bilitate his compromised honour or will find his
death on the battlefield. Within a few weeks, or months, all these
matters which at present cause you so much trouble will present quite a
different aspect."

"You are very kind, Mr. Heideck, and I thank you for your friendly
intentions; but I would not have invited you here at this unusual hour
had it been solely my intention to enlist your kind sympathy. I am in a
most deplorable plight--doubly so, because there is no one here to whom
I can turn for advice and assistance. That in my despair I thought of
you has, no doubt, greatly surprised you; and now I can myself hardly
understand how I could have presumed to trouble you with my worries."

"If you would only, Mrs. Irwin, show me how I can be of service to you,
I would pray you to make any use you will of me. I am absolutely and
entirely at your disposal, and your confidence would make me exceedingly
happy."

"As a gentleman, you could not, of course, give any other answer. But,
in your heart of hearts, you probably consider my conduct both unwomanly
and unbecoming, for it is true that we hardly know each other. Over in
England, and certainly in your German fatherland quite as well, such
casual meetings as ours have been could not possibly give me the right
to treat you as a friend, and I do not really know how far you are
influenced by these European considerations."

"In Germany, as in England, every defenceless and unhappy woman would
have an immediate claim upon my assistance," he seriously replied. "If
you give me the preference over your friends here, I, on my part, have
only to be grateful, and need not inquire further into your motives."

"But, of course, I will tell you what my motives are. My friends in this
place are naturally my husband's comrades, and I cannot turn to them if
I do not intend to sign Irwin's death warrant. Not a single man amongst
them would allow that a man of my husband's stamp should remain an hour
longer a member of the corps of officers in the British Army."

"I do not quite understand you, Mrs. Irwin. The gambling debt of your
husband is, after all, no longer a secret to his comrades."

"That is not the point. How do you judge of a man who would sell his
wife to pay his gambling debts?"

This last sentence struck Heideck like a blow. With dilated eyes he
stared at the young wife who had launched such a terrible indictment
against her husband. Never had she looked to him so cha