“But I don’t know how long I shall stay in Berlin,” continued Heideck. “I hope I shan’t be sent to join my regiment at once.”
“If you are I shall go with you, wherever it may be,” she said as quietly as if it were a matter of course.
“That would hardly be possible,” he rejoined, with a smile. “We Germans make war without women.”
“And yet I shall go with you.”
Heideck looked at her in amazement. “But don’t you understand, dear, that it would be something entirely novel, and bound to create a sensation, for a German officer to take the field with his betrothed?”
“I am not afraid of what people think. I don’t care what the Kennedys may say if I leave the ship at Brindisi and go with you. Of course it will be a sad downfall for me. They would look on me as a lost woman from that moment. But I care nothing about that. I have long been cured of the foolish idea that we must sacrifice our happiness to what the world may say.”
Of course Heideck refused to take her words seriously. He did not believe she meant to accompany him to the field, and seized the opportunity of making a proposal which he had already carefully considered.
“I should think the best thing for you to do, my dear Edith, would be to go to my uncle at Hamburg and stay there till the war is over. Then—if Heaven spare my life—there will be nothing to prevent our union.”
As she made no answer Heideck, who wanted to give her time to think, hastened to turn the conversation.
“Look how beautiful it is!” he said, pointing to the water.