Shaking their heads, the little group trotted over to the target. It seemed almost as if he had been pulling their legs. But not a trace of the last shots was to be found on the broad surface of the marking-table. The bullets must have stuck in the air. Only when Leo knocked over the slice of cheese with the nail of his little finger was the mystery solved. The slice had three pores larger than the rest. A bullet had penetrated through each of these almost without grazing the side. They gave vent to an exclamation of awed amazement, for here was a man capable of choosing the very pore in his enemy's skin that he might fancy in which to lodge a bullet. Soon afterwards the older gentlemen came over from the stable-yard, Ulrich amongst them. When he beheld his friend laughing and joking with the youngsters, he stiffened and withdrew a few steps, looking almost shocked. Before he could open his mouth, Leo was at his side. "Silence!" he exhorted. Then he shook heartily the hands stretched out to him on all sides. So soon as it was over he led Ulrich aside. "We must keep up the deception," he said to him, "and seem as if we had not met since the day at the station." "Why these hole-and-corner resources?" he asked, mystified. "Because Felicitas is cleverer than we two put together," he answered, with cynical exuberance. "She planned this?" "Yes, of course." "And wrote to you?" "Equally of course." "And then?" Leo saw that he could not rise to the task of convincing his friend. "Let her explain to you herself," he said, getting red and turning away. On the way home Ulrich learnt what he wanted to know. Rocking herself to and fro, half-crying, half-laughing like a child, who fears a scolding and hopes to turn it off by being funny, Felicitas told him of the stroke of genius, which had resulted in Frau von Stolt interceding to bring about the reconciliation for her own and her guests' sake, which otherwise she would never have countenanced or forgiven. A dispensation of Providence had drawn the good woman into the fray, to convince her, even while she resisted, of the holiness of such a work of love. Ulrich listened, still vexed. "Why did you not tell me what you intended to do?" he asked. "Because I wouldn't have my dear, good, noble husband mixed up in it," she replied. He shook his head. He could not understand, even yet, how the two could have lent themselves to such scheming. "It was all done for your sake," she whispered, leaning against him tenderly. That night Ulrich spent many hours walking up and down his room. "They lie for me; they deceive for me. For me they reverse all the laws of the human heart. Can such love as that lead to any good?" And when he had put out the light, and stared into the darkness with searching eyes, the thought flashed suddenly across him-- "This reconciliation ought not to be. It is not moral." XVIII