She thought they could bid each other good-by with a kiss, but two servants stood outside, and they had to content themselves with a prolonged clasp of the hand, and a look from Wilhelm's troubled eyes into hers, which were wet.

She was the first to speak: "Farewell, and come back safely, my Wilhelm.

I must go back to the drawing-room." Yes, if she must! and without looking back, he descended the marble staircase, feeling chilled to the bone, in spite of the hot sunlight in the street.

He had the feeling that he was leaving nothing belonging to him in Berlin, except his own people's graves.
In the evening he left by one of the numberless roads which at short distances traverse Germany toward the west like the straight lines of a railway.

The quiet of the landscape was disturbed by the fifes, rattle of wheels, and clanking of chains, and to all the villages along the road they brought back the consciousness, forgotten till now, that Germany's best blood was to be shed in a stream flowing westward.