts to define this world to her, I began turning the
pages of the geography, while Bertha looked at the pictures in
child-like wonder, and I tried as best I could to find simple
explanations.
Between the lines of my teaching, I scanned, as it were, the true state
of German ignorance. Despite the evident intended authoritativeness of
the book--for it was marked "Permitted to military staff officers"--I
found it amusingly full of erroneous conceptions of the true state of
affairs in the outer world.
This teaching of a child-like mind the rudiments of knowledge was an
amusing recreation, and so an hour passed pleasantly. Yet I realized
that this was an occupation of which I would soon tire, for it was not
the amusement of teaching a child that I craved, but the companionship
of a woman of intelligence.
As we turned the last page I arose to take my departure. "If I leave the
book with you," I said, "will you read it all, very carefully? And then
when I come again I will explain those things you can not understand."
"But it is so big, I couldn't read it in a day," replied Bertha, as she
looked at me appealingly.
I steeled myself against that appeal. I wanted very much to get my mind
back on my chemistry, and I wanted also to give her time to read and
ponder over the wonders of the great unknown world. Moreover, I no
longer felt so grievously concerned, for the calamity which had
overshadowed her had been for the while removed. And I had, too, my own
struggle to cherish her innocence, and that without the usual help
extended by conventional society. So I made brave resolutions and
explained the urgency of my work and insisted that I could not see her
for five days.
Hungrily she pleaded for a quicker return; and I stubbornly resisted the
temptation. "No," I insisted, "not tomorrow, nor the next day, but I
will come back in three days at the same hour that I came tonight."
Then taking her in my arms, I kissed her in feverish haste and tore
myself from the enthralling lure of her presence.
~5~
When I reached the café the following evening to keep my appointment
with Zimmern, the waiter directed me to one of the small enclosed
booths. As I entered, closing the door after me, I found myself
confronting a young woman.
"Are you Col. Armstadt?" she asked with a clear, vibrant voice. She
smiled cordially as she gave me her hand. "I am Marguerite. Dr. Zimmern
has gone to bring Col. Hellar, and he asked me to entertain you until
his return."
The friendly candour of this greeting swept away the grey walls of
Berlin, and I seemed again face to face with a woman of my own people.
She was a young woman of distinctive personality. Her features, though
delicately moulded, bespoke intelligence and strength of character that
I had not hitherto seen in the women of Berlin. Framing her face was a
luxuriant mass of wavy brown hair, which fell loosely about her
shoulders. Her slender figure was draped in a cape of deep blue
cellulose velvet.
"Dr. Zimmern tells me," I said as I seated myself across the table from
her, "that you are a dear friend of his."
A swift light gleamed in her deep brown eyes. "A very dear friend," she
said feelingly, and then a shadow flitted across her face as she added,
"Without him life for me would be unbearable here."
"And how long, if I may ask, have you been here?"
"About four years. Four years and six days, to be exact. I can keep
count you know," and she smiled whimsically, "for I came on the day of
my birth, the day I was sixteen."
"That is the same for all, is it not?"
"No one can come here before she is sixteen," replied Marguerite, "and
all must come before they are eighteen."
"But why did you come at the first opportunity?" I asked, as I mentally
compared her confession with that of Bertha who had so courageously
postponed as long as she could the day of surrender to this life of
shamefully commercialized love.
"And why should I not come?" returned Marguerite. "I had a chance to
come, and I accepted it. Do you think life in the school for girls of
forbidden birth is an enjoyable one?"
I wanted to press home the point of my argument, to proclaim my pride in
Bertha's more heroic struggle with the system, for this girl with whom I
now conversed was obviously a woman of superior intelligence, and it
angered me to know that she had so easily surrendered to the life for
which German society had ordained her. But I restrained my speech, for I
realized that in criticizing her way of life I would be criticizing her
obvious relation to Zimmern, and like all men I found myself inclined to
be indulgent with the personal life of a man who was my friend.
Moreover, I perceived the presumptuousness of assuming a superior air
towards an established and accepted institution. Yet, strive as I might
to be tolerant, I felt a growing antagonism towards this attractive and
cultured girl who had surrendered without a struggle to a life that to
me was a career of shame--and who seemed quite content with her
surrender.
