There was something in the tone of the captain's exclamation which seemed to displease the general; he knitted his brow, while he answered,
'I ought to have said that _we_ are called away. I have just received an order for our regiment to join the army in Holstein immediately.'
Jeanné uttered no exclamation. During the last two or three years she had acquired complete command over her feelings; her countenance remained calm, and did not betray the slightest sign of agitation.
Gregers relapsed into his former silence; he had returned to the place where he had before been sitting, by a table in a corner of the room, at a little distance from Jeanné, because, he said, the lights on her table hurt his eyes; from that place his look seemed to be fastened steadily upon the two others.
During the uncomfortable silence which now reigned in the drawing-room, were distinctly heard the wailing of the stormy wind, and the screech of the owls amidst the elm-trees on the outside of the windows.
Shortly after Gregers arose, took a candle, and left the room. Those who remained behind heard his steps becoming fainter and fainter as he traversed the long corridor which led to his study. When they were alone Jeanné let her work fall, and bending over the table covered her eyes with her hand. On raising her head again in a little time, she uttered a low cry, for Krusé was lying at her feet! She made a motion of her hand as if to bid him go, but the captain seized that soft white hand and pressed it to his lips, while he cast an indescribably beseeching look up at her.
'You have heard it,' he whispered; 'we must go--we shall part, for ever, perhaps--I must say a few words to you first. Meet me down yonder--only this once, this once--for the first and the last time!'
'No, no!' cried Jeanné, vehemently: 'I have already refused this. Oh, go!--it would be wrong!'
'Oh, I pray you,' he continued, in a still more touching and trembling voice, 'do not refuse my petition! Are you afraid of me, Jeanné, though in all these long years I have shown you how safe you are near me? Or are you afraid that your glance will fall on yonder wood, where, one afternoon, you promised to love me, where the sun shone, and the birds sang, while God received those vows which have since been so cruelly broken?'