"That is my brother Franz. He is home again, Gott sei dank! Heinrich worshipped him."
Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O'Connor. He had Eileen's letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head, clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble.
"I hope we shall meet one day," said Brand.
Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words.
"He will like to meet you—ever so much. You see, he was educated at Oxford, and does not forget his love for England."
"In spite of the war?" asked Brand.
The girl put both her hands to her breast.
"The war!" she said. "Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It was a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance—on both sides. The poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men who made this war against our will, and called out our evil passions. The wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is for good people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made, the ruin of hearts."
She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly.
"Are you one of those who will go on hating?"
Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told me, that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a sniper in No Man's Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not forgive the Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a little.
"The future must wipe out the past. The Peace must not be for vengeance."
At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up gladly.
"That is the old English spirit! I have said to my
