You and I have so much to say to each other."
Emily wondered if it were really her middle-aged and prosaic self who
sat later at the table, being waited on by a very competent butler, and
deferred to by the two men as if she were a queen.
It was she and the old man who did most of the talking, but always she
was conscious of Ulrich's attentive eyes, of the weight of the quiet
words which he interjected now and then in the midst of his father's
volubility.
"Germany, my mother, is dead," wailed the old man. "I have wept over
her grave; those who wage this war against humanity are bastards, the
real sons and daughters of that sweet old Germany are here in
America--they have come to their foster-mother, and they love her.
"If I had been younger," he went on, "I should have fought. My son
would have fought. But as it is we can make toys--and we shall say to
the Prussians across the sea, 'You have killed our mother--your people
are no longer our people, nor your God our God.'"
Ulrich took Emily home. She carried with her a Noah's Ark, and a
precious pot of cyclamen. She had chosen the cyclamen out of all the
rest.
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