upheaving world? The
Colonel was at dinner; he comes to nearly every meal; and it was he who
started talking about Kloster's audience with Majestat this afternoon.

I jumped as though some one had hit me. "That _can't_ be true," I
exclaimed, exactly as one calls out quickly if one is suddenly struck.

They all looked at me. Somehow I saw that they had known about it
beforehand, and Bernd told me tonight it was the Graf who had drawn the
authorities' attention to the desirability of having tongues like
Kloster's on the side of the Hohenzollerns.

"Dear child," said the Grafin gently, "we Germans do not permit our
great to go unhonoured."

"But he would never--" I began; then remembered my lesson yesterday and
his silence. So that's what it was. He already had his command to
attend at the palace and be decorated in his pocket.

I sat staring straight before me. Kloster bought? Kloster for sale?
And the Government at such a crisis finding time to bother about him?

"_Ja, ja_," said the Colonel gaily, as though answering my
thoughts--and I found I had been staring, without seeing him, straight
into his eyes, "_ja, ja_, we think of everything here."

"Not," gently amended the Grafin, "that it was difficult to think of
honouring so great a genius as our dear Kloster. He has been in
Majestat's thoughts for years."

"I expect he has," I said; for Kloster has often told me how they hated
him at court, him and his friends, but that he was too well known all
over the world for them to be able to interfere with him; something
like, I expect, Tolstoi and the Russian court.

The Grafin looked at me quickly.

"And so has Majestat been in his," I continued.

"Kloster," said the Grafin very gently, "is a most amusing talker, and
sometimes cannot resist saying the witty things that occur to him,
however undesirable they may be. We all know they mean nothing. We
all understand and love our Kloster. And nobody, as you see, dear
child, more than Majestat, with his ever ready appreciation of genius."

I could only sit silent, staring at my plate. Kloster gone. Kloster
allowing himself to be gagged by a decoration. I wanted to push the
intolerable thought away from me and cry out, "No, it _can't_ be."

Why, who can one believe in now? Who is left? There's Bernd, my
beloved, my heart's own mate; and as I sat there dumb, and they all
triumphed on with their self-congratulations and satisfactions, and
Majestat this