rviency to power would turn him
automatically about to the party whose power was supreme. And the
soldiers hated their officers.

VIII

On Friday night Gisela left her apartment in the Koeniginstrasse, where
she had slept for a few hours after a visit to the principal cities of
the Empire, and walked out to Schwabing, that picturesque "village" that
looked like a bit of the Alps transferred to the edge of Munich. She had
not forgotten the man she had sacrificed, and at the end of the first
day of the Revolution she had learned that his body had been caught
under the Schwabing bridge, rescued, and placed temporarily in the vault
of the little church.

It was a bright starlight night, and the old white church with its
bulbous tower, last outpost of Turkey in her heyday, looked like a lone
mourner for the dream of Mittel-Europa. Gisela climbed the mound and
entered the quiet enclosure. She had met no one in the peaceful suburb,
although she had heard the deep guttural voices of elderly men still
lingering at the tables in the beer gardens.

She had sent orders to leave the door of the church unlocked, and she
entered the barren room, guiding herself with her electric torch to the
stair that led down to the vault. Fear of any sort had long since been
crowded out of her, but it was a lonely pilgrimage she hardly would have
undertaken ten days ago.

She descended the short flight of steps and flashed her light about the
vault. It was a small room, oppressively musty and humid. All Schwabing
is damp but the Isar itself might have washed the walls of this dripping
sepulcher. The coffin stood on a rough trestle in the center of the
chamber, and it was covered with the military cloak that, with his sword
and helmet, she had ordered sent from his hotel.

She stood beside the coffin, trying to visualize the man who lay within,
wondering if the orders still bulged above the hilt of the dagger she
had driven in with so firm a hand ... or if they had taken the time to
remove it ... or if that symbol of Germany's freedom would be found ages
hence in a handful of dust when the man who had taught her all she would
ever know of love or living was long forgotten....

But in a moment these vagrant fancies, drifting from a tired brain, took
flight, her reluctant mind focused itself, and she knelt beside the
bier, pressing the folds of the cloak about her face and weeping
heavily.

It was her final tribute to her womanhood.