"Ida, who is there?"
"Who else should it be but Otto?" answered the girl.
Again the shrill voice called, yet more insistently, "Why does he not come in?"
Heppner finished his glass, put it down, and said: "Because I won't. Because I'm better off here. Because Ida's a pretty girl, and you're an old crone."
At this, as though in fun, he put his arm round the girl and pressed her to him.
Ida kept still for a moment. She shivered. Then she shook him off: "Let go, stupid! Go to your wife."
Heppner let her go. The single moment that she had permitted his embrace convinced him that here, too, he would conquer. How she had quivered in his arms! He understood such signs.
Meanwhile Sergeant Schumann, only separated from the Heppners by a partition wall, sat at the round table by the sofa with his wife.
Their room, with its antimacassars, its upholstered furniture, its flower-pots and canary-bird, its sewing-machine in the window, was more like an old maid's best parlour than a soldier's sitting-room. The small, neat-featured mistress herself, who was not very strong, and always, even in summer, wore a little shawl round her shoulders, suited her surroundings admirably.
She had a thousand small cares, and one great grief: that they were childless. But she never troubled her husband with her sorrow, taking care to bear it alone. He had bothers enough in the service; how often did she not hear his voice storming outside! He should have peace at home. One thing only she could not bear without complaining to him: the terrible quarrellings of their neighbours. She shuddered whenever she heard the strife begin afresh; and gradually out of this had grown an aversion from all this noisy life. She became a most zealous advocate of her husband's plans for retiring; and could scarcely find patience to await the moment when he would put off the richly-laced coat beside which she had formerly been so proud to walk. In her heart she had always been rather against the martial calling, and would take Schumann's sword from him as though it dripped blood.