No novelty in horror could startle
European women in those days. They dressed themselves hastily in their
gray uniforms and followed her to the _Saal_. With Mimi's assistance she
put on his coat, the hilt of the dagger thrusting forward the row of
medals on his breast. Marie went out into the street and flitted up and
down like a big gray moth, her gray little face tense with rapture. Her
devotion to Gisela had been fanatical from the first but now she begged
what invisible power her wild little mind still recognized to be
permitted to die for her.
In a moment she signaled that the street was deserted. Gisela and Mimi
carried the body over to the park and dropped it into the swiftly
flowing Isar. The clear jade green of the lovely river reflected the
points of the stars, and Franz von Nettelbeck as he drifted down the
tide looked as if attended by innumerable candles dropped graciously
from on high to watch at his bier. But it was to Heloise this fancy
came, and she lifted her face and thanked the stars for their silent
funeral march. Not for her would the supreme sacrifice have been
possible, and for the moment she did not envy Gisela Doering.
The four girls walked rapidly over to the Maximilianstrasse and crossed
the bridge to the Maximilianeum. The long symmetrical brown building
with its open galleries filled with the cold starlight was distorted by
a wireless station on its highest point and by a biplane on the extreme
left of the roof.
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