IV

1

Mrs. Prentiss and Mrs. Tolby placed a large sum of money to Gisela's

account in a Swiss bank, and this she transferred to the Bayerischer

Vereinsbank in Munich. As she had collected large sums for war relief,

and was on the board of nine war charities, no suspicion was excited.

She had given to these organizations the greater part of the small

fortune she had made from her play and other writings, not absorbed by

taxation and bond subscriptions, but there were many wealthy women,

hungry, sad, apprehensive that peace would find them paupers, upon whom

she could depend to give liberally.

There was to be no printed matter nor correspondence, but an army of

lieutenants, who, starting from certain centers, would augment their

numbers from Gisela's long list of correspondents, until it would be

possible to sound personally all the women of a district whom it was

thought wise to trust.

Gisela returned to Germany as soon as she had worked out the details of

her campaign and received the enthusiastic donation of her American

friends. Mimi Brandt, Marie von Erkel (who looked like an ecstatic fury

of the French Revolution when she realized that at last she had a rôle

to play in life that would not only vent her consuming energies and

ambition, but enable her to assist in the downfall of a race of men whom

she hated, both for their tyranny and indifference to brains without

beauty, with all the diverted passion of her nature), Aimée von Erkel,

who was persistent, incisive, and so alarmed at the prospect of all the

men in the world being killed, that she would have hastened peace on any

terms; Princess Starnwörth, a Socialist and idealist, a brilliant and

persuasive speaker, to whom war was the ultimate horror; Johanna Stück,

whose revolt had been deep and bitter long before the war and who was

one of Gisela's fervent disciples and aides--these and six others were

sent on one pretense or another into the various States of Germany--the

kingdoms, principalities, grand duchies, duchies, and "free towns"--to

bear Gisela's personal message and select the proper leaders.

Gisela went at once to Berlin and had a long interview with Mariette,

who was ripe for revolution: her lover had been killed and her husband

had not. Mariette was not of the type that sorrow and loss ennoble. She

was still a handsome woman, particularly in her uniform, but the pink

and white cheeks that once had covered her harsh bones were sunken and

sallow. Her mouth was like a narrow bar of iron. Her eyes were half

closed as if to hide the cold and deadly flame that never flickered;

even her nostrils were rigid. All her hard and sensual nature, devoid of

tenderness, but dissolved with sentimentality while the man who had

conquered her had lived, she had centered on her lover, and with his

death she was a tool to Gisela's hand to wreak vengeance upon the powers

that had sent him out of the world.

"Leave it to me," she said grimly. "There are not only the women in the

towns where I have been stationed these many years, but, here in Berlin,

the wives of men whose money is financing this war: men who permitted

the war because they hoped for infinite riches but are now terrified

that they will not have a pfennig if the war goes on much longer. They

dare not rebel, for they would be shot, and their fortunes be

confiscated: their banks, industries, shops, run by cowed minor

officials. But the women--I can count on many of them. Even if their

husbands suspected, they would wink at it, willing that the women should

take the risk and they reap the benefit. God! How they hate the

war--every woman I know. Leave this part of Germany to me, and be

prepared for Schrecklichkeit. There will be no mercy, no politics, in

this revolution--merely one end in view. The Russians are babies but we

are not. 'Huns' shall cease to be a term of opprobrium, for female Huns

will end the war."

Countess Niebuhr, whose love of intrigue had not diminished with the

years, and who had known more of the Pan-Germanic mind than her naïve

husband had guessed--who, moreover, had had a long and enlightening

interview with one of her sons but a month before--undertook to win over

many women of her own class who had suffered death and disillusion.

Elsa's transfer to a hospital in Saxony was skilfully managed; and Lili

went on a concert tour for the Red Cross. It was not worth while to

campaign in Austria; the moment Germany was helpless she would collapse

automatically.

