All this time the dancers inside were devoting themselves, without interruption, to Terpsichorean pleasures,--mostly waltzes, they being the special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom the band struck up the latest waltz,--“Over the Waves,”--and he noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant Specht to his smiling comrade, von Meckelburg. Frau Stark just took the time to gulp a glass of lemonade, and then was off again, breathing hard, but still in the ring. The atmosphere in the room was stifling, but all the ladies, at least, seemed to enjoy themselves. Officers’ wives are proverbially insatiable dancers. After two rounds of the room von Meckelburg was seen steering his victim towards a chair near the open window. Frau Stark sank into it, literally exhausted. She looked indeed dripping. The young lieutenants had had their revenge. She had “given in.” Borgert meanwhile had taken his stand in a corner, where he bent over Frau Leimann, who was seated and fanning herself with her handkerchief. Although fatigued from heat and dancing, she looked most seductive in her pale blue tulle, whose filmy lace clouds around throat and bosom heightened the effects of her charms. Borgert, bending over her, sniffed with sensual delight a faint perfume, while he carried on a whispered conversation in monosyllables with her--a conversation which seemed to have meaning but for these two. In the reading-room the orderlies were busy filling tulip glasses with that fragrant mixture, a May bowl, so grateful in its delicious iced condition, and yet so deceptive. Around a plain table in the small side room, away from the throng and undisturbed, several of the captains, the colonel, and two of the younger officers were playing “skat” at a penny the point. One of the lieutenants, to judge from his heated face and the anxious look on it, must be losing heavily. Had this “little game” been arranged to encourage the men under him in the economies Colonel von Kronau had but now so strongly recommended to them? Lieutenant Specht just then was taking French leave. It was necessary for him to run to the station and meet the young lady--a lovesick, pretty little milliner from Cologne--who for the time being dwelt in his unstable heart.