ng like real liberty in the tiny
garden house of the parterre apartment of Gisela Doering on the
Koeniginstrasse.

2

There is little time in the war zones to meet and talk, but even nurses
must rest and take the air, and during the month before the frightful
rush of wounded after the British offensive on the Somme began, the four
girls, all in different hospitals, maneuvered to obtain leave of absence
at the same hour, early in the evening. They promenaded the desolate
streets arm in arm, their heads together, relieving their burdened
souls. There was no idea of treason in any one of those rebellious
minds, for they still believed their Fatherland to have been on the
defensive from the first, the victim of a conspiracy, and they knew from
the expression of the officers' faces, to say nothing of their tempers,
that the danger was by no means past.

But being women, and women who had thought for themselves for many
years, they must talk it out, and when too overcharged to trust their
comments to the narrow streets, they retired to a hillock outside the
city which no spy could approach unseen. However, nothing was farther
from the minds of the German men of war than that the women cogs of
their supremely organized land should presume to criticize methods which
had, to their best belief, terrorized the world.

"But we are not the only ones," said Heloise grimly, as they sat on
their refuge one dusky evening. "All but the sheep have a word to say
now and then. Of course there always will be women who will grovel at
the feet of men merely because they are men; but look out for the others
when this accursed war is over. God! How I hate men! To think that once
I dreamed and hoped like the silly romantic girl I was that some day
some man would marry me in spite of my poverty. Now I would not marry
one of the Kaiser's sons. Sick or well, German, English, French, I
loathe them all alike. Obscene beasts every one of them; but I hate the
Germans most, for they are the most disgusting invalids. And I am a
German girl, too. France has never had any call for me. It is Marie who
would be all French if she could. Poor little Marie, with her drab face
and hair, her poverty, her dynamic body, mad to marry, and climbing out
of the window when mother is asleep, to go to Socialists' meetings and
scream off her pent-up passions. What a hideous world!"

She sprang to her feet and flung her arms above her head and glared at
the unrespon