"Eileen would make a fine wife for any man she liked. But she's above most of us."
We stayed up, talking, nearly all that night, and Wickham Brand described one scene within his recent experiences which must have been sensational. It was when he announced to the family von Kreuzenach that he loved Elsa and desired her hand in marriage.
Brand's sense of humour came back to him when he told me of this episode, and he laughed now at the frightfulness of his ordeal. It was he who had insisted upon announcing the news to Elsa's parents, to avoid any charge of dishonesty. Elsa herself was in favour of hiding their love until Peace was declared, when perhaps the passionate hostility of her parents to England might be abated. For Brand's sake also she thought it would be better. But she yielded to his argument that secrecy might spoil the beauty of their friendship, and give it an ugly taint.
"We'll go through with it straight from the start," he had cried.
Elsa's answer was quick and glad.
"I have no fear now of anything in the world except the loss of you!"
Franz von Kreuzenach was the first to know, and Elsa told him. He seemed stunned with surprise, and then immensely glad, as he took his sister in his arms and kissed her.
"Your marriage with an English officer," he said, "will be the symbol of reconciliation between England and Germany."
After that he remembered his father and mother, and was a coward at the thought of their hostility. The idea of telling his father, as Elsa asked him to do, put him into what Brand called "the bluest of blue funk." He had the German reverence for parental authority and
