Front matter (continued 6)

Thus it was in no peaceful or conciliatory mood that she took her place in Frau von Hollander's carriage that afternoon. Her manners were off-hand, her remarks tinged with an intentional arrogance which led her meek companion to the conclusion that public opinion was right, after all, and die kleine Engländerin an intolerable person. Nevertheless, she did her best to act the part of amiable hostess, and attempted to draw Nora's attention to the points of interest as they passed.

"All the regiments in Berlin will be there," she said with a pardonable pride. "That is not a thing one can see every day, you know. It will be a grand sight. They are the finest regiments in the world."

"In Germany, perhaps," Nora observed.

Her companion made no answer, and Nora tried to believe that she was satisfied with her own sharpness. How these foreigners boasted! It was a good thing to point out to them that not every one was so impressed with their marvels.

Yet, as they reached the Tempelhofer Felde Nora had hard work to restrain her naturally lively interest and curiosity from breaking bounds. The regiments had already taken up their positions. Solid square after square, they spread out as far as the eye could reach, a motionless bulwark of strength, bayonets and swords glittering like a sea of silver in the bright December sunshine. Wolff had taught Nora to recognise them, and she took a curious pride in her knowledge, though she said nothing, and her eyes expressed a cold, critical indifference.

"How fine the Kürassiers look!" Frau von Hollander said enthusiastically. "I have a cousin among them. They are all six-foot men—a regiment of giants."

"Rather like our Horse Guards," Nora returned; "but your horses are not so fine."

Frau von Hollander pursed her lips, and the bands striking up with the National Anthem put an end to the dangerous colloquy. The colour rushed to Nora's cheeks as she listened to the massed sound. She thought for an instant it was "God Save the King" that they were playing, and the tears of a deeply stirred patriotism rushed to her eyes. It was only a moment's illusion. Then the dazzling simultaneous flash of arms, a loud, abrupt cheer from the crowd about them reminded her of the truth. It was not the King who rode past amidst his resplendent Staff—it was the German Emperor—HER Emperor! She caught a glimpse of the resolute, bronze face, and because she was at the bottom neither narrow nor prejudiced, she paid her tribute of admiration ungrudgingly, for the moment forgetful of all the issues that were at stake. With eager eyes she followed the cortège as it passed rapidly before the motionless regiments. The resounding cheer which answered the Emperor's greeting thrilled her, and when he at last took his stand at the head of his Staff, and the regiments swung past, moving as one man amidst the crash of martial music, she stood up that she might lose no detail in the brilliant scene, her hands clenched, her pulses throbbing with a strange kind of enthusiasm. It was her first Kaiser parade; it overwhelmed her, not alone by its brilliancy but by the solidity, the strength and discipline it revealed; and had Frau von Hollander at that moment ventured a word of admiration she would have received no depreciatory comparison as answer. But poor Frau von Hollander had had enough for one day. She sat quiet and wordless, and silently lamented her own good-nature in taking such a disagreeable little foreigner with her in her expensive carriage.

The charge past had just begun when Nora heard her companion speak for the first time. It was not to her, however, but to a young dragoon officer who had taken up his stand at the carriage door, and Nora was much too absorbed to take any further notice of him. Their conversation, however, reached her ears, and she found herself listening mechanically even whilst her real attention was fixed on the great military pageant before her.

"The criticism should be good to-day," the officer was saying. "Tadellos, nicht wahr? Even the Emperor should be satisfied. I don't think we have much to fear from the future."

"From the future?" Frau von Hollander interrogated. She was not a clever woman, and her topics of the day—like her clothes—belonged usually to a remote period.

"I mean when the row comes," the dragoon explained. "We have all sealed orders, you know. No hurry, no bustle, no excitement; but when the Emperor presses the button—wiff!—then we shall be en route for England."

The brilliant picture before Nora's eyes faded. She was listening now with tight-set lips and beating heart.

"Ach, you mean the war!" her hostess said. "My husband is so reticent on the subject. I never hear anything at all. You think it will really come to that?"

"No doubt whatever—unless the English are ready to eat humble-pie. They are afraid of us because they see we are getting stronger, but they are equally afraid to strike. Their ancestors would have struck years ago, and now it is too late. Their navy is big on paper, but absolutely untried. As to their army——" He laughed good-naturedly. "That won't give us much trouble."

"You mean that it is not big enough?"

Frau von Hollander was pretending to forget Nora's existence, but there was a spite in her tone which was not altogether unpardonable. She was grateful for this opportunity to pay back the slights of the last hour.

"It is not merely too small," the officer returned judiciously; "it is no good against men like ours. Their so-called regulars are picked up out of the gutters, and the rest are untrained clerks and schoolboys who scarcely know how to shoot——"

Nora turned.

"That is a lie!" she said deliberately.

The conversation had been carried on loud enough to reach the adjoining carriages, and Nora's clear voice caused more than one occupant to turn in her direction. They saw a pretty young woman standing erect, white-lipped, with shining eyes, confronting a scarlet-faced officer, who for a moment appeared too taken aback to answer.

"I beg your pardon, gnädige Frau," he stammered at last, with his hand lifted mechanically to his helmet. "I—I did not quite understand——"

"I said that it was a lie," Nora repeated. "Everything you said was a lie. We are not afraid of you, and our soldiers are the best and bravest soldiers in the world!"

The dragoon looked helplessly at Frau von Hollander, and the latter decided on a belated rescue.

"It is most unfortunate," she said with pious regret. "I really quite forgot for the moment. Frau von Arnim was English before her marriage——"

"——and is English still!" Nora interrupted proudly. "Please let me pass. I am going home."

"Then tell the coachman. I cannot let you walk."

Frau von Hollander was now thoroughly alarmed. She felt that the matter had gone too far, and was ready to atone in any possible way. But Nora thrust the detaining hand aside.

"I would rather walk," she said between her clenched teeth. She sprang from the carriage, ignoring the dragoon's offer of assistance. That unfortunate young officer followed her, his face crimson with very real distress.

"Please forgive me, gnädige Frau," he stammered. "How was I to know? Your name was German, and I had no idea—and a fellow talks such rot sometimes. Please forgive me!"

He was so young, so sincere and boyish in his regret that her heart under any other circumstances might have softened. But the insult had fallen on an open wound, and the pain was intolerable.

"You said what you thought, and you lied," she said. "That is all that matters."

He drew aside with a stiff salute.

"I have apologised. I can do no more," he said, and turned on his heel.

Thus poor Nora toiled her way over the hard, frozen roads alone, her thin-shod feet aching, her heart beating to suffocation with anger and misery. But she was unconscious of pain or weariness. Her English pride, the high love of her land had risen like a tide and swept her forward—to what end she neither knew nor cared.

CHAPTER XIII

ULTIMATUM

"I do not know if I have done right in telling you," Frau von Arnim said. "I had not meant to do so, but circumstances—and Nora—have forced me. Had she offered me any reasonable explanation, or promised to put an end to her intimacy with this Captain Arnold, I should not have thought it necessary to speak to you on the matter. She chose to ignore my appeal and my advice, and I felt that there was no other course left open to me but to warn you and to give you my reasons for doing so."

"I am sure you meant it all for the best," Wolff answered. "All the same—I would rather have waited until Nora had told me herself."

He was standing by the window, and did not see the sceptical lifting of his aunt's eyebrows. She frowned immediately afterwards, as though annoyed at her own display of feeling.

"It would have been better," she admitted calmly; "but Nora is in a state of mind which does not encourage hope. I cannot help saying so, Wolff; she has changed very much since the Karlsburg days."

"I know," he answered. "She has changed just in this last month or two. Poor little wife!"

"Other people have noticed it," his aunt went on. "The Selenecks, the Freibergs, all our best friends have the same complaint to make. She is off-hand, sometimes deliberately rude; and that sort of thing does not help to stop the scandal that is growing round her. Elsa Seleneck does not usually klatsch, but she is merciless where Nora is concerned, and it is all the more unpleasant because they were once good friends. I can only suppose that Nora has come under the influence of her brother and this man—this——"

"Nora's friendship with Captain Arnold is absolutely innocent," Wolff said firmly. "No doubt they have that sort of thing in England."

"Perhaps so, but we do not. People see this Englishman at your house day after day. There seems no reason for his constant visits. They call each other by their Christian names and go out together. Who can blame any one for putting the worst interpretation on Nora's conduct? And they are beginning to blame you, Wolff."

"Me?"

"They say that you ought not to tolerate her brother's presence in your house—that you ought to send this Arnold to the right-about."

He winced.

"I can't. She would never forgive me."

"Wolff! Has she grown more important than everything else in life?"

"No, no," he answered almost impatiently. "But she is young and careless—not bad. She has done nothing to deserve such treatment at my hands."

Frau von Arnim rose and came to his side.

"I know that she is not bad," she said. "At the bottom of her heart Nora may be honest, but she is headstrong and foolish, and folly can lead to the same catastrophes as deliberate wickedness. Unless you hold her back with a strong hand, Wolff, she will alienate you from all your friends, she will bring an unpleasant scandal upon our name and perhaps ruin your career. These last two things are more precious to me than anything on earth, and that is why I have spoken to you and put the matter in its most serious light. You must show her how wrong she is."

Wolff turned and looked his companion steadily in the eyes. He had just returned from a hard afternoon's work, and it was perhaps the recent fatigue which had drawn the colour from his face and left him with deep lines about the mouth and across the white forehead.

"Is she wrong?" he said. "Do you know, I am not sure, Aunt Magda. I am beginning to think the mistake is all mine. I loved her so, and she is so impetuous and warm-hearted. I carried her off her feet before she had time to think, to realise what she was giving up. And now—well, I suppose she is beginning to realise; the glamour has all gone, and her love"—he steadied his voice with an effort—"hasn't proved to be what she thought it was. It isn't strong enough to bring the sacrifices, and she is hungry for her own country and her own people. One can't blame her."

Frau von Arnim sighed.

"And when the war comes—what then?" she asked.

"God knows!"

He dropped wearily into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

"We can but hope for the best," he said. "I must wait and be patient."

"You will say nothing to her, Wolff?"

"No. I do not understand what you have told me. I cannot believe that she should have deceived me and kept the secret so long, nor can I understand Captain Arnold's conduct. Nevertheless, I trust Nora, and one day perhaps she will tell me everything."

His aunt shook her head. That "one day" seemed too far off, too impossible, and in the meantime she saw the man with the bowed head, and understood something of what he was suffering.

"Do what you think best," she said, and, obeying a sudden impulse of tenderness, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. "Only let no harm come to the name, Wolff. It is all I ask, for your sake and for mine."

He took the hand and lifted it to his lips.

"You have the right to ask everything," he said. "Your sacrifice—yours and Hildegarde's—made it possible for me to make Nora my wife. I owe you——"

"Not your happiness, armer Kerl!" she interrupted sadly. "That was what we wanted to give you, but we have not succeeded. And you must not call it a sacrifice. We never do. You are just my only son, for whom it is a joy to smooth the way as much as it lies in our power."

She knelt down beside him. All her proud severity had melted. Had she shown a quarter of this tenderness to Nora, they would never have parted as they had done. But then Nora had sinned against her rigid code of honour; Nora deserved punishment—not tenderness.

"There is another thing I want to say, Wolff," she went on gently. "Seleneck confessed to me that you had sold Bruno. I cannot understand why you should have done so—unless you were short of money."

He turned away his head, avoiding her steady, questioning eyes.

"Won't you confide in me, Wolff—like you did in the old days?"

"Of course I will!" He tried to laugh. "Yes, it was money, Aunt Magda. You see, I knew we were going to be invited to the Hulsons' to-morrow; and Nora needed a new dress—and there were other expenses——

"Miles Ingestre, for instance?" she suggested bitterly.

"It was another mouth to feed," he admitted. "Nora's father doesn't understand that we are not rich. He hears that we invite and are invited, and so he thinks—naturally enough—that we can afford to keep Miles for a few months. And Nora does not quite understand either; so I sold Bruno to smooth things over."

He did not tell her what she none the less guessed—that many of Wolff's scanty gold pieces had found their way into his guest's pockets by means of the simple formula, "I'll pay you back as soon as the pater's cheque arrives." Which event had, so far, never taken place.

Frau von Arnim rose and, going to her writing-table, drew out a thick envelope, which she put in his hands.

"It is our gift to you," she said. "I have been keeping it for—for any time when you might want a little extra, and I should like you to have it now. Perhaps you could get Bruno back."

"I can't!" he protested almost angrily. "Do you think I do not know what you have already given up for my sake—your friends, your home, your comfort?"

"And do you not know that all has no value for me compared to the one thing?" she answered, looking him steadily in the face. "I want you to remember that, should any greater trouble come, any sacrifice would be gladly borne rather than disgrace."

"Disgrace!" he echoed, with a stern contraction of the brows. "Of what are you afraid, Aunt Magda?"

"I do not know. I only wanted your promise that you would always come to me. As to this little gift"—her tone became lighter—"it would be an insult to our relationship to refuse it. I cannot allow my nephew to ride to war on an old charger. Surely you will allow me to throw this sop to the family pride?"

So she laughed away his objections, and he sat there with drawn, white face and looked about him, recognising the remnants of the old home, knowing for whose sake it was that they had come to rest in these narrow, gloomy confines. And, after all, it had been in vain. The sacrifices had brought no one happiness. He rose to go, and as he did so the door opened, and Hildegarde stood on the threshold. For a moment he hardly recognised her. She held herself upright as he had not seen her do for nearly three years; her cheeks were bright with colour and her eyes with the old light, so that it seemed as though the time of suffering had been blotted out of her life and she was once more his gay, untroubled playfellow.

"Why, Hildegarde!" he cried delightedly.

She came laughing towards him and gave him her hand with a cheery frankness. Neither by look nor tone did she betray that his presence had set her pulses galloping with the old pain and the old happiness.

"Why, Wolff!" she repeated, mocking him. "Do you think I am a ghost?"

"A phoenix, rather," he retorted gaily, for his joy was unfeigned. "I never dared to hope such good things of you. What has brought about the miracle?"

She told him about the "cure" she had been through, still in the same easy, unconcerned voice, and only her mother noticed the restless movement of the long, thin hands. Perhaps it was that one sign of emotion which prevented her from urging Wolff to remain. Perhaps she knew, too, that Wolff was stifling in the narrow room.

"You must come back soon, Wolff," Hildegarde said, as he bade her good-bye. "You have so much to tell us—about the war and our chances. But I will let you go to-day. You look so tired."

She did not ask that Nora should come too. She did not even mention Nora's name. Wolff remembered that significant omission as he trudged homewards, and he understood that Nora stood alone. She had lost touch with his friends and with those nearest to him, and he too had drifted out of her life. Such, then, was the end of a love and a union which was to have been endless! A few months of untroubled happiness, and the awakening! He felt no anger mingle itself with his grief, rather an intense pity. Though he could not understand her conduct in the past, he trusted her with the blindness of an unchanged devotion. He believed that she would have some explanation. He was sure that once at least her love had been sincere, that she deceived herself more than she had ever deceived him. She had believed her love for him stronger than that for home and people, than any other love. She had been mistaken—that was all. An old love had returned into her life and with it the old ties. The intoxication of the first passion was over, and she had gone back to those to whom she belonged, and a sea of racial prejudice, racial differences, and national feeling divided her from the man to whom she had sworn, "Thy God shall be my God, thy people my people." He had lost her. What then? What was to be the solution to the problem that lay before them both? He knew of none, and perhaps at the bottom of his heart there was still a glimmer of hope that he was mistaken and her friendship for Arnold no more than friendship, her change towards him no more than a passing shadow. He told himself that when worried and overworked as he was, a man can too easily exaggerate the extent of a misfortune. Who knew what change for the better the next few hours might bring?

Thus he reached his home with a lighter heart than he had expected. Nora was not yet back from the parade. It surprised him, therefore, to hear loud and apparently angry voices proceeding from his room. He entered quickly, without waiting to lay sword or helmet aside, and found Miles and another older man, whose appearance warranted the supposition that his descent from the Mosaic family was unbroken.

Wolff looked from one to the other, and perhaps his knowledge of both classes of men warned him of what was to come.

"Might I ask for an explanation?" he said quietly.

Miles was clinging to the back of a chair and trembling from head to foot, either with fear or rage or a mixture of both. His usually sallow face was now grey and his lips twitched convulsively before he managed to answer.

"I'm beastly sorry, Wolff," he stammered. "It's the devil of a nuisance, and I swear I never meant to bring you into the mess. This—this man has come fussing about some money. I told him to wait, but he seems to have got some idiotic ideas in his head——"

"The Herr Baron vill not blame me that I am anxious for my moneys," the Jew interrupted, speaking also in broken English and giving Wolff the benefit of a servile bow. "Dis genelman have borrowed much from me, and I am a poor man. I vould not have took the risk but dat he gave me your name as guarantee. He said dat you vere his broder-in-law and dat it vere all safe. Dat is von month ago, and since den I have heard no more of my genelman, but many English leave Berlin just now, and I come to see if vat he say be true."

"It is perfectly true. Mr. Ingestre is my brother-in-law."

"Den I am satisfied. De Herr Baron vill see to it as officer and genelman."

He took a step towards the door, but Wolff stopped him with a curt gesture. Nor for a moment had he taken his eyes from Miles's colourless and sickly countenance.

"You say that Mr. Ingestre owes you money," he said. "Will you be so kind as to show me the bill?"

The Jew immediately produced a slip of greasy paper and handed it to him. Wolff took it with the tip of his fingers, his eyes narrowing with an irrepressible disgust. There was a moment's waiting silence. Miles's eyes were riveted on the carpet, the Jew was taking an inventory of the furniture, and neither saw Wolff's face. For that matter, save that the lips beneath the short fair moustache had stiffened, there was no noticeable change in his expression.

"Twelve hundred marks!" he said at last, throwing the paper on his table. "Have you that sum by you, Miles? It would be better to pay this gentleman at once."

Miles Ingestre started and glanced loweringly at his brother-in-law's face. He suspected sarcasm, but Wolff's pitiless steel-grey eyes warned him that the time for retort had not yet come.

"Eh—no; I'm afraid I haven't," he stammered. "I am expecting a cheque from home, and of course will pay up at once. To tell you the truth——"

His thin, hesitating voice died away into silence. Perhaps he felt that Wolff had no desire to hear "the truth." He held his tongue, therefore, and let events drift as they might. Wolff had taken Frau von Arnim's envelope from his pocket. He opened it and counted twelve notes for a hundred marks each on to the table.

"Kindly give me your receipt," he said.

The Jew obeyed willingly, scratching an untidy signature across the bottom of the piece of paper which Wolff pushed towards him. With greedy, careful fingers he counted the notes and stuffed them in his pocket.

"It is a great pleasure to deal vid so great genelman," he said as he shuffled to the door.

Wolff waited until he was gone, then he threw open the window as though the atmosphere sickened him. When he turned again his expression was still calm, only the narrowed eyes revealed something of what was passing through his mind.

Miles did not look at him. He was playing with the paper-weight on the table, struggling to regain his dignity. It bit into his mean soul that he should be indebted to "this foreigner."

"It's awfully decent of you, Wolff," he broke out at last. "I'm really awfully grateful, and of course as soon as my money comes——"

Wolff cut him short with an abrupt and contemptuous gesture.

"I ask for no promises," he said, "and make no claim on your gratitude. What I have done was not done for your sake, but for Nora's and my own. I do not wish the scandal of a disgraceful debt to be associated with my name. No doubt you do not understand my point of view, and there is no reason why I should explain it. There is one matter, however, on which I have the right to demand an explanation. You have run through something like £100 in the time that you have been here. Where has this money gone?"

Miles shrugged his shoulders. The movement suggested that as between one man of the world and another the question was superfluous.

"Oh, you know—the usual thing," he said. "Suppers, horses, and women. The people I know all did it. It was pretty well impossible to keep out of the swim."

Wolff detached his sword and seated himself at the table; Miles remained standing, and Wolff did not suggest that he should change his position.

"That means probably that you have other debts," he said. "Is that so?"

"£100 goes nowhere," Miles answered sullenly. "I didn't know they would come down on me so soon."

"You have a curious way of answering a question. Still, I fancy I understand you. You will make a list of these other debts and lay them before me. After that, you will return to England." He saw Miles's start of anger, and went on deliberately: "You have associated with the scum of Berlin, and therein I am perhaps to blame. I should have put an end to it before you drifted thus far. But I was under the illusion that at your age and as Nora's brother you would be capable of behaving as a man of honour. Otherwise, I should never have allowed you in my house."

He opened a drawer and began sorting out some papers before him, with the same deliberation, indifferent to the look of intense hatred which passed over his companion's face. "You have proved that you cannot rise to so necessary a standard," he went on, "and therefore a prolongation of your stay under my roof has become impossible. Nora must know nothing of this, and there must be no fuss or scandal. You will write this evening to your father and request him to telegraph for you immediately—the possibility of war will be sufficient excuse. Until your departure you will behave as usual, with the exception that you do not leave the house. You will, of course, send your apologies to General von Hulson for to-morrow evening. I do not wish you to accompany us. That is all I have to say. You will do well to make no difficulties."

Miles laughed angrily.

"Do you think I'd make difficulties if I could help it?" he demanded. "I'd give ten years of my life to get back to England."

"There is no object in your making fate such a generous offer," was the ironical reply. "Your debts here will be paid—somehow or other. The road home is open to you."

"I can't go without money."

"Your passage will be paid for you."

"I don't mean that—I mean—there are reasons which make it impossible for me to return—just now——"

Arnim swung round in his chair.

"You mean that you have debts in England?"

"Yes."

"In other words, that you left England on that account?"

Miles shrugged his shoulders.

"There were a good many reasons," he said.

There was a moment's silence. Arnim began to write with a studied calm.

"Your debts here will be paid on condition that you leave within forty-eight hours," he said. "I cannot do more for you. I only do that for Nora and for the sake of my own name."

Males leant forward over the table. He was not usually clever, but hatred had made him clever enough to take the most cruel weapon that lay within his reach.

"You talk as though I were such a beastly cad," he said, "but you shut your eyes to the other things that go on in the house. You are particular enough about your precious honour and name where I am concerned; but you let Arnold come into the house and make love to your wife without turning a hair."

"Miles, take care what you are saying!"

"I don't mind telling the truth. I have seen them——"

Wolff held up his hand, and there was something in the movement which checked the flood of malice and treachery and sent Miles back a step as though he had been struck.

"You can go," Wolff said quietly.

Again Miles wavered, torn between rage and cowardice. He hated this iron-willed martinet with his strait-laced principles and intolerable arrogance, but his fear was equal to his hatred, and after a moment he turned and slunk from the room.

Arnim went on writing mechanically. His brain—the steeled, highly trained brain—followed the intricate calculations before him with unchanged precision, but the man himself fought with the poison in his blood, and in the end conquered. As a strong swimmer he rose triumphant above the waves of doubt, suspicion, and calumny which had threatened him and held high above reach the shield of his wife's honour. It was all that was left him—his trust in her, his belief in her integrity. He knew that a crisis was at hand. With Miles's departure would come the moment in which Nora would have to make her choice between the home and people which he represented and her husband. How would she choose? The hope that had comforted him before seemed all too desperate. Family and country called her, and her love was the last frail bond which held her to him. Would it hold good? Had it not perhaps already yielded? Was she not already lost to him?

Yet, as he heard the door of the neighbouring room open and the sound of her quick footsteps, the hot blood rushed to his face, his pulses beat faster with the hope kindled to something that was almost a joyous certainty. She was coming to him. He would see her standing irresolute before him, and he would take her in his arms and by the strength of an unconquerable love draw her back over the tide which was flowing faster and broader between them. It was impossible that he should lose her, impossible that the outward circumstances of their lives should be stronger than themselves and what had been best in them—their love. Even when the footsteps stopped and he remained alone, the impossibility, absurdity of it all was still predominant over despair. He rose and pulled open the door. He had no clear conception of any plan. He was so sure that the moment they stood face to face she would understand everything by some miracle of sympathy, the very thought of an "explanation" was a sacrilege against the power with which he felt himself possessed.

"Nora!" he cried joyfully. "Nora!"

She stood immediately opposite him. Her hat had been flung recklessly on the table, and her hair was disordered, her face white and drawn. She made no answer to his greeting. Her eyes met his with no light in their depths. They were sombre, black, and sullen.

"Nora!" he repeated, and already the note of triumph had died out of his voice. "What is the matter?"

She came at once to him, taking his hands, not in affection but in a sort of feverish despair.

"Wolff," she said, "I want to go away from here—I want to go home!"

The moment of hope and enthusiasm was over. Something mysteriously cold and paralysing had passed like an icy breath over his self-confidence and changed it to a frigid despair. He could not even plead with her, nor tell her of the love which he felt for her nor of the pain which he suffered. Everything lay at the bottom of his heart a dead, frozen weight. He loosened her hands from his arm and forced her gently into a chair.

"You want to go away?" he said quietly. "Why?"

"Because I hate this place and—and every one."

"Does that include your home and your husband, Nora?"

She laughed wildly.

"My home! This isn't my home: it never has been. I have always been a stranger—an exile here. Everything is foreign to me—everything hateful. If you were twenty times my husband, I should say it. I loathe and detest this country and I loathe and detest your people. I am English. I was mad, mad, mad to believe I could ever be anything else!"

She was hysterical with fatigue and excitement, and scarcely conscious of what she was saying. But Wolff, who knew nothing of what had happened at the parade, heard in her words a deliberate and final declaration.

"If you hate my country and my people, you must hate me," he said. "Has it come to that already?"

She sprang to her feet as though goaded by some frightful inner torment.

"No, no, I don't hate you," she cried. "I love you at the bottom—at least, I believe I do. I can't tell. Everything in me is in revolt and uproar. I can't see you clearly as you are, as I love you. You are just one of those others, one of those whom I detest as my deadliest enemy. That is why I must go away. If I stayed, God knows, I believe I should grow to hate you."

Every trace of colour faded out of his face, but he did not speak, and she ran to him and clasped his arm with the old reckless pleading.

"Let me go!" she begged. "Let me go home! Things will be better then. I shall quiet down. I shan't be so constantly maddened and irritated as I am now. I shall have time to think. Wolff, I must go!"

"If you go now, it will be for ever," he said steadily. "The woman who leaves her husband and her country in the time of danger sacrifices the right to return."

"Wolff!" Her hands sank to her side. She stared at him blankly, horror-stricken.

"You must see that for yourself," he went on in the same tone of rigid self-control. "If war breaks out and you return to England, you can never come back here as my wife. I am a German and an officer, and the woman who shares my life must share my duty. That is the law. It is a just and right one. Husband and wife cannot be of different factions. They must stand together under the same flag. In marrying me you accepted my country as your own. If you leave me now, you are turning traitor, and there must be no traitors amongst us."

He put the case before her with pitiless logic, more overwhelming than the fiercest outburst of passion. The hysterical excitement died out of her face.

"A traitor!" she repeated dully. "How can I be that? How can any one give up their country?"

"I do not know," he answered, "and therefore whatever you choose I shall not blame you. I only show you the inevitable consequences."

"Wolff, I can't stay here. Everybody hates me. I can't hide what I feel. You don't know the things I have done—and said. I—I insulted some one this afternoon."

"It can all be lived down," he returned. "People will forgive and understand, if you stand by us."

"But I can't—not in my heart of hearts. Wolff, if war breaks out, I shall be praying for your ruin—yes, in your very churches I shall pray for it. Perhaps my prayers will direct the very bullet that kills you——"

Her voice shook with a kind of smothered horror, which stirred the cold weight in his heart to pity.

"Hush, Nora, hush! That is all exaggerated feeling. It is hard for you, but you must choose. Either you must sacrifice your country or your husband. That is the simple issue."

"Why should I bring the sacrifice?" she retorted. "Why must I be the one to give up everything that I was taught to love and honour next to God? If you love me, leave the army, leave Germany! Let us go away—anywhere—and be happy together!"

"Nora!"

"You see!" she exclaimed with bitter triumph. "That is too much to ask from you!"

"I am a soldier," he said.

"Then I would to God I had been born to so easy a profession!"

She turned away, battling with the fierce, angry sobs that choked her. The next instant his arms were about her. There was no hope and no joy in his embrace. He held her as he might have done in the midst of shipwreck and before the approach of death.

"Do you think it is easy to put before you the choice—knowing what you will choose?" he asked.

"Knowing——?" she stammered.

"You do not love me enough to stand by me."

"That is not true!"

She freed herself and took a step back, searching his face as though to find there an answer to some agonising doubt.

"That is not true," she repeated breathlessly.

He lifted his hand in stern warning.

"Think, Nora! We stand, you and I, at the parting of the ways. Make your choice honestly—I shall not blame you. But once you have chosen, there must be no turning back. If you choose to follow me, it must be to the bitter end of your duty. You must curse my enemies and bless my friends. Otherwise there can be no peace and happiness between us. If you choose your country—and those others whom you love—you shall go to them. I shall keep you in my heart until I die, but I will never see you again."

In spite of his strongest effort, his voice shook, and that one signal from the depths of his despair called forth the one and only answer of which her headlong, passionate nature was capable. She flung herself into his arms, clinging to him in a storm of grief and pity.

"With God's help, I will stand by you to the end, my husband!"

For a long minute he held her to him, and then gradually he felt how her whole frame relaxed and her arms sank powerless to her side. He looked down into her face. It was very pale, and a faint, childlike smile of utter weariness hovered round the half-open lips.

"I am so tired, Wolff," she said under her breath, "so tired!"

Without answering, he bore her to the sofa and laid her with a clumsy tenderness among the cushions. But he did not speak again. For the moment the conflict was over; a truce had been called between them. Only his instinct knew it was no more than that. Thus he knelt down silently beside her, and with her hand still clasped in his watched over her as she slept.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CODE OF HONOUR

Nora stood before the long glass in the drawing-room and studied herself with a listless interest. The expensive white chiffon dress which Wolff had given her for the occasion became her well, and at another time she might have found an innocent pleasure in this contemplation of her own picture. But she was exhausted, spiritually and physically. The storm of the day before had shattered something in her—perhaps her youth—and she saw in the mirror only the pale face and heavy eyes, and before her in the near future an evening of outward gaiety and inward trial. That which she had once sought after with feverish desire—magnificence and contact with the great world where stuffy flats and poverty were unknown—had become her poison. She shrank instinctively, like some poor invalid, from all noise and movement. She would have been thankful to be able to lie down and sleep and forget, but Duty, that grim fetish to which she had sworn obedience, demanded of her that she should laugh and seem merry beneath the critical, questioning eyes of those who to-morrow might be fighting against her people.

Miles was lying in his usual attitude on the sofa, watching her. He had been curiously quiet the whole day, keeping to the house and avoiding Arnim with an increased shyness. Nora believed that she understood him. She did not see that his young face was sallow and lined with dissipation, nor that his furtive eyes were heavy and bloodshot. She saw in him only the brother, the Englishman, and that one fact of his nationality covered him with a cloak, hiding from her all that was pitiable and contemptible, lending him a dignity, a worthiness that was not his. So also she interpreted his general conduct and his abrupt refusal to accompany her to the Hulsons' ball. She felt that he was awaiting the hour of departure to his own country, chafing at the bonds which held him, and that, like a true Englishman, he shrank from all further association with his future enemies. She honoured him for it—she envied him for it; but she dreaded her own loneliness. She came to his side and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

"I wish you were coming too," she said, "for my sake, not for yours."

"I can't," he retorted sullenly.

"No, I know. I was not going to try and persuade you. I understand so well how you feel. Oh, Miles, you must go back to England—we must manage it somehow. I shall tell Wolff to-night. Things can't be worse than they are—and perhaps he will help."

Miles Ingestre looked at her keenly. An expression that was half cunning, half amused lifted the moody shadows from his face. It was obvious that she did not know what had passed between Wolff and himself, and it was not his intention to tell her. His promise to Wolff on the subject did not weigh with him—he had other and better reasons for keeping silence. In the first place, he had no wish to awaken any sense of gratitude towards her husband in Nora's heart; in the second, he still needed money.

"You need not worry him with my debts," he said carelessly. "They can wait, and anyhow they wouldn't keep me in Berlin. The difficulty is on the other side."

"In England?"

"Yes; I must have ready money somehow. I can't go back until the way has been cleared a little." He pulled himself up on to his elbow. "Look here, Nora, you could help me if you wanted. Wolff can't and won't do anything, but there's Bauer. You don't need to look so shocked—he's told me himself that he would do me a good turn, only his sister-in-law has the purse-strings, and you have rather offended her. If you went to her ball on the 18th——"

"Miles, it is impossible! You don't know——"

"I only know that if you don't help me I shall be in a bad fix. When the war breaks out——"

"Is war certain?"

"Unless they funk it. I believe the ambassador has his trunks packed and his carriage waiting."

Nora made a gesture of mingled impatience and despair.

"Why must there be war?" she cried. "Why can't we leave each other alone? What is there to quarrel about?"

"Nothing!" Miles retorted. "The whole thing is got up. The beggars want more than is good for them, and we've got to keep them in their places. That's the gist of the matter. It has to come sooner or later."

Nora was silent. His words, with their unvaried mingling of scorn and pride, aroused in her an equally mingled feeling of irritation and sympathy. Why was he so sure of victory, why so scornful of "these foreigners"? What right had he to be either contemptuous or arrogant? What right had she to share those feelings with him, even if only in the secret places of her heart?

"By the way," Miles went on, watching her intently. "What's the matter with you and poor old Arnold? He has been here twice to-day, and you have been so-called 'out' each time. I got a note from him asking what was up. It's pretty rough luck on him, as he wants to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?" Nora repeated. She had started perceptibly, and Miles grinned.

"He has marching orders, and is leaving to-morrow night. I bet he would have gone days ago if it hadn't been—well, for some one!"

"Miles, I will not have you talk like that!"

She had turned on him scarlet with anger and humiliation, but Miles only burst out laughing.

"You need not get into such a rage, sweet sister mine! I didn't say it was you, though if the cap fits——" He broke off into a sulky silence. Wolff had entered. He was in full dress, and bespattered with mud, as though he had returned from an arduous ride. In one hand he carried a dispatch case. One glance at his face showed them that he controlled a strong excitement.

"I am awfully sorry, Nora," he said hurriedly, "it is impossible for me to accompany you. I have been driven from pillar to post the whole day, and now I have some work which will take me the whole night. You must give my excuses to General von Hulson. He will understand why it is. A good many officers will be absent for the same reason."

"Then I must go alone?" she asked.

Absorbed as he was, he heard the reproach and annoyance.

"Do you mind that?"

"I shall hate it!" she said emphatically.

The word "hate," with all its too recent associations, caused him to look at her closely. He saw that she had lost her pallor, and that the old defiant light burnt in her eyes.

"Perhaps it would be better, then, if Miles accompanied you," he said. "There is still time."

"I do not wish Miles to do anything he objects to," she returned coldly. "No doubt he has his reasons for not going."

Wolff's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

"No doubt," he said, glancing in Miles's direction; "but perhaps if I added my appeal to yours he would consent to overcome—his reasons."

Miles rose sullenly to his feet.

"If you want it—of course," he mumbled.

Wolff nodded absently. He went into his room, closed the door, leaving Nora alone. There had been an expression of anxiety on his face which did not, however, excuse his apparent indifference in Nora's eyes, and she stood frowning after him, puzzled and deeply wounded. But she made no attempt to follow him. The scene of the previous evening had been a last effort; she was too weary, too hopeless to strive again after a reunion which seemed already an impossibility.

Twenty minutes later Miles reappeared in the full glory of his evening clothes. Nora was surprised—perhaps a little disappointed—to observe that his spirits had risen.

"The carriage is waiting," he said. "Hurry up, or we shall be late."

Nora hesitated. A superstitious clinging to an old custom led her to the threshold of Wolff's room. She tried the handle of the door without effect, and when she turned away again her cheeks were scarlet.

"Locked, eh?" Miles said. "I bet he's afraid of us catching sight of his papers. Arnold said some of those staff fellows have the handling of pretty valuable stuff."

Nora gave no attention to his words, though she was destined to remember them. She led the way down the narrow stairs into the street where the cab was waiting for them, and a minute later they were rattling out of the little by-street into the busy thoroughfare.

It seemed to Nora that the crowds were denser than usual, that a curious unrest was written on the usually placid, cheerful faces that flashed past the open carriage window. She remembered Wolff's expression as he had entered the room; she felt now that it had been the unconscious reflection from those other faces, and that the one invisible bond of sympathy which unites all men of the same race had passed on the flame of patriotism from one to another, till in all these thousands there burned, above every meaner passion, the supreme Vaterlandsliebe. Only she felt nothing, nothing—though she was bound to them by oath—save fear and horror. She felt alone, deserted. Miles was the one being in the whole seething crowd who felt as she felt, who suffered as she suffered. She turned to him with an impulsive tenderness. He was not looking out of the window, but staring straight before him, with his low forehead puckered into thoughtful lines.

"It's a queer thing," he said, as though he felt her questioning glance. "Here we both are in a foreign country, mixing with people whom we shall be blowing up to-morrow, and to-day not moving a finger to harm them, just because the word has not been given, as it were. If I threw a bomb amongst all those big-wigs to-night, who knows what victories I might prevent?—and yet I suppose it would be murder. And then, there is Wolff stewing over papers that, I bet, the English War Office would give a few thousands just to look at; you and I sit and watch him and never move a hand."

"What do you expect us to do?" she returned listlessly.

"Nothing, I suppose."

The rest of the drive passed in silence, and once in the ball-room, Nora lost sight of her brother completely. He drifted off by himself, whither and with whom she could not think, for she knew that he had no friends in the brilliant crowd. She, too, was friendless, though there were many there who bowed to her and passed on, and for the first time she realised the full extent of her isolation. The Selenecks were not there, and she was glad of their absence: she would have hated them to have been witnesses of her loneliness. Those whom she knew, whose comradeship with her husband should have guaranteed a certain courtesy, passed her by. Nora cared nothing for them, but the humiliation stung her to the quick. She was English, and because she was English they insulted her, tacitly and deliberately. Not all the months in her husband's country had taught her to understand that she had insulted them, that she had trampled on their pride of race, and scorned the customs and opinions which were their holiest possessions. It never occurred to her that the description of the scene of the previous afternoon had passed from lip to lip with the rapidity of lightning, and that in the eyes of that mighty brotherhood of soldiers, and of that still mightier sisterhood of their wives, she was branded as a renegade, as a woman who had spat upon her husband's uniform, and exalted another race above that to which she belonged—a Deutschfeindliche, an enemy who masqueraded among them under a transparent guise of hypocritical friendship. Perhaps some pitied her; but for the most part they were the older men, whose experience taught them to be pitiful—and they were not present on this particular night. Even if they had been they could have done nothing to help her. She was an outcast, and for them she had made herself "unclean." Thus poor Nora, still young and headstrong in all her emotions, her sensibilities raw with the events of the last weeks, stood alone and watched the scene before her with eyes from which the tears were held back by the strength of pride alone.

There must have been considerably over two hundred guests present, almost exclusively officers of lower rank, with here and there a civilian to throw the brilliant uniforms into more striking relief. Nora could not but be impressed by the tall, finely built men, with the strong-cut, bronzed faces, and in each she saw a dim reflection of her husband. There was perhaps no real resemblance, but they were of one type—they were German, and that one similarity aroused in her the old feeling of wild opposition against the man she loved, and whom she had sworn to stand by to the end. Her love for him was as genuine as her admiration for these, his brothers—as genuine as her hatred for him and for them all.

In the midst of her bitter reflections she heard a voice speak to her, and, turning, found Bauer at her side. She had expected him the whole evening, and her humiliation deepened as she saw the cynical satisfaction in his eyes. She knew that he was triumphing in the belief that he had won, that in her loneliness she would turn to him, and the knowledge changed her misery to a desperate pride.

"Well, gnädige Frau," he said. She made no answer, and his smile broadened. "You see, I am very punctual," he went on. "I have come for my answer. What is it to be?"

"I gave it you once," she returned. "Is that not enough?"

"Circumstances can alter the most determined. Are you not tired of this Pharisaical crowd, who pretend to look upon you as dirt because you do not pronounce their shibboleth as it pleases them? Are you not ready now to come amongst friends who wish you well—who would help you? You have only to say the word."

She looked about her, feeling her isolation like an icy wind, and for an instant knew temptation. How easy it would be to yield! What, after all, had he asked of her?—her friendship, common politeness for the woman who had shown her kindness. What had he offered her? His help and support in her loneliness and need. Then she remembered—and the temptation passed.

"My answer remains the same, Herr Rittmeister."

His face became suffused with a dull red.

"Gnädige Frau, take care! It is not only your brother who will suffer for your decision!"

She heard the angry threat in his voice, and a feeling of contempt and aversion, almost physical in its intensity, came over her. She looked about her, half unconsciously seeking some way of escape. Miles was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes flashed rapidly over the crowd, picking out the black evening coats, and then for the first time she saw Arnold. She went to meet him, regardless of prudence, of the rage in Bauer's eyes, of the malice and suspicion that watched her from every side. She only knew that a friend had come to her in the midst of enemies, and that she was no longer alone.

"Oh, Robert!" she cried. "How glad I am to see you! How did you manage to come here?"

"The Ambassador got me the invitation," he said, taking her hand in his strong clasp. "God knows it isn't the time to seek such hospitality, but I had to see you somehow, Nora, before I went."

"Let us get away from this crowd," she said hurriedly. "We can't talk here."

He gave her his arm and led her to one of the supper-tables that were placed beneath the gallery.

"We can pretend to want coffee, or something of the sort," he said. "No one will disturb us."

She looked across and smiled at him with a fleeting radiance. Oh, that English voice, that English face! Laughter of relief and thankfulness fought with the tears that had so long lain checked, and now struggled for release beneath the touch of a friend's unspoken sympathy.

"Nora, what is wrong?" he went on. "Why wouldn't you see me? Have I offended you in any way?"

"Offended me!" She laughed brokenly. "Do I look offended, Robert? Don't you know I could have danced for joy when I saw you coming?"

Reckless Nora! Her words, spoken in a moment of relief from an agonising pressure, had not the meaning which he believed he read out of them. Something was not any longer so selfless, so resigned, flashed into his steady grey eyes.

"Then what is it, Nora? Tell me everything. You know you have promised me your friendship."

She did not hesitate an instant. Those three hours beneath the enemy's fire had driven her to exasperation, to that point of hysterical nervousness from which most feminine folly is committed.

"They forbade my seeing you," she said—"not in words; but they said things which left me no choice. They said I was bringing disgrace upon my husband, and upon his name——"

"Nora! Who said that?"

"Frau von Arnim. She hates me. And Wolff said much the same. They can't understand a straight, honest friendship between a man and a woman."

"You mean it was because of me?"

"Yes. Of course Frau von Arnim knows everything about—about the past, and she believes—oh, it is too horrid what she believes. We don't need to think about it. She has not told Wolff. If she had he would have turned me out of the house or locked me up in the cellar. None of them—not even he—can understand. Oh, Robert, you don't know how hard it was to have to send you away! You and Miles are the only people in all this big city to whom I can turn."

Arnold sat silent, staring in front of him. His pulses were beating with a growing, suffocating excitement. He knew by every tone of her voice, by every glance of her stormy, miserable eyes, that she was in his power, that he had but to make the appeal and she would follow him out of the room whithersoever he led her. The knowledge touched his steady-flowing blood with fever—in the same moment he was conscious of remorse and shame. He had lingered at her side against every behest of wisdom and honour, deceiving himself and her with an assumption of loyal, disinterested friendship. It was no friendship. Those who had judged it by another name had judged rightly. He had come between husband and wife, he was at that very moment, willingly or unwillingly, playing the part of tempter in the devil's comedy.

"Nora," he began, "perhaps I have done you harm. Perhaps I ought not to have come to-night."

"I don't care!" she retorted recklessly. "I don't care whether anything is right or wrong. When you came I was desperate. I hate every one here. It is awful to feel that I belong to them. I want to get away from here—home, to England."

"Nora—for God's sake!" He was frightened now—of her and of himself. "You must not talk like that. Your home is here with your husband."

"It is not!" she retorted, in the same low, trembling voice. "It is in England—it can never be anywhere else. Oh, you don't know what I suffer!"

"I can guess. Why don't you tell Wolff everything? Why don't you confide in him?"

Everything in him revolted against his own words. They were spoken, not out of innermost conviction, but as a stern tribute to his honour, and the principles which were bred into his bone and blood.

"I have," she said, "but it was of no good. He could not help me—no one can. It is as he said—one must choose."

"Poor child!"

"I deserve it all. It is my punishment. I did wrong in marrying Wolff, I did wrong to make you suffer. And now I suffer——"

"Nora!" An immense tenderness crept into his voice. He heard it, and the next moment he had regained his self-control. He was ashamed of the rôle he had been about to play. "We must bear our lot," he said sternly.

The waltz, under cover of which their rapid conversation had taken place, died into silence, and close upon the momentary hush that followed, they heard the dull thud of a falling body, a crash of glass and a low hubbub, above which one loud angry voice was distinctly audible. Nora started to her feet. Whether she had recognised that voice, or whether she was led by some instinct, she did not know. Her heart was beating with fear and excitement.

"Something has happened!" she exclaimed. "Quick!"

Arnold followed her in the direction whence the sounds came. In one of the adjoining alcoves a little group of officers had collected, and as they approached near enough to see what was happening, Arnold turned to Nora and tried to draw her on one side.

"Don't go!" he said. "It is some silly quarrel! Let me see to it."

"No, no!" she returned hoarsely, and pushed forward to the outside of the circle. She saw Miles standing by the table; he was leaning on it as though for support, his dress was disordered, his features crimson with drink and passion. A young officer had hold of him by the arm and was evidently trying to hold him back. A few feet away Bauer was rearranging his collar, with an assumption of contemptuous calm. A red scar upon his cheek told its own story.

"You d——d liar!" Miles shrieked in English, struggling against the detaining hold upon his arm. "If it wasn't that they protected you I'd thrash you within an inch of your life!"

His opponent smiled scornfully.

"I do not care for boxing-matches in a ball-room." he said, "not even with an intoxicated Englishman. Captain von Ebberstein, I should be very glad if you would represent me in this matter."

The one elderly officer present bowed, and approached Miles, whom he also saluted with a faultless formality, which contrasted strikingly with the other's unsteady, excited movements.

"Perhaps the gentleman would kindly name his seconds," he said, speaking in broken English. "The continuation of this affair can then be arranged on a more becoming occasion."

Arnold tried to loosen Nora's grasp upon his arm.

"I must get him out of this somehow," he whispered. "They are trying to force him into a duel."

Miles, however, gave him no time to interfere.

"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.

The officer shrugged his shoulders.

"You felt yourself wounded in your honour and have avenged yourself by insulting this officer here. That can have but one meaning."

"I swear I don't know what you are talking about!"

"There are certain injuries for which there is but one remedy," was the cold explanation.

A light seemed to dawn over Miles's scarlet face. He burst into a high, wavering laugh.

"You think I am going to fight a duel? You think I'm going to make such a d——d fool of myself?" he demanded thickly.

The officers looked at each other in contemptuous silence. Bauer smiled and turned aside, as though to spare himself the sight of so profound a humiliation. Captain von Ebberstein alone retained his expression of profound gravity.

"A gentleman is expected to give satisfaction," he said.

"I don't care what you expect," was Miles's retort. "I'll have nothing to do with such infernal nonsense. He lied, and I choked the lie down his throat, and there's an end to the matter!"

"On the contrary, it is the beginning."

"I think differently."

Bauer advanced. He was swinging his white kid glove carelessly backwards and forwards, and there was the same scornful smile about his lips. At the same moment his eyes fell on Nora's face, and the smile deepened with malicious satisfaction.

"In that case, it is my duty to inform you that you are neither a gentleman nor a man of honour," he said. "As such, and as a coward, you will feel no objection to my expressing my feelings—thus!"

He flung the glove full into Miles's face.

There was a moment of expectant silence. Miles appeared to ignore what had happened. The temporary excitement was over, and the wine was beginning to numb his senses with the first touch of drowsiness. It was Arnold's opportunity. He pushed through the little circle and took Miles firmly by the arm.

"Let me pass!" he said to those about him. "This gentleman is my friend."

Miles yielded passively, and no one made any effort to detain him. The group fell back on either side, as they would have done from people infected with disease, and Arnold guided the wavering Miles across the ballroom. The floor was empty, and Nora felt she must sink beneath the hundreds of eyes that watched them. Yet she carried herself haughtily, and the one thought that flashed clearly through her mind, as the great glass doors swung behind her, was that she was free—that, come what would, she could never see those people again. The last possibility of her existence amongst them was destroyed. Further than that she refused to think.

The drive home was an absolutely silent one. Miles, yielding to the influence of champagne and the late excitement, fell into a disturbed doze, from which Arnold and Nora made no attempt to arouse him. They sat opposite each other in the half-light, avoiding each other's eyes.

Thus they reached the gloomy little house which was Nora's home.

"I had better help him upstairs," Arnold said quietly. "We must make as little fuss as possible."

Nora consented with a brief inclination of the head. She was past all struggle against circumstances. Between them they succeeded in piloting Miles up the endless flights. He seemed, quite unconscious of his state, and talked loudly and incessantly, so that all hope of bringing him to his room unobserved was doomed as vain. Nevertheless, stunned and indifferent as she was, Nora started back involuntarily as Wolff met them in the passage. He carried a candle in his hand, and the light reflected on his pale, exhausted face fell also on Miles, and revealed enough of the truth. He glanced away at Nora, and from Nora to Arnold. His expression betrayed no feeling, but she felt that he was trying to read into the very depths of their souls.

"Please come in here," he said quietly.

He led the way into the drawing-room and switched on the light, and they followed him without protest.

"Tell me what happened," he commanded.

Arnold made a movement as though he would have spoken, but Wolff stopped him with a courteous but decided gesture.

"I wish Miles to tell me—if he can," he said.

Miles lifted his hanging head. A silly self-satisfaction twisted his unsteady lips.

"I can tell you right enough," he said, "only I'll sit down, if you don't mind, I feel so infernally shaky. It was Bauer, you know. I was having my supper when I heard him and another fellow talking, and though I'm not good at the jargon I caught the drift of what he was saying. It was about a woman. He said if he were her husband he would make an end of such a dirty scandal, and put a bullet through some one or other's head. You can fancy that I pricked up my ears, and I turned and saw that he was pointing at Nora and Arnold. That was too much for me. I got up and asked what he meant. He told me—and I swear it wasn't nice. He said——"

Wolff lifted his hand.

"I don't want to hear that," he said. "Go on."

"Well, I knocked him down, and there was the devil of a row!" Miles laughed unsteadily. "The silly fools wanted me to fight a duel over it!" he added.

"And you——?"

"I told them I wasn't going to make such a d——d idiot of myself."

Wolff said nothing for a moment. His whole face had stiffened, and he was looking at Miles from head to foot.

"And after that they called you a coward?" he asked, at last.

"Some rot like that——"

"And they were right. You are a coward—the vilest, most pitiful coward I have ever met."

"Wolff!"

It was Nora who had cried out. The insult had fallen on her brother and herself alike, and her voice shook with passionate indignation.

Her husband turned to her.

"The man who is not ready to risk his life for his sister's honour is a coward," he asserted deliberately.

A gesture of protest escaped Arnold, who had hitherto remained silent and motionless.

"You forget," he said. "In England we do not duel—it is not our custom."

"No; you go to law and take money for your injured honour," was the coldly scornful answer. "That is the revenge of shopkeepers—not of gentlemen."

The two men measured each other in painful electric silence, and as they stood there face to face, the contrast between them marked them as two great types of two great races. The thin, loosely built Englishman, with the long, gaunt features, confronted the German, whose broad shoulders and massive head seemed to make him taller than his opponent. Perhaps some vague notion of the conflict which they represented dawned in Nora's mind. She looked from one to the other, terrified of the forces behind the masks of stern self-repression, and instinctively weighing them in a mental balance. For the first time in their married life she was afraid of her husband. It seemed to her that his height and breadth had increased in the last moments; there was something gigantic in the stature, and something bulldog, tenacious, and yet keenly alive, powerfully intellectual in the face, with its square chin and massive forehead. Compared with him, Arnold, tall and wiry though he was in reality, appeared enfeebled, almost fragile. If the two men had fallen upon each other in that moment—the very possibility sickened Nora's heart with fear. She had seen Arnold's hands clench themselves as Wolff's scornful criticism had been uttered, and involuntarily she had taken a quick step forward as though to fling herself between them. But there was no need for interference. Both men possessed admirable self-control, and in that moment at least they respected each other.

"We have our own opinions on these matters," Arnold said. "You have yours. Mr. Ingestre is an Englishman, and does not need to conform to your customs. He gave his opponent the lie, and has done all that he need do."

"So you have said," Wolff returned calmly. "In my eyes, and in the eyes of my world, there is still much to be done. But that—as the one German here—concerns me alone." He turned to Miles, who was still seated, his face in his hands, apparently dozing. "Go to your room!" he commanded peremptorily. The tone of almost brutal authority acted like a goad on Nora's tortured nerves.

"You speak to my brother as though he were a dog!" she burst out.

Wolff did not answer her.

"Go to your room!" he repeated.

Miles staggered to his feet and tottered across to the door. He seemed to be obeying the hypnotising power of Wolff's voice, for his movements were those of a sleep-walker.

"Good night, every one!" he mumbled. "Good night!"

No one responded. The two men again faced each other.

"I am grateful to you for the assistance you rendered my wife," Wolff said. "We shall scarcely meet again."

"Not here, at any rate," was the significant answer.

A curt salute, and Arnold turned away. He gave Nora his hand.

"Good-bye—and God bless you!" he said.

Her lips moved soundlessly. For an instant it seemed almost as though she clung to him. Then her hand fell listlessly to her side, and the next minute he too had gone.

Husband and wife did not speak. Nora seated herself at the table and buried her face in her arms. She cried without restraint, not loudly, but with low, monotonous, terrible sobs.

Her husband crossed to the door of his room. He stood there a moment, his head bowed, listening. It was as though he were receiving some final message from those sounds of piteous self-abandonment. But he did not look at Nora. He went out, and the soft click of the lock pierced through her grief, so that she started upright.

She saw that the door was closed, and that she was alone.

CHAPTER XV

THE SEA BETWEEN

To reach Wolff's study it was necessary to pass through the drawing-room. On his way, therefore, Captain von Seleneck encountered Nora, who was seated at her table writing. He bowed, she answered with a slight inclination of the head and he passed on, as a total stranger might have done, into the inner sanctuary.

He found Wolff at work on some nearly finished plans. He was standing over them, and with a compass measuring distances with a careful, painstaking exactitude, and his face, as he looked up, though haggard almost beyond belief, was absolutely determined, without trace of weakness.

The two men shook hands and Wolff went on working.

"It was good of you to come, Kurt," he said. "I know you must be overburdened with duty just now."

"One has always time for a comrade, and especially for you," was the answer; "and whether you had sent for me or not, I should have come—like a bird of ill-omen. I felt I owed it to you as your friend, and you would rather have it from me than from another man. It seems, though, you know all about last night?"

"Quite enough."

"It was a wretched affair," Seleneck said, placing his helmet on the table. "I got it from an eye-witness. Of course, your precious brother-in-law had had too much to drink. That was inevitable, and might have been hushed up. But then came the row with Bauer. It was obvious that Bauer was on the look-out for mischief, and I should like to give Mr. Ingestre the credit for knocking him down as a return for what he said about your wife. Unfortunately, the real subject of dispute was—money."

Wolff nodded.

"How did you hear of it?" he asked.

"Ebberstein came straight to me. It was rather decent of him. He knew, of course, that I was your friend, and the best person to tell you what had happened. It was obvious that you had to be told. You see—it was not only your brother-in-law. Your—wife's name and—and honour were dragged in."

Wolff's lips tightened.

"I know," he said. "Go on!"

"Well, we talked it over, and I promised to come round to you directly I was free. When I got back this morning I found your letter waiting for me, and here I am!" He laid his hand with an affectionate movement on his comrade's shoulder. "Whatever it is—I'm your man," he said.

"I know, alter Junge. You have always stuck to me. You were the one man in all Berlin to whom I felt I could turn with real confidence. By the way, I suppose I may leave the arrangement of things in your hands?"

"I shall be proud to act for you, Wolff. To all intents and purposes everything is settled. Ebberstein and I talked it over last night. In the almost certain event of your challenging, we decided that a Court of Honour should sit this evening in my house and that the meeting should take place at the latest to-morrow morning. It is impossible to know when we shall have marching-orders, so there must be no delay. If you wish it, I shall proceed at once to Bauer and find out whom he intends to appoint as seconds. The rest of the formalities you can safely entrust to me."

"Thank you. When is the Court of Honour appointed to sit?"

"If it can be managed, at six o'clock. The circumstances are simple enough, so that the conditions should be very quickly settled. You, of course, are the challenging party, and the matter will come under the head of 'schwere Beleidigung,' so that ten paces will be about the outcome. Are you good at that distance?"

"Pretty well."

"Ebberstein says your man is a first-class shot. Es heisst aufpassen, Wolff!"

Arnim made no answer and his companion took up his helmet.

"I shall come round to you this evening as soon as the Court's decision has been given," he said.

Wolff looked up quickly.

"If you don't mind, I would prefer to come to you," he said. "And if I might, I will stay the night at your house. It would be better. I do not want my wife to know anything of what is to happen."

"But—Menschenkind! She must know!"

"She suspects nothing. You forget—she is not one of us. She does not understand."

Seleneck stared thoughtfully in front of him, pulling his moustache as though a prey to some painful uneasiness.

"Of course I hope the very best for you, Wolff," he said, at last, "but you are a big man, and unlucky accidents happen. It would be pretty hard on your wife if she knew nothing and——"

"It would be a shock," interrupted Wolff quietly. "I know that. Believe me, though, what I have arranged is for the best. She would not understand."

Seleneck asked none of the questions that were burning the tip of his tongue. A natural delicacy, above all, his comrade's face, held him silent, and it was Wolff who continued after a moment:

"In the event of what you call an 'unlucky accident' my wife will, of course, return to her own country. Her brother is starting for England to-morrow, so that she will be able to accompany him. But in any case—whether I fall or not—I beg of you to do your utmost to shield her from all trouble—and scandal. She is innocent—absolutely innocent. I know—you cannot hide it from me—that you and all the rest blame her. She is not to be blamed because she married a man not of her own people. She is to be profoundly pitied. That is all, and it explains everything."

"You talk as though you were certain of the worst," Seleneck said. "But if everything goes well—what then?"

The compasses slipped from Wolff's fingers.

"God knows!" he said.

It was no exclamation of despair, rather a reverent surrender of a life which he could no longer shape alone, and Seleneck turned aside, more deeply moved than he cared to show. He had known Wolff from the earliest Kadetten days, and had watched the dawn of great promise break into a day of seeming fulfilment. With unchanging, unenvying friendship he had followed the brilliant career, admiring the boy's ambition ripening to steadfast purpose, the boyish spirits steadying to a bold and fearless optimism. And, after all, he ended as others ended—in shipwreck—only more tragically, with the port of Victory in sight. Seleneck remembered his own words spoken only a few months before: "Take care that you do not end as Field-Marshal with Disappointment for an Adjutant!" And Wolff was not even major, and something worse than Disappointment, something that was more like Catastrophe, had already chosen him as comrade.

Against Wolff's wish, Seleneck blamed Nora bitterly. He held her responsible for every shadow that had fallen upon the hopeful life, but he swore to himself that she should not know it, and that he would prove her friend for her husband's sake, whatever befell.

"My will is, of course, made," Wolff said, breaking upon his troubled reflections, "and here is a letter to my aunt and Hildegarde; please give it to them in the event of my death."

"And for your wife?"

"This other letter is for her."

Seleneck took the two envelopes and put them in his pocket.

"I think everything is settled now?" he said.

"Everything. I shall work at these plans as long as possible, and if I get them finished I shall take them to Colonel von Beck before I come to you. If not, I shall leave them locked in here and bring you the key. If anything happens to me, you will know where to find them. They are of some importance, and I would be grateful if you would see to it that they are taken at once to head-quarters."

"Pray Heaven you may be able to take them yourself!" Seleneck returned earnestly.

Wolff made no answer, but he straightened his shoulders and held out a steady hand.

"In any case, thank you for your friendship, Kurt," he said. "It has been the best—no, almost the best thing in my life."

That loyal correction touched the elder man profoundly, and for the first time a faint trace of emotion relaxed Wolff's set features.

"Do not let my wife suspect that anything serious has passed between us," he added. "She suffers enough."

The two men embraced, and Seleneck went out of the room with his brows knitted in bitter, painful lines. He did not wish to see Wolff's wife, much less speak with her, but she was still seated by the table, and as he entered she rose as though she had been waiting for him. She did not offer him her hand, and in spite of all his resolutions he felt that the enmity and distrust were in his eyes as he waited for her to speak.

"Has anything happened?" she asked breathlessly.

If he could have forgotten his friend's face, he might have pitied her in that moment. Only a few months had passed since he had welcomed the girlish bride on the Karlsburg platform, and now all the girlhood had gone. She looked old as she stood there—pitiably old, because the age lay only in the expression, which was bitter, miserable, and reckless.

"What should have happened, gnädige Frau?" Seleneck answered, parrying her question with an indifference which concealed a very real anxiety. He could not free himself from the conviction that she knew. He could not imagine it possible that she was ignorant of the consequences of the last night's catastrophe.

"You know very well what I mean!" Nora said roughly. "I ask you because you must know. Will there be war?"

Seleneck nearly laughed. So much for his sharp-sightedness! She had not been thinking of her husband, but of herself; or was perhaps the fear written on her face, fear for his safety? He did not believe it. He was too bitter against her to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"I know no more than you know, gnädige Frau," he said. "Our ultimatum has been sent to England. The next twenty-four hours must decide."

"But surely you have an idea—surely you can guess?"

"Gnädige Frau, we soldiers are not politicians. We are ready to march when the order is given. That is the only point with which we are concerned."

He waited an instant, and then, as she did not answer, he clapped his spurred heels together and went.

Nora crept back to her place at the table. Her movements were like those of a woman who has struggled up from a severe illness, and as she sat there with the pen in her listless hand she asked herself if this feeling of deadly physical inertia were not indeed the forerunner of the definite breakdown of her whole strength. Alone her thoughts seemed alive, to be indued with an agonising vitality which left her no peace or rest. They had followed her through the short night hours of sleep, and they pursued her now till she could have cried out with pain and despair. They were not thoughts that helped her, or sought a way for her out of the problem of her life. They were of the kind that haunt the fevered mind in dreams, pictures of the past and of the future that slipped across her mental vision in kaleidoscopic confusion, only to return again and again with hideous persistency. She could not control them; she sat there and yielded herself listlessly to their torture, leaving to Fate the whole guidance of the future. She had no plans of her own. Once it had occurred to her to write to her mother, but she had not traced more than the first few lines before the pen fell from her hand. Pride, rather than love, held her back from the bitter confession of her wretchedness. The thought of her father's triumph and her mother's grief had been sufficient to turn her away from the one path which still remained open to her.

Thus her thoughts continued their round, and the winter dusk deepened to evening. The servant had forgotten to attend to the stove, and a bitter penetrating cold ate into her very heart. She cared too little to move. She sat with her chin resting on her hand and watched the snow that was beginning to fall in the quiet street. Winter—in a few days Christmas! The thoughts took a swift turn. A year ago she had been at home, fighting with the courage of her youth for what she deemed her happiness. A year ago she had slept—foolish child!—with Wolff's last letter beneath her pillow and sworn to it that, come what might, she would trample on home and people and country, and follow him whithersoever he would lead her. "Thy people shall be my people, thy God my God!" A year ago—no more than that! And now she sat alone, and the door was locked between them.

She listened intently, and again her thoughts changed their course. What was he doing? Was he, too, sitting alone, as she sat, with his face between his hands, gazing into the ruin of his life's happiness? A wave of pity, even of tenderness, passed like a thawing breath over her frozen misery. Could she not go to him and put her arms about his shoulders, and plead with him, "Let all be good between us! Take me away from here to the other end of the earth and let us forget! I cannot bear to suffer thus, nor to see you suffer!" Surely it was not too late.

Urged by a hope born of her despair, she rose quickly and went to his door. She heard him move; there was a sound of papers being turned over, the clatter of keys, a short sigh of satisfaction, and then slow steps approaching from the other side. Her hand, raised in the act of knocking, fell paralysed. The next instant she was back at her table writing—what and to whom she never knew. But she was laughing to herself—that piteous heart-rending laughter of those who find in themselves the butt for the bitterest mockery. He had been working. Not for an instant had he been thrown out of his course by the storm which was threatening her with total shipwreck. He had gone on with his plans, his maps, his calculations as though nothing had happened, as though she were no more than an episode in his life. He did not care for her suffering—or what was worse, he did not know, so complete was the severance of their union.

A year ago! It might have been ten years, ten ages. The moment when he had held her in his arms for the first time might have been a dream and this the reality, grim, cold, and intolerable. She heard the key turn in the lock, the crack of the door as it opened. She heard Wolff's heavy step on the parquette, and then once more the closing of the door and the noise of the key twice turned and withdrawn. Then silence. She went on writing—words that had no meaning. Her pulses were at the gallop with suspense, fear, and an emotion which she did not stop to analyse. They had not met since the night before. What would he say to her—or she to him?

"How cold it is!" he said quietly. "The fire has gone out. You must be freezing!"

She did not lift her head for a moment, so startled was she by the perfect equanimity of his words and tone. And yet it was what she might have expected. It was all in perfect harmony with his whole character, with his whole conduct. He had seen the last link between them break and had gone back to his room and worked steadily throughout the night, and now he came and talked to her—about the fire!

"Johann is out," he went on, "but I dare say I can manage."

She turned then, and looked at him. He was kneeling by the stove trying to rekindle the dying embers with some sticks he had found in the coal-scuttle. He had changed his clothes for his full uniform, and the helmet with the plume lay at his side on the floor, together with the sword and white kid gloves. A bitter, sarcastic smile relaxed Nora's set lips. She wondered that it had never struck her before how prosaic, almost plebeian he was. The splendid clothes had, after all, only been the gilt covering to a piece of machinery working in blind accordance with thousands of others in its one great task—a dull, brute thing, for whom the finer emotions were a sealed book. She saw him in a new light as he knelt there, his shadow thrown up against the wall by the rekindling fire. She felt as though he were a total stranger against whom she felt an increasing antagonism.

Presently he rose, dusting his hands on his handkerchief.

"I think it will do now," he said. "Do you want the light? You can't possibly see."

"I would rather be as I am," she answered coldly.

She covered her face with her hand and appeared to forget his presence. But in a rapid, inexplicable revulsion of feeling, the first fear and suspense returned, and though she did not see him she followed his every movement, her ears translating every sound with the precision of a second-sight. She heard him pick up sword and helmet, then the soft, familiar click of his spurs as he crossed the room to the farther door. Then the sound stopped, and she knew that he was looking at her. The silence seemed to last an eternity. It suffocated her; she felt that if it lasted another instant she must scream out, so frightful was the strain, and yet, when as though obeying an irresistible behest he came back upon his steps and put his hand upon her shoulder, she prayed for that silence to come back, anything rather than that he should speak to her.

"Gott segne dich und behüte dich, meine Frau!" he said, and bent and kissed her hand.

That was all. The next minute the loud clang of the outer door told her that he had gone.

For a long time she sat as though paralysed, listening to the words as they echoed through her memory. He had spoken in German—as he never did save in moments of deep feeling—and there had been something in his voice which she had never heard before. She sprang to her feet. The earlier lassitude and indifference were over, she felt as though every nerve in her body had been drawn taut by some nameless, indefinable fear.

"Wolff!" she cried. "Wolff!"

She knew that he was out of hearing. She knew that if he stood before her in that moment she would turn from him with the same coldness, the same anger. Yet she called for him despairingly, and when she put her hand to her face she found that it was wet with tears.

"Wolff!" she repeated. "Wolff!"

The answering silence appalled her. She ran out into the passage to Miles's door and knocked urgently. She did not know what she wanted of him. She only knew that she could not bear to be alone.

After what seemed a moment's hesitation the bolt was drawn, and Miles's flushed face appeared in the aperture. He looked curiously relieved when he saw who his visitor was.

"What is it?" he demanded curtly. "I am busy packing."

His tone gave her back her self-possession—or the appearance of self-possession.

"I only wanted to know if you were at home," she said. "I—am going out for a little."

The idea had come to her as she spoke. The confusion and noise of the streets seemed to offer to her the sole antidote for the feverish restlessness which had come over her.

Miles nodded.

"All right. Where—where is Wolff?"

The light was behind him, and she could not see his face. Nevertheless she felt that the expression in his eyes was tense, excited, that he was studying her as though on her answer depended more than she guessed.

"He has just gone out."

"Thanks. How long will you be?"

"I don't know. I am only going to get fresh air."

"You might go towards the Kriegsministerium," Miles suggested carelessly. "You might hear if there is any answer come from home. War may be declared at any minute."

Nora made no answer. His words had set her heart beating with pain, and the pain increased as five minutes later she found herself being swept along in the stream of the crowd. Everything was very quiet. It seemed to her that not one of those with whom she was borne forward spoke. A silence, ominous as the hush before the storm, weighed upon all, and only the faces coming and going out of the circles of lamp-light revealed the forces of passion which were awaiting the hour when they should be set free. After the first moment, Nora ceased to notice all this. She was winged with a panting, rapidly increasing anxiety which obliterated everything—even to her own personality. She forgot Wolff, she forgot herself and the conflict before her; she had become an atom in one mighty community with whose existence her own was irrevocably bound. She was no longer Wolff's wife, she was not even Nora Ingestre; she was English, and, as though from far away a voice called her by some all-powerful incantation, she forced her way forward. War! Her heart exulted. War! Her excited imagination transported her to the centre of another and a greater city; she felt closed in on every side by a people whose blood was hers; she heard their voices, a magic stream of sympathy poured from them to her; she heard the tramp of a thousand feet, the clash of martial music, the roar of cheering, and in the brilliant light bayonets flashed like a moving ribbon of silver. War! And if War—why then, Victory, her country's final, grandest triumph!

The dream vanished—nay, became a reality with another meaning, which for a moment she could not comprehend. The crowd about her swayed, hesitated, and eddied like a stream that has been checked by some unexpected force. A low murmur rose like the first breath of the hurricane.