; but their hearts might have turned to
water during those last dispiriting hours before the dawn.

And how could it be possible that all traitors had been detected,
exterminated, with millions in the secret? Troops might even now be in
Prussia. Great Headquarters (Grosse Hauptquartier) were in Pless, and
although the women of that city were not in the confidence of the
revolutionaries, and it was to remain in ignorance as long as possible,
the abrupt cessation of telephone and telegraph communication would
advise that group of alert brains that something was wrong. Moreover,
even with interrupted communications they would soon learn of the
blowing up of factories in other Silesian towns; no doubt hear them. It
was true the railways and bridges between Pless and Berlin were--if they
were!--destroyed, but there were always automobiles; enough for a small
force.... And the police, the police of Berlin! They were still
formidable in spite of the drain on men for the front. Mariette had
written her grimly that she would "take care of 'the rats in the
granary,'" meaning the police; but although Mariette was the most
thorough and merciless person she knew, she doubted even her in this
awful moment.

How could she have dreamed of accomplishing a universal revolution in
a country possessing the most perfect secret service system in the
world?... a country with eyes in the back of its head? True, the
Socialists in her confidence had been noisy and bumptious of late in
order to concentrate attention upon their sex, and at the same time
careful to refrain from definite statements or overt acts.... It would
never enter the stupid official head that German women could conceive,
much less precipitate, a revolution; but there _must_ be traitors,
women who fundamentally were the slaves of men, weak spirits, spirits
rotten with imperialism, militarism, but cunning in the art of
dissimulation.... What an accursed fool and criminal she had been ...
egotistical dreamer! ... led on by the extraordinary power she had
acquired over the women of her race....

For a moment she clung to the embrasure, so overwhelming was her impulse
to hurl herself down into oblivion. In that dark and shrieking uproar
she had the illusion that she was in hell, in hell with her miserable
victims.

But although Gisela's long slumbering nerves had had their revenge last
night, they had given up the fight when she had destroyed their only
ally, and these last p