Then my uncle has written to you?'
'I received the letter to-day, before coming here. Do you see that it
was better to have this explanation now, rather than to wait for to-
morrow?'
'Yes--it was better. Let us go, for the time presses--truly I have no
heart for this sport to-night. I wish I were at home.'
'Do not wish,' said Rex gravely. 'You could not help matters.'
Greif extinguished the light and the two men groped their way down the
dusky staircase in silence, both feeling that an exceptionally
difficult situation had been passed through with singular ease, both
recognising that the explanation had been hurried over in a way hardly
to be accounted for, except by the theory that neither wished to lose
the other's friendship. And yet, both Greif and Rex knew that their
decision had been final. The one had nothing more to conceal. The other
had nothing left to forgive. Rex, like Rieseneck himself, believed that
his mother had died long ago. Greif, like all the rest, was ignorant of
his own mother's identity. Sons of one mother they went out of the
house side by side, not dreaming that they were anything more than
cousins, whose fathers were half-brothers, little guessing that within
a few short hours the father of each and the mother of both would be
lying stiff and stark in the chambers of lofty Greifenstein.
They reached the great dark buildings of the University, and found
themselves in a dense crowd of students of all colours, on the
outskirts of a multitude of others who belonged to no associations.
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