giment at once."

"If you are I shall go with you, wherever it may be," she said as
quietly as if it were a matter of course.

"That would hardly be possible," he rejoined, with a smile. "We Germans
make war without women."

"And yet I shall go with you."

Heideck looked at her in amazement. "But don't you understand, dear,
that it would be something entirely novel, and bound to create a
sensation, for a German officer to take the field with his betrothed?"

"I am not afraid of what people think. I don't care what the Kennedys
may say if I leave the ship at Brindisi and go with you. Of course it
will be a sad downfall for me. They would look on me as a lost woman
from that moment. But I care nothing about that. I have long been cured
of the foolish idea that we must sacrifice our happiness to what the
world may say."

Of course Heideck refused to take her words seriously. He did not
believe she meant to accompany him to the field, and seized the
opportunity of making a proposal which he had already carefully
considered.

"I should think the best thing for you to do, my dear Edith, would be to
go to my uncle at Hamburg and stay there till the war is over. Then--if
Heaven spare my life--there will be nothing to prevent our union."

As she made no answer Heideck, who wanted to give her time to think,
hastened to turn the conversation.

"Look how beautiful it is!" he said, pointing to the water.

A long succession of white, foaming waves kept pace with the vessel on
either side. The keel seemed to be cutting its way through a number
of tiny cliffs, over which the sea was breaking. But closer inspection
showed that they were no cliffs, but countless shoals of large fish,
swimming alongside the ship, as if in order of battle. From time to time
they leaped high out of the water, their bright, scaly bodies glistening
in the sun.

"I should like to be one of those dolphins," said Edith. "Look, how free
they are! how they enjoy life!"

"You believe in the transmigration of souls?" said Heideck jestingly;
"perhaps you have once been such a dolphin yourself."

"Then certainly I have made no change for the better. There is no doubt
that our higher intellectual development prevents us from properly
enjoying our natural existence. But it teaches us to feel more deeply
the sorrows, which are far more numerous than the joys of human life."

. . . . . . .

The journey through the Indian Ocean took six days, and Heideck