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She wore a loose tea-gown of soft silk, and had a light covering spread over her knees. "Welcome back, Herr Reimers!" she said, and stretched out her hand to him. Reimers bent over it respectfully, and kissed the tips of her fingers. Then his young hostess let herself fell back again upon the couch and drew her hand across her forehead.
"And that all this has turned out so differently from my expectations is a grief to me, a very great grief. I cannot tell you how great." Reimers took his departure. The colonel looked after him till the portière fell. Whose fault was it that the young man left the room with hanging head and miserable face, instead of with the beaming eyes of an accepted lover?
Reimers had chosen a place near the little lieutenant of doctor's degree, who was quite an amusing fellow, and chattered away so glibly that his neighbour hardly needed to contribute to the conversation. Of course Fröben had begun: "Well, Reimers, fire away! Give us some leaves from your military diary. We are all ears!" But Reimers soon changed the subject.
Then Landsberg looked up, and for the hundredth part of a second caught his opponent's gaze. Landsberg's aim was unerringly directed on his man, when suddenly his hand began to shake, and he fired blindly, just as he heard Güntz's bullet whistle past him. Güntz stood unharmed, a happy smile on his good-natured, open face. Reimers hastened up to him and seized his hand.
Dr. von Fröben continued: "But you must not think, Reimers, that in such matters I am a bigoted moralist. Ideas of morality are subject to just the same fluctuations as " And he dealt out what remained in his memory of a newspaper article, the writer of which had entirely misunderstood Nietsche.
And the thoughts suggested to him by the reflections of the colonel and of his friend all pointed to a similar conclusion. They seemed to stand like warning signposts beside the road on which the German army was marching; and all, all, bore upon their outstretched pointing arms the ominous word Jena. The sinister idea haunted Reimers like a ghost.
He glanced with deep sorrow at his dark green coat, and strode up and down the room. "This is my only hope," he went on, with grim satisfaction, "that my beloved captain will soon succumb to D.T." Reimers reflected. "You must allow that this battery's unfortunate condition is quite exceptional. Let me make a suggestion. Provoke Mohr to a quarrel! You'll be sure to be backed up.
Reimers felt rather vexed, and was just turning away when the gunner returned and asked him to come in. He conducted the lieutenant along the corridor. "My mistress is in her boudoir," he said. Reimers was shown into a small room, the only window of which was darkened. Frau von Gropphusen half raised herself from a broad couch.
The orderly found the thick gold embroidery very uncomfortable to his cheek; but then it certainly was a fine thing to scratch his head with! When Reimers, who had left early, reached his quarters, he was surprised to find his servant waiting up for him. "Why on earth are you not in bed?" he inquired.
Reimers thought sadly of his honest friend Güntz, and the rude things he had been wont to say about such follies as these. But chance threw in his way a gift which to some extent compensated him for the loss of his friend. He and Colonel von Falkenhein were brought together; and, by the irony of fate, at one of these same odious balls.
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