“I don’t want to dissuade you,” he said, “not only because it would be useless, but because I am with you.  You couldn’t do otherwise, Hermann.”

“I don’t see that I could.  Sylvia agrees too.”

A terrible conjecture flashed through Michael’s mind.

“And she?” he asked.

“She can’t leave my mother, of course,” said Hermann, “and, after all,
I may be on a wild goose chase.  But I can’t risk being unable to get to
Germany, if—­if the worst happens.”

The ghost of a smile played round his mouth for a moment.

“And I’m not sure that she could leave you, Mike,” he added.

Somehow this, though it gave Michael a moment of intensest relief to know that Sylvia remained, made the shadow grow deeper, accentuated the lines of the storm which had begun to spread over the sky.  He began to see as nightmare no longer, but as stern and possible realities, something of the unutterable woe, the divisions, the heart-breaks which menaced.

“Hermann, what do you think will happen?” he said.  “It is incredible, unfaceable—­”

The gentle patting on his shoulder, that suddenly and poignantly reminded him of when Sylvia’s hand was there, ceased for a moment, and then was resumed.

“Mike, old boy,” said Hermann, “we’ve got to face the unfaceable, and believe that the incredible is possible.  I may be all wrong about it, and, as I say, in a few days’ time I may come racing back.  But, on the other hand, this may be our last talk together, for I go off this afternoon.  So let’s face it.”

He paused a moment.

“It may be that before long I shall be fighting for my Fatherland,” he said.  “And if there is to be fighting, it may be that Germany will before long be fighting England.  There I shall be on one side, and, since naturally you will go back into the Guards, you will be fighting on the other.  I shall be doing my best to kill Englishmen, whom I love, and they will be doing their best to kill me and those of my blood.  There’s the horror of it, and it’s that we must face.  If we met in a bayonet charge, Mike, I should have to do my best to run you through, and yet I shouldn’t love you one bit the less, and you must know that.  Or, if you ran me through, I shall have to die loving you just the same as before, and hoping you would live happy, for ever and ever, as the story-books say, with Sylvia.”

“Hermann, don’t go,” said Michael suddenly.

“Mike, you didn’t mean that,” he said.

Michael looked at him for a moment in silence.

“No, it is unsaid,” he replied.

Hermann looked round as the clock on the chimney-piece chimed.