Leimann meanwhile was on his way to Berlin. His wife, however, was still very busy,--burning up packages of letters which she did not wish either her husband or her companion to read, and then put into a handbag a few objects of the kind which only women cherish, and the sole value of which lies in the recollections clinging to them. It is astonishing what resplendent images a woman can conjure before her inner vision when in the possession of such faded flowers, bits of ribbon, and the like. Lastly came the leave-taking from Bubi, her little two-year-old son, and this she had fancied the day before a much harder achievement than it now turned out. She felt some qualms of conscience as she now, with a light heart, without a tear, left behind her her only child,--left it motherless, exposed to a future probably troubled and cheerless. It was strange, she thought. From the first moment on she had experienced something like aversion for this child with the broad nose, the large mouth, and the small, shifting eyes. When but a couple of weeks old, the baby had shown a striking resemblance to his father, and the more the estrangement grew between his parents, the more dwindled the small remnant of her mother love. She regarded this tiny human being, ugly and eternally crying, as solely _his_ child. It was in this way that the poor little fellow had spent nearly the whole of his short existence,--either in the kitchen or with the servants, fondled, scolded, and educated by hirelings. The mother herself frequently had not seen her child even for a minute a day. She had the conviction that her husband had deserved no better treatment at her hands, and because of that she scarcely gave him a thought during these last hours spent at her home. When she boarded, at three o’clock in the afternoon, a first-class compartment of the express train for Frankfort, she did so with a spirit light and almost gay. And the same was true of Borgert. He likewise cast to the winds any slight sentiments of regret at leaving the garrison, and as the train, some hours after Frau Leimann’s departure, went shrieking and thundering out of the little station, he felt that he was being carried on to a brighter future. That was enough for him. When he and Frau Leimann met, late the same evening, in the dining-room of an elegant hotel, all their life seemed to lie before them draped in rosy hue, and no shadows of coming evils troubled them. After they had ladled their soup in comfort, and with the appearance of a fine game pie, for which this hotel is famous among _gourmets_, the ex-officer motioned to the black-frocked waiter with the immaculate shirt front, and said, curtly: “A bottle of Mumm, _sec!_” Thus these two celebrated the event of their flight. CHAPTER VIII CHANGES IN THE GARRISON The flight of First Lieutenant Borgert could not long remain a secret.