Bernd was telegraphed for this afternoon from headquarters to go back at once to Berlin, and he’s gone.  I’m rubbing my eyes to see if I’m awake, it has been so sudden.  The whole house seemed changed in an instant.  The Graf went too.  The newspaper doesn’t get here till we are at lunch, and is always brought in and laid by the Graf, and today there was the Austrian ultimatum to Servia in it, and when the Graf saw that in the headlines of the Tageszeitung he laid it down without a word and got up and left the room.  Bernd reached over for the paper to see what had happened, and it was that.  He read it out to us.  “This means war,” he said, and the Grafin said, “Hush,” very quickly; I suppose because she couldn’t bear to hear the word.  Then she got up too, and went after the Graf, and we were left, Helena and the governess, and the children, and Bernd, and I at a confused and untidy table, everybody with a question in their eyes, and the servants’ hands not very steady as they held the dishes.  The menservants would all have to go and fight if there were war.  No wonder the dishes shook a little, for they can’t but feel excited.

As soon as we could get away from the diningroom Bernd and I went out into the garden—­the Graf and Grafin hadn’t reappeared—­and he said that though for a moment he had thought Austria’s ultimatum would mean war, it was only just the first moment, but that he believed Servia would agree to everything, and the crisis would blow over in the way so many of them had blown over before.

I asked him what would happen if it didn’t; I wanted things explained to me clearly, for positively I’m not quite clear about which nations would be fighting; and he said why talk about hateful things like war as long as there wasn’t a war.  He said that as long as his chief left him peacefully at Koseritz and didn’t send for him to Berlin I might be sure it was going to be just a local quarrel, for his being sent for would mean that all officers on leave were being sent for, and that the Government was at least uneasy.  Then at four o’clock came the telegram.  The Government is, accordingly, at least uneasy.

I saw hardly any more of him.  He got his things together with a quickness that astonished me, and he and the Graf, who was going to Berlin by the same train, motored to Stettin to catch the last express.  Just before they left he caught hold of my hand and pulled me into the library where no one was, and told me how he thanked God I was English.  “Chris, if you had been French or Russian,”—­he said, looking as though the very thought filled him with horror.  He laid his face against mine.  “I’d have loved you just the same,” he said, “I could have done nothing else but love you, and think, think what it would have meant—­”

“Then it will be Germany as well, if there’s war?” I said, “Germany as well as Austria, and France and Russia—­what, almost all Europe?” I exclaimed, incredulous of such a terror.