"Hartmut, are you out of your senses?"
"Perhaps I shall be so. All of you torture me beyond endurance."
Boundless despair lay in those words.
Egon, too, had turned pale, and his voice trembled as he said: "Before it goes so far--I will try to find an opening in a regiment for you."
"At last! I thank you."
"However, I cannot promise you anything, for the Duke has to be put altogether aside now. Besides, he leaves to-morrow for the battlefield. Should he learn later on that you serve in his corps, we shall then be in the midst of the storm of war, and one does not ask 'How' and 'Why' in the face of a completed fact. But it may take days before the decision arrives. Will you be my guest?"
Formerly the Prince would have accepted that as only natural and would have been exasperated if his friend had refused; now he made the inquiry, and Hartmut felt what lay in the cold question.
"No, I shall not remain in town," he replied. "I shall go to the Forester at Rodeck, and I beg that you will send your answer there. I can return here in a few hours."
"As you wish. Then you will not go to the castle?"
Hartmut gazed at him with a long, sad look.