thoroughly disgusted with it as a German that personal grievances were
far from necessary to fortify her for the momentous rôle she was to play
with the dawn; but in this rare hour of leisure it amused her naturally
introspective mind to rehearse certain episodes whose sum had made her
what she was.

When she was fourteen and her sisters Lili and Elsa sixteen and eighteen
they had met in the attic of their home in Berlin one afternoon when
their father was automatically at his club and their mother taking her
prescribed hour of rest, and solemnly pledged one another never to
marry. The causes of this vital conclave were both cumulative and
immediate. Their father, the Herr Graf, a fine looking junker of sixty
odd, with a roving eye and a martial air despite a corpulence which
annoyed him excessively, had transferred his lost authority over his
regiment to his household. The boys were in their own regiments and rid
of parental discipline, but the countess and the girls received the full
benefit of his military, and Prussian, relish for despotism.

In his essence a kind man and fond of his women, he balked their every
individual wish and allowed them practically no liberty. They never left
the house unattended, like the American girls and those fortunate beings
of the student class. Lili had a charming voice and was consumed with
ambition to be an operatic star. She had summoned her courage upon one
memorable occasion and broached the subject to her father. All the
terrified family had expected his instant dissolution from apoplexy, and
in spite of his petty tyrannies they loved him. The best instructor in
Berlin continued to give her lessons, as nothing gave the Graf more
pleasure of an evening than her warblings.

The household, quite apart from the Frau Gräfin's admirable management,