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 Germany— one west of the Rhine to Mühlhausen; one almost due east and up the river valley to the Rhinefall; one northeast to Tedtnau; the other north and parallel with the Rhine to Freiburg and Karlsruhe. The train evidently was traveling this last road with the Rhine valley dimly in sight to the west. There had come to Ruth the wholly irrational sensation that Germany, when at last seen, must appear a land distinct from all others; but nothing in this quiet countryside, which was disclosing itself to greater and greater distance under the brightening dawn, was particularly alarming or peculiar. She viewed a fair and beautiful land of forest, and farm, and tiny, neat villages very like the Swiss, and with not so many soldiers in evidence about them as Ruth had noticed upon the Swiss side of the frontier.

Perhaps it was the appearance of this fair, quiet countryside which spared Ruth from complete dismay; perhaps, deep within her, she had always realized that her venture must prove inevitably fatal, and this realization now controlled her reactions as well as her conscious thought; perhaps she was one of those whom despair amazingly arms with coolness and resource.

"I will go with you to Lauengratz," Ruth replied.

"That's good!" He patted the seat beside him. "Come back here now."

Ruth recognized that she must obey or he would seize her; so she returned to the other seat and suffered his arm about her.

"You do not recall me, Liebchen?" he asked indulgently.

He referred, obviously, to some encounter previous to