In the course of a month the secret propaganda was moving with the

invisible, sinister, irresistible suction of an undertow. The immense

army of women who did Gisela's work proved themselves true Germans,

logical products of generations of discipline, concentration,

secretiveness, and a thoroughness, even in trifling details, as

implacable as it was automatic. They made few mistakes. When they

discovered--and their spy service was also Teutonic--that they had

confided in some girl or woman whose inherent weakness or venality

threatened betrayal, she disappeared immediately and for ever.

Gisela, obtaining a commission to inspect the leading hospitals "back of

the front," visited each of the states in turn and addressed thousands

of women in groups of two or three hundred, gathered under the eyes of

the police in the name of one of the many war charities in which all

women were engaged. The lieutenants prepared these women, and Gisela

inspired, crystallized, cohered. The timid she shamed with the example

of the Russian women (and German women despise all other women); the

desperate she had little difficulty in convincing that there was but one

egress from their insupportable agony. Victory under her leadership if

they stood firm, was inevitable.

She had the gift of a fiery torrent of speech, a clear steady eye, even

when it flashed and blazed, and a warm and irresistible magnetism that

convinced the individual as well as the mass that she had but one

object, the liberation of the miserable women of her country, their

deliverance from further sorrow; and that she was wholly lacking in

personal ambition.

These women had known the gnawing sensation of unappeased appetite for

two years. They had seen old men and women, sometimes their own, fall in

the streets dead or dying, because they no longer had the reserves of

men and women in their youth or prime. They had seen men blow out their

brains in front of municipal buildings, cursing the Emperor, the

military autocracy, and even the Government, always at odds with the war

lords. They knew of suicides and child murder by despairing mothers that

they hardly whispered to one another. And all the children were

emaciated and wailed continually for food, sleeping little, playing

less, stunted in their growth and threatened with disease; if the war

went on another year they would join the little Polish victims on their

shadowy playground.... They feared for their daughters at home even as

they feared for their young sons in the trenches.... Barring a

revolution, the war might last for years ... _years_.... "Peace

Proposals" irritated what little humor they had left to ghastly obscene

joking.... "Victories" left them as cold as the mid-winter bed.... The

Hohenzollerns, the other kings and princes, the cast-iron junkers, would

cling fast to their own until the Enemy Allies' day of judgment, for

surrender meant their quicker extermination; now, at least, they were

still in the saddle, able to cheer their haunted egos with the Wine of

Lies.

It was the Hohenzollerns and defeat, or a Republic and easy terms from

the victors who would welcome a sound de-brutalized Germany, jealous of

her lost honor, into the family of nations. The arguments were brief and

simple. Gisela would have won over women far less despairing than

these. And the fact that she had spent four years in America studying

its institutions and resources, convinced the most susceptible to

official lies that the United States could pour money, men, ammunition,

munitions and food into Europe for countless years; and that the

agitations of her pacifists, syndicalists, German agents, and

bribe-takers were but picturesque ripples on the surface of a nation

covering over three million five hundred thousand square miles and

embracing more than one hundred million people.

And with all the insidious subtlety of her supple mind she changed the

prevailing hatred of President Wilson into a profound and pathetic

confidence. She had long since made them envy and admire the women of

America, and if these fortunate beings had enthusiastically reëlected

him and were now giving his policy as persistent and effective

assistance as the men, it was for the desperate women of Germany to

believe in his promises of deliverance. Above all he had now the

approval of their own Gisela Döring.

It was the mothers of Germany, balked, potential, or veritable, who were

ready to rise and rescue what was left of the youth of Germany. If

victory for the German arms were hopeless they would risk their own

lives to force a peace that would leave them with the rags of their old

honor and prosperity, that would give them revenge upon the men who had,

for their own criminal ambitions--ambitions which belonged to the Middle

Ages--doomed them to lifelong sorrow; and that would save the lives of

their children--save husbands also for a few of these stern and weary

girls. Even in the Rhine Valley, where the greater number of the

munition and ammunition factories were grouped, there were incessant

meetings, among the night and day shifts, of the thousands of women

employed there, and Gisela herself addressed each of them.

