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.