ted
Borgert warmly, and while the latter and the adjutant stepped to the
window, looking at the wife of Captain Koenig and Lieutenant Bleibtreu,
who were riding past the house on horseback, Borgert seized the
opportunity and deftly appropriated the pretty woman's hands, which he
kissed passionately.

Then he told them of his interview with Pommer,--told it in such droll
terms and with such an abundance of mimicry, that his two hearers
could not help laughing immoderately. The picture of ungainly, rough
Pommer being in the sentimental stage and a prey to a lacerated
conscience was too exquisitely ludicrous.

Meanwhile Pommer sat at his desk, laboriously inditing a letter to
his mother, to whom he opened his whole heart, as in duty bound.
Several of the strongest passages in his letter were panegyrics on his
new-won friend, Borgert, whom he limned in colors so brilliant that
the original would indeed have had great trouble in recognizing
himself in the portrait.

The lieutenant had by this time calmed down a good deal, and the
blurred images of the past evening resolved themselves, one after
another, into sane recollections. He now distinctly recalled the part
in the ugly intrigue played by the woman; how she had skilfully led
him on to make advances; how she had smiled encouragingly at his terms
of endearment; how she had "fished" for dubious compliments, and how
she had, above all, so alluringly made the most intimate confidences
to him as to her marital troubles and as to her status of a _femme
incomprise_. Really, he thought after quiet reflection, he himself was
not so much to blame in this affair, disgraceful as it doubtless was
when all was said and done. For the woman herself, a change of feeling
took place simultaneously. The tender pity he had felt for her in his
maudlin condition made room for something akin to contempt and
dislike. She certainly could not be a pure woman, a faithful wife and
mother, he thought, thus to invite, almost provoke, the passionate
regard of a man much younger and less experienced than herself,--a
man, too, whom she had known but slightly and conventionally hitherto.
In his inmost consciousness he had almost absolved himself from guilt
in the matter. And as to writing to her husband, or confronting him
with the raw tale of her and his indiscretion, as Borgert had
suggested, why, the more he thought of it, the less advisable a step
it seemed to him, from every point of view. Howeve