"Do you like it here?" I asked, knowing that my question was stupid, but
anxious to avoid a painful gap in what was becoming, for me, a difficult
conversation.
Marguerite looked at me with a queer penetrating gaze. "Do I like it
here?" she repeated. "Why should you ask, and how can I answer? Can I
like it or not like it, when there was no choice for me? Can I push out
the walls of Berlin?"--and she thrust mockingly into the air with a
delicately chiselled hand--"It is a prison. All life is a prison."
"Yes," I said, "it is a prison, but life on this level is more joyful
than on many others."
Her lip curled in delicate scorn. "For you men--of course--and I suppose
it is for these women too--perhaps that is why I hate it so, because
they do enjoy it, they do accept it. They sell their love for food and
raiment, and not one in all these millions seems to mind it."
"In that," I remarked, "perhaps you are mistaken. I have not come here
often as most men do, but I have found one other who, like you, rebels
at the system--who in fact, was starving because she would not sell
her love."
Marguerite flashed on me a look of pitying suspicion as she asked: "Have
you gone to the Place of Records to look up this rebel against the
sale of love?"
A fire of resentment blazed up in me at this question. I did not know
just what she meant by the Place of Records, but I felt that this woman
who spoke cynically of rebellion against the sale of love, and yet who
had obviously sold her love to an old man, was in no position to
discredit a weaker woman's nobler fight.
"What right," I asked coldly, "have you to criticize another whom you do
not know?"
"I am sorry," replied Marguerite, "if I seem to quarrel with you when I
was left here to entertain you, but I could not help it--it angers me to
have you men be so fond of being deceived, such easy prey to this
threadbare story of the girl who claims she never came here until forced
to do so. But men love to believe it. The girls learn to use the story
because it pays."
A surge of conflicting emotion swept through me as I recalled the
child-like innocence of Bertha and compared it with the critical
scepticism of this superior woman. "It only goes to show," I thought,
"what such a system can do to destroy a woman's faith in the very
existence of innocence and virtue."
Marguerite did not speak; her silence seemed to say: "You do not
understand, nor can I explain--I am simply here and so are you, and we
have our secrets which cannot be committed to words."
With idle fingers she drummed lightly on the table. I watched those
slender fingers and the rhythmic play of the delicate muscles of the
bare white arm that protruded from the rich folds of the blue velvet
cape. Then my gaze lifted to her face. Her downcast eyes were shielded
by long curving lashes; high arched silken brows showed dark against a
skin as fresh and free from chemist's pigment as the petal of a rose. In
exultant rapture my heart within me cried that here was something fine
of fibre, a fineness which ran true to the depths of her soul.
In my discovery of Bertha's innocence and in my faith in her purity and
courage I had hoped to find relief from the spiritual loneliness that
had grown upon me during my sojourn in this materialistic city. But that
faith was shaken, as the impression Bertha had made upon my
over-sensitized emotions, now dimmed by a brighter light, flickered pale
on the screen of memory. The mere curiosity and pity I had felt for a
chance victim singled out among thousands by the legend of innocence on
a pretty face could not stand against the force that now drew me to this
woman who seemed to be not of a slavish race--even as Dr. Zimmern seemed
a man apart from the soulless product of the science he directed. But as
I acknowledged this new magnet tugging at the needle of my floundering
heart, I also realized that my friendship for the lovable and courageous
Zimmern reared an unassailable barrier to shut me into outer darkness.
The thought proved the harbinger of the reality, for Dr. Zimmerman
himself now entered. He was accompanied by Col. Hellar of the
Information Staff, a man of about Zimmern's age. Col. Hellar bore
himself with a gracious dignity; his face was sad, yet there gleamed
from his eye a kindly humor.
Marguerite, after exchanging a few pleasantries with Col. Hellar and
myself, tenderly kissed the old doctor on the forehead, and slipped out.
"You shall see much of her," said Zimmern, "she is the heart and fire of
our little group, the force that holds us together. But tonight I asked
her not to remain"--the old doctor's eyes twinkled with merriment,--"for
a young man cannot get acquainted with a beautiful woman and with ideas
at the same time."
~6~
"And now," said Zimmern, after we had finished our dinner, "I want Col.
