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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Song of Songs
+
+Author: Hermann Sudermann
+
+Translator: Thomas Seltzer
+
+Release Date: December 30, 2010 [EBook #34791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF SONGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE SONG OF SONGS
+
+                            (DAS HOHE LIED)
+
+                          BY HERMANN SUDERMANN
+
+
+    TRANSLATED BY
+    THOMAS SELTZER
+
+    NEW YORK
+    THE VIKING PRESS
+    MCMXXVI
+
+    Copyright, 1909, by
+    J. G. COTTA'SCHE BUCHHANDLUNG NACHFOLGER, Stuttgart
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    Published in Germany, November 21, 1908
+
+    Privilege of copyright in the United States reserved
+    under the act approved March 3, 1905,
+    by J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger
+
+    Published November 20, 1909
+    Second printing, January, 1910
+    Third printing, February, 1910
+    Fourth printing, April, 1910
+    Fifth printing, September, 1910
+    Sixth printing, September, 1911
+    Seventh printing, March, 1913
+    Eighth printing, December, 1913
+    Ninth printing, January, 1915
+    Tenth printing, June, 1916
+    Eleventh printing, 1919
+    Twelfth printing, April, 1921
+    Thirteenth printing, September, 1923
+    Fourteenth printing, December, 1926
+
+
+
+
+THE SONG OF SONGS
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Lilly was fourteen years old when her father, Kilian Czepanek, the
+music-master, suddenly disappeared.
+
+It happened in this way. He had been giving piano lessons the whole day,
+in the interim swearing and drinking Moselle and Selters, for it was
+intensely hot. Occasionally he had slipped into the dining-room to take
+a cognac or arrange his Windsor necktie. He had pulled Lilly's brown
+curls as she sat labouring over her French vocabulary, and had
+disappeared again into the best room, where the girl pupils changed from
+hour to hour, and only the dissonances and the curses remained.
+
+When the last victim had stumbled through her lesson and closed the hall
+door behind her, Czepanek failed to reappear in his usual bad temper and
+with his usual appetite. He remained in the front room, where this day
+he neither whistled nor whined nor played out his rage on the keyboard,
+as he sometimes did after a day's labour. In fact, he gave scarcely a
+sign of life. Now and then a deep sigh--that was all.
+
+Lilly, who took warm interest in everything her handsome father did or
+did not do, let her French textbook slip from her lap, and stole up to
+the keyhole.
+
+Through it she saw him standing before the large pier-glass, absorbed in
+a close study of himself. From time to time he raised his left hand and
+pressed it as if in despair against his soft, silky, dark artist's
+curls, which Lilly's mother devotedly fostered every day with bay-rum
+and French oils.
+
+He and his reflection gazed at each other's moist red face with wild,
+eager eyes, and Lilly's heart expanded in love of her adored papa.
+
+To Lilly his standing before the mirror was a familiar sight. It was his
+manner of squaring accounts for his lost life and wasted love, his
+manner of charming back the great world, in which duchesses and prima
+donnas yearningly cherished the memory of their vanished idol.
+
+He stood there like an elderly god of love, with small alcoholic puffs
+under his eyes, and a tendency toward a paunch.
+
+Both mama and Lilly cared for him with unremitting zeal. They regarded
+him as a sort of bird of paradise, who by a lucky chance had been caught
+between the walls of a room, and who required the greatest effort, the
+utmost circumspection, to keep him safe in the cage.
+
+By right, Lilly should long ago have been sitting at the piano, for in
+the house of Czepanek a quiet keyboard was a waste of time and a sin
+before the Lord. She had to practice four or five hours every day. Often
+when her father was seized by the holy spirit of creativeness and forgot
+the time set aside for her practicing, she did not begin until nearly
+midnight. Then she sat at the piano frozen, with heavy eyes, striking
+out in all directions until the small hours of the morning. Sometimes
+her mother found her the next day lying with her arms crossed on the
+keyboard in that profound child's sleep from which there is almost no
+rousing.
+
+Thus it happened that she cared little for the artistic future for which
+her father's ambition had destined her. She preferred to dally with
+some old forbidden book, and often drove her father to despair by a
+false pretence at cleverness in playing at first sight. But to-day she
+had the Sonata Pathétique to do, and there is no trifling with that, as
+any babe in arms knows.
+
+So she was just about to interrupt her father as he stood there plunged
+in dreamy self-observation, when she heard a click at the door from the
+kitchen. She bounded away from the keyhole with one great leap of her
+long legs, and the next instant her mother entered, carrying the supper
+dishes.
+
+The mother's prematurely faded cheeks were now glowing from the heat of
+the kitchen fire. She held her lean figure erect, taut as a whip cord,
+which seemed to be tied in a knot at the abdomen by a protrusion, the
+result of abortive child-bearing. Dull marital sorrow had long ago
+transformed her eyes, once beautiful, into two lustreless slits. But at
+this moment they were beaming with pride and expectation.
+
+For to-day Mrs. Czepanek hoped to satisfy her lord and his palate.
+
+At the clatter of the plates on the table, the door to the parlour
+opened, and papa's dark curly head, about which the evening sunlight
+cast a halo, appeared in the bright opening.
+
+"The deuce, supper already?" he said, and his eyes wandered with a
+peculiar, confused gaze.
+
+"In ten minutes," the mother replied, joy at the surprise in store for
+him playing about her parched, chapped lips like secret bliss.
+
+He entered the room, took a few deep breaths, and said with the air of a
+man to whom speech comes hard:
+
+"I've just noticed that one of the straps of my hand-bag is torn."
+
+"Why, do you want it?" asked his wife.
+
+"One's hand-bag must always be kept in readiness," he answered, his eyes
+continuing to rove about the room. "Suppose I were suddenly to be called
+to act as substitute somewhere. I must have my bag ready."
+
+As a matter of fact, he had been called upon the previous winter to take
+the place of a Berlin virtuoso, who had undertaken to "do" the towns in
+eastern Germany and whose train had been snow-bound near Bromberg. The
+committee telegraphed to papa requesting him to play in his stead. But
+now, in midsummer, when the concert season was dead, such an emergency
+was scarcely within the realm of the possible.
+
+"I'll tell Minna to take it to the saddler's right after supper," said
+mama, who took good care not to contradict her choleric husband.
+
+He nodded meditatively and walked into his bedroom, while the mother ran
+to the kitchen to do the final honours in her own person to the titbit
+she had prepared for him.
+
+A few minutes later he returned with the bag in his hand. It looked
+rather bulgy. He stopped before the linen chest.
+
+"Lilly, dear," he said, "I wonder whether the score would go into the
+grip crosswise? In case I am called to a concert, you know--"
+
+The score of the Song of Songs was kept in the linen chest, so that,
+should fire break out during papa's absence, anyone in the family might
+easily get at this greatest of treasures.
+
+Lilly looked for the keys, but could not find them.
+
+"I'll go ask mama," she said.
+
+"No, no," he cried hastily, and a shiver went through his body, such as
+Lilly had often noticed when mother was mentioned to him. "I'll first
+take this old thing to the saddler."
+
+Lilly was shocked at the idea that her celebrated father should himself
+go to the saddler's dingy workshop.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, and reached out for the handle of the bag. She would
+take it to the saddler herself.
+
+But he warded her off.
+
+"You're too grown up now for such things, my girl," he said, and his
+eyes lighted up as they scanned her tall, virginal body, her hips and
+bosom, already beginning to show delicate curves. "Why, you're almost a
+_signora_."
+
+He patted her cheeks and pulled a little at the lock of the linen chest,
+gnawing his lips the while in intense bitterness. Then suddenly he shook
+himself, and with a shy, contemptuous look toward the kitchen--Lilly
+knew that look, too--went quickly out of the room.
+
+He went and never came back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night following that red summer evening remained graven in Lilly's
+memory hour by hour.
+
+Her mother sat on the window-sill in her nightgown, and her fervid,
+anxious eyes kept glancing up and down the street. Whenever she heard
+steps at a distance knocking on the pavement, she would start and cry:
+
+"There he is."
+
+Lilly felt there was no need to bother about the Pathétique to-day. A
+dull oppression in her left breast determined her to turn to St. Joseph,
+to whom she had stood in tender relations since her confirmation. She
+had already passed many a dreamy, idle hour before his altar at St.
+Anne's--right front, second chapel--and secretly sent up many an
+abstract sigh to the dear, good face with the beautiful beard. But
+to-night he failed her utterly. She could get no consolation from him,
+and vexed and disillusioned, she dismissed him.
+
+At twelve o'clock the last vehicle passed the house.
+
+At one the pedestrians, too, grew less frequent.
+
+At half-past two a dusty wind arose, smelling of sand and threatening to
+blow out the lamp.
+
+Between two and three only the night watchman was heard shuffling along
+the narrow, echoing street.
+
+At three the early delivery wagons began to rattle, and it grew light.
+
+Between three and four Lilly prepared a boiling hot cup of coffee for
+her mother, and ate up all the cold supper. Long waiting and crying had
+made her ravenously hungry.
+
+Between four and five a band of young night revellers passed by,
+throwing kisses to her mother, and when their importunities forced her
+to withdraw from the window they serenaded her. Fine, pure voices, Lilly
+had to admit despite her grief; rendition good and precise, without that
+pedantic stop-like effect which papa so detested in the singing
+societies. Perhaps they were even pupils of his who did not know his
+residence.
+
+Scarcely were they gone when the mother was again at her post.
+
+Lilly struggled against sleep.
+
+She saw as through a veil the thin blond hair waving over her mother's
+forehead in the morning breeze, saw the pointed nose, red with weeping,
+turn now to the right, now to the left, according to the direction from
+which a sound came; saw the nightgown fluttering like a white flag, and
+the lean legs incessantly rubbing against each other in nervous
+agitation. Then she had to retell, perhaps for the hundredth time, the
+story of the hand-bag and the linen chest, but her eyes closed.
+
+And then suddenly she started up with a cry; her mother had dropped back
+in a swoon, and lay supine on the floor like a log of wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+So Kilian Czepanek never came back.
+
+Good friends were not wanting, of course, who had for years foreseen the
+event. In fact, they failed to understand how he could have endured it
+so long--he, the man of genius, of God-given fancy, with the hall-mark
+of creative restlessness on his thunder-headed brow. Others called him a
+good-for-nothing, a dirty scoundrel, who ran after innocent girls and
+enticed young men to gamble. They declared Mrs. Czepanek lucky to be rid
+of him, and charged Lilly to erase her unworthy father from her memory.
+
+Most unpleasant of all, however, were those who said nothing, but
+presented bills. Mrs. Czepanek sold or pawned all the articles of luxury
+left her from the middle-class comfort of her youth, or from her
+husband's liberal moods. But these soon gave out. Furniture, dress and
+linen not absolutely indispensable followed; then at last the creditors
+were stilled.
+
+The singing society, to the leadership of which Kilian Czepanek had been
+called fifteen years before, and which, during that period, had carried
+off no less than six prizes, expressed its satisfaction with the
+accomplishments of its conductor by holding the position open for half a
+year and paying the salary in full to his wife.
+
+But this period of grace also came to an end. Now began the bitter
+begging pilgrimages to the eminent citizens and officials of the city,
+the sorry pulling of bells, the anxious scraping of shoes before
+strangers' doors, the half-hour waitings in dark corridors, the abashed
+sitting down on the narrow edges of chairs, the sighs, the stammering,
+the wiping of eyes, which, however honestly meant, came to have somewhat
+the appearance of professional hypocrisy. The more it was calculated to
+produce an impression the more it failed of its purpose.
+
+Now came the chase for work in shop and factory, in all places where
+bed-linen and shirts and nightgowns are made, where cheap lace is added
+to cheap underwear, where white goods is vitalised with hems and yokes
+and bindings and strings. Now came the whizz of the sewing machine the
+whole day and the whole night. Now came pricked fingers, inflamed eyes,
+swollen knees, vinegar compresses about feverish temples, a simmering
+tea-kettle at four o'clock in the morning, watery coffee heated three
+times over, with bread and butter instead of the midday roast and the
+evening eggs. In short, now came poverty.
+
+And strange to say, the more remote the day on which Kilian Czepanek had
+disappeared, the more confidently his abandoned wife looked forward to
+his return. The first half year had passed; another conductor appeared
+and challenged comparison. For a couple of weeks the papers contented
+themselves with mortifying him by flattering allusions to the former
+leader. But this also passed. And now followed the great silence of the
+grave. At most, Czepanek's picture remained alive only in a few
+bar-rooms and a few girls' hearts.
+
+Mrs. Czepanek, however, who had so long compressed her lips in smothered
+shame when the conversation turned upon her husband, began to speak of
+his coming back as of an established fact definitely prearranged. More
+than that, she who in the course of fifteen years had gradually lost her
+youth, her beauty, her ready wit and laughter, everything she had
+brought as a marriage dowry to her husband, sinking it, for no reason
+at all, in a grey pool of self-reproach and anxiety; she who for many
+years had not tried a coloured ribbon on her sunken breast, who had not
+troubled to arrange a lock of hair on her forehead, which kept growing
+higher and higher--this woman became vain again. Each time she received
+her meagre pay she made haste to invest part of it in powder and beauty
+creams. In moments of exhaustion, when she could no longer stand on her
+feet, she quickly whipped a red stick from her pocket and passed it over
+her thin lips. And about eight o'clock every morning she bustled between
+the kitchen fire and the sewing machine with a freshly burned wreath of
+curls.
+
+In this way she prepared herself for his return. She would receive her
+repentant husband in her outstretched arms, bedecked and radiant as a
+bride.
+
+For he was bound to return; that was certain. Where else would he find a
+comprehending smile like hers, where else the secret soul-harmony which
+consoles by silence and compels happiness by prayer, which, with the
+dropping of the rosary beads, secretly insinuates dreamy stipulations
+with Providence, and dissolves the whole universe into one great minor
+harmony of yearning? Where else was there a human being who served as
+she did, without malice and without regret, with body and with soul, who
+allowed herself to be taken or rejected according to impulse or desire?
+
+Thus she had once welcomed him, a young, blond, laughing, unsuspecting
+thing. She had given herself to him without stint and without
+questioning; just because he desired it. And she had scarcely felt it as
+her right and his atonement, when he led her to the altar at the command
+of her father, an honest subordinate in a court of justice. In fact,
+Czepanek had been forced into marriage by half the city, which
+otherwise would have ostracised the seducer and ousted him from his soft
+berth.
+
+Happier she could not be, that she knew. Of the nameless misfortune
+bound to come she had not the least presentiment; and when it came she
+took it without complaint; she loved him so very much, she regarded it
+as the natural indemnity for the unnatural gift of having possessed him.
+
+Yet he would come back in spite of all. Whether he wished to or not, he
+would come. She had in her possession a pledge which chained him to her
+for all time, and which, sooner or later, must force him to cross her
+threshold.
+
+It was not Lilly. True, he loved his child, loved her with a tenderness
+strangely compounded of pleasure in a toy for idle hours, and of
+aesthetic delight in her inner and outer loveliness. But for a real
+father's love, she knew, there was no room in his gypsy heart. Even in
+hours when he would feel himself most alone and abandoned, the thought
+would never occur to him to seek solace and comfort with a child of his.
+
+But the wife had something else in her keeping which gave her a far
+stronger hold upon him--a roll of music; that was all. He might easily
+have put it in the bag with which he had departed on his great journey.
+In fact, he had attempted to. But so great at the decisive moment was
+his desire to escape that he did not dare to face his suspicious wife.
+
+This roll of music contained everything that had linked his past with
+his future during the fifteen years of his Philistine life, everything
+remaining from the titanic storm and stress of his youth, from the giddy
+hopes and ambitions of the days when he starved.
+
+This roll of music--it was slender enough--contained the work of his
+life; it contained the Song of Songs.
+
+Since Lilly could think, nothing in the world had been spoken of with
+such respect, with such tender and reverent awe, as this work, of which,
+with the exception of the two women, no one knew a note.
+
+It was something that had never yet been, something unheard of, a new
+world of sound, the beginning of a musical development, of which the end
+was lost in the twilight of mystic anticipation.
+
+The opera had reached its culmination in Wagner, the road from which
+pointed straight down into the abyss; symphonic composition no longer
+answered modern requirements for sense music; the song had been split up
+by the newest school into a series of small subtle effects. The art of
+the future belonged to the oratorio, but not that constrained wooden
+production hitherto suffered to pass by the name from a false belief
+that we have to make concessions to a misunderstood ecclesiasticism,
+but--and here it was that the new world of sound, the Song of Songs,
+began.
+
+The score had been completed years ago. To entrust it to the heavy
+execution of the musicians of Czepanek's provincial town would have been
+desecration. So it lay there and lay there, and interwove the day with a
+mild, mysterious light, which no one saw, yet every one felt. It shot
+rays of light into the distant future, and so filled a child's
+palpitating heart with anticipation, prayer and love that that heart
+would rather have stood still than exist without this fountain of the
+good and the noble, from which the acting forces of life daily drew
+their sustenance.
+
+For Lilly the roll of music lying in the upper drawer of the linen
+chest, held together by two rubber bands, was a kind of household
+divinity, which gave purity and sanctity to the home. She had imbibed
+reverence for the sheets of paper, scrawled over with curly-headed
+runes, since the dawn of her recollections, and their music was
+familiar to her from her early childhood.
+
+Papa, it is true, did not like to have the themes of his creation
+bandied about in everyday life. "Why don't you sing 'O du lieber
+Augustin' or 'Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan?'" he used to say when
+he caught one of them dreamily humming his arias. "They are plenty good
+enough for you."
+
+Later his warnings grew unnecessary. Mama gradually forgot everything
+sounding like a song, and Lilly withdrew more and more into herself.
+
+She had arranged a sort of mass from the Song of Songs, which she
+celebrated before the mirror when she knew she was alone in the house.
+She draped a sheet about her waist like a skirt, hung window-curtains
+over her shoulders, wound old lace about her neck, and wove spangles
+taken from shoes into her hair. Singing, weeping, and uttering shouts of
+joy, with genuflections, magic dances and airy embraces, she lived
+through Sulamith's bridal yearning and ecstasy as awakened to life again
+in papa's Song of Songs after a slumber of twenty-five hundred years.
+
+The manuscript of this song became the anchor to which the hopes of
+Kilian Czepanek's family were henceforth fastened. It was conceivable
+that he, a vagabond, cast out by his own parents when a child, might
+abandon wife and daughter to want and pining--but to believe that he
+would desert the work of his lifetime, the sword wherewith he was to
+fight his way back into the great world, was sheer folly.
+
+And while the sewing-machine whizzed and whirred day and night in the
+attic to which Mrs. Czepanek and her daughter had removed, while the
+body of the forsaken woman dried up entirely and grew ever more
+deformed, and the layer of paint with which she kept herself young
+rested upon cheekbones sharpening from week to week, there lay in the
+upper drawer of the linen chest (the chest had been saved from
+bankruptcy) an earnest of future reunion, working miracles by its
+proximity, the Song of Songs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Lilly was now a tall young woman with a well-developed figure for her
+age, who carried her school-bag through the streets with the air of a
+princess.
+
+Her plaid dress of mixed wool was always wrinkled by rain, and despite
+the let-out tucks was ever too short. Her rainy-day boots went to the
+cobbler time and again, and between the wavy ends of her cotton gloves
+and the hems of her sleeves laboriously stretched to meet them, gleamed
+a strip of red, slender arm.
+
+But whoever saw her come down the street with the easy swing of her
+beautifully curved hips, with the careless, rhythmic tread of exuberant
+youth and strength, with the mobile head, too small for her tall body,
+set on a long neck, with the two mouse teeth that looked out eagerly
+from behind an upper lip somewhat too short, and with the two famous
+"Lilly eyes"--he who saw her did not think of the shabbiness of her
+dress, did not suspect that this delicately shaped, broad breast was
+bent for hours and hours over sewing, that this whole glorious, youthful
+organism, whose sap, as it chased through her veins, manifested itself
+in causeless blushings and passionate palings, was grandly maintained
+and preserved on boiled potatoes, bread spread with clarified fat, and
+bad sausage.
+
+The high school students followed her all afire, and for a long time the
+poems composed in her praise in the first year class were to be counted
+by the dozen.
+
+It cannot be said that she remained indifferent to their homage. When a
+troop of them came toward her on the street she felt as if a rosy veil
+were descending over her eyes from shame and dread; and when the young
+men passed by, doffing their caps--they had met her at the
+skating-rink--she was overcome by giddiness, or a sinking sensation, so
+suddenly did the blood mount to her head. The aftertaste of the meetings
+was delicious. For hours she recalled the picture of the young man who
+had greeted her most respectfully, or the one who had blushed like
+herself. That was the one she loved--until at the next encounter he was
+replaced by another.
+
+Despite her adorers she was subjected to less teasing by her schoolmates
+than is usual in such cases. The contented defencelessness of her manner
+disarmed all enmity. If they hid her school-bag she merely entreated,
+"Please give it back to me." If they stuck her up on the stove, she
+remained there laughing, and if they wanted to copy her English
+exercise, she gave them the solution to an arithmetic problem besides.
+
+The only discord in her relations with them arose from the jealousy that
+set her bosom friends by the ears. In this she was not quite blameless,
+as she changed her friendships with startling rapidity, feeling in duty
+bound to respond to all overtures of intimacy. Consequently her
+affections could not be fastened on a single companion for long, and she
+herself was amazed when she saw one sentiment pushed aside by the next
+attack.
+
+The teachers, too, had kindly feelings for her. The words, "Lilly, you
+are dreaming," which sometimes came from the platform, sounded more like
+a caress than a reproach. As head of the newcomers in the 1 B class she
+sat for a time at the end of the sixth row, and more than one hand gave
+her hair a paternal stroke in passing.
+
+Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such
+eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes _could_ not exist. "Cat
+eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them.
+Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her
+lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and
+nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.
+
+When fifteen and a half years old Lilly passed from the first-year class
+into the Selecta, the class for advanced pupils, for it had been decided
+that she was to earn her living as a governess.
+
+With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of
+study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. Nobody was
+addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper balls ceased, and no
+one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like
+"sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by
+repetition; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.
+
+For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy--she was
+neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such
+trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription,
+"Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course,
+not to be counted.
+
+But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple
+pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and
+yearning for the far-off, of a pupil's adoration for her teacher, and of
+a desire to save.
+
+He was assistant instructor in science in the girls' high school, and
+taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils'
+knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher's back in revenge.
+He gave no instruction whatever in the higher classes, but delivered
+lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.
+
+"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy
+through a maiden's soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering
+young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds
+the subject!
+
+His first name was Arpad.
+
+But there the romance ended. What remained was a poor consumptive, who
+had painfully earned his way through the university by private tutoring,
+only to fall a victim to the grave just when he had hoped to reap the
+scant fruit of the sufferings of his youth. His superiors helped him to
+the extent of their ability. They assigned him the easiest classes, and
+as soon as they noticed the fever stains burning on his cheeks, they
+obtained a substitute in his place and sent him home. But they succeeded
+in securing only a short respite, during which the dying man became a
+burden to the teaching staff. Feeling this himself he put forth suicidal
+energy to disarm whatever criticism might be made against his ability to
+work. He eagerly assumed all possible duties in his line, and what the
+most industrious and ambitious man found too difficult he, who stood
+with one foot in the grave, with no career ahead of him, gladly took
+upon his shoulders.
+
+The day the principal introduced him to the Selecta remained fixed in
+Lilly's memory. It was between three and four o'clock, the last hour,
+when the almighty principal's portly belly unexpectedly appeared in the
+doorway. He entered followed by the slender, good-looking young man with
+a slight stoop, who stood at Miss Hennig's right side during morning
+services in the main hall and dog-eared the pages of his hymn-book while
+the anthem was being sung. He wore a tight grey coat, which emphasised
+his slimness, and his shining modish silk vest cast a false glitter of
+the world of society over him. He made two or three abrupt bows to the
+class, like a lieutenant, and looked very shy and embarrassed.
+
+"Dr. Mälzer," said the principal, presenting him. "He will introduce you
+to the art of the Renaissance. I should like you, young ladies, to
+listen most attentively, for although the subject is not obligatory, and
+you will not have to pass an examination in it, it is of great
+importance for general education, and I shall have occasion to test your
+progress in the literature class when we take up, for example, Lessing,
+Goethe, or Winckelmann."
+
+With these words he strutted out of the room.
+
+The young pedagogue twirled his little blond moustache, which fell in
+two thin scraggly tufts over the corners of his mouth. A smile both
+bashful and sarcastic flitted across his face. He looked around
+irresolutely for the chair, hesitating, apparently, whether to sit down
+or remain standing.
+
+Meta Jachmann, with her usual inclination to be silly, began to giggle,
+and soon half the class had followed suit. A hot red spread over the
+teacher's wan face.
+
+"Laugh, ladies, laugh," he said with a voice which despite its weakness
+shook his narrow chest. "Persons in your position may well laugh; for a
+life full of activity and vigour lies ahead of you. I may rejoice, too,
+for I am permitted to speak to you as soul to soul; which is a piece of
+good fortune that rarely falls to the lot of a novice in the teaching
+profession. You will find that out from your own experience soon
+enough."
+
+The class grew still as a mouse. From that moment on he had the girls in
+his grip.
+
+"But that's not the whole of my good fortune," he continued. "The theme
+which the authorities of this institution have entrusted to my slender
+ability--whether from magnanimity toward me, or lack of respect for the
+subject, I cannot say--is the highest theme which human tradition knows.
+Every personal expression in history, however defiant, revolutionary, or
+alien the voice of the chosen one that uttered it, later exegesis used
+as moral fodder with which to satiate the masses. The only personages
+with whom this did not succeed were the men of the Renaissance. The nine
+times wise branded Plato as a shield bearer of Christianity, Horace as a
+pedant, Augustine as a church saint, Jesus as the Son of God. But no one
+has ever undertaken to make of Michael Angelo, of Alexander Borgia, of
+Machiavelli, anything but an ego, an ego which faces surrounding
+conditions and the world either as creator or destroyer, relying on the
+fulness of his own power."
+
+The young souls sat up and listened. Never had anyone spoken to them in
+such a tone. They felt he was talking his life away, but in the very
+moment they realised this, they drew a chain of freemasonry about him
+with which they shielded him.
+
+He continued. With bold rapid strokes, which wrung new life from the
+dead, he pictured to them the time and the men. The accumulation of many
+years of repression now burst from him in passionate utterance.
+
+His auditors suspected that here was more than a school lesson, more,
+even, than the harvest of scholarship. They divined that they were
+listening to a confession of faith; and they attached themselves to him
+with all the rapturous abandon of a woman and pupil, most rapturous when
+they did not understand.
+
+Lilly being one of the younger girls sat nearest to the instructor. She
+had a vague feeling, as of a flood of new, ineffably beautiful melodies
+being poured over her. Since everything in her life and imagination had
+hitherto centred about music, she had first to translate pictures and
+thoughts into the world of sound, before her perceptions could grasp
+them.
+
+She turned pale, and sat there squeezing her handkerchief in her left
+hand. Her eyes staring at him clouded over with moisture in the joy of
+surmise. She saw his breast working, saw the drops of perspiration on
+his forehead, saw the flames burning on his cheeks; she wanted to weep,
+to laugh, she wanted to cry: "Stop!" But she might not. So she sat
+motionless, and listened to the poor suppressed voice proclaiming the
+evangel of that old time which is still new. She listened also to
+another voice which cried jubilantly deep down in her heart: "Let there
+be----!"
+
+"But how does the world look," he continued, "in which that high-keyed
+life developed? Like Moses, I have viewed it only from the mountain. I
+have loitered a little in its outer courts, but I have seen enough for
+me to know that my soul will never cease to desire it while breath
+remains in my body. There between cypresses and evergreen oaks, temples
+and palaces sprang up in white glory from the soil, seeming like a part
+of it. What is clay here is marble there; what is routine here is free
+creative energy there; our feeble imitation there is spontaneous growth.
+Here laborious, grafted culture, there the grace of a happy nature; here
+poverty-stricken pursuit of the useful, there voluptuous passion for the
+beautiful; here sober, subtly reasoning Protestantism, there glad,
+naïve, Catholic paganism."
+
+This came to Lilly like a blow on the head. She had been raised by
+Catholic parents in a Protestant country. Though there had been little
+place for piety in her home, a great deal of religious enthusiasm dwelt
+in her soul, fostered by an imaginative faculty and a compelling
+emotionalism. To hear her Catholicism praised did her heart good, but
+why it should be linked, almost as a matter of course, with the wicked
+heathens, whom she had been taught to despise and deplore, was a riddle
+to her. Her mind was a whirl of anxious thoughts and queries. She was
+unable to follow the speaker any longer, and lost the thread of his
+discourse, until after a while she heard him, in soft caressing words,
+give a picture of the southern country.
+
+She saw the golden-blue summer sky rising over the isles of the blessed,
+she saw the sun's bloody disk dip into the sea blackened by the breath
+of the sirocco, saw the shepherd with his flute of Pan pasturing his
+long-haired goats on the shining meadows of asphodel, saw the evergreen
+forest clambering up the slopes of the Apennines to their snow-clad
+peaks. She breathed in the fragrance of the laurels and strawberries and
+inhaled the olive vapours, which, at the sounding of the Angelus,
+ascended heavenward in blue pillars, like the offerings of a prayer.
+
+When she glanced up again, she almost started back in fright. A
+consuming, tortured look of yearning shot from his eyes as they stared
+with clairvoyant gaze, past them all, into emptiness.
+
+The bell rang, the hour was over. He looked around like a somnambulist
+roused from sleep, snatched up his hat, and rushed from the room. Sacred
+silence remained. After a while the tension was broken by a whisper here
+and there and by a shy fumbling for school-bags.
+
+Lilly spoke to no one, and managed to make her escape into the street
+alone. Humming and weeping softly she walked home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning there was profound excitement in the Selecta. The waves
+set in motion by the great event of the day before continued to
+vibrate.
+
+Anna Marholz, the daughter of a physician, who was a member of the Board
+of Health, brought some facts about the young instructor's life. It was
+absolutely necessary, she reported, for Dr. Mälzer to go to the south.
+If he remained at home, he would probably not survive the winter.
+
+Lilly's heart stood still. The others considered ways and means of
+helping him. Since he lacked the money and since the city would not
+assume the cost of so long a leave of absence, especially as his
+position was not yet assured, the means for saving him would have to be
+obtained privately.
+
+"Let's form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Thank God," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been
+prolonged by forty or fifty years.
+
+At the ten o'clock recess they lost no time in getting together for
+urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the
+inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of
+secretary.
+
+A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein's confectionery
+shop--they did not venture into Frangipani's, the resort of military
+officers and city officials--in the course of which fifteen young ladies
+consumed fifteen small meringues glacés and fifteen cups of chocolate,
+business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various
+promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested
+that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with assigned rôles be given
+in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to
+take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for
+this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever
+found his way into girls' hearts.
+
+Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys' high school quartette,
+proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the
+Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.
+
+Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme
+for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens.
+This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that
+one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three
+projects into execution.
+
+Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went
+pit-a-pat, "For him!"
+
+The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so
+also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues
+glacés and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but
+enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Mälzer's
+subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in
+substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense
+sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with
+serious obstacles.
+
+The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at
+the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission
+to coöperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department
+was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared
+apply for it.
+
+Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating
+in a confectioner's bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly's
+share. Lilly well knew the way to the pawnbroker's, and she did not have
+to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she
+wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was
+all for his sake.
+
+Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each
+time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it
+furtively.
+
+One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art
+would be discontinued until further notice.
+
+Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.
+
+Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.
+
+"He's dying, he's dying!" was the cry in her soul.
+
+After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in
+one of her father's books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in
+his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain.
+But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours,
+despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the
+damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for
+having robbed her toiling mother of her help.
+
+The adventure was repeated the following evenings, and anxiety waxed in
+Lilly's soul. She pictured him lying there gasping for breath, with no
+woman's hand to wipe the death sweat from his brow.
+
+On Saturday her solicitude drove her from her work-table early in the
+afternoon. To patrol his house in broad daylight was impossible, but she
+ventured to pass it once, and lacked the courage to return. Then she was
+seized by a heroic resolve. She went to the florist's shop, and
+sacrificing the two marks eighty left over from the transaction of the
+little cross, she walked back to his house with a brownish yellow
+bouquet of drooping autumn roses.
+
+Without stopping to think she ran up the steps, and rang at the door of
+the second story, where she had seen the green lamp.
+
+An old woman in a soiled blue apron and mumbling her lips opened the
+door. Lilly stammered Dr. Mälzer's name.
+
+"In the rear," said the woman, and shut the door.
+
+Then the little green lamp did not burn for him. An old woman lived
+there, who wore a dirty apron and whose lips kept mumbling. For a week
+she had been worshipping a false idol. Disappointed, she was about to
+steal down the stairs, when her eye caught his name among four
+door-plates. Her heart leapt, and before she knew it, she had knocked.
+
+A brief interval elapsed before his head appeared behind the door, which
+he held only partly open. The lapels of his grey coat were raised to
+cover his neck, which apparently was collarless. His hair was in wild
+disorder, and the ends of his moustache were more matted than ever. And
+how his eyes glared as they seemed to demand in embarrassment, "What do
+you want?"
+
+"Miss--Miss--Miss--" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but
+failed to recall her name.
+
+Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained
+rooted to the spot as if paralysed.
+
+"You have been sent here by your class, I presume," he said.
+
+"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.
+
+"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come
+in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious
+consequences for both of us. But as a delegate--" he reflected a
+moment--"come in, please."
+
+Lilly had imagined him living in high, spacious apartments, surrounded
+by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay
+she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open
+card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly
+unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.
+
+"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.
+
+At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling
+less embarrassed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought
+them nearer to each other.
+
+"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"
+
+Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.
+
+"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.
+
+He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against
+his face.
+
+"They don't smell," he said, "they are the last--but my first. So you
+can imagine how precious they are to me."
+
+Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.
+
+"Are you still in pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she managed to ask.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Pain? No. I don't suffer from pain. A little fever now and then--but
+the fever's pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon
+away over everything--over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too;
+and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so
+beautiful--that is to say--I beg your pardon--"
+
+His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the
+pupil.
+
+In the midst of his embarrassment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to
+drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in
+two blue hollows.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoarser than
+usual.
+
+"Lilly, Lilly Czepanek."
+
+The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a
+short time.
+
+"You intend to become a teacher?"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Mälzer."
+
+"Do you know what? Get yourself exiled to Russia and throw bombs. Go to
+a pest-house and wash sores. Marry a drunkard, who will beat you and
+sell your bed from under your body. _Don't_ become a teacher--not
+_you_."
+
+"Why not just I?"
+
+"I will tell you why. A flat-breasted person with watery eyes and
+falling hair who can only see one side of a subject--such a creature
+should be a teacher. Somebody without the blood and nerve to live his
+own life can teach others to live--he's good enough for that. But he
+whose blood flows through his body like fluid fire, whose yearning
+spurts from his eyes, to whom the problems of life exist for seeing and
+knowing, not for paltry criticism, he who--but I mustn't talk to you
+about that, though I should very much like to."
+
+"Please do, please," Lilly implored.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+"And already a woman." His eyes scanned her in pained admiration. "Look
+at me," he continued. "I, too, was once a human being--you wouldn't
+believe it--I, too, once stretched two sturdy arms longingly to heaven;
+I, too, once looked with desire into a girl's eyes, though not into such
+as yours. Let me prattle. A dying man can do no harm."
+
+"But you shall not die," she cried, jumping from her seat.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Sit down, child, and don't excite yourself about me. It doesn't pay. A
+friend of mine once broke the back-bone of a cat that had gone mad. He
+did it with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn't run away, she
+couldn't howl, she couldn't do anything but just remain on all fours and
+cough and choke and cough and choke--until the second blow came. That's
+the way it is with me. There's nothing to be done. Go away, child, I've
+already made my peace, but when I look at you my heart grows heavy
+again."
+
+Lilly turned her face away to hide her tears.
+
+"Must I?" she asked.
+
+"Must?" He laughed again. "I shall feed on every minute of your presence
+as a hungry man feeds on the crumbs he digs out of his pockets. You sat
+on the left end of the first bench. I remember. I said to myself, 'What
+a pair of improbable eyes! Such eyes the magic dogs of Andersen's tales
+must have, eyes to which you would like to say, Please don't make such
+big eyes. And from being thought big, they grow still bigger and
+bigger.'"
+
+Now Lilly laughed.
+
+"You see," he said, "I have made you merry again. You must not carry
+away too deathlike a picture from here. Our lessons were beautiful,
+weren't they?"
+
+Lilly answered with a sigh.
+
+"When I spoke of Italy, you gasped a couple of times from sheer longing.
+I thought to myself: 'She's gasping just like yourself, yet she doesn't
+need it.'"
+
+"Would you like to go there very, very much?" Lilly ventured to ask.
+
+"Ask a man on fire whether he would like to take a cold plunge."
+
+"And it's the only thing that would save your life?"
+
+He looked her up and down a moment with a black, morose gaze.
+
+"Why are you questioning me? What do you want to find out? Tell the
+young ladies of your class that I'm very grateful to them, tell them I'm
+touched by their sympathy, I--"
+
+An attack of coughing choked him. Lilly jumped up and looked about for
+help. She instinctively seized a glass from the folding-table, which was
+half filled with a pale liquid, and held it to his mouth. He groped for
+it eagerly. After drinking he fell back exhausted, and looked at her
+gratefully, tenderly. She returned his look with a feeble smile,
+thinking only one thought:
+
+"What happiness to be here!"
+
+It was so quiet in the dark, overheated room that she could hear the
+ticking of his watch, which hung on the wall not far away. He wanted to
+sit up and speak, but he seemed not to have recovered sufficient
+strength. Lilly gave him an imploring look of warning. He smiled and
+leaned back again. So they sat in silence.
+
+"What happiness!" thought Lilly. "What great, great happiness!"
+
+Then he stretched out his hands to her wearily. She took them in an
+eager grasp of both her own. They felt hot and clammy, and his pulse
+beat down to his finger-tips. It went twice as fast as hers, for she
+could feel hers, too.
+
+"Listen, child, sweet," he whispered. "I want to give you a piece of
+good advice to carry away with you. You have too much love in you. All
+three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from
+pity. One of them everybody must have if he's not to be a fossil. Two
+are dangerous. All three lead to ruin. Be on guard against your own
+love. Don't squander it. That's my advice, the advice of one on whom you
+cannot squander it, for I can use it--God knows how well I can use it!"
+
+"Have you nobody to stay with you?" she asked, dreading to hear that
+some other woman had the right to nurse him.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"May I come again?"
+
+He started, struck by the ardour with which she asked the question.
+
+"If the class sends you again, of course."
+
+Lilly cast aside all reserve.
+
+"That was a lie," she stammered. "Not a soul knows I came here."
+
+He sprang to his feet, almost like a man in good health. His face
+lengthened, his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out his hands,
+which were trembling violently, as if to ward her off.
+
+"Go," he whispered. "Go!"
+
+Lilly did not stir.
+
+"If you don't go," he went on, excitement almost stifling his words,
+"you will ruin your future. Young ladies do not visit unmarried men who
+live the way I do--even if the man is their teacher and sick as I am.
+Tell no one that you have been here, no friend, not a single human
+being. Your livelihood depends upon your reputation. I cannot steal your
+bread. _Please go._"
+
+"May I never come again?" Her eyes pled with him.
+
+"No!!" he shouted in a voice like riven iron.
+
+Lilly felt herself being shoved through the doorway. The key was turned
+in the lock behind her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She disobeyed his injunction that very hour. She ran to Rosalie Katz,
+her friend _du jour_, to confess everything and relieve her feelings in
+tears. The little brown Jewess had a soft heart and was also head over
+heels in love with her teacher, and so the girls wept together.
+
+But they had forgotten to lock the door, and thus it happened that Mr.
+Katz, whose wealth and social position found pictorial expression in a
+round paunch, and whose waistcoat buttons consequently were always
+coming loose, entered his daughter's room to have one sewed on.
+
+When he discovered the girls in tearful embrace, he discreetly retired.
+But the instant Lilly had left the house, he extracted all the completer
+a confession from his daughter. He learned the story of the sick
+teacher, the abortive committee meetings, and the futile meringues
+glacés.
+
+"Well, we can fix that," he said with a smirk, twirling the very thin
+watch chain--heavy watch chains were worn only by those among the grain
+merchants who had remained below on the social scale--which branched out
+to the right and to the left from the third buttonhole of his waistcoat.
+
+A week later Dr. Mälzer received a registered letter from two strangers
+informing him that means had been found to enable him to make a lengthy
+sojourn in the south. All he needed to do was obtain leave of absence
+and draw the first payment at the office of Goldbaum, Katz & Co.
+
+He departed on a cold, crisp October evening. The faculty accompanied
+him to the station. Lilly and Rosalie, who had learned the time of his
+leaving at papa Katz's office, also were present, but they kept
+themselves in the background.
+
+He glided past them muffled in a thick scarf, his fiery eyes turned upon
+the distance.
+
+When the train left, the two girls flung themselves into each other's
+arms and wept for love and pride.
+
+On their way home Rosalie invited her friend to have an éclair with
+her, for it had grown too cold for meringues glacés.
+
+Half an hour later they were sitting in the confectionery shop smiling
+at each other and looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+With the advent of spring a new and gayer existence began for Mrs.
+Czepanek.
+
+He was soon coming, that was certain. But even if the time was short,
+why spend it over that disgusting sewing? There was a less wearing way
+of making a living.
+
+The thing was simple enough--rent an apartment of nine rooms, buy the
+furniture on credit, and have a plate hung on the outside of the house
+inscribed: "Board and Lodging for Students." As for the rest, well, a
+way would be found.
+
+This little set of thoughts took exclusive possession of Mrs. Czepanek's
+poor brain, riddled like a sieve by the incessant whirr of the
+sewing-machine.
+
+Though such a careless existence appealed to Lilly's fancy, she
+harboured some small doubts. In the first place the clamouring,
+threatening duns that had besieged their home after papa's departure
+were still fresh in her shuddering memory. Then she did not see quite
+clearly where so many students, enough to fill a nine-room apartment,
+were suddenly to come from after the beginning of the summer semester,
+since all had secured quarters already.
+
+But her mother would listen to no objections.
+
+"I will go to the directors, I will go to the mayor, I will--" and the
+attic room resounded with the new triumphant, "I will--"
+
+Now began a series of mysterious expeditions. Frequently, when Lilly
+returned from school, she could tell at the bottom of the stairs that
+the machine, whose industrious clatter had greeted her for years, was at
+a standstill, and she would find the key to the room under the door-mat.
+
+As the time drew near for the great event, the mother became more
+taciturn. A crafty smile lay on her face, which, but for an admixture of
+scorn, was like the smile parents wear before Christmas. She painted her
+cheeks more carefully than ever, and the jar of rouge, which previously
+she had kept locked away from Lilly, reposed unabashed on the top of the
+chest.
+
+But money grew rapidly scarcer. Lilly had to give up every minute she
+could spare from school work to make up for her mother's remissness,
+while Mrs. Czepanek went about calculating and speculating. She put her
+foot to the treadle only on rare occasions, when Lilly pled with her
+urgently. The delivery of finished articles became more and more
+irregular, and the two women were in danger of losing their entire means
+of subsistence.
+
+Lilly's vast hoard of youthful strength threatened to give out. Yet this
+did not cause her overmuch concern.
+
+"Something'll turn up," she thought.
+
+If only she could have gotten one good night's rest, instead of lying
+dressed on the edge of the bed from two to six in the morning, she would
+not have grudged her mother her youthful intoxication born of young
+hopes.
+
+Lilly sat in school with tired, reddened eyes, a filmy veil between her
+and the world, between her and the thoughts she was expected to think.
+Her teachers began to find fault with her.
+
+It was high time for the new life to begin.
+
+It began on a hot, drab July day.
+
+On returning from school Lilly saw two waggons standing outside the door
+loaded with furniture smelling of fresh varnish. Even before she set
+foot on the lowest step she could hear her mother's shrill voice
+apparently raised in altercation with strangers.
+
+Lilly ran upstairs, her heart beating fast. Two drivers wearing black
+leather aprons were standing there, one with a bill in his hand
+demanding money. A look of amusement was on their red faces. Mrs.
+Czepanek was tripping to and fro, running her fingers through her
+freshly-curled hair and screaming all sorts of things about rascality
+and broken promises and grinding down the poor. Whereupon the men
+laughed, and said they'd like to get back home that day.
+
+This set Mrs. Czepanek off completely. She tried to snatch the bill from
+the man's hand. He refused to give it up, and she set to pummelling him
+with her fists.
+
+Lilly sprang between them, caught hold of her mother, who fought
+desperately, and called to the men to leave, telling them everything
+would be arranged. So the men took themselves off.
+
+Her mother's wrath now descended upon Lilly.
+
+"If you hadn't come," she screamed, "I would have gotten hold of the
+receipt, and everything would have been all right. Now I have to go
+there to-morrow again, while if you hadn't mixed in, the furniture could
+have been unpacked in the new apartment this very day."
+
+"What new apartment?"
+
+Mrs. Czepanek laughed. How could Lilly be so stupid? Did she think her
+mother had been going about idle all that time?
+
+Then everything was revealed. The nine-room apartment had already been
+rented, and all they needed to do was move in. Even the plate had
+already been made. When hung it would act like magic. So much for the
+outside. But hadn't she self-sacrificingly strained every nerve on the
+inside equipment, too? She wasn't going to describe the furniture, for
+it might make her angry again, but--
+
+She had bought curtains for twelve windows--the pattern a Chinese lady
+and a palm leaf. And six rugs, good ones, because students usually have
+a pretty heavy tramp, and cheap stuff would wear out like chiffon. Big
+English wash basins with gold flowers, the pattern exactly matching the
+pattern of the ten stands. Unfortunately the dishes were not ready for
+delivery because it always took three or four weeks to have the monogram
+burnt in. But they would have to have something to eat from, so for the
+meantime she had bought a cheaper set--for eighteen people--everything
+thoroughly refined and respectable. She had been very clever and very
+careful in the entire matter.
+
+While engaged in this description, Mrs. Czepanek walked about the
+centre-table with long shambling steps. Her small eyes, with the traces
+of many sleepless hours upon them, glistened and gleamed, and beneath
+the false glowed the genuine red on her haggard cheeks.
+
+Lilly, who was beginning to be a bit uneasy, ventured to inquire
+concerning the payments. Her mother simply laughed at her.
+
+"You are either a lady and impress the tradespeople, or you are not a
+lady. I think that I, the wife of Kilian Czepanek, conductor of the
+singing society, am thoroughly entitled to be treated with respect."
+
+"Are the things at the apartment?"
+
+Mrs. Czepanek laughed again.
+
+"What should I do with them before the apartment is in order? Apartments
+have to be freshly painted and papered." Then with the graceful gesture
+which only the ability to pay bestows upon a person, she added: "I was
+especially careful in selecting the wall-paper to get artistic
+patterns."
+
+Lilly had a sickish feeling. It was like being in doubt as to whether or
+not your schoolmates were teasing you.
+
+Added to all the other annoyances nothing had been gotten for dinner.
+
+Lilly set the coffee on to boil and put the afternoon rolls on the
+table. Well, then, they would simply skip a meal again. The two
+Czepaneks had grown nimble in that sort of skipping.
+
+The mother hastily gulped down the hot drink. No time must be lost, she
+said, they would have to get at the packing.
+
+At this point she was seized by another attack of fury.
+
+"Hadn't you held my hands, you good-for-nothing, you," she screamed, "we
+should have had that lovely furniture in its place by to-morrow morning.
+As it is, we shall have to move in with all this trash. What _will_ the
+people say when they see it?"
+
+She tore at her artificial curls and despairingly brandished the
+bread-knife, with which she was slicing her roll.
+
+Then she turned up the sleeves of her blouse, and said the packing
+should begin.
+
+She emptied the wardrobe and piled the clothes over the bottom of the
+bed. The underwear and linen, the contents of their linen chest, she
+sent flying over the floor.
+
+The sinews of her withered arms jerked, the sweat trickled down her
+forehead.
+
+Lilly, watching the aimless pother with an oppressed feeling at her
+heart, noticed the score of the Song of Songs, the home's greatest
+treasure, lying on the floor, heedlessly thrown there by her mother
+along with nightgowns and bed-clothes.
+
+She stooped to pick it up.
+
+"What are you after with the Song of Songs?" screamed the mother. She
+had been kneeling, and now jumped to her feet.
+
+"Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was just going to put it on the
+table."
+
+"You lie," the mother screeched, "you low-down thing. You want to steal
+it, the way you stole the receipt. I'll spoil your little game for you."
+
+Lilly suddenly saw a gleaming something pass before her eyes, and felt a
+pain at her throat, felt something warm spread soothingly down to her
+left breast.
+
+Not until her mother prepared for a second thrust did Lilly realise it
+was the bread-knife she was holding in her hand. She uttered a piercing
+scream, and grasped her mother's wrist.
+
+But the mother had developed giant strength, and Lilly would probably
+have succumbed in the struggle that ensued, had not the noise they made
+drawn the neighbours to the spot.
+
+Mrs. Czepanek was caught from behind, and bound with handkerchiefs. She
+held the bread-knife in a tight clutch, which the strongest man could
+not relax, and did not drop it until an opiate had been administered by
+the physician who had hurried to the scene.
+
+Lilly's wound was dressed, and she was taken to the hospital, where she
+remained temporarily, because they did not know what else to do with
+her. While at the hospital she learned that her mother had been placed
+in the district insane asylum, and in all likelihood would never come
+out of it again.
+
+Lilly was left alone in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Well, young lady," said Mr. Pieper, the prominent lawyer, "I have been
+appointed your guardian. I accepted the office because I thought it my
+duty--the papers in Lemke _vs._ Militzky," he interrupted himself to
+call to his managing clerk, who had just then entered. "What was I going
+to say? Oh, yes. Because I thought it my duty, despite my being an
+extremely busy man--to assist widows and orphans to the best of my
+feeble ability."
+
+He passed his exquisitely cherished left hand over his shining bald pate
+and straw-coloured beard, beneath which a worldly mouth half concealed
+an epicurean smile.
+
+"My wards all make their way in the world," he continued. "It's my pride
+to have them succeed. The way they do it--well, that's my affair, a
+business secret, so to say. I am convinced, my child, that you, too,
+will get along. If I didn't think so, I should not be so interested in
+you probably. The first thing is to get the young ladies the right
+positions. The homely ones give most trouble, unless they happen to
+possess a certain measure of self-abnegation. It pays them to assume the
+so-called Christian virtues. But of course you don't belong in that
+category--you probably know it yourself--I tell you merely that you may
+learn with time to make demands. I must explain--the main art in life is
+to determine the boundary line between demands justifiable and demands
+unjustifiable. That is, you must have a feeling for exactly how far your
+powers will reach in each circumstance as it arises. A girl like you--"
+
+The managing clerk, a tall, bony fellow, suddenly appeared at the
+lawyer's side shoving a bundle of documents at him.
+
+"At four o'clock the Labischin divorce case. At quarter past five
+Reimann--Reimann _vs._ Fassbender--get everything ready, and have
+someone here to accompany this young lady--the papers will tell you
+where. That will do."
+
+The managing clerk vanished.
+
+"Well," Lilly's guardian resumed, "the time I have to spare for you is
+nearly gone. You cannot continue with your schooling, that's plain.
+There's no money for it. But even if you had the means, I'm not certain
+whether in view of your future--however, a governess may make a
+brilliant match--it sometimes occurs, chiefly, to be sure, in English
+novels--but there's the danger, too, that you might--excuse me for the
+word--on the spur of the moment I can't think of another--besides, it's
+the right one--that you might be seduced. What I'd rather see you than
+anything else is the lady in a large photographic establishment who
+receives customers. But it seems to me you haven't enough
+self-confidence as yet for that. One must make a deep impression at
+first sight, because people who leave an order have to have some
+inducement for coming back to call for their pictures. I've selected
+something else for you, for the purpose more of giving you a short
+period of trial than of providing you with a permanent position.
+It's in a circulating library. It will give you plenty of
+opportunity--discreetly, you know--not to hide your light under a
+bushel. The remuneration, I need scarcely say, will be moderate--free
+board and lodging and twenty marks a month. You will have a chance to
+let your fancy--I suppose you're not yet _blasé_--let your fancy roam at
+will in the fields of general literature. There you are, young lady!
+Mercy on us! Why are you crying?"
+
+Lilly quickly dried the tears from her eyes and cheeks.
+
+"I've just come from the hospital," was the only excuse she could find.
+"I'm still a little--I beg your pardon."
+
+The prominent lawyer shook his head. His bald spot looked as petted and
+pampered as a lovely woman's cheeks.
+
+"You must get out of the habit of crying, too, if you want to make your
+way in the world. Tears are not in place until you are 'settled.' Oh,
+yes, something else--the things your poor mother owned must be sold. The
+proceeds will serve as a small capital. I lay stress on having such a
+sum, no matter how insignificant. Now you will go back to your home with
+my man--the key was deposited at my office--and select what you think
+you absolutely need or"--he smiled a little--"what filial devotion leads
+you to prize. Good-by, my dear. In six months come to me again."
+
+Lilly felt a cool, soft hand, which seemed incapable of bestowing a
+pressure, lie in her own for an instant; then she found herself
+staggering down the dark steps behind a clerk who had been waiting for
+her outside the door with the key to her home.
+
+She wanted to speak to him, ask him questions, beg him for something.
+But for what? She herself knew not.
+
+When the clerk opened up the musty room, where the twilight was broken
+by shafts of light, as in a tomb, the tomb of her life, the tomb of her
+youth, Lilly felt that now everything was over and all left her was to
+fall asleep here and die.
+
+The clerk threw the shutters back and raised the windows.
+
+The clothes were still lying on the bed, the underwear and bed-linen on
+the floor, and close by were two brown stains, the blood that had
+flowed from her wound. The knife, too, was still there.
+
+Lilly restrained her desire to cry, shamed by the presence of the clerk,
+who stood there stupidly, whistling, with his lower lip thrust out.
+
+Lilly threw her clothes into the basket-trunk which her mother had
+intended to use in moving to the nine-room apartment, added a few pieces
+of underwear and some books chosen at random, and then looked around for
+mementos. Her brain was befogged. She saw everything and recognised
+nothing. But there on the table, there, bound with rubber bands, soaked
+in her blood, untouched because no one knew its value, lay the Song of
+Songs.
+
+Lilly snatched it up, shut down the trunk lid, and with the score under
+her arm, stepped out into the new life, hungry for experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Asmussen's two daughters had run away from home again. The whole
+neighbourhood knew it. Lilly had scarcely set foot in the dusky room
+smelling of dust and leather, where soiled volumes on pine shelves
+reached to the ceiling, when she, too, became acquainted with the fact.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen was a dignified dame, whom nature had endowed with
+gracious rotundity. She received Lilly at the entrance to her
+circulating library, and amid kisses and tears declared that even before
+seeing Lilly she had conceived a love for her such as she would cherish
+for a child of her own; and now that she had met her face to face she
+was completely bewitched.
+
+"And people speak of the cold world," thought Lilly, whom this sort of
+reception pleased very well.
+
+"What did I say--a child of my _own_? Nonsense! I love you more, much
+more, ever and ever and ever so much more. Daughters are venomous
+serpents, on whom love is wasted. They are parasites to be torn from
+one's breast--torn--"
+
+She stopped because the stupid clerk, who had accompanied Lilly in a
+cab, was shoving her trunk over the threshold. After he left Mrs.
+Asmussen continued:
+
+"Do you think I loved my daughters, or didn't love them? Did I, or did I
+not, say to them every day: 'Your father's a blackguard, a cur, and may
+the devil take him'? How do you think they rewarded me? One morning I
+get up and find they're gone--mind you, absolutely gone--beds empty--and
+a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You beat us too much, and
+we're sick and tired of that eternal mush.' Look at me, my dear. Am I
+not goodness itself? Do I look as if I could beat _any_body, much less
+my own daughters? And do you suppose this is the first time they did it,
+the first time they overwhelmed me with shame and disgrace in the eyes
+of the whole world? What would you say if I were to tell you it's the
+_third_ time--twice before I pardoned them and took them to my bosom. I
+found them lying outside my door in tears and rags. Yes, yes, that's the
+way it was, that's the way it is, the way it is. But if they dare to
+return _again_, here's a broom, here, look, behind the door--I put it
+there the instant I found out they had gone, and there it will remain
+until I take hold of it and beat them out, beat them out through the
+door to the street, this way, this way, this way--"
+
+With a gesture of ineffable disgust Mrs. Asmussen swept an invisible
+something through the hall, and let it lie outside, giving it a look of
+unspeakable contempt.
+
+"The poor, poor woman," thought Lilly. "How she must have suffered!" And
+she registered a silent vow to do her utmost to replace the faithless
+children in the abandoned mother's heart.
+
+At this point a young man entered, a customer, who wanted to exchange a
+book. He asked for one of Zola's works, and looked at Lilly
+triumphantly, as if to say, "You see, that's the kind I am!"
+
+Mrs. Asmussen went to fetch the book, shaking her head softly in
+deprecation. The customer took it hastily without paying the least
+attention to the look of warning with which she handed it to him.
+
+"Look, my dear," she said after he left, "that's the way youth goes to
+its ruin, and I myself am condemned to point the way."
+
+"How?" queried Lilly, who had been listening with the keenest interest.
+
+"Do you know what's inside an apothecary's shop?"
+
+Lilly said she had often been in an apothecary's shop, but could not
+itemise the contents.
+
+Her mistress continued:
+
+"One closet is marked 'Poisons.' It contains the most awful poisons
+mankind knows. That's why it's always locked and only the owner and his
+assistant may have the key to it. Now look about you. Half of what you
+see here is poison, too. Everything written these days vitiates the soul
+and lures it to its destruction. Yet I must keep the wicked books, and
+though my heart bleeds I must hand them over to any and everybody who
+asks for them. Oh, I need but to think of my undutiful daughters. No use
+my telling them not to--they read at any rate. They read and read the
+whole night long, and when they were crammed full of impudence and
+corruption, they didn't like the food I prepared for them, and all they
+wanted to do was to go out walking. On top of it all they went sneaking
+off to their father, that miserable cur, that common cheat, that
+pock-marked scum of the earth. Child, I warn you against that man.
+Should you ever meet him, lift your skirts and spit, the way I'm
+spitting now."
+
+Lilly shuddered at the man's frightful vileness, but took some courage
+in the thought that she had found her natural protector in this
+excellent woman.
+
+An hour later they went to supper, which consisted of mush and
+sandwiches, with nothing but clarified fat between. Lilly, whose palate
+had not been pampered, was easily persuaded that nobody in the world
+knew how to prepare such dainty mush, and that the emperor himself was
+seldom served with more delicious sandwiches. Had a little ham been
+added to the repast, such as she had gotten for supper every evening at
+the hospital, the acme of earthly enjoyments in her opinion would have
+been attained.
+
+Going to bed provided her with another pleasure. The books of the
+circulating library were kept in a large room with three windows,
+divided into four compartments by two bookcases running from the
+windowed wall deep into the room and by a counter opposite the door
+leading into the hall. A passageway along the wall dividing the library
+from the inner room was the only means of getting from one compartment
+to another.
+
+When bedtime came Mrs. Asmussen had Lilly carry to the compartment
+farthest from the hall door two bench-like pieces of furniture and mount
+a spring-mattress on them. This completely blocked the space crosswise,
+so that, to get into bed, Lilly had to jump over the bottom rail of the
+benches. She thought it great sport.
+
+Wedged in between perpendicular bookcases, the window-sill at her head,
+a chair holding her impedimenta at her feet, the Song of Songs clasped
+in her arms, Lilly fell asleep.
+
+The next morning her apprenticeship began.
+
+Lilly was instructed as to the system according to which the thousands
+of volumes were ranged on the shelves. As she knew her A B C's, she
+would have been able to fetch any book from its place at the end of five
+minutes if only Mrs. Asmussen had followed her own scheme and not
+produced utter confusion by disposing the books arbitrarily.
+
+Still harder a task was finding records in the large ledger. Here, too,
+the plan was supposed to be alphabetic; but some customers filled the
+space allotted to them more rapidly than others, and when there was no
+more room Mrs. Asmussen had simply turned to the next blank page
+regardless of alphabetic succession. The result was such a jumble that
+finally neither Mrs. Asmussen nor her decamped daughters knew where to
+look for what they wanted.
+
+Inspired by holy zeal Lilly began the great task of getting order out of
+chaos. This constituted her entire life.
+
+The very day after her arrival Mrs. Asmussen provided her with some
+singular experiences.
+
+During the working hours the worthy dame had for the most part kept out
+of sight. When Lilly went in for supper she found her mistress dreamily
+inclined over a steaming cup of tea in a room pervaded by a pleasant
+aroma of lemon and rum.
+
+"I suffer very much from a catarrhal affection of the mucous lining of
+my nose," explained Mrs. Asmussen, blinking at Lilly with somewhat
+watery grey eyes. "So I must take some medicine which one of the most
+eminent physicians in the city prescribed for me."
+
+Lilly stirred her mush while Mrs. Asmussen sipped tea, every now and
+then giving vent to a distressed sigh.
+
+"Have I told you about my daughters?"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Lilly, respectfully.
+
+In the morning, too, Mrs. Asmussen had spoken of scarcely anything but
+those miserable creatures and the contemptible wretch they called
+father.
+
+"I don't think it's possible for you to get even a remote conception of
+the charm of those two girls. They are my own flesh and blood, and
+modesty should forbid me to speak of them this way. However, from a
+purely objective point of view, I may say that never, never in the wide
+world have I ever seen, even from afar, two young ladies endowed with
+such striking qualities of mind and character. Such tender filial
+devotion, such self-sacrificing industry, such touching modesty, so much
+genuine feeling in all the small relations of life, such quiet strength
+in the judgment of great questions, have never before, I warrant, been
+united in two such youthful souls. Let them be an example to you, my
+child. You are far removed, far, far removed from those models of
+maidenhood."
+
+In her astonishment and shame Lilly dropped her spoon. The old lady went
+on:
+
+"It was with a bleeding heart that I had to part from them. As for them,
+they cried day and night before leaving me. But what was to be done?
+They had to go to their father. Have I ever told you about my splendid
+husband? An untoward destiny has separated us, but his love, I know,
+clings to me, and I will love him all the days of my life. Oh, what a
+man he was! My child, pray to the Lord that he may make you worthy to
+become the wife of such a man. Alas, I was not worthy, no, not I!"
+
+Two tears of infinite contrition ran down her cheeks.
+
+She related a good deal more on this second evening concerning the
+virtues of her two daughters, her husband's nobility of character, and
+her own unworthiness.
+
+After she had taken several more doses of the medicine prescribed by one
+of the most eminent physicians of the city, she finally wept herself to
+sleep.
+
+The next morning she began the day's work by bursting into a rage
+because Lilly had used the broom, which was to remain undisturbed behind
+the door, for sweeping the library.
+
+"This broom is here for only one purpose--to beat those two monsters
+when they come to my door. And if you, wretched creature, take hold of
+it once again, you will be the first to make its acquaintance."
+
+Lilly now began to divine that the strange world was not so roseate as
+her eagerness for experience had led her to picture it.
+
+But worse was to come.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who seemed to be greatly concerned for the salvation of
+Lilly's soul and the purity of her virgin fancy, immediately forbade her
+to read any of the books in the library.
+
+"Experience with my daughters," she said, "taught me where such
+misconduct leads. And I will see to it that you are spared a similar
+fate."
+
+So long as the work of ordering the books and the ledger continued, the
+temptation to disobey this mandate did not arise very frequently. But
+when fall came, when despite increase of custom, unoccupied hours grew
+more frequent, and the lamp hanging over the counter shone invitingly,
+when Mrs. Asmussen from day to day succumbed earlier to the effects of
+the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians in the
+city, and fell into an untroubled dream existence, curiosity and
+loneliness drove Lilly irresistibly on to commit the sinful deed.
+
+The final impulse was given by a girl of about her own age, who had come
+one rainy October evening to exchange the first volume of a novel for
+the second. But the second had been loaned already, and the girl
+actually cried in disappointment. She couldn't bear waiting, she said.
+She _had_ to know how the story ended. She would _die_ if she didn't.
+
+Lilly good-humouredly advised her to go to one of the other circulating
+libraries, which were said to be larger and more aristocratic. She even
+returned the three marks deposit for use at the other place. Happy in
+reawakened hopes the novel-reader left.
+
+Lilly examined the torn and soiled volume on all sides and took a
+cautious peep between the covers.
+
+"_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag," was on the title page. She
+recalled that even the girls of the first year high school had gone into
+raptures over the book. But the seamstress's daughter had had no time
+for reading novels.
+
+Lilly glanced timidly at the first page, then slipped to the glass door
+and listened for a while to Mrs. Asmussen's peaceful breathing--now,
+with sails spread, she launched forth on the high seas of romance.
+
+When she finished the volume at four o'clock in the morning she could
+have torn her hair in sheer desperation at having so lightly put the
+sequel into the hands of some stranger, who might not bring it back. She
+mapped out ways and means of unearthing his name and address and
+slipping to him secretly in order to hasten the return of the book. Then
+she fell asleep.
+
+She spent hours going over the ledger time and again to find the name.
+In vain! The entries were made by numbers, not by titles, and each time
+she skipped the number of _Soll und Haben_.
+
+So, like a toper who seeks intoxication in a new drink, she greedily
+devoured another book.
+
+From now on Lilly's life was one great orgy, and bore all the marks of
+such an existence--blurred eyes, aching limbs, huge bills for midnight
+oil, and spying and lying every few minutes to allay Mrs. Asmussen's
+suspicions.
+
+One winter morning the dreadful crime came to light.
+
+The fire in the library stove would die out about midnight and Lilly's
+feet would then grow cold. So she got into the habit of reading in bed,
+with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, set on the
+broad window-sill directly back of her head. She indulged in the luxury
+even though reduced to the bitter necessity of getting out of bed later
+to replace both the lamp and the book, for nowadays Mrs. Asmussen was
+frequently at her post earlier in the morning than Lilly. But Lilly, for
+the sake of the few extra hours thus gained, would not have been
+deterred from allowing herself this great joy, even if it had involved
+going out on the icy street in her nightgown.
+
+But once she started up from sleep in terror to find Mrs. Asmussen
+standing at the bottom of the bed all dressed. A black strap lay across
+her white shirt, and the lamp, which she had gotten up at one o'clock to
+refill, was still burning behind her.
+
+Never having been beaten in her life, she refused at first to take it
+seriously when Mrs. Asmussen, despite her corpulence, suddenly jumped
+over the bottom of the bed and squatted on the covers like a great
+turkey and began to strike her over the ears with the black strap.
+
+Bad times set in.
+
+Of what avail that Lilly felt genuinely repentant and swore to herself
+to reform. She was so steeped in the new passion, so absorbed by that
+lovelier existence, where people experienced and loved, suffered and
+enjoyed, where there were no pert servant girls who came to exchange
+books, no wet umbrellas, no second volumes loaned out, no ledger numbers
+not to be found, no mush, and no blows, that she could not have returned
+to her former self had she had the self-renunciatory ability of a martyr
+and saint.
+
+To such an extent was she dominated by her fancy that what was her
+actual existence, moving on from day to day in monotonous prison-like
+loneliness, seemed to her a dream, an oppressive death stupour,
+painless, but also pleasureless. Her being did not expand in real life
+until the sticky pages of a novel began to rustle in her hand.
+
+Intimidated and unresisting as she was, she did not find the courage to
+justify what was holiest to her even in her own eyes. She felt it to be
+a sin on which her hungry soul fed as on manna.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen had bethought herself of a diabolic way of still further
+humiliating Lilly. Like many a believing Protestant, she regarded
+religion solely as a scourge. Hitherto she had not shown the least
+solicitude concerning Lilly's piety, but now she began each meal with a
+long prayer of repentance, and while the steam curled invitingly from
+the soup tureen, she would beseech God with sighs and tears to raise
+Lilly from the depths to which she had sunk.
+
+And woe to Lilly if caught backsliding!
+
+That first chastisement was not the last. Every pretext was seized for
+beating and cuffing her. Storms of abuse showered down on her
+unprotected head. She did not dare breathe until the medicine prescribed
+by the eminent physician began to have its soothing effect.
+
+Then she would pounce on the first book she came across, and amid the
+forging of signatures and broken marriage vows, amid death by poisoning
+and the mad acts of love, she would suffer and triumph, triumph and die,
+blissful in her sufferings, intoxicated to the very end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was on a March afternoon, when the sun was shining with young
+impertinence and the heat was untimely.
+
+The black slabs of snow at the edge of the pavement had melted into
+gleaming puddles, and a sparkling shower fell from the icicles clinging
+to the roofs. Over to the south-west the red evening glow lay spread on
+the house fronts like gay rugs separated by an oblique line from the
+shadow of the walls on the near side. The window-panes glowed as if they
+were suns radiating their own light, and the sparrows chased one another
+along the dripping eaves.
+
+But best of all in this sorry spring of city streets was the rare spicy
+smell of thawing. Even the vapours rising from the gutters, now running
+again, gave an inkling of greening meadows and bursting boughs.
+
+Lilly, who had gone out on hardly more than three occasions the whole
+winter, sat behind the counter and looked through the window longingly.
+
+Everywhere she saw that windows and doors had been opened wide,
+everywhere breasts hungering for air greedily drew in the breath of
+coming spring. So she, too, opened the casement wide and gave the door
+to the hall a push, which sent it flying back and knocked down the
+broom, standing at its post, as always.
+
+Through the open doorway she could see into the parlour of the tenant
+who lived on the other side of the hall and who, likewise, had flung
+back his door for spring to enter.
+
+She saw a cherry-red sofa with embroidered antimacassars symmetrically
+plastered on its old-fashioned scroll arms. She saw framed wreaths of
+dried flowers with inscriptions hanging on the walls; she saw an
+artillery officer's helmet and two swords with sword-knots crossed
+beneath. She saw China lions serving as cigar holders, ladies in dancing
+attitudes holding tallow candles, photographs of family groups with
+peacock feathers stuck behind, a spherical aquarium containing gold
+fish, and a spotted goat skin. Amid all these comfortable-looking
+knick-knacks she saw a young man walking up and down with a book in his
+hand murmuring studiously. He would appear and reappear in the field of
+vision allowed by the hall door.
+
+This young man awakened Lilly's sympathy at the very first glance.
+
+He wore his waving light hair brushed from his forehead in free and easy
+fashion, and carried his head boldly erect. His brown and lilac necktie
+seemed to her aristocratic perfection.
+
+She passed in review all her favourite heroes to see which of them he
+most resembled. After some wavering she finally decided he came nearest
+to Herr von Fink, the rogue in _Soll und Haben_.
+
+Since the young man did not notice her, she could study him at leisure.
+Each time he appeared she felt a warm wave pour over her body, and when
+he remained away too long by the fraction of a second, she experienced a
+sensation of nausea, as if some one were trying to cheat her of a dear
+possession.
+
+This continued until once he looked up from his book, became aware of
+the open door to the circulating library with the young lady on the
+other side observing him, started in dismay, and quickly stepped back to
+the invisible part of the room.
+
+The next time he came into view he had assumed a conscious and studied
+manner. He looked at his book a little too closely and moved his lips
+one degree too zealously, while a severe frown clouded his countenance.
+
+Lilly, too, had found it necessary somewhat to improve the picture she
+presented. She smoothed her hair, which she wore parted Madonna fashion,
+and let her arm droop over the side of the chair in idle dreaminess.
+
+Some maids, who had come to exchange books for their mistresses, put an
+end to this dual posing. On leaving they closed the door and Lilly did
+not venture to open it again.
+
+But that night she carried the vision of the new hero into her dreams.
+
+It was too late in the day to speak to Mrs. Asmussen, who was now in the
+habit of preparing her medicine some time before the evening meal. The
+next morning, however, she seemed to be in a gracious humour, and Lilly
+felt emboldened to make a few inquiries concerning the neighbours, of
+whom she knew practically nothing.
+
+"What are the neighbours to you, Miss Inquisitive?"
+
+Such was the tone of intercourse that had developed from the first state
+of enchantment.
+
+Lilly took heart, and concocted a story of a steady customer who had
+asked about the neighbours the day before, and Lilly had not been able
+to give any information.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who cherished boundless respect for the customers'
+wishes, forthwith became communicative.
+
+They were two very good people, but of low station, with whom she, Mrs.
+Asmussen, a woman of greater aristocracy both of mind and heart, could
+not, of course, associate. The man, a sergeant out of service, was clerk
+in some office, and the woman sewed neckwear for a living.
+
+Lilly blushed. She recalled the brown and lilac tie, the sheen of which
+had been dazzling her eyes since the day before.
+
+An idea might be obtained of the vulgar existence those plebeians led,
+Mrs. Asmussen continued, if one knew they considered potato soup with
+sliced sausage in it a festal delicacy, whereas anyone with refined
+tastes would shudder at the mere thought.
+
+Lilly, who, like the good-for-nothing daughters, had long lost her joy
+in the daily mush, could not quite sympathise with this statement. On
+the contrary, she felt her mouth watering, and in order to change the
+subject quickly she timidly inquired whether anyone else was living next
+door.
+
+"Not that I know of," replied Mrs. Asmussen. "But there's a son. He goes
+to high school. I don't know why such people have their sons study."
+
+"I know," thought Lilly. "Because he's one of the elect, because genius
+shines in his eyes, because destiny has marked him to be a ruler on
+earth."
+
+That afternoon she kept the door open. But it had turned bitter cold,
+and the idea of friendly reciprocation occurred to nobody next door.
+
+After an hour spent in studying the oval door plate on which was
+inscribed:
+
+      L. Redlich
+    Please ring hard,
+
+she found herself under the necessity of closing the door, because her
+legs were depending from her body like icicles and she had the
+humiliating consciousness of being scorned.
+
+Henceforth she kept on the watch for one o'clock, when the students
+living in the house returned from school. Holding her forehead pressed
+against the window-pane, she could recognise at an inconceivable
+distance the blue and white rimmed caps worn by high school students.
+
+When he came up the steps leading to the porch in front of the house,
+she slipped behind the curtain, and in a joyous tremour caught the
+shamed, sidelong glance he sent her. If he looked straight ahead she was
+unhappy and afraid she had hurt his feelings.
+
+Other blue and white rimmed caps besides his entered the house. They
+belonged to friends who came to cram with him.
+
+Lilly loved them all. She felt she was a secret member of the union of
+these young souls who were going to storm the world, and when they
+seated themselves in the room she took her invisible place in the
+circle.
+
+Some of them Lilly recognised, not by their features, because they
+passed her too quickly for that, but by their caps, which she
+distinguished accurately. There was the "sad one," the "washed-out one,"
+the "stylish one" and the "wireless one." She could also recognise their
+walk and the manner in which they rang the bell at the opposite door.
+Even if occupied with customers, she could tell, without having looked
+through the window, exactly how many and which of the friends were
+working with young Redlich, and she would revolve in her mind why this
+or that one had not come that day.
+
+Spring advanced. The inmates of the house began occasionally to sit on
+the front porch, where there were benches on either side of the door.
+
+Before leaving, the young gentlemen would remain there a while chatting,
+and now and then He would lean over the railing in the twilight,
+dreaming, no doubt, of future conquests.
+
+With fluttering heart Lilly would stand behind a bookcase where she had
+cunningly contrived an observatory for herself by removing a number of
+books, and from there read the world-stirring thoughts that lay on the
+bold soaring forehead.
+
+The benches on the right side of the porch, in front of the windows of
+the circulating library, generally remained unoccupied, because Mrs.
+Asmussen, to whom this side belonged, preferred not to desert her
+evening medicine, and Lilly lacked courage to ask for permission to sit
+there by herself.
+
+But one evening in May, when dark blue clouds hung in the heavens shot
+with red, enticing rather than threatening, when the streets were so
+quiet that Lilly could hear the distant plashing of the fountain in the
+market-place, when the only stir was created by swallows darting hither
+and thither, she could no longer stand the library's pasty, leathery
+smell, and fetching her embroidery--more for show than from eagerness to
+sew--she went out to sit on the porch.
+
+She knew he had gone out and was not in the habit of remaining away
+after ten o'clock.
+
+So he would be bound to pass her at all events.
+
+Half an hour went by, another half hour, then a quarter of an hour.
+Finally she saw a blue and white cap come swinging down the street in
+the last glow of evening.
+
+Her first thought was to run into the library with all possible speed.
+But she was ashamed of the idea, and remained seated.
+
+He came, he saw her, he raised his cap and went in.
+
+She thought gleefully:
+
+"Well, he bowed at last."
+
+At the end of scarcely ten minutes he reappeared on the scene, seated
+himself on the bench belonging to _his_ side of the house, toyed with
+pebbles, whistled softly, and acted altogether as if he did not see
+her.
+
+Lilly sat in her corner with her face turned aside, rolling and
+unrolling her embroidery, and every now and then fetching a little sigh,
+not to show her love--oh, certainly not!--but because her breath came
+short.
+
+About half an hour passed in this fashion and Lilly was beginning to
+lose all hope of a rapprochement, when all of a sudden he said, half
+raising his cap:
+
+"The front door, I believe, is soon going to be closed, Miss."
+
+"Impossible!" she cried, feigning lively astonishment. But if she were
+to act on the suggestion implied in his words her chance of at last
+becoming acquainted with him would certainly be lost, and she added in a
+tone lighter than accorded with her mood: "But it doesn't matter. The
+window is open."
+
+He uttered,
+
+"H'm, h'm."
+
+Whether in agreement or blame she could not determine, and the
+conversation would have come to a standstill without fail had not Lilly
+made an effort to keep the ball rolling.
+
+"We are neighbours, aren't we?" she asked.
+
+He jumped from his seat and with a sweep of his cap describing a
+semicircle between his head and his trousers' pocket, he said:
+
+"Permit me to introduce myself. Fritz Redlich, senior in the high
+school."
+
+Lilly once more experienced the reverential thrill that used to pass
+through her soul when she was in the Selecta and the last year class of
+the boys' high school was mentioned. The fact was suddenly borne in upon
+her that now she was nothing better than a shop girl, and she grew hot
+with shame at the thought.
+
+But she would not have it that her glorious past was to have been lived
+in vain.
+
+"I was in the Selecta. I left last autumn," she said, "and I got to know
+some of you then."
+
+"Whom?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Lilly mentioned the names of two young men who had fluttered about her
+at the skating-rink, and asked whether he knew them.
+
+"Certainly not," he answered with scorn, which did not seem wholly
+sincere. "They loaf too much for fellows like us, and they're going to
+join a students' corps. We don't do that sort of thing."
+
+Silence ensued.
+
+It had now grown so dark that Lilly could see only the outline of his
+figure as he idly leaned against the corner post of the balustrade.
+
+Fine drops of rain fell and lay in her hair. She could have remained
+there forever with the dark youthful form before her searching eyes and
+spring's blessing lying cool on her head.
+
+"You are engaged here in the circulating library?" he asked.
+
+Lilly said "Yes," and was grateful to him for the elegant word
+"engaged," which seemed somewhat to improve her position.
+
+"And you are preparing for the examinations?" she inquired in turn.
+
+"In autumn--if everything goes well," he answered with a sigh.
+
+"Then you are going out into the wide, wide world," she said with the
+rapt expression that girls adopt in compositions. "Going out to fight
+your way through life. Oh, how I envy you!"
+
+"Why?" he asked in wonder. "Aren't you fighting your way through life
+already?"
+
+Lilly burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, if I were you," she cried, "what wouldn't I do--oh!"
+
+She exulted in her sensations. She felt her limbs stretching. She knew a
+gleam of triumph was flashing in her eyes, a gleam which could not
+triumph simply because it dissipated itself unseen in the dark.
+
+It was impossible for her, from sheer joy, to remain where she was. She
+would have gone mad had she been compelled to stay there, formulating
+stiff words, while everything in her cried out:
+
+"I love you."
+
+She bade him a hasty good-night and ran into the library, bolting the
+door behind her. She ran up and down the narrow aisles between the
+cases, laughing and sighing, raising her arms aloft like a priestess at
+prayer, and knocking her elbows painfully against the shelves.
+
+A yearning for symphonies, for great sustained major chords, welled up
+within her. She wanted to sing the Walhalla motif, but the Walhalla
+motif cannot be sung.
+
+Suddenly an aria flitted through her mind, one of those songs which had
+palpitated through her childhood, without conveying any meaning to her,
+but which, for that very reason, had been the more purely consecrated.
+
+    I sought him whom my soul loved,
+    I sought him, but I found him not.
+    I called him,
+    But he gave me no answer.
+    The watchman that went about the city found me.
+    They smote me, they wounded me.
+    The keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
+
+She sang in a soft, uncertain voice, loud enough, however, to be heard
+through the window. But when she peeped from her observatory to convince
+herself that he was listening, she no longer saw him standing there.
+
+She sang louder and leaned out. She tore open her tight-fitting dress to
+expose her bare breast to the rain drops.
+
+Then all of a sudden she was overcome by a feeling of wretchedness; why,
+she did not know, but so strong it was she thought she would die of it.
+She felt how the cruel watchers seized her; she felt the smart of the
+wound which rude hands caused her; she felt how the veil was being torn
+away which concealed from the eyes of the world the holy nakedness of
+her body. In shameless nudity, yet weeping drops of blood for bitter
+shame, she tottered through the streets, and sought and sought, yet _he_
+was farther off than ever.
+
+She sank on her knees at the window-sill, and pressing her face on its
+edge, wept bitterly in sweet dark sympathy with that image of herself
+straying through Jerusalem's nocturnal streets.
+
+Yet all this was sheer happiness!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+And the happiness endured.
+
+It nestled in the dusty corners, it perched on the bookshelves, it span
+golden cobwebs from beam to beam, it rode on every ray of light
+reflected from the windows opposite on the leather backs of the books.
+
+Wherever she went, Lilly was accompanied by a humming medley of
+quivering tones, half motifs and snatches of melodies, strains from an
+æolian harp, the chirping of a cricket-on-the-hearth, the singing of a
+boiling kettle, and the soft twittering of birds.
+
+Awake or asleep, she always heard it.
+
+Now and then a few measures of the Song of Songs joined in exultingly.
+
+Outwardly everything went along in the old ruts. Mrs. Asmussen was
+sometimes sober, sometimes full of sweet drugs. Husband and daughters
+rose and sank, sank and rose, through the entire gamut of ethical
+appraisement, plunged one moment into the deepest pit of depravity,
+exalted the next to the shining heights of apotheosis. One day a volume
+of Gerstäcker was missing, another day a Balduin Möllhausen seemed to
+have been sucked into the swamps of the Orinoco.
+
+Sometimes a puff of wind blowing through the window carried a little
+cloud of yellow powder to the edges of the shelves, from which it was
+wiped off like ordinary dust. Yet it conveyed a greeting from swaying
+boughs in bloom, which was all this spring brought to Lilly, except for
+a loads of lilacs carted past the library on their way to market.
+
+The young hero from the other side of the house had not approached her
+again.
+
+She trembled whenever she heard him go down the steps, and twice a day
+with beating heart she received his shy greeting--that was all.
+
+And he was not to be seen on the porch again. The digging and cramming
+with the other young men lasted until late at night, and it was often
+two o'clock before she heard their departing tread.
+
+Not until then would she throw herself in bed, where she lay staring
+into the dusk of the summer night, her spirit roving over the world to
+find _the_ throne worthy to serve as her hero's goal. She saw him a
+general winning epoch-making battles in the open country, she saw him a
+poet walking up the steps of the capitol to receive the laurel wreath,
+she saw him an inventor soaring through the ether in the airship he
+himself had perfected, she saw him the founder of a new religion--but
+here she came to a terrified halt, for in her heart she had remained a
+good Catholic.
+
+Under the oppression of bodily and spiritual castigation she had not
+dared seek refuge in religion. Quickly enough the courage had gone from
+her to ask Mrs. Asmussen for permission to visit St. Anne's early every
+morning, and soon she had completely forgotten that such a thing as a
+confession or a mass ever took place.
+
+Now, however, in the exuberance of her feelings, feelings such as she
+had never before suspected, her longing for spiritual disburdenment grew
+so strong that she decided to acknowledge her Catholicism to Mrs.
+Asmussen and beg for the privilege to pray in that quiet corner where
+St. Joseph, who had always been good to her, stood behind six
+gold-encircled candles and smilingly shook his finger.
+
+In Lilly's avowal Mrs. Asmussen found an explanation of all her vices;
+her sneakiness, her hypocrisy, her laziness, her lack of a sense of
+order. Mrs. Asmussen, therefore, concluded her daily prayer with the
+wish for immediate and complete conversion.
+
+Nevertheless she did not refuse Lilly two excursions a week to early
+mass, which was all Lilly had dared hope for.
+
+The meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph was touching.
+
+Really, going back to him was like going back home. The cherubs that
+fluttered in the gay glass case behind him greeted her with a knowing,
+confidential look, like brothers and sisters who have been let into the
+secret that the punishment after all is not going to be so very severe.
+The golden-yellow carpet extended a hospitable invitation to kneel, and
+the flowers on the Holy Virgin's altar close by perfumed the air.
+
+The saint at first seemed a little hurt because she had not visited him
+for so long. But after she had made her moan--telling of her loneliness,
+the daily mush and the blows--he softened and forgave her.
+
+Since her last visit he had received three new silver hearts, which shot
+out rays of light the length of a finger. She felt like dedicating one
+to him, too, but on what grounds she did not know, since the miracle to
+be worked in her was yet to be accomplished.
