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324 over his eyes. "I can't drive her onto the streets!" Morning dawned and he was amazed at what had happened to him.

"Lieutenants get up early," he thought, and he slipped off before Guste was awake. Beyond the Saxon Gate the gardens were full of perfume and twittering, beneath the spring skies. The villas, still closed up, looked as if they had been freshly washed, and as if innumerable newly-married couples had rented them. "Who knows," thought Diederich as he breathed in the pure air, "perhaps it will not be difficult. They are decent people. The circumstances also are essentially more favourable than—" He preferred not to complete the thought. There in the distance a cab stopped—before which house was it? Yes, it was. The iron gate stood open and also the door. The officer's servant came towards him. "It doesn't matter," said Diederich, "I'll see the lieutenant." Right in the room facing them Herr von Brietzen was packing a trunk. "So early," he was saying, let the lid of the trunk fall and caught his finger. "Damn it!" was Diederich's discouraging reflection, "he, too, is busy packing."

"To what chance am I indebted—" began Herr von Brietzen, but involuntarily Diederich made a movement which signified that this was superfluous. Nevertheless, Herr von Brietzen denied everything. He denied even longer than Diederich had done, and Diederich recognised this fact inwardly, for when a girl's honour was at stake a lieutenant had to be several degrees more punctilious than a Neo-Teuton. When they had finally got the whole situation straight, Herr von Brietzen at once placed himself at Diederich's disposal, as was certainly expected of him. But in spite of his deadly fear, Diederich replied cheerfully that he hoped a decision with arms might be unnecessary, provided Herr von Brietzen— And Herr von Brietzen assumed exactly the expression Diederich had foreseen, and used exactly those expressions which Diederich had heard in his imagination. When driven into a corner, he uttered the sentence which Diederich dreaded most, and which,