von Detmold's character, and he confessed to me that he made notes of her conversation every time he left her house.
"That woman," he said, "will probably be a martyr for civilisation. I find myself so cussedly in agreement with her that when I go back to New York I shall probably hang a Red Flag out of my window and lose all my respectable patients. She has the vision of the future."
"What about Brand and Elsa?" I asked, dragging him down to personalities.
He put his arm through mine as we walked down the Hohestrasse.
"Brand," he said in his shrewd way, "is combining martyrdom with romance—an unsafe combination. The pretty Elsa has lighted up his romantic heart because of her adoration and her feminine sentiment. I don't blame him. At his age—after four years of war and exile—her golden-spun hair would have woven a web round my heart. Youth is youth, and don't you forget it, my lad."
"Where does the martyrdom come in?" I asked.
The little doctor blinked through his horn spectacles.
"Don't you see it? Brand has been working out new ideals of life. After killing a good many German boys, as sniper and Chief Assassin of the 11th Corps, he wants to marry a German girl as a proclamation to the world that he—Wickham Brand—has done with hatred and is out for the brotherhood of man, and the breaking-down of the old frontiers. For that ideal he is going to sacrifice his reputation, and make a martyr of himself—not forgetting that romance is pleasant and Elsa von Kreuzenach as pretty as a peach! Bless his heart, I admire his courage and his boyishness."
Any doubt I had about the reality of Brand's passion