+
+"Perhaps it's only jealousy in me, or a desire to show off," she
+thought, for it was painful to her that others should stand in closer
+relations to her saint than she. "After all," she comforted herself,
+"how can I expect anything else when I neglected him so long?"
+
+After confessing everything--except, of course, her love story--he had
+become too much of a stranger for _that_--she hastened away. The clocks
+were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his
+way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose
+nor significance.
+
+She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street.
+
+He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath,
+remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a
+great danger.
+
+From now on there were two such encounters a week.
+
+Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and
+enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the
+faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the
+tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when--blushing
+a bit--he raised his cap to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when
+one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating
+library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell.
+She opened the door--there _he_ stood.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion.
+
+Did she happen to have Rückert's poems in her library?
+
+Lilly knew for certain she did _not_ have them, but if she admitted
+forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for
+entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't
+he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the
+customers' chair placed close to the door.
+
+Lilly spent some time searching, because she was afraid the inevitable
+"no" would send him off with a curt "thank you," and she ran up and
+down the aisles between the shelves aimlessly, reiterating:
+
+"I'm sure I saw the poems just a little while ago."
+
+Then, in order to think the matter over more quietly, she seated herself
+opposite him with the counter between. But he encouraged her to renew
+the search.
+
+"If you saw them only a short time ago, then they are bound to be here."
+
+When finally convinced that Rückert's poems were not in the library, he
+fetched a deep sigh and murmured something like, "What shall I do?" and
+disappeared.
+
+Lilly, completely dazed, stared at the doorway, which a moment before
+had framed his figure.
+
+She wanted to cry out and plead, "Stay here! Come back!" But she heard
+the door on the other side of the hall fall shut, and everything was
+over.
+
+She crouched at the window-sill indulging in speculations of what
+_might_ have taken place if he had happened to remain.
+
+Her heart throbbed violently.
+
+About quarter of an hour later the bell rang again.
+
+She jumped up. Supposing it was he?
+
+It was he.
+
+He begged pardon; he had forgotten his umbrella.
+
+"This time you don't slip away!" something within her cried.
+
+He caught up his soaking umbrella, which she had failed to notice
+despite the shining puddle which was crawling along the crack between
+two floor boards, and was about to escape again, when Lilly essayed:
+
+"For what do you need Rückert's poems?"
+
+He began to complain:
+
+"Life is made so hard for us, you have no idea how hard."
+
+He went on to tell about the speeches they had to deliver offhand on a
+subject sprung on them without warning, regardless of whether or not the
+students had prepared the theme. But this time they had gotten wind of
+the surprise in store--the next day in literature class they would be
+required to give a comprehensive view of Rückert. That was why he would
+have to glance over the poems once again to find out exactly who had
+been buried in the three graves at Ottensen.
+
+Lilly thrilled with joy.
+
+_She_ could help him--she, the low-flying sparrow, could help _him_, the
+soaring heaven-dweller.
+
+She timorously related the story of the poor, defeated count of
+Brunswick and Klopstock, the pious bard of "The Messiah." The only thing
+she had forgotten was who the twelve hundred exiles were who lay in the
+first of the graves.
+
+He seemed unwilling to believe in this unexpected good fortune. Was she
+sure of what she said? That about Klopstock was correct; he knew it from
+the tables of his history of literature. But the rest of it? Oppressed
+by grave doubts he shook his triumphant mane.
+
+Lilly eagerly allayed his fears. To be sure, it was more than a year
+since she had heard of those lovely things, but she had a good memory,
+and would certainly not misinform him lightly.
+
+At last he seemed relieved. He drew a deep breath, and observed, with
+his mind bent more upon general matters:
+
+"Yes, it's very hard, very, very hard."
+
+Once embarked on the current of open talk, he went on to offer his views
+concerning the other difficulties of human life. Mathematics was all
+right; in fact, he had done very well in analytic geometry. But history
+and the languages, and above all, German composition! A fellow was
+sometimes driven to despair by the wretched state of things in this
+world.
+
+In this Lilly fully concurred. She, too, had little cause to be
+satisfied with the course of mundane events, and she gave eloquent and
+passionate expression to her sentiments.
+
+"As for you," she concluded, "what tortures your spirit must undergo
+when it feels itself hampered in its flight by the humiliating demands
+of the schoolroom!"
+
+He looked at her in some wonderment and remarked:
+
+"Yes, indeed, it's hard, very hard."
+
+"I in your place," Lilly went on, "would not care a fig inside myself
+for all that vapid stuff. I would just do what is necessary in an
+offhand way, and then in complete spiritual freedom climb to the height
+where the great poets and philosophers dwell."
+
+"Yes, but the examinations!" he exclaimed, utterly horrified.
+
+"Oh, those stupid examinations!" she rejoined. "What difference does it
+make whether or not you pass?"
+
+Here he became eager.
+
+"You don't understand at all, not at all. Examinations are in a sense
+the avenue leading to every good position in life, no matter whether you
+enter the university or study architecture, or merely try for a good
+place in the postal service. But that, of course, I wouldn't do."
+
+"A man like you!" she interrupted.
+
+He smiled faintly, feeling stroked the right way.
+
+"I don't want to storm the heavens exactly," he said, "but I have my
+ambitions. What would a fellow be if he had no ambitions?"
+
+"That is so, isn't it?" Lilly cried, looking up to him with a grateful
+gleam in her eyes. The feeling that she had never experienced such an
+hour of joy took complete hold of her.
+
+When he arose to go--it had grown quite dark--she felt actual physical
+pain, as if a piece of her body were being torn from her.
+
+He had almost closed the door when he turned and said as one who wishes
+to be sure where he treads:
+
+"If it's not troubling you too much, do hunt for the poems once more.
+Perhaps you will find them."
+
+Turning back a second time:
+
+"You might lay the book under the door-mat if you find it."
+
+Lilly hastily lighted the lamp and obediently started on the search.
+After a time the futility of doing so occurred to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He spent the summer vacation in the country with a companion in misery,
+with whom he crammed for the examinations. The written tests were to be
+given immediately after the opening of school, and the oral tests about
+the middle of September.
+
+The young hero looked pale and exhausted, and reddish-brown stubble lay
+in the hollows of his cheeks like blotches of blood.
+
+Lilly was unable to witness such wretchedness in silence, and one
+morning, when, returning from mass, she met him alone in the deserted
+street, she ventured to stop and speak to him.
+
+"You must spare yourself, Mr. Redlich," she broke out anxiously. "You
+must keep well for the sake of your parents and those who love you."
+
+He seemed more embarrassed than pleased, and before finding a reply, he
+cast rapid sidelong glances in all directions.
+
+"Thank you," he stammered. "But later, if you please, later."
+
+He dashed past, scarcely daring to raise his cap.
+
+Lilly realised she had committed an indiscretion. The houses began to
+dance before her eyes, she chewed her handkerchief, and feared the
+passersby might laugh and jeer at her. When ensconced in her corner
+behind the entry book, she no longer doubted that she had lost him
+forever.
+
+She had!
+
+He came and went without greeting her--he came at suppertime and
+left--she heard his steps all the way down the street.
+
+Over and done for! Over and done for!
+
+But lo and behold! At dusk a knock was heard on the door. No, not
+exactly a knock, rather a scratching at the door, the way a dog with a
+guilty conscience scratches when he wants to be let in.
+
+There he stood. Not with the embarrassed yet business-like manner with
+which he had entered that Sunday evening when the graves of Ottensen had
+justified his coming. No, this time his heart throbbed anxiously. He was
+like a thief who lacks skill in the art of thieving.
+
+"Is Mrs. Asmussen here?" he whispered.
+
+"Mrs. Asmussen doesn't come in here at this time," she whispered back,
+with a deep sigh of joy.
+
+"Then may--I come in--for a moment?"
+
+She stepped aside, and let him enter, thinking:
+
+"How can a person endure so much joy without dying of it?"
+
+He stammered something about "begging her pardon" and "not answering
+her."
+
+She responded with something about "having reproached herself" and
+"having meant it well."
+
+Then they sat down opposite each other with the counter between, and did
+not know what to say next.
+
+He was the first to discover the way into the region of the permissible.
+
+"A fellow sometimes likes to exchange thoughts with a congenial young
+lady," he said with an emphatic air of importance. "But he seldom finds
+the time--or the opportunity."
+
+"Oh, as for the opportunity," thought Lilly.
+
+Since she had manifested such kindly interest in him, and since an
+exchange of views would certainly be edifying to him, especially because
+of the growing emancipation of women--which--
+
+He had steered into a tight place, but his sense of dignity did not
+forsake him. He looked at Lilly somewhat challengingly, as if to say,
+"You see how able I am to cope with this difficult situation."
+
+Lilly had not caught the drift of his talk. From the moment she
+recovered her power of thinking, she was dominated by one feeling: help
+him, save him, so that he doesn't work himself to death.
+
+"Once we girls had a teacher," she began, "who delivered glorious
+never-to-be-forgotten lectures in class. He worked too hard, like you,
+and by this time he must certainly have died of consumption. The same
+will happen to you, if you don't take care and go more slowly."
+
+He nodded dejectedly.
+
+"Yes, life's hard, very hard."
+
+"You must get enough sleep, and go walking. Walking a great deal is the
+very best."
+
+"Do _you_ go walking?"
+
+Lilly taken aback considered a moment. Since she had been in that hole
+among the books, she had not seen a field of snow or a green tree.
+
+"Oh, I!" she threw out, shrugging her shoulders. "What have I got to do
+with it?" Then, inwardly rejoicing at her own boldness, she added: "How
+would it be if we were to take a walk together?"
+
+Now it was his turn to be taken aback.
+
+"There are such a lot of obstacles," he observed, thoughtfully shaking
+his mane. "The thing would be misinterpreted. There are considerations,
+especially so far as you are concerned--certainly, especially for you."
+
+Lilly had read of young cavaliers whose solicitude for their lady's good
+name exceeded their very passion for her, and she looked up at him in
+gratitude and admiration.
+
+"Don't bother about me! I'll manage. I'll just shirk early mass."
+
+Though she felt a tiny prick at her heart because of her blasphemous
+words, she knew that for the sake of such a walk she would betray God,
+betray St. Joseph himself, without the least hesitation.
+
+"But I've got to get through with the examinations first," he explained.
+
+The matter was settled and the plan sealed with mutual promises.
+Accompanied by Lilly's good wishes and warnings, he took leave, but not
+before carefully scanning street, porch, and hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From now on Lilly's life was one glow of hope and dreamy anticipation.
+She would lie awake half the night, picturing to herself how she would
+wander over the golden meadows with him in the light of dawn, her hand
+pressed against her throbbing heart, her arm now and then slightly
+grazing his elbow. Each time she thought of this she felt a little
+shock, which quivered down to the very tips of her toes.
+
+She read nothing but hot, passionate books, in which there was much of
+"intoxication," "transport," and the "giddiness of endless kisses." But
+she did not dream of kisses in connection with herself. Whenever she
+found herself drifting in that direction, she checked herself in
+dismay--so exalted was he above every earthly desire.
+
+Now she knew what reasons justified her in promising St. Joseph a silver
+heart.
+
+One Sunday morning she told St. Joseph the whole story--about Fritz
+Redlich's examinations, his high ideals, and her solicitude for him. The
+only thing she refrained from mentioning was the walk they had planned;
+which she had to omit on account of the shirked mass.
+
+She had saved about sixty marks, which she carried in a leather pocket
+next to her body. The silver heart would cost twelve marks at the very
+most. Plenty of money remained for buying a gift for her friend. She
+wavered long between a gold-embroidered college portfolio and
+gold-embroidered slippers, and finally decided on a revolver in a case,
+naturally assuming that in the wild struggle for existence he would be
+exposed to many dangers, from which only reckless daring and instant
+decision could rescue him. A revolver and case cost twenty-five marks,
+gold thread for embroidering the monogram, five marks. Thus everything
+was arranged in the best possible manner.
+
+When she saw him step on the porch the morning of examination day, white
+as the glove with which he waved farewell to his parents--he seemed to
+have forgotten her--she felt as if she should have to run after him and
+press the weapon of deliverance into his hand without further delay. But
+she reflected that in all likelihood the examiners would not show
+themselves susceptible to that sort of eloquence.
+
+At the last moment, as he stepped from the porch to the pavement, a
+timid glance of his fell upon her, and she was happy.
+
+At one o'clock there was some stir on the street.
+
+They were bringing him home. He looked weary and completely crushed, but
+the others whooped and huzzaed.
+
+The old sergeant out of service ran to meet him in torn slippers, and
+violently wiped his green-grey bristly beard on his son's face. From the
+kitchen came the spicy smell of cooking sausages.
+
+Lilly ran rejoicing up and down the aisles of the library, and thought
+with a sort of superior satisfaction:
+
+"St. Joseph's fine! _Isn't_ he fine!"
+
+The very next morning she ordered the silver heart, and blushingly asked
+to have a monogram of L. C. and F. R. engraved on it.
+
+When she returned she found an envelope addressed to her among the order
+slips in the letter-box. Inside was a soiled menu card from a
+restaurant, on which was written: "Sunday 5 a.m. on the porch."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first grey of dawn entered the library through the lunettes in the
+shutters.
+
+Lilly sprang out of bed and threw the windows open.
+
+The street resembled a great bowl of milk, so heavily the white mist of
+early autumn weighed upon the ground. The cold damp drizzle did her hot
+limbs good. She spread her arms and washed herself in the icy air as in
+a bath.
+
+Her light summer dress, which she herself had washed and ironed the
+evening before, hung like a bluish drift on the white wall. She
+smartened herself as never before. This festal day should find her
+worthily adorned.
+
+With the paltry remnants of her savings she had bought a large yellow
+shepherdess hat tying under the chin, so doing away with the need for a
+collar. And openwork silk gloves suddenly came to light, having been
+discovered at the bottom of the trunk, where they had long lain
+forgotten.
+
+She would carry the heavy revolver in her work-bag. Before slipping it
+in, she kissed it several times, and said:
+
+"Watch over him faithfully, destroy his enemies, and lead him on to
+victory."
+
+It was a genuine consecration of arms.
+
+At five o'clock sharp the door opposite creaked on its hinges. She
+glided into the hall. On the porch they shook hands.
+
+His eyes were bleared, yet he looked rather enterprising. There was even
+something of the beau in his get-up. He wore his hat tilted a bit to one
+side, and in his left hand swung a light bamboo cane tipped by the head
+of a sea gull in silver.
+
+Lilly stammered congratulations.
+
+He thanked somewhat condescendingly, as if so insignificant a matter
+were not worth all that to-do.
+
+"We loaf about dreadfully now," he went on. "I can't say I get a great
+deal of sport out of it, but a fellow has to know something of the
+follies of human life, too."
+
+When they passed St. Anne's, a thought suddenly flashed into Lilly's
+mind, which filled her with bliss. If they were to go into the church
+for a moment, the sin of silence would be removed from her soul, and St.
+Joseph could even bestow his blessing on the day.
+
+Timidly she gave voice to her wish--and found herself in a pretty mess.
+
+"I am a free-thinker," he said, "I would never go counter to my
+convictions. Nevertheless, it is an enlightened man's duty to be
+tolerant, and if you want to go in, I will wait outside."
+
+No, she no longer wanted to, and she was terribly ashamed. Of course, he
+could not know what close connection existed between St. Joseph and his
+good fortune. Otherwise he would not have been so ungrateful.
+
+They walked in silence through the deserted streets of the suburbs. The
+fog lifted a little. Lilly chilled through and through shivered at each
+step. Perhaps excitement was the cause. On the whole, however, she felt
+much calmer than she had expected to. Everything was so altogether,
+altogether different. A little disenchantment had occurred, she did not
+know how.
+
+She cast a yearning gaze down the street, at the end of which dark trees
+showed their heads.
+
+"When once we are out there!" she thought, and clenched her teeth to
+keep them from chattering.
+
+The silence began to paralyse her thoughts. She would gladly have
+started a conversation, had she been able to think of a suitable
+beginning.
+
+A baker's boy was walking ahead of them whistling.
+
+"When we worked all night," said Fritz Redlich suddenly, "we always
+bought warm rolls. We might get some now."
+
+Lilly became joyous again.
+
+To be sure, had he said "we might steal some," she would have liked it
+better.
+
+The baker's boy was not permitted to sell his rolls--just the right
+number for delivery had been doled out to him--but on the opposite side
+was an open shop.
+
+When Lilly saw her hero reappear with a large bag in his hand, she had a
+pleasant sensation, as if they were beginning housekeeping together.
+
+They now walked along gardens under a veritable shower of dew falling
+from the trees. Lilly shrugged her shoulders, and did not know what to
+do she felt so cold.
+
+At last they were out in the open country.
+
+Mats of silver-grey cobwebs, each weighted down with a burden of dew,
+were spread over the fields of high stubble. Yellow ridges of hills
+bounded the semicircle of the landscape, and in the distance rose the
+walls of the woods.
+
+Lilly stretched her arms like a swimmer, and drew in through her open
+mouth five or six deep breaths.
+
+"Aren't you feeling well?"
+
+Lilly laughed.
+
+"I must make up for all I've lost," she said. "I haven't _breathed_ for
+a whole year."
+
+Feeling frozen still she began to run. He tried to keep pace, but soon
+fell behind, and panted after her, hopping rather than running.
+
+When they reached the top of the first hill, the sun began to rise over
+the plain. The brushwood seemed to be on fire, and the cobwebs shone
+like silver. Each dew-drop became a glittering spark, a flame ran along
+each thread.
+
+Lilly, warmed and excited from running, pressed her hands to her heaving
+breast, and stared into the sea of red with drunken eyes.
+
+"Oh, look, look," she stammered, giving his face a questioning,
+searching glance.
+
+She half expected him to recite odes, sing hymns, and play the harp.
+
+He stood there trying to get his breath, to all appearances occupied
+exclusively with himself.
+
+"Do recite something, Mr. Redlich," she begged. "A poem by Klopstock, or
+something else." She had not gotten up to Goethe in school.
+
+He gave a short laugh, and replied:
+
+"Catch me! Now that examinations are over German literature may go to
+the dogs for all I care."
+
+Lilly felt ashamed and said nothing more, fearing the expression of
+such crude desires must make her culture appear half baked. When she
+looked up again, the glow was gone. The fields still sent up
+yellowish-red vapours to meet the climbing sun, whose effulgence hung
+coldly, almost indifferently, over the earth begging for light.
+
+They walked on toward the woods.
+
+He swung the paper bag. From either side of the road she gathered
+blackberries, which depended like bunches of glistening black beads from
+bushes overlaid with a film of cobwebs.
+
+Some distance on, at the edge of the woods, they came upon a bench.
+Without discussing it, they simply made for the seat. It was the place
+they needed.
+
+Lilly felt a little oppression at her heart. Here she was finally to
+receive the revelations for which her soul languished; here she was to
+look into the heaven-gazing eyes of the young genius.
+
+He opened the bag, and she laid her handkerchief filled with the
+blackberries alongside.
+
+The work-bag containing the heavy revolver was deposited for the time
+being between the rounds of the bench. Lilly hollowed out the rolls, and
+filled them with blackberries, and the two breakfasted together very
+cosily.
+
+The golden shimmer of early autumn poured its enchantment over them.
+Lilly's brain grew heavy with longing and happiness. She could have sunk
+to the ground, and laid her forehead against his knees merely for
+support, because approaching fulfillment was more than she could bear.
+
+He had removed his cap. A curly lock fell over his forehead down to his
+eyebrows, giving his face a sombre expression, as if he were challenging
+the whole world. This "genius lock" was the fashion among the boys of
+the last year high school and was especially cherished by those who did
+not aspire to the stylishness of belonging to a students' corps.
+
+His gaze rested on the church towers of the old city, which resembled
+awkward, faithful, sleepy watchmen looking down on the wide-spreading
+clusters of house tops.
+
+"Will you tell me what you are thinking about?" asked Lilly, bashfully
+admiring. The great moment--at last it had come.
+
+He gave a short and somewhat mocking laugh.
+
+"I am calculating how many ministers get their living in a nest like
+that, and how comfortable it is for a fellow if he just studies
+theology."
+
+"Why don't you? Learning flows in on one from all sides."
+
+"You don't understand," he reproved her gently. "Learning is not the
+chief thing. Conviction is. One must do everything for the sake of one's
+conviction, suffer want, suffer all sorts of privations. The city has
+six scholarships to bestow upon theological students, but I would rather
+chop my hand off than accept one. A man must take up the fight for his
+convictions, and that's what I'm going to do--day after to-morrow."
+
+His small, short-sighted eyes sparkled. He stroked the genius lock from
+his forehead with a trembling hand.
+
+Now she had him where she wanted him. Perhaps this was the very instant
+in which to hand him the revolver. But out of respect for the greatness
+of his mood, she deferred the matter for a while.
+
+Taking a firmer hold of the bag in which the revolver was lying, she
+went into raptures as once before on the porch.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Redlich, what is finer than such a fight? To dive into the
+waves of life! To spite the dark powers who control our destiny, and
+wrest our fortune from them, to come out of the struggle each time with
+greater strength, a more iron will. Can you conceive of anything more
+up-lifting?"
+
+But this time, too, her adjuration failed to awaken an echo.
+
+"Good heavens," he said, "on close inspection what after all is this
+much-vaunted fight? Everybody walks over you, in winter you lie in a
+cold bed, and all year round you have nothing to eat. Of course, I'm
+going to go into it, of course I am, but it's hard, yes, indeed, it's
+hard! If I had a scholarship I should feel much better."
+
+"So that's all the joy you have in facing the world?"
+
+"My dear young lady," he rejoined, "a fellow who starts out with nothing
+but a satchel of darned wash and a hundred-mark bill--where's he to get
+much joy from?"
+
+"He's the very one!" Lilly exclaimed, eager to cast a ray of her own
+confidence into his heart. "When somebody is like you, with the mark of
+greatness on his face, then the world lies at his feet."
+
+She described a semicircle with her right hand, taking in the entire
+plain, its green bushes and silvery streams and the city with its wreath
+of swelling gardens lying embedded in the fields like a lark's nest in a
+meadow. Lilly felt as if she were showing him a small copy of his future
+realm.
+
+He nodded several times in the dejected consciousness of knowing better
+than she what the world is like.
+
+"Dear me, it's hard," he observed, "very, very hard."
+
+She wanted whether or no to convince him of his own ability to conquer,
+and growing warmer and warmer continued with her peroration.
+
+"If only I could express what I know and feel. If only I could give you
+some of my own assurance. Look at me, poor thing that I am. I have no
+father or mother, and no friends. If at least I could have stayed at
+school and graduated. But here I am, without a vocation, without money,
+without clothes for the winter--not even a decent pair of shoes." She
+stuck out the worn tips of her old boots, which until now she had kept
+carefully hidden. "I don't get as much to eat as I need either; and if I
+come home too late to-day, I shall be whipped. Yet I know that happiness
+is lying in wait for me. It is here already--in every breeze that blows
+my way, in every sunbeam that smiles at me--the whole world is
+happiness--the whole world is music--everything's a Song of
+Songs--everything's a Song of Songs!"
+
+She turned from him with an impetuous movement, to keep him from seeing
+how she was quivering all over.
+
+Down in the city the chimes began to ring. St. Mary, once the cathedral,
+now the chief Protestant church, came first with its three resounding
+clangs. St. George uttered a clear third E-G--on high festivals it added
+a paternal, rumbling C. More bells followed. St. Anne's thin tinkling
+joined in--modest, yet to be distinguished the instant it began. There
+was a secret whispering and calling in it: "We know each other, we love
+each other, and St. Joseph says 'Good morning.'"
+
+Lilly's friend seemed to have used the period of her silence in order to
+win back his spiritual balance. With the little air of didactic dignity
+that he liked to assume when he felt he had the advantage in a
+situation, he began:
+
+"I am almost inclined to think we don't quite understand each other. I
+was at great pains to make a careful study of the problems of life, and
+so I see somewhat deeper into things than you. I'm up to snuff about the
+so-called illusions of youth. I know what men are worth, and I should
+advise you to be a little more cautious about what you do."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, astounded.
+
+He gave her a sidewise smile with an air of mingled superiority and
+uncertainty.
+
+"Well, beauty carries certain dangers in its train."
+
+"Nonsense, beauty!" Lilly cried, glowing all over. "Who thinks of such
+silliness?"
+
+"The person upon whom nature has bestowed such a gift," he went on, "has
+many reasons for being on her guard. For instance, it's a piece of good
+luck for you that you chanced upon so strict and correct a young man as
+I am. Another man with a more frivolous nature than mine would have made
+an entirely different use of an excursion like this. You may be sure of
+that."
+
+Lilly stared at him. She was carried away by a whirl of obscure and
+disagreeable thoughts. What did he want of her? Was he reproaching her?
+Did he scorn her because of her most sacred feelings?
+
+"Oh, dear," she said, utterly discomposed. "I wish we were at home."
+
+"Understand me," he began again. "I am by no means a Pharisee. I have a
+thorough comprehension of the weaknesses of human nature. I am only
+offering you a bit of advice in all modesty, and some day you will thank
+me for it. It is not for nothing that a fellow has his principles.
+Should we ever meet again later in life, you will, I hope, not have to
+be ashamed of the friend of your youth."
+
+"If it's a question of shame," something within Lilly cried, "then I
+ought to feel ashamed now, and of myself."
+
+Forward, undignified, ill-bred--that was what she held herself to be for
+having begged him to take this morning walk.
+
+Yet there had been nothing evil in the thing! Where had the evil
+suddenly come from?
+
+The chimes were still making music, the sun was still weaving its net of
+gold about her. She saw nothing, she heard nothing, so very ashamed she
+was. She wanted to run away, but did not dare even to stir.
+
+As for him he no longer looked as if he needed comforting. His manner
+expressed the quiet satisfaction a man feels with a piece of work just
+completed.
+
+A blackberry had remained sticking in a crevice in the seat of the
+bench.
+
+"One mustn't get spots on one's clothes," he admonished, and stuck the
+berry in his mouth, slowly crunching the seeds between his teeth.
+
+Lilly pulled herself together, and caught up her work-bag.
+
+"What are you carrying there?" he asked. "It looks so heavy."
+
+Lilly in terror clutched the bag tight.
+
+"Only the house key," she stammered.
+
+Then they went home.
+
+"If only I could change his mind," she thought, "so that he would have a
+favorable opinion of me again."
+
+Nothing better occurred to her than to stoop at the wayside and pluck
+the finest field flowers she could reach to offer to him as a farewell
+gift instead of that other gift, the mere thought of which made her feel
+like a goose.
+
+She handed him the bouquet keeping her eyes turned aside. He thanked her
+with a pretty bow, and twirled the bamboo cane with the silver
+handle--an heirloom of which he had just come into possession. He swung
+it boldly about his head, the way future corps students do before making
+a high carte.
+
+Lilly in her dejection and humiliation was unable to say a word.
+
+"Doesn't an inner voice," he asked, "tell you we shall meet some time
+again?"
+
+She turned her face away. She had all to do to force back the tears
+welling up in her eyes.
+
+"Then I hope you will receive proof of what unremitting effort and
+unshakable fidelity to one's convictions can accomplish even with small
+means."
+
+His voice now sounded full and vibrant with self-satisfied energy. While
+making her small and timorous he seemed to have sucked up some of her
+joyous mood.
+
+When they drew near the Altmarkt, however, he became greatly disquieted
+again, and kept spying about on all sides. Finally he remarked that the
+streets were getting pretty lively, and it would be better perhaps if
+they were to part company and go back by different ways.
+
+A few days later he left home, and the house was perfumed with the
+garlic of the sausage that Mrs. Redlich sliced into his soup as a
+farewell offering.
+
+Lilly stood behind the window curtain with burning eyes, and thought in
+her sorrow:
+
+"Oh, I wish I had never seen him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+One grey October morning, which hid the threat of approaching winter
+behind a mask of moist, warm mist as behind a hypocritical smile, the
+wonderful happened: Mrs. Asmussen's runaway daughters came back again.
+
+Without casting a shadow before them, there they were all of a sudden,
+shoving several bulging hand-bags into the library, measuring Lilly with
+an astonished look of gracious frigidity, and ordering her to pay for
+the cab--they had no change.
+
+Lilly felt the throbbing of her heart up to her neck. The moment the two
+grand, voluptuous figures appeared on the scene and, though looking a
+bit weather beaten and washed out, swept victoriously into possession of
+the territory, she knew they were Mrs. Asmussen's daughters.
+
+She cast one anxious look at the pretty, pug-nosed faces, where two
+pairs of bright grey eyes challenged the door of the rear room, and
+another anxious look at the broom of welcome, whose hour had come. Then
+she hurried off to avoid the terrors bound to follow upon the opening of
+the middle door.
+
+In the cab she found two withered bouquets of gladioli, a Scotch plaid
+rolled in a shawl strap, from which two umbrella handles--large blue
+glass knobs, the size of a man's fist--were sticking out, some cushions
+trimmed with diagonal bars, and a whisky flask. There was also a tin box
+of lemon drops sans lid, and a disjointed paper hat-box, between whose
+cracks a comb and a piece of buttered bread were striving in unison to
+find their way into freedom.
+
+Lilly gathered up the effects, and stopped in the hall, listening in
+terror. She expected to hear the screams of the maltreated girls. But
+all was serene, and when she entered she saw mother and daughters
+hugging and kissing.
+
+Since there was no time left before the midday meal to buy a roast in
+honor of the festive occasion, dinner consisted of cabbage as usual,
+with the addition of a mountain of cakes from the confectioner's, to
+which the girls helped themselves before the meal in order to lay some
+aside for days of less plenty.
+
+This was the first evidence of their housekeeperly thrift.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen beamed with motherly joy and tenderness.
+
+"Well," she said, "did I exaggerate when I told you about these glorious
+creatures? Too bad I had to do without them for so long. But I am modest
+in my demands, and I am glad enough to get what I do. I know their
+hearts draw them now to their father, now to their mother, because they
+cannot make up their minds to deprive either of us permanently of the
+gift of their pure filial love."
+
+She was sitting between the girls, and she pressed a hand of each. All
+three looked into one another's eyes devotedly.
+
+The absent pater familias was remembered touchingly. Their gay, talented
+father, the girls said, intended to give up his large business, to
+assume the management of extensive farms in the south of Russia at the
+urgent invitation of influential patrons.
+
+Later, in Mrs. Asmussen's gloomier hours, it transpired that that
+"pock-marked scoundrel" had had to scurry off because of some
+questionable notes, and hide in Odessa until the atmosphere in the north
+cleared.
+
+To Lilly's unpracticed eye the girls were as like as two
+sparrows--saucy, greedy, inconstant, and amorous. It was only after a
+time that she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the older, who
+possessed some beauty of a coarse kind, had the ways of a clutching,
+grasping barmaid, and was the sharper of the two, usually dragging her
+sister Mi in tow, whose chief characteristic was a sort of flabby
+drollness.
+
+In their treatment of Lilly they observed for the time being the pacific
+attitude of suspicion willing to bide its time. Hints were not omitted
+to inform a certain person that they would soon learn what position to
+take and whether there was to be peace or war.
+
+When they were finally convinced that Lilly was shy and harmless, the
+waves of their tender confidences met over her head.
+
+It now became the regular thing for all three of them to sit on the edge
+of the bed until late at night with their corsets open and their knees
+drawn up to their chins, talking, talking, talking, while they sucked
+candies bought on the sly, or dressed one another's hair. Beautiful
+souls poured forth confessions. Whispered confidences about love
+adventures and man-baiting flowed on steadily, flooding Lilly's pure
+fancy with a turbid stream of sexual mysteries.
+
+What the Asmussen girls liked above all was to have their bodies
+admired.
+
+"When I turn this way, isn't the set of my shoulders classic?"
+
+"Haven't I a marble bosom?"
+
+"If I weren't so bashful, I'd take off my shirt and show you my hips.
+They are like a goddess's."
+
+They made less frequent appeals for criticism of their features.
+
+"We've gotten so many compliments about our good looks that we can't
+have any doubts on that score."
+
+Nevertheless when cold weather set in, and necessitated the wearing of
+woolen scarfs over their heads, they did not scorn to discuss the truly
+Greek way their hair had of growing low on their foreheads, or the
+seductive curves of their mouths.
+
+They could also be severely self-critical.
+
+"Our eyes are not beautiful, we know. Yours, for instance, are much
+lovelier. But whether _you_ cast sheep's eyes at anybody or not, it's
+all the same. Now, if _we_ just chuck a little sidelong glance--you'd
+think no one could possibly notice it--why, in a jiffy they're after us
+like mad."
+
+Their iridescent, cattish eyes would twinkle with the pleasant sense of
+unbounded power and triumph over the weakness of that strong animal man.
+
+The advice they dispensed liberally to Lilly might be summed up in one
+sentence: "Do what you please, but don't surrender yourself."
+
+They laid no restraint upon themselves in retailing spicy stories, which
+set Lilly's pulse to bounding, and in which they proved their absolute
+seriousness in the observance of this motto.
+
+They manifested a strong sensual craving. One of them once remarked:
+
+"My highest ideal is to be queen of the bees, but to have no children."
+
+The other, who seemed inclined to ethical speculations, rejoined
+vivaciously:
+
+"My highest ideal is to be a nun and horribly immoral."
+
+She pursued the theme, entering into all details after the manner of the
+Renaissance narrators, while Lilly's pious soul trembled and shuddered.
+
+Their libertinism of thought notwithstanding, all their hopes and dreams
+centered about marriage.
+
+To marry, as quickly as possible and as advantageously as possible, was
+salvation, career, a specific for all ills, earthly bliss, and eternal
+happiness.
+
+"That is, he must be _old_, he must be _rich_, and he must be _stupid_."
+
+This trinity embodied all their demands of fate. As others invest their
+husbands-to-be with supernatural virtues, these girls revelled in
+picturing their future spouses' infirmities and in recounting the tricks
+they meant to play upon them by virtue of their bodily and spiritual
+superiority.
+
+They were not always agreed as to the ways and means of obtaining this
+precious possession so absolutely indispensable to life. A favorite
+subject of debate between them was: "Is it expedient, or is it not
+expedient, to compromise oneself with the man of one's choice?"
+
+Lona, whose daring in hatching difficult schemes of action knew no
+bounds, upheld the positive side. Mi, who wished to be sure where she
+trod, inclined to the negative.
+
+"If you knew those male milksops half as well as I do," Lona scolded,
+"you'd realize that the best way to catch them is through fear. Make
+them sin, and twist their sin about their necks like a halter. That's
+the only way to be sure of them."
+
+"It's very odd," Mi returned with inexorable logic, "that you haven't
+practised what you preach, because if you had, you'd long ago--"
+
+Discretion bade her break off. Her sister's fingers, crooked ready to
+scratch, boded no good.
+
+Only a week after their arrival a love tilt took place between them, in
+which hair puffs and petticoat strings flew about, and from which Mi
+emerged with a laceration which Lilly had to treat with vinegar
+compresses the rest of the night.
+
+The cause of their contention was a "swell" who had followed them on
+their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi, had been discouraged
+from coming closer because her sister had not responded sufficiently to
+his advances.
+
+Lona asserted the principle that one must have nothing at all to do with
+so-called "swells," while Mi was of the opinion that he would have been
+good enough for a husband at any rate.
+
+Strolling through the streets and permitting themselves to be accosted
+soon became their chief and daily occupation. Lilly, who had credited,
+and been greatly disturbed by, the threats they first made that they
+would assume the management of the business, soon realized she had
+nothing to apprehend in this regard.
+
+They slept until nine, and took two hours for dressing. Then they went
+out for their morning walk to make the necessary estimates of the
+gentlemen of the garrison, who at that hour of the day promenaded in
+groups near the main guard.
+
+If the first half of the day was dedicated to the military, the second
+half was devoted chiefly to ordinary citizens.
+
+It goes without saying that afternoon coffee was taken nowhere else than
+at Frangipani's confectionery shop, where a few lieutenants and a number
+of city officials and young lawyers gathered to play chess or skat; and
+where, too, many a more dashing high school teacher came to display his
+kinship with the proper world of fashion.
+
+After this hour, spiced by all sorts of sweets, followed the promenade
+at twilight, which proved highly advantageous for establishing possible
+connections, and provided the subjects needed for discussion at home.
+
+It would not be stating the full truth to say that Mrs. Asmussen brought
+a loving sympathy to bear in her judgment of this kind of life.
+Certainly not. The mutual adulation of the first few days had given
+place to a period of sultriness, when cutting remarks flashed in the
+murky atmosphere like streaks of lightning. Then a season of protracted
+storm set in, and mishaps occurred in swift succession, gradually
+becoming so purely a matter of course that even Lilly, who at first had
+wept and screamed along with the other three, began to consider this the
+normal condition of the Asmussen household. Abusive epithets of
+unsuspected vigor flew hither and thither, and the place resounded with
+cuffings. Even the broom, which in the beginning had not been given a
+thought, was now drawn into its strictly limited field of activity.
+
+Peace did not come until evening, when Mrs. Asmussen's medicine asserted
+its rights. The two girls might have taken advantage of her oblivion to
+give free play to their desires, had not their highly developed sense of
+propriety strictly forbidden going out at night.
+
+"Persons meeting us would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then
+no wedding bells for us."
+
+One would scarcely believe with what a number of conventions the young
+ladies circumscribed their apparently unrestrained existence.
+
+You may let yourself be kissed as much as you like, but on no account
+kiss back.
+
+You may let a gentleman call you by your first name in conversation, but
+if he does so in a letter it is an insult.
+
+You may let a gentleman treat you to coffee and cake, but not to bread
+and butter.
+
+You may let a strange man tread on your foot, but if he attempts to
+press your hand under the table you must get up.
+
+And so on.
+
+Lilly had absolutely no comprehension for this set of thoughts and
+desires. Hitherto man as a male had been a piece of life non-existent in
+bodily form, which came to her notice on occasions, but glided by like a
+stranger without holding her attention. She had solely loved the man of
+her dreams, the man of her novels, the man of her own creation. The
+thing that stared at her on the street, the thing that came to exchange
+books and found all sorts of little pretexts for entering into
+conversation with her, the thing that officiously held aside the wadded
+curtain of the church door as she entered, or played the amiable over a
+shop counter, this thing was a strange, annoying fact; it was stupid and
+brazen, a matter of unspeakable indifference, to think of which would be
+a waste of time and a degradation.
+
+A girl's entire life, she now learned, was here simply for the sake of
+that gross and disgusting race; and a girl could concern herself about
+them from the moment she rose to the moment she fell asleep, without
+cherishing the thought of the one for whom she had been created as for
+work and faith and God.
+
+Though Lilly knew she was infinitely above being influenced by the two
+girls' advice and example, she felt, in spite of herself, a small desire
+arising within her to find out what the nature of those creatures might
+be about whom such a fuss was made, whose approval brought pleasure,
+whose coldness meant annihilation.
+
+She was beset by a tormenting fear of that dreadful, seething world
+outside there, of the dirt that was carried to her door every day anew,
+and of the disquieting curiosity with which she picked it up to examine
+it. For whether or no, her thoughts _would_ return to the gay pictures,
+painted in colors of poison, which the two sisters, growing ever more
+demoralized, unrolled before her eyes evening after evening.
+
+It was a piece of good fortune that the hot friendship both at first
+bestowed upon her cooled off somewhat after a month or so.
+
+The cause was the enigmatic shortage in the cash box, which occurred
+time and again, and came to be a permanent phenomenon. Lilly would spend
+hours calculating feverishly, entering and counting every cent, until
+finally there was no other conclusion to be reached than that some one
+had used the few moments of her absence to dip into the drawer where the
+box was kept.
+
+In order to save herself--in case of discovery she would be accused of
+the theft--she once carried the key of the drawer away with her as if
+unintentionally, and did so repeatedly, until the girls' manner, which
+had grown increasingly estranged and scornful, assured her that she was
+on the right tack.
+
+On one occasion they gave vent to their wrath and disillusionment.
+
+Did _she_, stray dog that she was, think she was mistress of the place?
+If need be, books and keys would be taken from her by force.
+
+In mortal fright Lilly ran to the mother and threatened to leave that
+instant unless she was allowed to control affairs as before.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who knew her scapegrace offspring through and through,
+took sides with Lilly, and the storm seemed to have blown over.
+
+The girls took to entreaty and in reawakened intimacy gave Lilly new and
+comprehensive views into the depths of their soul life.
+
+Did she think they cared a row of pins for the miserable little
+meringues they ate at Frangipani's? Not a bit of it. They were clever
+enough to know how to provide for the future. At any rate they couldn't
+stay with that old guzzler forever, especially since the place had
+turned out to be absolutely unproductive in regard to good matches. So
+for a long time they had been saving money industriously for another
+flight. It was no exaggeration to say they were starving themselves
+miserably. Lilly with her paltry desires could have no idea how many
+temptations they withstood when they sat at a table in the confectionery
+shop at suppertime, and had to look upon all sorts of glorious goodies
+without tasting them.
+
+Lilly remained unmoved by their persuasive wiles. Their manner cooled
+off again, and they began to pass her by, tacitly showing their sense of
+injury.
+
+Soon events occurred that fanned their enmity into a lively fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It was dusk of a wet November day. The spouts were streaming and an
+endless chain of grey drops glided down the iron rods of the porch
+railing and fell precipitously into the pool gleaming on the pavement
+below.
+
+A miserable sort of sport to watch the game! But what better diversion
+had the day to offer?
+
+Suddenly the front door opened, the library bell rang sharply, and in
+came a nimble little fellow, capering and stamping, and exhaling an
+aroma of Russia leather and Parma violets. His coat collar was turned up
+and his hat pulled far down. His close-cut blond hair shone like
+yellowish-white velvet.
+
+He measured Lilly from between lids masterfully narrowed to a slit with
+a cursory and apparently disillusioned glance, threw out a strident
+"good evening," and examined the back part of the room, as if expecting
+some one to emerge from behind the bookcases and give him a special
+greeting.
+
+Lilly asked what she could do for him.
+
+"Oh, you are the young lady in charge of the circulating library?" he
+asked. The existence of such a young lady seemed to transport him into a
+kind of careless gaiety.
+
+Lilly said she was.
+
+"Splendid!" he replied. "Just splendid!" And a thousand little merry
+devils danced in his blinking, white-lashed eyes.
+
+Lilly asked what book he wished.
+
+"Be it known to you, most honored and erudite miss, I am not exactly
+familiar with German literature and the allied sciences, but ever since
+yesterday I have been possessed of a fabulous and downright sophomoric
+zeal for culture. If you would help me with your valuable--"
+
+He came to a sudden halt, stuck a monocle in his eye, looked her up and
+down, first on the right side, then on the left, the way an intending
+purchaser scrutinises a long-legged horse, murmured something like "the
+devil," and asked to have the light turned on immediately.
+
+Since it had actually grown so dark that the numbers on the backs of the
+books were illegible, Lilly saw no reason for refusing his request.
+
+When she reached up in all her glory to raise the chimney from the
+hanging lamp, he uttered a second and more audible "the devil." And when
+she stood there before him, the light shining on her sidewise, with an
+uneasy, questioning look in her improbable eyes--those long-concealed
+"Lilly eyes"--he sank back on the customers' seat to show how utterly
+nonplussed he was, and folded his hands and implored her forgiveness.
+
+Lilly felt a hot sense of insult rising in her. So low was she esteemed
+in her position that an aristocratic young man--the first who had
+strayed in to her in the course of one and a half years--did not deem it
+necessary to show her the most ordinary courtesy.
+
+"If you do not wish to borrow a book, sir," she said, giving him a
+superior look, "please leave the place."
+
+"What--what did you say?" he rejoined, outraged. "I borrow a book? _One_
+book? One beggarly book? For every five minutes I am permitted to stay
+here I will take out a whole shelf of books, for all I care, a whole
+case of books--but with the proviso that I may return them to-morrow. I
+will immediately contract with the best express company in town to keep
+hauling the cases away and back again. But one moment--one moment. It
+seems to me I once heard that for every book taken from a circulating
+library you have to leave three marks deposit. Isn't that so?"
+
+Lilly stared at him in blank astonishment and said it was so.
+
+"Well, since I haven't such an amount of money in my possession just
+now, I must ask you to keep _me_ here as a deposit. So, in a measure, I
+yield myself up to you for imprisonment. Very vexatious for both
+parties, I'm sure. But what else is to be done in the circumstances?"
+
+In spite of herself Lilly had to laugh.
+
+"Oh, she's reconciled!" he cried triumphantly. "Her majesty is
+reconciled. And now let us speak to each other as decorous friends.
+Observe me well. Do I look as if I read books? To be sure I have my
+favourites, Schlicht, Roda-Roda and Winterfeld, and others who purport
+to know the humour of soldiering life. But if I come here, it's not to
+get books. The thing goes deeper than that. I hope I may confide in
+you."
+
+"If you think it necessary," stammered Lilly, whose eyes were fascinated
+by a gleaming chain peeping from under the sleeve of his tan overcoat.
+She did not know men ever wore gold bracelets.
+
+"Evenings I like to get into mufti--the rest of the time, you know, I
+wear uniform--but not for long any more--in a few weeks I depart this
+life, because--do you know what debts are? No? Then rejoice. Debts are
+the sour sediment in the lemonade of human existence, and the lemonade
+at that is none too sweet. But what was I going to say? Oh,
+yes--evenings I like to play Harun-al-Rashid and strive to win the favor
+of the populace by honouring the populace's more commendable daughters
+with a little conversation. Understand? So, in remoter districts, where
+high are the hedges and silent the new villas--so yesterday I--behind
+two young ladies--laughing over their shoulders and swinging their
+skirts, exactly the way well-bred girls are wont to do--"
+
+"I beg your pardon, but I should like this talk to end," said Lilly, red
+with shame.
+
+"Not at all," he said; "I knew at once you are a perfect lady, and have
+nothing to do with such ticklish matters. I am merely confessing in
+order to secure a little absolution from your purity."
+
+This turn did Lilly's soul good, and she did not oppose him further.
+
+"So the two young ladies were walking in front of me arm in arm. The
+moment I reached-them I slipped in between like a slice of sausage in a
+sandwich. They weren't a bit offish. They told me they owned a large
+circulating library and intended shortly to open an art shop in Berlin,
+and so on. But they didn't mention their address, and since--I admit it
+with shame--until a few moments ago I thought they had some good points,
+I am simply making the rounds of all the libraries in the directory.
+Besides the well-known bookstores there are only three. I investigated
+the other two, and now that I know the third, the art shop
+proprietresses may go to the devil for all I care."
+
+A feeling of scorn and mischievous delight arose in Lilly. She gave a
+short laugh, but took good care not to disclose the existence of the
+Asmussen girls.
+
+To prove to her that in the presence of her majesty all desire for an
+adventure ended, he presented himself formally: "Von Prell, future
+ex-lieutenant."
+
+Observing her questioning look he continued:
+
+"As I delicately indicated, my days in the regiment are numbered."
+
+Lilly timidly inquired whether an officer's life no longer pleased him.
+
+"Until now I knew of no sort of life that would _not_ have pleased me."
+Wanton spirits shot little gleams from his small grey eyes. "But the
+paternal riches have taken wing, and my wages as army serf will just
+about buy radishes, and even radishes get expensive around Christmas
+time. So the best thing for me to do is to buy an old herring keg and
+let myself be salted and packed. If you should happen to know of one to
+be had cheap, I give the best prices."
+
+Lilly frankly laughed a joyous laugh. He joined in, holding his hands to
+his hips and emitting a thin, falsetto tehee, which, though scarcely
+audible, shook his slim, sinewy body as with a storm of merriment.
+
+They now sat opposite each other like two good friends, with the counter
+between. Lilly wished the hour would never end.
+
+A maid entered to exchange a volume of Flygare-Carlén for her mistress.
+He unassumingly disposed himself for a stay, examined the backs of
+several books, and acted altogether as if he were at home. When the maid
+left he pulled the door open obsequiously and bowed and scraped as she
+passed through.
+
+Lilly grew more and more hilarious and restrained her laughter with
+difficulty.
+
+"Before the next customer comes you must go," she said, "else they'll
+begin to think something."
+
+"Why?" he asked. "The customers change."
+
+But Lilly insisted, whereupon he took to pleading.
+
+"Listen," he said. "I am known as a man utterly devoid of moral fibre.
+Do _you_ be my stay in this mundane existence--at least until the door
+opens again. While I'm sitting here I can commit no follies, and that
+must convey some consolation to your charitable heart."
+
+It was agreed, therefore, that he might keep his place until the next
+time the bell rang. He leaned back in his chair comfortably and scanned
+Lilly with the tender emotions of unlimited ownership.
+
+"All earthly ills flow from garrulousness," he began. "If Columbus had
+just kept the discovery of America to himself nobody would have made it
+disagreeable for him. I will be wilier. I will consider my discovery as
+a family secret between you and me. What a feast for the fellows! Let
+them keep to the moths that fly at twilight, like the two prospective
+art-shop proprietresses, to whom I owe the good fortune of your
+acquaintance."
+
+Lilly had completely forgotten the sisters. It was about time for them
+to be coming home. Suppose they were suddenly to open the door!
+
+The bell rang. No, it wasn't they. It was a spinster, who daily devoured
+several volumes of love affairs, and came every evening for fresh
+fodder.
+
+The blithe lieutenant, remembering the compact, shot up out of his
+chair. His demeanour stiffened into business-like coolness.
+
+"If you please," he twanged, "will you kindly let me have the latest
+work by--by--" Evidently no German author occurred to him. After racking
+his brain the delivering name came, "by Gerstäcker."
+
+Lilly brought him the "latest work," which bore the date 1849. He
+deposited the requisite three marks, and took leave with too sweeping a
+bow, while the little imps frolicked between his silver-white lids.
+
+Soon after the sisters came home, cast a suspicious look at Lilly's
+flaming cheeks, and passed by without greeting her.
+
+The next day went after the fashion of every other, but something
+troubled Lilly, something like Christmas expectations, a premonitory
+restlessness, which pressed on to a new life.
+
+And behold! At the same time as the day before the door opened, and in
+stepped two elegant young men, who emitted a strident "good evening."
+Their manner was both a bit assured and a bit abashed as they asked for
+"an interesting book," while measuring Lilly with the stare of a
+connoisseur.
+
+She felt her limbs grow heavy and rigid, as always when conscious of
+being observed and admired. But she maintained her dignity, and when the
+young gentlemen after selecting their trash (which they scarcely glanced
+at) wanted to start up a bantering conversation, she tossed her head and
+withdrew behind the bookcase L to N, which sheltered her when she sat at
+the window-sill making her entries and calculations.
+
+The gentlemen took whispered counsel with each other, said a low
+"good-by," and beat a retreat.
+
+So her jolly friend had betrayed her after all!
+
+From now on Mrs. Asmussen's poor little hole of a library swarmed with
+slim young men of fashion, who were driven by an insatiable desire for
+reading to exchange one musty old volume for another.
+
+Only a few dared come in uniform, but they did not withhold their names,
+and the last page of the customers' book looked as if extracted from an
+Almanac de Gotha.
+
+Some wrapped themselves in a coat of business-like correctness, others
+came with careless assurance of victory. One man began to make love on
+the spot, and another even had the audacity to bandy gross language over
+the counter. The naïvest one condescendingly inquired when within the
+next few days he might expect a visit from her.
+
+Lilly soon came to see that these attentions neither honoured nor gave
+hurt. She chatted freely with those who were courteous, refrained from
+replying to those who were impertinent, and the instant a conversation
+threatened to become lengthy she disappeared behind case L to N.
+
+Within a few days the sisters had discovered the aristocratic visitors.
+
+Their rage knew no bounds. Decency was thrown to the winds. Lilly was
+not spared a single insult, a single abuse. Vile epithets such as she
+had never heard poured over her in a dirty stream. The girls demanded
+that she cede her place at the counter to them. She refused point blank,
+whereupon they took to maltreating her.
+
+On occasions of greatest need Mrs. Asmussen came to her assistance. The
+broom rained blows on the white nightgowns of the jealous furies, and
+drove them into the back room, where the battle was drowned in rivers of
+tears.
+
+Hostilities continued. In case business exigencies necessitated some
+self-restraint during the day while customers were present, feelings
+were given all the freer play in the morning and evening.
+
+Lilly's life became a veritable hell.
+
+A crust of hate and bitterness laid itself over her soul. Partly in
+fright, partly in satisfaction she felt herself growing harder and
+sharper. It was only at night that she melted, when she buried her
+burning head in the pillows and gave vent to her misery in silent
+weeping.
+
+The merry friend with the white lashes, who had caused the entire
+catastrophe, did not put in appearance for about two weeks. He came in
+dragging his legs a little, and his eyes were swollen and bleared.
+
+"This flower," he said, undoing the tissue paper of the package in his
+hand, "is the picotee, which keeps fresh five or six days longer than
+any parting pangs."
+
+At the sight of him Lilly felt a little comforting joy light up within
+her. She took the bouquet as a matter of course, and reproached him for
+not having kept his mouth shut.
+
+"I told you," he replied imperturbably, "that I am a man utterly devoid
+of moral fibre."
+
+Then he informed her that the regiment had given him a farewell dinner
+for good and all, and now there was nothing more urgent for him to do
+than secure passage for somewhere--if he only knew where.
+
+"But we won't scratch our heads about _that_," he continued. "Brilliant
+people such as you and I have brilliant careers. The path of my life
+leads by still waters of cool champagne, and is paved with little meat
+patties. That's kismet. No use struggling against it. Even if it finally
+leads to a sugar-cane plantation in Louisiana, it's all the same to me.
+One always comes across something new, and that's the main thing. For
+the present the old man, who's taken a tremendous liking to me, wants me
+to run about his estate as Fritz Triddelfitz."
+
+He laughed his high-pitched, almost inaudible laugh, which shook him
+like a storm.
+
+Lilly wanted to know who the "old man" was.
+
+That a person should have to ask this seemed inconceivable to him.
+
+"Have you the least idea of life, if you don't know who the old man is?
+The old man is the cat-o'-nine-tails. The old man decides what is good
+and what is bad on earth. The old man breaks one man's neck and pays
+another man's debts. He is the punch bowl of all our virtues and all our
+sins. Withal the old man is eternally young. The old man sees you and
+says to you: 'Come here, little girl. I'm a grey old horror, but I wish
+to have you.' Then you have just enough courage left to ask 'When do you
+want me, high and mighty lord?' You see, child, that's the old man.
+They hist him on to you long ago, and if ever he should find his way to
+you, then may the Lord have mercy on you! Then all's over and done for
+with my poor young queen."
+
+"But I don't know yet who the old man is," said Lilly, whom this
+enigmatic alarum was beginning to make a little uncomfortable.
+
+"Then don't ask," he replied, and held out his freckled hand in good-by.
+"It's a pity for us two," he added, smiling at her tenderly and
+compassionately from between his blinking lids. "We could so cosily have
+enriched history with another famous pair of lovers." Leaning far over
+the counter, "Since I am a man utterly devoid of moral fibre, I should
+like to bestow one kiss upon you before I go."
+
+Lilly laughingly held her mouth up.
+
+He kissed her and walked to the door stiffly.
+
+"I can scarcely crawl, I'm so knocked up by my bout," he said, and with
+that was outside the door.
+
+After this visit Lilly was seized with the same disquieting sense as
+after his first visit. It seemed to her she was being flicked in sport
+with tickling switches. But this time, joined to the other feeling, was
+a certain anxiety which set her nerves a-tingle with a tormenting yet
+soothing sensation, as if she were waiting outside a locked door of
+gold, behind which an unknown fate was crouching ready to pounce on
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Outside on the street the hilt of a sword and the buttons of a uniform
+glittered in the noon sunlight of a December day.
+
+"A new one," thought Lilly. The stiff, thickset figure of the man who
+clanked up the steps of the porch was unfamiliar to her.
+
+A masterful stamping outside the door. The bell rang more sharply than
+usual.
+
+No, she did not know him. He was not a frivolous lieutenant, nor yet one
+of the maturer ones, who played the dignified and watched with an
+expectant smile for the first shy glance in order to extract from it
+whatever they dared.
+
+She saw eyes piercing sharp as a falcon's with a close ring of mobile
+crows' feet about them; she saw a severe high-bridged aquiline nose, and
+gaunt cheek bones on which lay a well-defined spot of red finely chased
+with purple veins. Under a short, bushy moustache she saw thin,
+compressed lips, the corners of which turned up in a smile of mocking
+benevolence. She saw a receding chin, polished to a shine by the shave,
+and disappearing in two limp folds near the high collar.
+
+She saw all this as in a dream. Her heart began to throb so violently
+that she had to lean against the bookcase.
+
+"Why, this is what I was afraid of," a voice within her spoke. "This is
+the old man."
+
+He raised his hand carelessly to his cap, but did not think of removing
+it.
+
+"Colonel von Mertzbach," he said in a voice whose rough intonations
+spread a whole world of authoritative power before her. "I should like
+to speak to you a few minutes. I have reasons for wishing to know you."
+
+Lilly felt she was to be subjected to a humiliating examination, which
+she was by no means in duty bound to suffer. But never in her life had
+she seemed so defenceless as at that moment. She felt as if she were
+standing in the presence of a judge who had the right to pardon or
+condemn entirely at his own discretion.
+
+Her lips trembled as she stammered something meant to express consent.
+
+"You seem to be an extremely dangerous young woman," he said. "Why,
+you've fairly crazed my men, especially the younger ones--there's no
+managing them."
+
+"I don't understand," replied Lilly, summoning all her courage.
+
+He uttered "h'm," stuck a monocle in his eye, and looked her up and
+down, or rather looked down to the point where the top of the counter
+cut her figure off. Then he uttered another "h'm," and observed:
+
+"It's very easy to play the innocent in cases like this. However that
+may be, I can thoroughly comprehend my young men. Probably I myself
+should not have behaved differently. But it seems that despite your
+youth and--inexperience, you possess a very respectable amount of
+feminine cunning, otherwise you would not have succeeded, in spite of
+your irreproachably reserved manner--or, perhaps, just _because_ of your
+manner--you would not have succeeded, I say, in bringing the young men
+here on repeated visits--they are somewhat fastidious."
+
+Lilly felt the tears rising. It would have been easy to repudiate the
+insults he offered her; but from where derive the strength to oppose a
+word in defence to this man whose eyes disrobed her and drilled her
+through and through, whose smile held her in a wire net?
+
+So she sat down and cried.
+
+He, in his turn, rose from his seat and stepped close to the counter.
+
+"How deeply your sense of honour has been wounded I cannot say offhand.
+At any rate, it is not my intention to make you cry. On the contrary, I
+should like you to give me with the utmost composure possible a little
+information which will enlighten me and which may be of some importance
+for your future."
+
+Lilly was conscious of only one thought: "You must pull yourself
+together because he wants you to."
+
+She wiped her eyes and looked at him obediently, sniffling a little, as
+when she had been scolded in her childhood.
+
+He asked her name, where she had been born, where her parents were, what
+school she had attended, and what she was doing in the library. At the
+mention of her guardian's name an ironic smile passed over his face.
+
+"I know the gentleman's views," he said. "So, in short, you have been
+left absolutely alone in the world?"
+
+Lilly assented.
+
+"And it would not be disagreeable to you to have some mainstay--to know
+someone to whom you could turn in moments of need?"
+
+"Where is a person like that to come from?"
+
+"Let me think it over at leisure," he said, wrinkling his forehead. "In
+any case, you cannot remain in this hole. Do they treat you well here at
+least?"
+
+"Oh, tolerably," said Lilly, and added between laughter and tears,
+"Only--the food is bad and sometimes I get--" she was going to say
+"beaten," but was ashamed to, and substituted "punished," which was a
+perversion of the truth.
+
+The colonel burst into a laugh that sounded like the crack of a whip.
+
+"Very commendable in you to take the matter humorously," he said, and
+rose to go. "Well, I know what I wanted to know. My men may continue to
+come to you--in uniform, in civilian's clothes, whichever way they want.
+They will find no more irreproachable company among the young ladies of
+this town. Should they ever forget their manners, just drop me a line.
+But I am sure they won't. Good afternoon, Miss Czepanek."
+
+Lilly watched him walk across the porch with the jerky, springy strut of
+an old cavalry man. The wintry sun seemed to be shining for the sole
+purpose of casting a dancing radiance about his figure.
+
+When he reached the pavement he turned to her window and lifted his cap
+slightly but respectfully. The eyes behind the lowering brows pierced
+hers, searching, almost threatening. Then he passed out of sight.
+
+Lilly's soul was assailed by a tumult of questions:
+
+"What was it? What was expected of her? Why wasn't she let alone?"
+
+She wanted to cry, wanted to pour out complaints and feel herself
+pitied. But her trouble had a certain festal tinge, a certain
+shadowyness and unreality. She bedizened herself with it as with a new
+hope, and what he had said about some one to whom she could turn in
+moments of need re-echoed in her soul like a soothing, easing melody.
+Didn't it seem almost as if he himself wished to be the mainstay so
+sorely lacking in her floundering young life?
+
+Perhaps he would get Mr. Pieper, who did not concern himself about her
+at any rate, to give up his guardianship over Lilly. Or, perhaps the
+colonel might even adopt her, or something like that. There was no
+knowing.
+
+If only there had not been those dagger eyes, that amused laugh, and
+that evil, evil look at the end, and above all her friend's warning: "If
+ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on
+you!"
+
+However, for all that, what could possibly happen to her behind the
+counter? Nobody had ever dared to raise the drop leaf and pass through.
+And surely she was safe behind the bookcase L to N, where she could not
+even be seen.
+
+The colonel's visit seemed to have acted like a cold douche on his men,
+despite--or, perhaps, on account of--the guarantee he had given for
+their good behaviour. Not one of them came to visit her again.
+
+"Is that a sign of the protection he is to favour me with?" Lilly
+wondered.
+
+Something was missing, she did not know what.
+
+A week passed, and one day the younger sister, who held watch every
+morning for possible billets-doux, threw an envelope at Lilly's feet,
+saying:
+
+"Something else again, with a coronet on it, you flirt, you!"
+
+"Flirt" was one of the milder titles of honour that the sisters lavished
+upon her.
+
+Lilly opened the letter and read:
+
+     "My dear Miss Czepanek:--
+
+     Remembering the interview that took place between us recently,
+     I take the liberty of making a proposition to you. The position
+     of private secretary and reader with me is open. Would you be
+     inclined to accept it? Since I am an unmarried man, it would be
+     in better form for you not to live in my house, but I pledge
+     myself to provide for your maintenance in a suitable and
+     respectable family. Your guardian, whom I took the opportunity
+     to consult in the matter, has given his consent to the plan.
+
+     --Respectfully yours,
+     Freiherr von Mertzbach,
+     Colonel and Commander of the----Regiment of Ulans."
+
+So here it was--her fate!
+
+It was there, on the other side of the gleaming snowy street, beckoning
+and calling to her:
+
+"Come out of your hole. I will show you life. I will show you something
+new."
+
+But then she pictured herself sitting at the colonel's great desk
+writing at his dictation. She saw his eyes drilling her, searching her
+soul, and threatening, always threatening. The pen would fall from her
+fingers, she would have to jump up and run away, but she would not be
+able to; the eyes would hold her in a spell.
+
+So Lilly sat down and wrote a very correct letter declining his
+proposition. She fully appreciated, she said, the honour he did her, but
+she felt she was not qualified to assume so difficult a position, and
+she thought that even if she was not so well off she did better by
+remaining in her modest situation, since she could fulfil the duties it
+involved. "Very gratefully yours, Lilly Czepanek."
+
+Done! Peace at last restored--as much peace as the bad sisters
+permitted.
+
+Christmas was drawing near. It cannot be stated with accuracy that the
+preparations in the Asmussen household produced an atmosphere of mirth.
+
+For weeks Mrs. Asmussen had been sighing over the bad times and the
+nuisance of having to give everybody in the world a gift. The sisters
+discussed as frequently and as loudly as possible the question whether
+it was necessary for refined and aristocratic young ladies to share a
+Christmas tree with low and vulgar hussies. There was no indication
+whatsoever of those gladsome mysteries that at this time brighten the
+saddest of human habitations.
+
+Lilly knitted a brown sweater for her mother, bought her two picture
+puzzles, a box of sweets, and a wooden vase for flowers--objects of
+china, being breakable, were not desired--and sent them to the asylum.
+
+At this time her thoughts frequently wandered from her mother to her
+father, who had now been gone four and a half years, and in that time
+had given no sign of his existence.
+
+In the forlorn condition she was in, her confidence in his return waxed
+strong. Christmas eve, about six or seven, he would suddenly enter, snow
+covering his havelock, and draw her into his embrace with that
+demonstrative ardour peculiar to him. She almost breathed in the
+fragrance always streaming from his anointed locks. That was one way.
+Another was, a servant would bring a little package as a preliminary
+greeting. Inside would be costly material for a dress. A hat would come,
+too. She needed it badly.
+
+After the others had gone to sleep she would fetch from the bottom of
+her trunk the score of the Song of Songs and softly hum the more
+beautiful arias.
+
+There were some passages which always made her cry. Oh, she cried a
+great deal these nights. Yet at this very period a tiny, hesitating
+sense of happiness found its way into her being.
+
+It was a lovely, dreamy feeling of being lifted up, of growing wings, of
+astonished listening to inner voices, which sounded sweet and familiar
+as words from a mother's lips, yet strange, like a gospel from the mouth
+of one who was still to come.
+
+Now and then she found herself kneeling in her nightgown, but not
+praying, merely dreaming, with arms outspread and rapturous eyes raised
+to the lamp, as if the salvation she was awaiting would approach from
+somewhere up there.
+
+Thus, after all, she celebrated Christmas in the quiet of her soul.
+
+Christmas eve was at hand.
+
+At the eleventh hour a few gifts were scraped together. The sisters ran
+about like wild animals making their preparations. They even bestowed a
+few kindly words on Lilly, who showed her gratitude by winking when the
+older sister had to look for something near the cash box. Lilly knew
+there was not much inside, and should anything be missing later she
+would replace it from her own funds.
+
+A few minutes before suppertime she was summoned to the back room, where
+the Christmas tree was already lit. The company was embarrassed.
+
+The sisters held out their hands. Mrs. Asmussen, who was already sitting
+over her medicine glass, delivered a few dignified words about the
+significance of Christmas in general and her misfortune in particular in
+having to forego the company of so splendid a husband on such an
+occasion.
+
+Then everybody asked everybody else's pardon because the presents were
+not more munificent. First of all, there had been a "must," which ought
+not to exist for refined souls, and which at first caused great chagrin.
+Then all of a sudden time had grown short. Besides, the apron with the
+red edge was very decent--they themselves had long been wanting one like
+it--and the pen-wiper was not to be despised, either. Above all,
+business had been bad.
+
+"I am ashamed to say, I have nothing at all to give," Lilly answered.
+But what she was most ashamed of was that she now felt kindly disposed
+toward the sisters.
+
+"I haven't a bit of character," she thought, as she bit into the
+marchpane which the older, the wickeder one, offered her.
+
+The library bell rang. A lackey loaded with parcels stumbled in and
+asked:
+
+"Does Miss Czepanek live here?"
+
+Lilly's heart leapt.
+
+"From papa--actually from papa!" she rejoiced.
+
+For a few moments she scarcely dared touch the packages. She ran about
+the room helplessly passing her hands over her hair. She did not venture
+to undo the cords until urged on by the sisters. They stood next to her,
+staring with great, greedy eyes.
+
+The things those boxes contained! A light cloth dress trimmed with lace,
+a delicate foulard dress, a pink silk petticoat, black patent leather
+and tan shoes, six pairs of glacé and undressed kid gloves, some of them
+elbow length, three kinds of collars, a fichu of Valenciennes lace to
+wear with empire gowns, books, writing paper, conserved fruit, and more
+things, and still more, many more--the boxes seemed bottomless. Even the
+hat she had hankered for was there, a simple shepherdess shape of light
+grey felt, which shape had always been most becoming to the grand style
+of her features. It was trimmed with light brown ribbons and
+silver-tipped pompons.
+
+A veritable trousseau!
+
+The sisters began to pull long faces. Lilly, too, soon ceased to
+rejoice. She was full of apprehension. All she wanted now was to find a
+letter, a card, some token of the sender's personality, which surely
+accompanied the gifts. She groped for it nervously. Though she had long
+given up all thought of her father and his return, an instinct of
+self-preservation impelled her to pretend in the sisters' presence that
+it was he, and only he, who had poured this flood of treasures over her.
+
+At last--underneath the gloves--she found an envelope and ran off to the
+library with it.
+
+There beneath the hanging lamp she drew out a visiting card and paled
+with fright as she read:
+
+"Freiherr von Mertzbach, Colonel and Commander of the----Regiment of
+Ulans," followed by a few lines in the heavy, bold strokes with which
+she was acquainted: "from the depths of his own loneliness wishes his
+lonely little friend an hour of Christmas joy."
+
+She returned to the back room, where the sisters, green with envy,
+received her with a chilly smile, while Mrs. Asmussen, nodding over the
+steaming glass, dropped fragments of mysterious words.
+
+"The things actually do come from papa," said Lilly, amazed at the
+strange, stifled sound of her own voice.
+
+The sisters gave a short laugh, and silently began to put the gifts back
+into the boxes.
+
+Lilly was holding a little porcelain bon-bon dish filled with fragrant,
+odd-looking confections. She glanced hesitatingly from one sister to the
+other without daring to offer them the sweets for fear of being repulsed
+with some abusive word or other. She set the lid--a little rose-wreathed
+Cupid--back on the delicately cut rim, let the dish sink down among the
+other gifts in one of the boxes, crawled to the corner where she slept,
+and cried bitterly.
+
+The sisters whispered together a long time. They built a pyramid of the
+boxes on the counter and passed by it at a respectful distance.
+
+The next morning Lilly summoned a porter from the street and returned
+everything to the donor without a word of explanation.
+
+Then she went to the sisters and said:
+
+"I didn't tell you the truth yesterday. The gifts did _not_ come from
+papa. So I returned them."
+
+The sisters, who had come toward her with a sweet-sour air of
+attentiveness, made no effort to conceal their disillusionment.
+
+"Well, I didn't take her for such a muff!" said the younger.
+
+"She's not," said the older sarcastically, who, true to her nature,
+scented an _arrière pensée_. "On the contrary she's particularly
+calculating--wants to drive her adorer still madder. I hope she doesn't
+get stuck at her own game. Even the blindest mortal soon comes to know
+the difference between false and _genuine_ worth."
+
+Therewith, in order to furnish on the spot an example of the genuine
+quality, she drew her petticoat tight about her legs with her left hand
+and with her right hand gathered her matinée close under her bosom, and
+sent Lilly a smile of utter contempt from over her shoulder, such a
+smile as only lofty souls can summon on occasion.
+
+Nevertheless, Lilly noticed that from now on she was treated with a
+certain heedfulness, from which she deduced that something was still
+expected of her.
+
+During the next few days nothing of importance occurred, though the day
+after Christmas a few of the young gentlemen had put in appearance
+again. Their manner was jerky as they exchanged their books, they outdid
+themselves in politeness and they showed no disposition to make
+themselves at home on chair or counter.
+
+Then--the day before New Year--Lilly received this letter:
+
+     "Dear Miss Czepanek:--
+
+     You shamefully mistook the motives that led me to send you
+     those Christmas gifts. I feel I must justify myself and bring
+     about a perfect understanding between us. I have plans
+     concerning you which I should like to set before you
+     personally, but my position forbids my visiting you repeatedly,
+     and I would ask you, if your future is dear to you, to come to
+     my house to-morrow evening. I shall expect you some time before
+     eight. I give you my word of honour for your safe return.
+     Yours,
+
+     Mertzbach."
+
+To go or not to go.
+
+That night Lilly did not sleep a wink.
+
+If only the feeling of dread had not obsessed her, dread which robbed
+her of breath and the power to defend herself. If the mere thought of
+him brought it on, what would become of her should she stand before him
+face to face?
+
+She finally decided not to go, while she knew for a certainty she _was_
+going.
+
+She lived through the day as in a dull dream.
+
+In the afternoon she obtained permission from Mrs. Asmussen to attend
+New Year's eve service. The sisters, who spied upon her every movement,
+exchanged significant looks, but seemed too preoccupied with their own
+affairs to give hers their usual sweet attention.
+
+Lilly donned the old felt hat which many a storm had buffeted and many a
+shower discoloured. Her winter coat made her look narrow shouldered, and
+tug as she would, the sleeves refused to reach her wrists.
+
+If she had had her wits about her she would have been much too ashamed
+to show herself before so aristocratic a gentleman in that garb. But she
+was driven to her acts by something outside herself, not by her own
+volition. Strange, mysterious powers seemed to be pushing her, invisible
+hands to be helping her dress, smoothing her hair lower on her forehead,
+raising the arch of her brows, and opening the buttons at her throat to
+give her constricted chest the freedom of its young fullness. They
+rubbed her cheeks, pale from lack of sleep, until they glowed with a
+triumphant red.
+
+When she reached the street and the frosty breath of the winter evening
+stroked her gently, she felt she was waking up at last.
+
+"Where are you going?" a voice within her asked.
+
+"Perhaps to St. Joseph," she answered evasively.
+
+But she did not go to St. Joseph. She made a wide détour about St.
+Anne's, crossed the Altmarkt diagonally, saw the sisters sitting at
+Frangipani's in the company of two admirers, with difficulty avoided the
+assiduities of a gallant, and suddenly found herself in front of the
+latticed gateway behind which, four flights up, the sewing machine had
+rattled and clattered the last remnant of reason out of her poor, ruined
+mother's head.
+
+Light was shining from the two dormer windows up there where Lilly had
+once lived.
+
+Some one else was probably sitting there now, sewing shirts and drawers
+and nightgowns, day and night, night and day. Lilly, too, would be
+sitting there some day, bitterly ruing her lost youth as one regrets an
+act of criminal folly.
+
+"If your future is dear to you," he had written.
+
+She faced about abruptly, and ran--ran--ran--without coming to a stop
+until she reached the lighted house, in front of which a sentinel was
+pacing and freezing as he kept guard over the highest dignitary in the
+city.
+
+"Where are you going?" the voice within her asked again.
+
+To avoid answering, she rushed up the wide carpeted stairway and came
+upon a lackey in silver-striped knickerbockers, who without question
+quietly relieved her of her umbrella, while the shadow of a mischievous
+smile flickered across his pudding face.
+
+High white doors were held open for her, red-shaded lamps shone like
+great flowers, beautiful bare-shouldered women with tiaras in their hair
+smiled down on her from oval gilt frames.
+
+It was so silent and warm in the spacious rooms you could lie down on
+the soft carpet and go to sleep. If only there had not been that feeling
+of dread which was tightening about her throat and brow like a net drawn
+closer and closer.
+
+Another door flew open. Beyond was green twilight, as in a thick forest,
+and from out of the twilight _his_ figure came toward her, broad,
+resplendent, clanking. She felt her hand being taken, felt herself being
+led into the green dusk. Bookcases towered before her like black walls.
+From somewhere came the threatening glitter of swords, helmets and
+armour.
+
+She did not dare look at him. Even after she had been seated in a tall,
+dark arm-chair, whose top hung over her head like a canopy, she had not
+given him a single glance.
+
+She heard his voice, whose resounding roughness seemed to have been
+muffled to vibrating organ tones.
+
+It was all unearthly, all that she perceived and felt. It was not
+heaven, it was not hell. It was a region of anxiety and dreams, where
+souls hovered between deprivation and fulfillment in a state of
+lethargy.
+
+At last she understood his words. There was nothing unearthly about
+them. They dealt most rationally with the Christmas gifts, the return of
+which he did not consider final. They were securely stowed away biding
+the time when their mistress would graciously deign to receive them.
+
+Lilly with a frozen smile on her lips merely shook her head. She could
+not summon the courage to voice a refusal.
+
+"And now you will ask me, my dear," he began anew, "what impels me, a
+man advancing in years, to hang on to your skirts like a pertinacious
+lover."
+
+At the words, "advancing in years," she looked up instinctively.
+
+There he sat, too sharply illuminated by the light of the green
+student's lamp. The orders on his breast gave out a subdued, golden
+lustre. The silver tassels of his epaulets quivered and glittered like
+little snakes. There was a shimmer upon and around him like the halo
+about a saint in gold and brocade.
+
+Confused and abashed by all this glory Lilly quickly sank her gaze
+again.
+
+"I went to you that time," he continued, "because a dispute had broken
+out among some of my younger men, of which you were the subject. The
+matter promised to take a dangerous turn and it had to be adjusted. I
+expected to find a pert, coquettish little shop girl, and I found--well,
+I found--_you_. Now you will ask what I mean by 'you,' because you
+yourself cannot possibly be aware of your good points, or, rather, your
+potentialities--everything in you is still in process of becoming. I am
+what they call a connoisseur in women, my child, and behind that which
+you are to-day, I see that which you will be some future day, _if_--this
+'if' is the main thing--if the opportunity is afforded you for proper
+development. You might go to ruin among your old books. In case you have
+the courage to entrust your fate to my hands, I should like to assume
+the care of directing your life into fitting channels."
+
+That sounded composed and paternal.
+
+Lilly felt herself breathing easier, experienced a little relaxing
+hopefulness. She ventured to raise her look once more, and beyond the
+gold and silver dazzle she saw a pair of brilliant glassy eyes, which
+had lost their sharpness and were fairly forcing themselves on her with
+a mighty, greedy questioning. The shuddering and stiffening came upon
+her anew. She sat there motionless with paralysed will, while she
+thought:
+
+"Of what avail? He will do whatever he wants with me at any rate."
+
+He went on.
+
+"I own a beautiful old estate, Lischnitz, in West Prussia, near the
+Vistula, to which my duties prevent me from going frequently. My
+household there is managed by a middle-aged aristocratic lady, Miss von
+Schwertfeger--but her name's immaterial. If you were to go there she
+would receive you with open arms, I promise you that, and you would have
+an opportunity to develop under the most favourable conditions into the
+woman I already foresee in you. Your problems for the time being would
+be solved, and I should benefit by finding my home, when I visit it,
+lighted by a ray of youth and beauty."
+
+He had risen and in his eagerness to persuade began to pace about her
+with short see-sawing steps. Each time he moved there was a clinking and
+jingling like delicate dance music played on small bells. Finally all
+she heard was this metallic ringing, and she no longer understood what
+he said.
+
+She pressed against the back of her chair with an indistinct feeling
+that he was tying her with cords, packing her up, and carrying her off
+to some spot where no rescuer could hear her cries of distress. She knew
+she would not offer the least resistance, so completely was she in his
+power.
+
+"Look at me," he said.
+
+She wanted to obey, certainly--oh, she was so obedient! But she could
+not.
+
+He put a finger under her chin and shoved her head back. She kept her
+eyes almost closed and saw nothing except the red border of his military
+coat.
+
+Suddenly she felt herself sinking. The red border mounted to the
+ceiling, bees buzzed about her ears--then nothing.
+
+When she came to, something cold and wet was lying on her breast, and a
+woman's clothes smelling of smoke grazed her cheek.
+
+The green twilight was still there.
+
+A breastplate was hanging in front of her. It looked like a brightly
+scoured kettle.
+
+She did not dare move, she felt so comfortable and easy.
+
+A rough, bony hand kept chafing her forehead and a kindly voice repeated
+two or three times in succession:
+
+"Poor little thing! Poor little thing! So young!"
+
+After a time Lilly could not help giving a sign of consciousness, and
+the instant she stirred a sure arm came to the support of her head, and
+the kindly voice asked, was she feeling better and did she want
+anything?
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Not so easily done," said the voice, "because he gave orders that he
+wanted to speak to you again. But if you'll take a good piece of advice,
+say 'much obliged,' and 'good-by,' and be off as quickly as you can.
+This is no sort of place for a poor young girl like you."
+
+Lilly sat up, and pulled down her waist.
+
+The cook was standing beside her--a brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face.
+Stroking Lilly's shoulder she asked if she should bring her something to
+strengthen her heart, a cordial beaten up with the white of an egg, or
+something else.
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"You shall, pretty soon, my dear. But I must call him in first."
+
+She hustled out of the room.
+
+Lilly reached for her hat, on which she must have been lying, because it
+was completely crushed and misshapen.
+
+"Now I must certainly get a new one," she thought, and tried to reckon
+how much she could spare for it.
+
+The door opened. He entered, followed by the cook.
+
+Lilly was no longer afraid. Everything seemed far, far away. Even he.
+Nothing seemed to concern her any more.
+
+"I think she's fit to be taken to the cab already," said the cook.
+
+"You are no longer needed here," he said imperiously.
+
+The cook ventured to stammer another suggestion.
+
+"Get out!" he thundered.
+
+With that she was outside the door.
+
+Lilly experienced merely a lazy sensation of being startled.
+
+"Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what he means to do with me now," she
+thought.
+
+But her interest in her own fate was not great.
+
+He walked up and down with a heavy tread. The silver spurs on his heels
+jingled.
+
+"We'll have some light," he said. "The subject we're now to discuss
+requires clearness."
+
+He summoned the lackey who had smiled the furtive, cunning smile. The
+lackey lit the gas jets of the chandelier, and on leaving the room gave
+Lilly a glance of wildly eager curiosity, this time without a smile.
+
+Lilly still sat on the couch on which she had come back to
+consciousness, twirling her old hat without a thought in her brain.
+
+In the full light of the chandelier she saw the colonel in all his
+resplendence still pacing silently up and down.
+
+Lilly could look him in the face without a flutter.
+
+"It's all the same to me what he does," she thought. "I cannot defend
+myself at any rate."
+
+He moved a chair in front of her, and sat down--so close that his knees
+almost touched her.
+
+"Now listen to me, my child," he said. His words rang out steely and
+choppy as words of command at a drill. "While you were lying here in a
+faint, I thought about you in the other room, and came to a
+decision--but more of that later. You have long noticed, I suppose, that
+my feeling for you is not paternal. The older I grow the less I
+comprehend so-called fatherliness. To be brief--I am seized by a passion
+for you which--rather upsets me. If I were ten years older than I am--I
+am fifty-four--I should say: 'That's senile.' Do you know what I mean?"
+
+Lilly shook her head.
+
+She saw his face next to hers so distinctly that, had she never looked
+upon it again, she would have remembered it to the end of her days.
+
+His eyes embedded in red puffs, burned and bored again in the way that
+had frightened her so at first. His hair lay in bristling strands of
+grey at his temples and over his ears, but his moustache was black as
+coal, and shadowed his dark teeth like a spot of ink with a white line
+down the centre. From his mouth started the two limp folds which passed
+his shiny chin and disappeared in the collar of his military coat.
+
+"How strange," thought Lilly, "that I must be the mistress of that bad
+old man."
+
+But he wanted it so, and there was nothing else to do.
+
+"If you were to make inquiries concerning me," he continued, "they'd
+tell you that despite my age, I know how to subdue women--probably
+because I never respected them any too highly. But this time--how shall
+I say?--the affair is in a manner peculiar. I need not conceal it--I
+cannot sleep. I haven't slept for many nights; which has never happened
+to me before. Such a state of matters may not continue, and I pledged
+myself to make an end of the absurdity in some way or other at the death
+of the old year." He looked at the clock. "I have half an hour still.
+I'm expected at a function. In short: it's true, I wanted to seduce you.
+That is, for a man of my years, who hasn't anything seductive about him
+any more, seduce is not the right word. At any rate not here; I'd given
+my word of honour in my letter. But you _were_ in my power--you need not
+doubt that an instant."
+
+"I don't," thought Lilly, who was listening to all he said with as
+little concern as if she were reading it in a thrilling romance. The old
+fear had not returned. She was still waiting with lazy curiosity for
+what was to follow.
+
+"If you had showed fight, you would have been defeated all the more
+certainly. I am somewhat of an adept in such things. But your fainting
+spell occurred, and gave me an insight into your soul. I had to admit I
+should never have taken joy in my conquest. You're fine stuff, and I
+have no use for someone who would pine. Tearful mistresses have always
+been a horror to me. I love my comfort. I have had experiences I should
+not like to repeat. So, while you were lying here with my cook to take
+care of you, I determined I was on the wrong course."
+
+Lilly had a warm sensation of happiness, as if some great act of
+kindness were being shown her.
+
+"How noble, how glorious of him," she thought, "to let poor stupid me
+alone."
+
+She cast a furtive glance at his hands hanging between his knees. They
+were yellow and long and bony. Had she not been ashamed to, she would
+have leaned over and kissed them, to show her gratitude.
+
+The next moment she felt almost sorry that so noble a man should have
+nothing to do with her any more.
+
+"I took further counsel with myself," he continued, and his voice was
+still steelier, as if tempered in the fire of his resolve. "The idea was
+not a new one. It had occurred to me frequently. At first it seemed
+ridiculous, then it came to be a last resort, from which I would not cut
+myself off, in case circumstances warranted--I am taking that way now.
+Why shouldn't I? I'm not very ambitious. I'm too well acquainted with
+the vile machinery of the government. It doesn't pay to oil it any
+longer than need be with one's sweat and blood. So the idea of quitting
+doesn't frighten me--of course I shall have to leave service. Perhaps I
+should at any rate. There are days when I can scarcely keep the saddle
+because of that cursed rheumatism in my hips."
+
+"Why is he telling me all this?" thought Lilly, not a little flattered
+that so great and aristocratic a man should discuss such weighty matters
+with her.
