ney proportionately
expensive--much too expensive, if all you got for it was one
intoxicating glimpse of dimples, followed by a flashing look of wrath
that made you feel cold with the thermometer at ninety. He had not felt
so dejected since the eighties, he reflected, in which dark ages he had
been forced to fight a duel. Karlchen had a prejudice against duelling;
he thought it foolish. But, being an officer--he was at that time a
conspicuously gay lieutenant--whatever he might think about it, if
anyone wanted to fight him fight he must, or drop into the awful ranks
of Unknowables. He had made a joke of a personal nature, and the other
man turned out to have no sense of humour, and took it seriously, and
expressed a desire for Karlchen's blood. Driving with his justly
incensed mother through the dust and heat to the station, he remembered
the dismal night he had passed before the duel, and thought how much his
dejection then had resembled in its profundity his dejection now; for he
had been afraid he was going to be hurt, and whatever people may say
about courage nobody really likes being hurt. Well, perhaps after all,
this business with Anna would turn out all right, just as that business
had turned out all right; for he had killed his man, and, instead of
wounds, had been covered with glory. Thus Karlchen endeavoured to snatch
comfort as he drove, but yet his heart was very heavy.

"I hope," said his mother bitingly when he was in the train, patiently
waiting to be taken beyond the sound of her voice, "I do hope that you
are ashamed of yourself. It is a bitter feeling, I can tell you, the
feeling that one is the mother of a fool."

To which Karlchen, still dazed, replied by unhooking his collar, wiping
his face, and appealing with a heart-rending plaintiveness to a passing
beer-boy to give him, _um Gottes Willen_, beer.

Axel was in the drawing-room, where the remains of Karlchen's
valedictory coffee and cakes were littered on a table, when Anna came
down. "I am so sorry for you," he said. "Princess Ludwig has been
telling me what has happened."

"Don't be sorry for me. Nothing is the matter with me. Be sorry for that
most unfortunate little soul upstairs."

Axel kissed Anna's right hand, which was, she knew, the custom; and
immediately proceeded to kiss her other hand, which was not the custom
at all. She was looking woebegone, with red eyelids and white cheeks;
but a faint colour came into her face at this, for