“Yes, Mother,” said the girl. “I am mad with joy.” “This English officer insults us intolerably,” said the mother, still ignoring Brand by any glance. “We were forced to receive him into our house. At least he might have behaved with decency and respect.” “Mother,” said Elsa, “this gentleman has given me the great honour of his love.” “To accept it,” said the lady, “would be a dishonour so dreadful for a good German girl that I refuse to believe it possible.” “It is true, Mother, and I am wonderfully happy.” Elsa went over to her mother, sinking down on her knees, and kissing the lady’s hand. But Frau von Kreuzenach withdrew her hand quickly, and then rose from her chair and stood behind her husband, with one hand on his shoulder. The old man had found his means of speech at last. He spoke in a low, stern voice to his daughter. Brand was ignored by him as by the mother. They did not recognise his presence. “My daughter,” he said (if Brand remembered his words), “the German people have been brought to ruin and humiliated by one nation in Europe who was jealous of our power and genius. That nation was England, our treacherous, hypocritical enemy. Without England, France would have been smashed. Without England our Emperor would have prevailed over all his enemies. Without the English blockade we should not have been weakened by hunger, deprived of the raw material necessary to victory, starved so that our children died, and our will to win was sapped. They were English soldiers who killed my dear son Heinrich, and your brother. The flower of German manhood was slain by the English in Flanders and on the Somme.” The General spoke very quietly, with an intensity of effort to be calm. But suddenly his voice rose, said Brand, to a kind of harsh shout. “Any German girl who permits herself to love an Englishman is a traitorous hussy. I would have her stripped and flogged. The curse of our old German God shall follow her.” Another silence, in which there was no sound except the noisy breathing of the old man, was broken by the hard voice of Frau von Kreuzenach. “Your father has spoken, Elsa. There is no more to say.” Elsa had become very pale, but she was smiling at Brand, he told me, and still held his hand in a tight grip. “There is something more to say, my dear father and mother,” she answered. “It is that I love Captain Brand, and that I will follow him anywhere in the world if he will take me. For love is stronger than hate, and above all nationality.”