"They are fighting to get the whole world under an iron heel—to crush—to grind—to destroy. My father reads it and weeps. He is an old man, Fräulein, and his mind goes back to the Germany which sang and told fairy tales, and made toys; do you see?
"Yet there are people here who do not understand, who point their fingers at him, at me. Who think because I am Ulrich Stölle that I am not—American. Yet what am I but that?"
He got up and walked around the room restlessly. "I am an American. If I was not born here, can I help that? But my heart has been moulded here. For me there is no other country. Germany I love—yes, but as one loves a woman who has been led away—because one thinks of the things she might have been, not of the thing she is."
He came back to her. "Will you sell me your elephant, Fräulein?"
She held out her hand to him. Her eyes were wet. "I will lend him to your father. Indeed, I cannot sell him."
He took her hand in a strong grasp. "I knew you were kind. If you could only see my father."
"Bring him here some day."
"He is too old to be brought. He sticks close to his chair. But if you would come and see him? You and perhaps the young lady who waited on me when I came before, and who was here to-day with the young man whose heart is singing."
"Oh, you saw that?"
"It was there for the whole world to see, was it not? A man in love hides nothing. You will bring them then? We have flowers even in December in our hothouses; you will like that, and you shall see my father. I think you will love my father, Fräulein."