Hagen stood like a rock and said nothing.
"Will you be kind enough to explain?... Your sentence has not been remitted, so far as I know."
"It has, Your Highness!" murmured Hagen.
"It has!" cried the Grand Duchess. "Herr von Hagen, are you mad?"
"No, Your Highness," replied the little officer, in a low, insistent voice. "My detention ceased this evening."
"Ceased!" exclaimed Aurora, beside herself. "Do you realize, Lieutenant, how far this jesting may carry you? Do you know that one thing, and one thing only, can remit a sentence of detention ordered by me?"
"I know it, Your Highness," said Hagen.
"And that one thing is ..."
"—WAR." The officer completed her sentence. It may strike you as highly improbable, but the fact is that in the midst of the series of tragedies which had just taken place at the Court of Lautenburg the great events of the last week of July had passed almost unnoticed. We knew all about the note to Serbia, of course, but since the night in the armoury nothing had existed for us but the events I have described to you, not even the Austrian Ultimatum, or the German "Kriegzustand." Nothing, absolutely nothing. And now that one little word—War.
I looked at Hagen in stupefaction. He had exchanged his red cloak for the grey-green field tunic.