melancholy in his disposition. Enough, she accepted him, and with joy he clasped his affianced bride in his arms.

The news of their betrothal aroused a storm in the family circle. From all sides came objections and warnings. Zalika's mother and step-father were sorely opposed to it, but resistance only increased the ardor of the young lovers. The engagement, in spite of kinsfolk, was soon an established fact, and six months later Falkenried took his young bride to his own house.

But the voices which had foretold unhappiness from this marriage were prophetic.

It was not long before the brief intoxication of joy was followed by bitter disenchantment. It had been a fatal error to believe a woman like Zalika Rojanow, who had grown up in the unrestrained freedom of a disorderly, extravagant Bojar family, could accommodate herself to the rules and restrictions of a settled German household.

The only life she had ever known, and the only life which suited her temper, was one of excitement and outward splendor. A house full of guests, horses, cards, hunting, racing, and the utmost liberty of conversation with the men of her acquaintance; this was the life she had led in her Roumanian home.

She had no notion of duty and no understanding for the obligations and requirements of her new position. And this was the wife who must adapt herself to the narrow life of a little German garrison town, and direct the household of a young officer with but limited means at his command. That it was impossible for her to do so, was shown within the first few weeks. Zalika began at once; regardless of all prudent considerations, to order her house after the same fashion as her father's, and squandered her large marriage portion right and left.

In vain her husband pleaded with and admonished her; she paid no heed to him. She had nothing but jeers for forms and ceremonies which were sacred to him, only a shrug of the shoulders for his strict ideas of honor and propriety. Soon there were violent quarrels, and Falkenried recognized, too late, what his precipitancy had done for him.

He had had great faith in the power of love, notwithstanding all the warnings he had received about Zalika's foreign birth, and the seal which her erratic education had stamped upon her character. But he had now to learn that she had never loved him; that it was the whim of the hour, or, more probably, the fleeting passion of a moment, which had made her throw herself into his arms. And she saw in him only an 

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