“Franz, there is something I want to tell you, something that has long troubled me, something that I do not want to carry with me to my grave.”
“Well, fire away,” said the host, taking up the long pipe that stood beside his chair.
“There was once—something—between your wife and me.”
The host let his pipe fall back again, and stared at his friend with wide-opened eyes.
“No jokes please, doctor,” he said finally.
“It is bitter earnest, Franz,” replied the other. “I have carried it about with me these forty years, but now it is high time to have it out with you.”
“Do you mean to say that the dead woman was untrue to me?” cried the husband angrily.
“For shame, Franz,” said his friend with a soft, sad smile.
The old soldier murmured something and lit his pipe.
“No, she was as pure as God’s angels,” continued the other. “It is you and I who are the guilty ones. Listen to me. It is now forty-three years ago; you had just been ordered here as captain to Berlin, and I was teaching at the University. You were a gay bird then, as you know.”