Hellar to tell you more of the workings of the Information Service."
"It is a very complex system," began Hellar. "It is old. Its history
goes back to the First World War, when the military censorship began by
suppressing information thought to be dangerous and circulating
fictitious reports for patriotic purposes. Now all is much more
elaborately organized; we provide that every child be taught only the
things that it is decided he needs to know, and nothing more. Have you
seen the bulletins and picture screens in the quarters for the workers?"
"Yes," I replied, "but the lines were all in old German type."
"And that," said Hellar, "is all that the workers and soldiers can read.
The modern type could be taught them in a few days, but we see to it
that they have no opportunity to learn it. As it is now, should they
find or steal a forbidden book, they cannot read it."
"But is it not true," I asked, "that at one time the German workers were
most thoroughly educated?"
"It is true," said Hellar, "and because of that universal education
Germany was defeated in the First World War. The English contaminated
the soldiers by flooding the trenches with democratic literature dropped
from airplanes. Then came the Bolshevist regime in Russia with its
passion for revolutionary propaganda. The working men and soldiers read
this disloyal literature and they forced the abdication of William the
Great. It was because of this that his great grandson, when the House of
Hohenzollern was restored to the throne, decided to curtail universal
education.
"But while William III curtailed general education he increased the
specialized education and established the Information Staff to supervise
the dissemination of all knowledge."
"It is an atrocious system," broke in Zimmern, "but if we had not
abolished the family, curtailed knowledge and bred soldiers and
workers from special non-intellectual strains this sunless world of
ours could not have endured."
"Quite so," said Hellar, "whether we approve of it or not certainly
there was no other way to accomplish the end sought. By no other plan
could German isolation have been maintained."
"But why was isolation deemed desirable?" I enquired.
"Because," said Zimmern, "it was that or extermination. Even now we who
wish to put an end to this isolation, we few who want to see the world
as our ancestors saw it, know that the price may be annihilation."
"So," repeated Hellar, "so annihilation for Germany, but better so--and
yet I go on as Director of Information; Dr. Zimmern goes on as Chief
Eugenist; and you go on seeking to increase the food supply, and so we
all go on as part of the diabolic system, because as individuals we
cannot destroy it, but must go on or be destroyed by it. We have riches
here and privileges. We keep the labourers subdued below us, Royalty
enthroned above us, and the World State at bay about us, all by this
science and system which only we few intellectuals understand and which
we keep going because we can not stop it without being destroyed by
the effort."
"But we shall stop it," declared Zimmern, "we must stop it--with
Armstadt's help we can stop it. You and I, Hellar, are mere cogs; if we
break others can take our places, but Armstadt has power. What he knows
no one else knows. He has power. We have only weakness because others
can take our place. And because he has power let us help him find
a way."
"It seems to me," I said, "that the way must be by education. More men
must think as we do."
"But they can not think," replied Hellar, "they have nothing to
think with."
"But the books," I said, "there is power in knowledge."
"But," said Hellar, "the labourer can not read the forbidden book and
the intellectual will not, for if he did he would be afraid to talk
about it, and what a man can not talk about he rarely cares to read. The
love or hatred of knowledge is a matter of training. It was only last
week that I was visiting a boy's school in order to study the effect of
a new reader of which complaint had been made that it failed
sufficiently to exalt the virtue of obedience. I was talking with the
teacher while the boys assembled in the morning. We heard a great
commotion and a mob of boys came in dragging one of their companions who
had a bruised face and torn clothing. "Master, he had a forbidden book,"
they shouted, and the foremost held out the tattered volume as if it
were loathsome poison. It proved to be a text on cellulose spinning.
Where the culprit had found it we could not discover but he was sent to
the school prison and the other boys were given favours for
apprehending him."
"But how is it," I asked, "that books are not written by free-minded
authors and secretly printed and circulated?"
At this question my companions smiled. "You chemists forget," said
Hellar, "that it takes printing presses to make books. There is no press
in all Berlin except in the shops of the Information Staff. Every paper,
every book, and every picture originates and is printed there. Every
news and book distributor must get his stock from us and knows that he
must have only in his possession that which bears the imprint for his
level. That is why we have no public libraries and no trade in
second-hand books.