+
+"What exercises me more is that a whole generation stands ready to
+revenge itself for the robbery perpetrated upon it. To be sure, a strong
+hand would do some good. We should have to dare something--why not our
+side as well as the other? Well, what do you say, child?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She was ashamed that she was so stupid as not to
+have extracted a single idea from all he said. His words sounded like
+Hottentotese.
+
+"Well, will you--yes or no?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't understand what you mean," she stammered.
+
+"Good Lord! I've been asking you all this time whether you'll be my
+wife," said the colonel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The great moment of her hopes had arrived.
+
+"Is this you, Lilly Czepanek, to whom such things happen? Or, is it
+someone else, with whom you changed places, some character in one of
+your brown-backed books, who will cease to live the instant you close
+it?"
+
+He had not insisted on an answer that New Year's Eve. When she had
+fallen back in a tremble, incapable of uttering a syllable, incapable of
+thinking, he had taken her hands in his, and with the smile of a
+gift-giving god had begun to talk to her in a softer, gentler tone than
+she had thought possible in him. He told her to think the matter over;
+she might take three days, no, a week; he would have patience. But she
+must promise not to say a word about it to anybody.
+
+She promised willingly, though she could not look him in the face, she
+was so horribly ashamed.
+
+Then she had run home, and cried and cried without knowing whether from
+bliss or misery. When the sisters came creeping in at four o'clock in
+the morning--they had let down the bars of their propriety on New Year's
+Eve--she was still crying.
+
+On rising, she came to the conclusion he could not possibly have been
+serious and he would take the first opportunity to recant--perhaps that
+very day.
+
+She would not complain if he did. On the contrary she would breathe
+freer, and thank God for having rid her of the presence of a phantom.
+
+At ten o'clock the bell rang.
+
+A box of roses was delivered, the size and cost of which aroused the
+disapproving amazement of the sisters, who knew to a penny the price of
+roses at that season, and reckoned a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages
+for several months.
+
+"I cannot for the life of me see," said the older, "why you don't yield
+to such a magnificent admirer. With us, of course, it's different. We
+belong to society, and we cannot give ourselves up. But you, nothing
+more than a shop girl, with no family to have to consider! Besides,
+there's no doubt but that shame has its charms. I in your place would
+make a venture--"
+
+The younger and more sentimental sister opposed the older one's advice.
+
+"The first time it should be from pure love," she said. "You owe it to
+your own soul, even if you are only a shop girl."
+
+Without coming to an agreement upon this debatable point, they went off
+to witness the change of guards, which Colonel von Mertzbach, they said,
+contemplated directing in his own person on New Year's day, and the
+Colonel, reputed to be a very handsome man pursued by all the
+marriageable girls in society, was someone they wanted to see.
+
+Lilly patted and kissed the roses of the upper stratum, and would have
+done the same to all in the box, had there not been so many.
+
+Then she took heart, locked the door, and went to St. Anne's to pay St.
+Joseph a visit.
+
+She nearly met the officers hastening to the main guard face to face,
+but managed in the nick of time to escape down a side street.
+
+High mass had just concluded and had left an odor of incense and poor
+people between the arched aisles. A few persons were still praying at
+the side altars.
+
+Lilly kneeled before her saint, leaned her head against the
+velvet-covered rail, and tried to lay bare her torn heart in order to
+obtain counsel and help.
+
+"May I? Shall I? Can I?"
+
+Oh, she longed to. Such a piece of fortune would never come her way
+again, never, never. To be rich, a baroness, to have all the splendours
+of the universe laid at her feet. Where outside of fairytales do such
+marvels occur?
+
+If only there hadn't been one thing about him. But what that one thing
+was she could not determine.
+
+It wasn't his eyes, no matter how dagger-like they looked. It wasn't the
+bristly hair on his temples either, nor the grating voice of command.
+
+Now she knew! It was the two dewlaps that fell from chin to throat. Yes,
+that's what it was. No use trying to dissemble with herself and pretend
+she did not see them. She shuddered at the mere thought of them.
+
+None the less, the sisters had called him a _handsome_ man, and rich,
+aristocratic women ran after him. It would be sheer folly to refuse.
+
+And wasn't he the noblest, the best, the most exalted of men? Wasn't he
+like God Himself?
+
+She imagined herself living and breathing for him. She would sit at his
+feet and learn. She would flutter about him like a gay bird. No, she
+could not imagine a person being gay in his presence. But a person could
+be poetic. You could languish away into unknown remotenesses, gaze at
+the evening clouds, present a noble, pale picture, up to which strange
+young men would look with consuming passion, and be honoured by not a
+glance in return--she could do this, because her life would be dedicated
+to the one who was to be her protector, friend, and father, who would
+elevate her to heights from which otherwise a ray would never have
+fallen upon her.
+
+"I will, I will!" life within her cried. "Dear St. Joseph, I will!"
+
+St. Joseph raised a threatening finger.
+
+But St. Joseph always raised a threatening finger. He couldn't help
+himself. That was the way the sculptor had made him. The sight of that
+finger, however, was vexatious and not calculated to help a poor human
+being out of a dilemma.
+
+The next day she received a letter from Mr. Pieper, asking her to call
+at his office on a matter of great importance.
+
+Hot and cold waves shivered up and down her back.
+
+"He knows," she said to herself.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen was greatly displeased when Lilly asked for permission to
+go out.
+
+"You get flowers and expensive gifts, and you want to leave the library
+every day. I very much fear me I shall have to offer up a daily prayer
+for you again."
+
+But Lilly showed her the guardian's letter, and she yielded.
+
+Lilly had not seen her guardian since the day, a year and a half before,
+when she had left the hospital tottering from weakness. Timidity had
+prevented her from availing herself of his invitation to visit him
+again. Besides, there had been no occasion to. Nobody had inquired for
+her. From time to time a tall, dry man, whom she recognised as Mr.
+Pieper's managing clerk, had called on Mrs. Asmussen and held a short
+conversation with her. This was the one sign that the man to whose
+protection Lilly had been consigned thought of her.
+
+"Mr. Pieper says, will you please walk in," said the clerk.
+
+The prominent lawyer, as on the previous occasion, was sitting behind
+his desk. When Lilly entered, he raised his head, and inspected her a
+few moments in silence. Then he smiled and rubbed his shining pate, and
+said in a long drawl:
+
+"U--m--m! So--o--o!"
+
+His eyes glided over her body as over a piece of goods for sale.
+
+Lilly, whose respect for the man rendered her breathless, made a gesture
+which was half bow, half courtesy, and pulled at the short sleeves of
+her overcoat.
+
+"Now I understand," continued Mr. Pieper. "You have developed in a way,
+my child, which in a measure excuses all sorts of masculine absurdities,
+even if it does not justify them--the masculine intellect is here to
+suppress all ebullitions. I forgot my manners--good morning, Miss
+Czepanek."
+
+He rose and held out his cold, spongy hand, which under pressure felt as
+limp as if it were boneless.
+
+"Oh, do please show me your gloves," he said.
+
+Lilly started like a guilty thing, drew her elbows back, blushed and
+stammered:
+
+"I was just going to buy a new pair."
+
+"Don't!" he rejoined, smacking his lips with gusto. "Grey rags like
+these arouse emotion. Your cloak arouses emotion, too. Your clothes make
+a piquant contrast to your general appearance. Lovers of such naïve,
+sentimental things are easily moved by them to lyric outbursts, even if
+lyricism is not their forte."
+
+He laid his arm in hers with a confidential manner, and led her to a
+heavily upholstered settee.
+
+"Be seated in this chair of torture," he said, "though to-day we're not
+going to extract even a tooth. Taking everything into consideration,
+you have done well for yourself. I am content with you, my child."
+
+He stroked his straw-coloured beard complacently, and grinned like a
+trickster after the performance of a particularly artful dodge. "When do
+you think the wedding will take place?"
+
+"Why, there has not been--an engagement--yet," stammered Lilly.
+
+"Well, there won't be what is called a real engagement--sending out
+notices and receiving visits, and so on. As little stir as possible,
+Miss Czepanek, as little stir as possible. That's my advice. In the
+delicate situation in which we find ourselves, contrary influences are
+always to be feared."
+
+"I haven't said 'yes' yet," Lilly ventured to interject.
+
+This amused him immensely.
+
+"Who'd have thought it! A mock refusal! Who'd have thought it! I didn't
+take you for so good a business woman, Miss Czepanek."
+
+"I am at a loss as to your meaning," said Lilly, who without fully
+realising why, was growing hot with indignation.
+
+He put one hand to his hip, and continued to be amused.
+
+"Well, well, that's all very fine and practical. But you can't carry
+such jokes too far. Let _me_ arrange matters. I have some knowledge of
+these affairs, though, I admit, so important a case has never come to me
+before. I will endeavour to hasten the wedding as much as possible--for
+the reasons I have already mentioned. I will also ask for all possible
+secrecy, at least until his resignation has been accepted. Then nothing
+need stand in the way of securing the banns, since getting an adequate
+trousseau need concern us in only a lesser degree. As for your conduct,
+my dear child, I advise you for the present to remain as undecided, as
+maidenly, as fresh as possible. The only change I suggest is to use
+better soap. Everything else may continue to be just as it is. Perhaps
+you will have to be placed with another family. In that case it will be
+necessary, of course, to get an outfit, for which the sum realised from
+the sale of your mother's effects, amounting to--one moment, please." He
+opened a large account book lying on a rack next to his desk, "amounting
+to--A, B, C, Czepanek--amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks and
+seventy-five pfennig, will come in very handy. Æsthetic enjoyment of the
+circumstances leads me to place my own purse also at your disposal.
+Well, so much for the time preceding the wedding! As to the incomparably
+more important time following, I should not like you to leave my office
+before I had given you a few delicate hints, although _unfortunately_, I
+must deny myself the pleasure of--"
+
+He paused a moment, and rubbed his hands, while an epicurean, satyr's
+smile widened his broad face.
+
+"The pleasure of taking a mother's place and giving you the advice with
+which a mother usually sends off a bride."
+
+This time Lilly understood him, and her hot shame seemed to spread a red
+mist before her eyes.
+
+"You may trust me implicitly in such matters as a will, life insurance,
+and alimony in case of divorce, provided, of course, you are the
+innocent party--or even, in a sense, a bit guilty. You were not placed
+in my keeping for nothing. However, there is _one_ circumstance--which
+circumstance has to be taken most frequently into consideration in
+marriages like yours--_one_ circumstance in which my professional skill,
+I am sorry to say, cannot provide you with adequate security. As to
+that, you must keep your eyes wide open for yourself. We human beings
+have been put in this world, my child, to do what gives us pleasure.
+Whoever says the reverse steals the sun from your heaven. But I warn you
+of three things: first, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand
+no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous
+confessions. You cannot fully comprehend this yet--"
+
+As a matter of fact Lilly comprehended not a single word.
+
+"But when the occasion arises, think of what I've said. The recollection
+may prove useful. And--here's something very important--do you love
+jewels?"
+
+"I cannot say I have ever seen any."
+
+"Well, in the jeweler's window at the Altmarkt?"
+
+"We were always forbidden to stand in front of shop windows."
+
+Mr. Pieper laughed his vilest laugh.
+
+"I advise you when you are out walking with your husband to stand in
+front of _every_ shop window. Such little attentions may seldom be
+reclaimed. Pay special regard to pearls. In that way you will lay by a
+little reserve which will stand you in mighty good stead in your hour of
+need--and your hour of need will come, you may be sure it will."
+
+Lilly nodded her head and thought:
+
+"I will never, never, do that."
+
+Mr. Pieper stroked his shining bald spot several times with his plump,
+white hand, and continued:
+
+"Well, what else have I to say to you? I have a good deal more advice to
+give, but I fear not being understood. Just one thing, for the first few
+months. Marriage, no matter what sort of marriage, causes a peculiar
+derangement of the nervous system in natures like yours. Should you feel
+an inclination to cry, take a bromide. In general, take plenty of
+bromides--whether in case of great love, or--hm--great aversion. At
+certain times pull a cap over your head, so that you see nothing, hear
+nothing, and feel nothing, and, as it were, shunt yourself off from what
+goes on around you, yourself, your volition, and your feelings. The
+close atmosphere of the chamber which will at first envelope you will
+gradually evaporate--in this case probably at the end of a few months.
+Then you will breathe fresh air again, and instead of a tester, you will
+once more see the heaven of your maiden days. But, whatever happens, it
+is dangerous when one's nerves are overstimulated, to direct one's fancy
+too much upon the immediate environment and seek the necessary
+compensation that very instant. Turn from what is near, and dream about
+the remote blue mountains. Let your happiness ever dwell at a safe
+distance. You are young. It will draw closer. Give it time to become
+full fledged. I assume you haven't understood a word."
+
+"Oh, yes I have," stammered Lilly, who wished not to be considered
+stupid, though he was right--his words fell upon her like hailstones, of
+which she was able to gather only a few here and there. Nevertheless,
+she had understood the last part, that about dreaming of the remote blue
+mountains. It did her heart good, and she would take his advice.
+
+"However that may be," Mr. Pieper continued, "some sentence or other
+will occur to you on occasion. One point more, the most delicate of all,
+because it is, so to speak, the most spiritual. If what is about you
+gives no sound or response, if it does not echo to your call, you must
+not grieve, nor attempt to alter it. Cracked bells should not be rung.
+Rather make your own music. If I am not mistaken, you have a whole
+orchestra at your disposal."
+
+"I have the Song of Songs," thought Lilly, triumphantly.
+
+"You cannot imagine, my child, how important it is, when one lives in
+such close contact with another human being, not to lose one's touch
+with oneself. Keep a corner reserved for your own thoughts--they will
+amuse you greatly. He who likes to eat fresh eggs must raise his own
+chickens. Don't forget that. But keep your corner to yourself. Offer no
+superfluous resistance. No obstinacy. From the very start you must
+provide the course of your life with a double track, so that you can
+ride in either direction, as need be. I shouldn't wonder if under such
+conditions it wouldn't turn out to be quite a happy marriage, entirely
+apart from the external advantages--so long as they last--these are
+matters of adaptation and good luck which our will cannot control in
+advance. I will send you the marriage contract sealed. Until your coming
+of age--in about two years, I believe--I am at your disposal. If after a
+time you see that the milk in your cup has turned permanently sour,
+break the seal. A thorough lawyer can read all sorts of surprises out of
+the contract, which laymen do not immediately realise. But, as I said,
+in _one_ case he cannot. Beware of that one case. It is called _in
+flagranti_. Some time cautiously inquire into its meaning. There you
+are! Now, may I give the colonel your consent?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the
+window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far
+into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void
+purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with
+yellow.
+
+How beautiful and strange it was!
+
+Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet
+cushion.
+
+It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and
+forth in her brain.
+
+A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it
+asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a
+myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war
+office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful
+Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked
+like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you
+wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay
+gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay
+gentlemen, the colonel.
+
+"The colonel's wife--the colonel's wife," throbbed the wheels.
+
+But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the
+gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:
+
+"La--dy Mertzbach--La--dy Mertzbach."
+
+Keeping time. Keeping time.
+
+The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and
+tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-glass
+a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had
+to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave
+way.
+
+Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every
+day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy,
+she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to
+ask his forgiveness later.
+
+There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.
+
+That was the only embarrassing thing. If she weren't such a
+chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a
+change.
+
+But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread
+had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear
+he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.
+
+There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn't speak to
+anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular
+cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body,
+giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were
+endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had
+donned civilian's clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.
+
+From time to time he leaned forward and asked:
+
+"Are you comfortable, little girl?"
+
+Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest
+of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft
+kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and
+then peeping from under her travelling gown.
+
+What a crowd there had been at the station!
+
+No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort.
+To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater.
+They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried
+to be inconspicuous.
+
+When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or
+three muffled cries of admiration. And God knows, they did not issue
+from friendly lips.
+
+It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.
+
+At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in
+through the window.
+
+She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and
+weeping like rain spouts.
+
+So great was Lilly's fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the
+evil poison in these girls was transmuted into pained participation in
+another's joy!
+
+And there he sat, the creator of it all.
+
+Overcome by a sense of well-being and gratitude, she knelt on the
+carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and
+looked up to him worshipfully.
+
+He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his
+left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from
+under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded--with a smile that seemed to
+say:
+
+"My hour will come in due time."
+
+It was there sooner than she had suspected.
+
+"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."
+
+"Where?" she asked, frightened.
+
+"At the station--you know--from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."
+
+"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had
+always spoken of going to Dresden.
+
+"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."
+
+In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their
+bags and trunks.
+
+The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and
+white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped
+into a circle of light.
+
+The train glided off.
+
+They stood there, and nobody concerned himself for them.
+
+The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at
+drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.
+
+His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body
+quivered, as if she were at fault.
+
+Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar
+from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a
+lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
+
+A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly
+intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
+
+The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw
+confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with
+a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were
+still seething within him.
+
+"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't
+know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you."
+A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open
+the coach door, and run away into the night?"
+
+She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped,
+would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she
+managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next
+morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen
+perhaps.
+
+At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont
+to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she
+returned his pressure.
+
+Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by
+the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and
+Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the
+fleeting thought beset her again:
+
+"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run
+away and never come back?"
+
+She was already walking up the steps on his arm.
+
+They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered
+carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.
+
+In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards,
+smoothly covered with a white counterpane.
+
+She looked about in vain for another bed.
+
+"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.
+
+The colonel--when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel
+still--behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit,
+fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.
+
+She remained leaning against the wall.
+
+"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out
+of the window."
+
+"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so,
+I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."
+
+A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure
+of his possession.
+
+He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and
+looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested
+herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.
+
+A knock at the door.
+
+A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated
+bottle.
+
+"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish
+feeling.
+
+"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It
+gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for
+her in the trunk."
+
+She clinked glasses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely
+moistened her lips with the wine.
+
+He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:
+
+"I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening."
+
+Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh,
+and observed:
+
+"All the better, all the better!"
+
+He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her
+uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.
+
+"You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown."
+
+She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before,
+lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous,
+lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before
+the wedding.
+
+She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape
+from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every
+movement.
+
+Hesitating, faint-hearted she stood there, her fingers hanging to her
+collar, which she did not venture to unfasten.
+
+Growing impatient he jumped up.
+
+He was about to seize her, but the look she gave him was so full of
+despair that a knightly impulse bade him desist.
+
+To account for his action he picked up a roll of paper that had dropped
+from the trunk while she had been rummaging for the nightgown.
+
+Lilly saw something white gleam between his dark fingers.
+
+"The Song of Songs!" occurred to her.
+
+With a cry she jumped on him and tried to snatch away the roll. But his
+hand held it as in a vice.
+
+He defended himself with ease, laughing all the time.
+
+The thought that the secret of her life had strayed into alien hands,
+deprived her of her senses. She cried, she screamed, she beat him with
+her fists.
+
+The matter began to look suspicious. A doubt as to the virginity of her
+soul, yea, even of her body, began to assail him.
+
+"One moment, little girl," he said. "There are no nooks or crannies for
+hiding in now. Either you'll kindly let me see what this is without
+further delay, or I'll take you between my knees and hold you so fast
+you won't be able to move a muscle."
+
+Lilly took to pleading.
+
+"Colonel, dear, _dear_ colonel! A few sheets of music, and some songs,
+that's all, I swear to you, _dear_ colonel."
+
+The droll innocence of her plea stirred his emotions; that humble,
+unconscious "colonel" set him laughing again. Besides, the daughter of a
+musician, as he knew her to be, might be expected to have ambitions.
+
+"You yourself probably compose?" he asked.
+
+"No--no--no--it's not that," she moaned. "But don't look in--give it
+back to me--if you don't, I'll jump out of the window. I will, by God
+and all the saints!"
+
+She pleased him so well with her eyes stretched in deadly terror, with
+her hair loosened by the struggle, with the expression of a tragic muse
+on the sweet, delicately cut child's face, that he wanted to enjoy the
+rare sight a little longer.
+
+Accordingly, he assumed a black expression, and pretended to be what a
+few moments ago he had actually been.
+
+She fell on her knees, and clasping his legs, stammered and whispered,
+almost choked with shame and distress:
+
+"If you give it back to me, you can do with me whatever you want. I will
+do whatever you want. I won't resist any more."
+
+The bargain, it struck him, was to his advantage.
+
+"Shake hands on it?" he asked.
+
+"Shake hands," she replied. "And never ask questions--yes?"
+
+"If you swear to me by your St. Joseph it's nothing but music."
+
+"And the libretto, I swear."
+
+He handed her the roll, and she gave herself up to him--sold herself to
+the man who already possessed her for the Song of Songs, of which he had
+robbed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rays of early morning shining on her eyes through curtains striped
+with yellow awoke her. She was resting comfortably pressed against
+something warm. She had slept deliciously.
+
+What had happened to her came back to her slowly.
+
+She leaned over and wanted to kiss him.
+
+He was lying with his head thrown back, his mouth open. The light from
+the windows was playing on his shiny, furrowed chin. Little veins
+crisscrossed his gaunt cheeks like streams on a map. The inky moustache
+glistened with pomade. His eyelids were folded over so often that Lilly
+thought if they were stretched to their length they would reach to the
+tip of his nose.
+
+"He doesn't look bad," she said to herself, but the idea of kissing him
+passed out of her mind.
+
+She got up without making a sound, and all the time she dressed he did
+not stir. The old cavalry man was blessed with sound sleep.
+
+She wrote on a sheet of hotel paper, "have gone to church," laid the
+sheet between his fingers, and slipped out, down the steps and past the
+porter, who was so astonished he forgot to pull off his cap.
+
+The streets of the little town were dreaming in the quiet of the winter
+morning. Hillocks of snow swept from the middle of the street were
+heaped in rows along the gutters. A black swarm of crows squatted in a
+circle about the frozen fountain in the market-place. The faint sound of
+sleigh bells penetrated the grey air.
+
+Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the
+sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks
+sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to
+others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one
+spring, goggled after her.
+
+Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing
+gloves--but no overcoats--came tramping along the middle of the street,
+puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals.
+All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of
+command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one
+another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders.
+
+She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which
+towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure
+with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks.
+
+The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously
+gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere
+to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who,
+however, did not have much to say to her.
+
+An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if
+she had broken something, she did not know what.
+
+She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed
+of herself.
+
+Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her
+fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy.
+
+Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to
+close her eyes and clench her teeth--she was ashamed of the shiver, too.
+
+Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was
+pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out
+of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set
+with pearls and precious gems.
+
+"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have _something_. Then I
+could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St.
+Joseph--and the swords in _my_ heart would be sumptuous to behold."
+
+As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at
+the wedding.
+
+She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had
+stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot,
+surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint--how she had been
+borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon
+the fair and blessed distance.
+
+None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.
+
+"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and
+shrugged her shoulders.
+
+Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return,
+that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted,
+distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.
+
+"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
+
+At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.
+
+She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She
+prayed to be able to love him--with as much passion as she had drops of
+blood--with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much
+delight as there was laughter in her heart.
+
+And behold! Her prayer was heard!
+
+With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and
+returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and
+trust--as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he
+happened to wish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The colonel wishing, on account of his mésalliance, to avoid his many
+military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went
+directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.
+
+He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost
+to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple.
+Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath--that was all they needed. Close
+companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring
+about inward intimacy.
+
+The colonel had good cause, indeed, to be satisfied with his honeymoon!
+
+He, who in the course of his many amours had probably dandled hundreds
+of girls on his knees, who thought he knew women through and through,
+the tart and the sweet, the chaste and the coquette, the sensitive and
+the bold, the genuine and the flashy, those who confined their coy
+caresses to a man's hand and lower arm, and those who hung on men's lips
+biting and sucking them in a wild frenzy, he, the old voluptuary, to
+whom nothing feminine ought to have been strange, stood astounded,
+incredulous before this lovely marvel.
+
+So much abandon and so much pride, so much tenderness and so much fire,
+so much ready comprehension and so much artless childishness, all
+mingled in one dreamy, laughing Madonna head, had never before presented
+itself to him, for all the fine art he had exercised in his roué's
+career.
+
+What touched him most and completely puzzled him was the modesty of her
+desires, the fact that she made no demands of any sort.
+
+When they took dinner _à la carte_ he might be sure her eye would travel
+to the cheapest orders for herself; and the expression with which she
+would sometimes prefer a request to be allowed to drink orangeade, was
+as hesitating and shamefaced as if she were making a love avowal.
+
+One day, on returning from the Grosser Garten by way of side streets,
+Lilly stood still in front of a poverty-stricken little provision shop.
+As a rule nothing could induce her to look into shop windows, and the
+colonel, curious as to her interest in the place, extracted from her the
+confession that she loved sunflower seeds--and would he be very angry if
+she asked him to buy some?
+
+The more he overwhelmed her with gifts, the less she seemed to realise
+that money was being spent for her sake.
+
+The long dearth she had suffered prevented her from appreciating the
+value of money, and whatever he put into her purse she handed out again
+without hesitation to the first beggar she met on the street. Then again
+it smote her conscience when he gave a flower girl two marks for a rose.
+
+Once, upon her doing one of these incredible things, which usually sent
+the colonel into epicurean transports, he was seized with sudden
+distrust.
+
+"I say, little girl," he said, "are you an actress?"
+
+Lilly did not even understand him. She looked at him with the great, sad
+eyes of innocence she always made on such occasions, and said:
+
+"What are you thinking of! Since papa left I haven't even _seen_ an
+actress. I haven't been inside a theatre once."
+
+That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the
+tickets in her hand wild with joy.
+
+But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress.
+Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and
+shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the
+magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in
+awe about the gleaming gala robes as circumspectly as about a thicket of
+nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no
+real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to
+introduce Lilly to society.
+
+When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely
+fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her
+delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the
+fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat--taller,
+lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever--the old robber
+was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the
+magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the
+tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked
+down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.
+
+The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the banal delight of
+shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old
+bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave
+himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a
+time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.
+
+The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her
+alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together
+aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the
+lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and
+questioning and pointing of opera glasses began anew.
+
+Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started
+back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she
+now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel
+pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object
+of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the
+woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone
+else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.
+
+She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into
+darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the
+land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.
+
+After this, two Lillies sat in her seat--the one in blissful
+self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike
+fancy through heavens and hells; the other making precise gestures like
+a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred;
+at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation
+creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.
+
+The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the
+colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as
+usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a
+gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were
+spreading their peacock feathers.
+
+The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried
+away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness.
+Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she
+ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.
+
+Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress--white shirt front
+and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot
+persistence, as if she were a strange animal.
+
+She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which
+spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob
+of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down
+her body.
+
+Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very
+act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the
+miscreant vanished.
+
+The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.
+
+He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.
+
+When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand
+again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.
+
+Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome
+asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its
+traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room--off
+with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!
+
+He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with
+greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate
+his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen
+youth.
+
+Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done.
+In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last
+veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again--she
+danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for
+help, as a Mænad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her
+fingers--as anything he wished.
+
+This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her
+blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of
+repulsion--a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while
+secretly hankering for something else--for the sobbing of violins and
+the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the
+deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.
+
+When he had had his fill of the spectacle--and this came soon because of
+his years--he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver
+thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their
+stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a
+while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and pricked like needles,
+she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then,
+while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette
+in bed, and laughingly retailed smutty jokes; which he called, "singing
+his baby to sleep."
+
+Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common
+dining room. He wanted to re-experience the prickly delight of seeing
+his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his
+property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and
+envied him the possession of it.
+
+As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken
+sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she
+might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young
+eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins
+and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed
+distances to which the way had been barred--she did not know by
+what--since the hour her great happiness had come to her.
+
+Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the
+glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her
+lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary
+as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the
+white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue
+spirals.
+
+Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the
+street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.
+
+It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her
+in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as
+with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.
+
+She felt as if she would have to hurry after the passerby and ask:
+
+"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"
+
+She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.
+
+For only the fraction of a second!
+
+But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about
+again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.
+
+And he nodded several times as if to say:
+
+"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"
+
+He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.
+
+That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.
+
+To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent
+watch for him; but a host of others took his place.
+
+Passersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through
+whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at
+a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered
+while waiting for him to draw near:
+
+"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"
+
+If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet
+was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which
+said to her:
+
+"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are
+walking."
+
+And each occurrence saddened her.
+
+It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no
+attention to her.
+
+"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder
+why he scorns me."
+
+In the dining room, on the Brühlsche Terrasse, and at other elegant
+places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her
+bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change.
+She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of
+her eyes, and she looked without embarrassment directly into the faces
+of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a
+falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this
+she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.
+
+She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the
+man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve--just
+as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would
+do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was
+starving, starving, starving--as she had never starved in her life.
+
+The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her,
+though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose
+glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the
+look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was
+stabbed with a dart from his eyes.
+
+It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and
+even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows.
+This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and
+begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and,
+as a rule, wind up with:
+
+"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."
+
+Despite his uncomfortable experiences he could not get himself to live
+alone again with his young wife. Habituated from youth up to motley
+associations, he required noise and light and laughter. But his
+suspicions waxed, and finally fastened upon Lilly, too.
+
+He forbade the matinal visit to church, to which she clung so ardently.
+
+What she had done, following a mere impulse, after the first awaking at
+his side, had by and by become a custom; and while he slept his profound
+sleep she dressed without making a sound and slipped out into the
+freshness of early morning.
+
+Going to church served as a pretext.
+
+Generally all she did was dip her fingers in the holy water and make her
+three genuflections. Sometimes she even contented herself, untroubled by
+scruples, with merely passing the church.
+
+For here was an hour of golden liberty, the only one throughout the day.
+
+First she hastened to the Augustus bridge to offer her breast to the
+winds always blowing there and watch the waters course by far below.
+Then she walked along the banks of the river, usually at a wild pace, in
+order to gather in as large a harvest of pictures and incidents as
+possible before creeping back to her husband's home.
+
+Everything the hour brought was pregnant with significance.
+
+The early morning mist lying red on the hills and descending to the
+river in golden ribbons; the chorus of the bells in the Altstadt; the
+first timid bursting of the boughs already russet with sap; the joggling
+carts on their way to market; the hissing and sparking of the swaying
+wires when the trolley-pole of an electric tram swept along underneath
+them--all this was joy, it was life.
+
+Since she was not threatened with a gift in consequence she ventured
+also to look into shop-windows, and greedily, in amazement, devoured
+every morsel of art.
+
+An end to all this from now on!
+
+The gates suddenly swung shut through which she had escaped for a single
+hour her perfumed life-prison overheated by desire and indolence.
+
+But she was so soft and pliant that she yielded without a murmur even in
+her innermost being.
+
+It was his wish--that was sufficient.
+
+Such a quantity of love lay fallow in her soul and cried for activity
+that in this time of inner conflicts she proffered him a double measure
+of tenderness. She had to, whether she wished to or not, whether her
+thoughts dwelled with him or glided off on the viewless path of dreams.
+
+She was his slave, his plaything, his audience; she dressed him, admired
+his good looks, rubbed his hips with ointment, adjusted the hare's skin
+about his loins to protect him against his gout; brought him his sodium
+carbonate when he had eaten too much; massaged his grizzled head with
+hair tonic, the pungent perfume of which nauseated her, and stood by to
+help and advise when he trimmed his moustache.
+
+She did it all with eager devotion and ingenuous confidence, as if in
+ministering to her husband she had found the end and aim of her
+existence.
+
+Nevertheless he lost his supernatural, god-like qualities in her eyes,
+became nothing more to her than a man, knightly to be sure, but
+whimsical and vain; for all his mental force intellectually indolent;
+for all his sensitiveness utterly brutal, and for all his thirst for
+love an oldish man, whose powers had long been enervated.
+
+Not that she ever put it in this way to herself.
+
+Had she seen his characteristics so clearly she might have come to hate
+and scorn him; for she was too immature to know that the witch's
+cauldron of worldly life brews the same out of most men's souls,
+provided the great feelings grow grey along with a man's hair, and he
+has erected no altar for himself at which he may seek refuge while
+sacrificing to it.
+
+But the picture her fancy had made of him shifted and changed colours
+from day to day, taking on now one aspect, now the reverse, until a
+little pity mingled with her terrified respect, and her childlike
+relation to him was tinged by a certain motherliness, which would have
+been ridiculous had it not had its roots in the unfailing warmness of
+her heart, which transmuted another's weakness into cause for her
+solicitude.
+
+Oh, if only she had not had to starve so!
+
+Starve, when sitting at a festive board each day decked anew with choice
+viands.
+
+Every morning Lilly eagerly read the theatrical and musical
+announcements posted in the hotel lobby, only to be drawn away swiftly
+by the colonel, who in his little garrison town had lost all interest in
+the arts. For lack of exercise his organs for perceiving and enjoying
+had lost their functions, and he shrank back petulantly from the
+intellectual work she expected of him.
+
+Everything in which he took pleasure, the exaggerated gaiety of the
+music halls, the display of physical strength and agility, the loud
+colours, soon became an abomination to Lilly after her first curiosity
+had been stilled.
+
+Wild horses, the colonel said, could not drag him to Shakespeare or
+Wagner again, then certainly not to a concert, the object of Lilly's
+profoundest cravings.
+
+One day she saw an announcement of the Fifth Symphony, which was bound
+to her childhood days by a thousand ties. She maintained silence, as was
+proper; but when she reached their room she threw herself on the bed and
+cried bitterly. He questioned; she confessed. With a bored laugh he made
+the sacrifice and took her to the concert.
+
+She had not been at a concert since her father's last performance.
+
+When she entered she trembled, and suppressing her tears, drew the air
+in through her nose.
+
+"You snuffle like a horse when he smells oats," joked the colonel.
+
+"Don't you notice there's the same atmosphere at all concerts?" she
+asked in a joyous tremour. "Our concert hall at home smelt just like
+this."
+
+But he had not noticed the similarity of smell, and he did not recall
+the Fifth Symphony.
+
+"Such matters--" he began.
+
+She was indifferent to all that preceded the symphony. She wanted to
+hear nothing but that trumpet call of fate which had once filled her,
+when just blossoming into womanhood, with a shudder of foreboding.
+
+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.
+
+Her husband amusedly hummed:
+
+"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.
+
+But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her
+own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of
+the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her
+with the flame burning in his own heart.
+
+Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the
+weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his
+presence.
+
+Suddenly he asked:
+
+"How would it be--would you like to go there?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.
+
+He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one
+place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might
+just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run
+down to Verona or Milan.
+
+She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet--it
+_was_ too much bliss.
+
+Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to
+anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the
+trip.
+
+First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk
+jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a
+dozen other hindrances.
+
+The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace
+with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to
+hasten their departure.
+
+The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a
+pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid
+pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.
+
+To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon
+race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's
+threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.
+
+Lilly saw her husband fall for the first time into a lasting mood of
+thoughtfulness. He paced up and down the room, repeatedly muttering:
+
+"I'll have to box his ears," or "I'll have to look for a second."
+
+The next day, when the colonel observed the importunate person trotting
+about ten feet behind them, he veered about suddenly and accosted him.
+
+The blond Titan looked him up and down without so much as removing the
+short pipe from his mouth.
+
+"I may look at anyone I want to, and I may go anywhere I want to," he
+declared.
+
+With that he slightly shoved up the sleeves of his overcoat and struck a
+boxing attitude, which, foreboding a street row, stifled all desire for
+a knightly mode of chastisement.
+
+The colonel in a final attempt to settle the matter in an honourable
+fashion handed the stranger his visiting card, which was received with a
+friendly "Thank you, sir." And the colonel's opponent stuck the card in
+his pocket evidently without the least inkling of the ominous import of
+the formality. Passersby began to gather and there was nothing left for
+the colonel to do but turn his back.
+
+The upshot of the rencontre was that the Englishman now assumed the
+right to honour Lilly and her husband with a greeting, and the colonel,
+who tried to drown the consciousness of having made himself ridiculous
+in a torrent of oaths, decided to leave Dresden immediately. This was
+about the middle of April.
+
+In Munich, where they stopped off a few days to render homage to the
+Hofbräuhaus, nothing especial occurred.
+
+But the colonel had grown nervous. He cast challenging, pugnacious looks
+at the most harmless admirers and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's
+head. "It seems," he would say, "everybody can tell at a glance that you
+are no lady; otherwise you would not be the object of such a number of
+indelicate attentions."
+
+At any other time Lilly would have grieved bitterly. Now she listened to
+him with an absent smile on her lips. Her soul no longer dwelt on German
+soil. She was breathing the air of the beloved country on whose
+threshold, she thought, she was already standing.
+
+One night's ride still, a short day in Bozen, and then the gates would
+open.
+
+Now nothing could intervene.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in a section of the express that leaves Munich late in the
+evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the dusk of early morning. Lilly
+and her husband sat in the seats by the window. The seat next to the
+corridor had been taken by a young man, who on assuming it had saluted
+the other occupants with a smile, and then paying no further attention
+to them had become engrossed in a book written, apparently, in Italian.
+
+So he was an Italian, a messenger from Paradise, who had come to bid
+them welcome. That was enough to ensure Lilly's interest.
+
+She regarded him from under lids to all appearances closed in sleep.
+
+He had a clear-cut, high-spirited face of a peculiar, milky yellow tint,
+without lines or shadows, as smooth as if enameled. A small, dark
+moustache, somewhat crispy, and the hair on the temples cropped so close
+that the skin shone beneath.
+
+Lilly wanted to see his eyes, too, but he kept them obstinately bent on
+his book, though he seemed merely to be skimming through it.
+
+What she admired most was the peculiar roundness and softness of his
+movements. You might suppose a woman was clothed in that black and white
+checked suit, which attracted her by its unusually aristocratic
+appearance. The silk shirt was violet and dark red, and a green necktie
+was tied carelessly about the soft collar.
+
+All these colours, strange as they looked, went so well together and
+seemed to have been selected with so much care and refinement of taste,
+that Lilly grew quite uncomfortable. She almost felt the young stranger
+was trying to force himself upon her by his manner and bearing and
+dress, and above all by his ostensible disregard of her.
+
+It was ridiculous; she was afraid of him.
+
+When the customs officers entered the compartment at the Austrian
+frontier he uttered a few strange-sounding words, which the officers
+understood, for they turned away from him with deep bows.
+
+At that moment he raised his eyes and let them rove about the
+compartment; and while the colonel was opening his bag they rested for
+an instant, as if by chance, upon Lilly.
+
+What singular eyes he had!
+
+They sent out sharp rays like black diamonds, yet they gave a caress, a
+wicked, sure caress, which asked impatient questions, questions that
+made one blush.
+
+The next instant nothing had happened. He was bending over his book as
+before and seemed not to notice her.
+
+But her husband scrutinised her with watchful cunning, as if he had
+found a something in her face for which he had long been searching
+there.
+
+When the train started again the colonel disposed himself to sleep. For
+the sake of greater comfort he chose the unoccupied seat next to the
+corridor. The stranger in order not to be opposite him instinctively
+moved nearer to the centre, by this greatly diminishing the distance
+between Lilly and himself. A little more and he would have been sitting
+directly face to face with her.
+
+If she had harboured an _arrière pensée_, she would have bestowed more
+attention upon her husband's sleep. But all her senses were engaged in
+the desire to avoid the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a
+thousand needles.
+
+She pressed close into her corner, and spasmodically stared out of the
+window, where the illuminated interior of the coach was reproduced on
+the black background as in a dark mirror.
+
+Thus she could observe the stranger quietly, without his catching her in
+an occasional raising of her lids.
+
+The light of the ceiling lamp sharply lit up his smooth, soft cheeks,
+whose even sheen merged into bluish darkness at the temple, a cheek
+formed for pressure and petting. To let your hand stray over it gently
+must be a great delight.
+
+And what long, dark lashes he had, longer than her own. Their shadow
+formed dark semicircles reaching to the finely cut nostrils.
+
+Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her.
+
+There it was again, that black-diamond, caressing gleam, cold, yet how
+seductive!
+
+She started in fright, and grew still more frightened at the thought
+that he might have noticed her fear.
+
+He smiled a very, very faint smile and continued to read.
+
+Her fancy wove more and more anxious, flattering thoughts about him,
+thoughts tantamount to a crime, which weighed upon her like a nightmare
+of which she could not rid herself.
+
+Suddenly--an icy stream poured over her heart--she felt a soft, tender
+pressure on her left foot, which she must have moved nearer to the
+centre quite involuntarily, for only a short time before it had been
+close against her right foot, and her right foot touched the outer wall
+of the compartment.
+
+What should she do?
+
+A rebuking "I beg pardon!" an angry flaring up, would have roused the
+colonel and given occasion again for suspicion, perhaps even for an
+encounter. So she slowly withdrew her foot, using the utmost caution,
+and pressed it against the wall to prove to herself she had rescued it.
+
+But those few moments of hesitation, she knew it well, had made her
+_particeps criminis_, and this consciousness tormented her as the
+thought tantamount to a crime, which she had permitted to obsess her
+before.
+
+Dishonoured, besmirched, she seemed to herself, a prey to each and any
+man that waylaid her path.
+
+Why find fault with him? The thing he had impudently desired, was it not
+the fulfillment of her own impure wishes?
+
+This notion fairly stifled her. She wanted to jump up, cry aloud, and
+beg for forgiveness. The stranger continued to read quietly, as if
+nothing had occurred.
+
+When Lilly started out of a state of wakeful torpor a grey day was
+peering in through the window. She saw a foaming torrent tumbling into
+depths below, and beyond gigantic green masses towering into the
+heavens. It was a picture she had seen only in her dreams, convincing in
+its greatness, dwarfing all else with its might.
+
+What she had experienced before falling asleep was now a grotesque dream
+and had lost its vital essence.
+
+She looked about the compartment cautiously.
+
+The stranger was lying stretched out in repulsive sleep. His cheeks
+swelled and sank as he puffed heavily. He looked sallow and effeminate,
+and disgusted her.
+
+She turned more to the side and suddenly saw her husband's wide-open
+eyes resting upon her with a rigid, chastising look. She started as if
+caught in guilt.
+
+"Are you awake already?" she asked with a constrained smile.
+
+"I didn't sleep a wink all night," he replied.
+
+Something in the tone of his voice set her a-tremble. It was both a
+rebuke and a sentence.
+
+And how he looked at her!
+
+They rode on without speaking. Lilly utterly disregarded the stranger.
+
+At the hotel in Bozen the colonel entered Lilly's room and said:
+
+"My dear child, I have something to say to you. I am tired of the
+annoyances to which we are subjected day after day. To what extent your
+appearance and conduct are to blame, or to what extent my age is the
+cause, I will not discuss. However that may be, I do not reproach you
+with gross infringement of the laws of duty or good taste. And I may not
+demand a _grande dame's_ matter-of-course reserve of one who two or
+three weeks ago was serving behind a counter. To teach you propriety
+requires time, and it is a matter that I may leave entirely without
+qualms of any sort to Miss von Schwertfeger. We will take the noon train
+back to Germany and we will reach Lischnitz day after to-morrow in the
+evening, perhaps earlier in the day."
+
+Lilly did not even grieve, she felt so humiliated and bruised.
+
+And the land of her dreams sank below the horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+They reached Lischnitz late Saturday night. Since the colonel had
+prohibited a formal reception, all Lilly could see of the castle and
+outbuildings were black shadowy masses, which the veiled moon painted
+light on the edges.
+
+A couple of servant maids stood on the steps holding lanterns, and a
+very slim lady with a wasp-like waist and a halo of red hair streaked
+with white put a pair of long, extremely thin arms about Lilly's neck,
+and in a melancholy, cracked voice spoke motherly words of welcome,
+which, though intended to bring about a speedy friendship between them,
+intimidated Lilly and inspired her with dread.
+
+Overcome with weariness, Lilly sank into a swelling white bed, with
+gleaming brass rods draped in light blue ribbons, the bows of which
+perched there like great exotic butterflies.
+
+It was these butterflies which the next morning carried her from a doze
+into full wakefulness, into the new existence.
+
+From the ceiling hung a gilded lamp with opaline shades and blue silk
+covers over the shades. A white-enamelled wainscoting about four or five
+feet high ran about the entire room, and the walls between the
+wainscoting and the ceiling were panelled in silk of the same light blue
+as the counterpane and scarfs set in frames of white enamel.
+
+All this was revealed by a beam of light, which came in through the
+narrow space between the curtains and threw a shining bridge across the
+Persian carpet of a yellowish colour intertwined with blue.
+
+Joyfully Lilly sprang out of bed and trod on the carpet, which seemed to
+ripple in waves, so soft and long was its nap.
+
+Nothing of the colonel was to be seen or heard.
+
+Long before, he had told Lilly his bedroom would be apart from hers.
+"But it cannot be far off," she thought; "it must be on the other side
+of that shining white carved door."
+
+Opening it softly she peeped into the next room.
+
+The window curtains had scarcely been drawn aside. The bed, a huge piece
+of dark mahogany, was empty, though the crushed sheets and pillows
+testified to its having been occupied. There were engravings of racers
+on the wall, tall boots, whips, pistols, some uniforms, and on the round
+side-table a rack for pipes, and next to the bed the tube of gout
+ointment. So, the evening before, though it was her sacred duty to
+massage him, he had treacherously done it himself.
+
+She felt hurt, and then a little shudder ran through her. It was all so
+strange and hard, as if mysterious threats were lurking somewhere.
+
+She hastily shut the door and retreated into her sky-blue silk realm.
+
+Her room had two other doors, one of which opened on the corridor. This
+was the one through which Miss von Schwertfeger had led her in the night
+before.
+
+Lilly shuddered again. Without question, without asking permission, the
+thin, melancholy person of the extinct eyes and commanding manners had
+taken possession of Lilly. The colonel and his housekeeper had exchanged
+a glance, a brief glance of mutual understanding, which, on the
+colonel's part, said:
+
+"I put her into your charge."
+
+And Lilly was thrown on Miss von Schwertfeger's mercy.
+
+The lady, to be sure, had afterward tried to insinuate herself into
+Lilly's good graces by calling her pet names and embracing her, and with
+her own hands bringing the comforting cup of tea to Lilly's bedside. But
+a voice within Lilly, who usually flew to meet everybody, whether man or
+woman, with expectant trustfulness, had called to her:
+
+"Be on your guard."
+
+While staring at the door which the spidery fingers had thrown open for
+her the night before and faint-heartedly recalling the incidents of the
+arrival, Lilly was overpowered, there in the midst of her gay glory, by
+a feeling of strangeness and solitude, which nearly broke her heart.
+
+She rapidly put on the morning gown, which Miss von Schwertfeger must
+have unpacked and hung next to Lilly's bed after she had fallen asleep.
+
+The third door had still to be investigated. Lilly hoped it would lead
+out into the open.
+
+She cautiously turned the knob and drew back with a little cry. What she
+saw fairly dazzled her.
+
+A small room flooded with sunlight and filled with flowers smiled at her
+like a tiny paradise. Azaleas as tall as a man spread their rosy
+coronets over a much-becushioned couch. And there was a dear little
+secrétaire inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell, over the top
+of which a palm placidly waved its flattering fronds. But that was by no
+means the most beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing was the toilet
+table, which sent a lovely, shamefaced greeting to her from the corner
+where it stood. It was draped with white lace and the surface was
+covered with a large, smooth, even-edged plate of glass. The mirror was
+tall and composed of three adjustable faces, so that you could see
+yourself on all sides--the hair at the back of your neck, the fastening
+of your dress, everything.
+
+Lilly had long desired such a mirror, but had not dared to ask for it.
+
+The room, doubtless, was her "boudoir."
+
+She, Lilly Czepanek, owned a "boudoir!" Was the wonder conceivable?
+
+On the glass plate lay all sorts of things which you couldn't take in at
+first glance, yet expanded your eyes and your soul like a divine
+revelation. There were ivory-backed brushes--three--four--of varying
+degrees of hardness or softness; an ivory-backed hand-mirror with a
+charmingly carved handle, a powder puff in an ivory box, a glove
+buttoner, a shoe horn, everything of silver and ivory. And many more
+things, mysterious in their functions, the significance of which would
+have to be learned gradually. On each shone resplendent the gold
+monogram L. M. with a seven-pointed coronet above.
+
+It was enough to set one wild.
+
+After having inspected her treasures to her heart's content, Lilly
+prepared to extend her expedition of conquest to outlying districts.
+
+The room in which she was had only one window, or, rather, a glass door,
+leading to a balcony, on which there was a rocking chair, and the high
+railing of which was partly overgrown with young creepers. Later in the
+season, when the leaves had unfolded all the way, a person standing on
+the balcony would be completely screened by walls of green; but now, in
+early spring, there was still so much space between the shoots that he
+might easily be seen from below.
+
+Lilly softly opened the casement door and slipped out into the open air.
+
+To the left, rising above a wall, were the barns and stables, which
+formed a large quadrangle about the yard. To the right, giant trees, a
+chaos of mazy, moss-green branches set with the golden-green buttons of
+the leaf buds. Inside the labyrinth the birds kept up a scandalous riot,
+which deafened one's ears as with a hail-storm of sounds. Straight
+ahead, about thirty paces away, rose the gable roof of an ancient
+one-story structure, which also bordered on the park wall and seemed to
+open in front on the yard.
+
+There at last a few mortals were to be seen. Two gentlemen, one with a
+round grey beard, the other stout, middle-aged and copper-coloured, were
+walking up and down the lawn at the back of the house smoking and
+conversing, while a third--
+
+Who was that?
+
+The slim, sinewy young man with the high collar and light yellow
+gaiters, sitting at a window, pulling a red dog to his lap by a thin
+chain, that was--no, impossible!--yes, it was--it actually was--Walter
+von Prell!
+
+It was her merry friend, who had, so to speak, slunk off around the
+corner, the little lieutenant, famed as one utterly devoid of moral
+fibre--the only man that had ever kissed her mouth.
+
+Except the colonel, of course; but the colonel didn't count.
+
+There were the silvery white lids and the clinking bracelet and the mute
+laugh, which shook him like a storm each time the red dog with the
+pointed ears fell from his knees. The only change in him was that the
+close-cropped, velvety head of hair had been replaced by a somewhat
+unkempt growth shining with pomade.
+
+Lilly laughed aloud and stretched her arms to him.
+
+"Mr. von Prell! Mr. von Prell!" she was about to call out, but checked
+herself in time.
+
+No matter--now, she knew, she was no longer solitary in that strange
+world. Her merry friend was here, her comrade, her playmate, the man to
+whom she owed her good fortune.
+
+She remembered his having said, "The old man has taken a tremendous
+liking to me and wants me to run about his estate as Fritz
+Triddelfitz"--Lilly knew her Fritz Reuter well.
+
+Strange that in all these months it should not have occurred to the
+colonel to mention a word about Von Prell's being at Lischnitz. To be
+sure, he had seldom spoken of his estate. Even Miss von Schwertfeger
+cropped up in his mind only when he wished to reprimand his young wife.
+
+Perhaps he suspected it was Von Prell and no other who had discovered
+Lilly and brought her forth from concealment. However, she would tell
+the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger without an hour's delay that she
+had met an old acquaintance. They need not be informed of the kiss. To
+what end? It had no more significance than a kiss in a game of forfeits.
+
+She slipped back into the bedroom, and a moment later, while she was
+drawing aside the window curtains, someone knocked at the door--three
+short, sharp, rapid taps, which seemed to probe to the marrow of her
+bones.
+
+It was Miss von Schwertfeger, of course. Who else would have frightened
+Lilly so?
+
+Lilly received a kiss on her forehead; and her cheeks were patted with
+every appearance of consideration and fondness. But the great colourless
+eyes travelled silently up and down her body, and a wry, bitter smile
+hovered about Miss von Schwertfeger's fleshy yet severely cut mouth,
+the skin about which was reddened, as often happens when women with a
+fine skin age before their time.
+
+She carried clothes thrown over her arm, which Lilly recognised as her
+own.
+
+"I brought you these necessaries, my dear," she said, "so that you can
+dress this morning. Here in the country we don't go about in matinées.
+Besides, directly after you have breakfasted, we will make a little tour
+of the grounds to give you an opportunity of getting acquainted with the
+household and the people."
+
+"May I keep house myself?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.
+
+"If you know how," said Miss von Schwertfeger, and gnawed her lips and
+squinted.
+
+Lilly vaguely felt that her harmless query suggested the infraction of
+the housekeeper's rights, and, trying immediately to atone for her
+thoughtlessness, she added, stammering:
+
+"That is--I am only asking for what I will be--"
+
+She was going to say "permitted," but Miss von Schwertfeger interrupted
+her and said, drawing herself up:
+
+"My dear child, you are the mistress here; nobody is better aware of
+that than I. But I mean well by you when I advise you to ask for nothing
+at present. Pay attention to nothing but your deportment. Upon that
+depends how soon you will really be that which, unfortunately, you are
+now merely in name."
+
+Lilly, depressed and humiliated, maintained silence.
+
+The disciplinarian was already showing her fangs.
+
+"And I advise you," she continued, "to bear in mind that you must first
+study the ground you will have to tread in the future. For this you need
+a guide, who knows a thing or two of which you are ignorant. Otherwise
+you will find yourself in difficult situations, from which it will be
+impossible to extract you. And that in view of your relations with the
+colonel, would be greatly to be deplored."
+
+Lilly felt the tears rising. The old inability to defend herself, which
+was her gravest weakness, took hold of her again.
+
+"Oh, please," she begged, folding her hands, "don't _you_ feel hostile
+to me."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger's extinct eyes, which lay half buried under heavy
+lids, lighted up--was it with a question, or with amazement, or pity?
+
+For a moment she stared into space, turning her head aside, and Lilly
+saw a noble, bold profile of cameo cut, which appeared to belong to a
+different person.
+
+Then Lilly felt long arms about her neck. The embrace in which she was
+held seemed warmer, more genuine than any of the caresses Miss von
+Schwertfeger had yet bestowed upon her.
+
+"You're a dear child, you _are_ a dear child," said she, and with that
+left the room.
+
+Half an hour later Lilly, dressed in the garments Miss von Schwertfeger
+had brought, entered the dining room, where breakfast was being served
+by old Ferdinand, a dried-up, spindle-legged heirloom of a servant. That
+smooth, round-faced fellow with the mischievous smile, had been
+dismissed, thank goodness!
+
+The colonel came in from his early ride, his eyes sparkling with the
+pride of proprietorship. The little crisscross veins of his gaunt cheeks
+were filled with blood, and the grey brushes over his ears glistened
+with dew drops. The heavy jacket he wore was becoming to him, and the
+O-shaped legs were hidden under the table. He looked like a kingly old
+warrior, both evil and kind-hearted.
+
+Lilly flew into his arms, and he said with a sweep of his hand about the
+place:
+
+"Well, do you like--your home?"
+
+She kissed his hand for the "your home."
+
+The dining room was a long chamber, arched at each end and filled with
+carved pieces of furniture darkened by age. It was only moderately
+lighted by three large bow-windows giving upon the terrace, from which a
+flight of railed stone steps led down to the park.
+
+At breakfast they discussed the walk they had planned for showing the
+young mistress her new realm. The colonel would not hear of such a thing
+as having the people come to the castle and wait upon Lilly
+ceremoniously. They were wearing their Sunday-best that day at any rate
+and with no derogation to themselves could receive her in the spots
+where they lived and toiled.
+
+The upper employés, the inspectors and bookkeepers, would come to dinner
+Sundays, as had been the immemorial custom, and take that as the
+occasion for paying their respects.
+
+"The youngest of them used to be one of my men," remarked the colonel,
+"a Mr. von Prell--" He stopped short, looked Lilly over thoughtfully,
+then, as if reassured, continued: "But he left service some time before
+I did, and he's to learn farming on my estate."
+
+This was the very moment for Lilly's happy avowal. But the words died on
+her lips. She could not--for all her good intentions, she could not. As
+it was, those great colourless eyes, resting on her face, were putting
+her to the proof.
+
+However, one thing was certain--the colonel knew nothing. His silence
+had been due simply to the fact that he had not deemed the gay dog
+worthy of mention.
+
+"How's he behaving?" asked the colonel, turning to Miss von
+Schwertfeger.
+
+"Oh, Colonel," she said with a smile, regarding her long, bony fingers,
+on which her crescent-shaped nails shone like mother-of-pearl, "you know
+I never denounce unless I have to."
+
+"Such a good-for-nothing rascal," laughed the colonel.
+
+Lilly, instinctively taking her friend's part, thought the lady's words
+were in themselves sufficient denunciation.
+
+After breakfast they started out on their little expedition.
+
+Lilly was placed between the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger, and a
+pack of dogs all of a sudden appeared to keep them company. Lilly
+thought them more likable than anything else about her.
+
+The kitchen was visited first. A perfect marvel of a kitchen, with tiled
+walls, porcelain sinks, and all sorts of up-to-date arrangements. Lilly
+did not know at what to look first.
+
+A face was there, an old, brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face, with a
+pair of moist eyes turned upon Lilly in mute questioning:
+
+"Don't you recognise me?"
+
+Lilly's eyes answered:
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+But she did not dare to speak with her lips as well as with her eyes,
+for fear Miss von Schwertfeger would inquire concerning the decisive
+moment of her life and come to despise her still more.
+
+She gave the old woman her hand, and the bond of friendship was renewed.
+
+Next they went to the servants' kitchen, where the Sunday soup was
+bubbling like a seething sea in a huge copper vessel. After this came
+the laundry with its wringers and mangles resembling brightly armoured
+monsters. It was good to smell the ancient odour of soap which had
+nestled permanently in every nook and cranny.
+
+In the pantries and storerooms, rows of hams wrapped in grey gauze
+depended from the rafters like gigantic bats. Sausages hung there, too,
+and last winter's golden pippins and other fine apples were still lying
+on straw beds. Long lines of wide-mouthed jars were ranged on the closet
+shelves--you could pilfer sweets to your heart's content.
+
+The party now cut diagonally across the paved yard, where the waggons
+and harvesters stood like soldiers on parade, to the barns and stables.
+
+The stable of the pleasure horses! Heavens! It was like a drawing-room.
+Upholstered wicker chairs with footstools in front stood about
+invitingly. A matting strip ran along the stalls, over each of which a
+porcelain plate proclaimed the name of the noble animal within. The
+horses moved supple, slender, lustrous necks and turned knowing human
+eyes to greet their beautiful mistress.
+
+"You will choose one of these for yourself," said the colonel.
+
+"I don't know how to ride," replied Lilly, embarrassed.
+
+The grooms standing about, cap in hand, grinned at her
+uncomprehendingly. A lady who could not ride had never before stepped
+into their world.
+
+The home of the draught horses was not nearly so interesting; it was
+dirty and malodorous, and the cow stalls nauseated Lilly.
+
+But she took good care not to betray her sensations. Ready to learn, she
+patiently listened to the explanations the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger gave in turn.
+
+A difficult piece of work was still ahead of them, the visit to the
+cottagers, who had just returned from church and were standing before
+their doors in expectant groups.
+
+The oldest and most trustworthy came first. There were many new names to
+learn, many dirty hands to shake and many eyes to look into which stared
+at her in respectful suspicion.
+
+Lilly felt she was fairly well able to cope with the situation. She
+found a few friendly words to reach the hearts of the old and the sick;
+and when she stooped and drew on her lap a blubbering little urchin a
+pleased whisper ran before her to smooth her path.
+
+At the end of the settlement were two structures originally erected for
+barns, but later converted into dwellings. Small windows in red and blue
+frames were set in the walls at irregular intervals, and what had once
+been the broad entrance had been built up with yellow bricks.
+
+Here lived the Polish immigrants, who had come as contract labourers
+from distant regions. The district in which Lischnitz lay had been
+German from times of old and had remained a German island amid the
+invading flood of Slavs.
+
+For this reason it was necessary to hold aloft the banner of Germanism,
+as Miss von Schwertfeger admonished lovingly. And Lilly felt mortified,
+as though she had been in the habit of disavowing it.
+
+Red head cloths gleamed. Great, blue, intimidated eyes prayed to her.
+Here and there an awed bobbing to the hem of her skirt, a shy attempt to
+kiss her sleeve.
+
+"_Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus_," she heard in a whisper about
+her, and involuntarily she answered: "_Na wieki wiekow!_ Amen!"
+
+In the course of her Catholic bringing up she had learned that this is
+the answer to a Polish greeting.
+
+A glad humming and buzzing, a ripple of happiness ran through the
+fearsome huddling little group. The lovely young _pana_ had spoken
+their language, the language of their God.
+
+"I had no idea you could speak Polish," said the colonel, his voice
+grating with blame of her.
+
+Lilly gave an embarrassed laugh and explained.
+
+They tarried a shorter time at the next entrance, where a group of young
+fellows in heavy grey jackets were twirling their caps and making
+awkward bows. Lilly scarcely ventured to give them a cordial nod. Even
+that, she felt, was forbidden.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger said not a word, but with aquiline nose in the air
+held aloft the banner of Germanism.
+
+"Now, my dear," she said when they reached the castle door, "put on your
+dark blue cloth dress. I have already had it taken from the trunk and
+pressed. You will find it in your room, and a lace collar to wear with
+it. That is the correct thing here for Sunday dinner, which we take in
+the middle of the day."
+
+Lilly obediently donned the blue gown. It enhanced her slim grace. Her
+heart beat for fear that her merry friend, who could not suspect she had
+disowned him, would betray both of them at the first meeting by a
+careless word of recognition.
+
+The dinner bell rang and the next instant came those three probing taps
+on the door.
+
+Lilly in alarm started away from the mirror. Miss von Schwertfeger
+should never discover she was vain. She looked Lilly up and down a
+while, then grasped both her hands, and buried her pale blue eyes, which
+now flared up again, in the improbable eyes.
+
+"God grant," she said, "that you don't cause too much mischief in this
+world, my child."
+
+"Why should I cause mischief?" Lilly faltered, mortified again. "I don't
+do a bit of harm to anybody."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger laughed.
+
+"The one good thing is, you don't know who you are," she said, and drew
+her to the corridor and down the old stairway, which cracked at every
+step.
+
+In the dining room were four dark men's figures besides the colonel's.
+At Lilly's entrance they hastily drew up in line.
+
+One was the man with the round grey beard--"Mr. Leichtweg, our chief
+inspector," said the colonel. The next was the stout, copper-coloured
+man--"Mr. Messner, our bookkeeper." Somebody else was introduced, and
+then--then--
+
+"Lieutenant von Prell, who is learning farming here," said the colonel.
+
+Just a slight inclination of her head, the same as to the others, no
+more.
+
+But my poor, merry friend, how you look!
+
+A long frock-coat fell below his knees, his narrow-pointed head was lost
+in his high collar, his clothes hung in loose, limp folds. Every feature
+of his, every marionette movement bespoke rigid formality and
+obsequiousness.
+
+Lilly stood there lost in pity and astonishment. If she had not seen him
+that very morning while he was--
+
+"Shake hands with the gentlemen," she heard whispered behind her.
+
+She started and pressed the honest country fists more firmly than
+beseems a chatelaine. But she quickly let go Von Prell's freckled hand,
+which was still well kept.
+
+"Thank the Lord, he won't betray us," she thought.
+
+Then came grace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The finches were the maddest of all. The titmice, too, made a racket,
+and so did the nuthatches, and the blackbirds behaved as if they were
+lords of the place, while the stay-at-home starlings formed in groups
+among themselves and paid no attention to the rest of the world. Beside,
+there were the hedge-sparrows and wrens, who added a fair share to the
+chorus. But the fanfare of the finches was too much for ears accustomed
+to the tiny twittering of a caged canary.
+
+Old Haberland knew them all. Old Haberland was the gardener, who
+pottered about in felt shoes and lived, in a measure, from the colonel's
+bounty, since he held sway now over nothing but the lawn sprinkler. He
+knew which birds nested on the ground and which in the branches. He knew
+the time each began to sing and the best place to stand if you wanted to
+study their plumage and habits.
+
+It was terrible to think that the squirrels had to be shot. Lilly almost
+hated the old man when he sallied forth, his pea-rifle under his jacket,
+with evil intent against the jolly little marauders--Haberland
+maintained the vermin recognised his gun and scurried off when they saw
+it. The magpies and jays were no friends of his, either. His love was
+the shy, green woodpecker, whom he had actually coaxed into nesting in
+the park. And that gay marvel of a bird, the hoopoe, came without fear
+at any hour of the day to the back of the castle, where it sang its
+hututu and transfixed the insects in the grass with its curved sabre of
+a bill.
+
+Those were mornings full of glow and brilliance, such as could not have
+been since the creation of the world.
+
+When you opened the door at five o'clock in the morning the cool purple
+mist crept in and folded itself about your body like a royal mantle. On
+the pond, where the reeds rose up over night, pushed by underground
+powers, lay sunlit vapours, which gradually lifted and ascended
+heavenward. Everything steamed. Sometimes white lights seemed to have
+been kindled on the lawn, and the little clouds in evaporating rolled
+heavily from the glistening campions, as though surfeited with the dew
+they had drunk.
+
+Such mornings!
+
+Who can describe the mad delight of the dogs when their beautiful young
+mistress appeared on the steps smiling, clad in a white blouse and short
+skirt and armed with garden shears? They had been awaiting her there a
+long time, every now and then emitting short, impatient sounds, half
+whine, half yelp. For _they_ had not hesitated an instant to recognise
+her absolute rule, in utter disregard of the pitying benevolence with
+which Miss von Schwertfeger--whom they detested--stood by and smiled.
+
+Bebel, the terrier, the cleverest of all, did not count, because he sped
+after the colonel on his early cross-country gallop. But there was
+Pluto, the long-eared setter, who, out of employment at this season,
+gave chase to the rabbits on his own account. There were Schnauzl, the
+poodle, and Bobbie, the dachs, living in constant feud with each other
+for the first place in Lilly's favour. Dearest of all was Regina, the
+panther-like Great Dane, one of whose forelegs had been broken. As if to
+apologize for her disgraced existence, she always crept back of anyone
+she met; but at night, to compensate, she was untiring in her
+watchfulness, and maintained a steady reign of terror.
+
+Who can describe the joyous caracoling of the colts in the pasture, the
+craving for love the yearling manifested when the mistress, who always
+carried sugar with her, pushed back the bars, and stretched her arms to
+caress the slender heads of her favourites?
+
+Who can describe the chagrin of the turkey cock, great enough when the
+pheasants got first peck at the bread crumbs, but knowing no bounds when
+those stupid ducks squatted right on Lilly's feet, as though that were
+the most natural thing in the world? At times his jealousy so swelled
+him with rage that he even dared to nab one of Pluto's ears. But Pluto
+disdained to do more than shake him off in scorn.
+
+Yes, those were wonderful mornings!
+
+And when the height of the flowering season came, she never wearied of
+wandering about and filling baskets with blue, golden and snowy blossoms
+until she was fairly drowned in a floral sea.
+
+After the morning stroll came breakfast, when from sheer joy and
+tenderness Lilly hesitated about whose neck first to throw her arms, the
+colonel's or Anna's--on certain confidential occasions she was called
+Anna. Lilly, in general, was very affectionate with Miss von
+Schwertfeger, despite her fear of that lady's censoriousness and despite
+other fears of which she could not rid herself.
+
+Yes, she thought, it was a strict school, indeed, which she had entered.
+
+Not a word, not a step, not a movement remained unobserved, or, if
+necessary, unreproved. She learned to sit at table and in an arm-chair,
+how to prepare and serve tea, how to invite a person to be seated, how
+to begin a conversation, how to introduce strangers to each other
+without getting into a muddle, how to pass over forgotten names, and
+offer everybody at table a fair portion of cordiality. All these things
+Lilly learned, and, oh, much more.
+
+But they were only the rudiments to be practised in the small world of
+the castle or when occasional visitors dropped in. Real instruction was
+to begin in the fall; for then expeditions to neighboring estates would
+be undertaken. In the meantime the colonel wished to avoid all contact
+with the families round about. He could do this without provoking
+comment, his long bachelorhood serving as a plausible pretext for
+wishing to prolong his honeymoon to the utmost.
+
+By autumn Lilly was to have been converted into a veritable _grand
+dame_, who would do honour to her husband's name and rank, and whose
+tact and ease would conquer all mistrust whether at the festivities in
+the homes of the gentry or in the club house.
+
+This, the highest ideal on earth, Miss von Schwertfeger kept before
+Lilly's eyes every minute of the day, and Lilly dreamed of it as she had
+dreamed of approaching examinations when in the Selecta. Full of fears
+and doubts she worked over herself night and day.
+
+Her soul found calm only when she went on one of her rambles, or, better
+still, when she sat behind locked doors in her boudoir.
+
+No, no, Heaven preserve her! Not her boudoir! That wasn't its name.
+
+The first time she had said "boudoir," Miss von Schwertfeger turned very
+condescending. It was a sitting-room. Only butchers' and bankers'
+wives--in Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes one and the same--would disfigure
+it with the other name.
+
+Thus Lilly stumbled at every step.
+
+Occasionally, when he quartered officers on their way through the
+country, the colonel, as if to test Lilly's social ability, would have
+her preside at table with Miss von Schwertfeger's assistance.
+
+Each time the same scene was enacted. At first Lilly would be stiff as a
+mechanical doll, incapable of addressing a word she had not learned by
+rote to these guests gleaming in military resplendence. A glass or two
+of wine would give her courage. Gradually she would liven up, and even
+grow merry, and finally bubble over with harmless pleasantries--from
+where they came flying into her head she did not know--which would so
+enrapture the gentlemen, most of whom were well past their prime, that
+they directed all their remarks to her, as if to pay her court, while
+their eyes hung on her face in enjoyment and desire.
+
+Now the colonel would grow uneasy. He would cast furtive glances at Miss
+von Schwertfeger, who usually sat with her eyes on her plate and a wry
+smile on her lips; and then despite the gentlemen's protestations of
+regret, the ladies would leave the table.
+
+Lilly grew hot with the fire she herself had kindled in the heads of her
+guests. It caused her pleasure and distress, and forced her to sit at
+her window until midnight, staring into the blue twilight of the park
+with beating heart and quivering nerves and flushed cheeks streaming
+with tears.
+
+Forebodings of mad acts and riotous self-abandon flashed up in her
+brain. A parching fever enervated her body. Her clothes, her room, the
+park, the world became too contracted. A wild dance of looks and flames,
+a whirl of fiery red, inured, desirous masculinity chased through her
+head.
+
+On such nights, when the guests had at last retired, the colonel, more
+or less intoxicated, would force himself into her bedroom, and begin by
+reproaching her for not having been ladylike enough. Lilly would cry and
+try to excuse herself. Then he would kiss the tears from her lashes,
+snatch her clothes from her body, and throw himself next to her in bed.
+
+Shuddering with foolish pangs of conscience, quivering in disgust of his
+drunkenness, happy, nevertheless, to feel that tormenting tenseness
+relax, she gave her body up to him.
+
+On other nights when she felt uneasy and alone and desired his presence,
+when her body as well as her soul longed to cling to him in the humble
+sense of belonging to him entirely, then he was not to be had. He kept
+his door locked.
+
+On the whole he was loving and gracious to her. He handled her as if she
+were a gay, fragile toy, to be wound up not too often, and each time it
+has been played with enough, to be laid aside carefully for use on the
+next occasion. This treatment suited her. At least she was spared dread
+of those outbursts of wrath which set the walls a-tremble two or three
+times a day, and frightened every living thing in the vicinity. Even
+Miss von Schwertfeger was not sure how to take them. She silently set
+her teeth, and bowed her head as before the inevitable.
+
+Lilly could never fathom the relation existing between the colonel and
+his housekeeper. Usually it seemed to her the many years of mutual
+confidence had welded them together inseparably. Then came times when
+they studiously avoided each other, the colonel in haughty preoccupation
+with his own affairs, Miss von Schwertfeger squinting sarcastically and
+suggesting by her manner a feeling of rancor, a menace.
+
+Now and then it even occurred to Lilly that when the lady had been young
+and fair, she had been the colonel's love. But Lilly dismissed this
+idea. Miss von Schwertfeger was far too proud to endure the bitterness
+of such companionship, and _he_ was too dominating to tolerate the
+presence of such a creditor.
+
+All that Lilly learned of her past was that she was the daughter of a
+poor yet aristocratic army officer, and had been left an orphan with her
+own living to earn after her confirmation. She had now been managing the
+colonel's household for nearly twenty years. The fact that Miss von
+Schwertfeger, homeless and without resources, like herself, had also
+been thrown upon the colonel's tender mercies gradually aroused in Lilly
+a sense of sympathy and kinship, although she could never cast off a
+slight feeling that she must be on her guard against this woman.
+
+She really owed Miss von Schwertfeger a debt of gratitude. Without her
+ready advice, Lilly would have fallen innumerable times from the road
+leading to the lofty heights where she would sit enthroned as aristocrat
+and lady of a manor. Ridiculers would have taken base advantage of her
+modesty; her sportive manner of equality would have invited
+impertinence; she would have ended in losing every vestige of power.
+Perhaps people would even have come to despise her.
+
+As it was, everybody loved her. She found shining glances to greet her
+in the kitchen, in the stables, among the villagers, and at the lodge;
+while in the barn, where the Polish women dwelt behind smouldering
+brushwood and drying wash, she was a veritable idol.
+
+Whether a rumor had gotten about of her Slavic name, or her Catholicism,
+could not be determined. However that might be, the fact remained that
+these strange, despised people, who glided among the stiff and haughty
+Germans with the humble look of a child in their eyes and the plaintive
+melodies of their country on their lips, revered Lilly as their redeemer
+and patron saint.
+
+She liked to busy herself with the gentle, good-natured folk. She
+visited the sick, and cared for the destitute. The girls seemed to her
+like poor sisters, who needed watching over; and as for the boys, why,
+they were a charge that God Himself had put into her keeping.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger looked askance at these kindly attentions. "The
+people belonging to the place," she said, "are beginning to complain
+that you prefer the immigrants to them. You would do well to take your
+walks in another direction."
+
+Lilly remonstrated. Henceforth Miss von Schwertfeger kept close watch,
+and did not leave her side when the barn dwellings happened to be in
+seductive proximity.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger even converted Lilly to Protestantism.
+
+Not in her soul. Heaven forefend!
+
+"Love your Holy Virgin and your St. Joseph as much as you want to," she
+said, "but just remove that font and those little images from your
+bedside. As for going to church, you may drive to Krammen to attend mass
+on Sunday; of course you may; the colonel would not think of forbidding
+you to. But take my advice, dearest, and sit next to us in our pew. Do
+it for my sake, you won't regret it."
+
+Lilly did not offer much resistance, and by way of reward received a
+small altar to keep in her room. When locked, it looked like a dainty
+jewel casket, but inside was the infant Jesus in the arms of the Madonna
+and--oh joy!--there was St. Joseph on the left leaf of the folding door,
+and St. Anne on the right leaf.
+
+Lilly wept with delight.
+
+Nevertheless she could not love the donor with all her heart and all her
+soul. No matter how often they sat together chatting confidentially,
+Lilly remained in solitude.
+
+And in fear.
+
+She did not dare even to eat her fill. As if to make up for Mrs.
+Asmussen's long-forgotten mush, Lilly had developed a ravenous appetite;
+but noticing Miss von Schwertfeger's apprehensive sidelooks at her
+heaped plate, she usually rose from table only half satisfied. To stay
+herself until the next meal she drew upon the treasures of the
+storeroom.
+
+Old Maggie the cook, in whom she possessed a sworn ally, kept watch to
+warn Lilly of Miss von Schwertfeger's approach. Once, however, the
+omnipotent housekeeper caught her there, and Lilly dished up the excuse
+that she wanted to learn housekeeping; which declaration was received
+with condescending merriment.
+
+Had it not been for old Maggie, Lilly would never have learned a single
+detail of the management of the large household, Miss von Schwertfeger
+studiously keeping her from regular activity of any sort, whether out of
+vainglory or consideration Lilly could not determine.
+
+If Lilly wanted to help with a piece of work, it was done already, or
+she mustn't spoil her hands, or she might injure herself.
+
+Her passionate desire to learn horseback riding was also thwarted by
+Miss von Schwertfeger, who was always discovering signs of approaching
+motherhood, though they proved each time to be false.
+
+Even playing on the piano was denied her. The yellow old instrument of
+torture, the keys of which resembled the decayed teeth of a smoker--just
+like the colonel's--was not to be replaced by a new piano until autumn,
+when they would go to Danzig to select one.
+
+She thought of the times preceding her marriage, hardly more than half a
+year ago, as belonging to her long-vanished youth. She would have
+ridiculed one who had told her, youth still lay ahead of her nineteen
+years.
+
+It was good that over there in the lodge a witness of her sweet, foolish
+past was living along in madcap thoughtlessness. This alone persuaded
+her that her maiden days had not been a mere dream, that she had not
+been a colonel's wife from the cradle upward.
+
+In all this time she had met her merry friend only at Sunday dinners,
+when he played a comic rôle making his jerky reverences in his long
+frock coat.
+
+Sometimes when standing on her balcony at twilight behind the foliage
+now closegrown, she saw him at his window in the lodge cutting capers
+with his wild little red fox of a dog. A feeling would then come over
+her that the only person who actually belonged to her in this alien
+world was yon light-haired good-for-nothing, who pursued all the maids
+on the demesne. Old Maggie told tales. At night he would ruin the
+toughest horses trying to get back from his secret excursions before
+dawn; and in his den behind closed shutters--
+
+At this point Maggie lost her faculty of speech. The things that took
+place behind those closed shutters must have been dreadful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+One red August morning Lilly, sprinkled with dew from head to foot and
+clasping a bunch of dewy roses in both arms, entered the dining-room,
+where Anna von Schwertfeger, tall and thin in her greyish blue linen
+dress, was standing at the table smiling to herself.
+
+It was not her manner, it was not her greeting; both were as usual. It
+was an intangible something which instantly caused Lilly to realize that
+an extraordinary event had occurred.
+
+Katie, she noticed, who helped Ferdinand with the serving, had red
+eyelids and kept gnawing her lips while setting the table. Katie was of
+finer material than the average servant girl, her father having been a
+teacher, and was very pretty besides; owing to which qualities Miss von
+Schwertfeger had selected her as Lilly's special maid.
+
+When Katie left the room, Lilly began to ask questions.
+
+In reply Miss von Schwertfeger merely kissed her with redoubled
+tenderness, and observed:
+
+"Why should you sully your pure young spirit with such ugly things? If
+certain people are bent upon breaking their necks, that's their
+business. We cannot help them."
+
+"Breaking their necks--that must mean Walter von Prell," thought Lilly,
+and said aloud: "After all this is my home, and nothing that happens
+here in my future province"--she modestly said "future"--"ought to be
+kept from me."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger yielded to her arguments.
+
+"It will be painful to you," she said, "because I know you like him."
+
+"Him--whom?" queried Lilly, conscious of blushing.
+
+"In fact all of us like him," continued Miss von Schwertfeger by way of
+mitigation, "the colonel most of all. So long as he confined himself to
+the rooms of the labourers' girls I winked my eyes, and begged the
+kitchen help not to annoy me with gossip about his adventures. But if he
+commits the outrage of breaking into the castle, it's time the matter
+ended."
+
+"Why, what did he do?" asked Lilly, in fright.
+
+"For some weeks past I noticed certain things which struck me as rather
+curious. In spots the vine on your balcony was withered--"
+
+"On--my--" Seized with a wild suspicion Lilly stepped a pace nearer to
+Miss von Schwertfeger, and clutching her arm asked: "What has my balcony
+to do with Mr. von Prell, Miss Anna?"
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger avoided Lilly's look.
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear," she said, "calm yourself. Persons in my
+position have to keep their eyes wide open. That's what they are there
+for. I was simply acting for your protection, because anyone who does
+not know you as I do might come to the vile conclusion that if a man
+climbs up to your balcony--"
+
+Lilly began to cry.
+
+"It's so low, so low."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger drew her to the sofa and stroked her brow.
+
+"I have gone through much worse things, dear child. At any rate, I
+wanted to get at the bottom of the affair, and although, I need not say,
+I hadn't the least suspicion of you"--she turned her eyes away
+again--"nevertheless I spent a few nights outside your door."
+
+Lilly started. While she had been sleeping in innocent unconsciousness,
+someone had lurked in hiding close by--so fast was she held captive!
+
+"And about one o'clock this morning I caught him in the act. Fancy! The
+dare-devil had the temerity to lean one of Haberland's ladders against
+your balcony--that was the cause of the broken, withered vines--and
+enter your sitting room through the glass door--glass doors, dearie,
+ought never be left open. He passed your bedroom, and went to the
+corridor without seeing me, of course. Since Katie is the only person
+who sleeps on that side I charged her with it early this morning. She
+made no denials. I always act in such matters with the utmost mildness
+and reserve, and I told her she might give notice and leave on the
+first. But what shall we do about the young man? I know this is the one
+place where he can be brought to turn over a new leaf. Should the
+colonel dismiss him, all's over with him. And I have no right to conceal
+his conduct from the colonel. An affair that so nearly compromises his
+wife's honour--"
+
+"What has my honour to do with Mr. von Prell if he runs after servant
+girls?" Lilly ventured to interject, hoping to improve his prospects a
+bit by playing the innocent.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger had just time enough to enlighten her innocence
+concerning all the evil results of Mr. von Prell's mad conduct, when the
+table began to quiver from the colonel's tread as he came tramping down
+the corridor.
+
+"Don't say anything--not yet!" begged Lilly, and with that was hanging
+on the colonel's neck to hide her confusion.
+
+The colonel noticed nothing amiss.
+
+His suspicions, ever alert, had gone to sleep now that he knew his young
+wife secure under the Argus eyes of his old and tried housekeeper.
+
+He was no longer that greedy lover, simulating youthfulness, who had
+spied upon her every look and emotion, jealous of his mastery. The
+humourous condescension with which he watched the doings of the lovely
+gentle child gave him a natural semblance of fatherliness, which became
+him well.
+
+His visits to the club house in the garrison town nearby, at first only
+occasional, had begun to grow more frequent. Sometimes he even departed
+from his custom of leaving after supper, and took the afternoon train.
+But whatever time he left, he never returned before two o'clock in the
+morning, since there was no train to bring him back earlier.
+
+During breakfast he good-humouredly explained to the ladies that he
+would have to go to town that day to unload the barley crop on the Jews.
+
+An idea occurred to Lilly which filled her soul with sacred joy. The
+colonel's absence must be employed for rescuing Von Prell. How, she did
+not yet know, but save him she must. She was the only one to do it. If
+she did not concern herself in his behalf, who else was there in the
+wide world to tow his drifting vessel to security?
+
+After the colonel had left the room, she plucked up the courage to put
+in a plea with Miss von Schwertfeger, who, however, refused to relent.
+
+"On the next occasion he will do even worse things," she said. "Then the
+shame both for him and for us will be still greater."
+
+"No, he won't do anything worse," Lilly averred. "He will get better.
+You need only take him to task."
+
+"I'm old enough to," replied Miss von Schwertfeger, with a bitter-sweet
+smile, "and I possess the authority. But, to be quite frank, the subject
+is rather a delicate one, and I should like nevermore to have a thing to
+do with such sordid affairs."
+
+The extinct eyes, over which the lids lay like heavy blankets, fell into
+a fixed stare, which Lilly had frequently noticed. It seemed to bring to
+the top an old, dark, bitter hatred which had long lain buried. Then
+Miss von Schwertfeger herself returned to the subject.
+
+"All I can agree to," she said, "is, that if he comes to me of his own
+will and begs my pardon, maybe I will yield. That's all I can do without
+incurring the blame of being underhanded."
+
+"Why, he doesn't even suspect he's been discovered."
+
+"I should like to wager," rejoined Miss von Schwertfeger, "that Katie
+will use her first free moment to run over to him."
+
+"And if she doesn't?" cried Lilly, scarcely mastering her anxiety.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger took her head between her hands.
+
+"If I did not know, dearie, what a sweet, harmless young creature you
+are, I should say your interest in the little rake is most curious. Now,
+you needn't blush. I know there's nothing back of it. At all events, I
+will wait until to-morrow, because you plead for him, my love."
+
+Thus the conversation ended. Nothing more was to be expected of Miss von
+Schwertfeger.
+
+"If I don't save him, he will be driven away, and if he's driven away,
+he'll go to rack and ruin, and if he goes to rack and ruin, I shall be
+to blame."
+
+In this fashion Lilly's thoughts kept revolving dizzily in her brain.
+
+The simplest thing would be to come to an understanding with Katie, but
+that was unbefitting Lilly's station. Besides, it had not occurred to
+the poor girl, who crept about apathetically, to run over to see Von
+Prell. Later in the day, in fact, she got an attack of cramps and had to
+be put to bed.
+
+At four o'clock the colonel drove off to the station. He had stuck a
+package of blue banknotes into his bill-folder; which was an unfailing
+sign that he would not return before early morning.
+
+Evening came. The lowing of the cattle and the cracking of whips
+proclaimed the end of the day's work.
+
+Lilly crouched behind the vine on her balcony, and listened to what was
+going on at the lodge. Finally the scapegrace appeared at his dormer
+window dragging his little dog by a chain. He was wearing the sort of
+greenish grey jacket with innumerable pockets that managers of estates
+affect; and each pocket was stuffed full, giving his figure a warty
+appearance. Nevertheless he was a dear, bright little fellow, well worth
+the saving.
+
+If she were to signal to him and throw down a piece of paper, would it
+be possible for him to pick it up later without being seen?
+
+She went into her room and scrawled a few lines in pencil.
+
+"Everything has been discovered. Miss von Schwertfeger promises to keep
+silent provided you--"
+
+She stopped short. Should the note fall into strange hands the stupidest
+mortal would construe them into a confession of guilt.
+
+"I will speak to him," she decided.
+
+The supper bell rang.
