E-text prepared by Sandra Bannatyne
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Photograph by Arnold Genthe, N.Y.
THE WHITE MORNING
A NOVEL OF THE POWER OF THE GERMAN WOMEN IN WARTIME
BY
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
Contents.
THE WHITE MORNING
I
1
Countess Gisela Niebuhr sat in the long dusk of Munich staring over atthe beautiful park that in happier days had been famous in the world asthe Englischer Garten, and deliberately recalled on what might be thelast night of her life the successive causes that had led to herprofound dissatisfaction with her country as a woman. She was sothoroughly disgusted with it as a German that personal grievances werefar from necessary to fortify her for the momentous rôle she was to playwith the dawn; but in this rare hour of leisure it amused her naturallyintrospective mind to rehearse certain episodes whose sum had made herwhat she was.
When she was fourteen and her sisters Lili and Elsa sixteen and eighteenthey had met in the attic of their home in Berlin one afternoon whentheir father was automatically at his club and their mother taking herprescribed hour of rest, and solemnly pledged one another never tomarry. The causes of this vital conclave were both cumulative andimmediate. Their father, the Herr Graf, a fine looking junker of sixtyodd, with a roving eye and a martial air despite a corpulence whichannoyed him excessively, had transferred his lost authority over hisregiment to his household. The boys were in their own regiments and ridof parental discipline, but the countess and the girls received the fullbenefit of his military, and Prussian, relish for despotism.
In his essence a kind man and fond of his women, he balked their everyindividual wish and allowed them practically no liberty. They never leftthe house unattended, like the American girls and those fortunate beingsof the student class. Lili had a charming voice and was consumed withambition to be an operatic star. She had summoned her courage upon onememorable occasion and broached the subject to her father. All theterrified family had expected his instant dissolution from apoplexy, andin spite of his petty tyrannies they loved him. The best instructor inBerlin continued to give her lessons, as nothing gave the Graf morepleasure of an evening than her warblings.
The household, quite apart from the Frau Gräfin's admirable management,ran with military precision, and no one dared to be the fra