“My husband is dying to hear you play,” said the Grafin, when he got up presently to go back to his work.  “Absolutely dying,” she said, recklessly padding out the leanness of his very bald good-bye to me.

He said nothing even to that.  He just went.  He didn’t seem to be dying.

Herr von luster walked back with me.  He is very agreeable-looking, with kind eyes that are both shrewd and sad.  He talks English very well, and so did everybody at the Koseritzes who talked at all.  He is pathetically keen on music.  Kloster says he would have been a really great player, but being a Junker settles him for ever.  It is tragic to be forced out of one’s natural bent, and he says he hates soldiering.  People in the street were very polite, and made way for me because I was with an officer.  I wasn’t pushed off the pavement once.

Good night my own mother.  I’ve had a happy week.  I put my arms round you and kiss you with all that I have of love.

  Your Chris.

Wanda came in in great excitement to fetch my tray just now, and said a prince has been assassinated.  She heard the Herrschaften saying so at supper.  She thought they said it was an Austrian, but whatever prince it was it was Majestatsbeleidigung to get killing him, and she marvelled how any one had dared.  Then Frau Berg herself came to tell me.  By this time I was in bed,—­pig-tailed, and ready to go to sleep.  She was tremendously excited, and I felt a cold shiver down my back watching her.  She was so much excited that I caught it from her and was excited too.  Well, it is very dreadful the way these king-people get bombed out of life.  She said it was the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife, both of them.  But of course you’ll know all about it by the time you get this.  She didn’t know any details, but there had been extra editions of the Sunday papers, and she said it would mean war.

“War?” I echoed.

“War,” she repeated; and began to tread heavily about the room saying, “War.  War.”

“But who with?” I asked, watching her fascinated, sitting up in bed holding on to my knees.

“It will come,” said Frau Berg, treading about like some huge Judaic prophetess who sniffs blood.  “It must come.  There will be no quiet in the world till blood has been let.”

“But what blood?” I asked, rather tremulously, for her voice and behaviour curdled me.

“The blood of all those evil-doers who are responsible,” she said; and she paused a moment at the foot of my bed and folded her arms across her chest—­they could hardly reach, and the word chest sounds much too flat—­and added, “Of whom there are many.”

Then she began to walk about again, and each time a foot went down the room shook.  “All, all need punishing,” she said as she walked.  “There will be, there must be, punishment for this.  Great and terrible.  Blood will, blood must flow in streams before such a crime can be regarded as washed out.  Such evil-doers must be emptied of all their blood.”