"What makes you think of that?" asks the captain.
"Why, because I should beg you to go back to the service, if I were not so mortally afraid of a campaign."
"No need to take that into consideration," the captain rejoins, "for in case of war I should go back immediately: not even you could prevent me, Kitty. But tell me, could you really summon up courage enough?"
"Could I not? It will be very hard eventually to part from the boy, but sooner or later we must send him to the Theresianeum, and--to speak frankly--even a separation from Freddy would not distress me so much as to see you degenerate in an inactive life."
"You really would, then, Kitty?--would voluntarily subject yourself again to all the inconveniences and petty miseries of the soldier's nomadic life?"
"Try me," and her large eyes are very serious and determined as they look into his own, "try me, and you shall see what a comfortable home I will make for you in the forlornest Hungarian village."
"Ah, you angel!" her husband exclaims, taking her soft little hand in his and pressing it against his cheek. "What a pity it is that we have lost so much time in all these nine years!"
"A pity indeed," she admits, "but 'tis never too late to mend,--eh?"
At this moment Rohritz enters the room, as is usual at this hour every afternoon, to get a cup of tea. He observes, first, that the pair have forgotten to ring for the lamp, and, secondly, that they stop talking upon his entrance; in short, that, for the first time, he has intruded.
"You have come for your tea," says Katrine. "I had positively forgotten that there was such a thing. Ring the bell, Jack."