‘Then this is the danger you foretold,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘What will happen at Greifenstein to-night?’
‘How can I tell!’ exclaimed Rex. ‘There may be an angry meeting. There may be worse. Or your father’s heart may be softened—’
‘You do not know him. Then my uncle has written to you?’
‘I received the letter to-day, before coming here. Do you see that it was better to have this explanation now, rather than to wait for to-morrow?’
‘Yes—it was better. Let us go, for the time presses—truly I have no heart for this sport to-night. I wish I were at home.’
‘Do not wish,’ said Rex gravely. ‘You could not help matters.’
Greif extinguished the light and the two men groped their way down the dusky staircase in silence, both feeling that an exceptionally difficult situation had been passed through with singular ease, both recognising that the explanation had been hurried over in a way hardly to be accounted for, except by the theory that neither wished to lose the other’s friendship. And yet, both Greif and Rex knew that their decision had been final. The one had nothing more to conceal. The other had nothing left to forgive. Rex, like Rieseneck himself, believed that his mother had died long ago. Greif, like all the rest, was ignorant of his own mother’s identity. Sons of one mother they went out of the house side by side, not dreaming that they were anything more than cousins, whose fathers were half-brothers, little guessing that within a few short hours the father of each and the mother of both would be lying stiff and stark in the chambers of lofty Greifenstein.
They reached the great dark buildings of the University, and found themselves in a dense crowd of students of all colours, on the outskirts of a multitude of others who belonged to no associations. Here they parted, for Rex could not walk in the Swabian Korps and must go with the black hats.