iend was silent now, and in his silence lay
his sentence.

"And you, too, Egon?" In the tone of the questioner, who had waited a
long minute, and waited in vain for some word, there was inexpressible
bitterness. "You, who have so often said to me that nothing should
hamper the poet's flight, that he must break all bonds which would bind
him to the earth. That's what I did, and it's what you would have done
in my place."

The young prince drew himself up proudly, and answered decisively:

"No, Hartmut, you are in error there! I would perhaps have escaped from
a severe school,--but from military service never!"

There were again the same old hard words he remembered as a boy--"the
military service"--"the service of arms!" All the blood in his body
rushed to his head.

"How did it happen you were not an officer?" continued Egon. "The cadets
are promoted while very young in the north! Then in a few years you
could have resigned. Just at the age, too, when life was beginning, and
been free--with honor."

Hartmut was dumb; that was what his father had said to him once, but he
would not wait. The barriers were an obstruction, and he threw them
down, not recking that he trampled duty and honor in the dust at the
same time.

"You do not understand how many things pressed upon me at the time," he
explained with difficulty. "My mother--I will not complain, but she has
been my fate. My father was divorced from her when I was little more
than a baby, and I thought she was dead. Then suddenly she appeared in
my life and I was tossed and torn by her hot mother love and her
extravagant promises of freedom and happiness. She alone is accountable
for my broken word--"

"What broken word?" asked Egon, excitedly. "You had not yet taken the
oath?"

"No, but I had promised my father to return, when he permitted me a last
interview with my mother."

"And instead of doing so, you ran away with her?"

"Yes."

The answer was almost inaudible, and then followed a long pause. The
young prince spoke no word, but a deep, bitter pain lay on his sunny
face, the bitterest of his lifetime, for in this minute he lost the
friend he had loved so passionately.

Hartmut began again, but did not look at his friend while he spoke.

"Now you understand why I will force myself into the army at any price.
On the battle-field I can expiate my boyhood's offense. When I saw in
Sicily that war was imminent, I flew in haste to Germany. I hoped to be