For the first time the awful certainty flashed through his mind that he stood at the brink of a catastrophe against which there was no remedy unless a miracle intervened. But where under the sun should such a miracle come from? All faith, all hope, dissolved before his view in these few moments when the whole crushing weight of his guilt, the whole labyrinth of his failure in life, came clearly to his consciousness. An unreasoning terror, a fear of himself and a feeling of helplessness conquered the man, who at other times had never surrendered to untoward conditions, who had never hesitated to stamp down all obstacles in his path. Borgert was not capable of deep feeling or of noble sentiment; he had so far trodden the path of life with cold egotism, coupled with a superficial view of his surroundings and a lack of clearer insight into the motives impelling him and others. For some time he sat there, pallid, motionless, gazing into the vast blank space of the unknown future; only the convulsive workings of his face betrayed the intense agitation of his mind. It was the psychological crisis in the life of a man who too late becomes aware of having destroyed his better self, of having annihilated all those hopes which on entering life had floated before his vision in roseate hue. And there was nothing to which he could cling, not even a straw for this man battling with the waves that threatened to engulf him, no human soul that could or would help him. Despair clutched his throat, and his breath came thick and short like that of one drowning. Borgert had struck a balance with himself. He had taken stock, and now felt clearly that his life was one not only marred but destroyed by his own fault. He made up his mind to bear the consequences since escape there was none. Mechanically he completed his toilet and then went to the barracks to report himself to the captain for having missed the morning service. He kept silence about Röse’s flight, saying to himself that if the deserter had the start of pursuit by a sufficiency of time, say forty-eight hours, he would be a bigger fool indeed than Borgert took him to be if he had not reached a safe retreat across the frontier. And that, of course, would spare Borgert himself the unpleasant predicament of facing a court-martial because of systematic maltreatment of a subordinate. When he returned home at noon, Borgert found a letter. It was the reply of the financial man in Berlin to whom, in his quandary, he had turned. The letter told the recipient in curt terms that his application had been rejected. No loan could be made to him, it said, since inquiries about Borgert and his co-called bondsmen, and the endorsement of Leimann, had “demonstrated a financial status highly unfavorable.” Borgert received this news almost with indifference, for since this morning he had abandoned all hope of a favorable turn, and hence felt no disappointment.