V

1

Gisela, who had been staring across the Königinstrasse into the heavy

branches that hung over the wall of the park, her mental vision too

actively raking the past to spare a beam for the familiar picture,

suddenly switched her searchlight away from those milestones in her

historic progress and concentrated it upon a suspicious shadow opposite.

Surely it had moved, and there was not a breath of wind. The night was

mild and still.

She did not move a muscle but narrowed her gaze until it detached the

figure of a man from the dark background of wall and trees. Always

apprehensive of spies, although the Gott commandeered by the Kaiser

seemed to have adjusted blinders to eyes strained west, east, and

south, she leapt to the conclusion that she was under surveillance at

last, and her heart beat thickly. She who had believed that the long

strain, the constant danger, the incessant demand for resource and ever

more resource, had transformed her nerves to pure steel, realized

angrily that on this last night when she had permitted herself an hour's

idle retrospect before commanding sleep, her nerves more nearly

resembled the strings of a violin.

Her apartment was on the ground floor. She stood up, revealing herself

disdainfully in the moonlight that now lay full on her window, then went

out quickly into the vestibule and unlocked the house door. Her only

fear was that the man would have gone, but if he were still there she

was determined to walk boldly over to his skulking-place and pretend she

believed him to be a burglar or a foreign spy. In these days she carried

a small pistol and a dagger.

When she had stepped out on the pavement she glanced quickly up and down

the street. Not even a _polizeidiener_ was in sight, for this

aristocratic quarter was, in peace and war, the quietest part of an

always orderly town. It was evident that the man spied alone.

Holding her head very high, she started across the street; but she had

not taken three steps when the shadow detached itself and walked rapidly

out into the moonlight. She gave a sharp cry and shrank back. It was

Franz von Nettelbeck.

"You--" she stammered. "They sent you--"

"They? And why should I alarm you? Am I so formidable?" He uttered his

short harsh laugh and lifted his cap. His head was bandaged; there was a

deep scar along the outer line of his right cheek. His face was gaunt

and lined; and his shoulders sagged until he suddenly bethought himself

and flung them back with a deathless instinct.

Gisela smiled and gave him her hand with a graceful spontaneity. "The

sense of being watched always shakes the nerves a bit, and I have felt

up to nothing myself for a long time. Why did not you come up to the

window when you recognized me?"

"I was so sure of welcome! And yet as soon as I was fit to travel I came

here to see you. I intended to send in my card to-morrow. But I could

not help haunting your window to-night, and when I had the good fortune

to see you sitting there--with the moon shining on your beautiful

face--"

"My face is no longer beautiful, dear Franz--"

"You are a thousand times more beautiful than ever--"

Something else vibrated along those steel nerves, but she said briskly:

"Standing so long must have tired you. Come in and rest. It is late; but

if there are still conventions in this crashing world I have forgotten

them."

Her rooms were always prepared for a sudden visit of the police. If a

firing squad were her fate it would not have been invited through the

usual channels. Even the arms to be worn on the morrow were in the

cellars and attics of citizens so respectable as almost to be nameless.

He followed her through the common entrance of the apartment house into

her _Saal_. It was a large comfortable room with many deep chairs, and

on the gray walls were a few portraits of her scowling ancestors,

contributed long since by her mother. A tall porcelain stove glowed

softly. Gisela drew the curtains and lit several candles. She disliked

the hard glare of electricity at any time, and she admitted with a

curious thrill of satisfaction that those manifestly sincere words of

her old lover had given her vanity a momentary resurrection. Her

suspicions were by no means allayed, even when she met his eyes blazing

with passionate admiration, but why not play the old game of the gods

for an hour? What better preparation for the morrow than to relax and

forget?

"Poor Franz!" Her voice was the same rich contralto whose promise had

routed the Howland millions years ago. "Our poor gallant men! When will

this terrible war finish?"

"Ask your United States of America!" And he cursed that superfluous

nation roundly. "We had some chance before. Not so much, but still some.

Now we shall be beaten to our knees, stamped into the dust, straight

down to hell." He threw himself into a chair and pressed his hands

against his face.