"In early life I favoured this system, but in time the foolishness of
the thing came to perplex, then to annoy, and finally to disgust me. But
I wanted the money and honour that promotion brought and so I have won
to my position and power; with my right hand I uphold the system and
with my left hand I seek to pull out the props on which it rests. For
twenty years now I have nursed the secret traffic in books and risked my
life many times thereby, yet my successes have been few and scattered.
Every time the auditors check my stock and accounts I tremble in fear,
for embezzling books is more dangerous than embezzling credit at
the bank."
"But who," I asked, "write the books?"
"For the technical books it is not hard to find authors," explained
Hellar, "for any man well schooled in his work can write of it. But the
task of getting the more general books written is not so easy. For then
it is not so much a question of the author knowing the things of which
he writes but of knowing what the various groups are to be permitted
to know.
"That writing is done exclusively by especially trained workers of the
Information Service. I myself began as such a writer and studied long
under the older masters. The school of scientific lying, I called it,
but strange to say I used to enjoy such work and did it remarkably well.
As recognition of my ability I was commissioned to write the book 'God's
Anointed.' Through His Majesty's approval of my work I now owe my
position on the Staff.
"His Majesty," continued Hellar, "was only twenty-six years of age when
he came to the throne, but he decided at once that a new religious book
should be written in which he would be proclaimed as 'God's Anointed
ruler of the World.'
"I had never before spoken with the high members of the Royal House, and
I was trembling with eagerness and fear as I was ushered into His
Majesty's presence. The Emperor sat at his great black table; before him
was an old book. He turned to me and said, 'Have you ever heard of the
Christian Bible?'
"My Chief had informed me that the new book was to be based on the old
Bible that the Christians had received from the Hebrews. So I said,
'Yes, Your Majesty, I am familiar with many of its words.'
"He looked at me with a gloating suspicion. 'Ah, ha,' he said, 'then
there is something amiss in the Information Service--you are in the
third rank of your service and the Bible is permitted only to the
first rank.'
"I saw that my statement unless modified would result in an embarrassing
investigation. 'I have never read the Christian Bible,' I said, 'but my
mother must have read it for when as a child I visited her she quoted to
me long passages from the Bible.'
"His Majesty smiled in a pleased fashion. 'That is it,' he said, 'women
are essentially religious by nature, because they are trusting and
obedient. It was a mistake to attempt to stamp out religion. It is the
doctrine of obedience. Therefore I shall revive religion, but it shall
be a religion of obedience to the House of Hohenzollern. The God of the
Hebrews declared them to be his chosen people. But they proved a servile
and mercenary race. They traded their swords for shekels and became a
byword and a hissing among the nations--and they were scattered to the
four corners of the earth. I shall revive that God. And this time he
shall chose more wisely, for the Germans shall be his people. The idea
is not mine. William the Great had that idea, but the revolution swept
it away. It shall be revived. We shall have a new Bible, based upon the
old one, a third dispensation, to replace the work of Moses and Jesus.
And I too shall be a lawgiver--I shall speak the word of God.'"
Hellar paused; a smile crept over his face. Then he laughed softly and
to himself--but Dr. Zimmern only shook his head sadly.
"Yes, I wrote the book," continued Hellar. "It required four years, for
His Majesty was very critical, and did much revising. I had a long
argument with him over the question of retaining Hell. I was bitterly
opposed to it and represented to His Majesty that no religion had ever
thrived on fear of punishment without a corresponding hope of reward.
'If you are to have no Heaven,' I insisted, 'then you must have
no Hell.'
"'But we do not need Heaven,' argued His Majesty, 'Heaven is
superfluous. It is an insult to my reign. Is it not enough that a man is
a German, and may serve the House of Hohenzollern?'
"'Then why,' I asked, 'do you need a Hell?' I should have been shot for
that but His Majesty did not see the implication. He replied coolly:
"'We must have a Hell because there is one way that my subjects can
escape me. It is a sin of our race that the Eugenics Office should have
bred out--but they have failed. It is an inborn sin for it is chiefly
committed by our children before they come to comprehend the glory of
being German. How else, if you do not have a Hell in your religion, can
you check suicide?'