+
+How strangely Miss von Schwertfeger regarded her, as if she had gotten a
+glimpse into the depths of Lilly's soul and discovered her bold design.
+But she did not refer to the malefactor again.
+
+On rising from the table she put her arm through Lilly's, after her wont
+when she intended to bar the way to Lilly's Polish friends.
+
+"She won't let go the whole evening," thought Lilly, raging inwardly.
+
+In a short while, however, word was brought that Katie had grown sicker,
+and it might be necessary to send for the physician.
+
+"I'll be back directly," said Miss von Schwertfeger, as she left the
+room giving Lilly a look expressive of stubborn resistance.
+
+In an instant Lilly had slipped out of the door and was running down the
+terrace steps leading to the park.
+
+Profound silence reigned. The only sound was of a splashing which came
+from behind a cypress tree where old Haberland, still occupied with
+watering the roses, was filling his cans.
+
+Lilly made straight for the lodge considering ways of making him look
+from his window and see her.
+
+She was saved from committing this indiscretion.
+
+He was lying at full length on the green bench outside the house,
+smoking a cigarette with evident gusto, the dog's chain wrapped about
+his left wrist, and the dog himself asleep at his feet. None of the
+other men were about.
+
+Her heart's throbbing almost deprived her of breath.
+
+"Mr. von Prell!"
+
+He jumped to his feet, the dog along with him.
+
+"Mr. von Prell, I should like to speak with you."
+
+He put his hand to his head to remove his cap, but no cap was there.
+
+"I am at my lady's service."
+
+"Will you accompany me a little way?"
+
+"At my lady's service."
+
+He threw away the stump of his cigarette, glanced about hastily for his
+vanished cap, then walked at her side bare-headed, stiff as a puppet in
+his extravagant respect.
+
+Lilly led the way into the interior of the park, where the clusters of
+trees and the open grassy spaces melted into purple-edged darkness. She
+had gotten back her calm. The desire to save him gave her strength of
+which she had not deemed herself capable.
+
+"You must not misunderstand my coming to you," she began.
+
+"Certainly not, my lady," he replied, bowing obsequiously. "The evening
+is so lovely, and old acquaintances like to chat with each other once in
+a while."
+
+"If I had wanted anything like that," said Lilly, making no effort to
+conceal her sense of insult, "I should have invited you to the castle.
+If I come to you instead, you can readily imagine the matter is more
+important."
+
+"What can be more important to me than strolling here at my lady's
+side?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Mr. von Prell, if you knew the difficulty you were in, you would
+take care not to indulge in such talk."
+
+Lilly had never thought herself capable of so much haughtiness.
+
+"What difficulty can I be in, my lady?" he rejoined, raising his brows
+and wrinkling his forehead. "My soul has worn half-mourning ever since I
+was condemned to live in a certain close distance from, or, rather, a
+certain distant proximity to--my gracious lady. Whether Tommy and myself
+possess the character for enduring this trial--come, come Tommy, don't
+be a goose. Our lady benefactress will have no objections to your not
+treading on her train."
+
+Tommy obstinately planted his forelegs and had to be dragged along like
+a lifeless toy.
+
+"You'll strangle the poor little beast," said Lilly, happy to have found
+a way of avoiding his personalities.
+
+"He will simply be sharing the sensations of his master," said Von
+Prell, illustrating his reply by clutching at his throat and emitting a
+horrible gurgle.
+
+Such behaviour must no longer be permitted. Lilly owed it to herself and
+her position to resent it.
+
+"Mr. von Prell," she said very condescendingly, "do you realize that by
+the same time to-morrow you will probably have been dismissed?"
+
+He was touched at last. He frowned and bit the ends of his moustache;
+but then he said:
+
+"What gives me some satisfaction in the fact is that my lady seems to
+take no slight interest in the matter."
+
+Now she became angry in earnest.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. von Prell," she cried. "I wear
+myself out and take great risks trying to help you, and you show your
+gratitude by making silly remarks all the time."
+
+"Courage, Tommy," he said, taking the dog in his arms. "First they flay
+us, then they kick us out. Our one comfort is, we are innocent
+sufferers. Poor, poor Tommy."
+
+"Don't try to whitewash yourself," Lilly reprimanded. "Miss von
+Schwertfeger discovered everything--your relations--you understand--your
+nightly trips to my balcony and through my room--everything. Do you
+think I take pleasure in having to treat you like a criminal when I've
+always thought so much of you? Don't you think I'd much rather be proud
+of you, than stand here and see you driven away like a stray dog? Or can
+you say anything in justification of yourself? Can you? Tell me."
+
+She talked herself into such warmth that she forgot the unseemliness of
+her being there with him. She was now that which she wanted to be--the
+benevolent chatelaine, who turns everything to good account; and her
+breast swelled with the consciousness of her lofty ethical undertaking.
+
+They had stepped from under the dark arches of the linden walk. A few
+sharply defined streaks of red still coloured the west, and cast a deep
+glow over his narrow, freckled face.
+
+He looked completely crushed and penitent, and Lilly regretted having
+dealt with him so harshly.
+
+"I realise," he began after a short pause, his voice quivering as with
+suppressed excitement, "I realise I must not let so grave a charge go
+without justifying myself. And I can justify myself, I most undoubtedly
+can. But in doing so, I am compelled to disclose a secret, which--I
+really do not know if I ought to initiate you into the horrible
+mysteries that threaten to ruin my life."
+
+"What are they?" queried Lilly, in terrified curiosity.
+
+"Well, then, from my boyhood up I have been pursued by an awful fate,
+which comes upon me when I am utterly defenceless and imposes upon me
+responsibility for misdeeds of which I am absolutely innocent, and
+places me in breakneck situations, which--I will be outspoken--I
+am--well, I am a somnambulist."
+
+The merry little devils frolicked between his silvery lids, and Lilly,
+in spite of herself, burst out laughing. He joined in with his dear,
+mute tehee, which shook him like a storm; and they stood there laughing
+till they wearied. Lilly no longer thought of her chatelaine's dignity,
+or her ethical mission.
+
+As if by mutual agreement they turned into the deserted depths of the
+park, which bordered on a bosky beech grove with neither fence nor hedge
+between.
+
+It grew darker at each step.
+
+Tommy resigning himself to his fate trotted behind his master
+obediently.
+
+"Well," said Von Prell, after they had recovered from their laugh, "why
+should I try to throw dust in your eyes? I am a poor pickerel floundering
+here on dry land. Have you the faintest notion of what it means to keep
+company with three plebeians and lead a useful vegetable existence, and
+from morning till evening steadfastly practise dutifulness and
+uprightness? It's more than a fellow can stomach. I tell you, it's enough
+to drive him to a dose of castor oil. Tommy self-denyingly helps me tide
+over the worst moments, but every now and then he, too, is a
+disappointment to me. Will my lady permit me to use this occasion for
+asking her an extremely important question?"
+
+Pleased at his having grown serious, Lilly assented.
+
+"Can you--can you wag your ears?"
+
+She succumbed to another paroxysm of laughter as to a spell of sickness,
+leaning against a tree and panting for breath, while he continued with
+profound affliction in his voice:
+
+"I am master of the modest art and have been proud to exercise my skill
+ever since I was at high school, where it was considered the acme of
+human accomplishments. I made up my mind to train Tommy to do the same
+trick, and I spent many an hour over him in difficult intellectual
+effort, but without result. One day, however, I discovered he could wag
+his ears much better than I can, and, I assume, always had been able to.
+Only he did it when he wanted to, not when I wanted him to. Isn't that
+distressing? Doesn't it reflect the general aimlessness of human
+endeavour? O dearest baronissima, I am afraid I shall soon become a
+great philosopher out of sheer boredom."
+
+Lilly could now see only the outline of his figure, behind which the
+dog's eyes glowed like two beacon lights. Since her school days she had
+not abandoned herself so completely to a spirit of pure fun, and she had
+to wait until a pause came in her laughing before she could tell him it
+was high time to be returning.
+
+He obediently turned on his heels, transferring Tommy's chain from one
+hand to the other.
+
+The catastrophe that menaced him seemed to have passed from his mind.
+Lilly, therefore, since time pressed and something had to be done for
+him, took the bit between her teeth, and reported what Miss von
+Schwertfeger intended to do, and what she demanded from him as the price
+of her silence.
+
+Lilly was helping him, but not with that beautiful, dignified air of
+superiority with which she had wanted to hold out her rescuing hand. She
+felt she was like a playmate of his, and every few moments a
+half-suppressed giggle interrupted her speech.
+
+"The worthy dame has an unconquerable desire to stand about on people's
+toes," said Von Prell. "But since we've gotten ourselves into a scrape,
+my dear little Tommy, we'll have to juggle to get ourselves out of it.
+Thank you very much, my lady. In accordance with your instructions I
+will go to her and ask her to forgive me--before going I'll oil my
+speaking apparatus. I will be more than repentant, I will even be
+roguish. That works on respectable old maids like Spanish fly. And I
+will use the opportunity to the best advantage for our future
+intercourse with each other--provided of course, my young queen agrees."
+
+Oh, she agreed fully!
+
+"But how will you do it?" she asked fearfully.
+
+"Leave the matter to me," he replied. "Your duenna is a knowing old
+beast. But I am even more knowing. I shouldn't be surprised if to-morrow
+I didn't earn an occasional supper in the castle, at which I shall have
+the opportunity of looking into the eyes of my exalted mistress without
+being observed by the two High Mightinesses."
+
+There were several things in his speech that grated on Lilly. He might
+make merry as much as he pleased at Miss von Schwertfeger's expense, but
+the colonel stood on too high a plane to be the butt of his ridicule.
+And now that Von Prell was out of danger, it occurred to Lilly for the
+first time how detestable his conduct had been, and how lacking in
+character she was to be sauntering about with him in the dark, laughing
+at his sallies.
+
+"One moment, Mr. von Prell," she said. "I warned you of the danger you
+were in, because I thought I owed it to our former friendship. But now
+that I have told you, we have nothing more to do with each other. My
+time is up. Good evening, Mr. von Prell."
+
+With that she hurried on ahead along the obscure wood path, and gave no
+look around. Suddenly she felt something soft and warm and living slip
+between her feet. She screamed and turned about for Von Prell's help. At
+the same instant a chain wound itself about her ankle, and held her
+fast.
+
+Since she and Von Prell had turned back, the dog in his eagerness to get
+home, had been straining on the chain with all his might, and had taken
+her hastening off as a signal to break away, thus entangling himself in
+her dress. The more he tugged the more painfully the chain cut into her
+flesh.
+
+That made an end of Lilly's ire.
+
+Von Prell had to kneel and hold down the unruly little animal, while he
+unwound the chain from her ankle.
+
+"Tommy, Tommy, what have we done? We have grievously hurt our noble
+mistress. We can't be blamed for pulling at our chains, but if in doing
+so we get under people's skirts, we give great offence. Shame on you,
+you rascal."
+
+He planted a kiss on the dog's pointed little snout.
+
+"Doesn't he ever bite?" asked Lilly with interest.
+
+"He has had the benefit of a rigorous military training, as a result of
+which he has grown accustomed to kisses."
+
+Another burst of gaiety. Von Prell held the struggling little ball of
+wool up to Lilly, and asked whether she would like to try a kiss, too.
+
+Laughing she declined, and, laughing, she went home with him.
+
+Characterless as she was.
+
+Still laughing aloud, she entered the lighted hall of the castle, where
+Miss von Schwertfeger met her with great reproachful eyes.
+
+"Where have you been, my dear?" she asked, evidently prepared to meet
+the grave situation in a mild spirit, while subjecting Lilly, none the
+less, to a keen cross-examination.
+
+"He's so funny!" Lilly sang out, hiding her face red with laughter on
+Miss von Schwertfeger's shoulder.
+
+"Did you--"
+
+"Of course I did. Do you suppose I'd leave such a delightful, jolly old
+friend of mine in the lurch?"
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger's face became rigid.
+
+Lilly gave herself a little shake and uttered a joyous gurgle. Then she
+ran off to her room, undressed, and burying her head in the pillows
+laughed herself to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+In laughter it began, and in laughter continued.
+
+When Lilly awoke the next morning she saw that everything about her, the
+chandelier, the washstand, and the pretty, sentimental gleaner on the
+wall, had assumed a new aspect, and the sun was shining twice as
+brightly.
+
+She stepped to the mirror in her nightgown, and forthwith had to laugh
+again at the reflection she saw there, a veritable street Arab's face
+with sly, darting eyes and saucy nose.
+
+At breakfast she fairly sparkled with playful conceits, chased the
+stiff-legged colonel about the table, and felt a warm sense of gratitude
+toward Miss von Schwertfeger rise within her.
+
+As for Miss von Schwertfeger, she smiled to herself significantly; and
+when the colonel left the room, caught Lilly by her ears, kissed her on
+her forehead, and said:
+
+"You baby, you."
+
+She made no reference to the confession Lilly had let slip that she and
+Von Prell were old friends. In fact, to judge by her manner, you might
+suppose she had not heard it.
+
+Lilly ran up to her balcony, pushed aside the creepers, and sent a
+summoning nod to Von Prell, who was walking up and down uncertainly
+between the castle and the lodge.
+
+He understood, bowed, and disappeared in the direction of the terrace
+steps.
+
+What took place between him and Miss von Schwertfeger remained a secret;
+and there was no finding out whether or no she had questioned him in
+regard to his former relations with the colonel's wife. But whatever the
+doubts on that score, the success of his interview was indisputable. So
+far from having to slink away from the place, he appeared at the supper
+table that very same day, ushered in by the colonel himself. In his
+striped coat, white waistcoat and high collar, in which his face lay
+almost buried, and wearing his most respectful expression, he was the
+very embodiment of correctness.
+
+"I heard," said the colonel, leading him to Lilly, "that Mr. von Prell
+doesn't feel entirely happy over there in the lodge. If you have no
+objections he will come to meals oftener after this."
+
+Lilly hadn't the slightest objections. The thought, however, that Katie
+would appear in the doorway the next instant almost choked her. But
+another maid took Katie's place in handing old Ferdinand the dishes.
+Lilly gave Miss von Schwertfeger a questioning look, which she answered
+in a whisper, so as not to be overheard by the gentlemen:
+
+"The poor girl got very sick, and asked for a long leave of absence.
+Most likely she will never come back again."
+
+In her gratification Lilly impetuously pressed Miss von Schwertfeger's
+hand under the table. She had a dim idea that Katie had been dismissed
+in order to spare her the repugnance of witnessing something impure.
+
+The gentlemen without delay plunged deep into a discussion of the
+cavalry, richly interlarding their talk with proper names.
+
+Mr. von Prell sat inclined toward the colonel to take in the
+instructions of his old commander, and kept blinking his lids in
+respectful attention. The colonel dominated like a wrathful god. He
+spoke gruffly and noisily and shot out his dagger glances as if to mow
+down rank after rank of the enemy's army. But this was nothing else
+than a craftsman's vain joy in his work.
+
+Lilly listened, and would gladly have taken part in the conversation,
+but the men had forgotten her presence, and a jealous gloom clouded her
+spirit, for which she did not know whether to blame the colonel or Von
+Prell.
+
+When Von Prell rose to take leave the colonel laying his hand on the
+young man's shoulder said:
+
+"See here, why haven't we done this before?" The glance he sent Lilly
+seemed to signify: "Such an amount of caution was really unnecessary."
+
+When the first cool days in September brought on the colonel's gout
+again, and his visits to town had to be postponed indefinitely, Von
+Prell's invitations to supper grew more frequent.
+
+The colonel groaned and cursed each time he mounted a horse, though he
+refused to listen to Lilly when she pled with him to give up his morning
+gallop.
+
+"Too bad all of you are always so dreadfully concerned about me," she
+observed, "because sometimes I might take your place in riding about the
+country."
+
+The colonel and his housekeeper exchanged looks.
+
+"After all, it's a shame she can't ride horseback. Any decent sort of a
+riding master might take her in hand. My morning excursion is more than
+enough for me. What do you think, Anna, can we entrust her to that
+humbug Von Prell?"
+
+Lilly's face lighted up with joy. Miss von Schwertfeger let her eyes
+rest on her glowing cheeks and said very slowly, as if to chew the cud
+of every word:
+
+"You know Von Prell is reckless. What if he should bring our darling
+back to us some day with broken bones? At all events, it seems to me,
+before deciding, we had better consider the matter carefully."
+
+Though Lilly took good care not to utter a syllable expressive of desire
+or opposition, she was not successful, apparently, in concealing her
+secret wishes; for the next time they were alone together, Miss von
+Schwertfeger suddenly took Lilly's face between her hands and said:
+
+"Get rid of the idea, darling. Do. Believe me, it's better so."
+
+About this time Lilly made a remarkable and somewhat suspicious find.
+She enjoyed going on expeditions of discovery through the spacious
+castle, only part of which was inhabited; and on one occasion while
+rummaging about in one of the third-story guest rooms, now seldom used,
+she extracted from a chiffonier a light gauze shirt, covered with silver
+spangles and shot with silver thread, resembling the shirt she had often
+had to wear during the Dresden stay before going to bed. Her own shirt
+these days hung undisturbed in her closet, from which it had not been
+removed even for Miss von Schwertfeger's inspection, because Lilly was a
+little ashamed of it.
+
+Her curiosity was piqued by the vestment she had found, and folding it
+carefully she went down to question her friend about it.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger was sitting over her account books, and scarcely
+looked up when Lilly entered. But suddenly the gleam of the tinsel in
+the sunlight attracted her attention. A quiver ran through her body. Her
+eyes widened, her figure stiffened, as if she were looking at a ghost.
+
+"What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly.
+
+"I thought I had cleared up thoroughly," she said, shaking herself.
+
+She snatched the garment from Lilly's hand, wrapped it up in a piece of
+paper, and carried it to the kitchen, followed by Lilly, who saw a
+whirl of smoke carry bits of silver thread up the hearth chimney.
+
+Old Maggie stood by looking in bewilderment from one to the other. She
+seemed to know what the discovery involved, but later, when Lilly tried
+to extract information from her, she had lost her faculty of speech.
+
+"I didn't always use to be just where the colonel was," she stuttered.
+"Ask Miss von Schwertfeger. She knows. She'll tell you."
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger would not tell. She went about with compressed
+lips, gave short answers when spoken to, and kept her extinct eyes
+fastened upon empty space.
+
+One evening at supper, her demeanour, apparently from no external cause,
+underwent a sudden change. She laughed, chatted, was tender to Lilly,
+and attentive to her master, pitying him on account of his pain,
+suggesting new remedies, and obtaining his promise to give up his
+morning ride.
+
+"By the way," she went on, "as to Lilly's taking riding lessons, I've
+thought it over carefully, and have come to the conclusion that if we
+are present--at first, at least--we may entrust her to the young man."
+
+Lilly fetched a deep sigh of joy; but the two pairs of eyes could not
+have detected the trace of a smile on her face, the faintest glimmer of
+delight, so well had she learned to keep herself under control.
+
+The next morning the riding lessons began, with the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger, of course, in attendance.
+
+Walter von Prell appeared in riding boots and a jockey's cap. The
+forward inclination of the upper part of his body seemed to signify, "I
+am awaiting orders," and his respectfulness and obsequiousness kept him
+shifting from one foot to the other.
+
+For the first essay they had chosen a lamblike grey mare, narrow-chested
+and somewhat overtrained in the fore-hand, yet a smart, well-fed animal.
+
+Mr. von Prell proceeded very methodically to explain the construction of
+the saddle and bridle, showed Lilly how the girths are buckled, how the
+snaffle and curb rein have to lie, and how to keep the curb chain from
+choking the horse.
+
+Next came learning how to mount. When Lilly for the first time put her
+foot on his interlaced fingers she felt a warm thrill to the very back
+of her neck, as if this contact with him were a sign of secret
+understanding between them.
+
+"One, two, three," he counted, and there she was in the saddle.
+
+The colonel clapped his hands in approval, and Walter von Prell blushed
+with pride to the roots of his blond hair.
+
+From now on he had the game in his hands.
+
+"Who'd have thought that blusterer has such a lot of pedantry in his
+make-up?" said the colonel turning to Miss von Schwertfeger, who nodded
+silently and took a deep breath, as if something were oppressing her.
+
+By the time Lilly was ready to dismount, she had learned how to draw in
+the reins and slacken them and to turn to the right or the left; and she
+had even ventured a trot about the yard. In short, as the colonel
+good-humouredly remarked, "She was on the road to becoming the most
+dashing horsewoman in the army."
+
+The lessons followed in quick succession. Either Miss von Schwertfeger
+or the colonel was always present, and there was no opportunity for
+private conversation between Lilly and Von Prell.
+
+Von Prell maintained his stiff, abject obsequiousness, while Lilly
+burned with the desire to see his waggery flash up in a look or word
+intelligible to her alone.
+
+One day, it chanced, both guards were absent.
+
+The colonel was busied with the construction of a riding-ring, in which
+his gout might defy the inclemencies of the weather, and Miss von
+Schwertfeger was nowhere to be found.
+
+Lilly's heart beat violently when she met her friend, and the smile with
+which she held out her hand to him, expressed uneasy triumph.
+
+He responded with a sly thrust of his tongue in the direction of the
+terrace, where her honour was wont to stand.
+
+"She couldn't be found anywhere," whispered Lilly.
+
+"_What_ will we do?" he moaned, wringing his hands. "Why, without the
+worthy dame's protection we shan't even be able to mount."
+
+Deep blue heavens arched above. A cool breeze, heavy with the smell of
+freshly turned soil, blew across the courtyard.
+
+He pointed with a wily look to the open gate.
+
+She laughed and nodded assent.
+
+The next minute she was galloping at his side along the grassy wood
+path, where no Argus eyes could follow her, in utter abandon, inwardly
+exulting and eagerly expectant of mad pranks to be played.
+
+Von Prell, for his part, seemed indisposed to avail himself of his
+unhoped for liberty. He held his eyes fixed on the road in front, every
+now and then caught at her reins, regulated the length of the stirrup,
+and made her sit better in the saddle. He was the riding master,
+nothing else.
+
+"How's Tommy?" she asked at length, bored.
+
+"Tommy sends his regards," he replied, without removing his gaze from
+the road, "and says we'd better pay attention to nothing but the horses
+to-day, because if something should happen we'd never be allowed to go
+out again."
+
+"And I send my regards to Tommy, and tell him he's a goose."
+
+"I will without fail," he rejoined, and nodded his riding crop.
+
+They now entered a grove of birch trees, where the ground was somewhat
+boggy and demanded added attention.
+
+But Lilly had eyes for nothing but the silvery gleam of the trunks and
+the golden webs which quivered in the wind and floated down on her
+cheeks.
+
+"Oh, see how beautiful!" she said with a blissful sigh.
+
+"Walk your horse, please."
+
+A demon took possession of Lilly. Touching her horse with her crop she
+went off in a mad gallop that was contrary to all the rules and
+regulations of horseback riding.
+
+The next instant, however, Von Prell was at her side gripping her reins
+and pulling up both horses.
+
+They looked at each other with flashing eyes.
+
+Lilly felt she had to throw herself over toward him just to be nearer to
+him.
+
+"Say, Lilly, what do you mean by that?" he hissed.
+
+She started and showed her white teeth.
+
+"Say, Walter, what do you mean by that?" she retorted.
+
+They turned the horses' heads and rode back home slowly, in silence,
+without looking at each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The threshing machine had been singing its autumn song for many a day.
+Its monotonous whirr could be heard far beyond the castle court. It
+carried no message of golden blessings or glowing crystallised sunlight.
+From morning till late at night it moaned and howled like an æolian harp
+in stormbeaten branches; and sometimes soft, long-drawn cries burst from
+its entrails, as if the sheaves it was torturing and tearing had been
+endowed with speech.
+
+So much dreamy bliss dwelt again in Lilly's soul that she got nothing
+but allurement and yearning from this music, which entirely obsessed her
+in her morning slumber and kept her lying in bed a long time in a drowsy
+half-sleep the better to listen to its even, unvarying singsong.
+
+All the while she thought of him.
+
+A comrade, a playmate, that was what she had needed all along, some one
+in whose company to make merry and complain, some one who would confess
+all his follies, his most secret sins, and then receive laughing
+absolution. For whatever his crime, he was not the guilty one; his youth
+was the sinner, the same sweet, mischievous youth which filled her soul
+with melancholy and her body with shuddering, which dominated them both
+like a beneficent yet tormenting divinity, who favoured the one and
+ruined the other.
+
+He had to be saved--saved from his own frivolity, from that fatal
+condition of his soul which threatened to entangle and choke him in a
+net of vulgar escapades. Rumours of the low life he was leading kept
+cropping up not to be silenced, and she needed but to step inside the
+servants' hall for a stream of gossip to come gushing over her like a
+jet of dirty water.
+
+Her first intervention was to be only the beginning of the great mission
+she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, walking
+before him and holding up her hands against every evil temptation, until
+he had become as pure, as undesirous as herself.
+
+Thus she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing machine.
+
+The first ride beyond the castle gates, though taken without permission,
+had been approved, even commended; and others were to follow. But Lilly
+hesitated. She wanted to learn a decent canter, she said, before
+venturing upon new roads. As a matter of fact, she was burning with
+eagerness for another such hour in Von Prell's company, and merely
+lacked the courage to bring it about.
+
+The morning after that first ride he was the same cringing riding master
+as before, outdoing himself in respectfulness and over-polite while
+rigorous in imparting instruction. Lilly had fully expected he would
+whisper a familiar word hinting at the day before, a soft "Lilly." There
+was plenty of opportunity, but nothing of the sort took place.
+
+The next few lessons went in the same fashion. Neither Lilly nor Von
+Prell thought of leaving the courtyard. But one day the decree went
+forth from the colonel himself.
+
+"Enough of this hopping about on the gravel. Get out of here and air
+yourselves in the wind of the fields."
+
+"At your command, Colonel," said Von Prell, touching his cap. He rode
+his horse up to Lilly's and gently steered both of them out of the gate.
+
+Her heart stood still. She forgot to say good-by to the colonel, she
+was so preoccupied with anticipation of the pleasure in store for her.
+
+They went the same road that had brought her the great experience of the
+week before.
+
+The willows dripped with dew and at the slightest touch showered down a
+rain of drops. Lilly laughed and shook herself. Instead of joining in,
+he guided his horse to the edge of the road, leaving the middle to her.
+
+"But I _want_ to get wet," she said.
+
+"As my lady says," he replied, stiff as a poker in his stupid,
+artificial respect.
+
+Then they rode on in silence.
+
+When they reached the spot where the great event had occurred which gave
+the lie to his present behaviour, she ventured to send him a furtive
+sidelong glance. But he did not respond, seeming not to have noticed her
+look. His jockey cap pulled close over his head down to the back of his
+neck, his thin, tightly-drawn face, sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish
+body, all muscle and bone, he sat on his saddle as if he and his horse
+were one.
+
+"How I love him, in spite of everything, the dear little fellow," she
+thought, and pictured to herself how horribly abandoned she would feel
+if ever he were to leave the place. And it became clear as day to her
+that the gay excitement in her soul, the sense of abundance in her life
+here where she dwelt, had arisen from nothing else than his always,
+always being near by.
+
+They rode along at an even gait. The brown ridges bordering the opposite
+bank of the stream drew nearer and nearer. Von Prell seemed to be making
+for them, but this did not serve her purpose, because the hour for a
+frank talk had struck.
+
+To-day or never!
+
+She made a great effort to go over in her mind what she would say to
+him. But her thoughts were incoherent. She had to keep her attention
+fixed on the horse; and so long as she remained in the saddle she felt
+herself too much under Von Prell's control.
+
+Summoning all her courage she asked:
+
+"Can't we dismount?"
+
+He paused to consider, but she had jumped from her horse already, and he
+had just time enough to grasp the mare's snaffle. He reprimanded her,
+though in the end he had to yield.
+
+They walked side by side, Von Prell leading both horses.
+
+The path led through a stone pit sparsely grown with oak trees and
+alders. Golden marigold buttons dotted the marshy spots, and the
+bur-reed stretched out its bristly fruit on crinkled arms. Reddish dock
+raised its aging stalk and the floating grass was drawing in its blades
+in expectation of approaching autumn.
+
+A mountain-ash, felled by a storm, stretched diagonally from the side of
+the road across the ditch. Its purplish red clusters of berries glowed
+like flames which by right should have been extinguished long ago, but
+which a mysterious life-force kept feeding.
+
+"I'd like to sit here," said Lilly
+
+He bowed.
+
+"If you please."
+
+"But you must sit down, too."
+
+"I must hold the horses, my lady."
+
+"You can tie them to a tree."
+
+He considered a while.
+
+"I can," he said, and tied the reins about the stump of the fallen tree.
+
+When he was about to sit down next to her, she moved nearer to the
+middle of the trunk to make room for him, and she sat with her feet
+dangling over the ditch water.
+
+He shoved himself after her, swinging his upper body between his arms,
+which held him like props.
+
+"No further," she said. She did not want him too close to her.
+
+"At my lady's service," he answered, and kicked his heels.
+
+The grotesque stiffness of his speech annoyed her.
+
+"Don't you know a better way of addressing me when we are alone?" she
+asked, looking him full in the face.
+
+"I do, but I mustn't"
+
+"And last time--how about then?"
+
+"It happened to be my birthday," he replied, "and I wanted a pretty
+gift, so I presented that to myself."
+
+"And to-day's my birthday," she laughed. "What will you present me
+with?"
+
+"Whatever my lady wishes."
+
+"Call me comrade."
+
+"Once or always?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Just _say_ comrade, or be comrade, too?"
+
+"Be, be, be," she cried. "The being is the chief thing."
+
+"Agreed!" he said, cautiously sliding his right hand along the swaying
+trunk.
+
+"Agreed!" she said, and they shook hands on it.
+
+"There's something else to be passed upon in connection with this," he
+observed, and cleared his throat.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Is this comradeship to be accompanied or not to be accompanied by the
+use of the first name?"
+
+"Not," rejoined Lilly, thinking she had made a great sacrifice.
+
+He took the prohibition at its face value and said obediently:
+
+"As my comrade wishes."
+
+Now her time had come. Lilly drew in a deep breath and said:
+
+"I have something very serious to say to you, Mr. Von Prell."
+
+He seemed to suspect evil.
+
+"Ouch," he said, and bit his gloved thumb.
+
+Lilly began. She would say absolutely nothing about that affair with
+Katie, even though it was very dreadful, because what is to be forgiven
+must also be forgotten. But if he thought the life he had been leading
+ever since he had come to Lischnitz had remained a secret, he was
+greatly mistaken. Even the scrubbing women laughed at him behind his
+back. But he couldn't expect anything else, if he--and she recounted the
+list of his sins, which, in spite of herself, had reached her ears from
+the servants' hall.
+
+Lilly was ashamed of what she said. She had meant to speak of entirely
+different things--of the loftiness of human existence, of the greatness
+of self-abnegation, of keeping oneself pure for the sake of genuine
+feelings, of the mysterious spiritual union of the elect on earth, and
+much more in the same strain. But when she saw him, as he sat there with
+his back curved and his feet turned inward, causing bulbs to appear and
+disappear on the soft leather of his riding boots where they covered his
+big toes, nothing better occurred to her.
+
+He did not interrupt her.
+
+When she had concluded he maintained silence and occupied himself with
+following the movements of an insect which was wriggling in the dark,
+slimy water of the ditch.
+
+"Have you nothing to say," she asked, "after I have reproached you with
+such disgraceful behaviour?"
+
+"What should I have to say?" he asked in turn. "My one claim to
+celebrity is my being a man utterly devoid of moral fibre. Should I lose
+that one claim, too?"
+
+"If you have nothing within yourself to hold you up, lean on me," she
+cried, glowing with eagerness. "Let me be your friend, your adviser,
+your--"
+
+"Foster-father," he suggested, and swished about the slime with his
+crop.
+
+She realised that everything she said was lost on him; that he even
+seized whatever opportunity offered to make merry at her expense.
+
+"Please get up and let me by," she said. "Why should I cast what is best
+in me before one who is unworthy?"
+
+He made no movement to leave his seat.
+
+"Look, comrade," he said, pointing to the dark, mirror-like surface of
+the water. "A water spider is gliding about there all the time with its
+legs up and its head down. If you were to ask it why, it would say it
+doesn't know how to glide differently. That's its nature. What's to be
+done?"
+
+"A man can restrain himself," she cried, flaring up and casting
+indignant glances at him. "A man can look up to heights, to an ideal. He
+can listen to the advice of a friend who means well by him--that's what
+he can do."
+
+"And what does his friend advise?" he asked flatteringly, while swinging
+himself nearer.
+
+But this time she did not answer. She covered her face with her hands
+and cried, cried so that her body shook with sobs.
+
+"For God's sake, sit still," he exclaimed, stretching his arms about her
+in a wide circle, for she was in danger of losing her balance on the
+slim, swaying trunk of the mountain-ash. "Do sit still, Lilly, else
+you'll fall into the water."
+
+She shuddered. She heard nothing of what he said except that sweet,
+secret, criminal "Lilly," for which she had been longing the whole
+week.
+
+Then he promised her everything she wanted of him. He wouldn't run after
+any more servant girls, he wouldn't spend nights boozing with the
+inspector and the bookkeeper, he wouldn't--oh, what wouldn't he do, if
+only she stopped crying.
+
+"Your word of honour?" she said, raising her wet, reddened eyes.
+
+"My word of honour," he replied without an instant's hesitation.
+
+She smiled at him, happy and grateful.
+
+"You won't regret it," she said. "I'll be close at hand, I'll be your
+friend, I will do whatever I can."
+
+"And whatever the two High Mightinesses permit," he added.
+
+This time the epithet "High Mightinesses" did not annoy her. She
+shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, they--yes, of course."
+
+Then they both laughed till they came near falling into the ditch after
+all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Delightful times followed. A game of hide-and-seek with herself, a
+long-drawn draught from an unfailing fount of expectancy, anticipation,
+delicious aftertaste and joyous recollections. Each day brought new
+pleasures and untold wealth.
+
+Sometimes when Lilly threw open the shutters in the morning and the
+fresh red September air flowed in over her she felt as if God had spread
+a mantle of sunny gold over the heavens to wrap both of them in, so snug
+and close that the whole world disappeared, leaving no one but
+themselves behind, pressed against each other in laughter and drunk with
+all that light.
+
+She felt she was growing more beautiful from day to day and emanated a
+sort of radiance which caused all who met her to look up with a smile of
+astonishment and satisfaction, mingled, however, with a touch of
+melancholy, such as always comes over us when we see a human being or a
+flower developing too happily, too proudly for its glory to endure.
+
+The two High Mightinesses did not keep their eyes closed, either.
+
+The colonel found no formula for such symptoms in his store of
+experiences. Had Lilly gone about downcast, staring dreamily into space,
+had she crept about him timidly, had she wavered between ardour and
+estrangement, his suspicions would have grown lively. He would have
+begun to sound and spy on her. But it was not in his power to discern
+aught else than increased spiritual well-being in her pliable, blissful
+tenderness.
+
+So he smirked complacently at the harmless gaiety his young wife
+radiated, and with paternal calm accepted the lavish caresses, which
+served as an outlet for her overwrought ecstasy.
+
+Anna von Schwertfeger shared no less benevolently in Lilly's happiness.
+She seemed to harbour as little suspicion as the colonel that a third
+person was playing a part in her life. Otherwise she would scarcely have
+viewed the growing frequency with which the two young people met with
+such unbegrudging kindliness.
+
+Often after supper she drew Lilly into the room on the ground floor,
+where she dwelt amid her account books. A genuine old maid's home, with
+canary birds, flower pots, faded family photographs, and all sorts of
+gilt and china knick-knacks, remnants of past glory such as are handed
+down from generation to generation in families of decayed gentlefolk.
+
+At other times she came gliding into Lilly's bedroom at an incredibly
+late hour, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and did not stir until
+she heard the sound of the colonel's carriage coming from the station.
+
+The two women would plunge into profound conversations concerning life
+and death, solitary old age and overflowing youth, the measure God has
+set for each mortal, and the misfortune of trying to exceed that
+measure. Anna von Schwertfeger no longer pried or warned, yet her
+fashion of hopping from subject to subject, of heedlessly expressing an
+opinion the very reverse of one she had uttered a moment before, seemed
+sufficient reason for supposing that her mind was occupied with very,
+very different things.
+
+Often while her speech flowed on monotonously Lilly would be astonished
+to look up and find her eyes resting on her intently, almost
+apprehensively. Then again Lilly would feel herself stroked and kissed
+with such pitying inwardliness that she herself was touched, and later,
+when left alone, she began to feel afraid of the dark, as if a menacing
+fate were crouching at the bottom of her bed ready to pounce on her and
+choke her.
+
+But from where was misfortune to drop on her? Wasn't she more securely
+stowed away than ever before in her life? Whom did she deceive? Wherein
+did she sin? Even if the few little secrets binding her to Walter should
+be discovered, how would she be punished? She would simply get a fine
+sermon like a naughty child, nothing worse.
+
+Thus she comforted herself before the aftertaste of Miss von
+Schwertfeger's late visits was dispelled by new dreams of happiness.
+
+September neared its end.
+
+Lilly went horseback riding with Von Prell almost every day, or she met
+him at twilight, as if by chance, in deserted parts of the park. They
+would spy each other strolling about some one of the various places they
+had fixed upon once for all. Then there was the pea-shooter to fall back
+upon in case different arrangements had to be made.
+
+Von Prell had brought the convenient instrument from the city, and it
+reposed innocently in a corner of Lilly's balcony, to all appearances
+nothing more than a superfluous curtain-rod. It enabled her to blow
+whatever message she wanted through the foliage on the balcony directly
+into his open window.
+
+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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the first Sunday in October.
+
+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.
+
+The sunflowers in the tenants' gardens were already sinking their singed
+heads and the asters showed signs of having suffered from the murderous
+blows of Jack Frost.
+
+But the air was as sweet and spicy as in spring, and from the fields
+came a singing as of meadow larks.
+
+"Such a day, such a day!" thought Lilly, and stretched herself in a
+vague yearning for secret conversation and glad pranks.
+
+She must have thought a little too loud, for Miss von Schwertfeger
+asked:
+
+"What's the matter with to-day?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Lilly, blushing. "I feel as if it were some
+festival."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger looked at her askance and said, emphasising each
+word:
+
+"I should like to make a festival of it for myself and visit a friend of
+mine in the city. But the colonel is away and I don't know--"
+
+Lilly started so violently that she lost her breath for an instant. But
+she mastered herself cleverly and began to persuade Miss von
+Schwertfeger, first speaking coolly, then more warmly and urgently. She
+needed a little outing; she hadn't left the place all summer; she lived
+like a prisoner, and ought to grant herself at least one hour of
+freedom.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger nodded meditatively, and that glassy stare came
+into her eyes which always discomfited Lilly.
+
+At the midday meal, which the two took in each other's company, she was
+still undecided; but as soon as they rose from table she ordered the
+carriage to be brought around and drove off without saying good-by.
+
+Lilly, who watched her departure, ran for the pea-shooter. The foliage
+of the creepers still hedged in her little domain so perfectly that Von
+Prell could not see her. But she could see him as he sat at the open
+window brooding over a book with a deep fold between his brows.
+
+"My good influence," thought Lilly triumphantly, and it almost made her
+feel sorry to tear him away from so salutary an occupation.
+
+The inspector and the bookkeeper were walking up and down near the lodge
+smoking their Sunday afternoon cigarettes.
+
+So more than ordinary caution was necessary.
+
+The pellet containing her missive hit Von Prell's forehead, rebounded,
+and fell on the grass outside the window.
+
+Von Prell had himself so well in hand that he even refrained from
+looking up to show he understood. After a while, however, he let the
+book fall out of the window as if by accident, and then got up to fetch
+it with an indifferent air.
+
+Half an hour later they met behind the carp pond.
+
+He was wearing a new black and white checked fall suit, similar to the
+one the fateful stranger in the railroad train had worn.
+
+"You're entirely too elegant," Lilly joked. "I'd rather not be in your
+company to-day."
+
+"That would be a sin and a shame," he observed. "I had these trappings
+constructed extra for to-day."
+
+"Why for to-day?"
+
+"Because to-day's our festival."
+
+"How did that occur to you?" she faltered, startled that their thoughts
+had taken the same course.
+
+"Oh, a person gets notions," he replied, and smiled significantly.
+
+Under the same impulse they took the path leading to the beech grove
+which they had wandered through on the first evening of their renewed
+friendship.
+
+"How's Tommy?" Lilly asked, recollecting the third party to the
+alliance.
+
+"He bit away the flooring in my room and dug a hole for himself, where
+he snarls like an eagle-owl. I shouldn't advise you to stick your
+wedding-ring finger into his hole. You might suddenly lose your ring and
+your finger, too."
+
+"Why have you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.
+
+"Why have I let myself get so wild?" he retorted.
+
+"Well, you're growing tame again," replied Lilly, caressing him with her
+eyes. His recent tameness was all her doing.
+
+"Do you think so?" he asked, and drew his brows together masterfully, as
+in his lieutenant days.
+
+"Haven't I your word of honour?" she exulted.
+
+"Pshaw!"
+
+Lilly basked in the superbness of her mission of salvation.
+
+"No matter how much you disdain my influence," she replied, "everybody
+sees that a change has taken place in you. Mr. Leichtweg says you're
+always the first to begin work now. You've borrowed that great book on
+agriculture from the colonel--it impressed him tremendously--and Miss
+von Schwertfeger said a little while ago you always look so appetizing
+now. Yes, Mr. von Prell, I take the credit for all this, and if things
+continue the same way we shall remain good friends."
+
+"Apropos of appetizing," he said, "your neck beginning back of your ears
+is all covered with tiny, silky hairs. Do you know from what that
+comes?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense," Lilly exclaimed, blushing. "Why? Do you know?"
+
+"A wise man has theories. For instance, observe this plot of grass." He
+pointed to a clearing below them, through which a rill trickled, and
+which was closely grown with tender, juicy grass of a vivid green. "From
+the way it looks you'd suppose it was still spring. Until late in the
+summer that plot stood under water, and the spots that least often or
+never get dry grow the finest down--that's nature."
+
+Lilly was on the point of taking his botany lesson in earnest when she
+chanced to notice the wicked grimace he was making. Then she understood
+the shameless allusion and had to laugh over it helplessly.
+
+"Listen, baronissima, how about playing tag? We owe it to the
+circulation of your excellency's blood."
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when with a blithe shout she
+darted off down the slope, the bottom of which was lost in the purple
+darkness of autumn. But at the end of a short stretch she tripped over
+the Scotch plaid she had taken along and had refused to let Von Prell
+carry. She fell full length and he came just in time to help her to her
+feet.
+
+This having spoiled Lilly's taste for tag they mounted the hill like
+well-behaved children.
+
+Here their eyes could travel over a rippling lake of leaves far, far
+away. The beeches glowed a deep red, the maples danced in all the
+colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered with bright flames, the elm
+flaunted its flakes of gold, while the oak alone obstinately retained
+its green garb of summer.
+
+Lilly stared into the violet-veiled distance.
+
+The sun hid itself behind gold-rimmed clouds, from which fiery tracks
+descended to earth. A narrow band of scarlet edged the horizon.
+
+"Shall we sit down here?" asked Von Prell.
+
+"No, not here," said Lilly, seized with a vague dread. "I'll begin to
+cry here."
+
+She ran ahead of him, back into the woods, and came again upon the path
+leading along the rill.
+
+Here the darkness of evening prevailed, but the sun-charm in which they
+had been enveloped worked its magic here, too, and filled her heart with
+a happy devoutness.
+
+Oh, how happy she was! How happy she was!
+
+No fear and no danger so far as her thoughts could reach; and no danger
+from her own heart, for the man walking by her side was her friend and
+playmate, nothing more. He might not and could not be anything else. No
+secret wish, no distorted desire came from him or went to meet him.
+
+Everything uniting him to her was clear and transparent as sunlight.
+Even if the others must not have a suspicion of their intercourse, there
+was no sin in it--only salvation for him and laughter for her and youth
+for both.
+
+She felt a warm-hearted impulse to take his hand, but fearing to be
+misunderstood she checked herself.
+
+Thus they walked at each other's side to the spot where the rill was
+caught up in a rotting wooden conduit, from which it spouted with a soft
+singsong.
+
+Withered ferns covered the light green moss with their ragged red
+fronds and tired leaves came fluttering down out of the beech trees.
+
+"Let us rest here," suggested Lilly.
+
+"But it's damp."
+
+"We'll spread the plaid," she said eagerly, taking the blanket from
+him--he had managed to snatch it away from her--and threw it over the
+fern stalks, which cracked under the weight.
+
+She sat down on the right side of the plaid and invited him to make use
+of the left side, to keep his fine new suit clean.
+
+"Do you hear the vesper bells?" he asked. "We ought to be eating supper
+now."
+
+"We poor church mice, we have nothing," she laughed.
+
+"Who told you so?" he asked, triumphantly producing a small paper
+package from his pocket, which contained a mashed, crumbly piece of
+cake. They laid it between them and ate the morsels from their hollowed
+hands, laughing all the while. The cake tasted like sweet wine, and
+Lilly felicitously hit upon its correct name, punch-tart, of which she
+was especially fond.
+
+"The English call it tipsy-cake," he explained. "It quite befuddles
+one."
+
+"That amount of intoxication I'll risk," she laughed, and threw herself
+on her back, folding her hands behind her head.
+
+She lay there a time without moving and looked up to the sky, of which
+jagged oval bits shimmered through the foliage. Rosy flakes swam in the
+opalescent ether, and way beyond appeared the vault of another heaven,
+which in some places burst through the nearer sky like a deep blue
+foreboding.
+
+Lilly stretched her arms upward yearningly.
+
+"Do you want to catch the larks?" he asked.
+
+No, not that, but she would like to have one of the falling leaves.
+
+They kept dropping, dropping from the boughs like birds with broken
+wings, and fluttered over the ground in little spirals, as if undecided
+where to rest.
+
+"We'll see to which of us the first one comes," he said, and also
+stretched himself on his back.
+
+"The one to whom a leaf comes first will be blessed with a great piece
+of good fortune," she added.
+
+They lay still and waited.
+
+At last one floated toward him and prepared to settle on his nose.
+
+But he would not permit this--hers must be that great piece of good
+fortune--and he blew the leaf back to her.
+
+She in turn was too proud to accept so munificent a gift and blew it
+back to him.
+
+Thus laughing and tossing themselves about, they kept the leaf whirling
+between them, and suddenly in the heat of the struggle their lips
+touched--touched and would not separate.
+
+The next instant they held each other in close embrace, and the instant
+after she was his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rill purled, the leaves fell as before. But a fiery mist lay upon
+the earth, and all over small suns winked rainbow coloured eyes.
+
+Why had it happened?
+
+She fell back without thinking and noticed that the heavens above were
+also clothed in fire.
+
+Her comrade sat beside her with his back curved like a berated schoolboy
+and rubbed his nails against one another.
+
+"Oh, let's go home," said Lilly, downheartedly.
+
+"As my lady commands," he replied, grotesquely respectful again.
+
+She laughed a weary, mirthless laugh.
+
+Apparently he was concerned with getting rid of what had happened as
+speedily as possible.
+
+"Oh, now it's all the same," she sighed; "now we can quite calmly call
+each other by our first names."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+First came dread, the same senseless dread that had dominated Lilly's
+being before her engagement. It stiffened her limbs, bound her arms to
+her body, crippled her knees, beat against the walls of the veins in her
+neck and created a black void in her brain.
+
+But after she had gone through the first meeting with Von Prell and
+nothing fateful occurred, her fear died down and what remained was a
+searching attentiveness, a readiness to jump aside at the least sign of
+danger, a tense anticipation of ticklish questions to be answered
+properly and pitfalls to be avoided with a crafty assumption of
+innocence.
+
+The colonel noticed nothing--he, the most suspicious of married men,
+with the keenest scent, who harboured the least illusions concerning the
+opposite sex, he noticed nothing. He even believed the headache myth and
+lavished mocking yet tender pity upon her, while he sat at her bedside
+laughing and helping her change the compresses that Miss von
+Schwertfeger had solicitously prepared.
+
+It was more difficult for Lilly to endure the woman's caresses. Behind
+them lurked a squinting pair of eyes, shy, heedful, and endeavouring to
+look harmless, while, in spite of themselves, revealing a greedy desire
+to know.
+
+The anxiety that so far as the colonel was concerned gradually lulled
+itself to sleep, grew sharper with regard to the self-sacrificing
+friend, who at any moment might become her enemy and betrayer.
+
+Lilly did not dare to cry until night time, when she felt sure of being
+alone. She would jump out of bed to wash her eyes, go back to bed again
+and cry until sleep took her in its soothing arms.
+
+It was not shame, nor regret, nor longing love. It was a feeling of
+infinite solitariness, it was a straying about in perplexity.
+
+"What will happen now?"
+
+For something must surely happen--confession, convent, flight together,
+suicide together, or one of all those events described in Mrs.
+Asmussen's books as following upon so atrocious a deed.
+
+The week passed.
+
+Lilly had arisen from her sick bed several days before, but she had not
+seen Von Prell. She could discover no signs of him, even when she locked
+all the entrances to her room and rushed to the window for a glimpse of
+him.
+
+All the while the colonel kept recommending horseback riding. There was
+Von Prell to take her and the exercise would do her good.
+
+At last, Saturday at dusk, she felt she had to yield--they would meet at
+dinner the next day at any rate.
+
+The horses were pawing before the door.
+
+The moment for the meeting before which she had recoiled had arrived
+with its threat of fresh dangers.
+
+When she saw her friend ascend the terrace steps in his high, shiny
+riding boots, looking pale and thin, and moving as if by springs to
+display his counterfeit respect, something within her suddenly turned
+numb.
+
+"Why, that young man there is an utter stranger," she felt. "He doesn't
+concern you in the least--you are looking upon him for the first time in
+your life."
+
+They rode out of the gate.
+
+The colonel had gone to the stables, but Miss von Schwertfeger stood on
+the terrace with her hands clasped and looked after them.
+
+The road, muddy with recent rains, plashed under the horses' hoofs and a
+cold evening wind crinkled the winter wheat. A yellow sheen hiding the
+poverty-stricken sun glimmered behind the ragged birch boughs.
+Everything looked sad and weary. It even seemed a vain task to have
+sowed the winter wheat.
+
+They trotted on side by side in silence--a long, long series of anxious
+moments.
+
+"He must speak some time," thought Lilly, biting her tongue till it
+bled.
+
+He kept his eyes fixed undeviatingly upon the road ahead, making only
+slight movements of his right hand from time to time to adjust his
+reins.
+
+"He'll call me 'my lady' again," she thought, and felt ashamed in
+advance for both of them.
+
+Finally she took heart and spoke to him.
+
+"Do walk your horse," she said, almost crying.
+
+"Of course, comrade," he replied, and reined in his chestnut.
+
+"Comrade! Comrade!" she burst out, and passionately searched his eyes
+with hers.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as always when he feared a scolding, and said
+nothing.
+
+"Say something, won't you?" she screamed, quite beside herself.
+
+"What should I say?" he queried, making a little gesture, as if to
+scratch his head. "It's a nasty business. We know it." And muttering to
+himself, he repeated, "Nasty business, nasty business!"
+
+"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cried.
+
+"My dear friend," he replied, "I am small, my heart is small. It's not
+a suitable spot for harbouring great anguish of the soul."
+
+"Pshaw, who's speaking of anguish of the soul? But what's to become of
+us, that's what I should like to know."
+
+"As soon as I come into possession of an unencumbered manorial estate,"
+he replied with a gesture of invitation, "a castle, stables, vehicles
+and other animate and inanimate things thereunto appertaining, I shall
+take the liberty of applying to your husband for your hand."
+
+This completely robbed Lilly of her self-control.
+
+"If you keep on making such jokes," she screamed, bursting into tears,
+"I'll ride to death, now, before your very eyes."
+
+"A difficult thing to do with that well-behaved nag of yours."
+
+Lilly was at her wits' end and simply let the tears course down her
+cheeks in silence.
+
+At last he changed his tone.
+
+"Well, well, child," he said, "be sensible for a change. All I want to
+do is tickle the superfluous tragedy out of your soul. And as soon as
+you make a glad face again I'll try to give the matter most serious
+consideration."
+
+Lilly wiped her tears away with the flap of her riding gauntlet and
+smiled at him obediently.
+
+"Fine," he praised her. "'Twas not idle in the poet to write '_O weine
+selten, weine schwer. Wer Tränen hat, hat auch Malheur._' I'll tell you
+something. We two pretty orphans were exactly meant for each other and
+we've been brought together here in this enchanted castle. But we should
+have _had_ to meet, no matter where, even if we hadn't been two hearts
+that beat as one long before. To be accurate, the colonel married us
+right at the beginning, and the only shame is that your marriage
+contract with him wasn't drawn up accordingly. But that's not to be
+altered, and we shall have to get around the matter in secret ways. See
+here, child, we both are headed in the same direction on the sea of
+life. We have the same to win and the same to lose. So cheer up! Go it!
+We're ragtag and bobtail both of us, at any rate."
+
+"I'm not ragtag and bobtail!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "I have pride and
+a sense of honour, and even if I have sinned a thousandfold, I know how
+to die for my sins."
+
+"It's not so easy to die. Usually the opportunity is lacking, and when
+the opportunity once presents itself we show it a clean pair of heels."
+
+Lilly felt a hot desire to protect him against the self-degradation in
+which he indulged.
+
+"You don't believe what you say," she cried. "You are the boldest, the
+most daring of men. I know you are. Without a moment's hesitation you
+would face death for the sake of your honour. If you would only summon
+all your strength the whole world would lie at your feet. I will always
+keep reminding you of that. I will work over you until you get back
+belief in yourself, until you feel you are on the upward road. I will
+share all your hardships, all your temptations, and I will protect you
+from all evil. For what should I be here if not for you?"
+
+She felt she was so completely his that she could have thrown herself at
+his horse's hoofs; and when she recalled the first moments of their
+meeting that day she could scarcely realise why he had seemed so
+repulsive and alien.
+
+"You're a touching creature," he replied. "It's really lucky the
+creepers on your balcony are so thoroughly knit together."
+
+She started.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she faltered, oppressed by a foreboding of
+ill.
+
+"And lucky the ladder was left there. It can be leaned against the
+balcony and the vines can break all they want to, even Miss von
+Schwertfeger wouldn't notice anything amiss. Well?"
+
+He blinked his silvery lids at her enticingly.
+
+She did not know where to turn to hide her face from his gaze, she felt
+so ashamed.
+
+"I'll never belong to you again," she cried. "I swear I won't by all the
+saints! I should be a thing of loathing to myself. As for you, I should
+utterly despise you. Pah!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Pity to lose the opportunity," he observed, and turned the horses'
+heads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He appeared at dinner the next day, virtuous in his frock-coat and black
+necktie. He strutted and scraped and bowed, pursed his lips in
+extravagant respect, and scarcely dared to take the demitasse from her
+hand.
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes passed between the two, watching and
+questioning.
+
+Late that Sunday night the following occurred:
+
+The colonel had gone off to town, Miss von Schwertfeger had retired to
+her room, and Lilly sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown brushing
+her hair.
+
+Suddenly she heard a gentle tapping at the window, as if the autumn wind
+were blowing a twig against the closed shutter. But the action of the
+wind is irregular, and this sound kept time--now a little louder, now a
+little softer--and recurred at even intervals.
+
+It frightened her, and she wanted to run down to Miss von Schwertfeger;
+but she bethought herself in time. She hastily put on her dressing gown,
+cautiously raised the window, and opened the shutters the least bit.
+
+At first she saw nothing.
+
+There were no stars in the heavens and the whole of the lodge seemed
+buried in darkness. Then she thought she saw a staff waving up and down
+close to the shutter.
+
+She opened the shutter an inch wider and recognised--the pea-shooter.
+
+Now she knew what was up.
+
+She jumped back and drew the bolt. Then threw herself back in bed, where
+she lay holding her fingers in her ears. But when she withdrew them she
+again heard that short, regular tapping, which now rose almost to a
+knocking.
+
+The nightwatch, who made the rounds of the court and park once an hour,
+need only find the ladder leaning against the balcony and all was lost.
+
+Her fright deprived her of her senses.
+
+Trembling in every limb, she ran into her dressing room, where there was
+no light, and opened the balcony door about half an inch. Through the
+crack she whispered into the darkness:
+
+"Go away, and never try such a thing again."
+
+Then she listened with her ear to the opening.
+
+Nothing to be seen or heard.
+
+But when she wanted to close the door it would not go shut. She groped
+along the crack in search of the obstacle, and came upon a round,
+hollow, wooden something, which an invisible hand had shoved there.
+
+The wretched pea-shooter!
+
+She moaned and covered her face with her hands, and the next moment was
+hanging in his arms in a half swoon.
+
+After that evening he had her completely in his power--defenceless,
+without a will of her own, at the mercy of his wishes and whims.
+
+It was not happiness. She experienced scarcely a single transport of
+feeling. That came later, when she had conquered her horror of the
+monstrous deed, and her fear of discovery had weakened. Nothing occurred
+to disturb them, and Lilly expanded in a sense of defiant security.
+
+Then it was a blissful sailing over awful abysms, a delirium of the
+senses, a nebulous ecstasy, a delightful writhing under lacerating
+blows, an ebb and flow of magnanimous scorn of self and blasphemous
+prayers.
+
+Laughter came again. Not the old simple laughter that had dominated the
+play of her spirit until within a short time before. No, this laughter
+was sardonic exultation, the exultation of the hounded thief, who
+carries his booty off to security, behind the backs of his pursuers.
+
+Lilly also found reasons for justifying herself.
+
+"I am merely fulfilling my destiny. I am now getting back the possession
+which fate promised to me and which the old man so long kept from me."
+
+In addition there was a redeeming element in all she did, consecrating
+the most arrant deception and endowing it with purity. This was the
+consciousness that he was being saved. Under the spell of a lofty love
+he would learn to scorn vulgar escapades and, borne on the wings of a
+woman's expiating favour, he would rise to the heights on which men and
+heroes dwell.
+
+With these thoughts she drugged her conscience each time; and when he
+lay in her arms she gave them whispered expression--the doors were not
+heavy and all sounds must be muffled.
+
+He laughed and kissed the words from her mouth. If she grew uneasy and
+demanded pledges, he vowed the stars out of the heaven.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger now never stayed in Lilly's room later than
+eleven o'clock. This was the hour he might come, and by half past one he
+had to be gone.
+
+Of course he had to confine his visits to the evenings when the colonel
+went to town. On account of the time the trains ran, the colonel could
+not possibly return before two. Besides the carriage could be heard at
+some distance.
+
+Before Walter left he had to unlock the door to the colonel's room, and
+smoke a cigarette to rid the atmosphere of the stable and leather smell
+he brought with him from his own room. For it often happened that the
+colonel stuck his head in before going to bed; or, if the wine had
+loosened his tongue, he would even awaken Lilly, seat himself at her
+bedside, laugh, cast about his dagger glances pick his yellow teeth, and
+tell the juiciest stories which had arrived fresh from the Berlin
+centres of obscenity and made the rounds of his club in town.
+
+Lilly played the drowsy pussy, and purred and yawned She began to feel
+so secure that once she actually fell asleep right in the middle of a
+laugh.
+
+Oh, if only there had been no Miss von Schwertfeger!
+
+Not that Miss von Schwertfeger had noticed anything. The horrors of such
+a possibility were inconceivable. But her restless, hasty comings and
+goings, the almost anxious greed with which she pried about, gave
+sufficient cause for concern.
+
+She looked very pale and worn, while the fleshy region about her mouth
+and her sharp, scenting nose glowed a still deeper red.
+
+You might suppose she tippled in secret. But such thing would be bound
+to leak out, and at table scarce a drop passed her lips.
+
+"Let her do whatever she wants to," thought Lilly, "if only she doesn't
+come spying on me as she did on Katie."
+
+And sometimes it occurred to Lilly that she herself was no better than
+the poor maid Katie, whom they had chased from the castle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It was shortly before midnight one evening late in November.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger had said good-night, and _he_ was sitting at
+Lilly's pillow wet and frozen through. He had been standing in the
+chilly drizzle a long time before the signal agreed upon--two rattles of
+the shutter bolt--had summoned him to her room.
+
+Now, everything was serene. The entire house was asleep; the watchman
+had made his rounds, and the ladder, which Von Prell drew up after him
+for greater security, reposed peacefully on the balcony.
+
+The blue-shaded chandelier bathed the warm, perfumed room in the light
+of a summer evening. Drops of rain splashed softly against the shutters,
+and the November wind whined like a beggar.
+
+Lilly lay comfortably under her blue silk quilt, holding his hand and
+dreaming up into his face, which, even in moments of self-abandon,
+retained its expression of abashed roguery. She saw the freckled bridge
+of his nose, the white-lashed, blinking eyes, the peaked chin covered
+with stubble and almost hidden by the green collar of his working
+jacket. He could no longer smarten himself for her sake. His housemates
+might notice the change.
+
+They did not say much to each other. If only he was with her, he who
+belonged to her in life and death, who like herself had been cast astray
+in this strange world.
+
+She drew his head down and stroked his forehead smooth from lack of a
+man's cares, and wiped away a few drops still clinging to his temples.
+
+The clock on the wall struck twelve softly, the hanging lamp swung back
+and forth, casting long sliding shadows on the ceiling, like the shadow
+of a rocking cradle, or like great raven's wings flitting to and fro
+inaudibly.
+
+Suddenly from the court came the rumble of carriage wheels, whether in
+arrival or departure they could not determine. Both started up and
+listened and looked at the clock.
+
+Twelve--impossible! The horses were never harnessed before quarter to
+two. They would have to wait entirely too long at the station.
+
+Perhaps it was the milkman who had been delayed at the railroad in
+getting his cans.
+
+They calmed down.
+
+A long, precious hour was still ahead of them, rich in care-free
+pleasures and oblivion.
+
+To express his triumph Von Prell sucked in his cheeks and rounded his
+eyes.
+
+With a luxurious smile Lilly put out her arms and drew herself up to
+him.
+
+At that instant three short, sharp raps sounded on the door opening into
+the corridor, and Miss von Schwertfeger called:
+
+"Open the door, Lilly! At once!"
+
+Walter jumped to his feet.
+
+When Lilly looked around he had already left the room.
+
+She felt a ringing in her ears, a dull desire to let herself sink down;
+but renewed raps at the door tore her out of bed and insisted upon her
+turning the key.
+
+Before she could stow herself under the covers again to conceal her
+overwhelming shame, she noticed Miss von Schwertfeger look about the
+room hastily, make a dash for something round and grey unostentatiously
+lying in a corner--Lilly did not realise it was Walter's cap until
+later--shove back the bolt of the door to the colonel's room, and then
+in sudden transition to tranquillity seat herself alongside Lilly's
+pillow.
+
+"Be careful not to cry," Lilly heard her say; and that instant the
+colonel's step resounded in the corridor.
+
+"Well, well, so late! How time does fly when you talk!" cried Miss von
+Schwertfeger for the benefit of the colonel before he entered. Her voice
+expressed endless astonishment.
+
+There he stood disagreeably surprised, it seemed, not to find his young
+wife alone.
+
+"Where did you drop from all of a sudden, colonel? You didn't order a
+special train, did you? You couldn't have flown here either. At least
+I've never observed that you possess the art of flying, have you Lilly
+dear? Poor Lilly's lying there perfectly stiff with surprise."
+
+Thus Miss von Schwertfeger talked against time, evidently trying to
+secure a few moments for Lilly in which she might pull herself together.
+
+And the colonel willy-nilly had to render account. On the way to the
+station it had occurred to him that one of the neighbours--he mentioned
+the name--was celebrating his birthday that day. So he drove over to his
+place instead of going to town.
+
+"Well," said Miss von Schwertfeger, "the greatest marvels have the
+simplest explanations. Good-night, dear, I hope you sleep well and get
+rid of that headache of yours."
+
+The colonel pricked up his ears.
+
+"If she has a headache, why didn't you let her go to sleep long ago?"
+
+When once aroused, not the least inconsistency escaped his attention.
+But Miss von Schwertfeger was his match, and rejoined without an
+instant's hesitation:
+
+"She wanted compresses again, but I thought it better simply to hold my
+hand to her forehead. She was just about to go to sleep; and we ought
+not to disturb her any more. Don't you agree with me, colonel?
+Good-night, colonel."
+
+With that she extinguished the lights.
+
+Lilly wanted to cry to her:
+
+"Stay here, stay here, he'll choke me."
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger was already out in the corridor; and she had
+done such excellent preliminary work that the colonel after a brief "I
+hope you feel better," to Lilly, left the room without further question.
+
+Had he remained, the game might have ended in a nervous breakdown.
+
+Lilly lay in bed paralysed by a dull fright, listening now for sounds in
+the colonel's room, now to the wailing of the wind, interrupted for
+three or four seconds by a very, very soft rustle.
+
+That was the ladder gliding over the rail as Walter let it down from the
+balcony. So long as he had seen the light in Lilly's room, he had wisely
+remained on the balcony. She could hear him remove the ladder and set it
+where it belonged. Now at length, now that she felt they were both
+secure, came a shuddering realisation of what had happened, accompanied
+by a desire to call out and cry aloud.
+
+Anna von Schwertfeger! What had her conduct meant? What had impelled her
+to implicate herself in so sinful a deed? Wasn't she risking her name,
+her existence, the reward of many years' labour? How had Lilly, wretched
+sinner that she was, come to deserve so great a sacrifice? Her heart
+expanded in gratitude. She could no longer endure lying in bed. She
+would have to go down and thank Anna forthwith.
+
+She dressed without making a sound, took the precaution to bolt the door
+between the two bedrooms, and slipped out into the dark corridor, where
+she peeped through the keyhole of the colonel's room, and saw him lying
+in bed already. The old oak steps cracked frightfully; but they had that
+habit even when no one was walking on them, and often kept up the sound
+of a tread all night.
+
+Light was shining in Miss von Schwertfeger's room. Lilly heard her
+sharp, hard steps as she paced to and fro.
+
+Finally she ventured to knock.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"I, Anna. I--Lilly."
+
+"What do you want? Go back to bed."
+
+"No, no, no. I must speak to you. I must."
+
+The door opened.
+
+"Well, then, come in."
+
+Lilly wanted to throw her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger's neck, but
+she shook her off.
+
+"I'm not in the mood for scenes," she said. Her trumpet-toned voice,
+which she muffled with difficulty, had lost all traces of sympathy. "And
+you needn't thank me, because I did not act from love of you."
+
+Lilly seemed very small to herself and very much scolded. Since the days
+of her thrashings at the hands of Mrs. Asmussen no one had ever given
+her such a reception.
+
+"First you help me," she faltered, "and then--"
+
+"Since you are here, you might as well answer some questions I have to
+ask," said Miss von Schwertfeger. "Close your dress--it's cold here--and
+sit down." Lilly obeyed. "In the first place: did I in any way ever help
+to bring about a meeting between you and that man?"
+
+"When could you have?"
+
+"That's what I am asking."
+
+"On the contrary. You weren't even willing for me to take the riding
+lessons."
+
+"Then, later, did I ever leave you without supervision while you were
+taking your lessons?"
+
+"Without supervision? Why, almost always you yourself were present."
+
+"Was it I who proposed your going out riding alone with him?"
+
+"You? Of course not. The first time we went without asking, and after
+that it was the colonel who wanted us to."
+
+"Was I careful to see that everything in your room was in order?"
+
+"I don't know. I think so. Why, even lately I've noticed you come to my
+room before you went to bed as if to say good-night."
+
+"You've probably taken me to be your enemy, your spy."
+
+"You wouldn't put yourself out for me very much, I thought."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger laughed a hard, dreary laugh.
+
+"What you say is very valuable," she said. "It proves to me that I made
+no blunders in carrying out my plan, and need not reproach myself for
+anything."
+
+"What plan?" asked Lilly, utterly bewildered.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger measured her with a glance of pitying scorn.
+
+"My dear child, I knew everything. I saw it coming from the very first,
+the moment you met him. I calculated it on my fingers the way I
+calculate the cost of a meal. I simply let matters drift. I could do so
+without dishonouring myself. Besides there was no use interfering. You
+were bent upon your own ruin."
+
+"What have I done to you," Lilly stammered, swallowing her tears, "to
+make you hate me so? I never wanted to oust you from your position. I
+subjected myself to you from the very first. I put myself completely
+into your hands, and now you do this to me."
+
+"If I hated you, you wouldn't be sitting here. You would probably be
+straying along some country road. I had you in my grasp and could have
+crushed you at least a dozen times, but didn't. However, I'll tell you
+the truth. I _did_ hate you, that is, before I knew you. I imagined you
+a sly, fresh little thing, who held off from the colonel in a pure
+spirit of calculation, until he adopted the extreme measure to which old
+libertines resort in such cases. But when I saw you, you dear child,
+without malice or guile, defenceless, and with the best intentions in
+the world to love the colonel and me, too, if possible, I had to back
+down--I and my hate. Then you became nothing else to me than a small,
+insignificant creature, which one uses so long as it is serviceable, and
+shoves aside after it has fulfilled its purpose. I am not concerned with
+you any more. You dropped out of the game long ago, and now the colonel
+and myself are playing it alone. I'll have to have it out with him, and
+then my work's done."
+
+Lilly felt nothing but dull, impotent astonishment, as if doors were
+being opened and curtains drawn aside, and she were looking into men's
+hearts as into a fiery abyss.
+
+"I thought you were so attached to him," she said. "I thought--"
+
+Suddenly it occurred to her that her first suspicion had not been far
+from the truth. This hardened, commanding spinster, whose beauty was not
+yet entirely faded, had found favour in the eyes of her employer some
+ten or fifteen years before, had then been neglected, and was now
+taking revenge.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger divined her thoughts, and dismissed them with a
+shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"Had it been that," she said, "I should have known how to acquiesce in
+my fate. And if I had still retained my place in the castle, I should
+have cherished it as my sanctuary. No, my dear, matters in this world
+are not so simple. There are even worse hells."
+
+Lilly now heard a story which filled her soul with horror and pity--the
+story of the house she lived in, the story of which she was the
+concluding chapter.
+
+The colonel, who had always been a man of violence and a mad voluptuary,
+had insisted upon taking in pupils in housekeeping under the pretext
+that when he came home on leave, he had to have youth and jollity about
+him. He reserved for himself the choice of the pupils. In this way only
+those came whom he had decided upon in advance. For a long time Miss von
+Schwertfeger noticed nothing amiss. But the servants began to tell her
+stories of secret orgies and mad chases on the upper floor, of how the
+colonel pursued girls clad in glittering raiment--the colonel had always
+liked transparent robes of silver. Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes were
+completely opened when some of the girls attempted suicide. She left.
+But she was poor and accustomed to command, and she could not endure
+subordinate positions. Dreadful distress was the result. The colonel had
+not lost her from sight; and when it seemed to him she had sunk low
+enough, he again offered her the position of housekeeper in his castle,
+promising she would have nothing to complain of. She crawled back to him
+like a starved dog. Soon he broke his word, and the indecent goings-on
+began again. But she no longer had the courage to resist. She learned to
+be blind and deaf when lewd glances were exchanged at table and screams
+and laughter penetrated to her room during the night. She even learned
+to keep curious servants at a distance, and throw a cover of concealment
+over the house's shame. Her relation to the girls became motherly.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," she interposed, "if he hadn't made the same
+proposition to you, saying I would take care of you."
+
+The fateful evening in which she had become the colonel's betrothed
+arose in Lilly's memory. While walking about her greedily, still in a
+state of indecision, he had spoken of a fine, aristocratic woman under
+whose protection she should live in his castle until she had grown into
+womanhood.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger went on with her recital. She described how rage
+at the disgraceful position she was in ate into her soul like a
+malignant cancer, how it finally took sole possession of her being to
+the exclusion of every feeling except the desire for reprisal. His
+marriage should furnish the weapons. She would be blind and deaf, just
+as she had been compelled to be before. Nothing else. She would simply
+let matters take their natural course.
+
+Thus she had acted until that night.
+
+And that night the sword must surely have fallen on Lilly and the
+colonel; but at the last decisive moment she realised her strength would
+not hold out. That young, good-natured, guiltless yet guilty wife, had
+become too dear to her. She could not sacrifice Lilly to her scheme of
+revenge.
+
+"I thought you said you hadn't acted out of love for me," Lilly ventured
+to interject.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger fixed her eyes on Lilly's face in an aggrieved
+stare.
+
+"My dear child, if you weren't a stupid thing, who has to sin in order
+to mature, you would have a better understanding of what goes on inside
+a person like myself. For the present be satisfied that you are out of
+danger."
+
+In a gush of gratitude Lilly threw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger, and
+kissed her face and hands; and Miss von Schwertfeger no longer repulsed
+her. She stroked her hair, and spoke to her as to a child.
+
+Kneeling at her feet Lilly confessed. She told how her relations with
+Walter had developed insensibly, how they had been old friends, and how
+he had really been the author of her happiness.
+
+"Happiness?" Miss von Schwertfeger drawled, and drew in the air through
+the right corner of her mouth, causing a sound like a whistle.
+
+Lilly started, looked at her, and understood.
+
+The question burned in her brain: "Am I better than I should have been
+had I allowed the colonel to drag me here without marrying me?"
+
+Eleven months had passed since that night when he courted her.
+
+She put her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger, and cried, cried, cried.
+It was so good to know there was a sisterly, no, a motherly, person in
+whose dress she could bury her tearful face. She had not experienced
+such easement since the day a certain knife had been waved over her
+head.
+
+The affair with Von Prell, of course, could not go on. He and Lilly must
+not meet even once again. Miss von Schwertfeger demanded it, and Lilly
+acquiesced without a word of protest.
+
+If only she had not had her mission!
+
+"What mission?" asked Miss von Schwertfeger.
+
+Lilly told of the holy task she had to perform in his life; how her love
+had awakened him to the realisation of a loftier, purer life; how she
+had to answer with every drop of blood in her body for his rising to
+better things and entering upon a noble, beneficent field of activity.
+
+It was Miss von Schwertfeger's turn to be astonished. She listened, and
+looked at Lilly with great, doubting eyes, then got up, and paced the
+room agitatedly, muttering:
+
+"Incredible! Incredible!"
+
+When Lilly asked her what was incredible, she kissed her on her
+forehead, and said:
+
+"You poor thing!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will suffer much in life."
+
+Thereupon it was agreed that Miss von Schwertfeger should speak with him
+once again, and the price of her silence was to be the breaking off of
+all relations between him and Lilly. They must not take their rides
+together, either.
+
+Lilly begged for only one thing, to be allowed to write him a farewell
+letter. She thought she owed this to him so that he should not harbour
+doubts of her and his future.
+
+Then the two women parted.
+
+Released, redeemed, born into a new life, Lilly walked upstairs,
+forgetting every precaution. But, thank goodness! the colonel was
+snoring.
+
+The clock struck four, and the shuffling of the stablemen already
+resounded in the courtyard.
+
+Before Lilly threw herself in bed, she cast a look of farewell at the
+lodge, and rejoiced that renunciation was so easy. She had not thought
+it possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+     "Dear Beloved Mr. von Prell:--
+
+     From what has happened you can imagine that everything between
+     us must come to an end. Yes, all's over. We shall never see
+     each other except at meal times. If you ask me whether I am
+     very sad, I will be brave and say, "no," hoping thereby to
+     assuage the pain of parting for both of us.
+
+     But easy or difficult--that's not the question. The main thing
+     is, our feelings should raise us to pure heights. True
+     greatness of renunciation must illumine our lives. Yes, I
+     expect you to show the greatness of renunciation. Our lives
+     after this must be dedicated entirely to recollections of the
+     past. Besides, can we hope ever again to find anything so
+     beautiful as those unspeakably exquisite hours we passed
+     together? I have given up thoughts of happiness, and you must
+     do the same. From now on my one sacred interest will be my
+     husband's welfare; and I ask you, with all the strength you
+     possess, likewise to labour at the reconstruction of your life.
+
+     Life is earnest, solemn, holy. I feel it is. The conviction
+     comes upon me with force, and has possessed me ever since I was
+     led back to the right path by a friend of mine. You must feel
+     it, too.
+
+     This letter is my last to you. Write to me once again. Oh, only
+     once. And stick the answer in the pea-shooter, which still
+     stands on the balcony. I shall have no peace until I know our
+     souls are united by the same ideal. Farewell, and at table
+     don't make any secret allusions to the past. You would merely
+     hurt me and make me doubt your good faith.
+
+     Ever with feelings of sisterly friendship,
+
+     Your L. v. M."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Dearest Friend:--
+
+     The profound emotions which have held me in their grip since my
+     interview with our honoured friend, have, if possible, been
+     deepened by your lovely letter. I feel a tremendous impulse to
+     accomplish by deeds of atonement that which has never yet been.
+     I am prepared to scorn the seven deadly sins. I will carry in
+     mind all the paragons of virtue from the young Tobias to St.
+     Helena, and will try to find that pure happiness in the great
+     renunciation you demand of me, which alone, they say, is
+     unalloyed with regret--an advantage which bears little weight
+     with me, since I am acquainted with that evil institution only
+     by hearsay.
+
+     Well, then, dearest, most charming of women, farewell. It was
+     _very_ delightful. I can swear to that without perjuring
+     myself. Should you require pledges for the future, I can
+     further swear that: 1, I will shun alcohol; 2, I will declare
+     war upon the female sex; 3, I will devote myself to the
+     encyclopedia of agriculture with inordinate, unalterable love.
+     Ha, do you smell the rarified atmosphere?
+
+     Once more, farewell. After I have climbed the ladder of my
+     hopes for the last time, I will lay it to repose under a wintry
+     grave of pine branches. When the time comes, may it awaken to a
+     new spring.
+
+     With a kiss on your slim, refreshingly large hand,
+
+     Your much improved,
+     Walter von Prell."
+
+Lilly found this letter the second morning after the great event in the
+shape of a pellet stuck into the mouth of the pea-shooter, which leaned
+innocently against the jamb of the balcony door.
+
+It did not provide her with unqualified satisfaction. There were turns
+of expression in it which raised doubts as to the sincerity of his
+conversion. Nevertheless, his asseverations were so plain and
+unmistakable she felt she might take the core to be sound. It was simply
+that he could not refrain from his wanton way of speaking, which the
+person who loved him would have to acquiesce in.
+
+She kissed the letter and stuck it in her bosom, to lie there warm and
+secure awhile before she tore it up.
+
+In the afternoon she took a walk about the grounds, and actually found
+under her balcony a long heap of pine branches from between which a few
+ladder rungs peeped at her familiarly.
+
+Rejoiced at this token of his pain she ran off to the park, now soggy
+from the autumn rains, and sauntered about, marvelling from time to time
+that renunciation was so easy.
+
+After all it was not so easy.
+
+She discovered it was not in the course of the next few days, when life
+began to lose its content and intensity, when the hours jogged along in
+dreary autumnal greyness, and the evening came and the morning came
+without a reason why.
+
+Moreover, she failed to find that support in Anna von Schwertfeger which
+she had expected to. Although her friend withdrew none of the promises
+she had made, yet a shadowy wall circumscribed her, which no insinuating
+love could penetrate. She seemed almost to fear that too great
+familiarity with Lilly would bring down upon her own head the sin of the
+adulteress.
+
+Lilly had much to suffer from the colonel these days. She, like the
+rest, now fell a victim to his attacks of fury. And what was worse, in
+moments of quiet self-abandon, she would suddenly feel his dark,
+lowering look fastened upon her, betokening many a thought in his mind
+which boded her no good.
+
+She began to fear he had gotten wind of her affair with Von Prell; but
+Anna pooh-poohed the idea.
+
+"The symptoms would be rather different," she remarked. "Such a
+suspicion would not pass without leaving a few broken chairs or lamps
+behind. My opinion is, he feels bored at home. He's hankering for the
+regiment, and holds you responsible for the change in his life. I
+sincerely hope he doesn't come to hate you on that account. In that
+event only two courses would be open to you: separation or suicide."
+
+Here was small comfort. And no less dispiriting was his hesitation to
+introduce her to the neighbours. Long before, Miss von Schwertfeger had
+declared Lilly's education complete. No colonel's wife or high-born dame
+could now find fault with her manners. But the colonel looked at her
+distrustfully, and deferred the visits from week to week.
+
+Lilly kept up bravely in all her tribulations. Faith in herself and,
+still more, faith in him, gave her peace and strength.
+
+She regulated her days strictly according to rule with a fixed
+occupation for each hour. She learned Goethe's poems by heart, studied
+Shakespeare in English, read histories of art, and lost herself in the
+mazes of the French Revolution.
+
+She took special delight in a large geographical work, in which there
+were many pictures of southern ports, tropical forests, and bald, rocky
+mountain ranges.
+
+There were also full illustrations of Italy--pious pilgrims on crusades,
+enigmatic churches, and slender-columned porticos, which filled her with
+an ardent longing to be there.
+
+When she travelled great distances into strange countries and looked
+about timidly to find her way back again, whom did she see standing
+there all of a sudden, blond, freckled, in a black and white checked
+fall suit, making deep reverences? "As my lady commands."
+
+The tears welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her one diversion was to stand behind her balcony door--without his
+knowing she was there, of course--and look over to the lodge through the
+openings in the vine, the last leaves of which fluttered like little red
+flags.
+
+Oh, she might be proud of him. When he sat at the window in his leisure
+hours he never let himself be seen without the encyclopedia of
+agriculture in his hands.
+
+He closed his shutters early every evening. In his frivolous days he had
+hung heavy portières at the windows, which, with the help of the
+shutters, prevented the tiniest ray of light from penetrating to the
+outside.
+
+Lilly doubted not in the least that his student's lamp burned until late
+at night, while he sat there over his book copying valuable extracts and
+soaring on the pinions of great creative ideas.
+
+She soared with him. She knew he could not lose his footing now. She had
+his vow, and he held her honour in his keeping. That would serve as a
+talisman, a guide on the road leading upward to a new life.
+
+A few weeks passed.
+
+He begged to be excused from coming to Sunday dinners; for which she was
+grateful to him. Fortune had favoured her still further by having
+bestowed a cold upon her that fateful night, as a result of which the
+physician forbade horseback riding throughout the winter. In this Miss
+von Schwertfeger probably had a hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once on a day early in December, the colonel, as if to spite his
+customary surliness, appeared at dinner in high feather. He chuckled to
+himself, his eyes danced and looked cunning, secret laughter, as it
+were, ran down his cheeks in rivulets.
+
+Lilly ventured to ask what was amusing him.
+
+At first he refused to speak.
+
+"Oh, stuff and nonsense, mind your own affairs." But he could not
+contain himself, and finally began: "Well, guess what happened to me.
+One of the men at the club said to me I'd better look sharp to my Prell,
+because stories were afloat that he kept knocking about in vile joints
+night after night and had even gotten mixed up in a nasty brawl on
+account of a hussy of a barmaid."
+
+Lilly felt an icy numbness creep slowly upward from her feet. Her limbs
+grew rigid. She smiled, and the smile cut into her cheeks like a
+sharp-edged stone.
+
+"At first, of course, I merely laughed at him, because, you know,
+there's only the one train to take going and coming, and lately _I've_
+been on that train nearly every day. No horse can stand twenty miles
+each way night after night, and the pocket money I give him won't hire a
+special train. That's what I said to the major; but he insisted. The
+younger gentlemen had told him; and it would be a pity if after all Von
+Prell had to be deprived of his uniform. When I got to the station at
+one o'clock, the business was still buzzing about in my head. I had a
+few moments' time, so I looked through the whole train--fourth class and
+all. Of course, not a sign. I did the same thing three times in
+succession. Well, I thought, it's a lie. And now listen. Yesterday, when
+I was just about to get into the train at this end, I remembered I had
+left my umbrella in the carriage. I can't get used to that piece of
+furniture. So I went back. The platform was already empty, but the train
+was still standing there; and when I passed the baggage car--sliding
+doors open--I saw someone on the opposite side jump out to the tracks
+and scamper off. 'Stop!' I called. But he ran and ran, into the woods. I
+was going to tell the baggage master, who was on the platform next to
+the locomotive, but Prell flashed into my mind. I said to Henry: 'Drive
+as if the devil were after you,' and we reached here in five minutes.
+But then, I reflected, he must have heard the carriage wheels from the
+path. So I went up to my room to hurry and turn on the lights. I wanted
+him to think I was in my room already. Did I wake you up, Lilly?" The
+colonel started. "How you look, Lilly!"
+
+"I?" she said, and smiled again.
+
+"She hasn't been feeling very well all day," Miss von Schwertfeger
+interjected hastily. "Besides, your story's very exciting, colonel. I'm
+all keyed up, too."
+
+"Hm," he muttered, twisting the end of his black dyed moustache,
+evidently little desirous of concluding his tale. But Lilly could not
+calm herself.
+
+"I must know, I must know," she cried, clasping her hands. She was
+beside herself.
+
+"Well, then," said the colonel, fixing his eyes on her, "down I go again
+in a jiffy--in ambush in front of the lodge--there he comes, stooping
+like a polecat--stands still--eyes my window--sees the light--aha, he
+thinks, all right. And just as he's about to stick the key in the lock,
+I tackle him by the collar."
+
+Lilly burst out into a mad laugh.
+
+"Isn't that funny, isn't that funny!" she cried. This time the colonel
+believed her.
+
+"Something funnier's coming," he continued. "'If you confess
+everything,' I said, 'I'll pardon you. But only on that condition.
