"But only because our mother married him," explained Anna-Felicitas. "Else we wouldn't have."
"And though she only did it once," said Anna-Rose, "ages ago, it has dogged our footsteps ever since."
"It's very surprising," mused Anna-Felicitas, "what marrying anybody does. You go into a church, and before you know where you are, you're all tangled up with posterity."
"And much worse than that," said Anna-Rose, staring wide-eyed at her own past experiences, "posterity's all tangled up with you. It's really simply awful sometimes for posterity. Look at us."
"If there hadn't been a war we'd have been all right," said Anna-Felicitas. "But directly there's a war, whoever it is you've married, if it isn't one of your own countrymen, rises up against you, just as if he were too many meringues you'd had for dinner."
"Living or dead," said Anna-Rose, nodding, "he rises up against you."
"Till the war we never thought at all about it," said Anna-Felicitas.
"Either one way or the other," said Anna-Rose.
"We never used to bother about what we were," said Anna-Felicitas. "We were just human beings, and so was everybody else just human beings."
"We didn't mind a bit about being Germans, or about other people not being Germans."