"Otto, remember what we vowed to each other in the dear old student days in Bonn: to be and to remain friends in gladness or sadness, friends to the death! This surely is sufficient. Let us not speak of Erna, or, at least, let us not connect her name with this business; such a connection is an insult to me, because it is casting doubt upon the purity of my motives. I can tell you something else, in reference to which I must, in the meantime, request your discreet silence. I have good reasons for assuming that Erna has already disposed of her heart, and this may explain certain oddities in her demeanour which have struck us both. I believe I shall soon know if I am right. In warning you, and your wife against Lotter, I gave you a proof of my careful observation and of my faithful friendship. Confide in me further: you will not repent of it. And now, old boy, go with a lighter heart than you came, and receive your guests, or else the great event will come off without you, and for that Hildegard would never forgive you, and she would be right." He was almost pushing poor helpless Otto out of the door, when Konski came hurrying up with an impatient message from My Lady. "Would Otto come at once? The military were just marching up the courtyard." Otto hurried away. Bertram was still standing near the door, his eye rigidly fixed upon it. He was murmuring to himself: "That was the first step. I should not have thought, after all I have already endured, that it would prove so hard. But it had to be done!" He walked slowly up and down, and paused again. "Had it to be done? And thus? Would it not have been better if I had not absolutely denied it? Anyhow, I have not resigned in every case; only, in case it is as I fear. Supposing it is not? What if the young man who has gone through the schooling of a Princess Volinzov, is not one whom our Erna can and should love? What if the Princess is mistaken in this part of the story, or if she has been deceived by the man who may have, had good reasons of his own? What if the whole thing has been a little gentle dallying which Erna has all but forgotten, and I were, with my diplomatic wiles, to fan again into life and light the almost extinguished flame, were to repel her from me and push her into his arms, which will be willing enough to open?" He stretched out his hands, as though he wished to ward off something. They were all assailing him again now in the broad light of the day, those dread phantoms with which he had wrestled in the awful darkness of the night. Then he had conquered them. Was he to be vanquished now? Was his strength exhausted?