"Go, I say." The command now sounded threatening.
"No, I shall not go!" cried Hartmut passionately. "I know that reconciliation with you depends upon this hour. I have offended you--how deeply and seriously I feel only now--but I was a boy of seventeen, and it was my mother whom I followed. Think of that, father, and pardon me--grant pardon to your son."
"You are the son of the woman whose name you bear--not mine!" said the Colonel with cutting scorn. "A Falkenried has no son without honor."
Hartmut was about to burst forth at this awful word; the blood rose hot and wild to his brow, but he looked upon that other brow beneath the hair bleached like snow, and with superhuman effort controlled himself.
The two believed themselves alone during this interview in the stillness of the night--surely everything was sleeping in the castle. They had no idea that a witness was there.
Adelaide von Wallmoden had not retired to rest. She knew that she could find no sleep after this day which had so suddenly and disastrously made her a widow. Dressed still in the dark traveling suit which she had worn on the unfortunate drive, she sat in her room, when suddenly Colonel Falkenried's voice reached her ear.
With whom could he be speaking at such an hour? Was he not a total stranger here? And the voice sounded so strangely hollow and threatening.
She arose in alarm and entered the ante-room which separated the two sleeping apartments--for only a moment, she thought--only to see that nothing had happened; then she heard another voice which she knew--heard the word "Father," and like lightning the truth flashed upon her, which the next words confirmed. As if paralyzed, she remained standing there, every word reaching her through the partly closed door.
"You make this hour hard for me," said Hartmut with painfully sustained composure. "Be it so--I have not expected it otherwise. Wallmoden has told you everything. I might have known it, but then he could not keep from you what I have sought and won. I bring to you the laurel of the poet, father--the first laurel which has come to me. Learn to know my work; let it speak to you, then you will feel that its creator could not live and breathe in the constraint of a vocation which kills every poetical emotion; then you will forget the unfortunate error of the boy."
Here again it was Hartmut Rojanow who spoke thus with his overweening self-consciousness and pride, which did not leave him even in this hour; the poet of Arivana, for whom there existed no duties--no barriers; but he encountered a rock here, upon which he shattered.