"Of course there was logic in his contention and so I gave in and made
the Children's Hell. It is a gruesome doctrine, that a child who kills
himself does not really die. It is the one thing in the whole book that
makes me feel most intellectually unclean for writing it. But I wrote it
and when the book was finished and His Majesty had signed the
manuscript, for the first time in over a century we printed a bible on a
German press. The press where the first run was made we named 'Old
Gutenberg.'"
"Gutenberg invented the printing press," explained Zimmern, fearing I
might not comprehend.
"Yes," said Hellar with a curling lip, "and Gutenberg was a German, and
so am I. He printed a Bible which he believed, and I wrote one which I
do not believe."
"But I am glad," concluded Hellar as he arose, "that I do not believe
Gutenberg's Bible either, for I should very much dislike to think of
meeting him in Paradise."
~7~
After taking leave of my companions I walked on alone, oblivious to the
gay throng, for I had many things on which to ponder. In these two men I
felt that I had found heroic figures. Their fund of knowledge, which
they prized so highly, seemed to me pitifully circumscribed and limited,
their revolutionary plans hopelessly vague and futile. But the
intellectual stature of a man is measured in terms of the average of his
race, and, thus viewed, Zimmern and Hellar were intellectual giants of
heroic proportions.
As I walked through a street of shops. I paused before the display
window of a bookstore of the level. Most of these books I had previously
discovered were lurid-titled tales of licentious love. But among them I
now saw a volume bearing the title "God's Anointed," and recalled that I
had seen it before and assumed it to be but another like its fellows.
Entering the store I secured a copy and, impatient to inspect my
purchase, I bent my steps to my favourite retreat in the nearby Hall of
Flowers. In a secluded niche near the misty fountain I began a hasty
perusal of this imperially inspired word of God who had anointed the
Hohenzollerns masters of the earth. Hellar's description had prepared me
for a preposterous and absurd work, but I had not anticipated anything
quite so audacious could be presented to a race of civilized men, much
less that they could have accepted it in good faith as the Germans
evidently did.
"God's Anointed," as Hellar had scoffingly inferred, not only proclaimed
the Germans as the chosen race, but also proclaimed an actual divinity
of the blood of the House of Hohenzollern. That William II did have some
such notions in his egomania I believe is recorded in authentic history.
But the way Eitel I had adapted that faith to the rather depressing
facts of the failure of world conquest would have been extremely comical
to me, had I not seen ample evidence of the colossal effect of such a
faith working in the credulous child-mind of a people so utterly devoid
of any saving sense of humour.
Not unfamiliar with the history of the temporal reign of the Popes of
the middle ages, I could readily comprehend the practical efficiency of
such a mixture of religious faith with the affairs of earth. For the God
of the German theology exacted no spiritual worship of his people, but
only a very temporal service to the deity's earthly incarnation in the
form of the House of Hohenzollern.
The greatest virtue, according to this mundane theology, was obedience,
and this doctrine was closely interwoven with the caste system of German
society. The virtue of obedience required the German to renounce
discontent with his station, and to accept not only the material status
into which he was born, with science aforethought, but the intellectual
limits and horizons of that status. The old Christian doctrine of heresy
was broadened to encompass the entire mental life. To think forbidden
thoughts, to search after forbidden knowledge, that was at once treason
against the Royal House and rebellion against the divine plan.
German theology, confounding divine and human laws, permitted no dual
overlapping spheres of mundane and celestial rule as had all previous
religious and, social orders since Christ had commanded his disciples to
"Render unto Caesar--" There could be no conscientious objection to
German law on religious grounds; no problem of church and state, for the
church was the state.
In this book that masqueraded as the word of God, I looked in vain for
some revelation of future life. But it was essentially a one-world
theology; the most immortal thing was the Royal House for which the
worker was asked to slave, the soldier to die that Germany might be
ruled by the Hohenzollerns and that the Hohenzollerns might sometime
rule the world.
As the freedom of conscience and the institution of marriage had been
discarded so this German faith had scrapped the immortality of the soul,
save for the single incongruous doctrine that a child taking his own
life does not die but lives on in ceaseless torment in a ghoulish
Children's Hell.