+Otherwise you're off to-morrow bright and early.' Well, what do you
+think the rascal was up to? The good-for-nothing has a lady
+love--barmaid in the Golden Apple--where the sergeants and clerks
+resort. So, for the sake of bumming with her, he bribed a railroad
+official and actually went to town and came back as a piece of the
+king's baggage. Night after night rode in the same train as I did--each
+way. If _that_ isn't rank impudence, what--Lilly!"
+
+A pause ensued. Lilly experienced a sensation of swaying and reeling as
+if tossed on stormy seas, a buzzing and singing; at the same time she
+felt Miss von Schwertfeger press her hand under the table by way of
+warning.
+
+The colonel rose, took Lilly's head between his hands, and pressing it
+until she thought her ears would split, said:
+
+"It seems you _do_ need rest."
+
+With that he faced about, and left the room abruptly.
+
+"Now gather your wits together," Lilly heard her friend's disturbed
+voice behind her, "because after this he'll be on the look-out."
+
+Lilly wanted to throw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger's breast and be
+petted and comforted. But Miss von Schwertfeger, as if afraid somebody
+might catch her in too intimate a conversation with Lilly, held herself
+aloof, and said coolly, though in a friendly tone:
+
+"Excuse me, dear, I have something I must attend to this minute."
+
+With that, she, too, left the room.
+
+What now?
+
+Lilly stared into space. The remnants of the precipitate meal littered
+the table; the dark carved furniture cast black-edged rays from out of
+the room's wintry twilight; the brass chandeliers gleamed palely. All
+was as usual, and yet nothing was there, nothing but an awful,
+all-devouring void, an abyss which drew her into its bosom with the
+enticements of grappling hooks and huge tongs.
+
+She stepped to the window and looked out apathetically.
+
+The bare branches swayed in the wind, the ivy on the railing fluttered,
+even the arched stalks of the rose bushes, the heads of which the
+gardener had secured under heaps of earth, trembled and quivered this
+way and that. The world was writhing in the clutch of winter. The only
+still things were the leaves lying on the thin coating of snow which
+covered the ground; but the leaves were dead already.
+
+What now?
+
+If _that_ could happen, then the very earth beneath her feet gave way;
+then there was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no strength, and
+no fidelity; then you might as well throw yourself down beside the
+leaves out there and die.
+
+But before that--what?
+
+Dishes rattled behind her. No one had rung for the maid, but she had
+come of her own accord and was helping Ferdinand clear the table.
+
+Lilly thought of Katie and that other creature in whose arms he had made
+mock of her and her faith in him.
+
+She dragged her torpid legs up the steps to the rooms where she felt at
+home. In passing the colonel's door, she caught the sound of his tread
+as he fairly ran to and fro.
+
+She experienced not the faintest fear of him.
+
+"Let him run, if he wants to," she thought.
+
+When in her own room, she heard him give orders to have the carriage
+brought around immediately.
+
+"For all I care, he may stay here."
+
+She stepped out on the balcony.
+
+The iciness benumbing her neck crept into her arms and spread down to
+her very finger tips.
+
+There sat Walter, as always in his free time after dinner, completely
+absorbed in the great encyclopedia of agriculture, so full of zeal for
+study that every now and then he would pass his hand through his hair in
+a preoccupied way and without looking up--he hadn't so much time to
+spare, Heavens! no!--he would flick the ashes from his cigarette into a
+flower pot.
+
+In the face of this infamous game, which he played for the sole purpose
+of deceiving her, Lilly was seized by a wild, infuriated desire to
+denounce him, which completely robbed her of her senses. A stinging and
+pricking lifted her paralysed arms. The iciness gave way to a painful
+fever, which throbbed in her temples, and hung a red curtain before her
+eyes.
+
+She saw nothing, heard nothing.
+
+She rushed down the staircase, tore open the garden door, leapt down the
+stone steps, and ran at full speed straight across the lawn to the
+lodge.
+
+Whether someone spied her or not she did not care.
+
+The door to his room banged against the wall.
+
+She had not stopped to knock.
+
+A rank, pungent smell, as in a menagerie, assailed her nostrils.
+
+There he was, sitting at the window. He jumped to his feet. The grey
+daylight glided over his head.
+
+"He's had his hair cut brush fashion again," thought Lilly. "The
+dissolute life he's living demands it; the elegance of the dives demands
+it."
+
+"Good Lord!" he said, crumbling his burning cigarette between his
+fingers, "a pretty howdy-do!"
+
+"Why--? Why did you--?" she screamed at him. "You're a blackguard! Your
+word's not to be trusted! You're a liar!"
+
+"Confound it!" he said, and looked about helplessly. "_How_ will my lady
+get out of this mess?"
+
+"You broke your promise--the most sacred bond uniting us.
+You--you--threw it away on a barmaid--a barmaid, a creature who would
+hang herself on anybody's neck for a couple of pennies. You're a vulgar
+profligate! You're not worth a woman's having tried to save you--you
+don't _want_ to be saved--you _want_ to go to the bad--"
+
+"All very good and fine," he said, "and probably very saddening and
+incontrovertible truths; but will my lady please explain how she expects
+to get out of here?"
+
+"I don't know anything I am more indifferent about," she cried. "I came
+for you to give me an account of yourself. I am asking you to answer
+me--immediately--here--now--on the spot."
+
+"Certainly, my lady, I will without fail. But first--damn it! hell! Get
+away from the window!"
+
+He cast a sharp, all-embracing glance at the castle. Nothing suspicious
+to be detected at that moment, at least.
+
+Alarmed by his snarling at her in that way, Lilly fled into the interior
+of the room, which was low, dark, and ill furnished. Here the vile
+animal smell was still stronger. From where it came was made clear to
+her the next instant. As she approached the rear wall, something
+suddenly snapped at her foot, and two little circular torches gleamed up
+at her wickedly.
+
+"Down, Tommy!" called Von Prell, while Lilly recoiled with an
+exclamation of fright.
+
+So that was Tommy, the other member of the triple alliance.
+
+Lilly leaned against the arm of the old spindle-legged sofa. Its worn
+springs squeaked under her pressure and pricked her thumbs, and the
+thought flashed into her mind:
+
+"What am I doing here? What is it all to me?"
+
+Von Prell the while stepped from door to door listening.
+
+"If that old Leichtweg had happened to be in the next room," he said,
+"we should be dying a dog's death. But if you go this instant, the front
+way, into the courtyard, they might suppose you had come to ask
+something, and perhaps we can patch it up still."
+
+All Lilly perceived in his words was a sly attempt at evasion, and a
+fresh flood of indignation overwhelmed her.
+
+"First justify yourself," she cried. "Until you do, I won't go this way,
+or that way, or the other way."
+
+To enforce her resolve she dropped down on the screeching sofa, which
+was covered with a dirty grey horseblanket folded into several
+thicknesses for protection against the sharp points of the springs.
+
+He was compelled to yield.
+
+"Very well, then, look here--a fellow's a human being, isn't he? And if
+he's given the go-by in that common way--"
+
+"Common way?" faltered Lilly. "What was common in my letter? Didn't I
+tear my heart out and throw it at your feet, and didn't Miss von
+Schwertfeger--?"
+
+She could not continue. Wrath and despair choked her utterance.
+
+In the meantime Von Prell, who at first had been at a complete loss,
+arrived at the proper policy to adopt.
+
+"Yes, that's just it," he said, growing more aggrieved with each word.
+"Is a love like ours to be concluded with a lukewarm homily? And that
+Schwertfeger--did I deserve being dismissed by you like an asthmatic old
+dog through the intermediation of a third person, a horrid, disgusting
+creature? Isn't it enough to make a man desperate after all he's done
+for you?"
+
+"What--did you--do for me?" queried Lilly.
+
+"Well--wasn't I a self-sacrificing comrade the whole time? Wasn't I
+disloyal even to my old colonel for your sake, that fine old gentleman,
+who saved my life, you might say? You see, all that's no small matter.
+Do you suppose it didn't cut me to the quick? Do you suppose I didn't
+get the blues? And then to be fooling round here alone night after night
+with that dung-beetle, that Tommy--the beast smells, I tell you. So why
+not try to dull one's feelings? Shouldn't I--how shall I say?--deaden
+the anguish of lost love? Not even deaden it? It's a perfect mystery to
+me how you can demand such a thing of me. We speak different languages,
+my dear child--there's a yawning chasm dividing our natures--and you're
+even willing to risk our two lives for such mummery. As a rule, I'm
+_not_ an old aunt, but indeed, if only I had you out of this place."
+
+Throughout this long speech he had walked about Lilly in a semicircle,
+with one hand thrust in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, making short,
+jerky steps, which forcefully expressed his righteous indignation.
+
+Lilly sat on the sofa stiffly upright, mechanically turning her head
+after him now to the right, now to the left, and staring at him with
+great, uncomprehending eyes.
+
+When he stopped speaking, he drew a cigarette from the case and
+energetically beat off the superfluous tobacco with the index finger of
+his left hand.
+
+Lilly rose in all her height, leaving the sofa and the table next to the
+sofa far below her.
+
+"Listen, Walter," she said, "from this moment everything between us is
+at an end."
+
+"Why, wasn't it long ago?"
+
+"I mean--inwardly, too."
+
+"Oh, inwardly, too!" He made a little grimace. "With you that probably
+means if you have something in your stomach."
+
+When Lilly saw her love so ridiculed and mutilated, she could no longer
+restrain herself. With an outcry she ran from the sofa, and hid her
+face--anywhere at all--on the wall next to the window.
+
+"Get away from the window!" she heard him hiss.
+
+Oh, what did she care!
+
+In the extremity of his fright he took to pleading.
+
+"Just come away from the window," he said. "It was all mere twaddle. I
+simply wanted to make you laugh again, nothing more. Please come away
+from the window."
+
+She did not budge.
+
+To crawl off somewhere! To crawl away and hide herself and all her
+shame.
+
+She felt his hands seize her rudely.
+
+That, too! To suffer violence, too!
+
+She flung him off, wrestled with him, clawed at his neck--
+
+And suddenly--
+
+A whistling, a clash and clatter--shivers of glass flew over their
+heads, and a long, dark something, like the shaft of a lance, sped past
+them, knocked against something, rebounded, and fell at their feet.
+
+The same instant Lilly felt a rush of cold air on her forehead, which
+aroused her from the stupefaction of surprise.
+
+One of the two upper window panes had been broken.
+
+No living creature was to be seen. But the balcony door yonder, which
+had been closed a moment before, now showed a dark opening, and was
+swinging shut.
+
+"A narrow escape," murmured Walter, and stooped to pick up the
+mysterious thing from the floor, while the fragments of glass gritted
+beneath his feet.
+
+"The pea-shooter," Lilly faltered.
+
+"A mercy he didn't happen to have his fowling-piece at hand," said
+Walter, "else we'd be riddled into sieves."
+
+With the back of his hand he wiped away the sweat of fright standing on
+his forehead in bright beads.
+
+None the less he was a brave little chap, and knew on the instant what
+to do.
+
+He sprang to the wardrobe under which Tommy had burrowed, fetched out
+his army revolver, and tested all its parts. Then he said:
+
+"Now, please go into Leichtweg's room, and lock yourself in. The
+colonel's simply gone to load his gun. Then he'll be here."
+
+But Lilly refused. Her wrath against him had completely evaporated.
+
+"Let me stay with you, let me stay with you!" she begged, clasping his
+shoulders.
+
+"Impossible, child," he replied, with the old masterful lift to his
+brows. "What's coming is men's business."
+
+"Then I'll stand out in the hall, and receive him at your door."
+
+He bit his lips.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you take it that way, I can't help myself. Sit
+down, please."
+
+He removed the key from the outside of the door, stuck it in the lock on
+the inside and cautiously turned it several times.
+
+"Between loading and shooting," he said then, "there's a great big
+difference--but the devil knows."
+
+He took out his watch, and listened intently for sounds from the
+outside, while he counted, "a half--one--one and a half--two. Probably
+can't find his cartridges." Then commandingly: "Do sit down. You'll need
+your legs to-day."
+
+Lilly sank in one corner of the sofa, and he seated himself in the
+other, placing the watch between them on the bumpy seat. Both counted
+now with their eyes fastened on the second hand. "Two and a
+half--three--three and a half--four--four and a half--five minutes."
+
+Not a sound, save the wind howling in the bare branches.
+
+Then it seemed to them they heard the trot of horses starting in the
+courtyard and dying away on the other side of the gates.
+
+"Whom's he gone to fetch?" asked Walter. "We're not ready for seconds
+yet."
+
+Red suns danced before Lilly's eyes. The ceiling began to rise and sink.
+
+Walter kept on counting.
+
+"Seven--eight--eight and a half."
+
+Nothing.
+
+"Nine--nine and a half--ten--" Suddenly he emitted a faint whistle, and
+grasped his revolver.
+
+The front door grated on its hinges, steps resounded, but not the
+threatening, thundering steps of a vengeful husband. They were soft,
+hesitating, dragging steps.
+
+Then for a while nothing again--no sound, except the breathing of two
+persons--and someone else--on the other side of the door, it seemed.
+
+"Who's there?" called Walter.
+
+Now came a knock.
+
+Soft, broken, as if of trembling, failing fingers.
+
+"Who's there, in the devil's name?" he called again.
+
+"Anna von Schwertfeger."
+
+He jumped up and opened the door.
+
+There she stood, ashen-hued, red about the mouth, her lids quivering.
+
+"The colonel has just driven off to Baron von Platow. He will return in
+three hours. He charged me to tell you, Lilly, that when he comes back
+he doesn't want to find you on his premises."
+
+"And what did he charge you to tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger, without regarding him, took Lilly's hand.
+
+"Come. You haven't much time. We must pack."
+
+"But--but where am I to go?" she asked, helplessly, suffering herself to
+be drawn to her feet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she got to the door of the lodge, she saw the carriage that was to
+convey her from the castle already rolling up the driveway.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+She was Lilly Czepanek again.
+
+In the divorce proceedings there had been no attempt at dissimulation or
+concealment, and the case moved along rapidly. Lilly alone was found
+guilty, and, upon the colonel's deposition, was deprived of the right to
+use her married name.
+
+"There is nothing to be saved from the ruins," wrote Mr. Pieper, "except
+the jewels which I hope you diligently accumulated by following my
+advice and standing in front of fine shop-windows. The pearl necklace
+your ex-husband put about your neck on your wedding day--owing in part,
+I may now say, to my suggestion--which I will try to get back for you,
+is in itself sufficient to keep your head above water several years."
+
+The result of this letter was that Lilly took the pearl necklace, which
+after her flight she had found in one of her trunks among the laces and
+evening gowns, carried it to a jeweller, had him pack it up, and
+addressed it to Miss von Schwertfeger.
+
+She felt justified in considering the less valuable trinkets to be her
+personal property. She had already disposed of a considerable number of
+them, and what was left would scarcely suffice for more than half a
+year. Then poverty.
+
+But her material condition gave her little concern.
+
+Her regret for what she had lost was too profound, her consciousness of
+the shame she had undergone too lively, but that her future should not
+have been hidden from her perceptions behind a veil of tears.
+
+Yes, tears, tears--oh, she learned to shed tears.
+
+She learned to swallow tears like salt sea water; she sucked them into
+her mouth with her lower lip thrust out, she shook them from her cheeks
+like drops of rain. And they kept welling up again, finally without
+cause, even after the pain had subsided--awake or asleep, they just
+came.
+
+She had gone away that grey, windy December day just before nightfall in
+a trembling state of stupefaction without complaint, without attempts at
+self-justification.
+
+Gone away blindly--anywhere--simply gone away--in all haste.
+
+She landed in Berlin, the haven of all the wrecked.
+
+In that world where oblivion spreads its blessing hands alike over the
+righteous and unrighteous, where enticing possibilities flash and
+sparkle, illuminating the dark days of inertness and prostration, where
+regret over a lost past by and by becomes tense, desirous expectation of
+happiness, and where the god Chance reigns supreme--in that world of the
+unknown and forsaken, in which none but those who are both old and poor
+sink into nothingness, hopeless outlaws--into that world Lilly crept.
+
+Many a dreary month she knocked about in lodging houses where divorcées
+with lost reputations huddle together, reminding one of little heaps of
+decaying apples; where the tone is given by Chilian attachés and agents
+of mysterious trades from Bucharest and Alexandria. In a friendly way
+she avoided the confidences of companions in misery, who lavished words
+of comfort, and with mute disregard repelled the advances--physical
+advances as well--of her enterprising, olive-complexioned neighbours.
+
+After a while she began to look about for a position--something unique,
+something between a lady in waiting and a chaperon, which would not be
+incongruous with her former station and the quiet dignity of her
+bearing.
+
+But positions of that sort seemed remarkably scarce.
+
+And all she reaped of her endeavours were the tender attentions of a few
+old gentlemen who came to see her in the evening, and could not find
+their way out again until the door was held wide open for them.
+
+Discouraged, she gave up going to employment bureaus and the useless
+ringing of front door bells. But her expectations had not yet sunk to
+the level of those of a shop-girl or model in a dressmaking
+establishment. And they never would sink so low, because "general's
+wife," as she was branded, no matter where she went, was written all
+over her.
+
+In that seething sea of humanity she tossed about without so much as a
+straw to clutch at; except, indeed, Walter's letter, which Miss von
+Schwertfeger forwarded to her two months after her expulsion. The poor
+boy was now completely ruined. Nevertheless, his letter gave proof of a
+modest attempt to offer her some support.
+
+     "Dearest Friend:--
+
+     I'm done for. I've been shot. A mere trifle when it happens to
+     others; but when it happens to oneself, the consequence is, it
+     considerably lessens one's hopes of entering upon a glorious
+     career as head waiter on the other side of the Atlantic.
+
+     Nevertheless I thank fate for having been gracious enough to
+     lead across my path so good, so touching a lamb, one so filled
+     with the desire to redeem, as my baronissima.
+
+     You will readily understand, O dearest, supergracious woman,
+     that I in turn also feel a slight obligation to play the
+     redeemer, if only to preserve our souls for each other.
+
+     But "the how" presents some difficulties, to be sure. If I were
+     to recommend you to the care of my former friends, your future
+     would be settled. For in blissful hours leaves and virtues
+     still fall.
+
+     Therefore I descend a step to those regions in which a sturdy
+     Philistinism creeps on its belly before our coronets, even when
+     those coronets lie shattered on the ground.
+
+     In Alte Jakobstrasse in Berlin there dwells a respectable
+     manufacturer of bronze ware, a comrade of the reserves, etc.,
+     by name Richard Dehnicke, who feels he is indebted to me
+     because I pumped him for coin.
+
+     I am writing to him by this mail. Step boldly in among his
+     lamps and vases. The former, I hope, will brighten your nights,
+     the latter, daintily line your way in life, and he will not ask
+     the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of
+     beautiful women. Some queer fish there have to be in the world.
+
+     My address will be
+
+     Walter von Prell,
+     Street-lounger & Candidate for Fortune,
+     Chicago, First Stockyard to the Left.
+
+     P. S.--Tommy sends his regards. Before going I planted a ball
+     in his forehead."
+
+This letter, the last and only greeting from her friend, left Lilly
+untouched. Soon after, Miss von Schwertfeger wrote, he set sail for the
+United States with a crippled arm. Their love had deserved an honourable
+burial, even if its rapture had not been genuine, even if its lofty
+purpose had set in dirt and disgrace.
+
+"If only to preserve our souls for each other," he had written, the dear
+little fellow.
+
+The letter, however, offered a certain guarantee that in her hour of
+need, a helping hand would be stretched out to steady her. But the
+measure he recommended, she never, never thought of adopting. What she
+feared above all was that something which emanated from the eyes of men
+fixed upon her face in desire, that something which issued from men's
+lips persuasively, masterfully.
+
+She wanted to keep her fate in her own hands and go her own way.
+
+What that way was to be, she had not yet determined.
+
+So irresolute had sorrow and anxiety made her that nothing but a faint
+breeze would have been required to head her life in a certain direction.
+
+But no breeze blew upon her.
+
+Months passed. Miss von Schwertfeger ceased to write. Lilly's money gave
+out. The little treasure of trinkets dwindled rapidly.
+
+The lodging houses to which she moved grew ever more modest. Chilian
+attachés and Greek trafficers were replaced by bankrupt real estate
+agents and unemployed bank clerks, who wanted to solace her in her
+loneliness by spending the evenings with her. And the women who came in
+soiled kimonos to pay her neighbourly visits cast greedy glances at the
+few brooches, bracelets and rings she still had left.
+
+So Lilly determined to make an end of this life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+One of the best of the "best rooms" in Berlin which are to be found in
+houses having once known those renowned better days and which are let
+out to decent young women for thirty marks, including service and
+breakfast, was to be had from the widow Clothilde Laue.
+
+It contained red plush furniture, which embodied the acme of good taste
+at the time of the Franco-Prussian War. It contained a pier glass
+fantastically stuck from top to bottom with New Year's cards, cards of
+congratulation, and illustrated advertisements of soaps and powders. It
+contained photographs on the walls of actors once famous, whose fame in
+the meantime had faded no less than the autographs they had written
+beneath their pictures. It contained a washstand, whose marble top was
+covered with a tidy embroidered with the sententious couplet:
+
+    To keep your body clean, be sure
+    To have your conscience just as pure.
+
+It contained photograph albums, card-cases, a cigar clip in the shape of
+a windmill of olive wood, a green glass punch bowl, and a shaky pine bed
+modestly hidden behind blue woolen portières.
+
+It contained, finally, hung over the sofa in a gilt-edged glass case, a
+mysterious round creation. The thing consisted of six strips of paper
+braided together and radiating from a common centre. It was covered with
+gauze, beneath which the outline of pressed flowers could dimly be
+distinguished.
+
+It was in this best room on Neanderstrasse, four flights up, over a
+china shop, a piano-renting establishment, and a "repair studio," from
+the windows of which room an oblique view was to be obtained of the
+greenish grey waves of the Engelbecken, and into which a broad expanse
+of genuine Berlin smoky sky actually shone, that Lilly one day landed.
+
+Mrs. Laue was a woman of fifty, worn out by overwork, with a face like a
+dried apple, and great staring, tearful eyes. She circled about Lilly in
+incredulous admiration, as if unable to comprehend that so much
+brilliance and beauty had strayed into her home.
+
+The very day of her arrival Lilly was informed of her history. Her
+husband had been cashier and bookkeeper at one of the favorite variety
+theatres in Berlin, and twenty years before had departed this world,
+leaving her without home or protection. There was no rosy glamour to
+glorify tears wept in solitude, no comic songs to drown the cry of
+hunger.
+
+Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved
+to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by
+an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for
+making others to sell.
+
+After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and
+disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her
+"pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist
+in her field.
+
+In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and
+where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table--she
+herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time--she had worked
+for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and
+weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned--thanks to her renown as a
+specialist!--so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her
+treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month.
+
+Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers.
+
+Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few
+betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of
+unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine
+aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because
+she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists
+only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and
+"pearl necklace"--Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers--and other such
+things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are
+taken as a matter of course.
+
+Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She
+helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she
+encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held
+before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future.
+
+In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every
+day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There
+were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their
+fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the
+artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the
+hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated
+artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a
+pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had
+become vacant.
+
+The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift
+her jubilantly to the throne of mistress.
+
+More months passed.
+
+Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights
+became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because
+some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible
+vividness.
+
+But one thing she did not learn: to consider the brief span during which
+she had wandered on the heights as a mere episode that had interrupted
+her true, modest life like a caprice, a dream. In her consciousness she
+was and remained a sort of enchanted princess in the guise of a beggar
+until it pleased Providence to reinstate her in her own.
+
+She solicitously cherished everything reminding her of her vanished
+glory.
+
+The gala robes the colonel had had made for her in Dresden hung in Mrs.
+Laue's wardrobe; her underwear embroidered with the seven-pointed
+coronet filled Mrs. Laue's empty drawers with their blossom-like
+delicacy, and in a long row in front of the tall mirror in Mrs. Laue's
+best room lay the superb toilet articles of ivory and gold which had
+once been the pride of her "boudoir." These, too, still bore the
+seven-pointed coronet. Lilly would have considered it an outrage upon
+her most sacred rights had she had to part with them.
+
+And all the time she awaited the future. She still studied
+advertisements, and wrote letters applying for positions; but the
+advertisements were usually forgotten and the letters seldom mailed.
+
+However, feeling the need of occupation and companionship, she got into
+the habit of sitting with Mrs. Laue in the back room and helping her
+with her work. Soon she, too, was tapping, pasting, daubing, threading,
+and weaving just like her teacher. Having inherited taste and talent for
+everything artistic she soon outstripped Mrs. Laue. After having sold
+the shades Mrs. Laue would relate without envy how the patterns she
+designed and set together were instantly recognised and preferred.
+
+Lilly's ambition was aroused. She strove to create works of art. She
+could not toil enough.
+
+"If you wouldn't fool such a time over every little spray," was Mrs.
+Laue's criticism, "you would make more money than I do." After each
+transaction Mrs. Laue honestly settled accounts with Lilly.
+
+But Lilly was satisfied with the forty or fifty marks a month that her
+work brought in. Her newly aroused fancy flew toward higher goals.
+
+The dried grasses, the "grass flowers," as Mrs. Laue called them,
+charmed her especially. Their slender, aspiring stalks, the delicate
+grace of their branchings, the weary mourning of their hanging sprays,
+caused them to resemble tiny trees, weeping willows at the edge of a
+brook, ash-trees inclining over marble urns, or palms longingly rooted
+on parched rocks.
+
+Lilly dreamed of a new sort of art--paintings on transparent glass with
+foregrounds of dried grass; lamp shades and window shades, on which
+woods of flowering grass and ferns charmingly shaded pasteboard houses
+standing out in relief with their windows cut out to let light shine as
+if from within; fleecy clouds, glowing sunsets, ridges of hills in hazy
+outline, and dark blue rivers, across which the moon threw swaying
+bridges of light.
+
+An endless succession of pictures suddenly took form in Lilly's mind,
+and new ones kept coming and coming. She did not know what to do with
+all that wealth of imagery.
+
+Mrs. Laue, who for twenty years had unswervingly stuck to pasting her
+oiled paper and felt that every desire to abandon her modest work was
+heretical, warned Lilly with all her might.
+
+But Lilly was possessed.
+
+And one day she resorted to extreme measures. She took her arrow-shaped
+brooch set with six small emeralds to the jeweler, who gave her eighty
+marks. It was worth five times as much, of course. She used the money to
+buy polished cut-glass plates, which were held together in pairs by
+brass screws and could be hung at the window by dainty chains. She also
+purchased a box of paints, and while Mrs. Laue clasped her hands in
+dismay, she set to painting bravely.
+
+But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections
+of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors
+ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance
+and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained
+nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.
+
+Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the
+stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again
+took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with
+white silk ribbons.
+
+Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum
+silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that
+had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set
+free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in
+Lilly's outstretched hands.
+
+As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to
+oppress her soul that as her life went on--that which she called
+life--she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper
+every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a
+horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great,
+watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still
+shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of
+the grave.
+
+This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out
+of doors, no matter where--out into the world, into the arms of life.
+
+Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened
+her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young
+fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned
+brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way--all this
+filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
+
+A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty
+independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a
+helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy
+security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and
+felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten
+and obviously was in the wrong.
+
+Then the waiting--the waiting--the never-sleeping, ever-hungry waiting.
+
+For what? She herself did not know.
+
+But something _had_ to come. Her life _could_ not end here among those
+bits of oiled paper.
+
+From time to time the thought of the rich bronze manufacturer to whom
+Walter had recommended her rose to the surface of her soul as a vague
+craving. But the fervor with which she clung to this shadow terrified
+her, and she instantly chased it from her mind.
+
+A year had passed since Walter's letter had been written. It was much
+too late to seek help from him.
+
+So she waited a few months more.
+
+Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing
+and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round,
+slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses,
+glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she
+was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and
+readiness for love.
+
+The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy
+work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies
+to intoxication and flight.
+
+And at twilight, when she stretched herself on the sofa in a brief
+moment of leisure, and saw the blue flash of the electric tram flit
+across the ceiling, dreams came gently gliding upon her, resolving that
+burning expectancy into soft, half-fulfilled desires; a feeling that she
+had been saved stole over her soul like a thanksgiving, and that which
+she usually bewailed as lost happiness became nothing more than a
+nightmare from which a benign destiny had freed her.
+
+But such hours were rare. And they resembled the solacing mirage that
+arises before the eyes of the thirsty traveller, rather than the drink
+itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The winter passed in fog and rain.
+
+Now came the mild March evenings when rosy clouds floated like blossoms
+over the house tops. Then came spring itself. The freshly trimmed little
+trees on the open places put forth brownish green buds, which by degrees
+turned into pale bunches of leaves.
+
+Lilly saw as little of all that glad bourgeoning, that snowy florescence
+of cherry trees, that brilliant glow of the hawthorne as when she dusted
+the yellow powder from Mrs. Asmussen's bookcases.
+
+Mrs. Laue did not like taking walks. To her the idea of passing a meadow
+without gathering flowers, or a garden without thrusting her hand
+between the rails, was inconceivable; and she feared being caught in the
+act, an experience she had often had.
+
+Lilly for her part would not venture out alone, dreading the
+unrestrained crowd.
+
+Then came those hot, hazy, oppressive Sunday afternoons when endless
+throngs stream from the city to the suburbs, when the streets lie
+stretched out dead in all their length, and when the overcast heavens
+fairly weigh upon those who have been left to pant between the walls of
+the houses.
+
+On those afternoons Mrs. Laue would stick genuine rhinestone studs into
+her ears, would don a brown velvet dress with a black jet collar on the
+square-cut neck, and in this costume would pay Lilly a formal visit in
+the best room. The Dresden gowns would be taken from the wardrobe and
+carefully compared with the gorgeous dresses worn by the charming ladies
+of the proscenium box twenty-five years before. The faded pictures of
+long-forgotten stars would be fetched down from the walls and examined
+as to their charms. Exciting tales would be told of their own
+adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its
+modest worth.
+
+The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A
+hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood
+furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if
+polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again
+repeat the tale of her stale virtues.
+
+When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed,
+burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. From without she would
+hear the shouts of the merry-makers returning from the country.
+
+The next morning the pasting of flowers would begin anew.
+
+July came. She could no longer endure it.
+
+One Monday, while she was lying in bed and early dawn found her still
+awake, still waiting, her pillow wet with tears, the desire for life
+suddenly gripped her heart so strongly that she jumped from bed with an
+outcry, a jubilant exclamation, and finally determined: "I will do it
+to-day. I will take the difficult step, and go on a begging pilgrimage
+to that strange man."
+
+But no--mercy, no! Beg--she would not beg. Oh, she had long before
+carefully arranged all that.
+
+She would merely ask for a bit of advice, which an experienced
+connoisseur of arts and crafts could easily give without sacrificing
+more than five minutes of his business time. She would simply find out
+from him how and where she could learn transparency-painting.
+
+Whatever his answer, the foundations of a new life would have been
+laid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Was it a path of destiny?
+
+The street wore its usual appearance. Truck waggons rattled along; women
+doing their marketing crowded in front of the provision shops; young
+men, hastening by with portfolios or books in their arms found time to
+turn and look after her. Lilly perceived this as always with a sense
+partly of satisfaction, partly of chagrin.
+
+Was it a path of destiny?
+
+The throbbing of her heart as she walked along said to her, "Yes."
+
+She felt she was going to market to sell herself.
+
+Herself--everything left of herself; her bit of pride, her bit of
+freedom, her faith that she was one of the elect, her faith in the
+miracle that some day was to be accomplished in her behalf.
+
+The walk lasted nearly an hour.
+
+She lost her way. She asked the policemen. She stood in front of shop
+windows to look at her reflection--she was afraid of not pleasing. And
+each time she saw the soft, slim contour of her tall figure with its air
+of pleasant self-sufficiency, she drew a breath of relief.
+
+When she read the name of the street where he dwelt, she started in
+fright. She had secretly hoped she would not find it, and would have to
+return after all.
+
+His house presented nothing remarkable. A grey, four-story structure
+with a broad, unadorned square carriage entrance, across the full width
+of which was a scaffolding
+
+        Liebert & Dehnicke
+    Manufacturers of Metal Wares,
+
+was inscribed in gold characters on an enormous iron plate stretching
+along half the front of the house.
+
+From the opposite side of the street she scrutinised every detail, still
+oppressed by the question whether she had not better turn back.
+
+The second story windows were closely hung with dainty écru lace
+curtains. On the sills were snowy white porcelain pots filled with
+geraniums and marigolds. That part of the house looked better kept and
+more prosperous than everything round about.
+
+"That's probably where he lives," she thought, and felt a slight dread
+in the face of so much serene yet severe beauty.
+
+Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door
+with iron grill work, which was next to the carriage entrance and seemed
+to lead up to that awe-inspiring second story.
+
+But the door was locked, and before ringing she peeped through the
+grating. She saw a dark staircase solemnly lined with cypress trees and
+laurel bushes. In the background at the head of the stairs was a window
+glowing blue and red and throwing rainbow colors on a white bust in
+front of it. Lilly recognized the bust, having seen it in the display
+windows of the art shops. It was Clytie, whom she had always loved
+because of her gentle melancholy.
+
+As she looked upon all this her heart sank again. She seemed to herself
+totally unworthy to step into those formal, peaceful regions. So she
+descended the three door steps and entered the profaner carriage
+entrance, where several labourers in white overalls were busily engaged
+covering the bare brick walls with highly veined marble stucco.
+
+Men were at work in the yard as well. The round cobble stones with which
+it had once been paved were lying in heaps, and the ground was being
+covered with an ornate mosaic, of a light grey broken by white swirls
+and circles, like the flooring in ancient churches.
+
+At the back of the yard rose the bald brick side of the factory, which
+also was undergoing changes in accordance with the general beautifying
+scheme. Up to about the second story the wall was being set with yellow
+and blue tiles. They looked gay and festive, and upon the completion of
+the repairs the old smoky court would have the appearance of a decorated
+salon.
+
+"They're doing things here in great style," thought Lilly, growing even
+more timid.
+
+To her left in a corner of the court she saw a building to which not a
+drop of the varnish being used on the other parts of the establishment
+had been applied. It stood there with bare, dun-colored plastered walls.
+Next to an extremely plain flight of iron steps was a metal plate
+inscribed "Office."
+
+Lilly went up the iron steps and entered a badly lighted, dusty room
+divided in two by a wooden rail, on the farther side of which a half
+dozen young people were sitting at desks covered with spotted,
+threadbare felt. They all stared at her in astonishment. It did not
+occur to one of them to ask her what she wanted.
+
+Evidently a person like herself had never before been seen in the place.
+
+The group was turned to stone and did not regain animation until she
+drew her card from her gold brocade purse and silently laid it on the
+table. Then the six of them jumped up and tried to get possession of
+it. There came near being a row.
+
+But one of them, a tall, straw-complexioned fellow, who seemed to have
+some authority, chased the others back to their seats with a few furtive
+nudges, and bowing and scraping, said to Lilly he would immediately go
+see whether Mr. Dehnicke--and with the card in his hand disappeared into
+a back room.
+
+A few moments passed. Lilly could hear subdued voices through the
+half-open door.
+
+"Czepanek? Don't know her. Ask her what she wants. What does she look
+like?"
+
+The answer, which lasted several seconds, seemed to have been
+satisfactory, for the clerk came out and without further ado opened the
+gate in the wooden railing and ushered Lilly into the back room.
+
+At last _he_ stood before her.
+
+Stocky, middle-sized--shorter than herself--with a tendency toward
+stoutness. A round, well-kept face, good, greyish blue eyes, which said
+little; an arched brow, light brown hair brushed back smooth from his
+temples, a short moustache turned up abruptly at each end, probably to
+proclaim the lieutenant. Remarkably small hands and ears. Everything
+about him breathed tidiness and scrupulousness, though it would not have
+mattered if he had been less well groomed.
+
+He was taken aback at Lilly's entrance. His eyes grew round with polite
+astonishment.
+
+The consciousness that she had not failed to make an impression
+emboldened her, and gave her a sense of security. It was not in vain
+that she had gone through Miss von Schwertfeger's schooling.
+
+"I have come to you at the recommendation of a friend of both of us, who
+prepared you for this visit," she began, inwardly rejoiced to be able
+once again to play the _grande dame_.
+
+A mirror hung opposite, and Lilly regarded with satisfaction the
+discreet wreath of violets about her lilac turban, and the
+violet-coloured tailor-made suit. Her image looking affably from the
+frame reminded her of a picture by some portrait painter of high life.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke silently drew up a chair for her. An expectant distrust was
+to be detected in his eyes in place of the consternation of the first
+seconds. Evidently he did not dare to place her in the class in which,
+to judge from her appearance, she belonged.
+
+His head was set a bit obliquely on his neck, inclining to the left, as
+if he had recently had an attack of lumbago. This posture increased
+Lilly's impression that he suspected her.
+
+She looked down at her brocade purse, and acted as if she could scarcely
+suppress a smile.
+
+He became still more confused.
+
+"May I ask," he stammered, "who that friend--? I don't recall." In
+perplexity he turned over the visiting card his clerk had brought him.
+
+Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose
+her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots.
+
+"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having
+received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you
+to interest yourself in a lady who--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair.
+His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened
+to pop from their sockets.
+
+"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I
+received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my
+lady--"
+
+So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's
+consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.
+
+But so it could not remain.
+
+"I call myself Lilly--Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn,
+though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the
+assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.
+
+Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly
+to be read in his features.
+
+"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have
+gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why
+didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited--a month--several
+months--then I took to looking for you--in vain. I even thought of going
+to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of
+reserve--"
+
+Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.
+
+"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of
+ever having the great pleasure--"
+
+In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand.
+However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw
+she did not respond.
+
+Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was
+so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate
+aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of
+one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.
+
+"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your
+door in vain."
+
+"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by
+way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers,
+with everything I am and--" He paused. The word "have," which should
+naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man,
+would allow to pass his lips so lightly.
+
+"I will not make great demands on you, of course," Lilly replied airily,
+to put a little damper on his ardour. "I simply do not want to be
+without someone to advise me as to a way of earning my livelihood, and
+since--Mr. von Prell"--at last the name came out--"said I might place
+perfect confidence in you--"
+
+"You may rely upon me as upon Mr. von Prell himself."
+
+"That's not saying a great deal," flashed through her head, but she kept
+from revealing her thought by so much as a smile.
+
+"By the way, what do you hear from him?" he asked.
+
+Lilly blushed. If she admitted his silence, she laid herself bare,
+irremediably. So, not to appear forsaken and cast aside, she said:
+
+"On parting we agreed not to write to each other for the time being. We
+thought in the struggle ahead of us that eternal waiting for news and
+that eternal fear for each other would not leave us with the strength
+necessary for meeting the demands of life. But you probably have gotten
+a letter from him lately?"
+
+He started, and reflected an instant.
+
+"Yes--that is, no. Not lately. Sometime ago he wrote--he was getting
+along. He said he was about to make a career for himself. And he asked
+most urgently as to your whereabouts; in regard to which, of course, to
+my great distress, I could not enlighten him."
+
+This did not sound very likely. A moment before he himself had been
+asking for news of Walter, and now when she inquired for Walter's
+address, he had to acknowledge, stammering, that the letter had not
+contained an address and for that reason--
+
+It was quite clear he had fabricated.
+
+Probably he hoped to acquire greater importance in her eyes by
+representing his relations with her lover as still continuing. But since
+similar motives had led her to trifle with the truth, she had no cause
+for feeling angry with him.
+
+She now told him the purpose of her visit; described the delicate craft
+she had learned a few months before, the desire she had to perfect
+herself in it, and her helplessness when it came to practical matters.
+Might she ask Mr. Dehnicke to recommend some artist who could instruct
+her? That was all she had come to him for.
+
+He listened to her with professional interest, and acted as if he took
+her plans ever so seriously. But behind the mute thoughtfulness of his
+features lay something that did not please her. It was not pity, most
+certainly not. It was rather a holding back and seeking, then an
+increasing satisfaction, as if he felt he was gaining ground in the
+measure in which the helplessness of her situation became apparent.
+
+"A very easy matter," he replied, his manner less constrained than
+before. "There are several real painters among the artists who furnish
+the models for my business. One of them"--he turned the pages of a
+book--"Kellermann--the very man--and then--. However, we'll drop that
+for the present. There are other things to be considered in connection
+with your practising your profession which, it strikes me, are more
+important. So please don't consider me impolite if I put some questions
+to you."
+
+Lilly nodded assent.
+
+"What artistic training have you had?"
+
+"Well, you see, that's just it," Lilly replied, getting the better of
+her embarrassment. "Just because I never had any I should like--"
+
+He did not move a muscle.
+
+"What are your means of support?"
+
+She was silent. She felt as if her clothes were being drawn from her
+body piece by piece.
+
+"I need not tell you," he added, "it's not my intention to pry into
+matters that do not concern me. But since you honoured me by asking my
+advice--"
+
+"I still have some jewels," she said, looking at him severely and
+haughtily. "When they go, I'll have nothing."
+
+He nodded slightly, as if to say, "I thought so."
+
+"One more question: in what sort of a place are you living now?"
+
+"In the sort of place befitting my condition. Four flights up, with a
+poor woman, the one from whom I learned pasting pressed flowers."
+
+As she said this, her glance fell upon the mirror and showed her the
+image of the beautiful aristocratic society dame, who had condescended
+to bestow a visit upon Mr. Dehnicke, "comrade of the reserves," in his
+dark hole of an office.
+
+He rose, and for a few moments paced up and down between the desk and
+the door. He was so spruce and his clothes fitted him so snugly that
+everything about him cracked and creaked. In his polished rotundity he
+looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. He had a little bald
+spot, too. But the expression of his face remained serious, almost
+uneasy, as if he were weighed down by heavy thoughts.
+
+He came to a halt before her and his voice quivered a little as he
+spoke.
+
+"What I am going to say has its roots in the many years of genuine
+friendship that unite me to Mr. von Prell--"
+
+The mocking, condescending words with which Walter had recommended him
+to her, occurred to Lilly.
+
+"I passed so many delightful hours in his company. I owe him so much
+inspiration and--" He stopped. He owed him so much he could not remember
+it all on the instant. "I will remain in debt to him the rest of my
+life."
+
+"Who feels he is indebted to me because I pumped him for coin," was what
+Walter had written. Then there really did exist such touching creatures
+in the world.
+
+"But I am most grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me by
+bequeathing his betrothed to me, so to speak."
+
+"Betrothed!" The word had been uttered. She had not deceived herself. It
+frightened her, but she did not repudiate it. Until that day she had not
+even dreamed of considering Walter and herself bound to each other,
+neither herself, nor the poor little fellow who did not know how to care
+for himself, much less for a wife and child. But then--in the eyes of
+this man with his middle-class morals, that was the only justification
+for her bungled, ill-regulated existence. And not only in his eyes--in
+the eyes of the whole world--and, if she cared, in her own eyes, too. If
+she clung to the man who was practically dead to her, fastening upon him
+all her wishes and feelings, she would have a support for her entire
+being. She could ask for absolution and justification even before God.
+
+All this flashed through her mind with lightning rapidity while Mr.
+Dehnicke continued to asseverate his friendship for Walter, and look at
+her with his round eyes in undesirous adoration. Finally he came to the
+point.
+
+"In his place and for his sake I advise you most urgently to quit
+surroundings that do not suit you, and create an environment in keeping
+with your past. If you ever wish to realise your plans you will have
+to."
+
+"What has my environment to do with my art?" queried Lilly, shrugging
+her shoulders.
+
+"Well, in the first place you must have a studio where you can receive
+your customers--where you can show them who you are and the extent of
+your artistic demands, and what the real nature of your artistic
+intentions are. That is the only way of preventing your customers from
+treating and paying you like an ordinary worker."
+
+"But the customers don't come to me," she interjected.
+
+"They should come to you," he exclaimed, talking himself into a degree
+of eagerness. "An artist with self-respect doesn't take one step outside
+his studio to offer his wares for sale. You must treat yourself the same
+way."
+
+She mentally calculated the value of the rest of her brooches, rings,
+and bracelets, and rejoined with a smile:
+
+"Easily said."
+
+Mr. Dehnicke made a bold sally.
+
+"My sincere friendship for Walter"--now he called him by his first
+name--"gives me the right--how shall I say? to make provision, to--"
+
+Lilly saw what was coming and shut off further discussion.
+
+"I feel content where I am," she declared, "and until I have created
+with my own efforts the suitable environment that you so kindly wish for
+me, I do not feel I am entitled to make a change."
+
+He bowed. His friendly zeal cooled off markedly. But he asked for her
+address, so that he might know where he should send her the desired
+information.
+
+Lilly hesitatingly gave it to him, and added the request that in no
+circumstances should he come to see her.
+
+He bowed again, and his coolness became rigidity.
+
+But Lilly rejoiced that she had known so well how to keep him at a
+distance. Nobody in the wide world should call her a beggar.
+
+She therefore took leave all the more graciously, for she had not come
+to him in order to frighten him away forever.
+
+He was quick to profit by her warmer tone, and became ardent again.
+
+If there was anything else he could do for her--if she felt lonely--and
+required company.
+
+Lilly looked at his right hand, saw no wedding ring there, and smiled
+"no."
+
+He understood look and smile, for he said, hemming and hawing in an
+endeavour to conquer fresh confusion:
+
+"I live alone with my mother, but unfortunately I cannot take you to see
+her because she is sickly and since my father's death has withdrawn
+entirely from society. But I would be most careful as to the company to
+which I should introduce you."
+
+"I took that for granted," Lilly replied with amiable condescension. "In
+spite of that--thank, you, really--in the peculiar position I am in it
+is better for me not to mingle with people."
+
+She gave him a regal bow, held out her hand, and left.
+
+He followed her respectfully, and the six young gentlemen stood up in a
+row and curved their backs like their employer.
+
+With flushed face Lilly passed the partially completed decorations in
+the yard, and walked along the imitation marble entrance to the street,
+thinking, in mingled triumph and disenchantment:
+
+"No, that was _not_ a path of destiny."
+
+But she had suddenly acquired a betrothed. That was something, at any
+rate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures,
+enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about
+thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got
+great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and
+small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.
+
+He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions,
+like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung
+oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and
+their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.
+
+When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused
+light from above--it was so high it seemed a very part of the
+heaven--she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green
+unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was
+squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a
+narghile that had gone out.
+
+"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without
+rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."
+
+Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow,
+hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust
+from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.
+
+"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have
+gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen
+herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."
+
+Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day
+before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.
+
+"Now his manner will change," she thought.
+
+Nothing of the sort took place.
+
+"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are
+you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"--here she was "general's wife"
+again--"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like
+this comes along."
+
+"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly,
+who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.
+
+He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.
+
+"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver--dry referring
+to bread as well as to giver--_did_ say something to me day before
+yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of
+apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to--"
+
+When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into
+unrestrained laughter.
+
+"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy
+the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a
+treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the
+heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able
+to look a rose in the face again."
+
+Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic
+lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long
+before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to
+instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.
+
+"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked
+herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain
+matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I
+should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can
+afford to pay for such valuable services--"
+
+He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would
+probably look out for that.
+
+"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she
+replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that--" she
+grasped her parasol--she had kept her gloves on.
+
+"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few
+moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.
+
+"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.
+
+"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.
+
+"It is more important to me than the first. It is--I should like to be
+treated like a lady."
+
+"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be
+fine as silk, I tell _you_, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of
+fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best:
+superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar.
+Now select."
+
+This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that
+for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as a _grande
+dame_, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her
+court and took her as a "good fellow."
+
+However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she
+came he was wearing boots.
+
+He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild
+flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in
+her childish plan.
+
+He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which
+colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in
+planning new effects.
+
+"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will
+deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely
+conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean,
+of course, Dame Nature."
+
+While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or
+chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the
+centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.
+
+The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul"
+were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour
+bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out
+their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing
+trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs
+which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays,
+finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.
+
+And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty,
+half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the
+floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a
+riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless
+conception and a laughing ability to execute.
+
+One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a
+pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid
+camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead
+lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy
+chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock,
+while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.
+
+There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the
+woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.
+
+One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these
+paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on
+exhibit.
+
+"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he
+replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric
+lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but
+not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because
+there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from
+dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who
+must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for
+twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers.
+Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"
+
+"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"
+
+He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length
+on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large
+glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the
+ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.
+
+She declined, and pressed him for an answer.
+
+"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains
+weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my
+manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her
+corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here
+is the foam-born body. Begin--look and paint to your heart's content.'"
+
+Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his
+clasped hands up to her.
+
+"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have _I_ to do with all
+that!"
+
+"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible
+respect to--. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for
+freedom long enough--she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I
+can't sleep--then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady,
+who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and--"
+
+"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.
+
+After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor
+even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see
+her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous
+desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly
+had to forbid his ever referring to it.
+
+Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not
+suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on
+the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's
+opinion, was highly commendable.
+
+In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood
+over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark
+and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic
+and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within,
+constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an
+extremely early period in the world's history.
+
+Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had
+declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with
+those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to
+let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had
+visited him.
+
+Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from
+him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.
+
+But one day Mr. Kellermann said:
+
+"What the devil--the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming
+all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up
+here every day to see how things are progressing."
+
+Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly
+blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a
+degree of satisfaction.
+
+At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she
+could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and
+wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden,
+seven-pointed coronet--she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he
+had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to
+come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.
+
+His reply arrived without delay.
+
+Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to
+visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her
+wishes.
+
+And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.
+
+Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink
+carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the
+windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration
+and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had
+saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace
+blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and
+festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in
+the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and
+scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady,
+who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than
+gotten.
+
+Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.
+
+He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room
+from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and
+in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.
+
+How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him
+permission--he hadn't wished to appear intrusive--he would have waited
+even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated
+everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which
+did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty
+manner.
+
+Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having
+caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while
+felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the
+rôle of the "general's wife"--partly against her will--who does the
+honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.
+
+Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She
+said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the
+transparencies at the windows.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into
+exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh
+start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like
+monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.
+
+Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.
+
+"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I
+ought to show them to you first."
+
+He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:
+
+"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing
+them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by
+inordinate professional conceit, and it might be--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.
+
+Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only
+slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at
+the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his
+smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:
+
+"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies
+to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the
+buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I
+might even dispose of them as goods of my own."
+
+Lilly flushed with gratitude.
+
+"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have
+found customers for myself?"
+
+The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.
+
+"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed
+expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home
+worthy of yourself."
+
+"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the
+wherewithal."
+
+"That may mean years."
+
+"I will wait years."
+
+"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being
+an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified--"
+
+Lilly drew herself up.
+
+"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I
+might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the
+world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would
+merely humiliate me."
+
+She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of
+insult.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of
+fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.
+
+When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the
+following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been
+settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few
+moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent
+friend. It was his only opportunity--
+
+"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him
+to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak
+about my betrothed."
+
+"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat
+stirred when she uttered it.
+
+The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen
+and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in
+the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly
+tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very
+dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a
+courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls
+of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great
+actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their
+signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.
+
+Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee,
+the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order
+for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert & Dehnicke, Mfrs. of
+Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven
+transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."
+
+The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Now followed happy times.
+
+With part of the sum she had earned Lilly bought new material, and soon
+more sunsets glowed beyond woods of dried grass.
+
+When she lay on her bed during the hot summer nights, sleepless from
+overwork, she would give herself up to wild dreams of what she would do
+when her art had conquered the world.
+
+She would start a workshop, like Mr. Dehnicke's, employ about a dozen
+women with Mrs. Laue, of course, as forelady. Then hunt up her father,
+and transfer her poor crazy mother to a fine private insane asylum. What
+else? Oh yes, provide for Walter, certainly. Now that she felt she was
+his fiancée, and her future was his, this was her bounden duty. To be
+sure he must first let himself be heard from. But some day, Lilly knew,
+when he was at a loss where to turn, he would get word to her in some
+way or other. Then she would send him money--in abundance--in
+overflowing measure--everything her craft threw into her lap.
+
+No, not everything. One task, the greatest, the holiest, merely to think
+of which was presumption, dominated her life.
+
+Whether or not her father returned, his work, his immortal work, must
+never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its summons to life the
+score of the Song of Songs still lay asleep in Lilly's locked trunk. But
+its sleep was no longer so sound, so dreamless as in the years just
+gone by. It began to stir and moan. It gave out a humming and ringing
+which echoed through the day's work and crooned in Lilly's sleep,
+causing chords and melodies to sound when she least expected them.
+
+From the blue hills beyond which the sun set in flames came a soft
+strain as if blown by evening winds: "How beautiful are thy feet in
+sandals, O prince's daughter!" And out of the dark depths of the
+fabulous woods fluttered fragments of songs of the rose of Sharon and
+the lily of the valley.
+
+It was almost as if invisible little beings were singing who led a
+pleasant existence inside those bright-windowed pasteboard huts.
+
+Like Lilly herself the whole world would some day have a share in the
+treasure whose guardian fate had destined her to be.
+
+Wherever she went or stood, whatever she did or thought, from all
+corners hopes came dancing forth, beckoning and smiling. A new, larger,
+purer existence was now to begin. The ends of that golden thread which
+her insane mother had cut in two with the bread knife, had been tied
+together again, and drew her upward, upward. She had divinations of
+something sacred which gave forth blessings, something to be prayed for
+and struggled for.
+
+A few more months and it would all come to pass.
+
+A piece of good fortune seldom comes unaccompanied by another; and so it
+happened that--miracle of miracles!--her betrothed gave a sign of life.
+
+It was one of the first days in September between eleven and twelve
+o'clock in the morning when Mr. Dehnicke appeared at her door without
+having announced his coming. Lilly was not completely dressed, and
+refused at first to see him in. However, he was so insistent that the
+business on which he had come was extremely important, that she did not
+venture to dismiss him, and offering a thousand excuses she received him
+in her matinée.
+
+He let a shy glance of admiration travel over her, and then drew a
+broad, strange-looking piece of paper from his pocket, which proved to
+be a check on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and some odd
+marks.
+
+"What shall I do with it?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Read the letter it came enclosed in," he replied unfolding a large
+sheet.
+
+"Mr. Richard Dehnicke, Dear Sir," was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell
+had deposited five hundred dollars to be paid over to Baroness Lilly von
+Mertzbach.
+
+Lilly was shaken by a storm of gratitude.
+
+She ran up and down the room pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+_She_ had wanted to provide for him, and now _he_ was providing for
+_her_.
+
+Suddenly she was fairly overwhelmed by a feeling of distrust.
+
+She came to a standstill, and looked from the check to Mr. Dehnicke and
+back at the check again.
+
+Both were wrapped in silence.
+
+"Do explain," she cried, utterly perplexed.
+
+"What is there for me to explain?" he rejoined. "I am merely the
+middleman, or, if you will, the agent in the affair, which really
+concerns no one but you and your affianced."
+
+"If at least he had given his address," cried Lilly.
+
+"It almost looks as if he wanted to eradicate all trace of himself," Mr.
+Dehnicke observed.
+
+It was so romantic and so unlike Walter--how could she help being at a
+loss!
+
+But there was "Baroness von Mertzbach." Walter was the only person not
+likely to know of her having had to renounce her married name. That, at
+least, was an indication of the genuineness of the remittance.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke inclined his head to the left as usual, and regarded her
+with calm indifference--he was the innocent middleman, nothing more.
+
+"After this unexpected turn of events," he finally said, "you will, of
+course, no longer refuse to take up the sort of life that accords with
+your social position and is so essential for the sale of your works."
+
+She shook her head, biting her lips.
+
+Hereupon he became insistent, more insistent than she had thought his
+modesty would permit him to be.
+
+"You _must_. For his sake you must. I am responsible to him for that. If
+he should return and want to marry you, he must not find a déclassée. I
+am responsible to him for that."
+
+Lilly asked for time to consider.
+
+From now on her distant lover held sway over her life with a certain
+emphasis. What had been mere fancy became reality.
+
+Not that she thought of him unqualifiedly as the real sender of those
+mysterious five hundred dollars. On the contrary, the voice would not be
+silenced that said to her: "You are being played with." But she was
+afraid to listen to it, or even draw inferences and come to conclusions.
+For if she were to lose the single friend she had, then what?
+
+In order to down all her doubts and scruples she worked diligently, and
+nearly once a week had batches of sunsets ready to be taken away. And in
+the meantime Mr. Kellermann had brought her new motifs: a Gothic
+cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a hunting lodge with many
+gleaming windows, and--_chef d'oeuvre_--the moon rising over peaceful
+waters, whose silvery sheen was broken by fern fronds.
+
+October came.
+
+The first Sunday of the month Mr. Dehnicke called to take Lilly out
+walking. He had come for her twice before, and Lilly had accompanied him
+gladly. Had he offered to take her to the country, her happiness would
+have been complete.
+
+The autumnal sun lay peacefully upon the tattered leaves of the bare
+little trees that edged the square fountain. Groups of people sauntered
+by aimlessly, looking bored and depressed. The winter was already laying
+its icy touch on men's spirits.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with
+human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and
+protector at her side in all that bustle.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally
+began:
+
+"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the
+future?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on
+this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel
+you are of some value in the world.
+
+"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his
+modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would
+delight in."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to
+assume that our tastes are absolutely similar."
+
+"Oh, no! I'm not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I
+think would please you, unless I'm very much mistaken. It belongs to a
+lady customer of mine who left town."
+
+"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than
+to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."
+
+He reflected.
+
+"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid,
+to be sure, won't be in, because it's Sunday, but the porter's wife
+knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to--"
+
+Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger,
+but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered
+that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses
+are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of
+glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety grass hang over the blue
+waters of a canal.
+
+"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.
+
+The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Königin-Augusta-Ufer."
+
+Dehnicke went to the porter's lodge and spoke a few words through the
+window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs
+of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare
+flagging at home, which hurt one's feet.
+
+He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the
+maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he
+unlocked the door with the key.
+
+In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door
+on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in
+the halls.
+
+They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and passed
+through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with glass doors
+curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture
+consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a
+large, dark, highly polished dining-table.
+
+"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn't be
+bad for a sample room and private studio for you."
+
+Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.
+
+Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with
+strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a
+broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held
+together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.
+
+"Does your customer belong to the nobility?" asked Lilly, seized by a
+vague feeling of envy.
+
+"Not that I know of. Her husband isn't a nobleman. But maybe she herself
+is of noble extraction."
+
+Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her
+underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue's musty drawers.
+How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in
+the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the
+aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with
+the poor-people's odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with
+deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.
+
+"Happy creature!" she said softly.
+
+It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life
+and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no
+matinée, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.
+
+"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said
+Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the
+left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was
+flooded with sunlight.
+
+Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.
+
+She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely
+outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms
+radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany
+furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables--a woman about to
+dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in
+prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a
+little bookcase, a lady's secrétaire, paintings on the walls, and even
+an upright piano.
+
+"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.
+
+There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows
+stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the
+sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped
+at them from another window.
+
+Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact
+all this was--like a bird's nest--yet how inconceivably charming when
+contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.
+
+"Why, it's a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were
+rising in her eyes.
+
+"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly
+had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the
+house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like
+that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for
+your assistants to work in."
+
+Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others,
+though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table
+with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner
+was a comfortable iron bed.
+
+"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained
+Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.
+
+They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had
+not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over
+the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of
+the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed
+beneath a curtain of lavender crape.
+
+"What's that?" Lilly asked.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the
+secrétaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same
+mysterious veil.
+
+Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the
+covering over the large picture.
+
+"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a
+theft.
+
+"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little
+more heavily than usual.
+
+She tugged--tugged more violently--the crape fell off--and before her
+hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the
+uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in
+crayon.
+
+Lilly's knees trembled. Cold shivers ran through her body. She refused
+to believe, to understand. Then she felt Mr. Dehnicke take her hand and
+draw her to the outside hall.
+
+He lit a match.
+
+On the porcelain plate she now read what she had previously been unable
+to decipher:
+
+        Lilly Czepanek
+     Pressed Flower Studio
+
+She uttered a cry, rushed back into the drawing-room, threw herself in
+the corner of the sofa, and wept the hot, blissful tears of desire and
+yearning that had so long been repressed.
+
+When she ventured to look up again, she saw Mr. Dehnicke waiting before
+her, modest and correct, with his sober, serious face.
+
+She was ashamed of herself for being so happy; and full of qualms she
+held her hand out to him gratefully.
+
+"May I hope that in my capacity of Walter's representative I have
+chanced in a measure to satisfy your taste?"
+
+There was no more thought of refusing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The mottled golden tops of the chestnuts grew paler, the gaps ever wider
+that the autumn ate into the foliage. Where a soothing green had cut off
+the view, now glittered the bright wavelets of the canal. Long barges,
+laboriously pushed by poles, trailed along in their cumbersome fashion,
+and the shaggy watchdogs barked up at the aristocratic windows.
+
+Grey, rainy days came stealing upon the city like an enemy, and
+loneliness laid its octopus clutch on Lilly's breast.
+
+But her work! Yes, she had her work. So long as the first infatuation
+had lasted and Lilly felt she might hope for some realisation of her
+plans, she had clung to her work day and night.
+
+But the hoped-for turn of events never came. The announcements she had
+had printed remained unheeded. Mr. Dehnicke, sole purchaser of her
+goods, begged her--with a hesitating, embarrassed manner, to be sure,
+yet explicitly enough--not to be hasty, since the general state of the
+market was dull.
+
+By degrees her zest in her profession began to languish. She gave up
+going to Mr. Kellermann for lessons, especially since his insistence
+upon setting free his "chained beauty" grew steadily more annoying. She
+locked the half-filled sample closets and completed none but the pieces
+Mr. Dehnicke ordered.
+
+Oh, those dark, pitiless days, which no laughter brightened, no waiting
+shortened, and no purpose bound together.
+
+The kitchen was ruled by a young maid, ever silent, whose eyes were
+greedy and too knowing. Each morning, while the little canary peeped,
+the fish were given fresh water.
+
+It was somewhat better in the evening when the lights were lit and the
+crystal chandelier radiated a brilliant white light. Lilly would then
+wander from room to room changing the position of this or that ornament
+and constantly reassuring herself how beautifully she lived and how
+happy she was.
+
+But of what avail was the old rose carpet with its vague vine pattern,
+the wine-coloured furniture, and the bronze bodies looking as if a
+golden breath had blown over them? Those bronze bodies whose innermost
+being after all was nothing more than a zinc alloy, having originated in
+the factory of Liebert & Dehnicke. Of what avail the charming secrétaire
+and the writing paper with the golden coronet stamped on it, of which
+Mr. Dehnicke had immediately ordered five hundred sheets? There was
+nobody to rejoice with her, nobody whom her longing brought to her side.
+
+She would often seat herself at the piano and let her fingers stray over
+the keys. But she did not get the pleasure out of playing that she had
+anticipated. Her father's discipline had long lost its effects. She had
+forgotten the pieces she had once known by heart, and she lacked the
+calm and patience to learn all over again.
+
+Yes, it was strange what disquiet would seize her the instant she
+touched the keys, a feeling of dread, an anticipation of impending
+danger, a consciousness of her own unworthiness.
+
+She could not keep on; she had to shut down the lid and take to
+wandering again from room to room until her legs wearied and ten o'clock
+summoned her to bed.
+
+In those joyless, unoccupied days, a piercing, stinging desire for man
+awoke in her, causing her nerves to tingle and a sweet, tormenting
+shudder to thrill her body.
+
+The whole of the two long years her senses had been mute. Tears of
+regret had drowned that which the colonel's senile depravity had
+enkindled, and the weeks of love with Walter von Prell had fanned into
+lively flames. Drowned it forever, it seemed. But there it stood again,
+transporting and shaming and refusing to be silenced by prayers or
+reproach.
+
+Often she felt she would have to run out on the street just to catch the
+glance of any stranger--as in the Dresden days--and see desire flare up
+in eyes veiled with yearning.
+
+But the people she might encounter on the street were rough and common.
+The mere thought of them made her tremble.
+
+The only time she went out was to visit her former landlady.
+
+The walk lasted a full hour, and before she had reached her former home,
+many a naïve admirer, many a keen _boulevardier_, had bobbed up beside
+her and tried to enter into a pleasant conversation. She always ran to
+the other side of the street, shaking herself. Sometimes, yes,
+sometimes, she would have liked to reply.
+
+When she lay in bed with closed eyes, she dreamed of strong-willed,
+sharply cut men's faces, to which she looked up in yielding happiness.
+
+She often dreamed, too, of Mr. Dehnicke, good, sound, loyal Mr.
+Dehnicke.
+
+If he were to come to her some day and falter in that guilty way of his
+which she liked so well: "I love you inordinately, and want you to
+marry me," what would she say to him?
+
+Each time she thought this a furtive sense of comfort stole over her.
+
+As for the man who by full right stood closest to her, she never dreamed
+of him. Sometimes, it is true, when her longings did not know where to
+strike root, those anxious yet blissful November nights would recur to
+her. But the part of hero might have been played by any other man as
+well as Walter.
+
+Walter himself had grown to be a sort of tyrannical conscience with her.
+
+She loved him--of course! How could she help loving him? He was her
+"betrothed," and he was working for her. But sometimes, when she stood
+in front of the sofa and felt his cold, blue eyes resting upon her
+haughtily and masterfully, and she recalled the sorry, inconstant little
+fellow he actually had been, she felt a desire to shake off everything
+that came from him and held her under a spell, as one tries to rid
+oneself of a preposterous nightmare.
+
+If only Mr. Dehnicke had not kept alluding to him with so much devotion
+and respect, treating himself as the modest agent, who would have to
+render account to his dear friend, when that dear friend would return in
+honour and glory.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke came punctually twice a week to inquire after her health
+and drink tea. He would leave in time to reach his office before it was
+closed for the day. These scant hours were always a festival for her.
+
+What wonder? She had no one beside him. He was the only person who bound
+her to the rest of the world and brought incident and interest into her
+life.
+
+She spent hours in fixing up the tea table, in trying different ways of
+lighting the room, in arranging the flowers, and standing before the
+mirror--for him.
+
+When he came at last and sat opposite her, they conversed long and
+seriously about the cares that oppressed him, the plans he was revolving
+in his mind, his disgust at the artists who considered it a disgrace to
+work for the trade, and did so only if the pistol was held to their
+heads, and then disdainfully, clenching their teeth; his trashy
+competitors, who built palaces in order to throw dust in the eyes of the
+buyers, and who thereby had forced him to transform his good old
+business place in accordance with modern ideas of decoration.
+
+Most distressing of all was his clientele. The artistic ideals of the
+metropolis in a measure made a moral demand upon him to go over to the
+secession and place on the market long-necked, narrow-hipped bodies in
+distorted attitudes. The real public, however, the well-intentioned
+public with purchasing power, would have nothing to do with all that
+rubbish. It clung to knights and high-born dames, to maidens plucking
+flowers or carrying water, to fighting stags and swinging monkeys. So he
+stood between the devil and the deep sea. On the one hand was the danger
+that people would ridicule him as old-fashioned, on the other hand, the
+danger of losing most of his old hereditary customers. So he had to
+steer carefully along a middle course, and that was extremely difficult.
+
+He also spoke frequently of the factory, with its hundreds of
+industrious hands, who laboured day after day for the prosperity of the
+house; and of the alterations being made in his yard and sample room,
+which, to judge by the architect's plans and the sum he calculated they
+would cost, would produce something worth seeing.
+
+But what doesn't competition force a man to do?
+
+Lilly listened with shining eyes.
+
+She shared in all his activities. She wanted to see everything and
+experience it with him, not only the renovation of the sample room, but
+also the doings in the factory with its machines, its clatter of wheels,
+its hissing of flames, and screeching of files. She never wearied of
+questioning. She had to know how the workmen looked and behaved, their
+wages, their lot in life, and what became of them. She felt that there
+in his factory was real existence, while her life was nothing but a
+dull, idle waking dream.
+
+"Oh, how happy you must be," she often cried out admiringly, "to have so
+many souls in your keeping!"
+
+"If the whole bunch of them didn't keep you in a stew all the time," he
+rejoined.
+
+But she would not admit the qualification.
+
+He was certainly a beneficent god to them all, she said, even if he did
+not feel it himself. He must be, because of his power and his good
+heart.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke gladly listened to such expressions. While she was speaking
+he would jump up abruptly, as if seized by a mighty, revolutionary idea,
+pace up and down the room excitedly, then stop in front of her and stare
+down at her with a dark solicitous look in his eyes, apparently unable
+to reach some great decision against which he was struggling.
+
+Lilly pretended not to notice his behaviour, though she knew exactly
+what was fermenting in his soul.
+
+"Let him alone, don't help him," she thought. "He must do whatever he
+wants to do of his own impulse. Otherwise he will bear me a grudge."
+
+If only there hadn't been that hateful sense of duty toward Walter,
+which, like herself, Mr. Dehnicke probably felt only in part, and
+shammed as a matter of decorum.
+
+There was something else that gave her qualms. Although he had promised
+to, he had never fulfilled the wish she had expressed to see his
+factory.
+
+However, he spoke openly of his mother, and did not shrink from
+confessing how greatly she had influenced him, though Lilly could read
+into his words that he wished for more freedom to develop his powers.
+When his father had died twelve years before, he had been a minor, and
+had had to yield to his mother's guidance. The old lady continued to
+maintain her authority. Dehnicke discussed each undertaking with her,
+and if she approved, it was executed, even if he did not concur.
+
+Lilly felt a dull terror arise within her of that old lady who sat
+commandingly in her arm-chair behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots, and directed the conduct of so powerful a man as Lilly's
+benefactor.
+
+Her heart would contract when she imagined her first meeting with the
+old lady.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Christmas Lilly had more work to do. Two dozen transparencies had
+been ordered and had to be completed before the holidays. 24x30=720.
+Well, she could see ahead again.
+
+For the first time in four years she forgot to send her mother a
+Christmas gift. To compensate, she made a particularly "poetic" lamp
+shade and had it delivered anonymously to Mr. Dehnicke's mother the day
+before Christmas. She herself did not know why she did this. Perhaps it
+was a sort of propitiatory offering, such as timid souls were wont to
+sacrifice to unknown gods as an expiation for unknown sins.
+
+Counting upon her friend's coming, though by no means certain he would,
+she had made a little heap of her gifts for him, and at the fall of dusk
+with throbbing heart began to listen for the ring of the door bell.
+
+Her fears were idle. At half past five he appeared loaded with parcels.
+He had displayed tact in his choice of the simple presents--things she
+still needed in the apartment, a few embroidered collars, a boa, because
+she had to be careful of her sables, and a few little pieces from his
+factory to adorn the empty top of her secrétaire. At each of her
+exclamations of delight he protested mildly. The things really came from
+Walter, as she knew.
+
+"And what comes from you?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing," he replied, turning his palms upward.
+
+"I know of something you could give me that Walter has nothing to do
+with."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Show me your factory."
+
+This time he did not evade her request. A date was immediately set--the
+first workday after New Year, when everything would be in running order
+again.
+
+Then Mr. Dehnicke added with an embarrassed air:
+
+"But please wear something dark and simple."
+
+"Why?" asked Lilly, frightened. "Do I usually dress conspicuously?" She
+felt as if some one had boxed her ears.
+
+"Oh, not that. But your good clothes might be soiled."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On January the second at about noon Lilly stood in front of the house in
+Alte Jakobstrasse, which she had not seen since she had paid Mr.
+Dehnicke that memorable first visit in his office.
+
+"It has almost turned out to be a path of destiny after all," she
+thought, and looked up furtively at the porcelain flower pots in the
+second story windows. She started. It seemed to her a white head had
+moved behind the lace curtains.
+
+"That smacks of a guilty conscience," she thought, and with awed,
+sidelong glances walked past the door that opened upon the broad,
+laurel-lined staircase which her unworthy feet might never tread until
+she had been received into the circle of bourgeois virtue.
+
+But the carriage gate stood hospitably open. The scaffolding had been
+removed, and the imitation marble of walls and columns shone
+challengingly in their variegated colours. The magnificence of the
+courtyard beyond oppressed her heart again.
+
+The office building had also undergone changes. The dun-coloured plaster
+had given place to a broad sandstone façade adorned by the busts of
+eminent artists; and gilded railings gleamed where once the
+sorry-looking iron staircase had been.
+
+There was her friend hurrying down the steps to meet her.
+
+Despite the stinging cold he wore no hat. In holding out his hand to her
+he cast a furtive look of scrutiny at all the windows. It seemed he,
+too, had a guilty conscience.
+
+He first led her to the sample room. Its brand-new magnificence exceeded
+her boldest expectations. Columned halls with coffered ceilings
+stretched out in a long vista as in a museum. There were endless rows of
+tables and cases, on which, gleaming with gold and silver lights,
+sparkling with crystal prisms, glowing with the hot red of copper, or
+shading off softly into the light green of the patina, stood thousands
+of works of German art and industry, "imitation bronzes," destined to
+fill the show windows of shops and carry the semblance of display-loving
+prosperity into the huts of the poor.
+
+There were corpulent begging friars, dancing gypsy girls clad in
+boleros, ogling dandies, postillions blowing horns, pecking chickens,
+dogs fetching game, calenders set in horse-shoe frames, cigar clips in
+the shape of little champagne bottles; tall pelicans holding lamps in
+their bills; figurines of men and women stretching up their arms, just
+as in Mr. Kellermann's studio, though here not aimlessly, since they
+bore aloft vases, candelabra and bowls. There were arbours screening
+love couples, with red electric bulbs hidden in the foliage; brownies
+beside shining mushrooms, sea shells to serve as ash trays, snakes
+writhing about the chalices of flowers, or about porcelain eggs, or
+copper dice. The whole pitifulness of a vulgar sense of art seemed to
+have crept into this glittering conglomeration and been concentrated
+there ready to scatter to all quarters of the globe.
+
+When Lilly gave her friend a questioning or astonished look because of
+some monstrosity, he shrugged his shoulders and observed:
+
+"That's what the people want."
+
+Despite some dissatisfaction with what she saw Lilly could have walked
+up and down for hours amid all that sparkle. She felt she belonged there
+by right. Had she been asked for her opinion she would have said without
+a moment's reflection: "Throw this away, and this, and this." But nobody
+appealed to her judgment, and everything went its way without her.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke then took her to the factory.
+
+Unfortunately the foundry, in which the basic part of all the work is
+done, happened just then to be closed. Through an open window Lilly saw
+the black gaping depths of the hearths, about which dirty troughs were
+standing, and over all, over chimney-hoods and vessels, a thick layer of
+ashes.
+
+They descended a flight of dirty steps and passed through damp rooms
+smelling of all sorts of poisons, where rows of mighty vats stood filled
+with vile fluids, and elderly men bustled about, who looked like sombre
+scholars, whereas they were nothing more than mere labourers. At Lilly's
+entrance they cast a look of surprise at her then concerned themselves
+about her no further. And they did not greet their employer.
+
+"This is the galvanising room," explained Mr. Dehnicke, and continued as
+they walked past the vats, "The nickle bath, steel bath, silver bath,
+and so on."
+
+Up in a loft surrounded by an iron netting, the wheels of a machine
+whirled, and vari-coloured electric bulbs glittered among them.
+
+"That's where the electric current is generated which goes through the
+different baths."
+
+Lilly did not understand, but she enjoyed the inconceivable rapidity
+with which the wheels span around and the buzzing sound they made.
+
+In the room where the chasing was done many men stood at long tables
+industriously at work smoothing down the unevennesses of the cast metal,
+and preparing the separate parts of an ornament for joining. The joining
+was done in the next room, where the flames of the blowpipes darted and
+hissed and little clouds of metallic vapour shot sparks into the air. At
+each workman's place lay small heaps of burnished limbs, which made one
+feel sorry for the truncated body from which they seemed to have been
+severed.
+
+In the next room the thinner parts were beaten into shape in iron dies.
+It was here that the flowers and foliage were made, the ribbons and
+vines and arabesques, everything that curled and dangled daintily. The
+workingmen looked all the coarser and unwieldier by contrast. They
+scarcely glanced up when Lilly and Mr. Dehnicke entered, and continued
+to hammer as if stupefied into dealing those blows.
+
+Lilly had a keener eye for the appearance and bearing of the men than
+for the work they turned out. She made comparisons, decided who was well
+off and who in distress, who took pleasure in his work and who went
+through the day's toil doggedly, because driven to it by need. Each shop
+had its peculiar physiognomy. In one the majority looked fresh and
+agile, in another galled and weary.
+
+And now, as often before when Mr. Dehnicke had spoken to her of his
+employés, a senseless desire arose in Lilly to watch over the fate of
+all these people, help where help was necessary, bring sunshine to the
+gloomy, and relief to the suffering. But she took good care not to
+acquaint Mr. Dehnicke with her absurd ideas.
+
+"Now we will see the most delicate of all the operations," said Mr.
+Dehnicke. "It is putting on the patina, which gives the pieces their
+real style."
+
+He opened the door to the next shop, and the smell of a thousand poisons
+again assailed Lilly's nostrils.
+
+Here there were women at work also, side by side with the men. They
+applied varnish and acids and brushed and rubbed. They looked sallow and
+jaded. At Lilly's entrance they were so taken aback that they dropped
+their brushes and cloths and stared at her in utter astonishment.
+
+"One would have to begin with these to win the confidence of all," Lilly
+thought, and gave them a cordial nod.
+
+But they seemed to take her greeting as mockery or blame, and turned
+back to their work with a grimace well-nigh scornful.
+
+In the packing room, where women and children were employed exclusively,
+Lilly's appearance produced a happier impression. The girls laughed and
+whispered, and nudged one another with their elbows.
+
+The only one who paid no attention to her was a pregnant woman, who
+seemed to find it difficult to keep from sinking to the floor. She held
+her drooping lips tightly compressed and a vivid red spotted her cheeks.
+Nevertheless her arms moved in feverish haste wrapping one paper wisp
+after the other about the limbs of the figure standing on the table in
+front of her, and inclining now to the right, now to the left under her
+manipulations.
+
+Lilly led Mr. Dehnicke aside and asked:
+
+"May I give her something?"
+
+"She's being provided for," he replied, unpleasantly affected, it
+seemed. He quickly opened another door.
+
+"This leads to the store room, where the pieces are kept until sold,
+with the exception, of course, of those which are made to order."
+
+Lilly looked down a dimly lighted corridor, from which the cold air blew
+upon her. On the shelves and stands stood endless rows of phantom
+beings, shapeless in their grey paper envelopes.
+
+"Oh, how queer," said Lilly, shivering a little, and preparing to walk
+along the narrow passageway. The very same instant, however, she noticed
+her friend start as in fright, and cast a helpless look about him. Then
+he stepped in front of her and blocked the way.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Lilly, surprised.
+
+He turned colour and said:
+
+"We had better not go in there. We'll go somewhere else. Besides,
+there's nothing to look at there, not a thing. You yourself see there
+isn't."
+
+He planted himself squarely in front of her, so that she could not
+possibly look down the long line of shelves.
+
+This, of course, merely heightened her curiosity.
+
+"But I would like to," she said, and assumed the over-bearing, haughty
+expression with which she was wont to get her way with him.
+
+"No, no," he burst out hastily. "It's a business secret. I mayn't
+betray it to a soul. Even the employés are not allowed to come here.
+Really I can't permit it."
+
+"Then you shouldn't have brought me here at all," said Lilly, feeling
+insulted; and she turned back.
+
+He poured forth excuses, grew hoarse with excitement, and coughed and
+choked. Then he led her back over the resplendent mosaic of the yard to
+the gateway with its imitation marble columns, through which a chilly
+draught was blowing.
+
+"You will catch a cold," said Lilly to hasten her departure.
+
+His face lighted up with a brilliant idea.
+
+"Besides, you know," he said, "the store room wasn't heated."
+
+"You should have thought of that sooner," rejoined Lilly, holding out
+her hand with a smile of partial reconciliation. She was really sorry
+for him in his helpless solicitude.
+
+Nevertheless she continued to feel hurt. And a bit disturbed. The day
+she had been looking forward to so happily for months had ended in a
+discord.
+
+And no matter how much she pressed him later, Mr. Dehnicke refused to
+tell her what mystery lay concealed in his store room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Lilly began to ail. She suffered from headaches, heart-burn, lassitude,
+insomnia and occasional attacks of vertigo.
+
+The physician, called in at Mr. Dehnicke's insistence, was one of those
+extremely busy men who make the rounds of numberless houses a day. First
+he took a good look at the apartment--a setting he seemed to know--then,
+upon a cursory examination, prescribed social distractions, walks, and
+iron, much iron.
+
+Social distractions had to be dispensed with; there was no opportunity
+for them. Taking walks was not so easy either. Lilly did not care to
+stroll about alone, and Mr. Dehnicke, the only person to accompany her,
+preferred not to be seen on the street with her too frequently. In
+order, he said, not to compromise her, though in all likelihood the
+truth was, he feared becoming conspicuous by appearing in public with
+that exotic, flowerlike beauty.
+
+For no matter what happened, no matter that trouble, want and all sorts
+of humiliations swept over her, no matter that boredom and displeasure
+with herself crushed her spirits, Lilly's appearance never lost thereby.
+
+On the contrary, the delicate milky whiteness of her cheeks, which
+before had been a golden brown, lent her a new, soft charm. The great,
+narrow, long-lashed eyes with the heavily drooping lids--those
+improbable Lilly eyes--now had a weary, languishing brilliance, as if
+they veiled all the painful riddles of the universe. Moreover, the last
+year had given back to her the slim, regal figure of her maiden days and
+taken away the womanly peacefulness it had acquired at Lischnitz. No
+wonder that many a head turned after her and many an appreciative,
+envious glance was sent askance at her companion, who was considerably
+shorter than she.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke was aware of all this, and being a staid, respectable
+business man, and not wishing to be the object of gossip, he preferred
+to stay indoors with her.
+
+About the middle of February she received an invitation by mail from Mr.
+Kellermann, whom she had not seen for several months.
+
+                    GREAT CARNIVAL
+                  KELLERMANN STUDIO
+
+    Magic Lantern Show, Flirtation, Opportunity for Crimes
+        Passionels, Cream Kisses, and other Attractions
+
+That seemed like distraction enough, and Mr. Dehnicke, who, it happened,
+had also been invited, was so energetic in his persuasions that he
+finally conquered her timidity and induced her to go.
+
+But when the day for the carnival came Lilly was seized by a great dread
+of it, and at the last moment felt like withdrawing from her engagement.
+
+She saw herself running the gauntlet of a gaping crowd of sardonic
+sneerers, who whispered the story of her rise and fall behind her back.
+She saw herself neglected and avoided, the object of derisive side
+glances. She passed through all the tortures of the déclassées, who must
+drag through life with the mark of the sinner caught in the act branded
+on their brows.
+
+She chose the most beautiful of her Dresden dresses, which in the two
+years had grown to be the very height of fashion. It was a white Empire
+gown embroidered with gold vines. She arranged a narrow bracelet in her
+hair like a diadem, and loosely laid over her head an oriental veil shot
+with threads of gold. In case of need it would serve to conceal the
+bareness of her bosom. When she had completed her toilet, she seemed to
+herself so repulsive and conspicuous that this alone was sufficient
+ground for not showing herself.
+
+She did not venture to cherish a faint hope until her friend came to
+fetch her. He saw her, and held on to the door knob, uttering a slight
+cry of astonishment.
+
+"Am I all right?" she asked with a diffident laugh, which entreated
+encouragement.
+
+Instead of replying he ran up and down the room breathing heavily and
+choking over inarticulate words--a mute language which Lilly immediately
+understood.
+
+While sitting beside him in the coupé, she succumbed to another attack
+of dread.
+
+"You will stay right next to me, won't you?" she implored. "You won't
+leave me, and you won't let a stranger speak to me, will you?"
+
+He promised all she wanted.
+
+Four flights up--a way she well knew.
+
+The landing outside Mr. Kellermann's door was filled with clothes-racks,
+on which awe-inspiring furs and humiliating lace mantles hung.
+
+She clung to his arm.
+
+Now to her ruin!
+
+The large anteroom, into which not a single ray of light penetrated in
+the daytime, and which Mr. Kellermann used as a kitchen, bedroom and
+dining-room, had been converted into a sort of fairy forest.
+Vari-coloured Chinese lanterns swung on the branches of pine trees, and
+in their dim red glow several couples sat smiling and whispering on
+narrow bamboo benches. They were so absorbed in themselves that they
+paid little heed to the new arrivals.
+
+All the more animated was Lilly's reception in the studio, which was
+filled with a bright, glittering mass of humanity. A general "ah," then
+absolute silence. A passageway naturally formed itself, down which the
+couple seemed to be expected to pass. Lilly made a gesture, as if to
+hide behind her friend. But he reached only up to her nose.
+
+At the same instant Mr. Kellermann came hurrying up to them. He wore a
+brown velvet costume consisting of a jacket, knee-length breeches, and a
+Phrygian cap. Everybody, in fact, wore what seemed to him original and
+becoming.
+
+"Welcome, goddess, queen!" he cried in a voice for the entire company to
+hear; and since nothing better occurred to him, he pressed kisses on her
+gloved arm from wrist to elbow.
+
+Then he begged to be allowed to show her the incomparable arrangements
+of his new court of love. She followed him, whispering to her friend to
+be sure to remain at her side.
+
+Electric lights had been hung in the open air directly over the
+skylight, converting it into a many-coloured, starry heaven. On looking
+up one really thought a thousand little suns were shining down from out
+of the night.
