Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/279

 her into Germany with power to punish her as might appeal to him.

"Then you do not know Lauengratz?" he went on.

"No," Ruth said.

"You do not call me Herr Baron now, Liebchen," he reproached, patting her face.

Ruth made no reply but the futile movement of slipping to the cushions opposite, where he permitted her to sit alone, contenting himself by leaning back and smirking at her.

He continued to speak to her in English, except for his native liebchens, to show off his perfect familiarity with her language. For he entirely abandoned all pretense of believing her anything but American. Near Lauengratz, he informed her, was his favorite estate, where, when he wished, even the war would not unpleasantly intrude; he trusted that she would have the good sense to wish to visit Lauengratz.

Dawn was brightening, and Wessels—Ruth did not yet know his true name—switched off the lights in the compartment, lifted the curtains and motioned to the right and ahead, where, along the length of Baden, lay the wooded hills of his Schwarzwald—the Black Forest. The gray light, sweeping over the sky, showed Ruth the wooded slopes reaching down toward the Rhine, which had formed the Swiss-German boundary at Basel, but which now flowed almost due north between the German grand duchy of Baden and the German Imperial Territory of Alsace, within the western edge of which now ran the French and American battle line.

Four railroads, Ruth knew, reached from Basel into