the papers had led her, when Adelheid asked
suddenly:

"Will your highness be alone all summer at Rodeck? Last year you had a
guest with you."

A shadow darkened the prince's face, and he forgot the correction which
he was about to make concerning his reported betrothal.

"You mean Hartmut Rojanow ?" he said very seriously. "He will scarcely
join me; he is in Sicily at present, or was, at least, a couple of
months ago. Since then I have not heard from him, and don't even know
where to write."

Frau von Wallmoden stooped to pluck a flower which grew in her way, as
she said quietly:

"I believed you were in constant correspondence with one another."

"I hoped to be when we parted, but the fault is not on my side. Hartmut
has become an unsolvable riddle to me lately. You witnessed the
glittering success of his 'Arivana' on that first night; which success
has been repeated in many cities since then; the drama has fairly taken
the people by storm, and the poet who has done it all flees from the
world, even from me, and buries himself, God knows where. I cannot
understand it. Upon my soul, I cannot understand it."

Adelheid plucked the petals of her flower as they walked on slowly, then
said in a low tone, as she looked with intense interest into the
prince's face:

"And when did Herr Rojanow leave Germany?"

"In the beginning of December. Shortly before that he had gone to Rodeck
to spend a few days; that was immediately after 'Arivana' was brought
out. I thought it was a whim of the moment and said little, but suddenly
he came back to me in the city in a state of excitement which fairly
frightened me, and announced that he was going to leave Germany and
travel. He wouldn't listen to reason, wouldn't answer a question, and
was off like a thunder-bolt. He had been gone weeks before I heard from
him again; since then I have had some letters, few and far between. He
was in Greece for several months, then he went to Sicily, and now for
two months I have been waiting anxiously for news."

Egon spoke in an anxious tone. No need to ask how painfully this
separation from his dearest friend affected him.

He little knew that the woman by his side could have solved the riddle
for him. She knew what drove poor, unsatisfied Hartmut from land to
land, knew the blemish that soiled the poet's name. This was the first
news she had heard of him since that fatal night at Rodeck, when all had
been revealed to her.

"I presume p