"But when?" Gisela watched him warily. If these were tactics they were

admirable; but who more full of theatric devices than the Kaiser he

adored?

"Years hence, no doubt--if we continue to hold the Social-Democrats in

hand and drug the people. We'll fight on until our enemies' might proves

that they are right and we were fools. That is all there is to war."

Gisela sat down and let her hands fall into her lap with a little

pathetic motion of weakness. "Sometimes I wish the Socialists were

strong enough to win and end it all," she said plaintively.

"Oh, no, you don't. You are a junker, for all your independent notions,

and trying to put some of your own nerve into the women. I read you with

great amusement before the war. But no one knows better than yourself

that the triumph of democracy in Germany would mean the end of us."

"I cannot see that we are enjoying many privileges at present--unless it

be the privilege to lie rather than be lied to. And when our enemies do

win we shall be pried out, root and branch. So, why not save our skins

at all events? I do not mean mine, of course--nor, for that matter, am I

thinking of our class; but of the hundreds of thousands of our dear

young men who might be spared--"

"Better die and have done with it. And there is always hope--"

"Hope?"

"Oh--in the separate peace, the ultimate submersible, some new

invention--the miracle that has come to the rescue more than once in

history. There are times when my faith in the destiny of Germany to

dominate the world is so great that I cannot believe it possible for

her to fail--in spite of everything, everything! And everything is

against us! I never realized it until I lay there in the hospital. I was

too busy before, and that was my first serious wound. Oh, God! what

fools we were. What rotten diplomacy. Even I despised the United States;

but as I lay there in Berlin their irresistible almighty power seemed to

pass before me in a procession that nearly destroyed my reason. I knew

the country well enough, but I would not see."

"They are a very soft-hearted people and would let us down agreeably if

the Social-Democrats overturned the House of Hohenzollern and stretched

out the imploring hand of a young Republic--"

"No! No! A thousand times rather die to the last man than be beaten

within. That would be the one insupportable humiliation. _Canaille!_" He

spat out the word. "I refuse to recognize their existence--"

He sprang to his feet and before her mind could flash to attention he

had caught her from her chair and was straining her to him, his arms,

his entire body, betraying no evidence whatever of depleted vitality.

"Let us forget it all!" he muttered. "We are still young and I am free.

I was a fool once and you will believe me when I tell you that I would

beg you on my knees to marry me even if you were Gisela Döring.... I

have leave of absence for a month ... let us be happy once more...."

"It was a long while ago ... all that ... do you realize how long?"

Gisela stood rigid, her eyes expanded. To her terror and dismay she was

thrilling and flaming from head to foot. This lover of her life might

have released her from one of their immortal hours but yesterday. But

although she had to brace her body from yielding, her mind (and it is

the curse of intellectual women of individual powers that the mind

never, in any circumstances, ceases to function) realized that while the

human will may be strong enough to banish memories, and readjust the

lonely soul, its most triumphant acts may be annihilated by the physical

contact of its mate. Unless replaced. Fool that she had been merely to

have buried the memory of this man by an act of will. She should have

taken a commonplace lover, or husband, put out that flaming midnight

torch with the standardizing light of day.

Her mind seemed to be darting from peak to peak in a swift and dazzling

flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck,

straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it

poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre,"

in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to

demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within

three days the inhabitants would give themselves up to an orgy of love.

Well, her world might end to-morrow. Why should she not live to-night?

Her arrogant will demanded the happiness that this man, whom she had

never ceased to love for a moment, to whom she had been unconsciously

faithful, alone could give her. Moreover, her reason working side by

side with her imperious desires, assured her that if he really were

spying, and, whatever his passion, meant to remold her will to his and

snatch the keystone from the arch, it were wise to keep him here. It was

evident that he had no suspicion of the imminence of the revolution.

And it was years since she had felt all woman, not a mere intellect

ignoring the tides in the depths of her being. The revelation that she

was still young and that her will and all the proud achievements of her

mind could dissolve at this man's touch in the crucible of her passion

filled her with exultation.

