He saw perfectly clearly that Hermann must go.
"I don't want to dissuade you," he said, "not only because it would be useless, but because I am with you.

You couldn't do otherwise, Hermann." "I don't see that I could.

Sylvia agrees too." A terrible conjecture flashed through Michael's mind.
"And she ?" he asked.
"She can't leave my mother, of course," said Hermann, "and, after all, I may be on a wild goose chase.

But I can't risk being unable to get to Germany, if--if the worst happens." The ghost of a smile played round his mouth for a moment.
"And I'm not sure that she could leave you, Mike," he added.
Somehow this, though it gave Michael a moment of intensest relief to know that Sylvia remained, made the shadow grow deeper, accentuated the lines of the storm which had begun to spread over the sky.

He began to see as nightmare no longer, but as stern and possible realities, something of the unutterable woe, the divisions, the heart-breaks which menaced.
"Hermann, what do you think will happen ?" he said.