itics,--_Politik_,
_Weltpolitik_, and _Realpolitik_, to enable her to avoid wrong and
frivolous conclusions such as the one the young Fraulein had just
informed them she had reached, and to listen intelligently to her
husband or son when they discuss these matters. He said a great deal
more, about a woman knowing these things just enough but not too well,
for her intelligence must not be strained because of her supreme
function of being the cradle of the race; and the cradle part of her, I
gather, isn't so useful if she is allowed to develop the other part of
her beyond what is necessary for making an agreeable listener.

It was no use even trying to explain what I had meant about Germany
really being in love with England, because I hadn't got words enough;
but that is exactly the impression I've received from my brief
experiences of one corner of its life. In this small corner of it,
anyhow, it behaves exactly like a woman who is so unlucky as to love
somebody who doesn't care about her. She naturally, I imagine,--for I
can only guess at these enslavements,--is very much humiliated and
angry, and all the more because the loved and hated one--isn't it
possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother? I can
imagine it quite well--is so indifferent as to whether she loves or
hates. And whichever she does, he is polite,--"Always gentleman," as
the Germans say. Which is, naturally, maddening.

_Evening_.

Do you know I wrote to you the whole morning? I wrote and wrote, with
no idea how time was passing, and was astonished and indignant, for I
haven't half told you all I want to, when I was called to dinner. It
seemed like shutting a door on you and leaving you outside without any
dinner, to go away and have it without you.

If it weren't for its being my day with you I don't know what I'd do
with Sundays. I would hate them. I'm not allowed to play on Sundays,
because practising is forbidden on that day, and, as Frau Berg said,
how is she to know if I am practising or playing? Besides, it would
disturb the others, which of course is true, for they all rest on
Sundays, getting up late, sleeping after dinner, and not going out till
they have had coffee about five. Today, when I hoped they had all gone
out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and
played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful
thing of Ravel's that Kloster showed me the other day,--t