She could not be everywhere at once.  War and misery and starving children, the loss of the men and boys they loved, and a profound distrust of their rulers, had filled them with a cold and bitter hatred of an autocracy convicted of lying and aggressive purpose out of its own mouth; but would the iron in their souls carry them triumphantly past the final test?  Women were women and Germans were not Russians.  They had little fatalism in their make-up, and their brain cells were packed with the tradition of centuries of submission to man.  True, their quiet revolt had begun long before the war, and this last year had wrought extraordinary changes, quickening their mental processes, forcing them to think and act for themselves; but their hearts might have turned to water during those last dispiriting hours before the dawn.

And how could it be possible that all traitors had been detected, exterminated, with millions in the secret?  Troops might even now be in Prussia.  Great Headquarters (Grosse Hauptquartier) were in Pless, and although the women of that city were not in the confidence of the revolutionaries, and it was to remain in ignorance as long as possible, the abrupt cessation of telephone and telegraph communication would advise that group of alert brains that something was wrong.  Moreover, even with interrupted communications they would soon learn of the blowing up of factories in other Silesian towns; no doubt hear them.  It was true the railways and bridges between Pless and Berlin were—­if they were!—­destroyed, but there were always automobiles; enough for a small force....  And the police, the police of Berlin!  They were still formidable in spite of the drain on men for the front.  Mariette had written her grimly that she would “take care of ’the rats in the granary,’” meaning the police; but although Mariette was the most thorough and merciless person she knew, she doubted even her in this awful moment.

How could she have dreamed of accomplishing a universal revolution in a country possessing the most perfect secret service system in the world?... a country with eyes in the back of its head?  True, the Socialists in her confidence had been noisy and bumptious of late in order to concentrate attention upon their sex, and at the same time careful to refrain from definite statements or overt acts....  It would never enter the stupid official head that German women could conceive, much less precipitate, a revolution; but there must be traitors, women who fundamentally were the slaves of men, weak spirits, spirits rotten with imperialism, militarism, but cunning in the art of dissimulation....  What an accursed fool and criminal she had been ... egotistical dreamer! ... led on by the extraordinary power she had acquired over the women of her race....

For a moment she clung to the embrasure, so overwhelming was her impulse to hurl herself down into oblivion.  In that dark and shrieking uproar she had the illusion that she was in hell, in hell with her miserable victims.