As I closed the cursed volume my mind called up a picture of Teutonic
hordes pouring from the forests of the North and blotting out what
Greece and Rome had builded. From thence my roving fancy tripped over
the centuries and lived again with men who cannot die. I stood with
Luther at the Diet of Worms. With Kant I sounded the deeps of
philosophy. I sailed with Humboldt athwart uncharted seas. I fought with
Goethe for the redemption of a soul sold to the Devil. And with Schubert
and Heine I sang:
_Du bist wie eine Blume,
So hold und schoen und rein,_
* * * * *
_Betend dass Gott dich erhalte,
So rein und schoen und hold._
But what a cankerous end was here. This people which the world had once
loved and honoured was now bred a beast of burden, a domesticated race,
saddled and trained to bear upon its back the House of Hohenzollern as
the ass bore Balaam. But the German ass wore the blinders that science
had made--and saw no angel.
~8~
As I sat musing thus and gazing into the spray of the fountain I
glimpsed a grey clad figure, standing in the shadows of a viney bower.
Although I could not distinguish her face through the leafy tracery I
knew that it was Bertha, and my heart thrilled to think that she had
returned to the site of our meeting. Thoroughly ashamed of the faithless
doubts that I had so recently entertained of her innocence and
sincerity, I arose and hastened toward her. But in making the detour
about the pool I lost sight of the grey figure, for she was standing
well back in the arbour. As I approached the place where I had seen her
I came upon two lovers standing with arms entwined in the path at the
pool's edge. Not wishing to disturb them, I turned back through one of
the arbours and approached by another path. As I slipped noiselessly
along in my felt-soled shoes I heard Bertha's voice, and quite near,
through the leafy tracery, I glimpsed the grey of her gown.
"Why with your beauty," came the answering voice of a man, "did you not
find a lover from the Royal Level?"
"Because," Bertha's voice replied, "I would not accept them. I could not
love them. I could not give myself without love."
"But surely," insisted the man, "you have found a lover here?"
"But I have not," protested the innocent voice, "because I have sought
none."
"Now long have you been here?" bluntly asked the man.
"Thirty days," replied the girl.
"Then you must have found a lover, your début fund would all be gone."
"But," cried Bertha, in a tearful voice, "I only eat one meal a day--do
you not see how thin I am?"
"Now that's clever," rejoined the man, "come, I'll accept it for what it
is worth, and look you up afterwards," and he laughingly led her away,
leaving me undiscovered in the neighbouring arbour to pass judgment on
my own simplicity.
As I walked toward the elevator, I was painfully conscious of two ideas.
One was that Marguerite had been quite correct with her information
about the free women who found it profitable to play the rôle of
maidenly innocence. The other was that Dr. Zimmern's precious geography
was in the hands of the artful, child-eyed hypocrite who had so cleverly
beguiled me with her rôle of heroic virtue. Clearly, I was trapped, and
to judge better with what I had to deal I decided to go at once to the
Place of Records, of which I had twice heard.
The Place of Records proved to be a public directory of the financial
status of the free women. Since the physical plagues that are propagated
by promiscuous love had been completely exterminated, and since there
were no moral standards to preserve, there was no need of other
restrictions on the lives of the women than an economic one.
The rules of the level were prominently posted. As all consequential
money exchanges were made through bank checks, the keeping of the
records was an easy matter. These rules I found forbade any woman to
cash checks in excess of one thousand marks a month, or in excess of two
hundred marks from any one man. That was simple enough, and I smiled as
I recalled that I had gone the legal limit in my first adventure.
Following the example of other men, I stepped to the window and gave the
name: "Bertha 34 R 6." A clerk brought me a book opened to the page of
her record. At the top of the page was entered this statement, "Bred for
an actress but rejected for both professional work and maternity because
found devoid of sympathetic emotions." I laughed as I read this, but
when on the next line I saw from the date of her entrance to the level
that Bertha's thirty days was in reality nearly three years, my mirth
turned to anger. I looked down the list of entries and found that for
some time she had been cashing each month the maximum figure of a
thousand marks. Evidently her little scheme of pensive posing in the
Hall of Flowers was working nicely. In the current month, hardly half
gone, she already had to her credit seven hundred marks; and last on the
list was my own contribution, freshly entered.