+
+Rugs and ivy vines divided the left side, where the gable roof sloped
+downward, into a number of small arbours, the entrance of each of which
+was hung with gaily coloured bead portières. And over each hung a great
+printed placard bearing a highly suggestive inscription.
+
+The first was called "Arbour of Lax Morality." Lilly turned a startled
+look upon her guide, who observed with a smile:
+
+"That's only the beginning, meant for bread-and-butter-misses and little
+afternoon-tea-souls like you." And added:
+
+    "This is but an intimation
+    Of more wicked adjuration,"
+
+while he pointed to the second entrance, the inscription over which
+read: "Arbour of Wicked Vows."
+
+"Oh, dreadful!" she cried in righteous dismay. Kellermann rolled with
+laughter.
+
+She could not help reading the next two signs, "Arbour of the Right to
+Motherhood" and "Arbour of the Cry for Man," but she said nothing more.
+
+There were two more divisions, a "Powder Room" and an "Arbour of
+Perversity." This she did not understand.
+
+"Now we'll go to the Criminal Side," said Mr. Kellermann, and led her
+diagonally across the room, making way for her among the people, who at
+her approach began to nod and hum and buzz, but with no trace of malice
+or contempt. The very reverse. It was an ovation, a suppressed
+demonstration of her triumph.
+
+Her breast expanded. A faint, humble sensation of happiness stole over
+her body like hot wine. She threw back her scarf. She no longer needed
+to feel ashamed of her bare throat and shoulders. In the looks turned
+upon her she read that no one would scoff at her.
+
+She did not succeed in reaching the Criminal Side. So many gentlemen
+wanted to be presented to her that Mr. Kellermann had all he could do
+telling off their names.
+
+From now on the carnival became something absolutely unreal, a dream
+land, a fairy meadow, on which strange, large-eyed flowers were blooming
+and sweet scents set heads a-reeling, and a haze sparkled with red suns;
+where people laughed and jested and whispered, where bold, unheard-of
+compliments floated in the air, and everything existed for Lilly to
+caress and admire and love.
+
+Yes, she loved them all, the men and the women, as soon as she met them.
+They were all good, noble souls, scintillating with delightful conceits
+and ready to perform friendly services. Each awakened a new hope, each
+brought a new joy.
+
+She felt how her cheeks glowed, what blissful intoxication was burning
+in her eyes. And he at whom she looked with those eyes would quiver, and
+respond with a gleam from his own, which seemed to be the reflection of
+her happiness.
+
+That was no longer another strange Lilly, who laughed and returned jest
+with jest and went from arm to arm with a faint pang of regret. That was
+she herself, doubly, triply herself.
+
+Sometimes, when a gentleman became too bold in his talk, when an
+unlicenced _double entendre_ seemed to lurk behind a joke, and Lilly
+became nervous and did not know what to say and involuntarily looked
+around for help, she always found her friend somewhere near at hand,
+glancing over at her as if by mere chance.
+
+That gave her a delicious sense of peace, a consciousness of being cared
+for and hidden away, so that she could be even merrier than before, and
+need not take offence at audacities.
+
+Once she overheard behind her:
+
+"Who's the lucky dog who has her for his mistress?"
+
+The answer was:
+
+"A little polished Mr. Snooks. There he stands."
+
+This made her stop and think a moment, though she could not know to whom
+it referred. But in the whirl of incidents it soon passed from her mind.
+
+Oh, what people she met!
+
+There were young blades in dress suits and white flowered waistcoats,
+who paid her mad court, and asked, as if casually, though their
+eagerness was visible under the nonchalance of their exterior: "What is
+your day at home?"
+
+Alas, she had no day at home. She lived a very retired life.
+
+There were sombre philosophers, who agonised over the world's pain, wore
+very long hair and monstrous neckties. They spoke to Lilly of "spiritual
+high pressure" and the "specific gravity of related individualities,"
+themes which did Lilly's soul good. One of them kept addressing her as
+"Your Excellency." When she asked him why, he looked staggered and said
+he had heard she was--then he broke off and substituted the paltry joke
+that she so "excelled" all the women present he could find no more
+suitable title.
+
+One of the men was an exuberant old high liver, whose name she had read
+with awe on many a beautiful picture. She would rather have kissed the
+hem of his garment than see him dance about her comically trying to be
+youthful.
+
+There were many others who aroused her curiosity; but she could learn
+nothing of their rank or character.
+
+The company even boasted a real prince, a pale, blond, very young man,
+who did not venture to ask to be introduced to Lilly, because his love
+was always in threatening proximity. So he kept making détours about
+her.
+
+The women, of course, were more distant than the men, though those of
+them who came to make her acquaintance gave themselves up to her with
+effusive warmth.
+
+One was a beautiful, voluptuous brunette with unsteady, glowing eyes and
+a smile betokening wild abandon.
+
+"We must get to know each other," she said. "I will introduce you to my
+friend, and later we'll take supper together like a cosy little family."
+
+Another was an extremely slim young woman with bright blue eyes, who
+towered above most of the men. She wandered through the throng serene
+and unconcerned in a long, white silk secession robe, looking like a
+phantom. She spoke without moving her head and smiled without drawing
+her lips. She had come from Denmark to study painting and at the same
+time "live life," as she expressed it.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked Lilly. "You are different from the rest. The
+woman who comes here and does not want to be swept along in the current
+must have strong arms."
+
+She boldly threw back the wide sleeves of her gown as far as her
+shoulders and exposed two lily-white, wonderfully curved arms, gleaming
+like marble pillars.
+
+Thereupon she wandered further.
+
+The third was an extremely light-haired, very elegant woman, no longer
+young. Her pretty, good-humoured face was tanned by the open air. With a
+merry flash of her eyes she held out her hand to Lilly, as if they were
+old acquaintances.
+
+"Oh, how sweet and lovely you are!" she said softly. "We have all flown
+here and don't know how. But where do _you_ come from? My name is ----"
+she mentioned the name of a great musician who in Kilian Czepanek's home
+had been revered as semi-divine.
+
+"Yes, Welter's former wife--that's who I am," she added gaily, and
+turned to the gentleman on whose arm she had walked up to Lilly.
+
+"Another general's wife, like myself," thought Lilly, looking after her.
+
+There were some married couples, too; for the most part extremely young
+and extravagantly clad, who at first kept together timidly and looked
+about with great, astonished eyes, and later frolicked about like
+monkeys set at liberty. One couple seemed to have been dragged to the
+carnival as a practical joke. The husband was a genuine complacent
+beery German, the wife, a good, corpulent, black-silk creature. The man,
+Lilly was told, was the landlord of the house, a well-to-do baker, who
+had been invited to the carnival as a reward for good-naturedly having
+permitted his fourth floor to be turned topsy-turvey. But the couple by
+no means felt nervous or out of place. They made coarse, clumsy jokes,
+and were always surrounded by a group of laughing auditors.
+
+About ten o'clock--Lilly had just been entangled by one of the
+long-haired and linenless in a profound discussion of false human
+values--when all of a sudden a sort of cry of wrath was raised, issuing
+at first from only one or two throats, then swelling to a loud thunder.
+Lilly distinguished the words "hunger" and "fodder."
+
+Mr. Kellermann's pacifying voice resounded to still the clamour. An
+accident, he said, had occurred to interrupt the spreading of the bread
+of which each guest would receive a piece--a poor devil of an artist
+couldn't afford a more abundant repast. He had hurriedly sent across the
+street for what was missing, and would the gentlemen please content
+themselves until it arrived? As for those who were _very_ hungry and did
+not worry about the taking of human life, the hosts had provided arsenic
+sandwiches and strychnine tarts, which were to be found in the closet
+marked "Poisons."
+
+The whole assemblage made a dash for the Criminal Side, where for the
+sake of the _crimes passionels_ a whole arsenal of deadly instruments
+had been prepared. Gallows dangled from the ceiling, ladders led down to
+abysses, and a cannon was discharged. The company immediately snatched
+the poisonous sandwiches from the sideboard, and sometimes even absolute
+strangers offered one another "a bite," like school children.
+
+Then came the regular supper.
+
+A buffet had been set up among the pines in the anteroom, piled mountain
+high with all sorts of goodies, Yorkshire hams, cold game, lobster,
+sliced salmon, and heaven knows what else. So stormy was the onslaught
+on that buffet--which, providentially had been placed against a
+wall--that the forest of pines gave way. Twigs flew about, branches
+broke, and a mass of laughing, cursing creatures rolled among the
+overturned tree-boxes.
+
+Somebody had a brilliant idea--chuck the whole forest down stairs.
+Forthwith the Chinese lanterns were extinguished, and despite the
+protestations of the landlord, who feared for the sleep of his other
+tenants, tree after tree went crashing down the steps and piled up at
+the bottom.
+
+The ladies' light dresses were completely strewn with pine needles, pine
+needles settled in their hair and on their bosoms. The whole place
+smelled of Christmas.
+
+One could hardly enjoy eating for all the laughing.
+
+Besides, there were not enough chairs and tables for everybody. So, to
+be able at least to balance the plate on their laps, they sat crowded
+close up against one another on the stairs, where the company was fed
+from above downward each time fresh provisions were procured from the
+buffet and brought out into the hall.
+
+Some enterprising pioneers even climbed up on the heap of pine trees and
+swayed on the springy branches like birds. Benevolent souls on the upper
+landing handed them their food on forks tied to walking sticks.
+
+Lilly, fairly sick with laughter, sat on one of the steps quite
+surrounded by strange gentlemen, all of whom wanted to be fed by her.
+She was in such a state of beatitude that she wished her life might end
+with the carnival. If she had any care in the world, it was to see to
+it that the gentlemen about her got enough to eat.
+
+The last of the refreshments were the cream kisses promised on the
+invitation. They swung on long strings from the ceiling, and each guest
+had to snap like a dog for his portion. If anyone used his hands he was
+rapped over the knuckles.
+
+This sport, which at first created fresh storms of folly, soon had to be
+relinquished because the cream dropped on the ladies' dresses. Lilly's
+Empire gown was also stained, but the instant the cream fell on it one
+of the gentlemen kneeled and sucked the spot away.
+
+When a trumpet blast summoned the company back to the studio, everybody
+was unhappy, Lilly in especial.
+
+But when she saw her friend again, whom she had quite forgotten, she
+quickly took comfort. Pressing against his arm and beaming with delight
+she reported to him amid gurgles of laughter all she had experienced in
+the meantime.
+
+Now, it seemed to her, she again saw the looks of those who passed her
+fastened on her face in strange seriousness, betokening something like
+compassion. But she had too much to relate to give those strange looks
+much thought.
+
+The speeches now began. Lilly begged her friend to stay at her side. She
+had romped enough, she said, and needed something "homey."
+
+He pressed his arm against hers gratefully.
+
+"Why are you trembling so?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he replied lightly.
+
+The first of the speakers was one of the long-haired, linenless, sombre
+ones. Something weighty and solemn, like a hymn, was to usher in the
+numbers on the program.
+
+He recited an ode entitled "Super-Smoke," in which such words as
+"sublime mist" rhymed with "amethyst," and "super-desire" with
+"passionate fire."
+
+Lilly understood not a word, though the poem must have been very
+beautiful, because at the conclusion the gentlemen burst into wild
+applause. "Bravo! Bravo! Super-smoke! More Super-smoke!"
+
+The sombre poet, who naturally interpreted these exclamations as a call
+for "_da capo_," bowed and felt flattered and started off again:
+"Super-Smoke, an Ode."
+
+He found he was in for it. "Enough, enough," came from all sides, and it
+turned out that the gentlemen had merely wished to express their desire
+for something smokeable in the language of super-men.
+
+The next to ascend the platform was a slim, very elegant gentleman with
+a dark brown Van Dyke beard and a gleaming monocle. He had been
+introduced to Lilly. Dr. Salmoni smiled sadly, and held his curved left
+hand close to his nose to scrutinise his long nails. His intention, he
+said was to draw up an intellectual inventory of the evening. For the
+purpose he would make a few remarks as a basis of his "so-to-speak
+destructive construction of this social heterogeneity."
+
+With that, a hail-storm of audacities and personalities came rattling
+down on the heads of hosts and guests.
+
+Though Lilly understood only a fraction of what he said, she felt she
+had to blush with shame for each person his ill-natured words hit. But,
+strange to say, nobody took offence. On the contrary, each one upon
+getting his raking tried to outdo the others in noisy applause.
+
+"What a happy world," thought Lilly, "where people have become
+absolutely invulnerable and the most heinous sins simply add to their
+honour."
+
+Her own misdeed, from which she had suffered so long as from a
+festering sore, suddenly appeared something like a child's amiable
+prank.
+
+"Was it idiocy in me to grieve so?" she asked herself, and pushed her
+hips downward with her hands, as if to brush away all the old chains
+from her limbs.
+
+The elegant doctor could deal in compliments also. Each of the lovely
+women received her little bon-bon rolled in pepper. And when he spoke of
+a lotos flower that had drifted there from fairyland and still seemed to
+dread the glory of the new sun shining upon it, Lilly again saw all
+glances turned upon her.
+
+"But let her take courage," Dr. Salmoni continued. "Should she need some
+one to help her dreamily await the night, she may count, I feel certain,
+upon every one of us."
+
+He was rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of all the gentlemen, and
+Lilly did not even feel ashamed.
+
+Upon concluding, and after gathering in a harvest of praise from the
+auditors, who crowded up to him--those who had gotten the hottest
+"roast" were the most eager--he stepped to Lilly's side and said _sotto
+voce_:
+
+"I beg your pardon most humbly for having mentioned you in the same
+breath as this set. People on our level ought to have a tacit code; they
+ought to understand each other without making bald declarations. But I
+was tired of just cracking a whip. Besides, I may assure you, I don't
+_always_ play the fool."
+
+He stuck his monocle in his waistcoat pocket and looked at Lilly with
+his sharp grey eyes as if to tear her heart to tatters.
+
+"People on our level," he had said. Lilly felt flattered that so clever
+and prominent a man should rank her with him.
+
+The next performer was a "minstrel," a mercurial, black young fellow,
+who accompanied himself on the mandolin. He struck up a highly
+sentimental ditty, like a troubadour's.
+
+    The lady's name I will not cite,
+    Far purer she than the moonlight.
+    She is so chaste, she burns with shame
+    To hear the stork called by its name.
+    And if rash Eros bids you try
+    To steal a kiss, however shy,
+    Her face grows pale--Heaven forefend!--
+    And stammers she: "Now this must end!"
+
+The second strophe, the temperature of which rose many degrees, ended
+with the line:
+
+    Quoth she: "Now cut it out! Now stop."
+
+And the third strophe, whose outrageous explicitness Lilly scarcely
+ventured to understand, wound up with the French:
+
+    _Tout ce que vous voulez, mais pas ça._
+
+An endless round of clapping and shouting followed the song.
+
+Lilly was astonished, but did not resent it. She resented nothing any
+more. Leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, she let the
+lights, the sounds, the vulgarities, the laughter and applause pass as
+in a dream.
+
+From time to time she looked around at her friend.
+
+He stood behind her, and smiled reassuringly, but said nothing. A
+mottled red burned on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps
+he had drunk too much champagne. As for herself, though she had taken
+only a sip, her head was spinning dizzily.
+
+At two o'clock the speech-making ended. Now the final restraints were
+thrust aside. The company romped madly, danced, kissed, drank,
+quarrelled, and fought duels. Lovers stabbed themselves and were carried
+out dead. The cannon shot off crackers. A thin, droll youngster clad in
+a Greek gown, which an obliging model had lent him, stood in front of
+the "Arbour of the Right to Motherhood," and held forth in a singing
+falsetto. Science had shown, he said, by the results of artificial fish
+culture that man as a factor in reproduction would soon be unnecessary.
+At the entrance to the "Arbour of the Cry for Man" a small, wild person
+with curly black hair had climbed on a chair and kept screaming "A
+woman! A woman! A woman!" Into the "Arbour of Perversity" they had
+pushed the baker and his corpulent better half, and each time the two
+kissed on command a shout of laughter went up outside.
+
+Lilly's head was a-whirl with the tumult. Everything turned in a circle,
+screeching, darting, hammering, like a series of painful flashes.
+
+"We'd better be going," Mr. Dehnicke's voice behind her advised.
+
+She arose and stretched her arms with a shiver.
+
+_That_ had been life! Life! Life!
+
+Then she followed him.
+
+Mr. Kellermann had noticed her leave, and furtively slipped up to her in
+the hall. His open collar hung over his jacket, his cheeks were puffed
+and shiny. He looked like a young Falstaff.
+
+He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say,
+"It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps.
+
+The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann
+turned to Lilly and whispered:
+
+"The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?"
+
+"Entirely," she replied with a languid smile.
+
+"You'll never come?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And I tell you"--he led her to one side next to the banisters--"I tell
+you, you _will_ come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and
+you won't know--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent.
+
+Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to
+these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the
+bacchic faun.
+
+She laughed at him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down.
+Leaning lightly against her friend's shoulder she walked airily down the
+steps singing and swaying her hips.
+
+The whole world seemed to have passed into a soft, perfumed, chiming
+twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining.
+
+Dehnicke's carriage was waiting.
+
+"Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in
+her fill of the invigorating, snowy air.
+
+She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang
+and beat time with her feet.
+
+He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night.
+
+"Do say something," she cried.
+
+"What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his
+bleared eyes.
+
+They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and
+then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage.
+
+Lilly sank into a drowsy state.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this
+way forever."
+
+Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter's arm was clasping her
+waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter's
+neck, as once on blessed November nights.
+
+But--where did Walter come from all of a sudden?
+
+She started up and sank back, wide awake.
+
+No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great
+shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with
+her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper
+arm.
+
+"And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to
+demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written.
+
+He was demanding it after all.
+
+How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on
+the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later--Walter, whom
+everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered
+to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there
+was salvation for her on earth.
+
+To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had
+a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But
+now it availed nothing.
+
+Cautiously, as if fearing to hurt him, she withdrew from his arm and
+pressed against the other side of the brougham.
+
+"Why didn't you stay?" he asked, stammering like a drunkard. "Weren't
+you comfortable?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+He repeated the question several times. She maintained silence. She felt
+any word she might utter would entangle her still further.
+
+Then he clasped her hand, which hung down limply.
+
+"I mayn't," she whispered, extracting her hand from his. "And you
+mayn't, either."
+
+"Why mayn't we?"
+
+"You will reproach yourself dreadfully later when you recall you are
+responsible to him."
+
+"Whom?" he asked.
+
+"Whom? _Him._ Whom else? You always say you're nothing but his agent,
+and--"
+
+A laugh, a hoarse, guilty laugh, interrupted her. He had folded his
+hands across his knees, and he laughed and drew a deep breath and
+laughed again, as one who has rid himself of a wearisome burden.
+
+A horrid certainty faced her.
+
+"Then all that wasn't true?" she faltered, staring at him.
+
+"Nonsense, perfect nonsense," he cried. "He wrote me _once_, before he
+left for the United States. 'Look out for her. Don't let her go to the
+dogs. She's too good for them.' Nothing else and never again. There! Now
+you know it. Now I'm rid of it. I've had a hard enough time over it. But
+what could I do? I had begun so I had to go on. There was no use--"
+
+He jerked up the window and leaned against it panting.
+
+Lilly wanted to ask, "Why did you do it?" but was afraid to. She knew
+what was coming. One thing stood before her with horrible clearness: she
+was in his hands beyond rescue. She lived in his house, spent his money,
+saw the world with his eyes. She was what he had determined she should
+be: his courtesan, his creature.
+
+The river!
+
+She tore at the brougham door, and set her right foot on the step, but
+he pulled her back and shut the door again.
+
+"Be sensible," he commanded. "Keep your wits about you."
+
+She burst into a fit of weeping, piteous, harrowing, heartbreaking. She
+had not shed such tears since the days of her divorce. She saw nothing
+and heard nothing. Sometimes she seemed to catch the sound of his voice
+as from a great, great distance. But she did not understand what he
+said. Simply to cry, cry, cry, as if salvation lay in crying, as if fear
+and distress would flow away with her tears.
+
+The brougham came to a stand. She felt herself being lifted out. He
+carried the key in his pocket.
+
+Supported by him she stumbled up the steps and thought from time to
+time:
+
+"Why, I was going to throw myself into the river."
+
+He led her to the sofa and turned on the lights of the chandelier. Then
+he undid the buckle of her cloak and removed the veil from her hair.
+
+She lay there languidly, looking apathetically at the tablecloth.
+
+The bird awoke and peeped to her.
+
+"It's late," she heard Mr. Dehnicke say, "and the carriage is waiting.
+But I can't leave you this way. I must vindicate myself. I want you to
+know how everything happened."
+
+"It makes no difference," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"To me it does," he rejoined. "I don't want you to think I'm a rascal."
+
+"That makes no difference either," she thought.
+
+"I loved you," he began, "long before I knew you, when you were still
+our colonel's wife."
+
+She looked up at him in surprise.
+
+As he stood there in his short, close-fitting dress suit, with a pale,
+joyless, pleading face, uneasily plucking at the tablecloth, he who was
+really master there, it seemed to her she was looking upon him for the
+first time.
+
+"I had been called into service for the manoeuvres that summer," he
+continued, "and the club was still full of you. Even the ladies of the
+regiment talked of nothing else. There were ever so many pictures of
+you, too, in circulation. Some of the men had snapped you on the sly.
+The instant I saw you I should have recognised you, because I remembered
+every feature. Yes, I may repeat with perfect truth, I loved you even
+then. What's more, after Prell's letter came and you were to step into
+my life, good Lord! what plans for winning you didn't I work out in
+those one and a half years! Then at last you appeared and exceeded my
+wildest fancies. But when I saw that in between you had become a _grande
+dame_, and how devoted you were to Walter--you kept talking of him--I
+lost my last hopes. Of course, I had never seriously counted upon
+winning you, because, though I lay some stock in myself, I'm not really
+self-assured--and besides--to have some one like you for a love--that's
+more happiness than anyone can dream of."
+
+When he said "a love," passionate bitterness welled up within Lilly.
+
+"To have me for a wife," she thought, "_that_ is certainty more
+happiness than anyone can dream of."
+
+She burst out laughing.
+
+He took her laugh as a sign of modest deprecation of his compliment, and
+talked himself into greater enthusiasm. Did she think a single person in
+all that company to-night was worthy of unlacing her shoe-ties? Did she
+realise how immeasurably she was raised above everything bearing the
+name woman?
+
+From out of her tear-stained eyes the question now candidly shone which
+pride and shame forbade her to utter.
+
+He must have understood, because he paused suddenly, clapped his hand to
+his forehead, looked agitated, and paced up and down the room,
+suppressing sobs. She heard him murmur, "I can't--impossible--I can't."
+
+"Oh--if he can't," she thought, and stared at him with her cheeks
+pressed between her hands.
+
+He halted in front of her, and tried to talk. But he could only choke
+down half-articulated words, and he took to pacing the room again.
+
+Lilly caught snatches of words--"mother"--"never persuade her"--"must
+give up the business." And again and again, "I can't--impossible--I
+can't."
+
+"He's right," she thought. "A person like me--he really can't." And
+feeling her renunciation was final she drew a deep breath, and
+collapsed.
+
+He hastened to her, frightened; leaned over her, and wanted to stroke
+her hands. But she shook him off. Since he could not find a word in
+justification of his weak evasion, he took up the thread where Lilly's
+tortured laugh had cut it off.
+
+"Remember one thing, dearest, dearest friend. I don't want anything for
+myself--no reward--nothing. Long ago I gave up all wishes for myself, I
+swear to you. The only thing I wanted was to draw you out of the hole
+where you were being degraded into a proletarian. Oh, I know it from
+experience. It lasts a few years--no more. They either go on the street,
+or they grow more careworn and uglier and uglier. Soon you'd never
+suspect what they once were. To keep the same thing from happening to
+you, I thought of that device of the check, and wrote to my American
+agents. When I saw you were completely taken in, I didn't sleep for
+several nights out of pure joy, because then I knew I shouldn't have to
+stand by and see you go to your ruin."
+
+"Why should I go to ruin?" Lilly interjected. "By the time your check
+came I had already earned a decent little sum. You yourself helped me,
+and you yourself said, if I continued the same way--"
+
+She stopped short in fright at the thought that if she had to separate
+from him, this one avenue would be cut off, too. The idea was a
+nightmare.
+
+No word of encouragement came from him. He kept plucking at the
+tablecloth in dogged reserve.
+
+"Say something! Have you already forgotten everything you did for me?"
+
+He raised his head.
+
+"Well," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "if you insist. At any rate,
+it may be well to be perfectly frank this evening."
+
+"Why, what else is there?" Lilly cried.
+
+"Do you remember when you visited the factory, I wouldn't let you into
+the storeroom?"
+
+"Certainly. But what--"
+
+"And afterwards I said it was because the room wasn't heated?"
+
+"Yes--but I can't see what that has to do with my work."
+
+"If you had gone the least little bit further, you would have seen every
+one of your transparencies, fifty-six in all. The last were still
+unwrapped."
+
+Lilly looked up at him as to her executioner. Then she fell down before
+the sofa. She had no more tears to shed, but the soft darkness of the
+cushions was soothing to her eyes. To see nothing more, to hear nothing
+more, to think nothing more. To die quickly, forthwith, before hunger
+came, and shame.
+
+A long silence followed.
+
+She thought he had already gone when she felt his hand stroking her
+shoulder and heard his voice with a mournful quiver in it pleading:
+
+"My dear, dear friend, tell me, _tell_ me, what could I do? Could I rob
+you of your one pleasure, your one assurance? Was I to say to you, 'It's
+amateurish, unsalable?' I saw your whole soul was wrapped up in it, and
+you lived from it spiritually, as it were. I thought: 'When her affairs
+are all smoothed out, I'll just let it die a natural death.' And you
+know it was in a fair way to die naturally. You hardly thought of it the
+last month. Dearest, dearest friend, do reflect, what wrong did I do? I
+helped you out of wretched surroundings, I gave you a few months of joy
+and freedom from care, and I didn't even ask for so much as a kiss. If
+you want, return to your Mrs. Laue to-morrow, and it will be as if
+nothing happened. Or remain here quite calmly until you have found a
+position. I won't thrust myself on you. You needn't see me. When
+I--leave here--now--"
+
+He could not continue.
+
+After a period of silence Lilly raised her head in fright and curiosity
+to see what had become of him. She found him in a chair inclined over
+the table, his head hidden in his arms, and his back shaken with mute
+sobs.
+
+She stood next to him a while, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+She was so sorry for him--oh, how sorry she was for him!
+
+Then she gently laid her hand on his hair.
+
+"Take comfort, dear friend," she said. "It will be much worse for me
+than for you. I won't have anybody at all."
+
+And she shuddered, thinking of her approaching loneliness.
+
+He straightened himself up and silently reached for his hat. His eyes
+were even more bleared than before; his head inclined still further to
+the left.
+
+Oh, how sorry she was for him!
+
+"Good-by," he said, pressing her right hand. "And thank you."
+
+"I will write to you," she said. "I should like to think it all over
+to-night. I shall probably move to-morrow, immediately."
+
+"Whatever you wish," he said.
+
+As he was drawing on his overcoat something long and cylindrical
+gleaming with gold and silver fell noiselessly from his pocket to the
+floor.
+
+Lilly picked it up. It was a huge cracker.
+
+Both had to smile.
+
+"That lovely carnival had to have this sad ending," she said.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Did you enjoy yourself? I hope for that at least."
+
+"Oh, what's the difference so far as I'm concerned?" said Lilly,
+deprecatingly.
+
+"A great difference. The whole affair was gotten up for you."
+
+"How--for me?"
+
+"Well, do you suppose Mr. Kellermann, who at the very best earns fifty
+to a hundred marks a week, can afford such an entertainment? The
+physician ordered diversion, and on account of the position you are in,
+I couldn't offer you any, so I hid behind him, and--"
+
+She opened her eyes wide.
+
+If he loved her to that extent!
+
+"You dear, dear friend," she said, and for one instant lightly leaned
+her head against his shoulder.
+
+He threw his arms about her quickly, greedily, as if she would be
+snatched from him the next instant. His whole body quivered, and she
+felt his warm tears on her forehead.
+
+Since he did not venture to kiss her even yet, she offered him her lips.
+
+"The third," she thought.
+
+When she glanced up, she saw Walter's eyes on the wall looking down at
+her with a base, sneering smile. Just as she had feared in the carriage.
+
+Terrified, she drew Mr. Dehnicke's attention to the portrait.
+
+"We'd better have it sent right down to the basement to-morrow," he
+said.
+
+And since they now had very much to say to each other, the carriage was
+immediately dismissed, because it was half past three, and the coachman
+and the horses needed a rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A new life began for Lilly once again.
+
+An end to her loneliness!
+
+Every afternoon Mr. Dehnicke came for his cup of tea, and now he was no
+longer Mr. Dehnicke; he was Richard, dear, beloved Richard, to whom one
+waved and nodded cheerily from the window, whom one received with
+outstretched arms in front of the apartment door, against whose knees
+one crouched on the floor, and from whose forehead one smoothed away the
+naughty frown of care with a tender "poor boy, poor boy."
+
+Oh, how needless to have hoarded up such a wealth of love! She could
+lavish it in profusion, yet there was always a fresh supply.
+
+Away with the _grande dame_, the haughty aristocrat! She stooped to him,
+played the little girl, wanted to be found fault with and scolded,
+looked terrified at the faintest shadow of displeasure on his face, and
+tried to read his every wish--wishes he himself was not aware of--from
+his eyes. She wanted to be grateful for his goodness, his tenderness,
+for everything he had done to save her from ruin.
+
+No wonder, then, that by degrees he lost his adoring upward glance, and
+began to make demands, sometimes very whimsical demands, and assume the
+manner of a husband. Now and then he even recalled his benefactions, not
+very emphatically, though with sufficient explicitness to change what
+was at first voluntary humility into a duty.
+
+Since Lilly had become his mistress, his attitude to the world had
+veered about, so that his entire life stood on a different basis.
+
+The pedantic bronze manufacturer so dreadfully concerned for his good
+name and standing in respectable society had changed into a daring fast
+liver.
+
+So far from hesitating to be seen at Lilly's side on the streets and
+promenades, he could not display himself to the eyes of the crowd often
+enough. The good old brougham no longer sufficed. He must also have a
+new-fashioned, spacious victoria, in which to drive with Lilly along
+Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. When they went out together in the
+evening, he chose the places where most of fashionable Berlin is to be
+found, and tried to obtain seats from which they could be observed on
+all sides.
+
+He sat in the boxes at theatre with a swelling shirt front, carefully
+tailored and barbered and manicured, and endeavoured to present an
+indifferent blasé smile to the glasses levelled upon him and his
+companion.
+
+He ordered his clothes from the representatives of London houses that
+bob up in Berlin every spring and autumn in search of customers. He
+adopted a monocle and stuck his handkerchief inside his left cuff. The
+military officer in him came to the surface and endeavoured to ape the
+effeminate gestures of the fops of the Guard.
+
+In short, he bent all his energies upon proving himself worthy of a
+mistress of Lilly's rank and qualities. He soon discovered that
+connection with so exquisite a creature, so far from damaging him, cast
+an unhoped for glamour about his life, even about his business, lending
+it an air of splendour that all his superb remodelling had not been able
+to give it.
+
+If the senior member of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, the world said,
+can indulge in such an extravagance, his goods must be selling much
+better than we thought. And many a dealer who had formerly bought of
+his competitors now came to him, impelled by those mysterious powers of
+suggestion whose laws psychologists and historians have in vain
+endeavoured to fathom.
+
+People showed him greater respect, but a respect mitigated by that
+jovial, confidential smile which the world always smiles when it pardons
+a man of proven harmlessness an interesting secret little infirmity.
+
+Questions like "When are we going to see you outside of business?" or
+"What do you say to making a night of it together now and then?"
+questions from persons who had paid no attention to him formerly, became
+as cheap as the bronze wares of Liebert & Dehnicke.
+
+"By right, I ought to charge you to the expense account of the
+business," he once said with a smile to Lilly, who by and by ceased to
+feel pained at delicate jokes of that sort.
+
+The evening excursions, which took place three or four times a week,
+gradually became a matter of habit, and rapidly acquainted Lilly with
+all the soap-bubble pleasures that float from the witch's cauldron of
+Berlin life.
+
+It was now too late in the winter for those great public balls, at which
+one shams the mysterious lady of rank beneath a silk domino. To
+compensate there were the theatres where observances are lax and the
+lowest vices of the Parisian boulevards, diluted and warmed over, are
+dished up to tickle the palates of hungry pleasure-seekers; all-night
+cabarets, where obscene jests are clothed in literary garb, and wild
+women escaped from the confines of middle-class life vie with
+professional music-hall singers for the palm of vulgarity; bars and
+grill-rooms; back rooms of aristocratic restaurants which the law
+forbids to be locked, and in which chilly orgies are smiled upon
+mockingly by correct waiters; and, to wind up with, certain cafés,
+sparkling with lights and blue with cigarette smoke, where the weary
+nerves seek and find their final stimulation in contact with prostitutes
+selling their wares in open market.
+
+In the beginning Lilly opposed these doings. Her senses demanded
+satisfaction of another sort. She had a vague feeling of mournfulness,
+as if each day of this new pleasure-filled life were carrying her
+farther and farther from those laurel-lined stairs to which her longing
+had gone out. But when she saw that her every wish for quiet encountered
+sulky resistance, she gave up her desires voluntarily, and kept her
+dreams for a better time, a time which would bring all her hopes to
+fruition, which--which--her fancy might venture no farther.
+
+Besides, it was always so fascinating, so dazzling.
+
+Lilly and Dehnicke were seldom left alone. In proceeding from place to
+place they would meet acquaintances, many of whom Lilly had seen at the
+carnival; and they would join company informally; or frequently,
+appointments were made beforehand. So there was quite a group of them, a
+little fixed nucleus, about which newcomers kept crystallising.
+
+One of the faithful was that sweet little brunette with the unsteady,
+glowing eyes and the foolish smile, who had wanted her friend and
+herself to form a little family group at supper with Lilly and Dehnicke.
+Her name was Mrs. Sievekingk. A vague desire for "life" had caused her
+to run away from her husband, a physician somewhere in Further
+Pomerania. After having gone through various experiences she was now
+living with the proprietor of a large steam laundry, a red-haired swell,
+thin as a broomstick, Wohlfahrt by name. He suffered from dyspepsia, and
+Mrs. Sievekingk always had ready in her hand-bag an assortment of pills
+and powders. But this touching, energetic care of him did not prevent
+her from deceiving him for the sake of any man who courted her.
+Everybody knew it and nobody blamed her. She was a poetess and had to
+create experiences to sing about. As a result many a lover who thought
+he was sinning with her in absolute secrecy would a few weeks later
+discover an exact portrait of himself as the hero of a passionate sketch
+or a murky love poem in some magazine of the latest school.
+
+There was Mrs. Welter also, the divorced wife of the renowned composer,
+whose round, russet face--she had returned lately from a mysterious
+pleasure trip to Algeria--formed a droll contrast to the golden aureole
+of her mass of dyed hair. It was dangerous to associate with her. She
+borrowed of everybody she met, although she was in comfortable
+circumstances, receiving an ample alimony from her former husband's rich
+relatives. Her constant state of want was due to her infinite goodness,
+which led her to turn over all she possessed and all her friends gave
+her to two cashiered lovers, each of whom in his way was a scamp. Nobody
+knew to whom she was attached at present. She was frequently seen with a
+district attorney, who was stiff as a poker and too formal to use a
+toothpick on his hollow teeth, and so sat for hours in silence busily
+rolling his tongue between his jaws.
+
+Among others was an extremely thin little shrewmouse, dainty and
+devilish, with steely eyes and thin pinched lips turning inward. She
+always wore white silk, and dragged a rustling, fan-shaped train. She
+called herself Mrs. Karla. Nobody knew her real name except her lover, a
+mere boy, the son of a manufacturer. Pale, puny, and completely in her
+toils, he followed her about until dawn indulging her in her sapping
+lust for pleasure. In an unguarded moment he revealed that she was the
+wife of a Jewish scholar who lived in absolute seclusion, and actually
+believed that she was occupied in satisfying the social demands of the
+Berlin West Side. And while she wantoned with all sorts of people in
+music halls and _chambres separées_, her husband sat quietly at home
+poring over his statistical tables.
+
+There were women of every description, for whose past and whose means of
+subsistence no one concerned himself, provided they were pretty and
+elegant and not exactly _cocottes_.
+
+In addition to the ladies' legitimate escorts were a large number of
+gentlemen, who came every evening to fish in troubled waters. These
+gentlemen constituted the real enlivening element, and among them was
+the Dr. Salmoni who had wielded "the big stick" at Mr. Kellermann's
+carnival while smiling a mournful smile. In his company, Lilly felt, she
+always grew embarrassed and reticent, although it seemed to her a secret
+bond united them. As at the carnival, he exercised his caustic wit upon
+every person who crossed his path, with the exception of herself, whom
+he passed by considerately. Now and then he dissected her with his
+probing eyes, and two or three times he whispered softly _en passant_:
+"What are you seeking to find here, lovely lady?"
+
+Mr. Kellermann, too, presented himself not infrequently; grew befuddled,
+and then threw out remarks about "a chained beauty crying to be set
+free," remarks which Lilly assiduously endeavoured not to hear. At the
+end of the evening he usually discovered he was out of pocket, upon
+which Richard came to his rescue.
+
+Such was the world in which from now on Lilly's days--and nights--glided
+along.
+
+She received mysterious messages of all sorts; invitations from strange
+gentlemen to discreet rendezvous, flowers sent anonymously, from modest
+bouquets of violets to gorgeous baskets of orchids, visits from ladies
+of suspicious character, who were organising private charity circles,
+and with highly significant smiles asked Lilly to join--a turbid surf of
+desire forever rolling up to her threshold. At first it frightened her;
+finally she took no notice of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring came, and with it the races at which everybody appears who lays
+claim for any reason at all to membership in the world of elegance.
+
+Since Lilly had been enthroned at Richard's side, the slumbering cavalry
+officer in him had been awakened to such lively consciousness, his
+passion for native horse-breeding had swelled to such vast proportions
+that he would not have dreamed of missing a single race. Although he
+never betted, his pockets were stuffed with crumpled tips; chances and
+pedigrees constituted his sole topic of conversation, and Lilly, who
+took not the least interest in it all, willingly lent him her undivided
+attention.
+
+One morning, on studying the account of the previous day's race in her
+paper, the following passage attracted her notice:
+
+"Among the charming representatives of the world which knows no _ennui_,
+was the impressive beauty who for some time past has permitted glimpses
+of herself everywhere, and who still radiates the discreet atmosphere of
+the _haute volée_, which, it is rumoured, was once her native element.
+She favors violet, and in accordance with a famous precedent, she might
+be dubbed '_la dame aux violettes_.' We congratulate ourselves upon the
+appearance of this new star, who will only add to the reputation of our
+metropolitan life."
+
+"Who can that be?" thought Lilly, slightly envious, and passed in
+review the beautiful women she had admired the day before.
+
+Then suddenly the blood rushed to her head. Her glance sought the
+Redfern costume, which she had not yet hung away, and was lying across
+the back of a chair. It was two years old, but so wonderfully well made
+that it could compete with the new creations of the spring. Since this
+was the only suit of the sort she possessed--Richard must be spared
+unnecessary expense--she had worn it several times in succession.
+
+"Yes, she no longer doubted--the item referred to her and no other. Her
+first thought was:
+
+"How pleased Richard will be."
+
+She, too, was pleased. Mrs. Laue's boldest prophecies seemed about to be
+fulfilled. She was growing famous. She actually figured in the papers.
+
+But that feeling of dread! That enigmatic, senseless dread which forever
+crouched in the bottom of her heart, and crept to the surface at the
+very moment a new event led her on a stage further toward grandeur and
+happiness. Since she had stepped into the world at Richard's side, she
+had encountered nothing but what awakened gladness, pride and hope.
+Everybody respected and flattered her. Scorn of herself, self-torturing
+thoughts, had passed away, giving place to a quiet appreciation of her
+own value in the presence of strangers. But that stupid, dull dread
+never left her. It would not be silenced.
+
+Earlier in the afternoon than usual, Richard came down the street
+beaming and openly waving the paper up to her.
+
+After they had embraced ten times and read the passage in the paper
+twice as often, Richard turned taciturn and gloomy, folded his arms like
+Napoleon, and paced up and down the room with short, sharp steps.
+
+You could see ambition seething in his brain.
+
+The bell rang.
+
+Little Mrs. Sievekingk was announced.
+
+She had come for a friendly little talk with Lilly several times before,
+though the two had not grown more intimate as a result. This time she
+arrived opportunely, to help them taste the joy of Lilly's fame.
+
+Her grey velvet suit shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, and the red
+turban with the waving aigrette nestled in her dark, curly head like a
+tongue of flame darting downward.
+
+She held her hand out to Lilly with her seductive smile, but when she
+turned to Richard, her eyes flashed with some of the energy with which
+she insisted upon her lover taking a dose.
+
+In the presence of strangers Lilly and Richard still kept up the myth of
+a Platonic friendship. So Richard modestly reached for his hat to
+extract from Lilly the polite request that he stay a little longer. But
+the small, dark woman anticipated them.
+
+"Don't be foolish," she said, "don't behave as if you weren't perfectly
+at home here. You may call each other by your first names, as if from a
+slip of the tongue, and I'll pretend not to have heard a thing."
+
+Lilly and Richard smiled, and while Lilly poured a cup of tea for her
+guest, Richard played with the paper. He wanted to make certain whether
+Mrs. Sievekingk had learned of the great triumph.
+
+"What I really came for was on account of that stuff," she said, "and
+you are the very person I want to speak to about it. I suppose you're
+awfully proud of it."
+
+Richard made a deprecating gesture, and smiled complacently.
+
+"To be quite frank, I credited you with a grain or two more sense."
+
+"I beg pardon," Richard observed, taken aback.
+
+Lilly started. Her dread of the morning grew into the suspicion that her
+great fortune had a cloven hoof.
+
+"Just let me speak," said the little woman, her eyes now flashing very
+steadily with a conscious purpose. "I have experience in such matters.
+My red-head began the same way with me. Has the thought never occurred
+to you, Mr. Dehnicke, that when a choice creature like this one sitting
+here, something so sweet and glorious that you'll never find her like,
+entrusts herself to you, you have assumed a vast responsibility? Do you
+think we're here to puff and swell your vanity? We're not factory girls
+or ballet dancers to be stuck into silks and laces and led around to
+show the world that you're a fine buck. We have fallen from society, I
+know, but we're not to be classed, not by a long shot, with those women
+to whose ranks you would like to reduce us."
+
+Richard wanted to reply, but could not find the right words, and Mrs.
+Sievekingk continued, bending toward Lilly tenderly:
+
+"So here comes a poor little mite in its unsuspecting aristocracy, and
+says: 'Take me. Do with me what you want.' And what will you do with
+her? You'll make a fast woman of her, at least what the world takes to
+be a fast woman. Don't contradict me. As a beginning you've already done
+very well." She pointed to the paper.
+
+"Once the yellow journals take us up, then the counts of the Guard are
+on the spot, and then, may the Lord have mercy on us! They're much
+better-looking and more chivalrous than you; and if we _must_ become
+_cocottes_, we'd like at least to know for whom and for what. And if
+you affect indifference, then you're nothing in our opinion but a bad
+joke of yesterday."
+
+Lilly's breath was taken away. She had not thought it possible that
+anyone should dare to speak to Richard in such a tone. She laid her hand
+on his shoulder deprecatingly to pacify him. She feared he might become
+angry and enforce his rights as master of the place.
+
+The very contrary occurred.
+
+"I will gladly do what you say," he replied, mealy-mouthed, "if only I
+knew--"
+
+"I'll tell you what you don't know. You mustn't lead her around like an
+animal in a show. Don't expose her to the gaze of all sorts of people.
+Don't seat her in the front of the box at opera for every rake to stare
+at."
+
+Richard plucked up his spirits for a defence.
+
+"Aren't _you_ to be seen everywhere?"
+
+"Certainly. Because I myself want to see things. That's the reason I ran
+away from my horror of a husband. Nevertheless I don't take box seats.
+And I don't fly around race tracks either. I'm by nature a Bohemian,
+while Lilly, with her quiet, refined heart, is a bourgeois, and a
+bourgeois she ought to remain, as if she were your wife by law. But
+neither of us wants to descend to the demi-monde, I mean what we mean by
+demi-monde in Germany. In the French sense we've been in it a long time.
+That's what I have to say to you, my dear sir."
+
+Richard arose helplessly, quite red in the face, gnawing ferociously at
+his moustache.
+
+"I've always had nothing but her good at heart," he said. "Beside, it
+was your wish, too, wasn't it, Lilly?"
+
+Lilly could not make denial. She did not want to shame him any further;
+and she turned aside without replying.
+
+"And supposing it was her wish a thousand times!" the little woman
+rejoined in Lilly's stead. "You should have said to her: 'My dear, you
+don't understand. Since we are not married'--_nota bene_, that would be
+the best for both of you--'we must live modestly, otherwise I should do
+you mortal injury, I should throw you in the mire.'"
+
+Lilly felt tears rising to her eyes, as always when the subject of
+marriage in connection with Richard and herself; arose. Not to show her
+emotion, she quickly left the room to fetch Richard's overcoat. It was
+already quarter of six.
+
+She accompanied him to the door and kissed him tenderly. He must by no
+means suppose that he had jarred her or that she bore him a grudge.
+
+When she returned to her guest, she took his part eagerly. He was very
+dear and good. He had saved her from ruin, and certainly meditated no
+evil.
+
+"I'm not here to sow dissension," said the little woman, laughing. She
+then asked to be allowed to remain a little longer. "My first name is
+Jula, and please avail yourself of it in the future."
+
+They sat hand in hand on the straight sofa, over which Walter's
+masterful smile had been replaced by an extremely indifferent
+sheep-shearing scene. On the glass plate in front of each was a bit of
+nibbled cake. For the first time in her life Lilly enjoyed the pleasure
+of possessing something like a friend--she had always felt uneasy in
+Miss von Schwertfeger's presence.
+
+The canary bird sang a sorry spring song, and the sparrows outside in
+the chestnut trees responded. The May sun painted red spirals on the
+wall, and from time to time a greenish golden flash darted from the
+aquarium when one of the little fish shot through the waving algæ.
+
+The hour of confidences had struck.
+
+"I put on mighty superior airs just then," said Mrs. Jula. "But it was
+necessary to, my dear. Because you're just like me, you are standing on
+the very edge. One touch, and over we go--where no one will pick us up.
+If we could rely on our own character, our plight would not be so bad,
+but there are no two ways about it, we can't always be faithful--we
+don't want to be."
+
+"How can you say such a thing?" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.
+
+Mrs. Jula ran her little red tongue along her lips.
+
+"Just wait, my dear. The men we meet are really not calculated to make
+us see that we are here for one alone. In fact, the only way to enjoy
+them is in the plural. Oh, I could tell you things! But I don't want to
+alarm you. Besides, there's a danger attached to the plural. Each man we
+give ourselves up to robs us of a piece of what is best in us--what is
+best, I tell you, even if we can't clearly define it. It isn't
+consciousness of our own worth, because, if possible, that survives.
+It's not purity either. We don't give a fig for purity. Happiness,
+certainly not. We should die of dulness if we stuck to one man. I've
+spoken to a number of women, and they all have the same feeling. Some of
+them think it's better not to fall in love, and do it just from caprice.
+Some swear by the grand passion, which is to consecrate everything. No
+two persons, I suppose, think alike in this respect. And now I want to
+give you a little advice, because your turn will come some day. Don't
+accept any gifts, at least, no gifts of money value. At the utmost
+flowers, and none too many of them. And don't give gifts in return,
+because everything belongs to 'him.' Married women may; but it's not
+seemly for us. In general, avoid the _amant de cæur_, because
+_amant-de-cæurdom_ is characteristic of prostitutes. Married women may
+do all that, because they have to take revenge for being tied to the
+'one.' We, on the contrary, are free. We are permitted to go whenever we
+want to. But we mustn't. Anything, but not that."
+
+"Why mustn't we?" asked Lilly, who suddenly began to feel her chains.
+
+"Married women may. They _may_ everything. They may be divorced as often
+as they want, and carry their heads just as high as before. As for us,
+each time we're thrust lower into the world of prostitutes; and the
+oftener we change, the more we become free booty. All very well if we
+have money of our own. But neither you nor I have. They hover over us
+like vultures ready to swoop down upon us. If she's allowed herself to
+be supported by him--and _him_--and _him_, why isn't she to be had
+for _my_ good money, too? That's the reason we must hold fast to the one
+we have, no matter how small and horrid he is, no matter how repulsive
+we think him.
+
+"I don't understand," said Lilly. "If you're with a man, you love him."
+
+"Oh--do you mean to say you loved every man you were with?"
+
+"Why, there weren't so many," replied Lilly. "Beside my husband, the
+general"--she could not deny herself the joy of uttering that proud
+word--"there was only one other, and now--here--"
+
+"Oh, stuff!" cried Mrs. Jula in righteous indignation. "Do you want to
+blossom in my eyes as a rose of virtue?"
+
+Lilly protested she was speaking the truth.
+
+Mrs. Jula could not credit it.
+
+"Why, then, you're not one of us! You ought really be a judge's wife."
+
+Lilly laughed. She who had always thought sentence had long before been
+pronounced upon her immoral conduct, now heard herself ridiculed for her
+excess of virtue.
+
+"Oh, if I were to tell you the stories of all the women we meet,"
+continued Mrs. Jula. "One of them goes with girls in secret. One rents
+out rooms to students, but only to students she likes. And then there's
+one"--her voice sank to a whisper--"who fetches her lovers in from the
+street."
+
+Lilly shuddered.
+
+"What! I've sat next to a woman like that, and never suspected it!"
+
+Mrs. Jula's eyes glowed into space.
+
+"It's dreadful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "Well, it doesn't
+bother me. I have my poems. They lend sanctity to my acts and wash me
+clean again. It's for their sake I do it all. I need sensations, yes, I
+need sensations. I must feel my blood chase through my veins. I must
+study, study--something new in each one. No matter how inane a man may
+be, so inane that a thimble would hold his soul, nevertheless he has one
+hour of intoxication to give you, one hour in which all the bells chime
+and even the spheres make their heavenly music. And the more men you
+possess, the more life you possess, the more souls you creep into. All
+the doors of life fly open. All the secrets are revealed. If you can
+hear the pulsebeat of a stranger, can feel it under your fingers--he's
+yours--he's you yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that's life.
+That's what I call life."
+
+Lilly said to herself she could not possibly take this talk seriously,
+though hot and cold waves shivered through her body.
+
+"I don't understand what you say," she replied, and rose.
+
+Mrs. Jula did not even hear her. A mystic fire smouldered in her eyes.
+She looked like a priestess sacrificing to dark gods.
+
+It struck eight o'clock.
+
+The maid had set the table in the dining-room, and had laid a cover for
+the strange lady, who did not seem disposed to leave. She now came to
+announce that the meal was served.
+
+"Will you stay and dine with me?" asked Lilly, somewhat against her
+will.
+
+At last Mrs. Jula woke up. She neither accepted nor declined, but arose
+and disengaged her flaming hat from her dark curls.
+
+"I'm crazy, am I not?" she said, and the foolish, seductive smile
+blossomed about her lips again.
+
+Drawing a breath of relief, Lilly opened the door to the dining-room.
+
+The table gleamed with snowy damask, strewn with leaves of light formed
+by the pierced shade of the hanging lamp. The gaily coloured dishes,
+which Lilly had bought cheap at a sale, were a copy of an old Strasburg
+pattern. The knives and forks as well as the set of casters and the
+sugar tongs were of the finest plate, to be distinguished from real
+silver only by the mark.
+
+When Richard stayed for the evening meal, he should find everything as
+shining and substantial as at his mother's.
+
+Mrs. Jula burst into raptures.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful your place is. How dear! How charming! Am I not right
+in saying you were born to be a married woman? You ought to see my
+rubbish at home. What's the use? If my red-head has spoiled his stomach
+in a restaurant on larded lamb kidneys or turkey _aux truffes_, the next
+day I have to prepare gruel and toast and I serve it to him directly
+from the pot. What's the use of making a lot of fuss and setting a
+table?"
+
+"Thank the Lord!" thought Lilly. "She's herself again."
+
+The meal was modest enough--various cold cuts with roasted potatoes, and
+the remnants of a pastry for dessert. But Mrs. Jula ate as if such
+delights had not been spread before her for years. And she had to know
+exactly where Lilly got her supplies.
+
+Lilly informed her accurately. For the sake of cheapness, she said, she
+got her cold meats from a man in the country, whose address she would be
+glad to give Mrs. Jula.
+
+"I divined it immediately," said Mrs. Jula, softly, her eyes staring
+meditatively. After a pause she added more softly: "That's just the way
+it was there."
+
+"There--where?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Why, in my home."
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Jula threw her napkin on the table, jumped from her seat,
+and stepped to the open window, wringing her hands and pressing them to
+her forehead.
+
+"I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin!" she moaned
+out into the night.
+
+"What's the matter?" faltered Lilly in fright, and also jumped up.
+
+"I want to go back to my husband. I want to go back to my husband. He's
+a cross old piece, I know. And it's death to live with him. It's true,
+it's true! But I do want to go back to him. I'm going to ruin here. I'm
+going to ruin here."
+
+Lilly stepped behind her and stroked her neck.
+
+"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave
+me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides,
+you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with
+a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower
+woods reposed unseen. "No, you won't go to ruin You will reach the
+heights, from which you will look down on us poor women."
+
+Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder.
+
+"Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can't pull myself out of this
+whirlpool. It's as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I'm going
+to ruin. I'm going to ruin."
+
+Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the
+unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where
+she had sat before.
+
+"It's nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So
+I'm going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There
+mustn't be a ray of light."
+
+Lilly closed the door of the dining-room.
+
+They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the canal
+through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey
+over the tear-stained face.
+
+"Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her
+adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who
+that woman is? _I_ am that woman."
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put
+on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to
+meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look--as a
+rule he turns back and speaks to me--and I go with him to common
+saloons, or to a little confectionery shop--anywhere he wants to. Or I
+sit with him on a bench in the dark--and if he pleases me still more--I
+go with him--wherever else he wants to."
+
+"Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she
+knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the
+street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed
+through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply
+been too fearsome to answer him.
+
+"Now that you know what I am, you won't want me to stay sitting here on
+your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I'm ready to go." She
+reached out pleadingly for Lilly's hands.
+
+Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is
+grievously ill and must render that assistance which the moment
+requires.
+
+"But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How
+did it come about?"
+
+"Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how _your_ life turned out as
+it did? It's all very well and good for people to reproach us with
+weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish
+gives birth to another. And you always think you're doing what is right
+and what fate has prescribed."
+
+"That's true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own
+life.
+
+"This is what I've always said to myself: my poetry requires it. I must
+have experiences, pictures, that _frisson_, as the French say. But all
+that's a mere pretext. The truth is, we hunt and hunt and hunt. Your
+husband's not the right one. Your red-head's not the right man, and none
+of the rest of them--your sporting business man, or your
+eh-eh-lieutenant. But he must be _somewhere_! The stranger sitting at
+the next table, he's the one, surely. So you come to an understanding
+with him--after all he's _not_ the right one. It is most certainly not
+the fine ones. Because they take the trouble to possess us without
+taking the trouble to find out whether there's anything fine in us, too.
+So you keep on hunting. Perhaps you will meet him on the street. Finally
+it turns into fever, which wholly consumes you. Sometimes I can scarcely
+fall asleep in anticipation of the next dark evening when I shall rove
+about again. Now, do you see, I must be going to my ruin? When I saw
+your beautifully set table, all of a sudden a longing for my home and my
+husband came over me again. Yes, I sometimes have that longing. He has
+bleared eyes and he smells of carbolic acid. Oh, that vile smell! I'd
+like so to smell it again For all I care, he may even throw the
+stethoscope at me again. Besides, he wrote to me I should return to him
+If I want to, I can. _But_--I will remain here--and go to my ruin.
+Life's funny."
+
+She rose and groped for her hat and hatpins lying on the table.
+
+Lilly did not want to let her go in such a state of mind.
+
+"If you feel it is driving you to your ruin, that it's a poison in your
+blood, why don't you try to resist? Why don't you pluck it out of your
+system? Mere force of will must help some."
+
+"I've said that to myself," rejoined Mrs. Jula. "But I've never had
+anyone to whom I could speak about it and who could help me. Now I've
+found you, it will be easier for me. Now I feel I might be able to.
+Maybe I will."
+
+"Do you want to give me your promise?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand
+to her.
+
+"Yes, I promise," Mrs. Jula cried, and delightedly clapped her hand in
+Lilly's. "You will be my saviour. You are already. I feel it. To show my
+thanks I will stand guard over you and see to it that no one spoils you.
+You shan't get to be what I am, or the others."
+
+"Oh, I'll take care of myself," faltered Lilly.
+
+"Yes, that's what you say! But when the dreary void comes--and 'he'
+grows more and more insipid--just you see! You've nothing left to say to
+yourself--and you mustn't have children--for God's sake!--we _don't_
+have them--all of us know how to prevent them from coming. You mustn't
+share his activities with him either. He acquaints you with as many of
+them as he is compelled to. And behind it all you feel the hostility of
+his family, who look upon you as a species of harpy. Then those cursed
+schemes of his for marrying that he dishes up whenever he's angry. Above
+all, the longing. It's like a steady toothache. That's it--like the
+toothache. You don't want to think of it, but wherever you go, it
+tortures you. For life _cannot_ end that way. Something _must_ happen.
+It's much worse than if you're married. Just you wait and see."
+
+Mrs. Jula's wild words increased the pain at Lilly's heart. A desolate
+mournfulness threatened to attack her.
+
+"Stop," she said. "If it must come, it will come soon enough. I don't
+care to think of it beforehand."
+
+"Right you are, my dear. It doesn't help any, either."
+
+Mrs. Jula now took leave.
+
+"Will you remember your promise?" asked Lilly from the hall door.
+
+"Forever and ever, I swear to you," and Mrs. Jula slipped down the
+stairs.
+
+With her brain in a whirl Lilly returned to her dark drawing-room, sad
+and distraught, and leaned her head out of the open window for a whiff
+of fresh air.
+
+She saw the little woman, who had just emerged from the front entrance,
+lightly and gracefully trip along the pavement.
+
+A gentleman in a chimney-pot and patent leather shoes came towards her,
+passed her, started, stopped abruptly, turned about, and, when he
+reached her side, raised his hat with exaggerated politeness.
+
+In the light of the street-lamp Lilly saw her face smiling up at him
+curiously, insinuatingly--and then they went on their way--together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Richard reluctantly adapted himself to a less showy existence. He still
+wanted to parade his possession of Lilly; but little Mrs. Jula's homily
+had sunk deep into his conscience, and he did not dare to disobey her.
+
+Nevertheless he was bored and vexed and sulky, and Lilly was on the
+point of herself suggesting that they go to the races, when she received
+news of her mother's death.
+
+She shed the number of tears and suffered the amount of affliction
+befitting her tender heart. In reality her mother had been dead to her
+so long before that her grief could not be very profound.
+
+Before leaving Berlin to attend the burial at the insane asylum, her
+greatest concern was to have as simple a mourning dress made as
+possible. She felt ashamed that she had provided so poorly for her sick
+mother during her lifetime, and she wished to avoid giving offence by
+elegance of appearance; which did not prevent the officials and
+physicians of the institution from dancing attendance on her and
+treating her as if she were a sort of shining black bird of paradise.
+
+She spent three glowing spring evenings at the little heap of earth in
+prayer and meditation, and returned to Berlin in a serious frame of mind
+with thoughts stirred up like soil freshly turned by the plough.
+
+When at her mother's grave she felt she hated Richard; but when she
+found him awaiting her at the station she sank into his arms
+helplessly, eager for consolation. Now he really was her all.
+
+For the next few months it was taken for granted that her mourning stood
+in the way of pleasure seeking. Richard, it must be said to his credit,
+behaved sweetly and considerately. He sat at home with her many a night,
+read unintelligible books, played backgammon, and preferred falling
+asleep on the sofa to luring her into the world of gaiety.
+
+But since it was not right that he should become entirely estranged from
+society, it was arranged that he was to have every other evening for
+himself.
+
+His beautiful mistress's reputation had smoothed his path. Relying upon
+the support of two of her admirers, he ventured to apply for admission
+into one of the aristocratic clubs, which welcomed him without a single
+black ball. From now on he could enjoy the supreme delight of losing his
+firm's well-earned money to young scions of the aristocracy, foreign
+attachés, and other superior beings.
+
+Lilly disliked hearing of his losses. She worried over his annoyance,
+which he invariably revealed. Whenever he told of his bad luck, she felt
+constrained, and then offered to make up by saving even more than she
+had heretofore. Though he laughed each time and assured her that what
+she cost him signified as little as if he were to indulge in one
+additional cigarette a day, she clung to her conviction that she was a
+parasite, and was partly responsible for the welfare of Liebert &
+Dehnicke.
+
+When he spent a quiet evening with her resting from his nocturnal
+campaigns, they always "talked business." Lilly displayed a sharp sense
+for practical matters, even for accounts, and her artistic judgment was
+sure.
+
+Richard very often brought home drawings of models, and the two sat
+bent over the outspread rolls planning and consulting with each other
+like partners.
+
+Those were well-nigh blessed hours.
+
+Lilly never wearied of inquiring about the factory; how many people were
+employed there at that particular time; whether this or that man or
+woman was still working for him--she did not know the names, but
+designated the people by an accurate description of their
+appearance--what pieces were in process of making; and whether the
+supply of articles of one or other model had not yet given out, so
+thoroughly informed she kept herself as to the firm's sales.
+
+The factory, as she often jestingly remarked to Richard, was her unhappy
+love. To call for him at his office at closing time was her greatest
+delight, and had she been permitted to, she would have busied herself at
+the factory every day. But he objected. His employés knew of the close
+relationship between them, and he must avoid gossip and ridicule.
+
+Lilly felt sure this was not the only motive. She had long fully
+realised that his mother was not kindly disposed to her. Though at first
+he had spoken of her quite freely, he now evaded a reply when Lilly
+directly asked for her. Probably he feared exciting the old lady's
+indignation if he permitted his mistress to make herself at home in his
+office.
+
+So Lilly contented herself with sympathetic interest from afar in the
+welfare of the little kingdom.
+
+On the evenings she was left alone, at a loss what to do with herself,
+she got into the habit of visiting the house in Alte Jakobstrasse.
+
+She left a little before ten o'clock, and took up her station on the
+opposite side of the street, from where she gazed reverentially at the
+old grey structure. She admired the imitation marble columns, which
+formed a decorative frame about the entrance after the fashion of a
+Renaissance gateway. She stared up at the dimly lighted second story
+where his mother dwelt, and pressed timidly into the darkness of a
+doorway if she saw the threatening shadow of a woman's figure glide
+across the curtains.
+
+When it grew late and the tenants of the house ceased to come and go,
+she ventured to cross the street, mount the three front-door steps,
+press her face against the iron grating, and peep into the hall. The
+sheen of the leafy pyramid, the subdued milky whiteness of the Clytie
+bust, the dark glow of the stained glass window mingled to produce the
+mysterious, alluring impression of a dusky chapel.
+
+The front-door steps became like a goal of a pilgrimage up to which
+penitents crawl on their knees; the stained glass window became a
+heavenly aureole, the Clytie bust a benedictory saint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late in the summer Richard was called to the manoeuvres.
+
+His letters were curt and reserved, and unsuccessfully concealed his ill
+humour. Finally they were dated from the hospital.
+
+He had fallen from his horse and his left knee joint was inflamed. He
+would be unable to ride for a long time, perhaps forever.
+
+He returned in October wearing a gutta percha knee cap, and promptly
+sent in his resignation from the regiment.
+
+The fall from his horse in truth was a fortunate incident. Rumours of
+his relation with the divorced wife of its former commander had reached
+the regiment. The comrades noticeably held aloof from him, and
+evidently his chiefs were merely awaiting confirmation of the report to
+call him to account officially; a procedure which in the circumstances
+would have brought his lieutenancy in the reserves to a catastrophal
+end.
+
+The accident was his salvation; and his object in adopting an irritated,
+reproachful manner in Lilly's presence was merely to make her aware of
+what he was sacrificing because of his love of her.
+
+Indirectly he had heard news of the colonel which filled Lilly with
+horror. It had gradually become a fixed idea of the colonel's that Anna
+von Schwertfeger had acted in collusion with Lilly and Von Prell; and
+man of violence that he was, he had chased her from his castle. Since
+then he lived alone, a maddened misanthrope, and it was feared he would
+come to a sad end.
+
+An ominous greeting from those sunny days of Lilly's past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few months later that occurred which Mrs. Jula had prophesied: one day
+Richard spoke to Lilly of marrying another woman, not, however, for the
+purpose of annoying her, but because he had formed the habit of
+disburdening himself of every vexation by talking it over with her.
+
+His mother was entertaining an enormously wealthy orphan girl.
+
+Of course for Richard--wholly and entirely for Richard.
+
+She sat at table every day, a pale, strawy blond, and looked at him
+questioningly with great, strange eyes:
+
+"Aren't you soon going to propose?"
+
+His mother delivered long sermons. It could not go on the same way. A
+few more seasons like the last and all the respectable families would
+point the finger of scorn at him.
+
+It was enough to drive him distracted.
+
+Lilly felt as if glacial waters were trickling down her back.
+
+But she bore up bravely. She smiled at him, and betrayed no more
+excitement than if he had been consulting her about some doubtful
+factory model.
+
+"Do you feel you could get to love her?" she asked.
+
+"What does 'to love' mean?" he rejoined, avoiding her gaze.
+
+"Well, everything has to be taken into consideration."
+
+"You talk just as if I were serious about it," he cried. "Altogether you
+act as if you didn't care, as if you would like to be rid of me in a
+twinkling."
+
+With languid eagerness Lilly tried to assure him she did not wish to
+stand in his way, not in the least, least bit. She had only his
+happiness at heart, and if he cared to make her proud by showing
+confidence in her, he would not take this step, neither now nor later,
+without discussing it with her beforehand.
+
+He was touched. He kissed her and said:
+
+"Oh, it's nonsense."
+
+But the conversation left Lilly as in a nightmare, and the one thought
+obsessed her:
+
+"If he deserts me, I shall sink into the mire after all."
+
+Grief over her mother's death was a vanishing cloud compared with this
+torturing anguish.
+
+The vultures Mrs Jula had spoken of occurred to her, all those vultures
+with their white fronts and black dress suits, who were waiting to
+snatch her to themselves with their moneyed claws the instant her friend
+and protector abandoned her. From them her thoughts flitted to those
+other vultures in Kellermann's picture, who perched on the sunburnt
+rocks ready to pounce on the naked beauty when she should lose the
+strength to defend herself.
+
+"Her chains are her weapons," thought Lilly. "And that's the way it is
+with me. If I am set free, I am lost."
+
+The next day she and Richard carefully avoided the dangerous topic,
+though Richard remained distraught and uneasy.
+
+Finally Lilly took courage, and though her feelings compressed her
+throat like a murderous clutch, she said:
+
+"I see you haven't come to a decision yet, Richard. Wouldn't you like to
+bring me her picture, so that I can see what she is like? No one knows
+you so well as I do, and no one will know so well whether she suits you
+or not."
+
+Richard violently denied that he was undecided. What did _he_ care for
+that doll of a girl?
+
+But his resentment was disingenuous, and his eyes stared into vacancy.
+
+She had five millions.
+
+And the next day he actually brought the photograph.
+
+Lilly laid it down without unwrapping it. Mere contact with the picture
+made her hands tremble. She feared the first sight of the girl's face
+would expose her own great distress.
+
+"Why, you're not even looking at it," said Richard, with some
+disappointment in his tone.
+
+"Time enough after you've gone," said Lilly, rejoiced that she could
+smile so indifferently.
+
+She called to him when he was out in the hall:
+
+"I'll tell you to-morrow--you'll know then."
+
+The next instant she caught up the picture. Her heart knocked at her
+ribs. But first she had to wave "good-by" to Richard, as was her habit
+and duty.
+
+And then--and then--
+
+A girl's face, good, placid, somewhat peaked, with poor, though amiable
+eyes. Her blond hair was plaited country fashion, and the heavy braids,
+thick as a woman's wrist, drew her head back a bit. A timid smile
+played about her full lips.
+
+Something just to be loved, something which would revive with happiness
+as a spray of lilacs in fresh water. Not turbulent, none too
+gifted--wifely and yielding.
+
+Just what Richard needed.
+
+Lilly placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees in
+front of it. She prayed and wrestled with her soul.
+
+She had to reiterate again and again:
+
+"Just what he needs. He won't have another such chance."
+
+And the five millions!
+
+If she were not to set him free she would be one of those harpies which
+Mrs. Jula said the world of respectability considered her and her like
+to be.
+
+"But I am in possession, therefore mine is the right. What good are her
+five millions to me, if I go to ruin on account of them? Why need I
+sacrifice myself for him, for him or for anybody in the wide world?"
+
+"Harpy, harpy!" rang in between.
+
+So thought the vampires described in children's mythologies as having
+beautiful hair and murderous claws.
+
+"I will tear to shreds the flesh of him whom I possess."
+
+Oh, what a night!
+
+She crouched in bed with her knees drawn up and her face buried in her
+lap, sobbing, sobbing.
+
+At last, toward morning, she found what she had been seeking. Out of
+tears, out of bitterness, out of shuddering and prayer arose the
+alleviating resolve: that very afternoon when he came she would tell
+him--but no!--why wait until the afternoon? Why wait until he entered
+the rooms where the force of familiarity, his loving resistance might
+shiver the great sacrificial work to bits?
+
+It must be in some other place where she seemed more of a stranger to
+him, which she could leave the instant she felt his proximity caused her
+to waver.
+
+She was not allowed to visit him in his office without special
+permission. But at the midday recess, when it was quieter than at other
+times, he retired to his back room for his actual work of the day, and
+she might be sure of entering unseen and speaking to him without fear of
+interruption.
+
+So sacred a resolve sanctioned everything.
+
+She used the morning for assorting his letters and tying them together.
+She wanted to hand them to him along with his betrothed's picture when
+she bade him farewell. He need never fear she might cause him trouble in
+the future.
+
+Then she dressed--more carefully than usual--washed herself with milk of
+lilacs to remove the traces of tears, waved her hair, and drew it into a
+knot at the nape of her neck, as she had seen on statues of Greek women.
+She was their equal--like them, serenely raised above sorrow and joy.
+
+She drove to the office.
+
+The clock struck quarter past one when she stood in front of the
+columned gateway.
+
+Nobody was to be seen in the yard except the porter, who lifted his cap
+with a confidential smile.
+
+She was still their employer's mistress.
+
+If only she had taken the precaution to send in her card.
+
+The front office door was open as usual when he worked in the back room,
+and she well knew the secret spring of the gate in the railing.
+
+She prudently knocked at the inner door, which as a rule stood slightly
+ajar, but which to-day was closed.
+
+"Come in," he said.
+
+She stepped in and faced--his mother.
+
+Lilly had never seen her, and she had imagined her quite, quite
+different, a tall, thin, imposing old lady. Next to Richard's desk sat a
+medium-sized, rotund woman with a black lace cap on her grizzled hair.
+She looked at Lilly with an expression of surprise and displeasure in
+her cold, grey eyes.
+
+Lilly instantly knew it was she.
+
+Richard, who had been leaning back comfortably in his revolving chair,
+jumped to his feet.
+
+Rigid with fright, Lilly stared at the old lady, who now rose from her
+seat also, while an evil gleam of anger and contempt lighted up those
+cold eyes.
+
+"A fine state of affairs," she cried, turning her head jerkily from
+Richard to Lilly and back to Richard. "I'm not secure even in my own
+home. I beg of you, Richard, do not expose me to another meeting with a
+person of this sort."
+
+With an indignant snort she pushed past Lilly, who stood to one side in
+respectful terror.
+
+"What are you doing here? What do you mean by coming here in this way?"
+
+Richard had never shouted at her so before.
+
+He planted himself squarely in front of her, thrust his hands in his
+trousers' pockets, and gnawed the ends of his moustache. His head hung
+on his left shoulder. He looked like a treacherous, butting bull.
+
+She wanted to hand him the picture and the letters, tell him everything
+she had intended to; but her voice failed. Her knees threatened to give
+way.
+
+"I--I--I--" she faltered, and choked.
+
+"I--I--I--" he mimicked her. "I--I--I'd like to wriggle myself in here.
+I--I--I'd like to be mistress here--isn't that so? No, my little angel.
+This can't go on! It has to stop--at once! I've long had my suspicions
+of what you call your unhappy love of the factory. Get out of here! Get
+out of here, I say."
+
+Before he had finished Lilly was out.
+
+She still held the parcel in a convulsive grip.
+
+She reeled as she walked along--past bright red houses, which threatened
+to fall on her. A truck loaded with flour bags scattered white clouds. A
+pulley screeched in a factory yard. When someone came toward her, she
+made a wide détour, keeping to the edge of the pavement. She feared he
+might grin his contempt at her.
+
+A skein of silk thread lay on the pavement. Lilly picked it up, and
+thought of hanging herself.
+
+Something must be done.
+
+To be abandoned--very well--if it could not be helped. Each one, when
+her turn came, would have to resign herself to her fate.
+
+But to be chased away--thrown out--like a thief--like the vilest woman
+of the street--to be shaken off like a disgusting worm, to be spat upon!
+
+Something must be done.
+
+Anything to take revenge upon him.
+
+Even if he was now unsusceptible to her revenge--all the same! He would
+discover he had been to blame throughout. If she descended into the
+mire, which had heretofore filled her with horror, if she went to
+ruin--!
+
+Something must be done--any deed of self-degradation which made her fit
+to be treated in that way and no other--and freed her from those
+torments--those torments.
+
+Her heart hung in her breast like a painful swelling. She could have
+drawn a line about it, so sharply defined it was against her side. It
+seemed to be in the clutch of sharp claws.
+
+Again those lurking vultures occurred to her, the vultures of
+Kellermann's picture.
+
+They were waiting for Lilly Czepanek. For whom else?
+
+Suddenly something flashed and hissed in her brain like a tongue of
+fire.
+
+That was it! That was it!
+
+She summoned a cab.
+
+On! On!
+
+Whither?
+
+She ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to Mr.
+Kellermann's studio.
+
+She ran up the steps, the same steps down which eight months before she
+had glided at Richard's side rocked in bliss. All a-tremble she stepped
+into the dark anteroom, which had the stuffy smell of a badly aired
+bedroom. Her hand almost failed her as she knocked at the studio door.
+
+Mr. Kellermann in his breeches and slippers was squatting on the floor
+beside the Turkish tabouret in exactly the same position as at her first
+visit. He was busied with a coffee machine, and looked contented and
+seedy.
+
+"Mercy on us!" he said, and drew the collar of his night-shirt together.
+"What signifies this sudden appearance, O noble goddess? Are the suns
+setting again?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She laid her hat and wraps on a chair, and began to
+unhook her waist, looking about for a screen. There was none.
+
+The models who came to pose for Mr. Kellermann were not squeamish.
+
+He jumped up and stared at her.
+
+When he realised what she meant to do, he broke into exclamations of
+delight.
+
+"What did I say? What did I say? I said you'd come. You see! We've
+reached the point at which we're screaming to be set free."
+
+"I'm not screaming," she replied, drawing up the corners of her mouth
+disdainfully. "If you please, look somewhere else."
+
+He made a dash for the picture leaning against the wall in its blind
+frame, blew the dust off, drove the wedge in tight, and adjusted the
+easel, laughing all the while, and grunting:
+
+"She came after all."
+
+Lilly had torn off her outer garments and was pulling at the drawing
+ribbon of her chemise. Her paralysed fingers could scarcely untie the
+knot.
+
+Now she stood entirely unclothed.
+
+The garish studio light pricked her flesh painfully as with a thousand
+needles.
+
+She wanted to groan and creep into a corner, but she turned her clenched
+fists outward, threw back her shoulders, and presented herself to the
+painter's greedy gaze.
+
+"Why don't you begin?" she asked. As she spoke she felt that her
+smarting scorn was distorting her face.
+
+"I'll begin immediately," he stammered, choking over each word. "I won't
+utter--a syllable--or the vision will vanish. I'll begin."
+
+He snatched up the palette, pressed the tubes, and readjusted the
+picture on the easel.
+
+He made a few strokes, then threw the brushes down. He reeled like a
+drunkard.
+
+"No use this way," he said, mumbling to himself. "You must pose."
+
+"Just as you wish," she replied, still with that mocking smile, and
+stretched out her arms like the beauty of the picture.
+
+He was not yet satisfied, and wanted to approach her. He did not dare
+to.
+
+"I will move the mirror, so that you can see for yourself what is wrong
+in your pose."
+
+He did so.
+
+Lilly shuddered. A strange wild animal, which was not even beautiful,
+seemed to be standing there.
+
+"Not right yet," she heard him say. "The attitude is meaningless--you've
+got to know what it's for."
+
+He went to the back of the studio and rummaged among all sorts of gear
+and fetched out a tremendously thick chain, the colour of rusty iron,
+which did not clank while being handled.
+
+"It won't be cold and won't weigh you down," he said with a short,
+forced laugh. "It's made of papier maché."
+
+Then she had to suffer his coming close to her and laying the chain
+about her body.
+
+He was panting and his breath streamed upon her hotly.
+
+Each tremulous touch of his fingers was like a sabre slash.
+
+He returned to the easel, groped for the brushes and began to paint
+again.
+
+Suddenly he cast everything from him, seized the picture with both hands
+and dashed it against the easel. One of the rods tore through the canvas
+and split it in two.
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.
+
+He threw himself upon her.
+
+She feebly attempted to defend herself with the chain.
+
+But the chain was made of papier maché.
+
+And she would not have had it otherwise.
+
+Down into the mire, quickly, with closed eyes!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day Richard paid his customary afternoon visit. His lids were
+reddened and his eyes glassy. He looked completely crushed, but he
+behaved as if nothing had occurred.
+
+Lilly had scarcely expected him, and she received him with frigid
+astonishment.
+
+"Oh," he said, "on account of yesterday. After you left I had a tough
+discussion with mama. You mustn't come to the factory. I had to promise
+her that. As for the rest, I think we'll not speak of it any more. The
+young lady's leaving this evening. So let's kiss."
+
+They kissed. And all was as before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Once more the chestnuts put on their yellow cloaks and the peep holes in
+the foliage widened. From her window Lilly could see the ducks foraging,
+and the odorous, fruit-laden barges on their laborious way to market
+sunk deep in the water under their summer cargo.
+
+Once more the world muffled itself up for winter weather; once more
+metropolitan amusements turned on their gay lights.
+
+In decent half-mourning the chase began again. Richard objected to
+remaining like a pickle in a jar.
+
+This time, however, they entirely renounced box seats at dazzling shows
+and suppers at aristocratic restaurants. Richard no longer had to
+establish himself triumphantly in the possession of a famous--at the
+same time cheap--_horizontale de grande marque_. They quietly remained
+on a middle-class level, where German champagne reigns supreme and the
+star Kempinski is in the ascendant.
+
+But here, too, in cabarets and theatres where smoking is allowed, in
+jolly little nooks and respectable looking back rooms, they passed
+numberless hours in riotous abandon.
+
+The women, who in the other world had felt somewhat out of place and
+embarrassed, enjoyed themselves better in these more modest
+surroundings, and the gentlemen were content that their shirt fronts
+retained the starch longer.
+
+The personnel remained about the same. Only a few dandies dropped away,
+who saw no fun in life unless it offered them an occasional opportunity
+to receive a condescending nod from a few lieutenants of the Guard in
+citizens' clothes.
+
+Lilly followed the crowd, and thought it had to be so.
+
+For the most part she sat there saying little and smiling a friendly
+smile. She permitted the gentlemen to pay her court and was moderately
+responsive. She listened indifferently to the confidences of the ladies,
+all of whom were well-disposed to her, because as everyone soon
+realised, Lilly had no desire to poach on another's preserves.
+
+They might have taken her to be limited or phlegmatic, if from time to
+time the champagne had not relaxed her rigidity and enlivened her with a
+different spirit. She slowly came out of her state of torpor. Her eyes
+flashed, her cheeks reddened. She laughed aloud, made madcap remarks,
+told the colonel's club jokes, and finally fell into a sort of ecstasy,
+in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous chirp, imitated well-known
+actors, and even danced the bold dances she had seen on the variety
+stage.
+
+Her memory was incredibly good. She remembered things she had heard only
+once, and quite unconsciously, for in her normal state she recalled even
+less than others. The wine first had to wash away the barriers that
+always hemmed her being.
+
+Her associates soon became aware of this, and tried to trick her into
+the condition that promised them a merry entertainment. But she resisted
+with all her might. She waged constant warfare without even Richard as
+an ally. It flattered his vanity to have his beautiful mistress admired
+because of her talents.
+
+The next day Lilly always felt bruised and battered and despondent.
+
+And sometimes when the field of her spiritual vision was completely
+filled with red, kicking legs and the empty teasing dribble of comic
+songs, she heard a still small voice in admonition:
+
+"There was a time when you lived otherwise. There was a time when you
+aspired to the heights."
+
+But Lilly feared to listen to this voice.
+
+She felt she was worthless because she was defenceless.
+
+And because nobody was there who understood her and held out his hand to
+her.
+
+Frequently, on the evenings she was left to herself, she slipped out of
+the house as if she were committing an evil deed, and took a seat in the
+gallery of some good theatre, where she thought no one would recognise
+her; or at a concert, among the music students, who sat on the steps or
+leaned against the railings, following the selections with thick scores
+in their hands. Lilly behaved as if she were one of them.
+
+But concerts no longer touched her. She felt uneasy and out of place,
+and turned her attention to some young man because of his bold profile
+or his fine head of hair.
+
+"He is one of those favoured talented persons," she thought, tormented,
+and looked at him long and languishly, until he returned her dallying
+with ardour.
+
+Though she burned to have him speak to her, she lacked the courage to
+grant him additional signs of her favour, having before her eyes Mrs.
+Jula's appalling example. Besides, the throbbing of her heart was
+sufficient enjoyment.
+
+Already she was so completely under the spell of an erotic world that
+every excitement of her mood was immediately transmuted into a desirous
+love game.
+
+And the longing, that eternal toothache, of which Mrs. Jula had spoken,
+had begun to drill her nerves.
+
+It had come like a thief in the night. It filled her sleep with flaming
+pictures and converted her waking hours into a twilight doze.
+
+She waited, but nobody came. Nobody took the trouble to pick up her lost
+soul from out of the dust.
+
+There was only one man who observed her and seemed to have a suspicion
+of what was taking place in her soul.
+
+He was Dr. Salmoni.
+
+Dr. Salmoni was considered a great man, one of the luminaries in
+Berlin's intellectual life. He was editor of an art magazine, which had
+once conducted a revolutionary campaign against the great men of the old
+school, and had fashioned new gods, erected new altars at which the
+masses might burn incense. But the steady burning of incense was not in
+Dr. Salmoni's line. He promptly bethought himself that the divinities
+before whom every Tom, Dick, or Harry was crawling on his knees, were,
+at bottom, creations of his and of his friends, fetiches to be rejected,
+just as they had been exalted. And he began a merry war upon them also.
+People easily endured Dr. Salmoni's hate; his quips sputtered in the air
+harmless as skyrockets; nobody believed his imputations. The only time
+he was dangerous was when he showed pitying benevolence. Then somebody's
+reputation was surely at stake. In certain circles Dr. Salmoni's praise
+was equivalent to a death sentence.
+
+As in the previous winter, the distinguished Dr. Salmoni condescended
+every now and then to take part in the innocent sport of the little
+circle whose forte was not exactly intellectuality. His appearance
+always caused a flutter of joyous reverence; the company instantly moved
+closer to make place for him, and as soon as he leaned back gently in
+his chair, smiled his sad, compassionate smile, and stroked the peak of
+his light-brown Van Dyke beard, they hung on his lips expectantly
+awaiting a titillating stream of spiteful sallies.
+
+But the jester's rôle did not always suit him. He plunged into profound
+tête-à-têtes, or dreamed in silence, according to his mood. Sometimes he
+even showed a naïve, trusting side of his nature, like a leopard playing
+with dogs.
+
+He seldom addressed Lilly; but his piercing eyes often glided over her
+face, as if to spy upon her feelings and grope about in her soul.
+
+One evening he seated himself next to her, and asked her to cut his meat
+for him--he had strained his wrist throttling a certain celebrity.
+Waxing more intimate, he next asked her to feed him, though his left
+hand had by no means been disabled.
+
+So for the first time they entered into a conversation.
+
+Lilly quailed. She feared she might not acquit herself creditably.
+
+"I am surprised," he said. "You've been going about with this loud crew
+for over a year, and I don't read the slang in your eyes yet."
+
+"Slang in my eyes? What do you mean by slang in a person's eyes?"
+
+"Do me the favour to regard the women here." He pointed furtively at
+Mrs. Jula, Mrs. Welter, Karla, and a few others. "Look at the way they
+roll their eyes and exchange glances. It's the lingo of a--well, I won't
+say vice--I despise words without nuance--I'll say of a thievish fancy.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"I think so," faltered Lilly.
+
+"But you still have some of the childlike expression you had when you
+made your début. Not altogether. A fleck of disdain is in your eyes.
