The quarrel between the two young women followed, and one summer evening a few weeks later Günderode strolled unobtrusively to the bank of her favorite stream and there shot herself. It is not suggested that any overt scandal occurred, or that the quarrel with Bettina was the immediate cause of this act. Günderode’s poetry is minor-keyed and full of a romantic preoccupation with early death. But certainly something in the relation between the two girls was a contributing factor. And that variant inferences are not far-fetched is evidenced by a German lesbian novel of 1919,[7] in which the memory of Günderode is worshipped with passion by a brilliantly educated lesbian, while Bettina is the object of jealous hatred. The author of this tale (of which more later) is known to have had access to much German material not available to the present writer, which apparently supported the lesbian inference. * * * * * Only a few years after Günderode’s death a tragedy in Edinburgh was directly attributed to homosexual scandal. Two mistresses of a private school, Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, were accused of tribadism by Dame Helen Cumming Gordon on the evidence of a young relative (or ward) who was a pupil in the school. The young women brought suit for slander and after a long and bitter battle apparently won their case, but their reputations were damaged to the extent of ruining their educational enterprise. It is upon the court record of their trial that Lillian Hellman based her Broadway success of 1934, _The Children’s Hour_, and their story will receive further attention when that drama is considered under twentieth-century literature.