illusions left. Love and marriage are ghastly caricatures to women who
have lived in a time when men are slaughtered like pigs in massed
formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young
girls--and widows!--are forced to bring more males into the world with
the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the
trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread. Oh, no! The German
man's day of any but legal dominion is over. Of course there is always
the danger of spies and traitors, but--"

"The wall for you at sunrise if you get caught," cried Mimi, with
another subsidence of enthusiasm.

"If that happen to be my destiny. Can any one experience what we have
done during these three years and not be as fatalistic as the men in the
trenches? I'd rather die before a firing squad after an attempt to save
my wretched country than live to see it set back a hundred years. But I
refuse to believe that I shall be betrayed or that I shall fail. _That_
I believe to be my destiny. For a long time the idea has been fumbling
in the back of my mind, but it lacked the current which would switch it
into my consciousness. You two have supplied the current."

Kate threw back her head and gave her merry, ringing laugh. "What
delicious irony! Germany defeated by its women! When I think of your
august papa, dear Gisela! That kulturistically typical, that naïve yet
Jovian symbol of all the arrogance and conceit, the simple creed of
Kaiserism über alles, and will-to-rule, that hurled this colossus on
the back of Europe--"

"Quite so. You of all present know that I received the proper training
for the part I am about to play. If all goes well we women will erect a