“Let that question rest,” he said gloomily.  “Perhaps later, you may learn to appreciate my reasons.  Now I cannot spare you the bitter alternative; you can only belong to one of us, and must shun the other; you must accept that as your fate.”

Hartmut bowed his head; he felt that nothing more was to be said.  That all meetings with his mother must cease when he was again under the rigid discipline of the institute, he knew full well; now he was at least permitted to write to her, which was more than he had ventured to hope.

“Well, I will tell my mother,” he said, dejectedly.  “Now that you know all, you will not oppose my seeing her again?”

The Major was startled; he had not thought of such a possibility.

“When were you to see her again?” he asked.

“To-day, at this hour, at the lake in the wood.  She is already waiting for me there.”

Falkenried had a fierce battle with himself; a voice within him warned him not to permit this meeting, but he felt that it would seem cruel for him to refuse.

“Will you be back in two hours?” he asked at last.

“Certainly father, or sooner, if you desire it.”

“Well, go,” said the Major with a deep sigh.  It was only his sense of justice which forced the permission from his lips.  “As soon as you come back, we will go home.  It is nearly the end of your vacation anyway.”

Hartmut, who was on the point of starting, turned back suddenly.  The words brought forcibly to his mind, what he had forgotten in the last hour, the compulsion and severity of the hated regimen he would again have to endure.  He had never ventured openly to avow his aversion for the army, but this hour, which took from him all shyness towards his father, also removed the seal from his lips.  After a moment’s hesitation he returned to his father, and putting his arm around his neck, said: 

“I have a request, a most earnest request to make of you, which I know you will grant, as a proof of your love for me.”

The Major’s brows contracted as he asked, reprovingly: 

“Do you need any proof?  Well, let’s hear it.”

Hartmut clung still closer to him and his voice assumed its sweetest and most flattering tones, and the dark eyes were almost irresistible in their look of entreaty, as he said beseechingly: 

“Do not let me become a soldier, father.  I do not like the profession you have chosen for me, and I shall never learn to like it.  If I have until now, bowed to your will, it has been with repugnance and secret hatred, for I have been wretchedly unhappy; but I have never dared until now, to tell you of it.”

The frown on Falkenried’s brow deepened, and he unfolded his son’s arms from his neck.

“In other words you will not obey,” he said in a bitter tone, “and for you obedience is more necessary than anything else.”