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The first meeting between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach had been rather dramatic, according to my friend's account of it, and he did not dramatise his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) an unsuccessful novelist. It had happened on the third night after his presentation of the billeting-paper which by military right of occupation ordered the owners of the house to provide a bedroom and sitting-room for an officer. There had been no trouble about that. The Mädchen who had answered the door of the big white house in a side street off the Kaiserring had dropped a curtsey, and in answer to Brand's fluent and polite German said at once, "Kommen Sie herein, bitte," and took him into a drawing-room to the right of the hall, leaving him there while she went to fetch "die gnädige Baronin," that is to say the Baroness von Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and studied the German drawing-room to read its character as a key to that of the family under whose roof he was coming by right of conquest, for that, in plain words, was the meaning of his presence.

It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. On one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a large portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a similar frame, a portrait of the ex