, answering the same questions over and over
again; and once more he had proof of the fact that against certain
conditions time seems powerless. Some of the young married women had
during his absence become mothers; but most of the ladies of the
regiment presided without change over the solid domestic comfort of
their house-holds. The main thing noticeable was that they had
sacrificed themselves with greater or less success to fashion, which
was just now in favour of slender figures.

The course of their conversation was almost literally the same as of
yore, and in each case the curiosity shown was of exactly the same
degree, except that Captain Heuschkel's wife, who was president of the
Red Cross Society, inquired as to the care of the wounded in South
Africa; while the lady who presided over the Home Missions wished to
know if the Boers were really as pious as they were represented to be.

This monotony was, to a certain extent, the result of natural
selection. Most of the officers had chosen their wives very carefully,
and this had brought about a fine similarity in their views, a
similarity which even found expression in the rather unattractive
arrangement of their dwellings, in which the upholsterer's hand was but
too evident.

Only two ladies, the wives of Captains von Stuckardt and von
Gropphusen, differed from this type.

Frau von Stuckardt was unjustly considered haughty. She was merely
unfortunate in being unable to adapt herself to the mental atmosphere
of the other ladies. She had been placed for a couple of years in an
institution for the daughters of the nobility, and was just preparing
to enter a convent when Stuckardt, who was a distant cousin of hers,
proposed to her. In her heart she regretted the worldly emotion to
which she had then yielded; she believed that, by her marriage, she had
defrauded the Church, and felt her conscience constantly oppressed by
this grave offence. The interests of the other officers' wives puzzled
her, doubly separated from them as she was by creed and by education;
and when, under social compulsion, she gave a coffee-party, she sat
among her guests like a being from a strange world, a pale and slender
figure, always dressed in dark colours and wearing a cap of old lace
upon her smoothly parted black hair; a striking contrast to the other
fair, rosy, lively women in their gay gowns.

Frau von Gropphusen's parties were much more amusing. You could not be
quite sure that