“You are the son of the woman whose name you bear; you are no son of mine.  No one devoid of honor can be a Falkenried.”

The words were almost too much for Hartmut.  The blood mounted hot and wild to his brow—­the brow so like his father’s—­and it required all his strength to keep himself under control.

The two believed themselves to be alone in the silence of the night, for all in the castle had retired to rest.  They did not know that they had a witness.  Adelheid von Wallmoden had not retired to rest.  She knew that sleep would not come to her eyes, which had witnessed the dreadful accident which left her a widow.  Still clad in the dark traveling dress which she had worn on that fateful journey, she sat in her room, when the colonel’s voice sounded on her ear.  With whom could he be speaking at that late hour?  He knew no one, and yet his voice had a strange, threatening sound.  Puzzled and uneasy, the tired woman rose and stepped into the ante-chamber which separated the two rooms, to see who it was.  She had no desire to overhear any conversation.  She had a nervous feeling that something new might have happened.  Then a voice which she knew only too well, said “Father,” and that one word revealed to her what the next few words confirmed.  Like one possessed she stood still and listened to all which came to her through the half-opened door.

“You make this hour very hard, father,” Hartmut said, laboring to control his voice, “but I think I hardly expected anything else.  Wallmoden has told you about me, I feel sure, and what I have sought, and how I have succeeded.  I bring you the poet’s wreath, father, the first which has fallen to my share.  Learn to know my work, let it speak to you, then you will realize how impossible it was for a man of my temperament to live and breathe under the restrictions of a profession which was death to every poetic feeling; then you will forgive your unruly son for his boyish trick.”

Hartmut Rojanow was himself again, and spoke with his old domineering pride.  His arrogant self-consciousness clung to him even in this hour.  He was the author of “Arivana,” who acknowledged neither obligation nor duty.

“The boyish trick,” said Falkenried in a harder voice than ever.  “Yes, that’s what they called it in order to make it possible for me to remain in the service.  I called it something else, and many of my comrades with me.  You would soon have been an ensign, in a few weeks you would have been fleeing from the flag you had sworn to defend—­I have never known such another case.  You had been well and carefully educated and I had striven to instill into your mind the keenest sense of honor.  You knew only too well what you did, you were no longer a boy.  He who flees like a thief in the night from the service of his country is a deserter; he breaks his word and he does not know what honor means.  That is what you did!  But it comes easy for you, and such as you, to do such things.”