s expanded as if they saw far
beyond the crystal mountains glittering before the open windows. Her
mass of dark hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to Mrs. Prentiss
that she looked like the Medusa in the Glyptothek in Munich, lovely but
relentless.

Gisela was no longer the radiant and voluptuous beauty who had incurred
the secret wrath of Ann Howland at Bar Harbor. These years of war,
during which she had known hard physical labor and often insufficient
nourishment, more rarely still a full night's sleep, had taken her
lovely curves of cheek and form, her brilliant color. She was thin,
almost gaunt; but the dissolving of the flesh had given her intellect,
her force of character, her aspiring spirit, their first real
opportunity to stamp her features. She would always be handsome, with
her long dark eyes and masses of soft dark hair, her noble outlines; and
her womanly sympathies had preserved their balance between a
devitalizing horror on the one hand and callousness on the other; but it
was a spiritualized beauty, devoid of that appeal to sex of which she
had been, even after she had buried the memory of Franz von Nettelbeck
and all desire for love, femininely tenacious, however disdainful.

Mimi was the first to speak after a long interval of silence.

"You've got me, all right. I've been digging up a few more things. We're
up against it for keeps, and it's get out or starve out. I've a notion
to sneak off to my relations in Milwaukee. Mrs. Prentiss, I'll go as
your maid--"

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" Gisela's voice cut through the ripples
of laughter which always greeted Mimi's redundant slang. "You'll go back
to Germany with me and do your part in putting an end to this war!" All
but Heloise half arose, but she sat staring at that hard drawn face as
if in telepathic communication.

"Can you do anything--really?" gasped Kate. "We have been hoping for a
revolution, but had given up the idea--until after the war. Your
Socialists either eat out of the Kaiser's hand or sputter and fizzle
out. And all your able-bodied men are at the front--"

"But not the women."

"The what?"

"You have both lived in Germany. You know that German women are big
strong creatures--what you call husky. They are stronger than many of
the men because they have led more decent lives. The men at the front
are hopeless as revolutionary material--at present. They are hypnotized.
They have been taught not to think. They are si