It was not long before the brief intoxication of joy was followed by bitter disenchantment.  It had been a fatal error to believe a woman like Zalika Rojanow, who had grown up in the unrestrained freedom of a disorderly, extravagant Bojar family, could accommodate herself to the rules and restrictions of a settled German household.

The only life she had ever known, and the only life which suited her temper, was one of excitement and outward splendor.  A house full of guests, horses, cards, hunting, racing, and the utmost liberty of conversation with the men of her acquaintance; this was the life she had led in her Roumanian home.

She had no notion of duty and no understanding for the obligations and requirements of her new position.  And this was the wife who must adapt herself to the narrow life of a little German garrison town, and direct the household of a young officer with but limited means at his command.  That it was impossible for her to do so, was shown within the first few weeks.  Zalika began at once; regardless of all prudent considerations, to order her house after the same fashion as her father’s, and squandered her large marriage portion right and left.

In vain her husband pleaded with and admonished her; she paid no heed to him.  She had nothing but jeers for forms and ceremonies which were sacred to him, only a shrug of the shoulders for his strict ideas of honor and propriety.  Soon there were violent quarrels, and Falkenried recognized, too late, what his precipitancy had done for him.

He had had great faith in the power of love, notwithstanding all the warnings he had received about Zalika’s foreign birth, and the seal which her erratic education had stamped upon her character.  But he had now to learn that she had never loved him; that it was the whim of the hour, or, more probably, the fleeting passion of a moment, which had made her throw herself into his arms.  And she saw in him only an uncomfortable companion, who spoiled all her pleasure in life with his foolish pendantries and his laughable notions of honor with which he wished to bind her hand and foot.  But with it all, she feared this man, who, in his energy and force, was striving to bend her characterless nature to his will.

The birth of little Hartmut did nothing to relieve the strain of this unhappy marriage, but it was a tie which, outwardly at least, still bound them together.  Zalika loved her child passionately, and she knew her husband well enough to recognize fully, that if it ever came to a separation between them, he would demand the boy.  That thought alone kept her by his side, while Falkenried suffered intensely, hid his misery in his own breast, and gave a brave front to the world.

But, in spite of all, the world knew the truth; it knew things of which the husband had never dreamed, and was only silent out of compassion for him.  But at last there came a day when his eyes were opened, and what had been so long an open secret to all his little world excepting himself, was known to him.