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 attend