that has been perplexing me.  They’d been afraid of it the last two days, and now they knew it.  England isn’t going to fold her arms and look on.  Oh, how I loved England then!  Standing in that Berlin drawingroom in the heart of the Junker-military-official set, all by myself in what I think and feel,—­how I loved her!  My heart was thumping five minutes before for fear of shame, now it thumped so that I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to for gladness and pride.  I was a bit of England.  I think to know how much one loves England one has to be in Germany.  I forgot Bernd for a moment, my heart was so full of that other love, that proud love for one’s country when it takes its stand on the side of righteousness.  And presently the Grafin said it all, tumbled it all out,—­that England was going to declare war, and under circumstances so shameful, so full of the well-known revolting hypocrisy, that it made an honest German sick.  “Belgium!” she cried, “What is Belgium?  An excuse, a pretence, one more of the sickening, whining phrases with which you conceal your gluttonous opportunism—­” And so she continued, while I stood silent.

Oh well, all that doesn’t matter now,—­I’m in a hurry, I want to get this letter off to you tonight.  Luckily there’s a letter-box a few yards away, so I won’t have to face much of those awful streets that are yelling now for England’s blood.

I went up and got my things together.  I knew Bernd would get the letter I posted to him this morning telling him I was going to Frau Berg’s tomorrow, so I felt safe about seeing him, even if he didn’t come in to the Koseritzes before I left.  But he did come in.  He came just as I was going downstairs carrying my violin-case—­how foolish and outside of life that music business seems now—­and he seized my hand and took me into the drawingroom.

“Not in here, not in here!” cried the Grafin, getting up excitedly.  “Not again, not ever again does an Englishwoman come into my drawingroom—­”

Bernd went to her and drew her hand through his arm and led her politely to the door, which he shut after her.  Then he came back to me.  “You know, Chris,” he said, “about England?”

“Of course—­just listen,” I answered, for in the street newsboys were yelling Kriegserklarung Englands, and there was a great dull roaring as of a multitude of wild beasts who have been wounded.

“You must go to your mother at once—­tomorrow,” he said.  “Before you’re noticed, before there’s been time to make your going difficult.”

I told him the Grafin had asked me to leave, and I was coming here tonight.  He wasted no words on the Koseritzes, but was anxious lest Frau Berg mightn’t wish to take me in now.  He said he would come with me and see that she did, and place me under her care as part of himself.  “And tomorrow you run.  You run to Switzerland, without telling Frau Berg or a soul where you are going,” he said.  “You just go out, and don’t come back.  I’ll settle with Frau Berg afterwards.  You go to the Anhalter station—­on your feet, Chris, as though you were going for a walk—­and get into the first train for Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, anywhere as long as it’s Switzerland.  You’ll want all your intelligence.  Have you money enough?”