"Thanks," she spoke in German. "I will go now. I will see you after. At dinner to-night. Here."
She walked quickly from the room, the oblong package under her arm.
CHAPTER VII
The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world—the dark, furtive hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day in the streets of Munich. Working men with guns. A sweep of spike-haired, deep-eyed troglodytes from the underworld of labor. Factories, shops, and alleys vomited them forth. Farm hovels and stinking bundles of houses sent them singing and roaring down the forbidden avenues, past the forbidden sanctuaries of satrap and burgher.
From behind curtained windows the upper world looked on with amazement and disgust. A topsy-turvy April morning. A Spring day gone mad. Here were the masses celebrated in pamphlet and soap-box oration. An ungodly spectacle, an overturning. Grinning earth faces, roaring earth voices come swaggering into the hallowed precincts of civilization. Workingmen with guns marching to take possession of the world. An old tableau decked with new phrases—the underfed barbarian at the gate of the grainary.
The singing and the roaring continued through the morning.
"Es lebe die Welt Revolution! Es lebe das Rate Republik! Hoch! die soviet von Bayern ... Hoch! Hoch!"
From the twisting, blackened streets, "Hoch!" Men and women squeezing aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "Hoch! Hoch!" from faces clustered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in the squares.
Red flags, red placards like a swarm of confetti on the walls and in the air. A holiday war.... The morning hours marched away.