The call came and knocked at people's hearts, and set the knees of all those a-tremble who, companions and fellow-combatants, filled with the same fear and the same impotence, writhed like worms under the blows of fate.
"Ti-ti-ti-tum, ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all he understood of it.
Turning about softly to urge him if possible to keep still, she noticed for the first time a profusion of yellowish-grey hair growing in his ear. It disgusted her.
"If he has hair in his ears," she thought, as though that were the reason of his deafness to music. A profound despondency seized her. Never again would she rejoice in the beautiful, never again stretch arms in prayer to wrestling heroism, never again quench her thirst for a higher, purer life at the sources of enthusiasm.
Between her and all that stood this man, who sang "ti-ti-ti-tum," and in whose ears there was a little bush of hair.
The soft consolation of the violins died away unheard, the melancholy acquiescence of the andante found no echo in her soul, and the triumphant jubilation of the finale--it brought her no triumph.
Tortured, debased, undone in her own eyes, she left the hall at the side of her yawning husband.
But her vital energy was too sound, her belief in the sunniness of human existence too lively to permit her to succumb to such moods.
Moreover, an event occurred which lent new wings to her being and flushed her with the intoxication of bold hopes.
Though little was said about plans for the immediate future, it was settled that they should remain in Dresden, or some other large city, until May, and then go to Castle Lischnitz, where the household, as always in the master's absence, was conducted by the oft-mentioned Miss Anna von Schwertfeger.
The colonel, forever hovering between trust and distrust of his young wife, was seized one evening by a fresh attack of doubts, and tried to get a view down to the bottom of her soul by questioning her as to how often and whom she had loved before she met him.
Unsuspecting as always, Lilly blurted out her two little experiences.
She told of Fritz Redlich first--because that had been the greater love--and then of the poor, consumptive teacher.
Despite his petty misgivings her husband's judgment had remained clear enough to appreciate the trustful purity of her conscience, and he sent his doubts to the devil with the laugh he usually reserved for his vulgar jokes.