"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State. He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared, are the proper motives for life. They _are_ life. Fear is a stronger and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and ends logically in death. With Christ the real victory, the real heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life." The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military philosophers. Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except under a _quasi_ truce or other provisional conditions. To form a perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton reformation took place. In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook hand: Immer heller brennt die Licht, Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht. Offered to her meadow pupil By his meadow teacher. (Ever brighter burns the light Of my sweet forget-me-not.) The Germans are not original in love-making. Elsa had read of such things being done. But it was an admission or advance from her as unexpected as it was belated. Gard tossed about awhile on his bed, thinking of it. As he had often acknowledged to himself, he had been interested in her more than any girl he had yet known. In the morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the gift. For it seemed to be _apropos_ of nothing in particular at this unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to Americans and had at length struck a sentimental attitude. CHAPTER XXXII A GERMAN MARRIAGE PROPOSAL