fficulty of it, the
sacrifice. I'm very unhappy tonight, darling mother, and selfishly
crying out to you. I feel almost like leaving Bernd, and starting for
Glion tomorrow. And then when I think of him without me--He's as
spiritually alone in this welter as I am. I'm the only one he has, the
only human being who understands. Today he said, holding me in his
arms--you should see how we cling to each other now as if we were
drowning--"When this is over, Chris, when I've paid off my bill of duty
and settled with them here to the last farthing of me that I've
promised them, we'll go away for ever. We'll never come back. We'll
never be caught again."

_Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914_.

My beloved mother,

The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I'm going back
to Frau Berg's tomorrow morning. I've settled it with her by
telephone, and I can have my old room. However lonely I am in it
without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being
there before, I won't have this horrid feeling of being in a place full
of sudden and unaccountable hostility. Bernd came this morning, and
the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again. She couldn't
have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I'm going, so she
wants to separate us. But why? Why? And oh, it means so much to me
to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been!
A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of
the front door as she came in.

"What--was Bernd here?" I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of
impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.

"Helena thought you had gone out," said the Grafin.

"But you _knew_ I hadn't," I said, turning on Helena.

"Helena knew nothing of the sort," said the Grafin severely. "She said
what she believed to be true. I must request you, Christine, not to
cast doubts on her word. We Germans do not lie."

And the Graf muttered, "_Peinlich, peinlich_" and pushed hack his chair
and left the room.

"You have spoilt my husband's lunch," said the Grafin sternly.

"I am very sorry," I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn't
see it because I was blinded by tears.

After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg. I waited till the
Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I
should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn't
mind, to go tomorrow. It was