match, and sat down.

Wasn't it a good thing he sat down. I felt so much happier. But just
as it was at the meals at Frau Berg's so it was at the coffee party
here,--I was singled out and talked to, or at, by the entire company.
The concentration of curiosity of Germans is terrible. But it's more
than curiosity, it's a kind of determination to crush what I'm thinking
out of me and force what they're thinking into me. I shall see as they
do; I shall think as they do; they'll shout at me till I'm forced to.
That's what I feel. I don't a bit know if it isn't quite a wrong idea
I've got, but somehow my very bones feel it.

Would you believe it, they stayed to supper, all of them, and never
went away till ten o'clock. Frau Bornsted says one always does that in
the country here when invited to afternoon coffee. I won't tell you
any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same
lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling
me variations of Pastor Wienicke's theme, the women going for me in
twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like
Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy. They
were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of
the Austrian assassination. The silence from Vienna worries them, I
gather, very much. They are afraid, actually they are afraid, Austria
may be going to do nothing except just punish the murderers, and so
miss the glorious opportunity for war. I wonder if you can the least
realize, you sane mother in a sane place, the state they're in here,
the sort of boiling and straining. I'm sure the whole of Germany is
the same,--lashed by the few behind the scenes into a fury of
aggressive patriotism. They call it patriotism, but it is just
blood-lust and loot-lust.

I helped Frau Bornsted get supper ready, and was glad to escape into
the peace of the kitchen and stand safely frying potatoes. She was
very sweet in her demure Sunday frock of plain black, and high up round
her ears a little white frill. The solemnity and youth and quaintness
of her are very attractive, and I could easily love her if it weren't
for this madness about Deutschland. She is as mad as any of them, and
in her it is much more disconcerting. We will be discoursing together
gravely--she is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are
being really--about amusing things like husbands and when and if I'm
eve