The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged, the other young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by his billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast. The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders. “It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English, a little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are pleased to call us Huns”--here she laughed good-humouredly--“I trust that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your blockade.” In that short speech there was a hint of hostility--masked under a graciousness of manner--which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive. “As long as it is not inconvenient----” he said, awkwardly. It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her friendly words, and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good looks. That she was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a glance. She had the same thin face and fair hair, but Youth was on her side, and her finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line that comes from age or bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as one sees it in Prussia more, I fancy, than in southern Germany, and her complexion was that perfect rose-red and lily-white which often belongs to German girls, and is doll-like if they are soft and plump, as many are. This girl’s fault was thinness, but to Brand, not a sentimentalist, nor quickly touched by feminine influence (I have written that, but on second thoughts believe that under Brand’s ruggedness there was a deep strain of sentiment, approaching weakness), she seemed flower-like and spiritual. So he told me after his early acquaintance with her. Her first words to him were charming. “We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to our house not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice, but as an Englishman who may come to be our friend.” “Thanks,” said Brand. He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one word gratefully. The mother added something to her daughter’s speech. “We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake.” “It was inevitable,” said Brand, “after what had happened.” The daughter--her name was Elsa--put her hand on her mother’s arm with a quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war. “I will show Captain Brand to his rooms.”