She melted into his arms and lifted hers heavily to his neck.

"Franz! Franz!" she whispered.

2

Gisela moved softly about the room looking for fresh candles. Those that

had replaced the moonlight hours ago had burned out and she did not

dare draw the curtains apart: it was too near the dawn. She had no idea

what time it was. But she must have light, for to think was imperative,

and her mental processes were always clogged in the dark.

She found the old box of candles and placed four in the brackets and lit

them. Then she went over to the couch and looked down upon Franz von

Nettelbeck. He slept heavily, on his side, his arms relaxed but slightly

curved. In a few moments she went down the hall to her bedroom and took

a cold bath and made a cup of strong coffee; then dressed herself in a

suit of gray cloth, straight and loose, that her swiftest movements

might not be impeded. In the belt under the jacket she adjusted her

pistol and dagger.

She returned to the _Saal_ and once more looked down upon the

unconscious man. How long he had been falling asleep! She had offered

him wine, meaning to drug it, but he had refused lest it inflame his

wounds. She had offered to make him coffee, but he would not let her

go.

It was in the complete admission of her reluctance to leave him, even

after he slept, and while disturbed by the fear that the dawn was nearer

than in fact it was, that she stared down upon the man who was more to

her than Germany and all its enslaved women and men. He knew nothing of

her plans, had not a suspicion of the revolution, but he had vowed they

never should be parted again. He had great influence and could set

wheels in motion that would return him to the diplomatic service and

procure him an appointment to Spain; where good diplomatists were badly

needed.

It was an enchanting picture that he drew in spite of the horror that

must ever mutter at their threshold; but to the awfulness of war they

were both by this time more or less callous, although he was mortally

sick of the war itself; and Gisela, who doled half-measures neither to

herself nor others, had dismissed the morrow and yielded herself to the

joy of the future as of the present. What she had felt for this man in

her early twenties seemed a mere partnership of romance and sentiment

fused by young nerves, compared with the mature passion he had shocked

from its long recuperative sleep. He was her mate, her other part. Her

long fidelity, unshaken by time, her own temperament and many

opportunities, all were proof of that.

The caste of great lovers in this unfinished world is small and almost

inaccessible, but they had taken their place by immemorial right. Were

it not for this history of her own making they would find every phase of

happiness in each other as long as they both lived. Women, at least,

know instinctively the difference between the transient passion, no

matter how powerful, and the deathless bond.

Gisela glanced at her wrist watch. It was within seventy minutes of the

dawn. If she could only be sure that he would sleep until Munich herself

awoke him. But he had told her that he never slept these days more than

two or three hours at a time, no matter how weary.

If he awoke before it was time for her to leave the house and renewed

his love-making, her response would be as automatic as the progress of

life itself.

If she attempted to leave the house before sunrise, on no matter what

pretext, his suspicions would be aroused, for she had told him that she

had been given a week for rest. For the same reason she dared not awaken

him and ask him to go. He would refuse, for it was no time to slip out

of a woman's apartment; far better wait until ten o'clock, when there

were always visitors of both sexes in her office. Moreover, he would no

more wish to go than he would permit her to leave him.

She was utterly in his power if he awakened and chose to exert it. He

had mastered her, conquered her, routed her career and her peace, and

she had gloried in her submission; gloried in it still. A commonplace

woman would have been satisfied, satiated, felt free for the moment,

turned with relief to the dry convention of the daily adventure, rather

resenting, if she had a pretty will, the supreme surrender to the race

in an unguarded hour.

Gisela was cast in the heroic mold. She came down from the old race of

goddesses of her own Nibelungenlied, whose passions might consume them

but had nothing in common with the ebb and flow of mortals. But great

brains are fed by stormy souls, and in the souls of women there is an

element of weakness, unknown, save in a few notable instances, to great

men in the crises of their destiny; for women are the slaves of the

race, and nature when permitting them the abnormality of genius takes

her revenge.

