Bernhard Reimers thus became doubly an orphan. But he had far more than the death of a mother to deplore. With his mother he also lost the only person who had loved him, and the only one whom he in return had loved. So closely was the boy encircled by his mother's love, that the need which led his schoolfellows at the gymnasium to form friendships was never felt by him. Whenever he wanted to learn something, to solve a doubt or to confide a secret, he could count on his mother's tenderness; she would explain, soothe, or sympathise, as the joys and sorrows of the growing youth became ever more serious. From this relation he retained a touch of womanliness in his character, even after he had left home to enter the regiment: a shrinking from everything coarse, a reserve before all that was unlovely. This instinctive feeling did not, indeed, altogether protect him from temptation, but it withheld him from yielding to excess. He joined in the little drink and love follies of the other young subalterns from a sense of comradeship; alone they would never have appealed to him. As at school, so in the regiment, he had many comrades, but no friend. He did not trouble himself about this, and until his mother's death he felt no want. Then he recognised sadly that he was quite alone; but he was incapable of setting to work to seek a friend, so he just waited for some happy chance to bring the right person across his path. When, at last, he found the friendship he sought, it did not come in the way he had dreamed, suddenly, like a gift from heaven thrown into his lap; but was a gradual strong growth, a slow mutual recognition. It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that presented by Reimers and this Senior-lieutenant Güntz; externally and internally they differed radically. Reimers was tall and lean, with golden-brown hair, and a noble, but somewhat melancholy expression; Güntz was small and very fair, with a tendency to stoutness, and with a red jovial face like the full moon. The one was romantic and even exuberant, slightly fantastic in his moods; the other firmly rooted in prosaic fact. Both were prized as able officers. Reimers was referred to on questions of military history and science; Güntz was considered an authority on mathematical technicalities, especially in connection with the artillery. Thoroughness was a characteristic of each alike; and on the strength of this, and despite all difference, they were daily attracted more and more to each other. Güntz, the more expansive nature, soon opened his whole heart to his friend; though Reimers, partly from a kind of timidity, still kept his deepest and innermost feelings somewhat hidden. For Güntz, with his sober sense and terrible logic, must necessarily, since he could never be otherwise than sincere, destroy most of the ideals and illusions to which Reimers passionately clung, and without which he believed he could not live.