the guttural argument of two Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand's sake.
His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing eyes. He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his hand to Elsa von Kreuzenach and they walked slowly up from the station and then went inside the Cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers at our headquarters in the hotel, "Die Goldene Stern." Afterwards I had lunch with them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven's house—a little shrine in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old instruments, his manuscript sheets of music and many relics of his life and work.
It was at about four o'clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down, and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leap-frog there, watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way home. I strolled the length of the gardens and at the end which is near the old front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von Kreuzenach together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat under the trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of his field-cap, and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were holding hands like lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I heard Brand speak.
"I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us. . . ."
When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether Brand would confide his secret to me.