If he awakened.... There was little time for thought. She must plan

quickly. If she left the house at once he might awaken immediately and

after searching the apartment, follow her; there was the dire

possibility that he would learn too much before the terrific drama of

the revolution opened, and manage to thwart their plans. He was a man of

quick brain and ruthless will; no consideration for her would stop him,

although he would save her from the consequences of her act, no doubt of

that. Save her for himself.

Mimi Brandt, and Heloise and Marie von Erkel were asleep in rooms at the

end of the hall.... She had a mad idea of binding him hand and foot and

locking him in her bedroom.... Either he would hate her for the

humiliation he--Franz von Nettelbeck, glorious on the field of honor, a

bound prisoner in a woman's bedroom while his class was blown to atoms,

and his caste was roaring its impotent fury to a napping Gott!... Oh, an

insufferable affront to a man of his order who held even the dearest

woman as the favored pensioner on his bounty ... or she would be

consumed with remorse, melt ... it was positive that she must visit

him--not leave him to starve ... nor could she keep him bound ... and

once more she would be his slave ... could she hold out even for a day?

The first blow of a revolution is, after all, only its first. There is

always the danger of a swift reaction.

Unremitting vigilance, work, encouragement are the part of its leaders

for months, possibly years, to come. All revolutions are dependent for

ultimate success upon one preëminent figure.

Franz stirred under the unconscious fixity of her gaze and changed his

position, lying on his back. She hastily averted her eyes. Her hands

clenched and spread. Even to-morrow if this man found her ... one soft

moment ... when she needed all her energy, her fire, her powers of

concentration, of depersonalization, for the millions of tortured women

who would follow her straight out to meet any division the Emperor might

detach in the vain hope of subduing an army far outnumbering all that he

had left of men.

Nothing but a miracle could halt the initial stage of the revolution;

the wireless plants were all operated by women in her service, and no

telephone message had advised her of danger. No matter what her

defection at this moment the revolution would begin at dawn; but

although Germany happily lacked the disintegrating forces of Russia,

comfortable as she had been for two generations, and proud in her

discipline, that very discipline would dissolve its new backbone without

the stimulating force of her own inexorable will. And if she deserted

them!...

It was a woman's revolution. A necessary number of men Socialists had

been admitted to the secret and were to strike the second blow. But the

women must strike the first, and according to program. Not only were the

men under surveillance, but where women would be pardoned in case of a

failure, they would be shot. And most of them had more brain than brawn,

were past the fighting age; the girls, and women of middle years, were a

magnificent army which would make the graybeards appear absurd in the

open.

These women worshiped her, believed her to be a super-being created to

save them and their children; but if she betrayed them, proved herself

the merest woman of them all--a childless woman at that--the very bones

would melt out of them, they would prostrate themselves in the ashes of

their final despair.

Spain! Franz! For a moment her imagination rioted.

She smiled ironically. Happiness? Four-walled happiness? Hardly for her,

even without the blood of murdered thousands soaking her doorstep. Love,

for women like her ... even eternal love ... must be episodical. Life

forces the duties of leadership on such women whether they resent them

or not. They must take their love where they find it as great men do,

subordinated to their chosen careers and the tremendous duties and

responsibilities that are the fruit of all achieved ambition.

It was true that she had no political ambition, but for an unpredictive

period she must be the beacon-light of the new Republic, no matter how

successful the coup of the Socialists; until some one man (she knew of

none) or some group of men became strong enough to control its

destinies. The women must stand firm, a solid critical body led by

herself, until the tragically disciplined soldiers who had survived

these years of warfare had ceased to be sheep, or run bleating to the

new fold.

Even if she won Franz over, her power would be sapped; not for a moment

would he be out of her consciousness; her imagination would drift

incessantly from the vital work in hand to the hour of their reunion.

The hurtling power of her eloquence would be diminished, her magnetism

weakened.

Her memory flashed backward to those three years when he was an

ever-rising obsession--personifying love and completion as he

did--before which her proud will fell back again and again, powerless

and humiliated.

Why, in God's name could not he have come back into her life six months

hence?

No woman should risk a sex cataclysm when she has great work to do.

