"Because I think that it is time for our relationship to each other to be clearly settled," he said. "Ever since our childhood it has been an unwritten understanding that if Hildegarde would have me we should marry; and so I have come to ask her—if she will be my wife." He spoke bluntly, coldly, not as he had meant to speak, but the steady gaze on his face shook his composure. "Have you the right to ask her that?" "Aunt Magda!" "Or, after all, have you been playing with the affections of a girl who has the right to my protection?" "Aunt Magda—that is not true—that——" He stopped short, pale with agitation, his lips close compressed on the hot words of self-vindication. For a minute Frau von Arnim waited as though giving him time to speak, and then she went on quietly: "Wolff, we Arnims are not fond of charity. We prefer to eat out our hearts in silence rather than be objects of the world’s pity. And Hildegarde is like the rest of us. She will not ask for your sympathy nor your care nor your devotion. She will ask you for your whole heart. Can you give her that?" He made a gesture as though about to give a hasty answer, but her eyes stopped him. "I—love Hildegarde," he stammered. "We have been friends all our lives." "Friends, Wolff! I said ’your whole heart.’" And then he saw that she knew; and suddenly the tall, broad-shouldered man dropped down, sword-clattering, at her side and buried his face in his hands. The smile in Frau von Arnim’s eyes deepened. So he had done in the earlier days when youthful scrapes and disappointments had sent the usually proud, reserved boy to the one unfailing source of understanding and consolation. Very gently she rested her hand upon his shoulder. "Shall you never grow up, Wolff?" she said with tender mockery. "Shall you always be a big schoolboy, with the one difference that you have grown conceited and believe that you can hide behind a full-dress uniform and a gruff military voice—even from my eyes?" He lifted his flushed, troubled face to hers. "You know—everything?" he asked. "Everything, _lieber Junge_. Hildegarde knows, Johann knows, the cook knows. I should not be surprised if the very sparrows make it a subject of their chattering. And you can go about with that stern face and mysterious, close-shut mouth and think you have deceived us all! Oh, Wolff, Wolff!" "You are laughing at me," he said. "God knows I am in deadly earnest." She took his hand between her own. "If I laugh at you it is because I must," she said; "because it is the only thing to do. There are some forms of quixotic madness which it is dangerous to take seriously, and this is one of them. Wolff, you have tortured yourself with an uncalled-for remorse until you are ready to throw your own life and the lives of others into a huge catastrophe. In all this, have you thought what it might mean to Nora?" He started, and the colour ebbed out of his face, leaving it curiously pale and haggard.