"She has three hundred marks yet," commented the clerk.
"Yes, I see,"--and I turned to go. But I paused and stepped again to the
window. "There is another girl I would like to look up," I said, "but I
have only her name and no number."
"Do you know the date of her arrival?" asked the clerk.
"Yes, she has been here four years and six days. The name is
Marguerite."
The clerk walked over to a card file and after some searching brought
back a slip with half a dozen numbers. "Try these," he said, and he
brought me the volumes. The second record I inspected read: "Marguerite,
78 K 4, Love-child." On the page below was a single entry for each
month of two hundred marks and every entry from the first was in the
name of Ludwig Zimmern.
~9~
I kept my appointment with Bertha, but found it difficult to hide my
anger as she greeted me. Wishing to get the interview over, I asked
abruptly, "Have you read the book I left?"
"Not all of it," she replied, "I found it rather dull."
"Then perhaps I had better take it with me."
"But I think I shall keep it awhile," she demurred.
"No," I insisted, as I looked about and failed to see the geography, "I
wish you would get it for me. I want to take it back, in fact it was a
borrowed book."
"Most likely," she smiled archly, "but since you are not a staff
officer, and had no right to have that book, you might as well know that
you will get it when I please to give it to you."
Seeing that she was thoroughly aware of my predicament, I grew
frightened and my anger slipped from its moorings. "See here," I cried,
"your little story of innocence and virtue is very clever, but I've
looked you up and--"
"And what--," she asked, while through her child-like mask the subtle
trickery of her nature mocked me with a look of triumph--"and what do
you propose to do about it?"
I realized the futility of my rage. "I shall do nothing. I ask only that
you return the book."
"But books are so valuable," taunted Bertha.
Dejectedly I sank to the couch. She came over and sat on a cushion at my
feet. "Really Karl," she purred, "you should not be angry. If I insist
on keeping your book it is merely to be sure that you will not forget
me. I rather like you; you are so queer and talk such odd things. Did
you learn your strange ways of making love from the book about the
inferior races in the world outside the walls? I really tried to read
some of it, but I could not understand half the words."
I rose and strode about the room. "Will you get me the book?" I
demanded.
"And lose you?"
"Well, what of it? You can get plenty more fools like me."
"Yes, but I would have to stand and stare into that fountain for hours
at a time. It is very tiresome."
"Just what do you want?" I asked, trying to speak calmly.
"Why you," she said, placing her slender white hands upon my arm, and
holding up an inviting face.
But anger at my own gullibility had killed her power to draw me, and I
shook her off. "I want that book," I said coldly, "what are your terms?"
And I drew my check book from my pocket.
"How many blanks have you there?" she asked with a greedy light in her
eyes--"but never mind to count them. Make them all out to me at two
hundred marks, and date each one a month ahead."
Realizing that any further exhibition of fear or anger would put me more
within her power, I sat down and began to write the checks. The fund I
was making over to her was quite useless to me but when I had made out
twenty checks I stopped. "Now," I said, "this is enough. You take these
or nothing." Tearing out the written checks I held them toward her.
As she reached out her hand I drew them back--"Go get the book," I
demanded.
"But you are unfair," said Bertha, "you are the stronger. You can take
the book from me. I cannot take the checks from you."
"That is so," I admitted, and handed the checks to her. She looked at
them carefully and slipped them into her bosom, and then, reaching under
the pile of silken pillows, she pulled forth the geography.
I seized it and turned toward the door, but she caught my arm. "Don't,"
she pleaded, "don't go. Don't be angry with me. Why should you dislike
me? I've only played my part as you men make it for us--but I do not
want your money for nothing. You liked me when you thought me innocent.
Why hate me when you find that I am clever?"
Again those slender arms stole around my neck, and the entrancing face
was raised to mine. But the vision of a finer, nobler face rose before
me, and I pushed away the clinging arms. "I'm sorry," I said, "I am
going now--going back to my work and forget you. It is not your fault.
You are only what Germany has made you--but," I added with a smile, "if
you must go to the Hall of Flowers, please do not wear that grey gown."
She stood very still as I edged toward the door, and the look of baffled
child-like innocence crept back into her eyes, a real innocence this
time of things she did not know, and could not understand.