'Will you let yourself sink into a mooning poet, my hero of great battles? No! you shall go back, dear love—back to your grand, soldier's life! See, I will stay here and dream of you, if you will not let me take the only path back to Wirtemberg. You shall write to me, sometimes send me a poem, a jewel perhaps—but we shall be parted! O Eberhard!' She sighed deeply, but her strange, hard eyes watched him narrowly. He turned away his face. She saw that her reminder of his military ambition had succeeded as she expected.
'You are right. Alas! this horrible degradation, this masquerading before God—and yet it is the only way.'
Her arms stole round him. Against his cheek he felt her smooth skin, her warm lips sought his.
'I love you, only you,' she whispered. 'In a few days I follow you to Stuttgart. Come to me!'
He flung her from him almost roughly.
'Not now! God in heaven! not now! Can you dream that at such a time I could? It would make the hideous bargain you contemplate to-morrow one degree more vile.' He turned from her and fled. In a moment she heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs in the courtyard.
