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This ambition occupied my thoughts day and night. Other things seemed unreal. I discovered by accident that Herr von Brincken often visited the parents of one of my schoolmates. I took great pains to cultivate her acquaintance, and we became inseparable. Although I was not yet confirmed, I succeeded in getting an invitation to a party at which Von Brincken was to be present.
A similar conspiracy, but embracing the destruction of railroad bridges as well as munition ships and factories, was later revealed on the Pacific Coast. Evidence on which indictments were made against the men Crowley, Von Brincken, and a woman confederate aforementioned, named Captain von Papen, the German military attaché, as the director of the plot.
A German baron, Von Brincken, said to be one of the kaiser's army officers; an employee of the German consulate at San Francisco, C. C. Crowley; and a woman, Mrs. Margaret W. Cornell, were the offenders. A conspiracy to prevent the manufacture and shipment of munitions to the allied powers.
A peculiar mode is vicarious menstrual hemorrhage through old ulcers, wounds, or cicatrices, and many examples are on record, a few of which will be described. Calder gives an excellent account of menstruation at an ankle-ulcer, and Brincken says he has seen periodical bleeding from the cicatrix of a leprous ulcer.
At the same time it began to dawn upon me that the personality of Von Brincken, or rather the difference of our ages, inspired me with a kind of disgust. In spite of his style and good appearance, he had something of the "elderly gentleman" about him. This feeling possessed me when we looked over the house.
The indictments charged that the defendants planned to destroy munition plants at Aetna and Gary, Ind., at Ishpeming, Mich., and at other places. The Government's chief witness, named Van Koolbergen, told of being employed by Baron von Brincken, of the German Consulate at San Francisco, to make and use clockwork bombs to destroy the commerce of neutral nations.
Two years ago Von Brincken died, leaving me a considerable share of his fortune and a letter, written on the night of the day when we last met. I might then have left Richard. Your constancy would have been a sufficient guarantee for my future. A mere accident destroyed my illusions. A friend of my own age had recently married an officer much younger than herself.
I am almost ashamed to confess that men are the same to me as flowers; I judge them by their smell. I remember once a young English waiter in a restaurant who stirred all my sensibilities each time he passed the back of my chair. Luckily Richard was there! For the same reason I could not endure Herr von Brincken to come near me and equally for the same reason Richard had power over my senses.
Von Brincken looked long and searchingly at me, and said in a sad and tired voice, which I shall never forget: "Yes, you are right.... Evidently you cannot stand my champagne." The following morning two letters were brought from his house. One was for my father, in which Von Brincken said he felt obliged to break off the engagement.
He rarely entertained. Sometimes while I was watching the house, Herr von Brincken would come riding home accompanied by a groom. He always bowed to me, and occasionally spoke a few words. One day an idea took possession of me, with such force that I almost involuntarily exclaimed aloud. My brain reeled as I said to myself, "Some day I will marry the great man and live in that house!"
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