“I should like to see her,” said Madaleine; “she must be a kind, good lady, from her letters to you.”
“And the fondest mother in the world!” exclaimed Fritz with enthusiasm. “But, you will see her—some day,” he added after a pause. “I vow that you shall.”
“I don’t know how that will be,” said Madaleine, half laughing in a constrained fashion, as if wishing to conceal her real feelings. “In a week or two you will be off to the wars again and forget me—like a true soldier!”
“Stay,” interposed Fritz, interrupting her. “You have no right to say that! Do you think me so ungrateful? You must have a very bad opinion of me! I—”
“Never mind explanations now,” interrupted the girl in her turn, speaking hurriedly in a nervous way, although trying to laugh the matter off as a joke. “If the doctor says you can soon report yourself as fit for duty, of course you’ll have to rejoin your regiment.”
“Ah, I wonder where that is now?” said Fritz musingly. “Since our camp round Metz is broken up, the army will naturally march on farther into the interior. No matter, there’s no good my worrying myself about it. They’ll soon let me know where I’ve got to go to join them; for, the powers that be do not allow any shirking of duty in the ranks, from the highest to the lowest!”
“I saw that here,” remarked Madaleine. “The baroness wanted to get her son to return home with her; but she was told that, if he were allowed to go he could never come back to the army, as his reputation for courage would be settled for ever.”
“Yes, that would be the case, true enough. Hev would be thought to have shown the white feather! But, about your movements, Fraulein Madaleine—the baroness is not going to remain here long, is she?”
“No; she spoke this morning about going away. She said that, as the siege of Metz was raised, and the greater portion of the wounded men would be removed to Germany, along with the prisoners of war, she thought she would go back home—to Darmstadt, that is.”
“And there you will stop, I suppose?” asked Fritz.