But I made nothing of it—­thinking, like a careless, ill-deserving soldier-lover, eager for success and dazzled with ambition, chiefly of my profession, of how to win battles and take fortresses against the surrounding princelings, our Karl’s enemies, till one day I found Helene with her cheeks wet and her pretty lips bitten till the blood had come.

“What is’t, little one?  Tell me!” said I, going to her and putting my arm about her, as indeed I had some right to do, if no more than the right of having carried her up into the Red Tower in her white gown so long ago.

But she wrested herself determinedly out of my hold, saying:  “Do not touch me, sir.  ’Tis all your fault!”

“What is my fault, dear lass?” said I.  “Tell me, and I will instantly amend it.”

“Oh!” she cried, casting her hands out from her in bitter complaint, “there is nothing so meanly selfish as a man!  He will say tender things—­aye, and do them, too, when it liketh him.  He can be, oh, so devoted and so full of his eternal affections.  He is dying all for love!  And then, soon as he passes out of the door he ties his sword-knot and points his mustache to his liking, and lo! there is no more of him.  He goes and straightway forgets till it shall please his High Mightiness to call again.  Oh! and we—­we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!”

This was a most mighty speech for the Little Playmate, and took me entirely by surprise.  For mostly she was still enough and quiet enough in her ways and speakings.

“’Tis true, sweetheart, that some men are like that,” I replied, gently, “but not Hugo Gottfried, surely.  When did you ever find me unkind, unthankful, unfaithful?  When went I ever away and left you alone?”

“Oh, you did—­you did,” she cried, the tears starting from her lovely eyes, “or I should never have been insulted—­treated lightly, spoken to as a staled thing of courts and camps!”

And Helene sank down beside the garden wall in an abandonment of sorrow—­so that my heart grew hot and angry at the cause of her grief, to me then unknown.

I knelt down beside her and touched her lightly on one rounded, heaving shoulder.

“Dearest,” said I, “I knew nothing of this.  Tell me who has insulted you.  As God is in His heaven, I will have my sword in his heart or nightfall, were it the Prince himself!  Tell me, and by the Lord of the Innocents, I will make him eat cold steel and drink his own blood therewith!”

“Oh, it was my own fault—­I know I should not have met him—­let him speak to me in the garden.  But you were so cold to me, Hugo.  And then I thought—­I thought that the Woman was taking you away from me.  Also she sent me out to be—­to be in his path!”

“In whose path, I bid you tell me, and what woman?”