Reading this narrative over I think perhaps it would be more consistent if I omitted these preliminary paragraphs in view of the events which are recorded below. Should this story by chance obtain a wider circulation than that which was intended, it would be perhaps necessary to explain my honourable relationships with this sometime belle of Irish freedom. Miss O’Mara and I met in the halcyon days at a ball. What there was in me that attracted her it is not for me to say. We Germans shrink from the revelation of our secret souls. Our thoughts are too sacred for vulgar expression, but this I may say, that it is a curious fact that women find some subtle attraction in me which they cannot define. There must be other men in the world of my height and build--even stouter men. There must be eyes as blue as mine and hair as like velvet pile of a deep sun-kissed auburn. There must be men with the same deep, tender voice, and that there are men with the same taste who dress as well, I can testify, for in one day in Chicago I have seen a dozen gentlemen with the same patterned waistcoat, the same pink tie, the same gold chain and wearing just as many rings as I carry on my hands. I think we must look for this fascination (if I may be allowed to use the word, and I can think of no better) in a subtle mind, something which cannot be reduced to words, an aura of understanding, a moral up-lifting force which radiates from a vigorous and virile soul. We Germans are rare sentimentalists, I admit. Materialism finds no place in the true German heart. Enemies have made statements about me, particularly in relation to a certain Flossie van Heever, a clerk at a Detroit drug store, which I repudiate with scorn and indignation. The girl utterly misinterpreted certain well-meaning words such as a German gentleman would speak, certain innocent attention such as a German gentleman can give, and I emphatically deny all the sordid charges which this girl in a moment of delirium made against me. Oh, Plato, Plato, what sins are committed in thy name! To what depth will a woman sink in order to secure the man for whom her heart craves! But enough of these sordid affairs. It is sufficient that Miss Kathleen O’Mara believed in me. I wrote to her every week from the day I landed in England. I wrote about my life and about her work and that peculiar hobby of hers that I had many times thought of utilizing for the benefit of the Fatherland. Sometimes she would reply tenderly or in holy rage when she thought of the wrongs of her down-trodden countrymen (_i.e._, Irishmen) and sometimes she did not answer at all. For three months before this story opened I had not heard from her.