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Falkenhein had again begun to walk up and down the room, not awaiting a reply. At last he turned again to Reimers. "Well, the matter must take its course," he said, in a somewhat calmer tone. "One thing, however, I ask you to do for me. Directly all is over to-morrow, will you come and tell me quite privately? I shall hear officially from Kauerhof. He's to be umpire, isn't he?
"Before Jena." Reimers started. The ominous word struck his pride like a lash. He drew himself up stiffly. "Why not before Sedan?" The other calmly answered: "Sedan? Jena? Perhaps you are right, perhaps I am. No one knows." After this conversation Güntz avoided such topics with his friend.
I tell you, Reimers," he went on, "I was thoroughly upset when I joined the battery. The way things go on there you would hardly believe. I wondered at first how it could be kept dark. But there's a regular planned-out system of hurrying things into shape somehow for inspection fixing up a sort of model village. And as for honour!
Reimers interrupted him: "Come, you know, the thing's not quite so simple as all that!" But Güntz replied: "Oh yes, it is! To master the elementary formulae according to which the service is regulated, sufficiently to satisfy the mere requirements of inspection that is child's play. And yet on that the superior has to found his judgment! And who has the patience or the inclination to do it?
"I am afraid I come too often." Güntz knocked the ash off the end of his cigar, and reassured him; "No, certainly not, old chap. If you did I should not hesitate to tell you." So it came about that every Sunday at mid-day, and on every Wednesday evening, Reimers found himself at the dinner-table of the snug little villa, Waisenhaus Strasse No. 57.
Reimers strolled on further. A sandy pathway cut across the pink blossoms of the heather; without thinking he turned into it. This was the road which had formerly led from the forest towards the ruined village; there was now no use for it, and it was being allowed to fall into disrepair. The solitary wanderer approached the dilapidated dwellings.
His hair smelt a little too strongly of pomade, and wax had not been spared on his fashionably-stiffened moustache. When Reimers drew his bunch of keys out of his pocket to unlock the door, Gähler hastened to take them from his hand, and opened the door for the lieutenant to pass in before him.
Everything at the mess-house seemed to be just as of old; it seemed to Reimers as if he had not been away for a day.
But those that whispered and chattered about her felt their consciences prick them when they carried their backbiting further; the young wife could never be accused of anything more serious. It was noteworthy that Reimers had always felt more attracted by these exceptions among the officers' ladies than by the typical representatives of that class.
He had, of course, been absent from the tennis club for a whole year, and she was all the more delighted at the approach of fine weather. Frau von Gropphusen and Reimers were always the last to leave the ground, when the balls were often hardly discernible in the gathering twilight. She soon found that her opponent had, during his absence, come on very much in his play.
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