"That is as it ought to be," said Hildegarde. "Certainly," George agreed, "that is why I am astonished that our officers don't feel like that. If only the girls, who so often regard a lieutenant as the paragon of perfection, knew, or could hear with their own ears how the officers talk about them after they have been to an entertainment, they would blush with shame, and a lieutenant would soon cease to be their ideal. There are, of course, exceptions, thank God! but most of my fellow-officers are as I have just described, and it is the same in other regiments; to them a woman is just like a horse--a thing to be examined and appraised. How is it, I wonder, that a young girl is of so little account to a lieutenant, that he talks of her without the least respect? I have often thought over the matter. Is it, perhaps due to their education? Most of them grow up in the regiment; they have no home life; they only see their sisters and their friends when on leave; as cadets, they go into Society to make conquests, and each conquest helps to lower all young girls in their eyes. Perhaps the girls themselves are to a certain extent answerable for this state of affairs. In Society there exists no one but a lieutenant for them, they ignore a civilian, unless he happens to be a reserve officer. The lieutenant simply goes about in pursuit of conquest, and often he wins the victory only too easily. I cannot speak of this from my own experience. I am a stranger here, but I have often heard my comrades talk of young girls who push themselves forward, send them love-letters, and who do not even wait until they are asked to give a rendezvous, but ask permission to be allowed to visit the officers, either in a friend's house, or in the officers' quarters." "But, Lieutenant Winkler," interrupted Hildegarde, "no lady would do such a thing." "She certainly ought not to do so," he agreed, "but, nevertheless, she does. Just give a glance at the select company here. How many of these aristocratic ladies have not a more or less harmless intrigue with a lieutenant? It is not only the married ladies, I can assure you. Those young girls trip about so modestly and chastely, yet their great pride is that, in spite of their youth, they have had a _past_." Hildegarde knew only too well that he was right. She remembered how most of the friends of her youth had had a lieutenant lover. How often had she not spoken to them about this, and reproached them, but all had given the same answer: "Why shouldn't I have a lover? the others have, and what's the use of being young and beautiful? Do you think that our blood remains calm when a man pays court to us the whole evening, presses us closely to him when dancing, and casts longing glances at us? Are we to wait till we have a husband? We may wait a long time, perhaps for ever, and what then? Do you want us to die without having had experience of life? How ridiculous!"