Franz stirred under the unconscious fixity of her gaze and changed his position, lying on his back.  She hastily averted her eyes.  Her hands clenched and spread.  Even to-morrow if this man found her ... one soft moment ... when she needed all her energy, her fire, her powers of concentration, of depersonalization, for the millions of tortured women who would follow her straight out to meet any division the Emperor might detach in the vain hope of subduing an army far outnumbering all that he had left of men.

Nothing but a miracle could halt the initial stage of the revolution; the wireless plants were all operated by women in her service, and no telephone message had advised her of danger.  No matter what her defection at this moment the revolution would begin at dawn; but although Germany happily lacked the disintegrating forces of Russia, comfortable as she had been for two generations, and proud in her discipline, that very discipline would dissolve its new backbone without the stimulating force of her own inexorable will.  And if she deserted them!...

It was a woman’s revolution.  A necessary number of men Socialists had been admitted to the secret and were to strike the second blow.  But the women must strike the first, and according to program.  Not only were the men under surveillance, but where women would be pardoned in case of a failure, they would be shot.  And most of them had more brain than brawn, were past the fighting age; the girls, and women of middle years, were a magnificent army which would make the graybeards appear absurd in the open.

These women worshiped her, believed her to be a super-being created to save them and their children; but if she betrayed them, proved herself the merest woman of them all—­a childless woman at that—­the very bones would melt out of them, they would prostrate themselves in the ashes of their final despair.

Spain!  Franz!  For a moment her imagination rioted.

She smiled ironically.  Happiness?  Four-walled happiness?  Hardly for her, even without the blood of murdered thousands soaking her doorstep.  Love, for women like her ... even eternal love ... must be episodical.  Life forces the duties of leadership on such women whether they resent them or not.  They must take their love where they find it as great men do, subordinated to their chosen careers and the tremendous duties and responsibilities that are the fruit of all achieved ambition.

It was true that she had no political ambition, but for an unpredictive period she must be the beacon-light of the new Republic, no matter how successful the coup of the Socialists; until some one man (she knew of none) or some group of men became strong enough to control its destinies.  The women must stand firm, a solid critical body led by herself, until the tragically disciplined soldiers who had survived these years of warfare had ceased to be sheep, or run bleating to the new fold.