+Disdain is not the right word. At the edge of deserts there are certain
+salt seas--dark green and empty. Do you catch the idea? Because the
+ground is poisonous."
+
+"Possibly," said Lilly, constrained.
+
+"Nevertheless, it's wonderful. Your soul's like a filter. It assimilates
+nothing but what it wants to. Or have you a secret store to draw on,
+which gives you the right to mock at us--some constant ideal--some goal
+in the hazy distance--some great song--a Song of Songs?"
+
+Lilly started up with a faint outcry, but not so faint as to fail to
+attract general attention.
+
+"I merely stepped on her foot," Dr. Salmoni explained, "and she is still
+innocent enough _not_ to consider it unintentional."
+
+All laughed.
+
+"A joke exactly suited to their understanding," he whispered, bending
+toward her shoulder. "I'll pretend not to have heard your involuntary
+avowal. That alone has value in my estimation which is voluntary. And I
+will not ask you as I did a year ago: 'What is thy quest here, lovely
+lady?' I will ask you: 'What hast thou to lose here?' I myself will
+furnish the answer. Your style--you have your style to lose. You are on
+the point of becoming styleless; which is always a misfortune and a
+crime. To me style is virtue, greatness, genuineness, force, religion, a
+God-ordained quality--all in one and a few things more. Remain bodily
+and spiritually intangible. Rise to a healthy, gladsome vice--_tant
+mieux_. Dress your hair for evening prayers, or let it flow over the
+pillow like a bacchante--but decide which."
+
+"I believe a moment ago you were pleading for nuance," said Lilly, the
+edge of whose wit was sharpened by his, "and now you're advocating a
+dogma."
+
+"Hear, hear!" he praised her. "Excellent. But no. I'm not preaching a
+dogma. I'm preaching the exercise of one's will, the will to
+personality. Do you understand? The result will be rich enough in
+nuances. Undoubtedly you have the material in you for a _grande
+amoureuse_, but alas not the courage."
+
+"Well, then, not the material," she flashed back happily.
+
+He laughed like a child.
+
+"In one's old age one gets lectures on logic from little, virtuous
+women." He magnanimously allowed her the pleasure of having outdone him
+in repartee.
+
+Thereafter Lilly reflected much upon the conversation. What a vast deal
+he knew of her! Was he in alliance with supernatural powers?
+
+"The will to personality," he had said.
+
+She felt blissful. Up to the heights again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On another occasion, as they were walking behind their companions along
+Friederichstrasse, still gaily alive at midnight, he adopted a different
+tone.
+
+"I have a sure feeling that you are afraid of me," he said.
+
+"I?" she queried, confused and drawing a deep breath. "Why should I be?"
+
+"Because you know I have a message for you, a message to which, in the
+bottom of your heart, you don't feel equal."
+
+"I don't understand," she stammered, though she fully took in his
+meaning. She knew precisely what rôle he could play in her life if--
+
+"I am a man who likes tones pianissimo. I don't care to blow my
+sensations on a comb. Otherwise your ears might have tingled on certain
+occasions. However, I must say, it's abominable to see a woman like you,
+a woman created to wander on the heights of thought and enjoyment,
+seduced by a few Bismarck herrings into cutting capers with them. I
+won't mention names, but I assure you, you can't get drunk on lukewarm
+dish water, and intoxication is the great thing in life, at least while
+our blood runs lively in our veins."
+
+Lilly trembled on his arm.
+
+They were passing a crowd of roysterers, young fellows shouldering their
+canes, with swimming eyes dreaming into space. One whistled Wagner,
+another sang a students' song; and sweet little street-walkers cast
+longing, seductive glances at them. Lilly and Dr. Salmoni passed more
+people, adults and half-grown girls, men and youths. All seemed under
+the spell of the same transport. It was like a great dance, at which
+each offered his neighbour hand and mouth and body and soul.
+
+"What can I do?" she whispered, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.
+
+"I will tell you," he replied with a smile which harboured dark
+promises. "You must learn to live another life along with this one. One
+all for yourself, for yourself and a few select. Do you understand? As a
+Frenchman once said, you must lay out a secret garden, in which you will
+cultivate in absolute quiet those thoughts and desires that seem dear to
+you, and above all, those that seem to be forbidden and those that you
+have stolen by the way, no matter how. Do you understand?"
+
+"Whatever I have stolen has brought me misfortune," said Lilly,
+hesitatingly.
+
+"Rather the law which calls it stolen. The distinction is a difficult
+one to make. However, you may believe me in this: so long as we are not
+permeated with the religion of self-exaltation--do you understand me,
+child?--so long as we haven't rooted out the words 'attachment' and
+'duty' from our thoughts, our road is not perfect. We continue to knock
+our toes on the crushed stones that the others heap up ahead of us under
+the pretext that they are levelling the way."
+
+"Sometimes they do," said Lilly, recalling all the good things she had
+received from Richard.
+
+He smiled at her with compassionate indulgence.
+
+"You seem to be suffering from what I call chain madness."
+
+"What is that?" asked Lilly, suspecting, to her dismay, that he again
+divined what lay in her innermost being. Could he know of the shameful
+rôle that a certain chained beauty had played in her life?
+
+"It is said," he continued, "that if galley slaves who have worn chains
+for many years are liberated, they cannot endure their freedom. They
+complain that their arms and legs have been chopped off. They miss the
+support and weight of their chains. You have such beautiful arms for
+stretching upward. Just exercise them a little."
+
+"And such long legs for running away," she supplemented with a tortured
+laugh. "The only question is: Whither?"
+
+"Oh, oh! Why run away immediately?" he asked, stroking her hand, which
+rested on his arm, and speaking as to a child. "You would simply run
+into the arms of another so-called duty. First you must be free
+inwardly. You must first forget to fetch and carry for persons who are
+themselves meant to fetch and carry."
+
+"Teach me," she burst out.
+
+"I will bring you some books," he said, as if deliberating, "books which
+will lead you back to yourself. To-morrow at noon, I will--"
+
+At that moment they were separated.
+
+In bed Lilly lay with clasped hands smiling up at the ceiling.
+
+She was again aspiring to the heights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the next day when he was to come, dread fell upon her again, dread
+of him, of Richard, of herself.
+
+It was the first secret visit, the first to knock a breach in the peace
+of her home.
+
+When she saw him step from the cab with several volumes in his arm, she
+flew into the kitchen and told the maid to say she was not at home.
+
+But the instant he left she seized the books which he had brought.
+
+Some were printed in Roman type and looked dreadfully scientific.
+However, they were intelligible, and Lilly took up one after the other.
+What she read sent the blood coursing turbulently through her veins, and
+mounted to her head like sweet wine.
+
+All the books spoke of the "will to power," "the free man," "the right
+to live one's life," "the religion of passion," and similar things. In
+each pure beauty was extolled as the goal of human endeavours; in each
+the word "individuality" recurred numberless times in numberless
+connections. Each taught you to look down upon your fellow-beings with
+vigorous pride, and despise them as a blunted, debased, tortured and
+enslaved mass. In each you wandered along in blessed solitude--or in the
+company of a very few like-minded, noble souls--on free wind-swept
+mountain heights surrounded by an eternally bright ether.
+
+It was a constant offering of incense, an insatiable lashing of oneself
+into satiety, pleasant murder, hymn-singing rape. The main subjects
+invariably were intoxication, dreams, life's festivals, and ecstasy.
+
+Thus, a veil of intoxication and dreams was spread over Lilly's soul.
+She felt she was enveloped in a sapphire haze shot with the purple of a
+distant glow. She heard hot, wrathful music storming onward in discords
+like mænads tearing down every hindrance in their way. She felt she was
+climbing up perpendicular rocks, ever higher, ever higher, fighting the
+whole time against the dizziness which threatened to cast her back into
+the abyss. But she did not sink. She clung to the edge, which bruised
+her hands, and laughed down--laughed--laughed--at the sorry wretches
+there below crawling along in flocks, permitting themselves to be ground
+to death for their bit of daily bread.
+
+Then she felt sorry that she alone had scaled such heights, that she
+alone should be up there enjoying the wild, golden sunlight, while all
+the others little conceived that deliverance was at hand. She wanted to
+hold out her hand to her poor, starving brothers and sisters and draw
+them up after her. But they could not understand her message of
+salvation--he had said "message of salvation." She saw wasting faces,
+dank with the sweat of death; glassy eyes unable to turn from the
+gleaming penny, their pay. She saw pregnant bodies, swollen yet
+emaciated.
+
+The working woman in Richard's wrapping room recurred to her. She
+recalled her hands flying in feverish haste about the swaying doll. She
+and others recurred to Lilly, with the timid hate and the hopeless
+yearning in their weary eyes.
+
+Her unhappy love for the factory, which she thought had been
+extinguished forever on that day of shame, awoke within her again, as a
+quiet, painful tenderness, like the spring anticipations that tremble in
+us when the February snows begin to melt.
+
+This, to be sure, was hardly the sense or purpose of Dr. Salmoni's
+books. But they served another purpose most admirably. Her faint
+toothache rose to a veritable anguish. The desire for a man, any man not
+Richard, who understood her and swept her along with him, overwhelmed
+her with such force that she could only twist this way and that and feel
+she would perish under the lash.
+
+Somewhere the "one" was surely to be found. Was it not possible for a
+favouring wave in this sea of humanity to toss him to her feet?
+
+One evening she put on simple, dark clothes--she might have been taken
+for a seamstress returning from work--and slipped down the street, as
+she used to when Richard's house drew her to it with a thousand secret
+threads.
+
+Since she was unskilled in strolling about aimlessly and needed a goal,
+she listened to the voice of her newly awakened love, and took the
+accustomed route to Alte Jakobstrasse. On the way she shudderingly
+avoided two old beaux and a fresh clerk.
+
+The latticed gates of the famous marble-columned portal cried an iron
+"Halt!"
+
+She stood a long time pressed up against her old door on the opposite
+side of the street, and stared at the house to which fate had anchored
+her.
+
+Lights were burning in his mother's room.
+
+The two gas jets of the chandelier resembled her cold, clear eyes. The
+rest of the jets were not turned on, probably from motives of economy.
+
+Of the factory nothing was to be seen save the dark top of the chimney
+towering above the roof of the house in front.
+
+A sorry greeting. Nevertheless a greeting. She would have liked to say
+"How do you do?" to the beloved staircase also. But she no longer dared
+to cross the street.
+
+Then, as if after a good deed accomplished, she turned homeward feeling
+at ease.
+
+She repeated the visit three times in the course of the week. She began
+to feel that the aimless journeys were a life necessity.
+
+Once, just as she was disposing herself comfortably in her protecting
+doorway, an elegant slim gentleman, who evidently had come the same way
+behind her, stopped and raised his hat.
+
+Dr. Salmoni.
+
+Lilly in her fright nearly forgot to return his greeting.
+
+If he were to betray her to Richard! Richard would assume that jealousy,
+or even worse, had driven her there.
+
+"Well, well," began Dr. Salmoni, complacently rolling the words in his
+mouth. "It strikes me as somewhat touching that we should meet directly
+opposite Liebert & Dehnicke. As you know, I'm a gentle nature, a soul in
+socks, as it were. So I refrain from asking you what stirrings of your
+heart prompted you to come here. You know the fairy-tale of the queen
+who sallied forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd.
+Thus a pearl may stray into a bronze ware factory. I should not have
+permitted myself to follow you intentionally. I was seduced by a certain
+play of lines and curves. Perhaps a certain suspicion of brilliance
+shone through--but a young pheasant should not be shot out of season.
+Let your fruit ripen, is a very sound motto, and not only with respect
+to _soi-disant_ love. But it's questionable whether mottoes are worth
+the while. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of
+Virginia tobacco, and Virginia tobacco smells, and is celebrated far and
+wide _because_ it smells. Do you get my profound meaning?"
+
+"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen
+here!"
+
+"Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing
+with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume
+that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you
+wish."
+
+He offered her his arm. She declined.
+
+They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther
+west side.
+
+He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire
+set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally
+forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play
+of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and
+her sorry existence.
+
+But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He
+merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it.
+
+He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head
+downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk
+necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked.
+Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that
+she was being stroked tenderly.
+
+When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to
+contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always
+thought the same, it seemed to her.
+
+He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from
+country life, extolled discreet horseback rides _à deux_, and the
+transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been
+present at all the events of her life.
+
+"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation.
+"I know it all."
+
+Oh, if his past had been similar!
+
+So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.
+
+When he began to speak of the books he had brought her--he
+considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had
+called--she ventured a languid resistance.
+
+"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The books confuse and sicken me--I don't know. You said they would lead
+me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing
+strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.
+
+"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing.
+"Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a
+higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time
+there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual
+craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is
+really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must
+accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for
+enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows
+and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of
+miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom
+they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But
+scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they
+took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death--on account
+of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same
+to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral
+exactions."
+
+Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.
+
+Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to
+withdraw it.
+
+They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark masses a
+lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings
+stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel
+streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.
+
+"We're going out of the way of society. And if I wanted to exploit the
+present conjuncture of circumstances I should profit by your being lost,
+your feeling that you need protection. But I'm not a calculating nature.
+In matters of emotion I'm like a child. I take whatever the heavens rain
+down on me. Aren't you the same way?"
+
+"I'm too heavy," replied Lilly, ready to bare her soul to him. "I'm full
+of scruples. I think a lot over everything."
+
+"The question is _what_ you think," he said gaily.
+
+She wanted to reply and talk to him--tell him all her thoughts. She felt
+like holding out her heart on her open palm, so that nothing should
+remain concealed from him. But shame before his great wisdom sealed her
+lips.
+
+"Why do you take the trouble to bother with a stupid thing like me?" she
+asked, to show him her humility at least.
+
+"Perhaps because I have a mission to fulfil in your life. 'Perhaps,' I
+say, because one can never be sure whether there is such a thing as
+reflex action of the emotions. Certain _moments psychologiques_ will
+teach us."
+
+Though his meaning was not at all clear to Lilly, a hesitating sense of
+happiness stole over her that so mighty a man should actually concern
+himself with her.
+
+"You are entirely in his power," she thought, "and you will be whatever
+he wants you to be."
+
+At that moment he drew her arm a little closer, and her pressure in
+response brought his hand for an instant on her breast.
+
+She was overwhelmed with fright. He might think she was offering herself
+to him. If he were to take her home, were to ask--
+
+"I'd like to get into a tram," she faltered. "I'm very tired."
+
+He whistled for a cab, which just then came swaying out of the fog.
+
+"No, no," she burst out, thinking of nothing but that she must not
+lightly forego the joy of his friendship. "Not with you--I must go home
+alone--on account--"
+
+She tore her arm from his and ran to the next stopping place so quickly
+that he was just about able to reach her before she jumped on the first
+tram that came along. She scarcely said good-by.
+
+The smile with which he looked after her was by no means melancholy.
+
+He might, he should triumph.
+
+She, Lilly Czepanek, was once again aspiring to the heights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later they met again; this time in a large company which had
+visited a _café chantant_, and was to wind up the evening at a
+respectable bodega.
+
+Unluckily somebody else took the seat at her side, which she had
+carefully reserved for him.
+
+That upset her.
+
+The champagne heated up everybody's spirits.
+
+Lilly, out of spite and boredom, drank more than was good for her.
+
+Provocative merriness burned in her eyes. Her cheeks took on the Baldwin
+apple hue that they all dearly loved. Her laughter rang out clear, her
+body moved more nonchalantly.
+
+Suddenly she heard a general outcry: "Lilly! Lilly! We want Lilly!"
+
+Terror stopped her pulse.
+
+She had never ventured to perform in his presence. In fact, she had not
+been asked to when he had been there, for then _he_ formed the centre of
+attraction.
+
+But she felt:
+
+"I can do it to-day. To-day I will show him what I am."
+
+She rose, brushed her hair from her forehead, and gave herself a little
+shake, as was her wont when she jerked aside the everyday Lilly, the
+craven-hearted Lilly, the Lilly of the oppressed feelings, the Lilly who
+feared to face her fellow-beings, the stiff-jointed Lilly.
+
+She made a dash and began.
+
+First she imitated the beautiful Otéro, and crowed and cuckooed. Her
+auditors rolled with laughter. Then she hit off certain cabaret stars.
+Sucking her fingers like an innocent babe, she sang in flute tones:
+"Please let me in your room."
+
+She croaked in a droll, bull-frog bass: "Once I was ambassador," and
+peeping from behind the clothes rack she cooed the song of the
+passionate dove: "Coo--coo--coo--kiek!"
+
+They insisted on her concluding with a fandango. She protested. In vain.
+
+They shoved the tables against the wall, and Lilly, making her own music
+through her teeth, whirled about the room more madly than ever before,
+and finally collapsed in a corner almost swooning.
+
+The tumult of applause promised never to subside.
+
+The women kissed her again and again, the men stroked her hair and arms,
+the stiff district attorney sounded a trumpet blast, and Richard, quite
+pale with pride, stood there in his Napoleon attitude, tugging at his
+moustache.
+
+But Dr. Salmoni remained at a distance, sad and modest, as if it all
+concerned him not in the least.
+
+The only sign by which she knew he realised it was all meant for him was
+a rapid glance of understanding which he threw to her like a laurel
+wreath.
+
+She was still rocking in the tempest when the company prepared to break
+up.
+
+That had been intoxication, the sort of which he had spoken. It hissed
+like a flame through her heart and limbs.
+
+Dr. Salmoni himself helped her on with her fur coat--Richard was busy
+paying the waiter--and while he deliberately laid the sable scarf about
+her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear:
+
+"May I come to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," she screamed, alarmed at herself.
+
+Then in defiance of her own cowardice, she turned abruptly on her heels
+and shouted sharply, as in anger, directly in his face:
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"
+
+"What's the matter?" everybody asked.
+
+She merely laughed shortly. What did she care for the others? Wasn't she
+aspiring to the heights again?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning it was all a spectral dream. The one clear point was:
+"He's coming."
+
+With the applause still ringing in her ears she had stretched herself
+and thought:
+
+"Now he knows what I am. Now he knows I'm no dull, shrivelled, half-way
+creature for the valleys, no slave nature, no sheep that runs with the
+flock, no Mrs. Grundy-made fool, who voluntarily conforms to each and
+every convention. Now he knows I'm a free, proud woman, who, like
+himself, drinks in the light on the heights, one of those complete
+women, those mænads who dance a wild dance over abysms and mock at death
+even when he has them in his clutches."
+
+Then her faintheartedness crept over her again. What after all had she
+done besides drink herself into a champagne mood, sing a few comic
+songs, and dance an abandoned dance? She had behaved like a music-hall
+danseuse, and had harvested the very doubtful approval of a
+semi-intoxicated audience.
+
+If that alone was required for belonging to the elect, to the mighty,
+laughing, chosen ones, of whom Dr. Salmoni's books spoke!
+
+No, oh, no! After last night's performance he could feel nothing but
+contempt for her, or, at most, pity. It was to tell her this to her face
+that he would come to visit her, if at all. He would let her feel her
+lowness and then go his own way, benevolent but untouched.
+
+She would not suffer him to go. She would cling to him and cry:
+
+"You promised to lead me up to the heights out of these depths of
+distress, out of this insipid existence, out of this void! Be true to
+your word. Do not desert me. I will do whatever you wish. I will be your
+thing, your creature. But don't desert me."
+
+In feverish expectancy she dressed, waved her hair, and rouged her lips,
+pale from nights of pleasure. She made herself as beautiful as she
+could.
+
+A little before twelve the bell rang.
+
+He?
+
+No. Mrs. Jula.
+
+As if by mutual agreement she and Mrs. Jula had avoided each other since
+that evening of confidences. And now, without having announced her
+visit, here she stood, wearing her most cordial expression, and asking
+for a brief interview.
+
+Lilly hesitated.
+
+"Really I shan't keep you long, my dear. I understand--you're expecting
+some one."
+
+"Not that I know of," replied Lilly, aware she was blushing.
+
+"Don't deny it. Dr. Salmoni is coming. I know the joke. I once stood the
+same way, pale one instant, the next instant red, and waited for him.
+The only difference is, my house gown wasn't such an angelic red. I was
+plain Bordeaux red. All the same to him. He takes us in Bordeaux red,
+too."'
+
+"What do you mean?" Lilly faltered.
+
+"What do I mean? Do you know what our circle with all our pretty legères
+women is to Dr. Salmoni? It's a sort of fishing pool, where he angles
+from time to time to land something for which he just then happens to
+have an appetite. There you have it, my dear!"
+
+"That's slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He's never made approaches
+to me. We've never so much as mentioned the word love to each other."
+
+"No need," replied Mrs. Jula, and laughed exultingly. "He doesn't bother
+with such petty things. He knows when the time comes we shall swim into
+his net without it."
+
+Lilly felt herself getting still angrier.
+
+"We've always spoken of pure, noble things, of a proud humanity. And if
+you and your like cannot understand his language, if you insist--"
+
+"One moment, my dear," Mrs. Jula interrupted her. "No need to be
+insulting. I came to you out of good motives. As for the others--it was
+_toute même chose_ to me. I even licked my chops. But _you_, I love
+you, even if you don't want to have anything to do with me. _You_ he's
+to leave as you are. And last night, when I saw how far things had gone,
+I couldn't quiet down. I had to come to you before he--"
+
+"Really, you're mistaken," said Lilly, though unable to refrain from a
+furtive glance at the clock.
+
+Mrs. Jula, upon whom the glance was not lost, made a little grimace.
+
+"Never mind. When the bell rings I'll slide out through the guest room.
+But before then I am in hopes of having completed my work. See here,
+child"--she seated herself at one end of the sofa and drew Lilly down
+beside her--"why, all of us poor women crave to rise again, or once did,
+when like you we were tolerably faithful to the one. At the
+psychological moment, enter Dr. Salmoni. He doesn't have to work so hard
+for some of us, but he seems to like it. He must first salivate on us
+like an adder on a sparrow. He has various methods. With a cold mug like
+Karla, of course, he behaves very differently from the way he behaves
+with such as you or me. To us he says in the beginning: 'I cannot get
+over my astonishment at seeing you in these surroundings. Tell me, what
+seek you here?'"
+
+Lilly started.
+
+"Well, did he, or didn't he?"
+
+"Yes--but--"
+
+"Very well, yes. That's all I want to know. Then he describes the
+dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet
+abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully
+particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it
+went?"
+
+"Yes--but--" stammered Lilly.
+
+"Good. Then _he_ will deliver us. _He_ will guide us. He's the mountain
+guide ordained. 'Upward--up to the heights!' _N'est-ce pas?_"
+
+Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame.
+
+"Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature
+little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we
+all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It
+quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that
+we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the
+mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we're such
+sheep, and he's so clever--so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give
+the devil his due."
+
+"But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield
+him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our
+entire past with us?"
+
+"Yes, child. People in similar circumstances usually have similar
+experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past--of those of us who came
+from the country. I'm a landed proprietor's daughter. Didn't he tell you
+in a by-the-way that he had passed a great part of his youth in
+castles?"
+
+Lilly assented.
+
+"Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased
+estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was
+saucy."
+
+In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing.
+
+"Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well
+feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because
+afterwards, oh, how it hurts!"
+
+"Yes, tell me, how is it--afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.
+
+"Very simple. After he's gotten what he wants, finis. He buttons up his
+coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, '_au revoir_,' but there
+never is a _revoir_. You never see him again."
+
+"Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can't treat a woman
+so currishly."
+
+"You--_never--see--him--again_, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man
+has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore--not a line
+in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she
+was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later
+in company, you don't read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the
+very most he 'jollies' you like the rest."
+
+Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later"
+encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every
+recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his
+comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this
+world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.
+
+She hid her face on the sofa arm shaken with a storm of shame and guilt.
+
+"Never mind," Mrs. Jula comforted her. "Nothing has happened yet."
+
+The bell rang.
+
+Lilly hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid to dismiss the visitor,
+but Mrs. Jula restrained her.
+
+"What's gotten into your head?" she whispered. "Would you have him think
+you're afraid of him? That way you'll never be rid of him. Laugh at him.
+Do you understand? _Laugh_ at him--long and hard."
+
+Lilly wanted to run after her and beg her to remain. Was she, Lilly,
+his match? He was already entering the room.
+
+Drawn to her full height she looked at him as at a dead enemy.
+
+"My dear child," he said, kissing her hand, which she quickly withdrew.
+
+He had exercised great care in dressing. He wore straw-coloured gloves,
+and held his silk hat pressed to his breast. His monocle danced on his
+white waistcoat. An air of smug self-confidence, of unpretentious
+mastery enveloped his being like a mild glory. The way he settled
+himself comfortably in his chair, the way he amiably crossed his legs
+indicated that of course she had been subjugated.
+
+Lilly was no longer fearful or timid, nor did she experience the pangs
+of disillusionment. She was simply possessed of cool, conscious
+curiosity.
+
+She followed each of his movements with astonished eyes, as he passed
+his hand over his shining hair cut brush fashion, and pulled his
+trousers up and exposed the red-dotted stockings on his ankles.
+
+She kept saying to herself:
+
+"So _that's_ what you are, _that's_ what you are."
+
+He began to speak in a soft, compassionate, caressing voice, while his
+peering eyes glided up and down her body.
+
+"You're excited, dear child. I understand. When two people like us are
+brought alone together for the first time in their lives, their feelings
+run away with them. Don't be ashamed. What led us to each other is such
+a delicate, subtle understanding--the fluid between us is of such a
+rare, fleeting quality--"
+
+"Yes--fleeting, especially," thought Lilly, "--that it would really be
+a shame if we did not taste every drop of it. And a superabundance of
+feelings would simply be a hindrance to the spiritual epicureanism in
+both of us, particularly in me."
+
+As he spoke, slightly smacking his lips and swaying back and forth, the
+refrain of a Viennese ditty in her repertoire occurred to her: "I have
+much too much sentiment."
+
+"He has much too much sentiment," she said to herself, and smiled
+involuntarily.
+
+He saw the smile, which she tried to conceal by lowering her face, but
+he misinterpreted it.
+
+"There is a coy virginity about you," he said with an admiring shake of
+his head, "which always fills me with astonishment."
+
+"Oh, you jackanapes," thought Lilly, and smiled again.
+
+Now he hesitated a bit. He had not had all his experience for nothing,
+and a flash of greed and suspicion darted from between his lids.
+
+"Oh," he continued, "has some of the delightful humour that you
+surprised us with last night remained over for to-day?"
+
+"Perhaps," she replied with an upward glance which was almost
+coquettish.
+
+"Oh, splendid!" he cried. His face now brightened into a mischievous
+smile, in which gaiety and devilishness counterbalanced each other. "Are
+you one of those who can laugh in her sleeve at--at--how shall I
+say?--at the whole humbuggery of it all--and at yourself? At yourself,
+my child, that's the main thing. Then you and I are one--nothing divides
+us. Then--"
+
+"May God forgive me," she thought, and held her handkerchief to her
+mouth to suppress her tittering.
+
+"Laugh at him," Mrs. Jula had said.
+
+But he seemed to take it as an invitation, as a delicate, friendly hint
+to cut the preamble short; for he sprang toward her and clasped her
+body.
+
+She pushed him back--she wrestled with him.
+
+Tears of shame and indignation welled up in her eyes.
+
+"What sort of a thing have I become?" a voice within her cried, while
+she struck at him with her fists.
+
+In the midst of the struggle she succeeded in reaching the bell.
+
+The maid appeared.
+
+He picked up his hat from the carpet, murmured something like
+"riffraff," and disappeared.
+
+Disappeared also from the little circle that he had sometimes honoured
+with his presence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Henceforth Lilly ceased to aspire to the heights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The next year Lilly went through two little love affairs which were of
+no significance in her after life.
+
+During a four weeks' stay in the Riesengebirge, she met a novelist whose
+name was then on everybody's lips. He was airing his newly acquired fame
+in the Bohemian resorts and plucking what flowers he found by the
+roadside. He forced himself upon Lilly without much ceremony, and a few
+days later went his way in search of pastures new.
+
+And in Berlin she favoured a handsome, extremely elegant hussar of the
+Guards, who had flirted with her from his seat at the next table in an
+aristocratic restaurant. But he wounded her pride by attempting to repay
+her with a little leather box which came from the jeweler's. She sent
+back the box and turned him off.
+
+She disliked the thought of both adventures, and soon wiped them
+entirely from her memory.
+
+At Christmas a companion came to live with her. She had frequently
+complained to Richard that her life was empty; she craved something
+alive and loving to take care of. So he gave her a little naked monkey
+which could not warm itself even in her bosom. When angry, the monkey
+spat his scorn of her yearning in her face.
+
+Every now and then a marriage scheme was again propounded.
+
+Lilly knew the signs perfectly.
+
+When Richard paced through all the rooms, taciturn and distraught,
+wrinkling his forehead; when apropos of nothing he began to philosophise
+on the futility of all things earthly; when mama required the carriage
+at unwonted hours, and little packages of concert and opera tickets
+filled his purse, she knew something was impending.
+
+And then it seldom lasted long before Richard broke silence.
+
+One had two millions, the other three. Influential relatives, mines,
+factories, legacies, government contracts, whole blocks of houses, and
+innumerable building lots nodded in the distance.
+
+Sometimes Lilly's drawing-room hummed with so many figures that it might
+have been a stockbroker's office.
+
+One of the prospective brides even was poor. But she was a general's
+daughter, and mama adored her.
+
+"I'm a general's widow," said Lilly.
+
+Whether rich or poor, they all disappeared, because none of them was
+good enough for him.
+
+Lilly meditated and schemed; this is the way she should be, and this
+way, and this way. She must have white, column-like arms such as the
+Danish girl at the carnival; and she must have an extremely delicate,
+scarcely perceptible bosom--her own seemed to Lilly to have become too
+voluptuous--and when she laughed, two dimples must form in her cheeks,
+because dimples were a sign of peaceableness.
+
+Peace she demanded for him above all. She knew he could not bear
+disputes. As a matter of fact they never did quarrel. But if a little
+disagreement arose, he went about for days looking miserable, spoke in a
+woebegone, sick tone, and had to be petted like a child. Which she did
+with joy, though he by no means deserved it.
+
+For, whatever the standpoint from which you viewed such things, he had
+become an out and out good-for-nothing.
+
+He might be pardoned the very respectable sums he lost at the club, but
+he debauched like a married man, and his experiences were none of the
+purest.
+
+One day a pretty young thing with an eight weeks' old baby on her arm
+came to Lilly and wept and screamed, and declared Lilly must cede her
+place to her because she had the child by him and so the greater right.
+
+Lilly comforted her and gave her some wine, and, filled with envy,
+tickled the baby's wet little chin until it laughed. Whereupon the girl
+left quieted, and even kissed Lilly's hand on parting.
+
+That afternoon Richard listened to an eloquent discourse.
+
+Lilly felt herself to be entirely free from jealousy.
+
+Whenever he appeared looking embarrassed or with a crafty expression in
+his eyes, his head inclined all the way to the left, and radiating an
+odour of cheap perfumes, she always received him with an indulgent
+smile, which he understood very well and feared like a plague.
+
+However valiant his resolve to maintain silence, it scarcely lasted half
+an hour before he sat there hopelessly stranded, making partly veiled
+confessions and asking for praise and comfort.
+
+In a life of this sort, which reflected all the faults and perfidies of
+marriage without bestowing its sense of dignity and natural rights, it
+was inevitable that Lilly should withdraw into herself more and more and
+look forward to her future with increasing gloom.
+
+She passed her days as on a swaying bough in momentary expectation of
+being blown into the depths. Then again her life seemed to her like a
+straight, bare road, which gave no signs of coming to an end, but ever
+unrolled hopeless stretches ahead.
+
+Always the same pleasures, the same faces, the same aimless drifting
+from place to place until dawn.
+
+Sometimes she felt so weary--as if after a day's hard labour.
+
+Sometimes, too, she went on strike, and remained in bed reading the
+_Fliegende Blätter_, or dreaming of old times with closed eyes.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen's sunless hole among the books became a paradise, her
+mush, food for the gods. Lilly's thoughts stepped cautiously about the
+pictures of her girlhood loves, as if it were a crime to charm them back
+into being. From this arose a happy, yet fearful presentiment that one
+or the other of them would return, and hold out his hand, and say: "Now
+you have strayed in strange lands long enough. Come back home."
+
+Which of them it was she did not venture to say. But one of them it must
+be. Something, something _must_ happen. It could _not_ go on the same
+way.
+
+Now and then, when her secret disquiet filled her with unrest, she took
+again to her nocturnal strolls. In the electric tram she would ride to
+distant districts, where, with a guilty soul, she sauntered along lively
+streets.
+
+Just like Mrs. Jula.
+
+Yet she could never bring herself to listen to any of her pursuers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on one such excursion in May far out on the north side, somewhere
+near the Rosentaler Tor, that she met a young man who paid not the
+slightest attention to her, who did not look like a gentleman, and yet
+seemed familiar.
+
+So familiar that her heart pained her.
+
+She racked her brain, but could not place him.
+
+Making up her mind quickly she turned about and followed him.
+
+He wore a brown, sweat-soaked hat and a salt and pepper suit with a
+yellow tinge to it, which had seen better days. His coat collar was
+shiny, and his knees had worked great bags into his trousers, the bottom
+of which hung in black fringes over his crooked heels.
+
+None of her friends in disguise. Her friends wore different trousers.
+
+He stopped in front of various display windows--a cigar shop, a
+butcher's, and, longest of all, a haberdasher's. From which Lilly
+concluded his undergarments also required a change.
+
+When he turned his profile toward her, she saw a lean, bony face with a
+prominent nose and a bush of reddish-brown hair on either side of his
+chin. He did not appear to be sickly; rather seedy or withered. But the
+lids of his small, slit-like eyes were swollen and inflamed, and before
+he stepped into the garish illumination of the shop window, he planted
+dark-blue goggles on his nose.
+
+He carried a thin cane, which he pressed into the shape of a bow on the
+pavement and then let shoot out straight again. The silver handle of
+this cane, which did not harmonise with the shabbiness of his clothing,
+recalled something to Lilly connected with chilliness, warm rolls,
+autumnal glow, and Sunday chimes.
+
+She cried aloud. Now she remembered.
+
+Fritz Redlich! Yes, it was Fritz Redlich. No doubt of it. Her girlhood
+love! Her girlhood love! Her great warrior in life's battles! Her St.
+Joseph's protégé!
+
+Oh, God, her St. Joseph! And the revolver! And the potato soup with
+sliced sausage! And the three graves at Ottensen!
+
+"Mr. Redlich! Mr. Redlich!"
+
+Trembling, laughing, she stood behind him and stretched out both hands.
+
+He dropped his goggles and blinking his weak eyes, suspiciously
+scrutinised the tall, elegant lady from behind whose lace veil two
+great, tear-filled eyes were shining a blissful greeting. Then he
+awkwardly pulled at the brim of his hat.
+
+"Mr. Redlich--I'm Lilly--Lilly Czepanek. Don't you remember me any
+more?"
+
+Yes, now he remembered.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "why shouldn't I?"
+
+As he spoke he gave a furtive jerk at his waistcoat, as if that were the
+readiest way of improving the poverty of his appearance.
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Redlich! We haven't seen each other for an eternity. I
+think it must be seven or eight years. No, not quite. But it seems much
+longer. Everything's gone well with you in the meantime, hasn't it? And
+I suppose you're dreadfully busy. But if you're not, we might spend a
+little time together now."
+
+He really was quite busy, but if she so desired, they might remain
+together a while.
+
+"How would it be if we went to a restaurant and took a glass of beer?"
+she suggested, still between laughter and tears. "Well, well, Mr.
+Redlich, who'd have thought it possible?"
+
+He was decidedly opposed to taking a glass of beer.
+
+"Restaurants are always so stuffy and full of people, and the beer here
+is so wretched--unfit to drink."
+
+"The poor fellow has no money to pay for it," Lilly thought, and
+proposed sitting on a bench instead. It made no difference, just so they
+were together.
+
+"That's worth considering," he said, "although--" He looked about warily
+on all sides to see if anyone was scandalised at the ill-matched couple.
+
+They turned into the quieter Weinbersgsweg. Lilly, looking at him
+sidewise with pride and emotion, as if she had created him out of
+nothingness, kept murmuring:
+
+"Is it possible? Is it possible?"
+
+In a dark spot near a church they found a pleasant bench overhung with
+lilac buds which a love couple had just vacated.
+
+"Well, now tell me all about yourself, Mr. Redlich. My, the things we
+have to say to each other!"
+
+"There _is_ a good deal to tell," he replied, hesitating, "but perhaps
+my lady will begin."
+
+"Oh, pshaw, I haven't been a 'my lady' for a long time," cried Lilly,
+blushing consciously.
+
+"Yes, to be sure--I heard something of the sort," he replied.
+
+Lilly felt there was a note of blame in his tone, as if his
+susceptibilities had been offended.
+
+"But I'm not in the least sorry," she hastened to add. "All in all I
+lead a much freer and pleasanter life. And I haven't the slightest
+cares. I have a charming little home. In fact, I'm in the best of
+circumstances. And I'd be ever so happy if you were to come and see for
+yourself. I'm always at home in the middle of the day. And I'd like you
+to dine with me some time."
+
+"Oh," he said, obviously moved by the pleasant prospect.
+
+She drew a breath of relief at having steered so smoothly past the rocks
+of her autobiography.
+
+And he asked no questions. On the other hand he seemed as little
+disposed to be communicative in regard to his own situation past or
+present.
+
+"Life has a sunny and a shady side," he said, "and he who sits on the
+shady side would do well to reflect whether or not he should speak much
+of it."
+
+"But you can trust an old friend like me," cried Lilly. "Imagine we're
+sitting here on our porch in Junkerstrasse. Do you recollect? That
+evening we spoke to each other the first time was an evening just like
+this, in May."
+
+"It was warmer," he rejoined quickly, and drew his coat together at his
+neck.
+
+"Are you chilly?" she asked, laughing, because she was aglow.
+
+"I didn't bring--" he paused an instant--"I didn't bring my spring
+overcoat along to-night."
+
+"Then we'd better get up," she said, becoming meditative.
+
+"We can tell each other all we have to say just as well walking as
+sitting."
+
+So they strolled about the dark church a number of times, but no
+autobiographical narrative resulted. She evaded and he evaded, and when
+forced to speak, they regaled each other with generalities.
+
+Lilly praised her happy lot in life, and he sighed repeatedly.
+
+"Yes, it's hard, very hard!"
+
+Exactly as once during examinations. The rhythm of it still sounded in
+her ears, as if she had heard it the day before.
+
+"How are your father and mother?" she asked to change the subject.
+
+His father had died two years before after a short sickness, and his
+mother still sewed neckties.
+
+He adjusted something invisible under his raised coat collar, probably a
+gayly patterned testimony of maternal skill and goodness.
+
+After Lilly had expressed her sympathy she ventured with throbbing heart
+to inquire after Mrs. Asmussen and her daughters.
+
+Mr. Redlich smacked his lips audibly.
+
+"Very unpleasant neighbours. The elder girl married a paymaster, who
+will probably be dismissed soon on account of his irregularities. The
+younger has charge of the library, the mother is completely in the
+clutches of drink."
+
+He spoke with the same offended air as when Lilly had referred to her
+divorce.
+
+"He must be extremely moral still!" she thought, with a sense of her own
+guilt and unworthiness.
+
+But he was unhappy. That was certain.
+
+And poor, very poor. Poorer than she had ever been in her life. Perhaps
+he was suffering the pangs of hunger while he walked at her side
+shivering in his thin, shabby jacket.
+
+"How would it be, Mr. Redlich, provided your business permits you to, if
+you were to come to dinner to-morrow?"
+
+His business, as a matter of fact, made it practically impossible for
+him to get off in the middle of the day, and he hadn't a moment's time
+for changing his clothes; but if she would receive him in the suit he
+was wearing--
+
+"Oh of course," she laughed. "I'll even serve you with your mother's
+potato soup."
+
+With that she pressed both his hands and slipped into a street car.
+
+Oh, what a piece of good fortune!
+
+Now she had the thing she had so long been seeking. Some one whom she
+could care for and pet and spoil; some one to whom she meant more than a
+toy or a show piece, who needed her as he needed bread and air, who
+languished for a gentle hand to lead him back to hope and joy.
+
+Some one all to herself, all to herself!
+
+Out of the grave of her youth he had risen exactly as she had dreamed in
+her dreams.
+
+Life would again become rich--and happy--and full of secrets, tiny, gay,
+absolutely innocent secrets.
+
+That night she slept little, wakeful as a child the night before
+Christmas.
+
+The next morning, to the vast astonishment of the maid, a buxom wench
+from the country, who had rapidly fallen into city ways, Lilly rose
+early--the maid knew her to be a bit lazy--and went off to market.
+
+"A friend is coming to dinner," Lilly laughingly explained.
+
+She had to buy everything herself, the meat, the radishes, and above all
+the sausage that had once been the pride of his mother's potato soup.
+
+She even attended to the cooking herself.
+
+She set the table and removed the palm from beside the aquarium to have
+something green in the dining-room in place of flowers, which she had
+forgotten to buy.
+
+He was the first dinner guest she had had for two and a half years, and
+such a dear one--the dearest, perhaps that life could present her with.
+
+At half past twelve the maid, turning up her nose, announced a young
+fellow who insisted upon speaking to the lady.
+
+"Why, that's he!" cried Lilly.
+
+"He doesn't look it," observed the maid with a haughty upward inflection
+in her voice. Shrugging her shoulders she dawdled behind her mistress,
+who ran to meet the guest.
+
+At first he shyly hesitated to step into the lighter part of the room,
+and hugged the door post and pulled at his suit, which really looked
+dreadfully frayed, even more so than the night before.
+
+His inflamed eyes, two red rifts, blinking behind his round glasses,
+gave him a sheepish, groping, helpless appearance. The bold thinker's
+forehead had acquired an unpleasant backward slope because the genius
+lock no longer fell over it. And the triumphant blond mane had turned
+into a strawy, matted mass, apparently untouched by a comb this many a
+day.
+
+He was unable to say much.
+
+He swallowed the potato soup with tremulous devoutness, leaving the
+slices of sausage for the last. When his plate was quite dry he spitted
+them on his fork one at a time, and on conveying each bit to his mouth
+cast suspicious glances to right and left as if somebody were standing
+nearby to snatch it away.
+
+The roast he received with greater composure. He heaped his plate high
+without paying the least attention to the maid, who grinned
+villainously.
+
+He drank Richard's good claret in long draughts. A mottled red flecked
+his cheeks; he laughed and felt he was himself again.
+
+At first Lilly had been somewhat depressed; but as he gradually thawed
+out, she began to hope he might be made to pass muster after all.
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to her that now at last an opportunity
+presented itself for the genuine salvation of a human being, not merely
+a game of enamoured self-deception as with Walter von Prell.
+
+The thought filled her with blissful, confident hope.
+
+After the meal they went into the drawing-room. With masterful ease of
+manner born of the unwonted drink, he promptly seated himself in the
+rocking chair and tickled the snarling monkey.
+
+He sat leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched out. The
+fringed ends of his trousers slipped into the expanded tops of his
+boots, exposing the tattered rubber drawing loops.
+
+It was an appalling sight.
+
+"I'll have to do something," thought Lilly, and cogitated on the best
+way to help him.
+
+As for Mr. Redlich, now that his spirits were in turmoil, he turned his
+innermost being outward and aired his views of life.
+
+Oh, what a display of gall and poison!
+
+He had become so embittered by long privation and eternal envy of those
+who seemed gay, happy, and favoured by fortune, that no values, no
+attainments, no prosperous undertakings could withstand his onslaught.
+Everybody was hollow, corrupt and hypocritical. Everything depended on
+birth, cliqueism, "pull." Success, no matter in what line, was an
+ineradicable stain.
+
+But this time also he said little of his personal experiences. Lilly
+could not even discover if he was still a student. He acknowledged only
+one thing, with bitter resentment, that his deepest feelings had been
+badly damaged in his constant struggle for existence.
+
+While he spoke and laughed spasmodically, two lugubrious, sarcastic
+folds cut a deep semicircle in each emaciated cheek. Lilly dimly
+recalled that a tendency to those folds had existed in the times long
+ago.
+
+"Oh, you poor, poor fellow!" she thought, and vowed soon to make a man
+of him again, both outwardly and inwardly.
+
+But his visit left her feeling sad and depressed.
+
+"After all--am I better off?" she thought. "Where is the confidence in
+life I used to have? Where is my joy of life? Where is my Song of
+Songs?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which
+she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's
+purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings.
+
+"Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea
+together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy
+one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to
+know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the
+same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked
+simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes
+again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs
+everything."
+
+"With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the
+stuff I have at any rate."
+
+But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful.
+
+"What's he like?" he asked.
+
+In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she
+began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a
+highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his
+university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant
+career--a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else.
+
+What was his specialty?
+
+She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he
+would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for
+him.
+
+Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she
+scarcely knew what she was saying.
+
+Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a
+tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked
+uneasy and nettled.
+
+"I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction
+so smoothly.
+
+"Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and
+added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him."
+
+Perfect.
+
+The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge
+bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest
+style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky
+underwear.
+
+Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly
+striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line.
+
+The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich
+without offending him and having him refuse them.
+
+When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to
+show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said.
+
+When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally
+as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases,
+withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit.
+
+"I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left
+the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging
+here."
+
+Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.
+
+Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them?
+
+"Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold
+a glance at his own trousers.
+
+Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he
+gave him the suit?
+
+No, he could think of no one.
+
+Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn't
+believe she was mistaken--a remarkable similarity of figure--though the
+general had measured a bit more about the waist--and if he wanted to
+entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor--
+
+The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? Nobody
+could class him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his
+principles would never permit him to wear a person's cast-off clothes.
+
+With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project.
+
+But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the
+drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go,
+because Richard might enter any moment.
+
+At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked,
+stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening.
+
+"Haven't you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded,
+taken aback. For Richard's sake she did not care to receive visitors
+late in the day.
+
+No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was--it was--. He hung
+on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below.
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and--and--"
+
+"Well, and?"
+
+"And if it's dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with
+me."
+
+With that he jumped down the steps.
+
+"The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought,
+looking after him.
+
+The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a
+letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for
+enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the
+second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor.
+
+When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The
+suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his
+boots from turning up--they were too long for him--he had stuffed them
+with cotton wads.
+
+Even the maid sent him friendlier glances.
+
+A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair.
+But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him.
+His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help
+of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and
+gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or
+picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink
+claret.
+
+His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the
+peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination,
+and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes.
+
+He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly's situation,
+and she was grateful to him.
+
+Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional
+allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture
+of his unsuccessful career.
+
+After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and,
+consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology
+in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships.
+
+"After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny
+morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the
+green valley.
+
+But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During
+the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing
+envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not
+explicit.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor
+and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do."
+
+He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and
+ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who
+had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate
+ambition.
+
+To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried
+to find out what lot in life he desired for himself.
+
+He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man
+again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to
+breathe pure air.
+
+"All of us want something lovely like that," she thought.
+
+It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country,
+preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself.
+
+"And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the
+wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to
+water."
+
+She nearly cried with envy.
+
+From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire.
+She gave him money to insert advertisements in the _Kreuzzeitung_, wrote
+letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little
+circle of friends to do what they could for him.
+
+All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid
+attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him
+these days.
+
+He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being
+cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word.
+
+"That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask
+your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease.
+
+One day the bomb exploded.
+
+Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were
+present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table
+with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown
+of revenge puckered his brow.
+
+Lilly jumped from her seat, paling.
+
+As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there
+awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from
+his buttonhole into his soup plate.
+
+For a moment silence prevailed. Nothing but the tittering of the maid in
+the kitchen was to be heard.
+
+"I beg pardon," said Richard in the same threatening manner. "I merely
+wanted to make sure how you are really getting along."
+
+"Mr. Dehnicke, a good friend of mine--Mr. Redlich, my old friend," said
+Lilly.
+
+Now Richard scrutinised his dread rival more closely--looked in
+amazement and disapproval at the rank growth of his beard and shaggy
+mane--his gaze travelled downwards--and brightened--a nonplussed look,
+but also a joyous look of recognition, betrayed itself in his features.
+Wasn't that _his_ suit and _his_ shirt?
+
+His eyes dropped lower without halting at the napkin in the soup plate.
+
+Weren't those _his_ trousers? Weren't those _his_ discarded boots which
+the brilliant intellectual scholar was wearing?
+
+"Oh, that's it," he said. "Nothing more." With a wicked grin of scorn
+he turned to Lilly, who could scarcely keep on her feet. "May I speak to
+you alone for an instant?"
+
+"Will you excuse me, Mr. Redlich?" she said, and in her confusion and
+from force of habit, she opened the door to--the bedroom, as if that
+were the prescribed place for single ladies to receive their gentlemen
+friends. Richard, who was as accustomed to the way as she, followed her,
+unconscious of the exposure of intimacy.
+
+"Listen," he said upon shutting the door. "I was a donkey for having
+been jealous of your affinity. But now I swear to you, your friends may
+come and go, morning or evening, any time you wish. I'll always keep old
+suits on hand for them. Good-by--goosie!"
+
+He left. She could hear him laughing even after the door fell shut
+behind him.
+
+She was frightfully ashamed. How would she ever summon the courage to
+appear before her girlhood friend again, before that moral person who
+had shrunk at the mere mention of her divorce?
+
+Then she realised she was standing in the bedroom.
+
+Everything was revealed, all the disgrace of her existence, all, all.
+
+No matter how unworldly he might be, the rôle of the man who had so
+suddenly intruded in the apartment and as suddenly disappeared, must be
+patent.
+
+A long time she hesitated, the knob in her hand, listening to what Fritz
+Redlich was doing. She feared his tread, the clearing of his throat. His
+very silence boded evil.
+
+At last, trembling, ready to confess everything amid tears of
+contrition, she stepped into the dining-room.
+
+Lo and behold! He sat quietly at his accustomed place rubbing at the
+spot the wet napkin had made on his waistcoat. The blue goggles lay next
+to his plate, and he blinked at her amiably with no air of constraint.
+
+"Has the gentleman left already?" he asked innocently.
+
+At that moment the roast was brought in, and he fell to with avidity,
+making no further mention of the interlude.
+
+Actually--so pure was his conscience that he did not detect the impure
+even if thrust under his very nose.
+
+Oh, how grateful she was to him!
+
+To prove her gratitude she told him he might come evenings also--Richard
+permitted it--without waiting to be invited.
+
+If she should happen to be out, the maid would prepare supper for him,
+and see to it that he lacked nothing, absolutely nothing. And mindful of
+the wry face the maid had cut the first day he came, she enjoined her
+emphatically:
+
+"Now be real pleasant and friendly to him, so that he always feels at
+home here."
+
+The buxom wench turned down the corners of her mouth and said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly now went to work in behalf of Fritz Redlich with redoubled zeal.
+
+She again found a ready assistant in Mrs. Jula.
+
+"Leave the thing to me," said Mrs. Jula one day "There's somebody up
+there I've known a long time"--she hesitated a bit--"he's all-powerful,
+and has taken the Good Lord's place in many a minister's family. If I
+were to write to him--but, of course my name must be kept out, it's
+still a red rag to the bull up there."
+
+The next day Lilly sent her one of the advertisements that Fritz Redlich
+had inserted in the paper. Mrs. Jula was to forward it to a certain
+person, and the response would then go directly to Fritz Redlich without
+the intermediation of a third party. Lilly preferred that his future
+fortune should appear to be due entirely to his own efforts.
+
+And behold! Mrs. Jula was successful.
+
+One evening the next week Fritz Redlich appeared at Lilly's
+unexpectedly--a frequent occurrence now, whether she was at home or
+not--and complacently informed her his advertisement had been so
+convincing that he had immediately received an invitation from a
+minister in Further Pomerania to send his references and be ready to
+leave Berlin at short notice. The minister seemed to be quite keen for
+him.
+
+Lilly's heart throbbed with pride. Nothing in the world would have
+induced her to betray that she was at the bottom of his good luck.
+
+His happiness was her work! He himself, therefore, was her possession,
+more absolutely her possession than anything in the world.
+
+During the meal an exalted, blissful silence prevailed. Since he had not
+announced his coming, there was no potato soup, the usual first course.
+
+She excused herself for the omission, and added with a little pang:
+
+"At any rate you won't take many more meals with me."
+
+"Probably," he said with an embarrassed glance at the maid, whose
+presence evidently troubled him. Had she not been there, he would very
+likely have given warmer expression to his feelings.
+
+After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room.
+
+It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the
+naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered
+even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to
+which he submitted, snarling all the while.
+
+The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell.
+
+Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge
+after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly.
+
+"Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as
+before."
+
+Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune!
+
+She told him so for about the hundredth time.
+
+"Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles
+is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When
+I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence
+to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not
+only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the
+doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no
+wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts
+one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard,
+very hard."
+
+"Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out.
+We're old friends."
+
+"I will gladly if you wish it."
+
+Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since
+her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a
+motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit
+of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer
+hesitatingly, like a light in the distance.
+
+"Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have
+you ever been in love?"
+
+He started as if he had been hit.
+
+"In love? What do you mean?"
+
+"Well--what do you think--I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of
+the rocking chair with her thumb nail.
+
+He seemed to breathe more easily.
+
+"For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the
+desire."
+
+"And hasn't any woman ever loved you?"
+
+"Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his
+shoulders.
+
+His embittered dejection annoyed her.
+
+"Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little
+teasing.
+
+He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled
+him with dread.
+
+Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm
+had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme
+delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman.
+
+An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago,
+which would prove to him how mistaken he was.
+
+She choked it down.
+
+Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving
+Berlin.
+
+Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and
+ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the
+little canary also slept.
+
+Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she
+passed the rocking chair.
+
+She halted in front of him again.
+
+There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected
+nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow.
+
+Poor, poor fellow!
+
+"You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said
+with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women."
+
+With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly
+raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank
+under the light touch like a cushion.
+
+He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and
+coughed a little.
+
+"Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That's good advice. If I want to
+make a pleasant impression in my new position--"
+
+As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on
+his neck.
+
+Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave.
+
+She was too embarrassed to invite him to remain.
+
+The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down
+the stairs.
+
+"Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window.
+
+He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark.
+
+Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked
+away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him.
+
+The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused
+thoughts.
+
+"I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself.
+
+Nevertheless she was glad she had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had
+gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly's
+protégé was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling
+expenses had already been forwarded to him.
+
+Lilly wept tears of joy.
+
+Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back
+to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him
+her own.
+
+And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell
+him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl--everything.
+
+And once again--before parting--she would lay her hand on his mass of
+hair. Then what would might follow.
+
+The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her
+wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked
+his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him--he no
+longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in
+the saucepan.
+
+The clock struck eight. He had not come.
+
+"He's busy packing," she comforted herself.
+
+The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was
+standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard
+sometimes did.
+
+Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven.
+
+Then she went to bed sad and weary.
+
+The next morning she received the following letter:
+
+     "My dear Mrs. Czepanek:--
+
+     After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a
+     livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former
+     life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too
+     frequently forced me into circumstances conflicting with my
+     principles. My firm character was led into temptations from
+     which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge
+     intact.
+
+     I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I
+     hereby duly express my thanks. Nobody shall say Fritz Redlich
+     is an ingrate.
+
+     I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circumstances
+     compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the
+     suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But
+     had you really respected me, you would have spared me that
+     humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in
+     question evidently once belonged.
+
+     I may not conclude without making the following remarks:
+     improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face
+     of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this
+     advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had
+     continued to let you think me a dunce.
+
+     I remain your ever grateful
+
+     Fritz Redlich,
+     cand. phil. et theol."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience.
+
+It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because
+the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained
+without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the
+incident had its humorous aspect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a
+married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently passed for a
+widow of rank in a hall resort on the Baltic sea.
+
+She accepted the homage of several old maids, allowed a young missionary
+to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and respectfully declined the
+honourable proposal of a widower, the city treasurer of Pirna. Those
+were six weeks to her liking.
+
+The following winter went in much the same way as the preceding.
+
+At Christmas Richard presented her with a hired carriage, the door of
+which, of course, was decorated with the seven-pointed coronet. He had
+engaged it in order to avoid disagreeable encounters with his mother,
+who spoke of Lilly with increasing severity, and had frequently demanded
+the equipage when he was out driving with his mistress.
+
+He also gave Lilly a sable cloak, one of the new-fashioned sort, with
+countless tails, which cost a small fortune.
+
+Despite Richard's reproaches she made little use of either. That feeling
+of dread, never to be stilled, told her that such false display would
+drive her ever on into the world which she wanted to flee.
+
+And while Richard endeavoured with dogged greed to drain the cup of
+worldly delights to the very dregs, Lilly's desires went out more and
+more to middle-class respectability. She clung to it as the last hope,
+which enabled her to drag through her existence, the complete poverty
+of which tormented her increasingly there amid the lights and music and
+laughter.
+
+The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her
+intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she
+showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she
+elaborated with a lively fancy.
+
+But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that
+foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish
+disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little
+tales were nowhere to be found.
+
+When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she
+would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see."
+
+Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula,
+having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could
+not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her
+longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date,
+because it was St. Joseph's day.
+
+A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine.
+
+One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its
+instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring
+symphony.
+
+The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks
+going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy
+shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation.
+
+Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure
+remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences,
+throw herself on the bare earth--no matter what--but get away for a few
+hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was
+burdened by the spirit of idleness.
+
+She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the
+maid--this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to
+service with single ladies--and without troubling to order her carriage,
+took the electric tram to the Grunewald.
+
+At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an
+end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man,
+Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction.
+
+A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed
+and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually
+recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So
+she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss.
+
+Here nobody was to be seen far or near.
+
+The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the
+reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered
+near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each
+little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through
+the holes.
+
+Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to
+extinguish timid spring hopes.
+
+"In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought
+Lilly.
+
+But the freshness of the wind redolent of moss and pine needles did her
+good. She battled against its might, taking long strides. Her cheeks
+tingled, her frozen blood thawed, and sent fresh life pulsating through
+her fallow body.
+
+And her fallow soul.
+
+Suddenly she shook with a fit of laughter. It was all nonsense, her
+regret and her yearning, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's
+eternal marriage schemes. Even the respectability she desired was
+utterly vapid.
+
+What would she do with it? She, Lilly the free, the wild, the ruined?
+There was something else, something higher. There must be. Not in Dr.
+Salmoni's sense. No, oh, no. Something as hard and pure and
+life-bringing as this March wind sweeping through her limbs.
+
+Above her in a pine tree she heard a chipping sound which she had
+learned to recognise at Lischnitz. It was a call both of fear and
+invitation, which ended in a snappy "Tshek-tshek."
+
+Lilly stood still, looked up, and whistled.
+
+A pair of squirrels had been chasing about the trunk in corkscrew lines,
+and now, at her appearance, stood stock still in fright.
+
+"Tshek-tshek," Lilly clucked to incite the little red coats to play. She
+did not succeed, and picked up a pebble from the ground.
+
+Just as she was about to throw it, she saw, behind a tree trunk, two
+eyes fastened on her, large, questioning astonished eyes, which narrowed
+under her gaze, and darkened, and tried to turn away, but could not. She
+knew those eyes. She had looked into them long, long, long ago.
+
+But, no, she had not; she had never before seen them.
+
+The young man who, like herself, had been watching the squirrels play
+and was still standing half-concealed behind the trunk, his hat in his
+hand, was an utter stranger. Impossible that she had ever in her life
+met him. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.
+
+It was not easy to forget that serious, reserved Greek face, with the
+nervous nose narrow across the bridge and the shining dreamer's eyes.
+
+His appearance was not extremely elegant. It pleased Lilly better so.
+He wore a brown, somewhat old-fashioned overcoat, and the suit beneath,
+of which she caught a glimpse, was of a woolly material sprinkled with
+little tufts, by no means of German make and certainly not English.
+
+Gradually life came into him. He put on his hat, and stepped from behind
+the tree.
+
+"Now he'll speak to me," the sickening thought shot through Lilly's
+mind.
+
+No. He merely raised his hat, glanced at her again for the fraction of a
+second with an expression of query, astonishment, and, at the same time
+recognition, walked past her, and took the way she had just come.
+
+Lilly also wanted to leave the spot, but she was unable to; and since
+she must not be discovered looking after him she hid behind the same
+tree that had concealed him.
+
+"I wonder whether he will look back."
+
+No. He did not look back either. She felt hurt and neglected.
+
+The tall figure dwindled in the distance. "Never been in the army," she
+thought, judging from his rather heavy gait. Then it seemed to her that
+he stooped, drew himself up again, and looked back. In fact, he spied
+about a long time as if compelled to discover her.
+
+But she kept herself carefully hidden and did not move.
+
+He walked on and disappeared behind a curve.
+
+"What a pity I didn't take the carriage," thought Lilly.
+
+She might be overtaking him now without appearing to follow him, and the
+seven-pointed coronet would not have failed of its effect. As it was, he
+naturally cherished a bad opinion of the lady who walked about alone
+whistling like a boy and throwing pebbles at poor enamoured squirrels.
+
+Nevertheless, while walking homeward, she felt as if she had been
+presented with a lovely gift.
+
+Where could she have seen him before?
+
+She recalled a young man of the Dresden days. It was once when she was
+out walking arm in arm with the colonel along the Prager Strasse. She
+had seen eyes fixed upon her with the very same sad flash of recognition
+in them.
+
+Then--she remembered it well--she had wanted to look back and ask him:
+
+"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you want me to belong to you?"
+
+But even the partial turn of her head would have been a crime in her
+husband's eyes.
+
+And now, now that she was free, free to choose her friends according to
+her heart's desire, she had let him go, him, the one--whether the same
+as the Dresden man or another--who belonged to her, perchance, as she to
+him.
+
+She walked along with half-closed eyes, and conjured up his image. A
+small, dark, two-cornered beard, so close-cut on his cheeks as to give
+them a blue sheen. Such beards were seldom to be seen in Berlin.
+Frenchmen and Italians affected them. Full, firm, tightly compressed
+lips, lips such as a sculptor chisels. A high, square forehead, on which
+something like wrath seemed to be imprinted, not ordinary wrath against
+herself or any poor mortal. It was not of this world, and it really was
+divine love.
+
+Thus Lilly's enthusiasm fed itself. She forgot the way, and strayed
+about, finally arriving at a spot in an entirely different direction
+from that which she should have taken. The most dreadful things might
+have happened to her in the woods, where solitary ladies are exposed to
+encounters with tramps at any hour of the day. But she scarcely gave
+heed to her danger. She reached home two hours too late, tired, but in a
+glow.
+
+She could not eat. She threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamt.
+
+The bell rang. She heard a man's voice.
+
+It could not be Richard. He never came before half past four.
+
+Adele entered. There was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know
+whether the lady had lost her card-case. He had found one in the woods.
+
+Lilly jumped to her feet. Actually the little brocade case which she had
+held in her hand with her silver net purse was gone. In her excitement
+she had not missed it.
+
+"Like what does the gentleman look?"
+
+Tall and young and handsome, in fact, very handsome.
+
+"A short, dark beard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lilly reeled.
+
+"Let him come in," she stammered. She did not think of beautifying
+herself. She merely ran her hands over her face and hair in a dazed way.
+
+When he appeared in the doorway she scarcely recognised him, so thick
+was the red mist before her eyes.
+
+"I beg pardon," she heard him say--it was the serene voice of a man
+whose ways are not impure--"I would not have disturbed you had your
+address been on your cards. I found your number in the directory, but I
+couldn't be certain whether there were not more of the same name in the
+city."
+
+"You're very kind to have taken all that trouble," she replied, inviting
+him to be seated.
+
+"My name is Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting behind the back of his
+chair until she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa. On sitting
+down he drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
+
+She smiled her thanks; and feeling she must enhance the value of his
+courtesy, she said the case was a memento she prized highly, the loss of
+which would have distressed her.
+
+"A memento of my husband," she added.
+
+His face grew a shade more serious.
+
+A little pause ensued, during which his eyes rested steadily on her
+face, reading, questioning, comparing, and wondering. Nothing of that
+bold groping of other men's glances. A clean, unconscious joy amounting
+to devoutness lay in his look.
+
+"Didn't we meet just a little while ago at the edge of the woods?" Lilly
+asked warily.
+
+"Yes," he replied with animation. "And if I hadn't been so awkward I
+should have begged your pardon immediately for having unintentionally
+spied on you. I saw how startled you were. But I myself was so--how
+shall I say? All I thought was: 'Clear out. You'll be serving the lady
+best that way.'"
+
+His frank, blithe manner did her good, though it shamed her a little.
+
+"Now you've done me a much greater service," she said, feeling as
+appreciative as if he had saved her life.
+
+"Oh, don't speak of it. If only I had turned back instantly. But the
+earth seemed to have swallowed you up. I was worried about you."
+
+She smiled to herself, fearful in her happiness. A little more, and she
+would have acknowledged where she had stowed herself.
+
+"What did you think of me when you saw me strolling about the woods
+alone?" she asked.
+
+"That you don't feel alone when you're with nature. Otherwise you'd have
+had company with you."
+
+"You're right," she replied eagerly. "Besides, my carriage was waiting
+in the Hundekehlenrestaurant"--after all the carriage would play its
+part--"but it was imprudent of me. I suppose you are also very fond of
+nature?"
+
+"Very? I hardly know. I must say in Cordelia's words: I love it
+'according to my bond; nor more nor less.' To love nature is really no
+merit nor peculiarity. It is simply a vital function. Don't you agree
+with me?"
+
+"Certainly," she faltered, and thought, "Oh, how clever he is? How will
+I acquit myself?"
+
+"But to be quite frank," he continued, "I am having a strange experience
+with nature here. I cannot accustom myself to it. Its poverty oppresses
+me. I am like one who has outgrown his home and reproaches himself for
+it. I try to get back to my old attitude, and I admire and flatter
+German nature whenever I possibly can. But first other pictures in my
+mind must fade. You see I have just returned from Italy, where I spent
+the last two years."
+
+Heaving a deep sigh Lilly stared at him. She felt as if now he were
+absolutely unearthly.
+
+"Two whole years?" she asked in astonishment.
+
+"I am working on a large scientific work, on account of which--no, I was
+really sent to Italy on account of my health. My uncle, who's a father
+to me, wanted me to go. I didn't think of the work until I got there.
+Then my own country and my studies, everything, fell into the
+background."
+
+As he spoke his eyes glowed and stared into space, full of will and
+enthusiasm. The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings
+again in Lilly's breast.
+
+"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There
+all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you
+wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but
+I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything
+great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more
+beautiful--and--everything--sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"
+
+He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze.
+
+"Yes," he replied almost solemnly. "It is so, exactly."
+
+She tingled with delight. Did it not seem that with these words he made
+an avowal of the inner union between them, the avowal she had hoped for
+from the very first instant of their meeting? Did it not seem that
+nothing now separated them?
+
+She looked down helplessly.
+
+Was he really the embodiment of that shade which had so senselessly
+fastened itself upon her soul since the Dresden days?
+
+"I feel as if we had met before," she said softly without raising her
+eyes.
+
+"Exactly the way I feel," he rejoined hastily. "But it cannot be, for I
+should know where and when."
+
+"Were you in Dresden six years ago at about this time?"
+
+"No," he said. "Six years ago I was studying at Bonn. The semester came
+to an end at this season, but I went directly to my uncle, who was
+having his castle restored."
+
+"Where is his castle?"
+
+"Near Coblenz."
+
+So they had not met in Dresden.
+
+"But if we both have the same feeling--" said Lilly.
+
+"There are pictures in our souls which seem to be recollections, but in
+fact are previsions."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that one--that one--walks as on the edge of a knife between the
+past and the present, and reels and falls into a void the instant--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The instant--" he broke off--"I beg your pardon, are you an artist?"
+
+"Why?" she asked, unpleasantly taken aback. Did he want to make merry at
+her expense?
+
+"I read your sign outside."
+
+The sign! "Pressed Flower Studio."
+
+Violently torn out of sweet dreams and plunged into bitter reality!
+
+But now she must be on her guard. She must not lose his esteem.
+
+"In a way," she replied. "A very modest sort of art which I used to
+pursue. But it made me very happy. I learned it just after I lost my
+husband"--the fatal "divorce" would not pass her lips--"less for the
+sake of a livelihood than to lend my life content. But then I had to
+give it up--because--of a trouble with my eyes."
+
+Three lies in the same breath.
+
+Why not? She was lies within and lies without. Every gesture, every
+thought was a lie. But the great cry of her soul vibrating through her
+entire being, "You shall be mine; I will be yours," was _not_ a lie. And
+for his sake she continued to lie.
+
+"I don't like to speak of it." She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.
+"It still pains me. And please don't ever again refer to it in the
+future."
+
+"Again," "in the future," she had said, as if taking it for granted that
+they would continue to meet. Her words filled her with shame and
+confusion.
+
+She rose and turned her face aside.
+
+"I beg pardon," he said, abashed. "I could not have divined--" He rose
+to take leave.
+
+"Stay, stay, stay!" her soul cried. But she was unable to speak. She was
+benumbed.
+
+Perhaps he had seen through her lies, and had instantly realised who
+she was, and did not care to remain. She felt haughtiness congealing her
+features.
+
+"It was very kind of you," she said, graciously extending her finger
+tips.
+
+The moment had come in which to invite him to visit her, but the words
+froze on her lips.
+
+He had turned very pale and looked straight into her face expectantly.
+
+"I hope we meet some time again," he said finally.
+
+"I hope so," she replied very formally.
+
+He lightly touched her hand with his lips and left.
+
+Over! Over! And her fault!
+
+Happiness had come, had laid its blessing hand on her forehead, and had
+flown away again, leaving behind nothing but this pain, a wild pain,
+such as she had never before felt. It fairly tore at her throat and
+heart like a physical affliction.
+
+During the night she devised a thousand schemes for hunting him up and
+meeting him again.
+
+He was a scholar and probably frequented the library. She would go there
+and read and study, and some day she would surely meet him.
+
+Or, simpler still, she would write to him.
+
+"I don't love you," she would say. "Why should I? I scarcely know you.
+But I am confident that I could be something in your life. Therefore--"
+
+Then, disgusted with her lack of dignity, she rejected every plan.
+
+No, Lilly Czepanek after all would not throw herself away in such
+fashion.
+
+Once more it became impossible for her to remain at home.
+
+In the daytime she walked along the Potsdamer Strasse and Leipziger
+Strasse, where the metropolitan bustle is the greatest. In the evenings
+she did not visit distant districts as formerly, but with a busy air
+hurried incessantly up and down the lonely banks of the canal near her
+home.
+
+Despite her strict economy she always kept the light burning in her
+drawing-room, and did not confess to herself why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about eight o'clock in the evening four days after the meeting.
+The stars hung like lamps in the heavens. Lilly was pacing along the
+further bank of the canal, when she noticed the figure of a young man
+who was looking fixedly in the direction in which her home lay.
+
+She could not distinguish his features, because he kept his back turned.
+Besides, he had selected a dark spot for his coign of observation.
+
+With a slight throbbing of her heart she continued on her way, though
+after a while her legs refused to carry her further in the same
+direction. She had to turn about.
+
+She found the dark figure still standing motionless among the trees.
+From across the water the light in her drawing-room peered through the
+bare branches.
+
+This time he heard her tread, and faced about.
+
+She recognised his features and started.
+
+He also thrilled with the shock of surprise. For an instant he foolishly
+pretended not to see her, but then he drew a deep breath and took off
+his hat with an abashed smile.
+
+Lilly trembled so, she could not hold out her hand.
+
+"Dr.--Rennschmidt," she managed to say.
+
+He was the first to recover his composure.
+
+"You will wonder," he began, stepping alongside of her, "why I stand
+here in the dark and look over there. If I were to say it was a mere
+chance, you wouldn't believe me. So I will frankly confess I could not
+rid myself of the thought that at our parting something went
+wrong--there was a misunderstanding--precipitancy--I felt I ought to beg
+your pardon for something."
+
+"If you felt that way, why didn't you come up to me, and tell me so?"
+
+"Was I permitted to?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You see, we men have no rights with women except such as they give us.
+No others exist for us. To be sure, we may stand in the dark here, and
+bite our lips--"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Don't ask me."
+
+His voice did not quiver, but a tremour ran through his arm, which
+grazed hers.
+
+Lilly, alarmed, stopped and helplessly looked back at the dark way she
+had come.
+
+"That means--I--I must say good-by?" he asked.
+
+In the light of the lamp she saw his eyes clinging to her with a look of
+fearsome inquiry.
+
+"Oh, no," she replied slowly, as if some one else were speaking in her
+stead. "Now that we are together, we will remain together."
+
+"I think so, too," he said. The same gravity of an oath lay in his words
+as she had put into hers.
+
+They walked along in silence.
+
+Then he began in a lighter tone.
+
+"But I must call your attention to something. Your light is burning. If
+you really do want to favour me with an hour, I'm afraid the thought of
+the waste will disquiet you."
+
+"Well, we'll put it out!" she replied gaily, and turned on her heels so
+abruptly that he continued to make two or three steps forward.
+
+As they crossed the slender arch of the Hohenzollernbrücke, he pointed
+up to the heavens.
+
+"Jupiter shines on our undertaking. I like him better than Venus, who
+runs after the sun and needs a rosy flooring for her feet."
+
+"Which is Jupiter?" asked Lilly standing still.
+
+He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six
+constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.
+
+"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look
+out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her
+mind.
+
+While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the
+light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take
+supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying
+down again.
+
+Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and
+sobbed.
+
+But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite
+proper.
+
+"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I
+know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's
+practically in Italy."
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for
+nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian
+restaurant.
+
+They walked along the canal for about five minutes talking nonsense. The
+medley of lights of the Potsdamer Brücke was quite near when he paused
+in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen
+wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of
+sand.
+
+"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to
+be had in Florence," he explained.
+
+They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the
+proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the
+bar.
+
+"_Sera, padrone_," Lilly's friend greeted him.
+
+From the anteroom they passed into a rather long, hall-like room filled
+with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of
+crisscrossed garlands of shiny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of
+being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets
+and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion
+for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wishing them
+on this March evening a "Happy New Year."
+
+"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the
+waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in
+his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
+
+At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long,
+thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the
+knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting
+Italian with fascinating rapidity.
+
+"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great
+sculptors employ them as assistants. They earn a great deal of money,
+and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish
+a household."
+
+Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, lustreless hair drawn
+very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches
+burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their
+dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made
+brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then
+fell to whispering busily.
+
+Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air,
+as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.
+
+"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader
+deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."
+
+"Where am I?" thought Lilly.
+
+It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a
+strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin,
+Germany, near the Potsdamer Brücke, was the placard's complacent "Happy
+New Year."
+
+"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt,
+after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot
+cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has
+no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order
+some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."
+
+He nodded to the waiter, Francesco by name--Francesco, as if he had just
+stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively
+conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.
+
+The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in
+yellowish red gravy.
+
+Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told
+him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her
+life, never since she could remember, felt so good.
+
+The last course was a "_giardinetto_," a "little garden," of mandarins,
+dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.
+
+The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the glasses
+scattering bright drops.
+
+Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new
+friend's face.
+
+He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements
+like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or
+perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional
+attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of
+life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously.
+The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his
+seething ardour.
+
+He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness.
+He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them
+through a heavy mass of hair. But the mass was no longer there, and his
+hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.
+
+Everything about him bespoke force and decision--to Lilly's admiration,
+well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of
+health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not
+robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and
+sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward,
+a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely
+youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.
+
+"So _that's_ what you are," she thought and stretched herself in
+blissful peace. "At last."
+
+"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you
+feeling well?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about
+down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."
+
+Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive
+teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under
+all the ashes life had cast upon it.
+
+"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."
+
+"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never
+been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back--as a
+punishment--because a young man ogled me."
+
+"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you
+divine."
+
+"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."
+
+"Why at me?"
+
+"Because you shine like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."
+
+He became serious.
+
+"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life
+and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been
+opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout--sometimes I hardly know
+what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers bloody, and more keeps
+coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to
+whom."
+
+"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so
+miserably poor."
+
+He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.
+
+"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."
+
+"Isn't that the same thing?"
+
+He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.
+
+"What was your husband?" he asked.
+
+"I--am--the divorced wife--of an army officer of high rank," she replied
+with downcast eyes.
+
+This time--thank the Lord!--it was not a lie.
+
+Yet, to be accurate, she had lied.
+
+For see what she was _now_!
+
+He clasped her hand, which lay next to his on the table, and held it an
+instant.
+
+"If it is difficult for you to speak of your life, don't," he said.
+"Later, perhaps, when we know each other better, you will tell me. I
+will tell you about myself--and how I--came to do my work."
+
+"The work of which you spoke that time?" Lilly asked, strangely stirred
+by the sudden solemnity of his tone.
+
+Drawing a deep breath he stretched out his clenched fists and his eyes
+stared into space.
+
+"Yes--the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and
+future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and
+lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour
+created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and
+your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving."
+
+"I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly.
+
+"I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how
+restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung,
+painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have
+grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost
+frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the
+final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be
+formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work."
+
+"Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken.
+
+He smiled and shook his head.
+
+"I'm neither a poet nor a painter, nor a historian, nor a psychologist.
+Yet I must be something of each, and more to boot. My work requires it."
+
+Then he told his story.
+
+His father had been instructor at a university and an eminent jurist.
+His mother had died in giving him birth, and his father did not survive
+her long. He then came under the care of his uncle, a rich, experienced
+old bachelor, who had passed a lively life in business and
+pleasure-seeking, and now dwelt in merry singleness in his castle. He
+had given Dr. Rennschmidt an education and had assured him a small
+income which enabled him in a modest fashion to indulge his wishes and
+whims. Dr. Rennschmidt had intended to follow in his father's footsteps
+and enter an academic career, but the examinations, which he had passed
+honourably, had tried his health. So, to satisfy his uncle, he had given
+up the idea of a university career for the time being, and had gone out
+into the world. He had been drawn to Italy by his studies in the history
+of art, which he had always pursued with interest, though without
+considering them his life work. What fascinated him more than the
+churches and the museums was the free, beautiful humanity in which the
+lively southern race expressed its personality. He felt as if it had
+awakened in him a new, free humanity, conscious of its own powers. He
+felt more and more strongly the original unity of artistic and personal
+experience, past and present. The heroes of mythology and history, the
+characters in poetry and painting, and the poets and painters themselves
+all became so real and familiar that they seemed to be part of his own
+being. Surrounded by a people saturated with its own history, possessing
+the skill of a thousand years' exercise of art, always in touch with the
+spirit of the time, it seemed possible to him to penetrate into the
+emotional world of past generations. He learned to distinguish
+monuments of different periods and follow those related to each other
+step by step along the course of time.
+
+His guide always had been and remained art. Art was best able to wring
+speech from the silence of death and bid the dust add new forms to the
+old. Only one thing was still missing, knowledge of the sources of its
+convincing might, the A B C's of the language in which it expressed its
+thoughts.
+
+Lilly strained herself to follow him. She had never before listened to
+such language; yet it was not strange. Remnants from of old, from
+long-forgotten times seemed to cling to the bottom of her soul, which
+harmonised with what he said.
+
+"One day," he continued, "while I was staying in Venice, I went off on a
+short excursion to Padua. By railroad it's about the same as going from
+Berlin to Potsdam. I wasn't keen about seeing the art there, because I
+was still in the honeymoon intoxication of my love for the early
+Venetians. It was only for the sake of completeness. I got into a little
+church in which there are frescoes by Giotto. Do you know who he was?"
+
+"Certainly--Giotto and Cimabue," she said proudly.
+
+"Then I needn't say more. I really had little left in me for him and his
+people, because, as I said, the quattrocentists had heated my
+imagination. Now just conceive a Roman amphitheatre completely ruined
+and overgrown with ivy, nothing but the outer walls still standing, like
+the walls of a garden. In the enclosure is the little church built of
+brick, as sober and prosaic as a Prussian Protestant praying barn."
+
+Lilly smiled gratefully. A side-thrust at Protestantism was still a
+personal favour to her.
+
+"Services are no longer held there. It has been set aside as a national
+monument. When I entered I saw nothing at first but a blue radiance from
+the walls, a sort of modest background, with long rows of pictures on
+it, the story of Christ told quite simply, the way a preacher speaking
+to poor people would tell it on Good Friday, provided he is the right
+preacher for poor people."
+
+"But aren't we all poor people in the presence of Christ?" Lilly
+ventured to interpose.
+
+He paused, looked at her with large eyes, then assented eagerly.
+
+"Certainly. But not only in the presence of Christ, in the presence also
+of every great personality, of every great truth. But it isn't easy for
+us to cultivate that feeling--to make it clear to ourselves that we must
+be poor when what is given to us ought to enrich us. Religion is best
+able to inspire us with the feeling, if it finds the correct means of
+expression. And the Italians did. A poor man spoke to poor men. Therein
+lay the wealth of Giotto's gift. For what moves us to tears is not his
+vast competence, it is his incompetence. Do you get what I mean?"
+
+"I think I do," said Lilly, her face lighting up. "If a man desires
+something of us, and can merely stammer and stutter his desire, he
+affects us more than if he says it in a prepared discourse."
+
+"Exactly!" he cried joyously. "That's why Giotto's scant speech, his
+stammering created the whole language of art. Everything before him had
+simply been learned by heart from dead, Byzantine models. For the first
+time a man read life with simple eyes and a simple heart, and extracted
+from it what he had to say. That is why he became the universal master.
+To this very day if anyone succeeds in portraying supreme suffering and
+supreme delight with his brush, he owes his skill to that little
+church."
+
+"I can conceive," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source and a
+man were suddenly to come upon it, he would feel as you do."
+
+In the exuberance of his emotion Dr. Rennschmidt seized Lilly's arm with
+both hands.
+
+"That's the missing figure. It's strong enough to express what took
+place in me. But I came upon another source. While I walked along those
+frescoed walls, something suddenly stood before me clearly--and my work
+was there, sprung from nothing: the history of emotions. Emotions, you
+know, as art has seen and portrayed them in all generations. Not only
+the pictorial and plastic arts. They are only a fraction. Literature
+also. Poetry as well as painting, sculpture as well as music. I thought
+in that way I might succeed in creating a true, genuine history of the
+development of the human heart, which no moralist, no historian, no
+psychologist has yet attempted. Why not? The documents are at hand; just
+as fossils lie embedded in rocks for the guidance of zoölogists. They
+need merely be cut out. What do you think? Isn't it a work worth
+spending a lifetime on?"
+
+"It is," said Lilly, with the same solemnity.
+
+"Oh, but there's much to be thought over first," he went on. "You cannot
+make an impetuous onslaught like a bull on a red rag. Often art leads us
+astray because it strove to reproduce something entirely different from
+the emotional life of its time. Whether it succeeded or not is another
+question. And often it was wanting in the necessary means of expression.
+Oh, you and I will speak of this many more times. Don't look so
+frightened. I need you. After this evening I could not get along without
+you. Nobody before you ever listened with such faith and understanding.
+Besides, I've grown to be an utter stranger here. The people I know are
+full of their own interests, and scarcely listen to me. Then, too,
+there's a bit of madness in my undertaking, of which I really ought to
+be ashamed. But one thing comforts me: a bit of madness has underlain
+every great work until that work was completed and had compassed its
+end. Of course everybody has the same idea of his own work. So some time
+I'll rise above that feeling. But now, while I'm wrestling, and every
+day I think I have discovered a new vein of gold and then am compelled
+to throw a good deal away because it's pinchbeck, if I have nobody on
+whom I can pour out what oppresses and torments me, why the jumble
+fairly chokes me. So fate sent me to you. It was like an inner voice,
+which would not let me rest at my desk, but sent me out to watch your
+light. Now I have you, and I won't let you go. God knows, I shouldn't be
+so bold in my own behalf, but it's for my work. It is clamouring for
+you. For heaven's sake, why are you crying?"
+
+"I'm not crying," said Lilly, and smiled at him.
+
+But the tears kept rising, and veiled his lovely picture.
+
+"I know what it is," he said sadly. "I wasn't considerate. You are
+regretting your lost art, because I spoke so happily of my own work."
+Lilly started back as if she had seen a ghost, and made vehement denial.
+
+"No, no, it isn't that! Really not!"
+
+But he persisted in his belief; which drove the thorn of her own
+unworthiness all the deeper into her soul.
+
+"Let us go," she requested. "There is so much assailing me--happiness
+and unhappiness and all sorts of things--outside I'll be calmer."
+
+It was long after midnight. A cold wind swept across the water and
+soughed in the bare branches.
+
+He offered her his arm, and Lilly nestled in it as if she had been at
+home there from times immemorial.
+
+For a while they were both silent
+
+"In five minutes he'll leave me," she thought. She could not bear the
+grief of impending loss.
+
+"One thing is lying heavy on my conscience," he began. "You might think
+me overweening because I make so much of myself. But I don't wish to
+appear more important than others. I know every vigorous young fellow
+must have a similar work to bring purpose into his life. One has a book
+to write, another a business to carry on, another a dependent to
+support. For some it's enough if they keep their heads above water. It
+doesn't matter what. If you let yourself go, you're lost. And none of us
+want to be lost, do we?"
+
+"I think I lost myself long ago," whispered Lilly, shuddering and
+crouching like a whipped dog.
+
+He burst out laughing.
+
+"You, the best, the finest, the noblest."
+
+She knew how undeserved his praise was. Yet how delicious, oh, how
+delicious.