Nature is too subtle for any woman's will as long as the man be

accessible. And the strongest and the proudest woman that ever lived may

have her life disorganized by a man if she possess the power to charm

him.

She moved softly from the couch and walked up and down the room,

striving to visualize her manifest destiny and erect the grim ideal of

duty. Her mind, working at lightning speed, recalled moments, days, in

the past, when she had let her will relax, ignored her duties, floated

idly with the tide; the sensation of panic with which she had recaptured

at a bound the ideals that governed her life. Mortal happiness was not

for her. Duty done, with or without exaltation of spirit, would at least

keep her in tune with life, preserve her from that disintegrating horror

of soul that could end only with self-annihilation.

And end her usefulness. It was a vicious circle.

Suddenly a wave of humiliation, of insupportable shame, swept her from

sole to crown, and she returned swiftly to her post above the sleeping

man. One moment had undone the work of all those proud years during

which she had made herself over from the quintessential lover into one

of the intellectual leaders of the world, a woman who had accomplished

what no man had dared to attempt, and who, if the revolution were the

finality which before this man came had seemed to be written in the Book

of Germany, would be immortal in history. Wild fevers of the blood,

passionate longing for completion in man, oneness, the "organic

unit"--were not for her.

All feeling ebbed slowly out of her, leaving her cold, collected, alert.

She was, over all, a woman of genius, the custodian of peculiar gifts,

sleeping throughout the ages, perhaps, like Brunhilde on her rock, to

awaken not at the kiss of man, but at the summons of Germany in her

darkest hour.

She bent over the man who belonged to the woman alone in her and whose

power over her would be exerted as ruthlessly as her own should be over

herself. He looked a very gallant gentleman as he lay there, and he had

been a very brave soldier. His own place was secure in the annals of the

war, but at this moment, following upon his triumphant swoop after

happiness, he was the one deadly menace to the future of his country.

Gisela opened his shirt gently and bared his breast. She held her

breath, but he slept on and she took the dagger from her belt and with a

swift hard propulsion drove it into his heart to the guard. He gave a

long expiring sigh and lay still. A gallant gentleman, a brave soldier,

and a great lover had the honor to be the first man to pay the price of

his country's crime, on the altar of the Woman's Revolution.

3

Gisela went swiftly down the hall and awakened Heloise, Mimi, and Marie

and told them what she had done. No novelty in horror could startle

European women in those days. They dressed themselves hastily in their

gray uniforms and followed her to the _Saal_. With Mimi's assistance she

put on his coat, the hilt of the dagger thrusting forward the row of

medals on his breast. Marie went out into the street and flitted up and

down like a big gray moth, her gray little face tense with rapture. Her

devotion to Gisela had been fanatical from the first but now she begged

what invisible power her wild little mind still recognized to be

permitted to die for her.

In a moment she signaled that the street was deserted. Gisela and Mimi

carried the body over to the park and dropped it into the swiftly

flowing Isar. The clear jade green of the lovely river reflected the

points of the stars, and Franz von Nettelbeck as he drifted down the

tide looked as if attended by innumerable candles dropped graciously

from on high to watch at his bier. But it was to Heloise this fancy

came, and she lifted her face and thanked the stars for their silent

funeral march. Not for her would the supreme sacrifice have been

possible, and for the moment she did not envy Gisela Döring.

The four girls walked rapidly over to the Maximilianstrasse and crossed

the bridge to the Maximilianeum. The long symmetrical brown building

with its open galleries filled with the cold starlight was distorted by

a wireless station on its highest point and by a biplane on the extreme

left of the roof. It stood on a lofty terrace and commanded a view of

all Munich and of the tumbled peaks of the Alps.

They ran up the stairs and called to the operator from the higher

gallery. She answered in a hard and weary voice: "Nothing." Then they

walked down the gallery to the open tower facing the Alps. For half an

hour longer they stood in silence, alternately glancing from their wrist

watches to the faintly glittering peaks whose first reflection of dawn,

if all went well, would change the face of the world.