"Mr. Cooper!"
Slowly I turned my head. I could not turn anything else. And there, by my side, lay pallid, cadaverous, Franz von Heidenbrunn.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I?—I am dying."
A pause.
"But how did you come here? Why are you not on the Austrian front?"
Very slowly the answer came:
"I became a deserter, when I eloped with Mitzi. I never returned to Austria. I served with the Germans."
He was very weak, I could hardly hear his words. And I, too, felt so feeble that I was scarcely able to speak.