before
him by the orderly, and then he became livelier.

[Footnote A: A one-year volunteer who elects to remain on in the army
and await promotion.--_Translator_.]

Reimers had chosen a place near the little lieutenant of doctor's
degree, who was quite an amusing fellow, and chattered away so glibly
that his neighbour hardly needed to contribute to the conversation.

Of course Froeben had begun: "Well, Reimers, fire away! Give us some
leaves from your military diary. We are all ears!" But Reimers soon
changed the subject. What he had seen and gone through down there among
the Boers was still in his own mind a dim, confused chaos of
impressions, and it was repugnant to him to touch on it even
superficially, so long as he was not clear about it himself.

The little doctor began to dilate on the splendid German East-African
line of steamers, which conveyed one for a mere trifle from Hamburg to
Naples, by way of Antwerp, Oporto, and Lisbon, and he enlarged at great
length on the educational influence of long journeys in general and of
sea-voyages in particular.

Reimers listened patiently, letting his eyes wander round the table.
Just as of old, the various groups still kept together, and were
continuing their conversations uninterruptedly. Falkenhein, in
their midst, listened with amusement as the senior staff-surgeon
chaffed Stuckhardt about that oldest and yet newest of nervous
diseases--"majoritis." Madelung was looking rather glum, and kept
twirling the little silver wheel of the knife-rest. Next to him, Mohr
was staring straight before him with glassy eyes, and Schrader leant
back in his chair laughing, while Gropphusen still kept on talking to
him.

"He's got something to laugh about!" said Froeben to his neighbour,
interrupting his discourse.

"How do you mean?" asked Reimers.

"Well, to put it delicately, Schrader has got a flirtation on with Frau
von Gropphusen--a very intimate flirtation!"

"Indeed!" Reimer responded indifferently.

Here was a fine piece of gossip, and strange to say, in this, too,
things were as before; it was not the first time that Major Schrader
and Frau von Gropphusen had afforded material for conversation.

Dr. von Froeben continued: "But you must not think, Reimers, that in
such matters I am a bigoted moralist. Ideas of morality are subject to
just the same fluctuations as----"

And he dealt out what remained in his memory of a newspaper article,
the writer of which ha