Mathilde sat up. Her voice acquired a vicious dullness. "You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes." "I, Matty?" The Baron laughed and resumed his mocha. "I am heart and soul with Levine. If Dorn cannot go I will have to go alone. It is necessary I be in Munich when the Soviets are called out." "You will not interfere with me, von Stinnes," the girl repeated, "or I will kill you." "You have my permission, Fräulein. The logical time for my death is long past." Mathilde's sharp young face had grown alive with excitement. She sat with her eyes unwaveringly upon the Baron as if her thought were groping desperately beneath the smiling weariness of the man. "Mr. Dorn," she spoke, "von Stinnes is a traitor." Dorn smiled. "If one million marks will cause a revolution, I'll take them to Munich myself," he answered. "I'm sick of Berlin. I need a revolution to divert me." "I fear I am in the way," von Stinnes interrupted. He arose with formality. "Mathilde would like to unburden herself to you, Dorn. I am, she will inform you, a secret agent of Colonel Nickolai, and Colonel Nickolai is the head of the anti-bolshevist pro-royalist propaganda in Prussia." He paused and smiled. "I will meet you in the lobby when you come down." He walked toward the door, halting before the excited face of the girl. "Ah, Matty, Matty," he murmured, "you will not in your zeal forget that I love you?" He bowed whimsically and passed out. Dorn laid aside his book and approached the divan. In the week since their return from Weimar he had become interested in the moody, dynamic young creature. The fact that she had resisted the expert persuasions of the Baron--a subject on which the nobleman had discoursed piquantly on their ride to Berlin--had appealed to him. "Karl is a good fellow," he said, seating himself next to her. "And if it happens he is employed by Noske and Nickolai it doesn't alter my opinion of him." "He is a scoundrel," she answered quietly. "That is impossible," Dorn smiled. "He is merely a man without convictions and therefore free to follow his impulses and his employers. I thank God for von Stinnes. He has made Europe possible. A revolution alone could rival him in my affections."