As he approached the red sandstone house, with its sculptured balconies, and its pretty front garden, he had a disagreeable surprise.  At the iron gate two cabs were standing, evidently waiting for visitors at the house.  He was shown, not into the little blue-room, but into the large drawing-room near the winter garden, and found several people there in lively conversation.  Beside Loulou and Frau Ellrich there were Fraulein Malvine Marker, with her mother, and also Herr von Pechlar, the lieutenant of hussars of cotillion fame.

“Have you come too to say good-by?” cried Loulou, going to meet Wilhelm.

Her face looked troubled, and her voice trembled, and yet Wilhelm felt as if a shower of cold water had drenched his head.  The insincerity of their relations, her distant manner before the others, but above all the unfortunate word “too,” including him with the lieutenant, put him so much out of tune that all his previous intentions vanished, and he sank at once to the position of an ordinary visitor.

Herr von Pechlar led the conversation, and took no notice of the new guest’s presence.  He oppressed Wilhelm, and made him feel small by the smartness of his uniform, his rank as first lieutenant, and his eyeglasses.  Wilhelm tried hard to fight against the feeling.  After all, he was the better man of the two, and if human nature alone had been put in the scale—­that is to say, the value both of body and mind—­Herr von Pechlar would have flown up light as a feather.  But just now they did not stand together as man to man, but as the bourgeois second lieutenant in his plain infantry uniform, against the aristocratic first lieutenant—­the smart hussar, and the first place was not to be contested.

In Fraulein Malvine’s kind heart there lurked a vague feeling that she must come to Wilhelm’s help, and overcoming her natural shyness, she said to him: 

“It must be very hard for you to tear yourself away under the circumstances.”

She was thinking of his attachment to Loulou, which in her innocence she quite envied.

Oppressed and distracted as his mind was, he found nothing to say but the banal response: 

“When duty calls, fraulein.”  But while he spoke he was conscious of the kindness of her manner, and to show her that he was grateful he went on, “My friend Haber wishes to say good-by to you before he leaves Berlin.  He thinks a great deal of you, and is very happy in having made your acquaintance.”

Malvine threw him a quick glance from her blue eyes and looked down again.

“What a good thing that I was here when you came,” he said softly; “I might certainly not have seen you but for this chance.”

“The fact is, gnadiges Fraulein,” he stammered, “our duties demand so much of our time.”

“Is Herr Haber in your regiment?” she asked.

“No; he has remained with our old Fusilier Guards.”

“Ah, what a pity!  It would have been so nice for you to be side by side again, as in 1866.”