"When you have made a great, proud name and future for yourself then you can stand before him and ask him whether he despises you or not," Zalika had said to her son on that memorable night when he had protested against breaking his word to his father. Now the first step toward this brilliant future had been taken.
Hartmut Rojanow already wore the laurel wreath, and that was enough, surely, to obliterate the past. It should and must be enough; and it was this thought which blazed from Hartmut's eyes as he looked toward the ambassador's box last night.
But could he look thus into his father's eyes? Despite all his defiance he feared those eyes, and them alone, in all the world.
He had partly decided to go to Rodeck, and then he picked up the paper again to see if any date was named for the distinguished officer's arrival. He felt within him a something—a secret and burning longing. Perhaps now when his great triumph was but just begun, the hour for reconciliation had come; perhaps, when Falkenried saw what the freedom and life for which his son had craved so long ago, had developed, he would forgive the boy for the sake of the man. He was his child still, his only son, whom he had clasped to his arms with such passionate tenderness on that last evening at Burgsdorf.
This memory brought with it a mighty longing in Hartmut's soul for those arms, for a home, for all that he had lost since those boyhood's days, which, despite their severity, had been so innocent, so peaceful, so happy.
The door opened, and a servant entered and extended a card on a salver. Rojanow made an impatient movement to take it away.
"Didn't I tell you I wouldn't see any one else to-day?"
"I told the gentleman that," explained the servant, "but he said he'd like Herr Rojanow to hear his name, anyway—Willibald von Eschenhagen."
Hartmut rose suddenly from his reclining position; he did not believe he had heard aright.
"What name, did you say?"