"No, Hartmut, you are in error there! I would perhaps have escaped from a severe school,—but from military service never!"
There were again the same old hard words he remembered as a boy—"the military service"—"the service of arms!" All the blood in his body rushed to his head.
"How did it happen you were not an officer?" continued Egon. "The cadets are promoted while very young in the north! Then in a few years you could have resigned. Just at the age, too, when life was beginning, and been free—with honor."
Hartmut was dumb; that was what his father had said to him once, but he would not wait. The barriers were an obstruction, and he threw them down, not recking that he trampled duty and honor in the dust at the same time.
"You do not understand how many things pressed upon me at the time," he explained with difficulty. "My mother—I will not complain, but she has been my fate. My father was divorced from her when I was little more than a baby, and I thought she was dead. Then suddenly she appeared in my life and I was tossed and torn by her hot mother love and her extravagant promises of freedom and happiness. She alone is accountable for my broken word—"
"What broken word?" asked Egon, excitedly. "You had not yet taken the oath?"
"No, but I had promised my father to return, when he permitted me a last interview with my mother."
"And instead of doing so, you ran away with her?"
"Yes."
The answer was almost inaudible, and then followed a long pause. The young prince spoke no word, but a deep, bitter pain lay on his sunny face, the bitterest of his lifetime, for in this minute he lost the friend he had loved so passionately.