All day long sad and solemn groups stood under the trees in the boulevards amid the falling leaves discussing the crime in horrified tones. The horror of it pervaded the house. I found my wife weeping at evening; no need to ask what was the matter; the wife of the chaplain had been there, with some detail of Miss Cavell's last hours: how she had arisen wearily from her cot at the coming of the clergyman, drawing her dressing-gown about her thin throat. [Sidenote: The body not given to friends.] I sent a note to Baron von der Lancken asking that the Governor-General permit the body of Miss Cavell to be buried by the American Legation and the friends of the dead girl. In reply he came himself to see me in the afternoon. He was very solemn, and said that he wished to express his regret in the circumstances, but that he had done all he could. The body, he said, had already been interred, with respect and with religious rites, in a quiet place, and under the law it could not be exhumed without an order from the Imperial Government. The Governor-General himself had gone to Berlin. [Sidenote: Whitlock and Villalobar.] And then came Villalobar, and I thanked him for what he had done. He told me much, and described the scene the night before in that anteroom with Lancken. The Marquis was much concerned about the Countess Jeanne de Belleville and Madame Thuiliez, both French, and hence protegees of his, condemned to die within eight days; but I told him not to be concerned; that the effect of Miss Cavell's martyrdom did not end with her death; it would procure other liberations, this among them; the thirst for blood had been slaked and there would be no more executions in that group; it was the way of the law of blood vengeance. We talked a long time about the tragedy and about the even larger tragedy of the war. "We are getting old," he said. "Life is going; and after the war, if we live in that new world, we shall be of the old--the new generation will push us aside." [Sidenote: Miss Cavell's death wins mercy for others.]