Isolde came back to her senses to find she and Erlind were still in the conference room, although the closing speaker was wrapping things up. Some of the chairs around them were vacant and she found she was still clutching his hand. Clearing her throat, she removed it and clasped her hands in front of her. Then she remembered her unadorned hair and reached to pat it into place, only to find that it was securely in the snood without even so much as a renegade curl.<br/><br/>“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she began to say to her escort when she realized that maybe,…<br/>“Do I have to ask your permission now?” even to her ears her voice sounded breathy. Isolde didn’t quite know how to go about this being a soul slave and was afraid that she was probably going to break a lot of rules.<br/><br/>Without waiting to hear yes or no, she threaded her way through the crush of people. In the ladies’ room, she found there was a line waiting for the toilets and the women were three deep trying to use the mirror to apply their lipstick. A blonde woman shoved ahead of her to make a moue at herself in the plate glass mirror. Isolde said,<br/>“Aren’t you Eva Hitler?”<br/>The woman smoothed the red marks around with her pinkie finger and smacked her lips on a tissue.<br/>“No, dolly. I’m not. I’m Eva Braun. Addie won’t marry me. He heard a rumor that I might have Jew blood and I laughed and said, Not any more than your own mummy.”<br/><br/>The woman was direct and frank. Isolde was startled by her cavalier attitude.<br/>“I told him it didn’t look good for the father of the Fatherland to not be married. It might make the children bastards.” She tossed back her head e chortled at her own coarse joke. “ Like I would call Addie’s Nazis bastards.”<br/><br/>She sobered quickly and peered at Isolde to see if she was laughing at the Nazis’ expense. Isolde was smarter than that.<br/><br/>“Well, dolly, I’m going to get some beauty sleep so I will be the belle of the ball tomorrow night. I suggest you do too. Be sure to sleep in tomorrow too, because it will be a long night. We women might as well go on to sleep because the men will be smoking cigarettes and drinking gin all night, congratulating themselves on being the Master Race. We will just be in the way.” She did a quick air kiss Isolde’s direction and abruptly left her standing, next in line.<br/><br/>After her turn in the facility, Isolde decided Eva Braun was right. She was exhausted and tomorrow night, she would need her full strength to get close to “Addie”. Instead of rejoining Erlind, she made her way to her chambers where sleep was a long time in coming.