Brand decided to take the risk, and though he asked my advice beforehand, as a matter of friendship, I knew my warnings were useless. It was about a month after that tram journey to Bonn that he came into my room at the Domhof, looking rather pale but with a kind of glitter in his eyes.
"I may as well tell you," he said abruptly, "that I am going to marry a German girl."
"Elsa von Kreuzenach?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"Just a guess."
"It's against her parents' wish," he said, "to say nothing of my parents, who think I have gone mad. Elsa and I will have to play a lone hand."
"'Lone' is not the word," I suggested. "You are breaking that taboo we talked of. You will be shunned by every friend you have in the world—except one or two queer people like myself"—(Here he said, "Thanks," and grinned rather gratefully) "and both you and she will be pariahs in England, Germany, and anywhere on the wide earth where there are English, Germans, French, Americans and others who fought the war. I suppose you know that?"
"Perfectly," he answered, gravely.
I told him that I was amazed that he of all men should fall in love with a German girl—he who had seen all the abomination of the war, and had come out to it with a flaming idealism. To that he answered savagely:
