On reaching the highroad Boleslav saw the figure of a girl come out from the shadow of the churchyard yews, and advance to meet him with hesitating footsteps.

The moment to which he had looked forward with tender yearning for eight years had come at last, yet his heart beat no quicker. "You ought to be pleased; congratulate yourself," he said inwardly. "She loves you! She saved you ... has freed you from Regina." And something echoed sadly within him, "From Regina!"

The contour of the too slender figure was sharply defined against the moonlit background. The shoulders looked angular, and her hips fell in straight, ungraceful lines from the high-waisted bodice.

He jumped over the ditch, and held out both his hands to her. With a prudish simper she placed hers behind her back.

"Don't be so impetuous," she lisped.

He was amazed. The action chilled him, and almost excited his contempt; but he was ashamed of the emotion, and tried to suppress it.

"You have kept me waiting a long time, Regina."

The face she turned on him was illuminated by the moon, and he saw plainly how insignificant and meagre it had become. She tossed her head scornfully.

"My name is Helene," she said. "I am sorry you have forgotten it;" and pouting, she turned her back.

He winced. "Pardon," he stammered; "it was a slip of the tongue."

This was certainly an unfortunate beginning. She made another grimace, but seemed disposed to accept his apology.

"Don't let us stay here," she begged. "I'm afraid."

"What of?"

"Of the churchyard ... if you will know."

Again he had to struggle against a feeling of contempt. In all she said and did he found himself involuntarily comparing her with Regina, and the comparison was immeasurably to her disadvantage.

"You know how timid I am," she said, as they retraced their steps. "It was rash of me to have chosen this place for an appointment; indeed it was exceedingly rash to come at all--and if it weren't----"

Instead of finishing her sentence she cast at him an affected sidelong glance. Then, as he offered to help her over the ditch she gave a little scream and said, "No, no!"

His half-defined sensation of disappointment now gave place to blank astonishment. She gazed round her nervously.

"We can't stay here either," she whispered, "If I were caught here alone with a gentleman, I believe I should die of shame."

"Where do you wish to go, then?"

"You must decide."

"Very well. Come into the wood."

She clasped her hands together with an agitated old-maidish gesture.

"What are you thinking of?" she exclaimed. "At night ... with a gentleman!"

He rubbed his eyes. Was it really possible, what he heard and saw? Could this be Helene, the guardian angel to whom he had looked up, as to a being belonging to another world?

But perhaps it was he who was to blame. Perhaps the language of innocence and virtue was no longer intelligible to him because of the fair savage who had perverted his tastes, and filled his imagination with impure pictures.

"Then let us walk quietly along the highroad," he said.

"But if some one comes?"

"We can see that no one is coming."

"Yet some one might ..."

He was at a loss for an answer. A silence ensued, and then he said, "Won't you take my arm?"

"Oh, I don't know whether I ought," replied the love of his youth.

And again they walked on in silence. It almost seemed as if they had nothing at all to say to each other.

"Regina is waiting!" a voice cried within him.

"How silent you are!" Helene lisped, playfully pinching his elbow with two of the finger-tips that lay on his arm. "You wicked man! Haven't you a little bit of liking left for me?"

He felt he had no right to say "No." She had been true to him, had trusted his word for eight long years; he dared not prove himself unworthy now of her faith in him. When he had reassured her with a stammered "Of course, of course," she sighed, a deep-drawn, languishing sigh.

"I hear such dreadful things about you," she said, "that I don't know what to believe. Tell me it's not true."

"What?" he asked wearily.

"Ah, a girl can't discuss such matters. Immoral things, I mean. In old days you were a good, noble fellow, and I can't believe it's true that you've altered so completely."

She drew a little closer to him. In doing so, she dropped her blue silk reticule. As he stooped--with her--to pick it up, the peak of his cap brushed her face.

"Oh, take care!" she simpered, drawing back hastily.

"A thousand pardons!" he answered, in a tone of rigid politeness, and bit his lips.

"Well, you don't answer my question," she continued. "Perhaps it is true, then, what people say! I should be sorry to think that poor unhappy me had been so deceived in you. But papa always thought you would come to a bad end." She said this with such a ludicrous little air of superiority, that he could not help smiling.

She seemed to discern that she was appearing absurd in his eyes, and went on in a deeply injured tone, "Ah, it's all very well to laugh at a poor girl, whose intentions towards you are so kind, and who would give anything to prevent your ruin."

"Please, do not trouble yourself on my account," he replied.

"Now you are making yourself out worse than you are," she interposed. "I know you have a noble nature at bottom. And if fate parts us for ever, I shall always, always keep a warm place for you in my heart. Oh, what bitter tears have I shed for you many a time! And I've prayed every night to God to keep the dear friend of my youth from sin, and from wicked revengeful thoughts, and to give him a good conscience."

"I am afraid the behaviour of the Schrandeners is not exactly calculated to cure a man of revengeful thoughts," he replied.

She turned up her sharp little nose. "The Schrandeners are an uncouth lot," she remarked. "And one can't have much to do with them. I would much rather stay altogether with my aunt in Wartenstein. There at least one associates with respectable, well-mannered townspeople, who lift their hats to a lady when they meet her in the street. Not a single Schrandener, with the exception of Herr Merckel, and Felix of course, dreams of doing such a thing. Felix," she added with a sigh, "has the manners of a gentleman and an officer." Then as if something had suddenly recalled the events of the afternoon to her mind, she screamed, wrung her hands and said, "Oh, Boleslav, Boleslav!"

"What is it, Helene?"

"Boleslav, how could you be so wicked! Poor, poor Felix! I did not see it myself, for I was in the back-garden drawing radishes, but they told me afterwards how you slashed at his head with your drawn sabre, till it poured with blood." She shuddered and shook with suppressed sobs. Then she wrenched her hand out of his arm and skipped to the opposite side of the road. "Go! I won't have anything more to do with you," she cried. "You acted in a harsh and cruel manner----"

"But you don't understand, dear Helene," he protested.

"And he was your schoolfellow and playmate, and used to play hide-and-seek with us both in the garden. He often climbed over the hedge for you to get your ball when you had tossed it too far, and he used to give you guinea-pigs. Have you forgotten everything? You ought to remember the dear old times."

"Because of the guinea pigs, eh?"

"Oh,--and to think that you have shut him up in the cold dark church! Papa is of opinion that you have no business to do it; he says he will report your conduct to the kommando, and that probably you will get the worst of it."

She resembled her father so little, he thought, that his words of thunder when repeated by her lips sounded the most insipid chatter. And it was on this cackling little hen that he had let the great question of to be, or not to be, hang!

She had now come back to his side, and with a mincing gesture pushed her hand again through his arm.

"They say that you intend carrying him off to-morrow a prisoner, to be tried by a court-martial, and that he will be shot dead for certain. But it must be a lie. It is, isn't it? You couldn't do such a thing; I wouldn't believe it of you. You are not so bad as all that."

He suppressed an exclamation of impatience.

"Say you won't?" she besought, wiping her eyes. "If I ask you, dear Boleslav, to let him go free, you will grant me the favour--I know you will."

She spoke calmly, as if the request she made were merely a casual one. But there was secret anxiety in the eyes that glanced at his suspiciously.

"Dear, dear Boleslav!" she continued more urgently, her arm trembling violently, "if you care for me the very least little bit, don't let us part before you have promised me this. I will cherish your memory always in my heart, if Fate is cruel enough to separate us for ever, and will at least never cease to pray for you and bless you."

"I am sorry, Helene," he said, moved to speaking more warmly by her now evident distress, "if I must seem hard and inexorable to you. But it is all of no good. Your wish cannot possibly be fulfilled."

She had not in the least expected this answer, and regarded him for a second with a cold, angry expression. Then suddenly she burst out weeping, and sank against the trunk of a tree for support, with her thin hands before her face.

