Two religious sisters who accompanied her appeared more moved than she.
They were trying to exhort her and at the same time were struggling to
keep back the tears.... The priest was no less touched. He had attended
other criminals, but they were men.... To assist to a decent death a
beautiful perfumed woman scintillating with precious stones, as though
she were going to ride in an automobile to a fashionable tea!...

The week before she had been in doubt as to whether to receive a
Calvinist pastor or a Catholic priest. In her cosmopolitan life of
uncertain nationality she had never taken the time to decide about any
religion for herself. Finally she had selected the latter on account of
its being more simple intellectually, more liberal and approachable....

Several times when the priest was trying to console her, she
interrupted him as though she were the one charged with inspiring
courage.

"To die is not so terrible as it appears when seen afar off!... I feel
ashamed when I think of the fears that I have passed through, of the
tears that I have shed.... It turns out to be much more simple than I
had believed.... We all have to die!"

They read to her the sentence refusing the appeal for pardon. Then they
offered her a pen that she might sign it.

A colonel told her that there were still a few moments at her
disposition in which to write to her family, her friends, or to make
her last will....

"To whom shall I write?" said Freya. "I haven't a single friend in the
world...."

"Then it was," continued the lawyer, "that she took the pen as if a
recollection had occurred to her, and traced some few lines.... Then
she tore up the paper and came toward me. She was thinking of you,
Captain: her last letter was for you and she left it unfinished,
fearing that it might never reach your hands. Besides, she wasn't equal
to writing; her pulse was nervous: she preferred to talk.... She asked
me to send you a long, very long letter, telling about her last
moments, and I had to swear to her that I would carry out her request."

From that time on the _maitre_ had seen things badly. Emotion was
perturbing his sensibilities, but there yet lived in his mind Freya's
last words on coming out of the jail.

"I am not a German," she said repeatedly to the men in uniform. "I am
not German!"

For her the least important thing was to die. She was only worried for
fear they might believe her of that odious nationality.

The atto