Sometimes it was only "Good morning, comrade," sometimes the hour of meeting, or sometimes a harmless jest, the outgrowth of a moment's exuberance.
On the evenings the colonel remained at home Von Prell was usually invited to supper. Though he then assumed his according-to-rules-and-regulations stiffness, the opportunity for a little byplay was now always afforded.
Neither Lilly nor Von Prell moved a muscle and the two High Mightinesses sat there unsuspecting.
But Lilly had a rival whom she feared and detested, because that rival had the power to draw her "comrade's" attention from her for hours at a time. The mere mention of the rival's name sufficed to reduce Lilly to the position of nothing but a lay figure. The rival was--the regiment.
The time of the autumn manoeuvres had come, and both gentlemen read the papers with feverish interest to see what part was being taken by their former regiment.
One evening they sent off a picture postal with congratulations to the regiment. Two days later the reply came, also on a postal, all scribbled over with names which it required a vast effort to decipher.
Three remained illegible, or, rather, inexplicable, until all of a sudden Walter lit upon the solution: Von Holten, Dehnicke, Von Berg, summer lieutenants, who had been called into service for the manoeuvres and had signed their names along with the other officers.
All but one of the names fell upon Lilly's ear unheeded. "Dehnicke" struck her as a little odd, because its bourgeois simplicity did not seem to chime in well with the ringing charm of the old patrician names.
The greeting from out of his past had no benign influence on the colonel's mood. He grew taciturn, then surly; and Lilly caught a sidelong glance of his fixed on her, which caused her to start in terror, it was so wildly, fiercely reproachful.
Thereafter his visits to the neighbouring garrison town grew more frequent, and despite his painful gout he never refused an invitation to join a hunt.
The colonel had left at dawn to go to a neighbour with the intention of not returning until late at night.
A soft grey mist shot with violet suggestions of the sun lay over the ground when Lilly, bored and writhing internally, came out of church on Miss von Schwertfeger's arm.