"Last year at this time," the guest continued, "we three were still together, so happily. She sat there in the easy chair, knitting socks for Paul's oldest child, and hurrying as fast as she could. They had to be finished by twelve o'clock, she said. And they were. Then we drank the punch and very comfortably discussed death. And two months later she actually was carried out to the cemetery. You know I wrote a thick volume on the immortality of the idea. You never could bear it. I cannot bear it any more either since your wife died. As a matter of fact, I don't give a fig for any philosophic ideas any more." "Yes, she was a good woman," said the husband of the deceased. "She took good care of me. When I had to be out for service by five o'clock in the morning, she was always up ahead of me and saw to it that I had a good cup of coffee before I left. To be sure, she had her faults, too. When once she got to philosophising with you--whew!" "You simply never understood her," murmured the guest, something like restrained resentment quivering about the corners of his mouth, though the look he allowed to rest on his friend a long time was mild and sad, as though his soul carried the secret consciousness of guilt. After a period of silence, he began: "Listen, Franz, I must tell you something--something that has been gnawing at me a long while. I cannot possibly go down into the grave carrying it along with me." "Fire away, then," said Franz, and picked up the long pipe leaning against his rolling chair. "Once something--happened between--me and your wife." "Please don't joke, Doc," said Franz. "I'm in grim earnest, Franz. I have been carrying it round with me for more than forty years, and now the time has come at last to make a clean breast of it." "Do you mean to say my wife deceived me?" the old soldier shouted in a rage. "Shame on you, Franz," said the philosopher, with his sad, mild smile. Franz mumbled and muttered a little and then lighted his pipe. "No, she was pure as an angel," the philosopher went on. "You and I are the criminals. Listen to me. It was forty-three years ago. You had just been ordered to Berlin as a captain, and I was teaching at the University. You know what a wild fellow you were then." "Hm," said Franz, and raised his shaking hand to twist the points of his moustache. "There was a beautiful actress with big black eyes and small white teeth. Do you remember?" "Do I remember! Bianca was her name." A feeble smile flitted across the old man's weatherbeaten countenance with the marks on it of hard and fast living. "She could bite, I tell you, she could bite!"