"Oh, Katrine, my darling, wayward Katrine!" the captain almost shouts, clasping her in his arms. "At last I know that 'tis no deceitful dream mocking me!"
A light tripping step is heard in the corridor. Both spring up as Freddy's merry little face appears at the door:
In the evening, as the couple are sitting in the drawing-room in the twilight, Katrine says,--
"If only there were no such thing as war!"
"What makes you think of that?" asks the captain.
"Why, because I should beg you to go back to the service, if I were not so mortally afraid of a campaign."
"No need to take that into consideration," the captain rejoins, "for in case of war I should go back immediately: not even you could prevent me, Kitty. But tell me, could you really summon up courage enough?"
"Could I not? It will be very hard eventually to part from the boy, but sooner or later we must send him to the Theresianeum, and--to speak frankly--even a separation from Freddy would not distress me so much as to see you degenerate in an inactive life."
"You really would, then, Kitty?--would voluntarily subject yourself again to all the inconveniences and petty miseries of the soldier's nomadic life?"
"Try me," and her large eyes are very serious and determined as they look into his own, "try me, and you shall see what a comfortable home I will make for you in the forlornest Hungarian village."
"Ah, you angel!" her husband exclaims, taking her soft little hand in his and pressing it against his cheek. "What a pity it is that we have lost so much time in all these nine years!"
"A pity indeed," she admits, "but 'tis never too late to mend,--eh?"
At this moment Rohritz enters the room, as is usual at this hour every afternoon, to get a cup of tea. He observes, first, that the pair have forgotten to ring for the lamp, and, secondly, that they stop talking upon his entrance; in short, that, for the first time, he has intruded.
"You have come for your tea," says Katrine. "I had positively forgotten that there was such a thing. Ring the bell, Jack."
Before the evening is over Edgar has made a very important discovery,--to wit, that however cordially one may rejoice when two human souls after long and aimless wanderings come together and are united, any prolonged association with a couple so reconciled is considerably more tedious than with an unreconciled pair; wherefore he leaves Erlach Court on the following day.