e from my love, from the fate which threw us together? To
possess you would be my highest glory, for you are free. Such joy comes
to me now, only for a single fleeting minute, and then ascends again to
unattainable heights, like the prophetess of my drama who bore your
name. No matter; it is with me now in this moment of parting."

He drew her to him and pressed a kiss on her brow, while she broke into
a passion of tears on his shoulder.

"Hartmut, promise me that you will not seek death."

"No, but it will seek me! Good-bye, my own, good-bye."

He tore himself from her, and rushed away through the storm. She stood
still, leaning in her turn against the old tree, whose branches tossed
their arms and kept time to the moaning and shrieking winds which played
at hide and seek through the leafy foliage. But suddenly in the west,
through a rent in the angry clouds, shone a purple ray. It was only for
a minute, only a single lost beam of the descending sun, but it lighted
up the woodland height and beamed across the face of the departing man,
as he turned back once to wave a last adieu. Then the dark clouds met
again, and hid the light--the last greeting of the setting sun.

The red, flickering firelight lit up the interior of a small house which
had formerly been the home of a signal man, but now served as
headquarters for the officers of the advanced guard. The room made
anything but a comfortable impression, with its cold, rough, whitewashed
walls, low ceilings and narrow barred windows; the heavy logs of wood
which blazed and crackled in the clumsy stone fire-place, threw out a
grateful warmth, for the weather was bitter cold and the ground covered
with snow. The regiments which lay here were little better off than
those before Paris although these belonged to the army of the South.

Two young officers entered the room, and one, as he held the door open
for his comrade, said with a laugh: "You'll have to stoop here, for the
entrance to our villa is somewhat out of repair."

The warning was not unnecessary, for the tall figure of the guest, a
Prussian Lieutenant of Reserves, had need to stoop to avoid the loose,
overhanging plaster. His companion who was doing the honors, wore the
uniform of a South German regiment.

"Permit me to offer you a chair in our salon," he continued. "Not so bad
after all, considering everything; we'll have worse than this before the
campaign is over. You are looking for Stahlberg. He is a