"'Just about this time, too, Kvatopil was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant. This at once inflamed our hearts with the joyous hope that he would rapidly scale the ladder of promotion, and we knew that if once he became a major he would not have to deposit his matrimonial caution-money, and we might then fearlessly publish the fact that we were man and wife. Nobody knew of it hitherto except our friends and relations.
"'So we agreed to keep it quiet, and immediately afterwards Kvatopil and his regiment were transferred to Hungary.
"'Since the revolution broke out in Hungary I have heard nothing more of Kvatopil. I know not where he is, or what has become of him, or whether he is alive or dead: no tidings of him whatever. In times of war they make a mystery of the whereabouts of this or that regiment.
"'Once we read from a bulletin that my husband's regiment had taken part in a battle in the Banat. My poor father then resolved to go personally to the Banat and inquire of the colonel whether my husband was still alive. Just as he got there, they were burying the colonel with great pomp. He had died of typhus fever. He had been the witness of our marriage, and was the only one of the officers who knew anything about it. He had kept his secret well, for his officiating as a witness at an irregular ceremony might have cost him his place also. All that the lieutenant-colonel could tell us of Kvatopil was, that his company had been detached on some expedition, and had not come back. Possibly the Hungarian insurgents had eaten them all up.
"'I could thus very well put on and wear mourning, and till the end of the war I heard not a word about my husband.'
"So far spoke Anna; but now I began to speak.
"'You didn't hear of him, because all through the campaign he was closely invested in the besieged Temesvar with his company, and no news could come out of that place till the end of the year.'
"'But why couldn't he let me hear from him when Temesvar was free again? He could at least have written that he was still alive?'
"'The cause of that is easy to find. So far as he was concerned, the whole campaign was sterile of glory. As a cavalry officer he was unable to be of any service to the besieged city. At the end of the campaign he still remained a senior lieutenant, whilst all the others had reached the rank of captain. Bitter disappointment was all that remained to him. An officer who is passed over is worse off than if he were dead. He cannot even say, "Thank God, I am still alive!"'
"'But subsequently? In all these latter years? Why didn't he write to me all these three or four years, if but a line to say that he was still alive and thinking of me, and of the child whom he loved so much?'