... It would
never enter the stupid official head that German women could conceive,
much less precipitate, a revolution; but there _must_ be traitors,
women who fundamentally were the slaves of men, weak spirits, spirits
rotten with imperialism, militarism, but cunning in the art of
dissimulation.... What an accursed fool and criminal she had been ...
egotistical dreamer! ... led on by the extraordinary power she had
acquired over the women of her race....
For a moment she clung to the embrasure, so overwhelming was her impulse
to hurl herself down into oblivion. In that dark and shrieking uproar
she had the illusion that she was in hell, in hell with her miserable
victims.
But although Gisela's long slumbering nerves had had their revenge last
night, they had given up the fight when she had destroyed their only
ally, and these last protesting vibrations were very brief. Her eyes
fell on the ranks of women standing in the wide Maximilianstrasse,--a
street a mile long and seventy-five feet across--undisturbed by the
turmoil they had anticipated, calmly awaiting her orders. The obsession
passed, and after a brief tribute of hatred to her imagination, which
was, after all, one root of her power, she turned and glanced
critically at her three companions. Marie, looking like a little gray
gnome, was dancing about and waving her arms in ecstasy.
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