end instead of a lover, how much easier were
his relations with Fraeulein! Brooding sensitiveness and
responsibility passed into lightsomeness. The unnatural and
crankling proceeding of his trying to woo a German girl was smoothed
away into a genial indifference. The mental picture of Elsa would
remain as one that had attracted him on the wall of his German
memories. And like the hundred maids that a youth is smitten with,
she would gradually blend into the dim gallery of such pleasant
visions of Kirtley's susceptible spring-time--visions which, in all
men, fade sweetly into their manhood.

In this manner the cloud of Gard's awkward discomfort in speaking
out or acting out his answer to Frau's virile project, had melted
away before these lighted-up faces. He felt as if a fog were lifted
off his consciousness. He was glad to slip out thus easily. In the
lively jumble of robust, rejoicing realities about him, he seemed to
have emerged from the fringy edges of a daze.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A GERMAN "GOTT BE WITH YE"

A dash of adventure was to crown Gard Kirtley's farewell to Germany
as it had crowned Jim Deming's, but with an ominous wreath of the
tragic instead of garlands of the comic. War was at hand, yet even
Anderson did not see it plainly enough to report it. War was often
in the sky in Germany and often had he been fooled. The Teutons must
be sure of victory and, he was positive, would avail themselves of a
long summer for their campaign.

In those days of July something peculiar and tense hung over the
land, but its sources were untraceable, its form, abstract. The
unadvised, ordinary people wiped the sweat from their foreheads and
said it must be the heat. Kirtley would not have been expected to
interpret Friedrich's surprising engagement in the music ranks of
the _Landwehr_ as a sign that widespread preparations were being
made for the fullest onslaught of which the nation could be capable.
The Government was, nevertheless, quietly laying its hands on all
its young men--even musicians who were blind in one eye and could
not see out of it.

Gard was glad to go home through the heart of Germany. Jena, Weimar,
Erfurt, Eisenach!--the land of Goethe, Schiller, Luther. While these
figures were discarded from the blatant pageantry of the armed
Empire, the landmarks associated with them remained to satisfy the
vision, and he could tell of them to dear old ignorant Rebner who
would be waiting to hear of his b