Hartmut shook his head gravely.
"It was a deed of despair, not heroism. I did not believe that it would succeed--nobody believed it; but even if I had fallen I should have regained my lost honor by that ride through the enemy. Egon knew that, and for that reason he put the rescue into my hands. When we said farewell that icy winter night in the shattered walls of the little chapel, we both felt that it was a final farewell, but we thought, too, that I should be the victim, for I went into almost certain death. Fate decreed differently. I was borne as by spirit hands through the dangers to the accomplishment of my aim, and almost at the same hour Egon fell. You need not hide your tears from me, Ada; I am not jealous of the dead, for I loved him just as--he loved you."
"Eugene brought me his last greeting," said the young wife, in whose eyes shone the tears she had wished to conceal from her husband. "And Stadinger, too, wrote me to fulfill his dying master's last request. I fear the old man will not live much longer; his letter sounded as if he were utterly crushed."
"Poor Egon!" In Hartmut's voice sounded the deep pain he felt for his friend. "He was so full of sunny happiness and joy; he was created for it and to give it. Perhaps you would have been happier at his side, Ada, than with your wild, passionate Hartmut, who will trouble you often enough with the dark side of his nature."
Ada smiled up at him with the tears still in her eyes. "But I love this wild, stormy Hartmut, and do not desire any greater happiness than to be his wife."
The forest lake lay in dreamy noonday stillness; grave and dark stood the old firs over it; the rushes at its border whispered low, and thousands of bright sparkles danced upon its surface.
Above it curved the blue sky into which the boy had once wished to soar like the falcon of which his race bore the name, higher and higher to the sun. It beamed, too, now up there in shining splendor the powerful, eternal sign of flame in the heavens!