ed by innumerable candles dropped graciously
from on high to watch at his bier. But it was to Heloise this fancy
came, and she lifted her face and thanked the stars for their silent
funeral march. Not for her would the supreme sacrifice have been
possible, and for the moment she did not envy Gisela Doering.

The four girls walked rapidly over to the Maximilianstrasse and crossed
the bridge to the Maximilianeum. The long symmetrical brown building
with its open galleries filled with the cold starlight was distorted by
a wireless station on its highest point and by a biplane on the extreme
left of the roof. It stood on a lofty terrace and commanded a view of
all Munich and of the tumbled peaks of the Alps.

They ran up the stairs and called to the operator from the higher
gallery. She answered in a hard and weary voice: "Nothing." Then they
walked down the gallery to the open tower facing the Alps. For half an
hour longer they stood in silence, alternately glancing from their wrist
watches to the faintly glittering peaks whose first reflection of dawn,
if all went well, would change the face of the world.

VI

1

The eyes of the four women traveled to the lofty towers of the
Frauenkirche. Its bells rang out a wild authoritative summons.
Coincidentally the streets filled with women dressed uniformly in
gray--big powerfully built women, sturdy products of the strong soil of
Germany. They did not march, nor form in ranks, but stood silent, alert,
shouldering rifles with fixed bayonets.

Involuntarily Gisela and her three lieutenants braced themselves against
the pillars of the tower. An instant later the walls of the
Maximilianeum rocked under the terrific impact of what sounded like a
thousand explosions. The roar of parting walls, the shriek of shells and
bombs bursting high in the air, the sharp short cry of shattered metal,
the deep _approaching_ voice of dynamite prolonging itself in echoes
that seemed to reverberate among the distant Alps, shook the souls of
even those inured to the murderous uproar of the battlefield.

Grotesquely combined with this terrific but majestic confusion of sound
were the screams of innocent citizens hanging out of the windows, waving
their arms, staring distraught at the sky, convinced, in so far as they
could think at all, that a great enemy air fleet was bombarding Germany
at last.

Masses of flame and smoke shot upward. The pale morning sky turned
black, rent with darti