hat train at Victoria nearly
a year ago," he said. "If I had been five seconds later, I should have
missed it, and so I should have missed my friend, and Sylvia would have
missed hers, and Mike would have missed his. As it is, here we all are.
Behold the last remnant of my German sentimentality evaporates, but I am
filled with a German desire for beer. Let us come into the studio, liebe
Kinder, and have beer and music and laughter. We cannot recapture this
hour or prolong it. But it was good, oh, so good! I thank God for this
hour."

Sylvia put her hand on her brother's arm, looking at him with just a
shade of anxiety.

"Nothing wrong, Hermann?" she asked.

"Wrong? There is nothing wrong unless it is wrong to be happy. But we
have to go forward: my only quarrel with life is that. I would stop it
now if I could, so that time should not run on, and we should stay just
as we are. Ah, what does the future hold? I am glad I do not know."

Sylvia laughed.

"The immediate future holds beer apparently," she said. "It also hold
a great deal of work for you and me, if it is to hold Leipzig and
Frankfort and Munich. Oh, Hermann, what glorious days!"

They walked together into the studio, and as they entered Hermann looked
back over her into the dim garden. Then he pulled down the blind with a
rattle.

"'Move on there!' said the policeman," he remarked. "And so they moved
on."

The news about the murder of the Austrian Grand Duke, which, for that
moment at dinner, had caused Hermann to peer with apprehension into the
veil of the future, was taken quietly enough by the public in general in
England. It was a nasty incident, no doubt, and the murder having been
committed on Servian soil, the pundits of the Press gave themselves
an opportunity for subsequently saying that they were right, by
conjecturing that Austria might insist on a strict inquiry into the
circumstances, and the due punishment of not only the actual culprits
but of those also who perhaps were privy to the plot. But three days
afterwards there was but little uneasiness; the Stock Exchanges of
the European capitals--those highly sensitive barometers of coming
storm--were but slightly affected for the moment, and within a week
had steadied themselves again. From Austria there came no sign of any
unreasonable demand which might lead to trouble with Servia, and so with
Slavonic feeling generally, and by degrees that threatening of storm,
that sudden lightning