on which
gradually became intolerable to him.

But suddenly, without his having done anything to bring it about, the
day came that granted him escape from his degrading entanglement. The
imperial order arrived, promoting him to the grade of First Lieutenant
and transferring him to another garrison, far in the interior of the
country.

She was the first person he informed of it.

"Farewell! We shall not see each other again!" He spoke quite coolly,
almost callously, and he left her cowering on the sofa and weeping
hysterically. He felt a free man again. The abominable shackles had
fallen from him.

If he had seen Frau Kahle five minutes after he had left her he would
not even have retained for her a vestige of that first tenderness that
had swept over him that night in the Casino garden. For when he had
retired, and she had heard his step on the flagging of the hall below,
she had quickly risen and peered, from behind the lace curtains, into
the street after his vanishing figure. Then she had sat down at the
piano and intoned a merry Strauss waltz.

But then she reflected that they might call her heartless. So she had
indited a long, passionate farewell letter to him. He showed it, the
night before his going, to Borgert at the Casino. They were all his
guests that night. Borgert had screamed with laughter.

"What a devilish smart little woman she is, after all," he had
exclaimed. And then, poising in mid-air his champagne glass, he said,
nodding to Pommer:

"Here's to her and her simpleton!"

He spoke from experience.

CHAPTER IV

THE CASE OF SERGEANT SCHMITZ

Late in the forenoon of a raw day in autumn Vice-Sergeant-Major Roth
was seated in his comfortably heated room, and near him Sergeant
Schmitz. Each was enjoying a cup of coffee.

The quarters occupied by Roth were situated on the second story of the
regimental barracks, and made at first sight the impression of
elegance and almost wealth, precisely as though the occupant were a
member of the upper ten thousand.[8] It required a closer examination
to become convinced that a good deal of these apparently costly
trappings, as well as the furniture and wall decorations, was not what
it seemed, and that, to produce by all means the effect sought for,
taste and appropriateness had been sacrificed. The wall paper of
arabesques in green and blue, which the government had furnished, did
not harmonize with the hangings or carpets. The paintings on th