Englishman is a traitorous hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of our old German God shall follow her."
Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing of the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach.
"Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say."
Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and still held his hand in a tight grip.
"There is something more to say, my dear father and mother," she answered. "It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him anywhere in the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than hate, and above all nationality."
It was Franz von Kreuzenach who spoke now. He was standing at the table, facing his father, and it was to his father that he talked. He said that Elsa was right about love. In spite of the war, the souls of men and women were not separated by racial boundaries. When two souls touched and mingled, no hatred of peoples, no patriotic passion, could intervene. Elsa's love for an English gentleman was but a symbol of the peace that was coming, when all countries would be united in a Society of Nations with equal rights and equal duties, and a common brotherhood. They saw in the streets of Cologne that there was no natural, inevitable hatred between English and Germans. The Army of Occupation had proved itself to be an instrument of good will between those who had tried to kill each other for four years of slaughter. Captain Brand had behaved with the most charming courtesy and chivalry, according to the traditions of an English gentleman, and he, Franz von Kreuzenach, was glad and honoured because this
