“Franz, there is something I want to tell you, something that has long troubled me, something that I do not want to carry with me to my grave.” “Well, fire away,” said the host, taking up the long pipe that stood beside his chair. “There was once--something--between your wife and me.” The host let his pipe fall back again, and stared at his friend with wide-opened eyes. “No jokes please, doctor,” he said finally. “It is bitter earnest, Franz,” replied the other. “I have carried it about with me these forty years, but now it is high time to have it out with you.” “Do you mean to say that the dead woman was untrue to me?” cried the husband angrily. “For shame, Franz,” said his friend with a soft, sad smile. The old soldier murmured something and lit his pipe. “No, she was as pure as God’s angels,” continued the other. “It is you and I who are the guilty ones. Listen to me. It is now forty-three years ago; you had just been ordered here as captain to Berlin, and I was teaching at the University. You were a gay bird then, as you know.” “H’m,” remarked the host, raising his trembling old hand to his mustache. “There was a beautiful actress with great black eyes and little white teeth--do you remember?” “_Do_ I? Bianca was her name,” answered the other as a faded smile flashed over his weather-beaten, self-indulgent face. “Those little white teeth could bite, I can tell you.” “You deceived your wife, and she suspected it. But she said nothing and suffered in silence. She was the first woman who had come into my life since my mother’s death. She came into it like a shining star, and I gazed up to her in adoration as one might adore a star. I found the courage to ask her about her trouble. She smiled and said that she was not feeling quite strong yet--you remember it was shortly after the birth of your Paul. Then came New-Year’s Eve--forty-three years ago to-night. I came in at eight o’clock as usual. She sat over her embroidery and I read aloud to her while we waited for you. One hour after another passed and still you did not come. I saw that she grew more and more uneasy, and began to tremble. I trembled with her. I knew where you were, and I feared you might forget the hour of midnight in the arms of that woman. She had dropped her work, I read no longer. A terrible silence weighed upon us. Then I saw a tear gather under her eyelid and drop slowly down upon the embroidery in her lap. I sprang up to go out and look for you. I felt myself capable of tearing you away from that woman by force. But at the same moment she sprang up also from her seat--this very same place where I am sitting now. “‘Where are you going?’ she cried, terror in every feature. ‘I am going to fetch Franz,’ I said. And then she screamed aloud: ‘For God’s sake, _you_ stay with me at least--don’t _you_ forsake me also.’