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 sick of the war, they suffer when they come home and see their women reduced to shadows, or go to the cemeteries to visit the graves of their little brothers and sisters; but the teaching of a lifetime:  the omnipotence of their sovereigns, whom they innocently believe to rule by divine right, sends them back submissive, patient, sad.  I know what you had in mind when you brought us here to convince us that our country was not only responsible for the war, but beaten.  You hoped we would somehow bring about the assassination of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria—­all the great generals.  Is it not so?  That would, assuredly, break down the morale of the army, give it a more smashing blow than any it has received even