So she laughed away his objections, and he sat there with drawn, white face and looked about him, recognising the remnants of the old home, knowing for whose sake it was that they had come to rest in these narrow, gloomy confines. And, after all, it had been in vain. The sacrifices had brought no one happiness. He rose to go, and as he did so the door opened, and Hildegarde stood on the threshold. For a moment he hardly recognised her. She held herself upright as he had not seen her do for nearly three years; her cheeks were bright with colour and her eyes with the old light, so that it seemed as though the time of suffering had been blotted out of her life and she was once more his gay, untroubled playfellow.
"Why, Hildegarde!" he cried delightedly.
She came laughing towards him and gave him her hand with a cheery frankness. Neither by look nor tone did she betray that his presence had set her pulses galloping with the old pain and the old happiness.
"Why, Wolff!" she repeated, mocking him. "Do you think I am a ghost?"
"A phoenix, rather," he retorted gaily, for his joy was unfeigned. "I never dared to hope such good things of you. What has brought about the miracle?"
She told him about the "cure" she had been through, still in the same easy, unconcerned voice, and only her mother noticed the restless movement of the long, thin hands. Perhaps it was that one sign of emotion which prevented her from urging Wolff to remain. Perhaps she knew, too, that Wolff was stifling in the narrow room.
"You must come back soon, Wolff," Hildegarde said, as he bade her good-bye. "You have so much to tell us—about the war and our chances. But I will let you go to-day. You look so tired."
She did not ask that Nora should come too. She did not even mention Nora's name. Wolff remembered that significant omission as he trudged homewards, and he understood that Nora stood alone. She had lost touch with his friends and with those nearest to him, and he too had drifted out of her life. Such, then, was the end of a love and a union which was to have been endless! A few months of untroubled happiness, and the awakening! He felt no anger mingle itself with his grief, rather an intense pity. Though he could not understand her conduct in the past, he trusted her with the blindness of an unchanged devotion. He believed that she would have some explanation. He was sure that once at least her love had been sincere, that she deceived herself more than she had ever deceived him. She had believed her love for him stronger than that for home and people, than any other love. She had been mistaken—that was all. An old love had returned into her life and with it the old ties. The intoxication of the first passion was over, and she had gone back to those to whom she belonged, and a sea of racial prejudice, racial differences, and national feeling divided her from the man to whom she had sworn, "Thy God shall be my God, thy people my people." He had lost her. What then? What was to be the solution to the problem that lay before them both? He knew of none, and perhaps at the bottom of his heart there was still a glimmer of hope that he was mistaken and her friendship for Arnold no more than friendship, her change towards him no more than a passing shadow. He told himself that when worried and overworked as he was, a man can too easily exaggerate the extent of a misfortune. Who knew what change for the better the next few hours might bring?
Thus he reached his home with a lighter heart than he had expected. Nora was not yet back from the parade. It surprised him, therefore, to hear loud and apparently angry voices proceeding from his room. He entered quickly, without waiting to lay sword or helmet aside, and found Miles and another older man, whose appearance warranted the supposition that his descent from the Mosaic family was unbroken.
Wolff looked from one to the other, and perhaps his knowledge of both classes of men warned him of what was to come.