I’m coming back to you.  Don’t be unhappy about me.  Don’t think I’m coming back mangled, a bleeding thing, because you see, I still have Bernd.  I still believe in him—­oh, with my whole being.  And as long as I do that how can I be anything but happy?  It’s strange how, now that the catastrophe has come, I’m quite calm, sitting here at Frau Berg’s in my old room in the middle of the night writing to you.  I think it’s because the whole thing is so great that I’m like this, like somebody who has had a mortal blow, and because it’s mortal doesn’t feel.  But this isn’t mortal.  I’ve got Bernd and you,—­only now I must have great patience.  Till I see him again.  Till war is over and he comes for me, and I shall be with him always.

I’m coming to you, dear mother.  It’s finished here.  I’m going to describe it all quite calmly to you.  I’m not going to be unworthy of Bernd, I won’t have less of dignity and patience than he has.  If you’d seen him tonight saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the Colonel!  His look as he obeyed—­I shan’t forget it.  When next I’m weak and base I shall remember it, and it will save me.

At dinner there were only the Grafin and Helena and me, and they didn’t speak a word, not only not to me but not to each other, and in the middle a servant brought in a note for the Grafin from the Graf, he said, and when she had looked at it she got up and went out.  We finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when the Grafin’s maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress.  She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though she wasn’t writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round, that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening.  She said that apart from her private feelings, which were all in favour of my going—­she would be quite frank, she said—­there were serious political reasons why I shouldn’t stay even as long as till tomorrow.  The Graf’s career, his position in the ministry, their social position, Majestat,—­I really don’t remember all she said, and it matters so little, so little.  I listened, trying to understand, trying to give all my attention to it and disentangle it, while my heart was thumping so because of Bernd.  For I was being turned out in disgrace, and I am his betrothed, and so I am his honour, and whatever of shame there is for me there is of shame for him.

The Grafin got more and more unsteady in her voice as she went on.  She was trying hard to keep calm, but she was evidently feeling so acutely, so violently, that it was distressing to, have to watch her.  I was so sorry.  I wanted to put my arms round her and tell her not to mind so much, that of course I’d go, but if only she wouldn’t mind so much whatever it was.  Then at last she began to lose her hold on herself, and got up and walked about the room saying things about England.  So then I knew.  And I knew the answer to everything