At the same moment the report of a gun was heard in the distance, the echo of which slowly rolled through the woodlands.

Helene gave a frightened cry, and, throwing up her hands, sobbed out--

"Now they have shot him for certain, because you, inhuman monster, have commanded it! Oh dear! have you no mercy?"

Listening in the direction from which the gunshot had come, he did his best to soothe her.

That the shot had anything to do with Felix Merckel was, of course, out of the question.

It had undoubtedly been fired in the wood, on the farther side of the Castle, probably by a poacher on the track of a wild red deer.

But she sobbed more violently than ever--

"It's all very well ... but you ... you ... intend dragging him out to his death--you know you do."

Her increasing agitation began to bewilder Boleslav. He assured her he would do everything in his power to ameliorate Felix's sentence. He himself would testify to his being hopelessly intoxicated at the time. His old rancour against himself, his wounded vanity, all should be cited in extenuation of his offence, and might influence his judges to mildness.

But she was not satisfied, and at last dropped on her knees in the clay soil, and cried aloud--

"Be merciful! be noble! Save him!"

"For God's sake, stand up!"

"No, I shall not. In the dust I'll kneel to you and implore your mercy."

"But don't you see that I shall be imputing to myself a murderous design if I represent him as innocent?"

"Never mind," she sobbed. "If you really love me, you won't object to making this little sacrifice for my sake."

Then it began to dawn on him that it was not for the pleasure of seeing him she had summoned him to her side, but, in accordance with a preconceived plan, to make use of his love for her on behalf of another. And of such stuff as this the woman was made, of whom for long years he had considered himself unworthy! This was the radiant angel who had represented his ideal of purity and goodness, whose name he had held too sacred to mention in the same breath as Regina's!

And Regina, the dishonoured, the outcast! What worlds she seemed now above this sly virtue!

A wild laugh burst from him. "Why did you not tell me at once that you were in love with some one else?"

She started. "That is a slander!" she cried. "I am an honest, innocent girl!"

"Well, I presume you are betrothed?"

She began to cry again, though even in her grief she did not forget to carefully brush the mud from her skirts.

"Oh, Boleslav," she wailed, "it's all your fault. Why did you keep me waiting for you so long? And why have you given people so much cause to gossip about you? And then you know, there was papa! His consent could never have been won! What was I, poor girl, to do?"

"Please, say no more. It really doesn't matter!" he broke in cheerily.

"You aren't angry with me, then?"

"Oh no! not in the least!"

In silence he accompanied Helene back to the village, took a friendly farewell of her, and promised to do all he could to save her fiancÉ.

She thanked him, made a formal little curtsey, and they parted.

And so ended the great love of his life.

As he watched the shadow of her meagre little figure disappear behind the houses, his whole soul cried out for Regina in uncontrollable boundless jubilation. Now the road was free--free for sinful, exultant love.

But what was sin, when virtue had collapsed so deplorably? How could there be any evil, when what was good appeared so absurd and contemptible?

"Take her in your arms--crush her to your breast--even to-morrow shall not cheat you of her.... She shall follow you to the camp, from battle to battle--let her wear men's clothes like that Leonore Prohaska, the heroine whom all Germany admires and honours!"

"Regina! Regina!" he carolled anew, stretching out his arms exultingly, in anticipation. He bounded over the moonlit meadows, and higher and darker every minute rose the wooded bank of the river before him.

She would be standing on the Cats' Bridge looking out for him, as she had always done.

"Regina!" he shouted over the river. But no answer came. Deep silence all around. There was only a faint rustle among the young leaves of the willows that sounded like slumberous breathing through half-closed lips; and a gentle splashing came up from the invisible river. Its waters were low, and broke on the sharp pebbles. He climbed the steep steps.

"Regina!" he called again. Still silence. Then he saw that in the centre of the plank, the rickety hand-rail had given way: rotten splinters hung on either side. Horror-stricken, he looked down at the river.

On its silver surface floated a woman's corpse.