“You would fall?” asked Ada, with sad reproof in her voice.  “Even if I tell you that your death will be mine too?”

“Yours, Ada?” he cried excitedly, “and do you no longer turn in abhorrence from my love, from the fate which threw us together?  To possess you would be my highest glory, for you are free.  Such joy comes to me now, only for a single fleeting minute, and then ascends again to unattainable heights, like the prophetess of my drama who bore your name.  No matter; it is with me now in this moment of parting.”

He drew her to him and pressed a kiss on her brow, while she broke into a passion of tears on his shoulder.

“Hartmut, promise me that you will not seek death.”

“No, but it will seek me!  Good-bye, my own, good-bye.”

He tore himself from her, and rushed away through the storm.  She stood still, leaning in her turn against the old tree, whose branches tossed their arms and kept time to the moaning and shrieking winds which played at hide and seek through the leafy foliage.  But suddenly in the west, through a rent in the angry clouds, shone a purple ray.  It was only for a minute, only a single lost beam of the descending sun, but it lighted up the woodland height and beamed across the face of the departing man, as he turned back once to wave a last adieu.  Then the dark clouds met again, and hid the light—­the last greeting of the setting sun.

The red, flickering firelight lit up the interior of a small house which had formerly been the home of a signal man, but now served as headquarters for the officers of the advanced guard.  The room made anything but a comfortable impression, with its cold, rough, whitewashed walls, low ceilings and narrow barred windows; the heavy logs of wood which blazed and crackled in the clumsy stone fire-place, threw out a grateful warmth, for the weather was bitter cold and the ground covered with snow.  The regiments which lay here were little better off than those before Paris although these belonged to the army of the South.

Two young officers entered the room, and one, as he held the door open for his comrade, said with a laugh:  “You’ll have to stoop here, for the entrance to our villa is somewhat out of repair.”

The warning was not unnecessary, for the tall figure of the guest, a Prussian Lieutenant of Reserves, had need to stoop to avoid the loose, overhanging plaster.  His companion who was doing the honors, wore the uniform of a South German regiment.

“Permit me to offer you a chair in our salon,” he continued.  “Not so bad after all, considering everything; we’ll have worse than this before the campaign is over.  You are looking for Stahlberg.  He is at an outpost near here with one of my comrades, but he’ll certainly be back soon.  You won’t have to wait above fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll wait with pleasure,” responded the Prussian.  “Eugen’s wound was not very serious, I judge.  I looked for him in the hospital and heard that he had gone on a visit to the outpost, but would probably be back shortly, so I thought I’d come over and see him at once.”