+
+They were now walking so closely pressed against each other that their
+cheeks almost touched. She closed her eyes and ardently drank in the
+warm breath of his life. She felt she was being wafted to unknown
+blessed distances.
+
+She did not come to herself until they reached her home.
+
+"When?" he asked her.
+
+She had no time the next day. She was invited out. But the day after.
+Yes, the day after, she had the whole evening free. He need only call
+for her.
+
+For fear she might after all ask him to come the very next day, she
+hurried into the house, ran up the steps, and concealed her happiness in
+the hushed apartment.
+
+She did not turn on the lights. The street lamps, shining on the walls
+of the drawing-room and touching rainbow colours on the chandelier
+prisms, provided sufficient illumination.
+
+She began to wander through the open doors from room to room, into the
+corner where the bed stood, around the dining table, across the
+drawing-room, into the cold guest room, which had never received a
+guest, up and down, back and forth, singing, crying, exulting.
+
+And from amid her tears and singing and exultation suddenly arose--how
+did it go?
+
+    Come, my beloved! Let us go forth into the field,
+    Let us spend the night in the villages.
+    Let us get up early to the vineyards,
+    Let us see if the vine have blossomed.
+
+No, not quite--a little different. But she would surely get it.
+
+Impetuously she raised the lid of the piano, which had long remained
+closed. As if the neglected instrument, unforced into silence, had
+suddenly acquired a life of its own, a flood of sound rushed toward her,
+of which she had deemed neither the piano nor herself capable.
+
+    Let us see if the young grape have opened,
+    Whether the pomegranates have budded,
+    There will I give my young love unto thee.
+
+Yes, that was the way it went. Exactly. She had found each note again.
+
+Where had it kept itself hidden all those long years?
+
+It seemed as if the last time she had sung it had been the very day
+before.
+
+Yet worlds of suffering lay between.
+
+No, not suffering.
+
+"If only it had been suffering," thought Lilly, "the Song of Songs would
+never have become mute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The next morning on awaking Lilly began to worry anew.
+
+Nobody was so blind as not to detect, on coming closer how worm-eaten
+was her existence. Least of all he whose fine feelings vibrated under
+each spiritual touch and awoke an anxious echo in her soul.
+
+Even if it were possible for her to create a sort of island on which she
+might prevent him from coming into contact with her world, wasn't her
+very appearance a traitor? All those mad nights could not have passed
+over her without leaving traces. Two years before Dr. Salmoni had
+already remarked a change in her appearance. "A cold, disdainful look,"
+he had said.
+
+She jumped from bed, and ran to the mirror to subject every feature to
+suspicious scrutiny.
+
+Her eyes had grown tired. There was no disputing that. But they did not
+look disdainful. "Virgin Mary eyes," Dr. Rennschmidt had said, not
+"Madonna eyes." Was there a difference? On her brow were faint cobwebby
+lines; but she could well-nigh rub them away with her finger. "They will
+disappear with a little massaging," she said to herself. But the deep
+grooves on either side of her mouth were bad. They gave her face a
+haughty, satiated expression. "The paths that consuming passion long has
+trod," she quoted from "Tannhäuser in Rom," which she knew almost by
+heart.
+
+And yet--had she not preserved her noblest, her profoundest feelings? As
+if to save them up for this One, and now that the One had come, it was
+too late perhaps.
+
+She spent the day in misery, and when Richard came for his tea, he found
+red eyes.
+
+That afternoon proved to her clearly what she possessed in Richard. He
+asked so few questions, and was so sympathetic and full of solicitude,
+that for a moment or two she felt comforted and secure. She almost
+succumbed to the temptation to tell him a little about her new
+acquaintance, as was right between two such good friends. Fortunately
+she resisted the impulse. Rather let Adele into the secret, who had
+several times observed encouragingly:
+
+"You may trust me fully. I know life far too well not to take the lady's
+side."
+
+Wishing to avoid "the whole crew," as she dubbed the circle of her
+friends, Lilly pled sickness, and Richard rested satisfied. In the
+evening it occurred to her she had told Dr. Rennschmidt she was going
+out. She hastily put out the light, and sat brooding in the dark until
+bedtime.
+
+The next morning the mail brought her a letter addressed in an unknown
+hand.
+
+She tore the envelope open and read:
+
+    I cannot rest, I cannot sleep before
+    I speak to you, before the prayer torn
+    From out my breast in passionate outpour
+    Swiftly on wind and wave to you is borne.
+
+    I sit and dream by lighted lamp; still lies
+    My work. With hours stolen I entwine
+    A crown of flame that heavenly aspires
+    In tongues of fire up round your head divine.
+
+    Oh, chide me not for uttering words uncalled;
+    Chastise me not for sacred spell I've broken
+    In which your lofty spirit is enthralled.
+    I am a struggler--I must needs have spoken.
+
+Good Heavens! Did this refer to her, to Lilly Czepanek, who ate her
+heart out in dull self-depreciation?
+
+If any human being in the world could think of her so, above all _he_,
+the most glorious--she knew the poem, though unsigned, came from
+him--then after all she was not in such a bad way; then perhaps her life
+had not taken a permanent hold upon her; probably her innermost being
+had remained intact, and values lay strewn in her soul which needed only
+to be used in order to sanctify and bless herself and others.
+
+Long after she knew the verses by heart she read them again and again.
+She could not tear her eyes from the beloved writing.
+
+Then she tried to set the words to music. She opened the piano, and
+fantasied. Her playing came back to her as on the other night;
+everything she had known as a girl and had thought long forgotten came
+back. She needed merely to drop her fingers on the keys, and there it
+was--or nearly so.
+
+But her finger joints were stiff, and the muscles of her lower arm soon
+wearied. She would have to practise and limber them.
+
+"When he visits me, I can even play a classic for him," she thought.
+Buoyed by the new hope she floated further along on the current of her
+newly won self-esteem.
+
+At the same time she kept careful count of each minute that separated
+her from the evening.
+
+Richard found her practicing assiduously.
+
+"What's gotten into you to-day?" he asked. "I hadn't the slightest idea
+you could play so well."
+
+"Neither had I," laughed Lilly.
+
+"You must play for the others this very evening."
+
+"This evening?" Lilly asked, alarmed. "I thought I had this evening
+free."
+
+"Free! What do you mean by free?" he rejoined, evidently annoyed. "You
+act just as if our going out in company were heaven knows what a
+sacrifice. You keep to yourself whenever you can possibly get a chance.
+Yesterday, in fact, Karla said nobody really knows what sort of life you
+lead."
+
+"I think that applies much better to Karla than to me. Nobody really
+knows her name."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Others have criticised your reserved ways, too. One
+man even hinted I'd better keep my eye on you more than I do, and not
+let you go your own way so much. So to hush them up I promised I'd bring
+you this evening instead of yesterday. There's no getting out of it."
+
+Lilly instantly reflected that a refusal, far from helping, would merely
+arouse his dormant suspicions. So she bravely choked down fright and
+tears. But when he left the anguish of disappointment was all the
+keener.
+
+What would Dr. Rennschmidt think if he came at the appointed time and
+found her out? Since he had not mentioned his address, she could not
+write to him, and he would have a full day in which to nurse evil
+suspicions.
+
+In an agony of apprehension she sought comfort with Adele, whose dry,
+peevish face perceptibly brightened. She seemed to be in her element
+when it came to deceiving a person, or, better still, two persons.
+
+"The best thing," she said, "would be for you to say a sick friend had
+asked you to come. Something sad like that takes them all in." She knew
+it from experience, she assured Lilly.
+
+That evening her friends did not get much entertainment out of Lilly.
+She disregarded the gentlemen, and gave the ladies rude answers. Mrs.
+Jula, the only one whose presence would have pleased her, was absent,
+as had become usual of late. They finally left her to herself and
+Richard, the dear fellow, who had hoped to parade his possession,
+helplessly gnawed the ends of his moustache.
+
+The next morning Lilly again suffered the torments of dread.
+
+When she had come home the night before, despite the late hour, she had
+awakened Adele, who said he had come and had looked dreadfully upset. He
+had gone away without saying anything.
+
+Another day spent in nervously counting the minutes. She stood in front
+of the mirror, utterly despondent, and dressed herself for him. She
+would have liked to sink at his feet when he entered. Nevertheless she
+determined to maintain in words and gesture, then and in the future, a
+certain gentle, melancholy grandeur of manner which would nip suspicion
+in the bud, and would correspond with the picture of her he had drawn in
+his verses. When she thought that that stupid, much-kissed head of hers
+should from now on be a "head divine," she grew thoroughly ill at ease
+from sheer sanctity.
+
+At half past seven the bell rang.
+
+She received him with a conventional smile, and the gentle, melancholy
+grandeur, which she succeeded in adopting perfectly, concealed her
+harassed spirits.
+
+His manner, she saw at the first glance, was also constrained. His eyes
+glided past her with a singularly empty expression.
+
+"He has divined everything," her soul cried.
+
+But she bore up nobly.
+
+"I must beg your pardon," she said, "for not having kept our
+appointment."
+
+"I hope your friend is feeling better," he said, while a disdainful
+smile of doubt played about his lips.
+
+She made all kinds of explanations, said whatever came into her head;
+and without looking at him, she knew he believed not a syllable.
+
+"I must beg _your_ pardon," he rejoined after she had finished, with the
+same lurking disdain in his voice and smile.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I sent you some verses which I hope you will consider nothing more than
+what they really are, a mere harmless stylistic effort without sense or
+significance."
+
+"He's already withdrawing," her guilty conscience cried; and all the
+colder and worldlier was her reply.
+
+"I admit your pretty verses did astonish me at first. I couldn't
+conceive that I was a fitting subject to inspire them. But then I
+thought you probably meant nothing more than what you just now said, and
+I did not feel offended. If you wish we won't say more about it."
+
+He looked at her with great questioning eyes, and she rejoiced at having
+requited him so bitterly.
+
+Wishing to observe the rules of decorum she invited him to stay for
+supper, though absolutely nothing had been prepared for a guest.
+
+"I thought I was to be permitted to take you out," he replied in a hard,
+disillusioned tone.
+
+She smiled politely.
+
+"Just as you wish."
+
+They descended the stairs in silence, and in silence paced along the
+canal, the same way they had walked three evenings before, pressed close
+against each other in drunken bliss. Then, too, they had not spoken;
+but, oh, how different had their silence been!
+
+"What have you done the last few days?" Lilly finally asked, to make
+conversation.
+
+"Nothing special. I tried to write an article for the _Münchener
+Kunstzeitschrift_, on which I'm a collaborator. My subject was the
+Sienna School outside of Sienna. But it didn't turn out very well. The
+editor won't be satisfied."
+
+Lilly read reproach of herself in his words. Evidently he wanted to
+indicate that her entrance into his life was to blame.
+
+And when he asked to what restaurant she would like to go, she said, her
+wounded heart quivering:
+
+"I'm neither hungry nor thirsty, and people and light would hurt me."
+
+She wanted to add something about "not wishing to be a burden" and
+similar things, but swallowed the words before they were spoken.
+
+"If you wish to avoid people, we might go to the Tiergarten."
+
+Lilly agreed. Had he said, "Come down into the water of the canal with
+me," she would have assented even more willingly.
+
+The hard park roads stretched before them in the light of the electric
+lamps like long galleries with garish walls between which one was forced
+to run the gauntlet. The pedestrians coming toward Lilly and Dr.
+Rennschmidt measured the tall couple with cold, intrusive curiosity.
+
+"It's worse here than in the crowded streets," said Lilly.
+
+Her aching, despondent heart fluttered with excitement
+
+He pointed to a side path leading into darkness; and without speaking
+they dipped into solitude.
+
+Above the towering masses of branches the cloudy sky, looking like a
+metal whose brilliance has worn off, reflected the invisible sea of city
+lights. Through the lattice work of the leafless bushes gleamed the
+lamps lining the more public ways; and on all sides the gongs of the
+electric trams, shooting hither and thither, sounded like fire alarums.
+
+But there in the interior of the park, quiet and darkness prevailed.
+Lilly felt she had sunk into a black sea of mournfulness.
+
+The silence between them became intolerable.
+
+Suddenly Dr. Rennschmidt stepped in front of Lilly and blocked the way.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Mrs. Czepanek--Mrs. Czepanek--what I am going to say--what I am going
+to say"--his raised hands jerked back and forth before her face--"will
+either bring us together again--or--send us apart forever. I was
+cowardly before. I thought I could evade the truth. When I said I didn't
+mean what I wrote in my poem, I was lying. I felt exactly what I wrote.
+And a thousand times more strongly. But I oughtn't to have spoken. I
+know I frightened you. You were bewildered. You didn't know how to take
+me. You probably think me some enamoured adventurer who wants to exploit
+the trust you show. Dear, dear Mrs. Czepanek, I promise you I will never
+again annoy you with a display of my feelings. But don't withdraw your
+friendship from me. Please don't. Just imagine what would become of me
+if I were to lose you!"
+
+So _that's_ what it was!
+
+Oh, God! If nothing else stood between them.
+
+She could not help herself--she had to lean against a tree and cry. Her
+tears soon soaked her veil, and she raised it and pressed her finger
+tips to her eyes.
+
+"What's the matter?" she heard his voice, hoarse with anxiety. "Did I
+wound you so deeply? Was what I said so very bad? I will atone for it.
+Just pardon me. You must pardon me."
+
+When she heard him beg her pardon so humbly for the immeasurable
+happiness he had bestowed upon her, she was seized with a frenzy, and
+throwing her grand manner to the winds and her shame, to boot, she flung
+her arms about his neck with a groan of abandon, pressed her body
+against his, and kissed his lips, and sucked and bit them.
+
+Under the impetus of this wild, unchaste kiss, he staggered and held
+himself erect on her, digging his fingers into the flesh of her upper
+arm.
+
+How good it felt, because it hurt so!
+
+"At last, at last!" her heart cried.
+
+Now he knew who she was and what she had to give him.
+
+When she pulled herself together, she saw he had sunk back with his head
+leaning against the same tree that had supported her. His hat had fallen
+to the ground. His eyes were closed. His face had the ashen hue of
+death.
+
+For a few moments all was still. The only sound was the clanging of the
+tram bells.
+
+"My love, my love!" she whispered, stooping and then drawing herself
+upward on him. "Wake up, my love! wake up, and come!"
+
+He opened his eyes and stared at her with the look of a foolish slave.
+
+"Come, come," she exulted. "Come back, come home. I don't want to roam
+about any more--in the woods or restaurants. Come home! Come to me!"
+
+He did not respond. He seemed to have lost his mind completely.
+
+A dull sense of guilt awoke in her, but was instantly stifled by joy.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+With both hands she drew him away from the spot that had become the
+cradle of her bliss--and his, too. Was it remarkable that happiness
+should benumb him and rob him of his senses? He upon whom Lilly
+Czepanek bestowed herself, Lilly Czepanek for whose favour hundreds had
+begged in vain, might well lose his senses. It by no means derogated
+from his dignity.
+
+While she drew him along the roads and streets, she let loose upon him
+her soul's tempest in a delirium of happy prattle.
+
+Hadn't he an inkling of what he was that he should have harboured such
+doubts? She had belonged to him from the very first instant. A miracle
+had taken place in her as well as in him. Never had she known what love
+was until the day when the squirrels chipped over their heads. The rest
+of her life no longer existed for her. _He_ alone was there. He and his
+eyes. He and his mouth. He and his will. He and the great, glorious work
+which she would toil for like a slave; which she would enrich with her
+love, because from old pictures and poems he would gather nothing but
+the grey ashes of love. Genuine, young blissful love, _she_ would teach
+him, she, Lilly Czepanek, who had waited for him ever since she could
+remember, who belonged to him from the beginning, from the beginning of
+time, you might say. He could see God had destined them for each other,
+because they both thought they had met before, whereas they had never
+met in life. At most in dreams. She had seen him in her dreams always,
+always. Exactly as in fairy tales.
+
+"Perhaps it is a fairy tale. Tell me, tell me, you whose first name I do
+not even know. But no matter. Tell me, it's not a mere fairy tale."
+
+But he said nothing. He walked along like a somnambulist. He followed
+her up the steps mechanically, and remained standing stiffly in the
+centre of the drawing-room, into which she had led him. When the lights
+were turned on, he looked about with a shy, searching glance, as if he
+had never seen the room, and could not recollect how he had come there.
+
+She clung to him, and said he should sit quite still and rest, and close
+those eyes of his. Then she helped him remove his overcoat, and pressed
+him into a seat and kissed him on both "those eyes" until his lids
+closed and he reclined there as if actually asleep.
+
+"Now wait, beloved, until I come back."
+
+She ran joyously into the kitchen to order Adele to prepare supper
+hastily. Then she hurried into the bedroom, where she changed her
+rustling silk dress for a light blue tea-gown, turquoise-studded, in
+which, as Richard was wont to say gallantly, she was Venus herself. She
+arranged her hair more loosely and discarded her rings The only jewel
+she left was a gold bracelet.
+
+Adele, the sulky, had transformed the table as if by magic into a bower
+of flowers, and her face was wreathed in smiles; for at last there were
+human goings-on in this respectably indecent house. The plated
+silverware gleamed on the fresh damask, and the aroma of golden bananas
+came from the fruit basket.
+
+He might be content. Lilly was. Her dread had disappeared. She felt
+well-nigh victorious. But her happiness was too humble to be totally
+unqualified.
+
+Her one pride, greedy for recognition, was that she had so much, so much
+to give him.
+
+When she entered the drawing-room, she no longer found him reclining on
+the arm-chair. To her terror she saw he was standing in front of the
+secrétaire--absorbed in contemplation of Richard's picture.
+
+"Oh, if only I had taken it away before!" she thought Now it was too
+late.
+
+He let a confused, astonished look glide over the Venus robe, and
+fetching a deep breath, grasped both her hands.
+
+"Why did you make yourself so beautiful for me?"
+
+"Just to give you a little feeling of being at home here," she said,
+dropping her eyes. "Nothing more. But come. Let's go to supper. We
+haven't had anything to eat all evening."
+
+"Eat and drink now? Oh, very well--I'll just sit at table, if you want."
+
+"Then I don't care for anything either," she cried, clinging to him, and
+drawing her arm so tight about his neck that the pressure of his body
+fairly robbed her of her breath.
+
+Peter, the little ape, who had slept in his corner the whole time, awoke
+and whimpered jealously, and stretched his grey arms yearningly between
+the bars of his cage, as if wishing to be the third party in the
+alliance.
+
+Dr. Rennschmidt heard the strange sound and started.
+
+Lilly smiled and calmed him.
+
+"Later I'll introduce you to all my little ones. My friends must be
+yours, too."
+
+He drew himself up to his full height.
+
+"How is that possible? As what would you introduce me?"
+
+Lilly hastily parried.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean it that way. I merely meant--" She was at a loss what
+explanation to offer. Then she felt his trembling fingers clutch her
+upper arm. His eyes burned their way into hers.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.
+
+Her brain reeled.
+
+"Who am I? I am a woman--who loves you--who has never loved anyone
+before."
+
+He gratefully caressed her shoulders.
+
+"Understand me," he said. "I am not trying to force myself into your
+confidence. But if the relation between two human beings is what ours
+has been for the past hour, they want to mean everything in the world to
+each other. I have never met a woman like you. I am utterly helpless.
+The few little experiences I have had don't count. In Rome a baker's
+daughter loved me. She ran away with a marquis. When I was a student I
+went through a few similar episodes. I never mingled much in society.
+And now all of a sudden I have you in my arms--the noblest, the most
+glorious thing I've ever beheld. A creature not of this world. I keep
+looking at you as you stand there in your blue peplum--why, it's as if
+an old marble statue by Lysippus or Praxiteles had come to life. And
+that is to be mine? The mere desiring of it is naked tragedy. We are
+both making straight for a precipice, and we don't even resist."
+
+"Why resist?" she cried, in bliss, throwing her head back, as if to toss
+from her brow streaming bacchantic locks. "We love each other. Nothing
+else concerns us."
+
+He sank into the chair next to her, and pressed his face into both
+hands, his body heaving as with sobs.
+
+She kneeled before him, and bent her head, and planted little kisses on
+his clenched hands.
+
+"No," he cried, jumping up. "I will not permit myself simply to drift.
+If _you_ think as you do, you who are willing to sacrifice
+everything--very well! But I, who am the recipient, I must make
+everything clear to you, so that you know for whom you are making the
+sacrifice. I mustn't leave any possibilities open to mislead you. I'm
+nothing but a poor young fellow who lives by his uncle's bounty. I have
+no prospects. I can't build on my work. And the few articles I write
+don't count. I must first toil for my little place in the world. It may
+be ten years before I secure it. And I can't let you support me. Think
+what you will of me, but I must tell you: we cannot become husband and
+wife."
+
+At first she scarcely comprehended. It was impossible for her to realise
+that a man could be so naïve, so unworldly as to speak of marriage in
+Lilly Czepanek's drawing-room.
+
+She burst into a strident laugh, the overflow of her scorn of her own
+worthless life.
+
+"Do you think," she cried, jumping to her feet, "that I'm nothing but an
+adventuress who tries to rope men into marriage, one of those
+harpies"--Mrs. Jula's word occurred to her--"who pounce upon every
+passerby? For what sort of a sorry wretch do you take me?"
+
+He looked into her face with astonished, uncomprehending eyes.
+
+"A woman who loves a man and wants to be the joy of his life is not a
+sorry wretch."
+
+Oh, if that was what he meant!
+
+The time when in all innocence she had wanted to be Richard's wife
+recurred to her. How long ago was it? How low she must have sunk if this
+most natural conception of the relation between man and woman should
+have become strange to her!
+
+She shuddered, and was aware of having turned pale.
+
+If only he had noticed nothing amiss. She could stand much, but not
+that.
+
+Humbly, in dread of his searching eyes, she replied:
+
+"I merely wanted to let you know that you are free and will remain free
+from first to last. You can leave whenever you want to, and nothing will
+have been."
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"What do you mean--I?"
+
+"As what will you remain behind if I go?"
+
+"I'll take care of that," she laughed.
+
+The contingency was very, very remote. Why split her head over it now?
+
+But he was not yet satisfied.
+
+"There's something peculiar about you. A whiff of mystery. A--a--how
+shall I say? The shadow of a wrong done you. You mingle much in society,
+you say. Yet I have the feeling that you are lonely and perhaps
+unprotected. Whenever I try to look into you, I feel as if rude hands
+had been laid on you. From now on I will stand by to protect and advise
+you. But I'm so inexperienced in worldly matters. It can easily come
+about that without divining it I may merely add to the mischief in your
+life. And I would not for the world--you are holy to me. So you must
+tell me now, to-night, whatever you may of what you have gone through
+and suffered. Will you?"
+
+Lilly felt evasion was no longer possible. The hour had struck of which
+she had lived in dread ever since she had met Dr. Rennschmidt, though it
+had seemed indefinitely remote.
+
+One of Mrs. Jula's sayings again flashed through her mind:
+
+"The road back into the community of virtue leads through lies."
+
+It had begun with lies; with lies it would go on.
+
+For an instant the wish shot up within her to tell him the full truth.
+But that was madness, suicide. In fact, she need not lie. She need
+merely put a different face upon matters, the face they wore when hope
+still shone upon her life and she actually was what she now endeavoured
+to appear to be.
+
+"It must be darker," she said, extinguishing the chandelier's piercing
+white glare. The only light now came from the red-shaded standing lamp,
+which cast a flowery shimmer upon them.
+
+Her hands in his, her head leaning against his shoulder, she began her
+whispered, faltered confession.
+
+She told of her sheltered, care-free childhood, in which music held
+sway, a benevolent spirit and a demon in one; of her father's flight and
+the poverty in which she and her mother were left.
+
+So far nothing to conceal or alter. The colonel also remained as he had
+been, except that she occasionally promoted him to the rank of general.
+It was not until Walter von Prell stepped on the stage the second time
+that it became necessary to mix in fresh colours. The mere
+acknowledgment that she had frivolously abandoned body and soul to a
+tattered and torn jovial ne'er-do-well would deprive her forever of her
+friend's esteem. So the sorry little good-for-nothing was quite
+naturally converted into a happy, yet ill-fated laughing hero who had
+been vanquished merely because all the dark powers combined against him.
+
+Once launched, she sailed serenely on. She represented the parting as
+having taken place amid a thousand vows and tears and bridal
+expectations. As for the duel, of which she had never learned the
+particulars, she exaggerated its horrors vastly, her lover emerging a
+total cripple, who left for America resolved not to enter her life again
+until he should be in a position to atone for his misdeed by marrying
+her. So for the meantime he placed her in the care of a simple, good
+young man, who was all nobility and self-sacrifice. For love of the
+vanished friend, this young man had taken Lilly's fate into his keeping
+four years before, and watched over her and led her into society. With
+rare disinterestedness he managed the little capital remaining from her
+married days, and always advised her in practical matters. He came every
+afternoon for a social cup of tea, and sometimes he escorted her when
+she went out in the evening. His circle had become hers, and everybody
+they knew honoured and respected the fine relationship existing between
+them, the basis of which was his noble loyalty to his friend.
+
+So Lilly Czepanek, with the force of conviction, recounted her life
+history. She almost believed in her own words. As a matter of fact, it
+was a fair picture of her life, such as Richard had once portrayed it,
+before she had begun to slip into the abyss the night of the carnival.
+
+Of Kellermann and Dr. Salmoni and the whole "crew," of course, she said
+nothing. But she alluded to her unfortunate art with tears--for the last
+time, she said--then it should never be mentioned again.
+
+She concluded. When, with a hesitating feeling of security, she looked
+up to him expecting to receive his absolution, she started at the change
+in his appearance. His face was livid, his eyes, fastened on the
+ceiling, glowed unnaturally, deep furrows of anguish had cut themselves
+into his cheeks.
+
+"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her head.
+
+He jumped up, and snatched Richard's picture from the secrétaire, and
+carried it to the light of the standing lamp.
+
+Lilly knew he was thinking of Walter, and timidly interjected:
+
+"That isn't he."
+
+"Then who is it?"
+
+"His friend--the manufacturer."
+
+He cast the picture aside.
+
+"Haven't you a picture of _his_?"
+
+Yes--but where was it? The large pastel was in the lumber room. The
+small one very likely was stowed away in some drawer.
+
+"I packed it away," she excused herself, "because I couldn't bear to
+have it in my sight all the time."
+
+She did not tell him why the sight of it annoyed her. She preferred him
+to assume the cause was her newly awakened love.
+
+How ridiculous, how pitiful it all was!
+
+She longed to sink at his feet and cry to him:
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me--take me as I am, do not spurn me."
+
+Instead, she lied on, shamelessly, desperately, like an ordinary
+adventuress on the verge of discovery.
+
+"Will you do me the favour to hunt for the picture?"
+
+"Why do you want to torture yourself?"
+
+"Please, I beg of you."
+
+Further resistance was out of the question. She fetched the key of the
+secretary from a basket, opened the drawers at random, rummaged among
+the papers without half looking, and actually found it. There it was.
+She had not seen it for years.
+
+The white-lashed eyes looked haughty and cunning.
+
+"Lie and deceive, lie and deceive," they seemed to say. "That's just
+what I used to do."
+
+"Here it is."
+
+He stepped to the lamp, and stared at the picture long. His lips
+twitched from time to time, the picture quivered jerkily in his hands.
+
+"Exactly the way I stood in front of the rich orphan's photograph,"
+thought Lilly. But that was long ago.
+
+Then she heard him speak. His voice was hoarse.
+
+"Will you answer a question upon which much depends?"
+
+"Ask it, my love."
+
+"Do you still count upon--upon this young man's return?"
+
+Whither did the question lead? Lilly felt she need merely say "no," and
+every obstacle was removed. But if she said no, all her falsehoods about
+Walter and his friend would have had no significance.
+
+So she had to choose a middle course.
+
+"Sometimes I have my doubts," she managed to say, lingering over the
+words. "I am waiting for two now. My father seems to be gone--gone for
+good. And I don't hear from him either."
+
+"Do you consider yourself bound, just as you did then?"
+
+She felt the halter tightening about her neck.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+Something in his tone seemed to bar escape. It left no nook to hide in.
+Her answer meant life or death.
+
+She held up her arms as if swearing an oath.
+
+"Since I know you I don't care one way or the other. If you want me to
+be true to him, I'll wait for him--till Judgment Day. If you want me to
+throw him overboard, I'll throw him overboard."
+
+He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and stood there as he had in
+the park. She became alarmed again for his sake.
+
+"Why does he torture himself so?" she thought. Then it occurred to her
+for the first time that he took her and everything she had said
+seriously; that he, who himself practiced loyalty, assumed that loyalty
+was a life principle of hers, too.
+
+Oh, if he knew!
+
+She was so ashamed she did not dare to speak or approach him.
+
+He drew himself up energetically, and his forehead glowed with the
+wrathful will, which from the first had intimidated her.
+
+"Listen," he said. "After everything you've told me, I know I acted on a
+false assumption. You are _not_ neglected, the world has _not_ done you
+wrong. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for, and you're
+looking forward to a future, no matter how uncertain it may now be. You
+would lose all that through me. The instant your friend were to suspect
+my existence, he would, of course, withdraw his support. And all the
+others who now constitute your world would go with him."
+
+Lilly wanted to burst out laughing, and give vent to her utter contempt
+for everything that had constituted her former life. But another thought
+instantly restrained her. Dr. Rennschmidt must continue to think that
+Richard should not suspect his existence. To defy her past and present
+was to bring about a catastrophe which would irremediably expose the
+wretchedness of her situation. She might be his only in dark secret
+hours.
+
+He continued:
+
+"What I have to offer in return is nothing. I have nothing but my
+work--you know. And even my work is still in the clouds. Why, I'm not
+even certain of myself. If I think of what I have just--" He turned his
+eyes aside.
+
+"Of course, if you don't love me," said Lilly, dejectedly.
+
+He threw himself in front of her, placing one knee on a vacant part of
+the seat of her chair, and putting his arms about her body.
+
+"Have mercy on me. You see how I'm suffering. Don't make it _harder_ for
+me. Every day, every hour, I should say to myself: 'Over in America
+there's a man toiling and moiling for her. He doesn't write simply
+because he's ashamed to admit that he has accomplished nothing on
+account of his mangled body.' I can't conceive any other motive for his
+silence. A man doesn't forget a woman like you. In the meantime I sit
+here with you in secret, and hold you in my arms. I don't know--I--a
+person can debauch, he can commit adultery--so far as I'm concerned it
+wouldn't matter. But to rob a poor cripple of his all--I think the
+lowest scoundrel would draw the line at that. I don't know how I'll get
+over it--" He collapsed. His forehead hit against the arm of
+Lilly's chair, and dry sobs shook his body. "But--it would be
+better--immediately--on the spot--better than later--when it's too
+late--for both--of us."
+
+The blow had fallen. How cleverly she thought she had garbled the truth,
+and here she was caught in her own net of lies.
+
+"For God's sake," she screamed, "do you mean to say you will--"
+
+He rose to his feet.
+
+"Farewell," he said. "Think of me in peace. Thank you."
+
+"If I tell him the truth, he'll be all the more certain to go," she
+thought, looking about helplessly.
+
+His hands, stretched toward her, were waiting, his eyes hung on her
+thirstily, as if to drink in the picture forever.
+
+"I will plant myself at the door," she thought, "and throw myself on
+him, and stifle him with kisses."
+
+But the desire not to lose his respect made her small and timorous.
+
+"Not this instant," she implored, clasping his hands. "One hour--one
+parting hour--just one."
+
+He gently extricated his hands from her grasp, and turned to the door.
+
+Raised to her full height, Lilly stood in the centre of the room in her
+blue Venus robe and held out her hand to him. The wide sleeves fell
+away and revealed the mature womanly beauty of her arms.
+
+"If he sees me this way," she thought, "he will still be mine."
+
+But he did not turn about. He reeled. His forehead struck against the
+half-open door.
+
+All of a sudden he seemed to have been wiped out of existence, and with
+him the light of the world. A swarm of bees buzzed about her head, and
+in the darkness enveloping her, she sank through the floor, deeper,
+deeper, into the canal--a club dealt her a blow on her forehead--and all
+was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first it sounded like a chirping of birds, then like the murmur of a
+mighty throng in some wide sunny place; and then only two voices
+sounded, one a man's, the other a woman's. They kept up an eager,
+whispered conversation.
+
+The cook--Maggie--and the lackey with the mischievous smile. Of course,
+that's who they were.
+
+The colonel would enter the next instant and want her to be his wife.
+
+Something cool and damp dropped soothingly on her aching head. Just as
+then.
+
+"So I'll have to go through all that again," she thought in terror, and
+she began to cry and entreat:
+
+"Oh, colonel, please let me go. I'm much too bad for you! Oh, _dear_
+colonel."
+
+"For God's sake, she's raving!" said the man. After all he wasn't the
+horrid lackey.
+
+Oh, how deliciously at ease she lay in the spell of that voice, in which
+a home-like note quivered solicitously.
+
+"He didn't go at any rate." The thought tranquillised her, and she
+settled herself more comfortably on the pillow they had placed under her
+neck on the floor. If she had known his first name, she would have
+spoken to him. Why, how disgraceful not to know his first name yet. So
+she merely raised her arms a little toward him.
+
+Instantly he was kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.
+
+"Keep real quiet," he said, "real, real quiet."
+
+"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up to him in
+blissful peace.
+
+Yes, yes, everything would be all right. Ways and means would be found
+for their remaining together--like two friends, like a brother and
+sister. They wouldn't part--no, no, they wouldn't part. Nobody need be
+tortured so terribly as that.
+
+Lilly shuddered and thought of the moment when the light about her had
+gone out, and she had sunk into the wet, slimy depths.
+
+Thus life would have been without him.
+
+But now they would wander toward the dawning sun hand in hand like
+brother and sister in innocent gaiety, liberated and purified.
+
+Inconceivable happiness!
+
+Strange that neither of them had hit upon the idea sooner.
+
+She groped for his arm and with a contented sigh nestled her cheek in
+his hollow hand.
+
+But Adele, who all the while had considerately been looking out of the
+window, thought the compress ought to be changed, because the wound on
+Lilly's forehead was still bleeding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Each spring in a man's life has its peculiar aspect and its peculiar
+history. Each spring finds him different, each stirs new depths and
+opens fresh, hidden wounds. One spring passes by like a dull, vapid
+game, because he himself just then happens to be dull and vapid. Another
+tortures him with a thousand fruitless admonitions, because he cannot
+pay off a penny of the debt he owes himself. A third finds him listless
+and sodden as a field which cannot recover from the winter stress. And
+again the spring-time chants deceptive hymns of liberation and
+redemption in his heart, as if _it_ had the power to liberate and
+redeem.
+
+But most beautiful is that spring of which we are scarcely aware for all
+the spring joy within us; whose bourgeoning seems but a reflection of
+our spiritual bourgeoning, and which is but the accompaniment of the
+mighty growth that broadens our minds and souls and fairly bursts the
+bonds of our being.
+
+Such a spring broke upon Lilly.
+
+Everything took on a new aspect. Never had the morning sun painted such
+crinkly, laughing grotesques on the walls. Never had rainy days
+enveloped the world in such languishing violet twilights. Never had
+people's faces been brightened by so much expectant festivity. Never had
+the din and bustle of the streets revealed so much joyous, purposeful
+activity.
+
+Why, all of a sudden Lilly also was overwhelmed with work.
+
+Every hour was filled with urgent occupations. If anyone in the last few
+years had dared to tell her that the day would come again when with
+burning cheeks and a heated brain she would indiscriminately cram names,
+dates, biographies, lists of great men's works, poetical quotations, and
+foreign terms, she would have laughed him to scorn.
+
+But it would never do to loaf now. She must be ready with a response on
+any occasion, just as she had been when he asked her about Giotto. All
+her eagerness for knowledge, which a feeling of spiritual isolation and
+aimless endeavour had dammed up within her for years, now gushed out.
+Her mind, insatiate as a fallow, unfertilised field, absorbed whatever
+was thrown upon it. She scarcely needed to put forth the least effort.
+If she merely imagined herself repeating it to him, it remained in her
+memory.
+
+She went at her studies with the utmost secrecy. Konrad--yes, his name
+was Konrad--must not suspect that her wisdom had just issued brand-new
+from the laboratory. She also kept her visits to the museums a secret.
+He was to suppose she had always been thoroughly familiar with the
+masters. In addition she had to practice many a piece of early music
+which he wished to hear for his work. And often she blessed her father's
+strict hand which had held her down on the piano stool throughout many a
+long night.
+
+Lilly and Dr. Rennschmidt saw a great deal of each other--every other
+evening of course. He avoided coming afternoons, which, he knew,
+belonged to her betrothed's friend. But often he ran up to her in the
+middle of the day to bring her a book or some flowers and ask her for a
+bit of music. No matter how much she pressed him, he never remained for
+a meal. In fact, he seemed not to feel quite at ease in her apartment.
+He would walk up and down incessantly, pretty soon glance at the clock,
+and take leave. At first she felt hurt, then she asked him teasingly
+whether he thought he was in an enemy's country, and finally she adopted
+the policy of _laissez faire_.
+
+Oh, she did not yet thoroughly understand him. Each day laid bare new,
+unusual sides of his being.
+
+He was still very young. Not only in years. She had met many a cold,
+blasé old man of twenty-five. His youth was deep-seated. He thought
+passionately. Lilly had never seen such fervour expended on pure
+thinking. Ideas seemed to him like tangible beings with which he had to
+strive breast to breast, and which he drew to himself if they proved to
+be friendly to his intellectual attitude, or rejected if hostile.
+Similarly, great thinkers and creators of the past were either allies or
+enemies. He associated with them as with teachers and comrades, adoring
+or despising them, submitting to their reprimands, or turning them into
+laughing-stocks.
+
+His thoughts and speech were in a constant state of flux with
+counter-currents and a whirl of contradictions. He was like a man
+forcibly cleaving a way, or giving merciless chase. He never remained
+indifferent or apathetic to a phenomenon, spiritual or physical.
+Everywhere he saw problems to be solved and vexed questions in regard to
+which he must take one side or the other. He either loved or hated. He
+scarcely knew a stage between.
+
+And Lilly followed him with all the ardour of a pupil and lover. She
+planted each idea of his in her being and let it take root or die as
+chance willed. No need to cherish it; she enjoyed sufficient wealth
+without it.
+
+He spoke little of his personal matters, not from distrust or reserve,
+but because he deemed them of small importance. Lilly had to extract
+jots of information by questioning.
+
+He was very enthusiastic about his parents, though their pictures seemed
+to have faded in his mind or lost form.
+
+His uncle had taken their place, the self-made man and globe-trotter who
+had made Dr. Rennschmidt his heir, and who even during his lifetime
+allowed him means for a modest, yet care-free existence.
+
+Lilly could not fathom the inner relationship of the two men. Sometimes,
+it seemed, Dr. Rennschmidt cherished a tender love for the old man. Then
+again he was skeptical, almost bitter in his judgment of him. Evidently
+a profound difference existed in their natures, though they struggled
+for compromise.
+
+He had few friends--chiefly old fellow-students--and he never paid
+purely social visits. As a result he could spend all his leisure hours
+with Lilly.
+
+They sat in the restaurants, generally the little Italian bodega, until
+the waiter turned out the lights over their heads, to their invariable
+surprise--they had just come.
+
+Or they bought their suppers for a few pennies at a delicatessen shop,
+and escaped the city dust in the Tiergarten, where they hunted up an
+empty bench somewhat removed from the public ways, yet not in too
+secluded a spot. It was not until love couples began to wander by in the
+dark like shades of the netherworld that they felt wholly concealed; and
+if others seated themselves on the same bench, they little objected,
+knowing well that love couples would never remain beside them long. They
+had much more urgent need of the night and solitude than Lilly and
+Konrad.
+
+While the light green leaves, still stemless, gradually melted into a
+dark, shadowy, jagged mass, and the sunset flames above merged into the
+sombre purple of night, and the nightingale sang for them sometimes only
+a few feet away, they would sit there shoulder to shoulder waiting for
+the stars to dot the twilight, each evening later and fewer in number.
+
+Their winged thoughts travelled far into the realms of music, painting,
+northern sagas and Italian landscapes. Questions of infinity arose,
+hesitating and halting, and were promptly disposed of with the sure,
+clear discernment of a happy, youthful latitudinarianism. Lilly was now
+accurately informed of the meaning of the universe and immortality and
+the soul and God.
+
+Often she felt as if she had been left alone to freeze in a vast, icy
+waste where there was no Father, no life after death, and certainly no
+St. Joseph.
+
+"What you believe, I suppose, is atheism, isn't it?" she asked
+timorously.
+
+"If that's what you want to call it," he laughed.
+
+So, from now on Lilly was an atheist, one of those who in the eyes of
+the Church were roasting in nethermost hell. But if excommunication did
+not drive _him_ to despair, she, too, could suffer it. She would even
+endure a Fatherless condition.
+
+Her one regret was for St. Joseph.
+
+Although he had not entered her thoughts for many a day, none the less
+it was a pity never again to be able to run to him in sorrow or joy,
+never, at least, without having to feel ashamed of herself, and that
+exactly at a time when she needed him so urgently, when her experiences
+fairly overwhelmed her with their force and number.
+
+She felt a desire to be lulled and calmed, and the lofty art that Konrad
+spread before her eyes by no means soothed her; rather, it goaded her
+on, though, to be sure, to fresh delights.
+
+They went to what few concerts the late season still offered, and heard
+the Eroica and Brahms' Second Symphony and an unutterably exquisite
+production by Grieg.
+
+They would take their stand in the cheaper part of the house, where they
+both delighted to be, and listen with the backs of their hands touching
+as if by chance. A slight pressure conveyed the feelings awakened by
+some subtle charm or expressive bit.
+
+What wonderful hours those were!
+
+And what wonderful hours when she sat at Konrad's side in the pit (where
+none of the "crew" could see her). As she learned to know Shakespeare's
+characters belonging to every age and time and Wagner's luminous
+fairy-tale realism, she understood fully how infinitely poor her
+previous life had been.
+
+He took her to see the moderns also.
+
+Of all the plays Rosmersholm affected her most.
+
+She, Lilly, with her secret guilt, was Rebecca. He in his unsuspicious
+purity was Rosmer. His high-pitched spirituality had an increasingly
+strong influence on her, as Rosmer's on Rebecca. But if the filth of her
+existence should gradually roll from her upon him, would she not be his
+evil demon, his ruination?
+
+The thought was intolerable. She wept so bitterly during the performance
+as to attract general attention, and Konrad offered to take her out. She
+indignantly repudiated the suggestion.
+
+On going home she staggered along the river side, still sobbing. He had
+chosen that way because it was darker and quieter, and he half carried
+her on his arm.
+
+On the Spreebrücke she stopped and stared down into the dark, living
+depths. He let her have her way, but when she began to climb up on the
+railing--to see what it was like--he forced her down from the precarious
+position.
+
+"What's the difference?" she thought. "When he finds it all out, I'll
+have to go down there after all--and alone."
+
+From that evening on the effort to keep him free of the slightest
+suspicion as long, as long as possible troubled her more than ever,
+occupied her thoughts every moment of the day.
+
+Her great ignorance caused her no shame--nevertheless she fought against
+it with all her might--but she lived in constant terror that the
+slovenly, cynical tone to which she had gradually habituated herself
+through long intercourse with the "crew," might crop out in her
+conversation.
+
+The bit of carefully cherished rigour and good-breeding which she
+fetched out from among the remnants of her former spiritual state did
+her sluggish being good. And so she acquired some of that "grandeur"
+which she had demanded of herself at the beginning of her relations with
+Konrad. This time, however, it was not empty affectation, but an inner
+quality, a natural outcome of the finest and tenderest feelings, which
+she might still call her own.
+
+Much that had long dominated her thoughts became unintelligible to her,
+especially the tendency caught from her friends, to transfer everything
+entering the circle of her thoughts to the realm of the erotic.
+
+In astonishment she beheld world upon world opening up beyond the narrow
+whirlpool in which she had been carried around and around. Such a wealth
+of great and beautiful things to taste and enjoy was suddenly spread
+before her, that she did not find the time to feel ashamed of what had
+been.
+
+But when she recalled how she had once dared to kiss him, shame ran hot
+through her body. That moment of wild abandon, she feared, might ever
+remain a stain upon his image of her.
+
+Yet there was not the slightest indication that he did not think of her
+with the same respect as she of him. This mutual esteem always hung
+between them like a gauze veil, obscuring the beloved man's face as
+behind a mist of mingled happiness and anxiety, though at the same time
+removing the sting of self-reproach from Lilly.
+
+They were never more to talk of love. Love gave way to a sweet,
+fraternal, though somewhat constrained relationship. The word
+"friendship" was frequently on their lips. They praised its hallowing
+force with a most serious mien, as if they had not the faintest notion
+of what it meant.
+
+It was difficult, however, for Lilly to endure Konrad's bodily
+proximity. The one caress he permitted himself was to lay his arm
+lightly on her shoulder when they sat side by side. Though Lilly then
+longed to press closer up to him she finally moved farther away, because
+the constriction of her breast mounted by degrees to veritable torture.
+
+She never ventured in the very slightest to think that some day he might
+become her lover. When unable to fall asleep, she pictured herself
+drowsing off with her head under his shoulder--that was bliss enough.
+
+Her fancies scarcely ever strayed into forbidden territory. The chastity
+of her maiden days, which the colonel's senile greed had rudely
+violated, once again laid its merciful veil about her tremulous soul. In
+fact it was all as in the long-forgotten days of her girlhood--the
+golden wealth of thoughts and sensations, the witching glamour about
+each little object, the delightful importance of the tiniest incidents,
+the hopeful disquiet hoping for she knew not what.
+
+If only there had been a single human being in whom to confide her joy
+and fears, her happiness would have been complete.
+
+The desire waxed so strong within her as to be nearly uncontrollable.
+She had found herself more than once on the brink of telling her secrets
+to Richard--a quick way of ending them.
+
+One day she decided to visit her former landlady and acquaint her with
+her great experience.
+
+The old friendship between Mrs. Laue and Lilly had never wholly died
+down. Though they saw little of each other, Lilly had kept herself alive
+in the old lady's memory by sending messages and little gifts.
+
+The tenant _pro tem._ of the "best room" opened the door for Lilly.
+
+Mrs. Laue, as always, was sitting at her long white work table tapping
+busily with her wet finger-tips now on a pressed flower, now on a gluey
+bit of paper. She did not suffer herself to be interrupted, not even
+when Lilly on taking a seat beside her pushed toward her the sweets she
+never failed to bring.
+
+"No, thanks, child," said Mrs. Laue. "Each bite more is one flower less.
+People like myself have to wait for a holiday before we can eat. We have
+nobody to provide for us and keep us like a princess. I'd like to be in
+your shoes just one day before I lie in my grave--go out walking early
+in the morning--with nothing to do but feed a couple of gold fish."
+
+"As if that were happiness," sighed Lilly.
+
+"Do you mean to complain of your lot?" cried Mrs. Laue indignantly. "If
+I were in your place, I'd thank the Lord every hour of the day for
+having sent me such a friend."
+
+"Do you think that would satisfy all your hopes?"
+
+"Why, what else do you want?" Mrs. Laue--ceaselessly tapping--rebuked
+her. "He can't marry you any more--that's out of the question. Besides
+marriage would be nasty after all you've gone through. But listen to me.
+Be careful! If you always behave yourself nicely, he will make you an
+allowance, and you'll have something to live on all your life."
+
+"So, I'm just to aim for an old age pension?"
+
+"Well, what else?"
+
+"I can conceive of many other objects in life."
+
+"What? Work? Try it. See what it's like after you've been nothing but
+emotions for years. Or take another lover? Then you'd be sure of a fine
+time. Let me tell you one thing, child; never for a single instant think
+of another man. If you were to do that, you'd deserve to paste flowers
+like me--sixteen hours a day--until you die."
+
+While incessantly pasting one flower after the other, she poured out a
+volume of well-intentioned admonitions.
+
+Lilly rose shivering.
+
+There was nothing to be hoped for from that quarter. She looked about
+her with a sudden feeling of estrangement.
+
+"I'll never come back here again," she thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning the uneasy desire to open up her heart and obtain
+counsel again awoke, even stronger and more tormenting than before. Her
+friend Jula occurred to Lilly.
+
+To be sure, the clever, hot-blooded little woman had held herself aloof
+from the crew's jaunts. Her friends had not the least idea of what she
+was doing, and her red-head, when appealed to, became reticent. But
+Lilly felt sure Mrs. Jula would not withhold the bit of comprehending
+sympathy she needed.
+
+It took Lilly a long time to find her.
+
+The coquettish yellow silk nest her red-head had fixed up for her near
+the "Linden" was empty.
+
+Mrs. Jula had migrated to a suburb, the porter informed Lilly. She had
+thought the neighbourhood too dangerous; which made no sense, because
+the street was never empty, day or night.
+
+Lilly smiled. The porter gave her the address, and she drove out to Mrs.
+Jula.
+
+In a little bosky corner where the poets and philosophers dwell, Lilly
+found a very sober little house, brimful of books and manuscripts and
+busts of eminent men.
+
+Mrs. Jula seemed to have undergone a great change. She no longer wore
+her curly hair in a disorderly pompadour about her forehead, but
+smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears. This gave her a
+disquieting touch of virtuousness, although that way of wearing the hair
+was just then the height of fashion in the very world in which virtue
+for esthetic reasons has little value.
+
+Though she came to meet Lilly, as always, with outstretched arms, her
+cordiality seemed not wholly genuine; and though she beamed with delight
+at seeing her friend again, her expression was somewhat distraught, as
+if she were holding much in reserve.
+
+"Without asking Lilly about herself or paying any attention to her
+appearance, Mrs. Jula burst into an account of her own affairs.
+
+"You'll be tremendously surprised, but I can't help it," she said. "I
+never kept my little scruples of conscience a secret from you--they were
+really superfluous--my sins had never been so dreadful--"
+
+"Hm, hm," thought Lilly.
+
+"So you shall be the first of our former circle--"
+
+"Former?" thought Lilly.
+
+"--to learn of my return to a decent existence. Well, not to beat about
+the bush, I'm going to get married."
+
+"Your red-head?" asked Lilly, happy and sympathetic.
+
+"Well, not exactly." Mrs. Jula regarded her finger-tips with a
+condescending smile. "My red-head has given me his blessings, but that
+ends his rôle."
+
+"Then who is he?" asked Lilly, struggling to overcome her bewilderment.
+
+Now Mrs. Jula hung back a bit after all.
+
+"You see, it's a long story," she said hesitatingly. "To understand it
+thoroughly you'd have to know more of the circumstances of the past two
+years of my life. Did you ever happen to hear of an authoress by the
+name of Clarissa vom Winkle?"
+
+Lilly recalled having seen the name in puritanic family sheets, which
+she had looked through in cafés and confectionery shops.
+
+"Now listen: that Clarissa vom Winkle, who won a very acceptable
+reputation for championing the cause of simple, bourgeois morality as
+against the pernicious new-fashioned ideas of love--that Clarissa vom
+Winkle am I."
+
+Lilly was too strongly under the spell of her own fate properly to
+appreciate the humour of Mrs. Jula's avowal. Just a glimmering suspicion
+dawned upon her mind of the monstrous farce we human beings figure in at
+life's bidding.
+
+"Now on that account you're not to think me a convert or a bigot or
+something of the sort," Mrs. Jula continued with a certain little air of
+dignity, which became her as well as her quondam cordial cynicism.
+"There never was a special Day of Damascus in my life. I've always had,
+as it were, two souls in my breast; the one which--" she hesitated a
+moment--"well, which you know; and another which craves self-restraint
+and white damask and so on. That's the reason your unsuspicious loyalty
+always impressed me so, my dear. You probably recollect that I urged you
+to cling to your loyalty through thick and thin, because--you can't deny
+it--it's the crown of a woman's life. That's just what I said. Do you
+remember?"
+
+Lilly was unable to recall such sentiments, but she did recall many
+others scarcely harmonising with them. She began to feel quite uneasy.
+Her friend's new conception of life seemed ill adapted for a source of
+peace to her in the joyful stress that had led her to seek sympathy with
+Mrs. Jula.
+
+"Well, to continue," said the little lady. "I was always able to sell my
+essays and novels quickly, especially if I took them to the editors
+myself, and I found I was on the road to accumulating a tidy capital. My
+red-head became little more than an ornament. That's the beautiful thing
+about virtue. For the person who understands it, it is much more
+lucrative than sin." She ran her little red tongue over her lips in her
+knowing way, but maintained a perfectly demure face. "And then it was in
+disposing of my works that I met my husband to be. You know--I'm at last
+divorced from that old horror up there. This one is the editor of a new
+magazine for women. It stands for quiet domesticity and already has very
+good advertisements. He's a man of great intellectual gifts, and very
+firm moral principles, which, I suppose you've noticed, have not
+remained without influence on me."
+
+She made a little double chin and folded her hands in her lap.
+
+"And how did you manage to separate from--your old friend?" asked Lilly,
+from whose mind all these curious facts had almost driven her own
+concerns.
+
+"Separate? What are you thinking of?" rejoined Mrs. Jula, beaming again
+with sunny foolishness. "I wouldn't be as heartless as all that. Even if
+I did say his rôle had ended, you're not to take it so literally. What's
+the poor dyspeptic fellow to do if I refuse to set a place for him at my
+table now and then? Why do you look so surprised, Lilly? Something of
+the sort can always be managed. In the first place, I swore to my
+betrothed that my red-head had never been more to me than a brotherly
+friend. All of us women swear such things and don't even blush."
+
+Lilly nodded thoughtfully. That evening, had Konrad demanded it, she
+would have sworn an oath without a moment's hesitation.
+
+"In the second place--I'm telling you this in confidence--he contributed
+a considerable sum toward establishing the magazine. So the two
+gentlemen are partners. I arranged matters that way intentionally,
+because it seemed to me the best guarantee of a continuance of
+all-around friendly relations. Don't make such large eyes, dearie. Life
+is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its nest. And if you
+think I'm afraid of disclosures, I shrug my shoulders. Tragedy is a
+matter of taste. _I_ don't like it. So it doesn't exist for me. I always
+say to myself: you must wear a smile on your brow, but beneath the smile
+your brow must be of iron."
+
+Lilly experienced a sickish sensation.
+
+"If that's the price to pay for uprooting tragedy from one's life," she
+thought, "then I'd rather have unhappiness--I can swallow it--than all
+this happiness."
+
+She rose.
+
+No matter how high above her this woman towered in force of intellect
+and will, no matter how firmly she stood on the ground of virtuous life,
+she was no longer suited to be Lilly's friend.
+
+"I sincerely hope you will never be mistaken in your confidence," said
+Lilly.
+
+Mrs. Jula threw up her hand contemptuously.
+
+"Bah," she said, "_those_ men! A man who knows the world is a woman
+eater, and your 'pure' man is a simpleton. I can always get along with
+both classes."
+
+"There may be a third class," said Lilly, irritated, as if Konrad had
+been insulted.
+
+"Possibly," rejoined Mrs. Jula, shrugging her shoulders. "I've never
+come across it." Then putting both hands on Lilly's waist: "Tell me,
+child, perfectly frankly: if you look at me this way and compare me with
+what I used to be, does it seem to you that I'm posing?"
+
+"To be quite candid," Lilly admitted, "it seemed to me so at first."
+
+Mrs. Jula sighed.
+
+"It's very hard to adapt your figure to a dress that wasn't made for
+you. Everybody has a certain moral ambition, the so-called non-moral
+person most of all. But there's one thing I'd love to know: what is
+really the more valuable in me, my former sinning or my present virtue."
+
+She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy yet sly expression.
+
+This time Lilly did not respond. Beyond that complacent little
+scatterbrain her own happiness rose lofty and threatening as a
+storm-cloud.
+
+When out on the street the feeling of restless isolation took stronger
+hold of her than ever. Yet she was glad she had not spoken. She knew
+that if she had held up her beloved's picture to Mrs. Jula's sly
+understanding, it would have come back to her desecrated.
+
+Now there was actually not a soul to whom she could pour out her heart.
+
+A few days later in glancing over the paper, as was her daily habit, her
+eyes were caught by a sentence which suddenly sent a ray of light into
+her soul: "St. Joseph's Chapel--Müllerstrasse--evening services," and so
+on.
+
+Then her old, long-forgotten friend was still alive. He even possessed
+his own church here in cold, heretical Berlin.
+
+In all the years she had been in Berlin she had not entered a church.
+After having seated herself among the Protestants at Miss von
+Schwertfeger's advice, she had felt she was a renegade, and had not
+ventured to seek solace in religion.
+
+And now she was an atheist.
+
+But the name St. Joseph in the paper warmed her heart. She felt as one
+who has wandered long in foreign lands and suddenly among a throng of
+strangers beholds a dear face from home.
+
+Now she knew to whom to turn without fear of having to depart
+misunderstood and unheard. Even if the great scholars had done away with
+him a thousand times, he still existed for her stupid, surcharged heart,
+ready to receive the confession of her happiness.
+
+Müllerstrasse was somewhere on the extreme north side, "somewhere around
+Franz-Josephs-Land," her green grocer, to whom she had applied, informed
+her.
+
+She went through a maze of streets, from one electric tram to
+another--past the Reichtags buildings, the Lessing theatre, and the
+Stettin station--along the endless chaussé. Beyond the Weddingplatz,
+which the Berlinese consider the end of the world, was where
+Müllerstrasse began.
+
+Nobody had the slightest notion of where a St. Joseph's chapel was, not
+even dwellers in the immediate vicinity. Finally somebody remembered
+seeing "a Catholic something or other," and Lilly at last found the
+object of her search.
+
+A low frame structure which might have been taken for a barn, and some
+blossoming trees set between towering tenements.
+
+The side door was open. Pine wreaths said "Welcome." Lilly saw a simple
+white hall permeated with the sepulchral smell of incense, laurel, and
+freshly cut pine, and in the background a niche decorated to resemble
+the starry heavens. Beyond the wooden balustrade separating the
+pictureless shrine of the high altar from the hall, rose two glorious
+palms. The low rumble of an organ came from the choir. The organist had
+probably stayed after the funeral to dream a bit.
+
+In suspense Lilly's glance glided along the walls in search of her
+saint's abiding place. Was he smiling and holding up his finger here,
+too, with the same benevolent, threatening manner as the good old uncle
+in St. Anne's?
+
+There was no place for side altars. The space was completely filled with
+benches. But that large picture there in the garish frame, with a
+console-table beneath covered with dusty bouquets--
+
+She saw it--and started in terror.
+
+Her saint, her dear, beloved saint, was simply ridiculous.
+
+He had a sharp-nosed, wax-doll face with a golden yellow beard and eyes
+cast down in pious modesty, and he was smiling mawkishly. The infant
+Jesus clad in pink triumphed on his left arm, while his right arm gently
+clasped a spray of lilies.
+
+Lilly's disgust turned into pity.
+
+How remote, how inconceivably remote, was that world in which one
+implored St. Josephs for signs of favour.
+
+Could it be that her good, true monitor in St. Anne's had been just as
+comical?
+
+Perish the thought. He should not be, he must not be so absurd. There
+must be _one_ place to which one's memory could travel homeward in hours
+of pleasant mourning.
+
+The organ was playing the prelude of a beautiful mass by Scarlatti,
+which Lilly well knew from of old. Gradually she began to feel at ease.
+
+She kneeled on the last bench, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine
+that instead of that blond caricature, her old friend was looking down
+upon her.
+
+A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas occurred to her, which she remembered
+from her Sunday school lessons: "God has granted other saints the power
+to help us in _certain_ circumstances; to St. Joseph he has granted the
+power to help us whatever our need."
+
+Once he had been so powerful in her life.
+
+She spoke to him across the hundreds of miles and hundreds of years that
+separated her from the altar in St. Anne's--the last time on earth, she
+was fully aware. There was no longer place in her soul for such
+childishness. And just because it was her farewell, she told him without
+reserve of her great experience--how infinitely happy she now was--how
+everything that had lain dead within her blossomed forth with fresh
+life--and how the entire universe was one great symphony of joy.
+
+And she told him of the monstrous deception she was practising, and her
+fear of discovery--and the sweet, impatient tremour for which there
+could be no image or name.
+
+Then she told him she no longer believed in him in the least--she had
+become an "atheist."
+
+Then, reconciled, she laid the carnations she had brought along for the
+poor out-of-the-way saint among the dusty bouquets and left with
+lightened heart, smiling at the spring which smiled upon her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beside this Lilly, whom the stormy wind of her new life bore aloft to
+the heavens far above all earthly hindrances, a second Lilly lived, who
+spent every other evening with her old friends, and was the marvel of
+her circle, because of her triumphant mood, her merry wit, the youthful
+liveliness of an awakening intellect.
+
+When Richard came for his afternoon tea, he met with daily surprises. In
+place of the dragging gloom, which had long coloured her days, he found
+sprightliness and activity, a creature of novelties never still an
+instant. Though now and then abashed at his inability to keep pace with
+her, he gladly accustomed himself to this side of her being, and praised
+the magical qualities of the hæmatogen which the physician had
+prescribed that spring instead of the usual iron.
+
+The same scene was enacted each evening that Richard wanted to take
+Lilly out. At first she pleaded a cold or said she was not in the mood
+for meeting people. But once she had consented and was in the swing, she
+played with her admirers as with puppies, and awed the ladies by telling
+them things to their faces. Sometimes, to be sure, she sat as formerly,
+absorbed in dreamy silence, though now, if anyone attempted to liven her
+up, she no longer blushed and suffered herself to be teased without an
+attempt at self-defence. She paid back every intruder with such prompt,
+haughty satire that the men soon found it wiser to leave her to herself.
+
+In all this time she drank herself into a state of exaltation only once,
+and that on the day on which--at last!--she decided to tell Richard of
+the existence of her new friend.
+
+She had wrestled with herself for two months. Sometime or other it had
+to be, she knew; for what if they were seen together! But since she
+could not decide in what form to clothe the avowal, she had deferred it
+from day to day.
+
+Chance helped her out of the dilemma. One day Richard, in order to
+obtain her judgment, brought along some sketches of vases which had been
+submitted to him for purchase. On leaving he forgot to take them along.
+Konrad happened to see them, and in a few rapid strokes drew the outline
+which corresponded to the original draught, and which the artist in
+developing the plan had failed to insert.
+
+The next day when Richard saw the work he looked at Lilly in
+astonishment. The corrections were splendid--who had made them?
+
+Lilly, still suffering from the intimidation induced by her bungled work
+on the transparencies, did not dare to tell him she herself had. So
+taking heart she said:
+
+"My teacher, who's giving me lessons in the history of art."
+
+"Since when, I'd like to know?" asked Richard, his eyes growing round
+and severe.
+
+In her great embarrassment she took to scolding as best--or as
+worst--she knew how.
+
+"Do you think I can stand such a dull, inane, idle existence? Do you
+think it's a crime for an unoccupied young woman to strive for a bit of
+culture? Don't you think I'd be a better friend if I could keep pace
+with you and other clever people than if I go to my ruin jabbering a lot
+of nonsense and dressing myself up for show and behaving like any silly
+thing?"
+
+The turn about "clever people" flattered him.
+
+"All very well and good," he replied more mildly, "but why didn't you
+tell me before?"
+
+She concocted a long story.
+
+About three months before she had read an advertisement in the
+_Lokalanzeiger_ in which a young scholar offered his services to
+gentlemen and ladies possessed of a thirst for knowledge. She wrote to
+the scholar, he came, and the lessons began. Pupil and teacher had grown
+to be friends. Though their friendship, of course, was of a purely ideal
+nature, she dreaded awakening Richard's jealousy; so she had decided not
+to tell him until time should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the
+absolute purity of her endeavours.
+
+He wrinkled his forehead, and a cunning grin, inexplicable to Lilly,
+played about his mouth.
+
+"So your friend's a young scholar?" he asked. His eyes twinkled, and he
+looked at her sidewise, his head inclined entirely to the left.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's going to be _Privatdozent_, I suppose?"
+
+"He's not quite certain, but he probably will."
+
+"And I suppose he's highly intellectual and scintillating and superior?"
+
+She turned her eyes heavenward.
+
+"I've never in my life met a man who--" She stopped in fright. It was
+scarcely the better part of wisdom to give reins to her enthusiasm.
+
+"Hm, hm," he said, as one who finds long harboured suspicions confirmed.
+His face was quite red, and he gnawed the ends of his moustache.
+
+"I knew it!" cried Lilly. "You're jealous after all."
+
+She felt as if a bitter injustice were being done her.
+
+He said nothing more, and left lowering.
+
+An hour later a package from Messrs. Liebert & Dehnicke was left at the
+door.
+
+Lilly opened it and found it contained a man's suit, which she
+recognised as one Richard had frequently worn the previous summer.
+
+A letter accompanied the package.
+
+     "Dearest Lilly:--
+
+     As I promised you that time, I shall always be ready to come to
+     the assistance of your affinities with old clothes. To further
+     their progress I shall also be glad to provide them with old
+     boots.
+
+     You see how jealous I am.
+
+     Your Richard."
+
+In the exuberance of her delight Lilly drank to excess that evening.
+Never--not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni--had she allowed her
+imitative faculties such full play. She was in a state of mad
+self-abandon.
+
+In conclusion she danced on the tops of the tables set close together, a
+wild Salome dance, which had just then come into fashion.
+
+Between her clenched teeth she zimmed strange oriental melodies.
+
+"What's that she's mumbling?" the spectators asked.
+
+Later they put the question to her.
+
+But she had lost her senses. She was unconscious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the
+railroad station's sooty glass roof.
+
+Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great
+arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath
+them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.
+
+The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent
+Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an
+indispensable master of ceremonies.
+
+There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing
+societies, and an entire department store.
+
+In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked
+along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from
+each other, so that nobody could be sure whether or not they belonged
+together. They made for one of the front coaches.
+
+Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her
+grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness--a mute homage which she well
+knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since
+the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her
+triumph.
+
+In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white--a linen
+crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a
+white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath
+it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white
+zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had
+arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the
+country until they wearied.
+
+They sat in opposite corners of the third-class compartment smiling
+slyly and saying not a word.
+
+They were riding into the unknown.
+
+"Follow me," he had said. "I'll give you a surprise. We will go on a
+voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal.
+Otherwise it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."
+
+The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.
+
+About an hour must have passed and the compartment had long been empty,
+when he nodded to her to get out.
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"What difference does it make where we are?"
+
+Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the
+station.
+
+They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine
+lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were
+locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display
+windows to proclaim the Sunday.
+
+Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A
+turkey cock strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them--no
+more organ tones.
+
+The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening
+grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it.
+Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background
+black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.
+
+They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of
+silvery white dust chased ahead of them.
+
+Konrad knew and saw everything--how the falcon flapping its wings stood
+still in the air--how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump
+leapt away in droll haste--every minute there was something new.
+
+Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming
+spring.
+
+"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have
+been so different."
+
+In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them
+almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man's
+height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.
+
+Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had
+first met.
+
+Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not
+budge.
+
+"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us,
+I shouldn't be a bit surprised."
+
+Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.
+
+Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they
+lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on
+them through the sparse fir boughs.
+
+They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel's presence, when a sudden
+chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little
+fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them
+too frightened to stir.
+
+"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at
+them, they'll take good care not to speak to us."
+
+"We're enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in
+my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me
+so. Have you?"
+
+"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."
+
+"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every
+happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.
+
+"Oh, there's not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far
+from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old,
+Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble
+courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle
+and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing
+roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I
+would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious
+gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An
+iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there
+was nobody about to see the street Arab escapade--only a few peasant
+labourers in the olive plantations live there--I actually climbed over
+that gate one day."
+
+"Glorious!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful,
+strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the
+sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg
+firs. And--think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so
+came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."
+
+"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.
+
+"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my
+ears, I fell asleep--a thing one had better not indulge in, because one
+may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I'm sure I should have,
+if some tourists hadn't come along and thrown sticks and stones at me.
+When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn't dream of climbing
+over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the
+sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a
+hearing--Who are you? Don't you know trespassing in the garden is
+forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn't send me to jail, because all
+the people tapped their heads and said: '_è matto_, he's crazy.'"
+
+"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the
+forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside
+the railing."
+
+"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly
+choked down her curiosity.
+
+"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn't hurt if one practices standing
+outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you
+crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."
+
+Lilly looked at him.
+
+What did he mean by that?
+
+Their eyes met in shy understanding.
+
+That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name,
+quivered through her like a fit of fever.
+
+"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking
+back at him.
+
+The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where
+birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.
+
+The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of
+a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly
+they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.
+
+"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the
+direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the
+right.
+
+"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me
+in life."
+
+Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a
+position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But
+before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he
+could continue with his life-work.
+
+"It must be a very high position, isn't it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had
+the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of
+China, she would not have been a bit surprised.
+
+But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:
+
+"I'd rather tell you about it when it's all settled."
+
+She had to be content.
+
+Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the
+horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine
+silver thread.
+
+"Is that it?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Oh, don't put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up
+to now I've been very good and haven't asked a single question. But do
+at last tell what you have up your sleeve."
+
+"Afterwards, when we're there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn't
+like to make you jealous before the time's ripe."
+
+Oh, if a woman _was_ in the case!
+
+Another woman!
+
+She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt
+quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.
+
+The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its
+greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.
+
+Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an
+inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame
+houses half-way between a palace and a barn.
+
+But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and
+the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly's
+and Konrad's mood.
+
+To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right,
+beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy
+green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in
+the bushes and reeds.
+
+And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a
+park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns
+and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.
+
+Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to
+stand that day.
+
+How beautiful and how mysterious.
+
+Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst,
+the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of
+Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.
+
+But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things--too
+bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card
+with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.
+
+Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of
+the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil,
+she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer
+treasures at their feet.
+
+"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a
+woman is she?"
+
+He burst out laughing.
+
+"So you know there's a woman in the case?"
+
+"What else would make me jealous?"
+
+"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen
+anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."
+
+Oh, if that was all.
+
+"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand
+in apology.
+
+While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that
+led up to their present pilgrimage.
+
+In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art
+dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty
+sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes
+upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in
+an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two
+did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter,
+and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The
+German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In
+defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale,
+and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's
+park--he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined
+for no unworthy setting.
+
+"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly,
+blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We
+have the right to enter it."
+
+But Konrad looked thoughtful.
+
+"It's not so simple as all that. Remember--as what shall I introduce
+you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I
+pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."
+
+A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned,
+outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.
+
+"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a
+burden to you."
+
+"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the
+world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of
+the entire place."
+
+Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.
+
+At this point--at last! the carp was served.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet
+high with never a break in it to peep through.
+
+But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end
+giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view
+some distance into the interior.
+
+Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms
+forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes
+draped the open grassy places. In the background on a hillock about
+which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with
+Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.
+
+"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.
+
+So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage
+escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there--a Ceres, a
+satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a
+glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were
+seeking was nowhere to be seen.
+
+They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road.
+An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led
+across.
+
+But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet
+gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.
+
+"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.
+
+"That is the way the gods went to Walhalla," she said.
+
+With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that
+bridge.
+
+Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.
+
+Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some
+distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along
+the other side of the fence.
+
+The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a
+fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the
+roll of bowling balls.
+
+Lilly and her friend passed without giving heed to these things. Their
+wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment
+increased their longing.
+
+Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to
+which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.
+
+Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and
+clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spiræas grew in
+rank profusion between.
+
+The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about
+himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.
+
+Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the
+interior.
+
+Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its
+vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work,
+was half sunk in blooming acacias.
+
+Here at last they could get a good view of the park.
+
+In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here
+they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably
+stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only
+architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace,
+where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the
+iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.
+
+"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know
+what it's like."
+
+His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what
+"it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in
+the very same position.
+
+But where, where?
+
+Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?
+
+Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the
+door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded
+staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.
+
+That, too, was a forbidden garden!
+
+Forbidden gardens everywhere!
+
+"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to
+remain here."
+
+Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping
+as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their
+hearts' desire.
+
+Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their
+aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them
+would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of
+gold over the universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Evening came.
+
+Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like
+torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its
+cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold.
+It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all
+earthly promises.
+
+The two could no longer bear it on land.
+
+Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing
+about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very
+little.
+
+Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.
+
+Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow
+cut through a waving carpet of pollen.
+
+Among this year's tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey
+weather-beaten remnants of last year's growth. Dark bulrushes edged the
+shores, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.
+
+Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the massed park trees rising
+toward the heavens like purple walls.
+
+When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:
+
+"Oh, no use, it's out of the question."
+
+Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.
+
+Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage
+the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread
+her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for
+herself.
+
+She lay crouched at Konrad's feet with her back to the seat in the
+stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a
+different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into
+the land of the virtuous.
+
+She would give music lessons--her knowledge sufficed for beginners--and
+with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently
+fitted her--or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she
+must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so
+long as he needed her friendship.
+
+Or--not to wound the sensibilities of others--she would leave Germany,
+earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her,
+return a new, purified being.
+
+Or--oh dear, "or!"
+
+To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs.
+Discovery and death--the one involved the other--would come soon enough.
+
+The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed
+down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have
+thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black
+stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of
+wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.
+
+The foliage of the park slowly melted into a mass of darkness.
+
+Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim
+with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the
+unattainable.
+
+As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove
+suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park
+side. It seemed to continue inward without end.
+
+For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then
+he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.
+
+"What's the matter? What's the matter?"
+
+"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It must have flowed in somewhere--eh?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.
+
+"There it is."
+
+"You think we shall after all--?"
+
+The thought was too bold for utterance.
+
+"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from
+one side to the other."
+
+In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell
+upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and
+pledges.
+
+The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows
+set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond
+stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.
+
+Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before
+them.
+
+"O Lord!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we'll be turned out
+after all."
+
+He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for
+the splash of a leaping fish.
+
+He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a
+mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there
+on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.
+
+They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the
+sound of clinking glasses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in
+the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.
+
+Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an unobstructed
+view of the castle--a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous
+simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not
+yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who
+had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.
+
+Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight
+sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the
+intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.
+
+"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren't a mill-stone about his
+neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.
+
+The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the
+vision of a moment.
+
+Passing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay,
+where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more
+into silence and darkness.
+
+To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with
+old statues and ivy-draped urns--to the left a world buried in darkness.
+A line of lindens, hundreds of years old, bordered the stream and
+stifled every ray of light in its dark halls.
+
+Perhaps this was where the marble bust was hidden. Lilly peered into
+every recess, though furtively, so as to reserve the pleasure of
+discovery for him.
+
+They now approached the daintily arched bridge they had seen from afar
+in the daytime.
+
+It did not lead to Walhalla, but from a spiræa bush to a hemp bush, and
+beneath it slept a pair of swans, who awoke at the stroke of the oars
+and with outspread wings swam behind the boat begging for bread.
+
+"Swans! The one thing lacking!" Lilly rejoiced softly, and sought in
+vain for a crumb. She turned to look after the swans and her neck
+touched his knees.
+
+"May I stay this way?" she asked a little anxiously.
+
+"If you're comfortable," he answered. There was a yielding tone in his
+voice which ran warm through her body.
+
+She unpinned her hat, and laid it on the back seat. Now she was free to
+lean her head lightly against him. With sweet alarm she felt his hand
+quietly stroke her head.
+
+But he seemed taciturn and self-absorbed, as if a burden were weighing
+upon him which he was not strong enough to shoulder.
+
+And again she felt, as ofttimes, that a veil hung between them, a veil
+seldom lifted aside, which obscured the true features of his being, no
+matter how closely her love drew her to him.
+
+"Oh, if only he were gay!"
+
+The park came to an end.
+
+The red evening glow, no longer shadowed by a mass of foliage, shone
+upon them insistently. The magic spell threatened to be broken. The
+world took on its ordinary aspect.
+
+"Come, turn," she asked softly.
+
+He rowed back again into the blissful night.
+
+Now he had to strive against the current, and could not avoid the sound
+of splashing.
+
+"If only they don't catch us," he said.
+
+"Oh, they are too happy," rejoined Lilly, "they wouldn't do anything to
+a happy person."
+
+"It seems almost like an enchanted castle, but who can tell--it may be a
+delusion."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, the most grievous wound may be hidden under powers, and many a man
+hides himself behind beauty because he has buried his powers."
+
+The doubt displeased Lilly.
+
+"But they should be happy," she exclaimed softly. "Those who can spare so
+much as they have given us to-day have enough left for themselves."
+
+"Illogical conclusion, darling," he replied. "You can enrich a beggar
+and still remain as poor as a church-mouse."
+
+"Are _we_ beggars?" she asked, raising herself up to him tenderly.
+
+"No, by God, we are _not_ beggars," he replied drawing a deep breath.
+
+There was silence for a time. Then it seemed to Lilly something warm and
+moist fell upon her forehead.
+
+For God's sake! He was crying! Crying with happiness. How had she
+deserved it--she, Lilly Czepanek--she--?
+
+To hide her own tears she crouched down again. It was in overflowing
+measure--unendurable. She wanted to sob, cry aloud, kiss his hands. Yet
+she was forced to clench her fists and stuff her gloves between her
+teeth, to keep him from seeing what was going on within her. It was a
+God-send that as they slowly approached the castle again, the sound of a
+woman's singing reached them. Full ringing tones, which in the ascending
+notes struck her heart like a lash.
+
+What was she singing? Wasn't it from Tristan? Lilly had never heard the
+opera, but it could only be from Tristan.
+
+She raised her head questioningly.
+
+"Isolde's _Liebestod_," Konrad whispered in her ear.
+
+He turned the boat toward the shore in the deepest darkness. They must
+not lose a note.
+
+Up there on the terrace the laughing and talking had ceased. The
+nightingale alone, in the linden thicket, would not be silenced, and
+mingled its sweet ecstasy with the exultation in death of the woman who
+like no other creation of God or man teaches us that the desire not to
+be is the most exalted affirmation of to be.
+
+Lilly, her whole body quivering, put her hand over her shoulder to grasp
+his. She had to hold on to him. Otherwise she felt she would sink into
+the void. She did not grow easier until she felt his warm fingers
+between hers.
+
+The song ended. The mighty arpeggios of the accompaniment died away.
+There was no applause. Each of the merry guests had realised his
+indebtedness to the occasion.
+
+Konrad pressed her hand and withdrew his, and took up the oars again.
+
+The forbidden garden began to disappear.
+
+The reddish dusk of night lay upon the meadows. Not sound far or near.
+Nevertheless the world seemed filled with the music of harps and ringing
+songs.
+
+"We haven't _seen_ your marble woman," Lilly whispered, stroking his
+knees, "but I keep thinking that was her voice."
+
+"I, too," he burst out passionately. "And she wasn't singing for the
+good folk up there, but just for us."
+
+"Oh, if only I could sing it like her," sighed Lilly.
+
+"Try."
+
+She remembered bits here and there, but was unable to gather them into a
+whole. Besides something else forced its way between, which now gushed
+up mightier than all else.
+
+With the Song of Songs of the greatest and richest her own poor Song of
+Songs mingled, undesired, uncalled.
+
+And she sang into the deep silence:
+
+    Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,
+    Where thou feedest?
+    Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?
+    For why should I appear like a vailed mourner--
+
+She stopped.
+
+"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."
+
+"It is--my--Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.
+
+Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.
+
+"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.
+
+Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the
+moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.
+
+"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly
+and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."
+
+Without speaking he laid the oars down.
+
+"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."
+
+He cast a searching glance in all directions.
+
+The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake,
+upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in
+scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of
+danger.
+
+Then he did as she had asked.
+
+They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with
+their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.
+
+And she told her tale.
+
+Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always
+emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years,
+though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious
+significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into
+chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul
+began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a
+sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil.
+It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had
+kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who
+would some day come to her.
+
+And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment
+had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into
+the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment
+to its creator and herself.
+
+In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.
+
+The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what
+was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more
+than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than
+she had known of herself up to that hour.
+
+He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and
+hopeful still within her. The other--the lazy, the impure, that which
+had ruined her heart and life--no longer existed. It no longer concerned
+her.
+
+While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not
+dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward
+him.
+
+She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken
+look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his
+feelings as it were in his clenched fists.
+
+Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no
+name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run
+to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.
+
+Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the
+bench.
+
+"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she
+laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the
+bench.
+
+His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.
+
+"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.
+
+So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all
+those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since
+the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.
+
+She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the
+verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:
+
+    For, lo, the winter is past,
+    The rain is over and gone;
+    The flowers appear on the earth;
+    The time of the singing of birds is come,
+    And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;
+    The fig putteth forth her green figs,
+    And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
+    Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
+
+She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook
+his head, and nestled closer.
+
+Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in
+among the reeds, and night had completely descended.
+
+But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.
+
+There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart"
+and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And
+then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:
+
+    Come, my friend!
+    Let us go forth into the field,
+
+But when it came to
+
+    Let us see if the vine have blossomed,
+    Whether the young grape have opened,
+
+she could scarcely go on.
+
+    Whether the pomegranates have budded,
+    There will I give my caresses unto thee.
+
+She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.
+
+"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.
+
+A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.
+
+"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."
+
+She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.
+
+A swift end to all bravery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood
+there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.
+
+Very timidly they rang the bell.
+
+"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the
+obsequious, smiling hostess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It would be wide of the truth to aver that no happy star favoured
+Lilly's ripened love.
+
+In the first place Adele proved to be a circumspect ally, thoroughly
+accustomed to be uncommunicative and passionately devoted to the cause
+of Lilly's lover. In the second place Richard, who had gone to his
+mother in Harzburg that epoch-making Sunday, had remained away the
+greater part of a week instead of one day. And in the third place, upon
+visiting her on his return, he was so preoccupied with himself and his
+own affairs as not to notice in the least Lilly's guilty embarrassed
+reception of him.
+
+He affected a highly lofty mien and talked through his nose, as always
+when he pulled his soul together, as it were, and became vividly
+conscious of having once been a cavalry officer. He even wore his
+monocle again hanging down over his navy-blue silk waistcoat.
+
+All of which taken in conjunction with the crafty expression with which
+he blinked his eyes and steadily looked past Lilly and dropped his head
+on his left shoulder, gave sufficient ground for the welcome assumption
+that he had delayed the visit to his mother and, instead,--like Lilly
+herself--had taken a side excursion _à deux_ into the blossoming world
+of spring.
+
+The conjecture, however, proved to be false.
+
+Richard had been in Harzburg the whole time and intended to return the
+very next day for a longer stay of at least four weeks.
+
+"What's the matter?" he exclaimed in alarm.
+
+Lilly, overwhelmed by the veritable tempest of happiness that burst upon
+her, had reeled and sunk on the arm of a chair.
+
+She instantly collected her wits again and denied that she had been
+overcome. Nevertheless, he remained full of solicitude, kissed her on
+her neck again and again, and would not permit her to go to the trouble
+of pouring out the tea for him. A guilty conscience peeped from every
+pore of his being.
+
+"Unfortunately," he said, trying to return to his former lofty manner,
+"unfortunately there's no longer a chance of our taking a trip together.
+Anyhow--we've gotten too used to each other. Both of us will have to
+practise getting along without each other. It's highly desirable we
+should. We certainly should."
+
+His words sounded like familiar music coming from a great, great
+distance.
+
+"Confess," she said smiling. "What is it this time?"
+
+Out he came with it, stuttering and choking over his words.
+
+An American heiress--of German extraction--millions and millions--not
+millions of marks, but millions of dollars--very stylish and chic--a
+wonderful piece of luck--mama in a quiver to have it go through--her
+parents favourably disposed--she, too, evidently not disinclined. This
+time or never.
+
+"Congratulate you," said Lilly, giving him a friendly handshake.
+
+He looked at her with large, astonished, and somewhat reproachful eyes.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+"Why--what else?"
+
+"How can you remain so cool? Doesn't the thought that your old friend is
+about to leave you move you in the least? I took you to be more loving,
+more sympathetic. I certainly did."
+
+"Please remember," said Lilly, "you reproach me the same way each time
+you make up your mind to marry because I don't want to be a hindrance to
+you. You always act as if _I_ had dismissed you, and not you me."
+
+He burst into expostulations.
+
+"Dismiss--what language you use! You haven't the least idea of what's
+going on within me--how I struggle and wrestle with myself. Why, I
+haven't slept for nights thinking what will become of you. But you
+behave as if it didn't concern you in the least! Altogether
+you're--frivolous! You have no feelings--now you know it."
+
+While he spoke, pictures of her approaching freedom danced before her
+eyes--nights of unshackled, glowing love, days full of sweet, vague
+dreams.
+
+What followed lay as far off as the end of the world.
+
+Smiling good-humouredly, she listened, and never even responded.
+
+"Though your future doesn't seem to worry _you_," he continued to
+upbraid her, "_I_ must give it all the more consideration. I must
+provide for you, and mama quite agrees with me."
+
+The word "mama" tore her from her world of dreams.
+
+Since the terrific encounter in Richard's office, it had scarcely ever
+passed their lips. They had employed a thousand circumlocutions and
+substitutes which they understood and which each appreciated in the
+other.
+
+Now "mama" suddenly rang in her ears, the symbol of her disgraced
+existence.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "if she's in it, it's bound to be humiliating to me.
+I'll tell both of you one thing: take good care not to make a
+proposition to me about money, or support, or anything of the sort. I'd
+consider it an outrageous insult, for which you could _never_ make
+amends."
+
+He ran up and down the room wringing his hands.
+
+"What are you talking about again! Quite apart from the fact that I'd be
+eternally disgraced in the eyes of the world. Woman, don't you know
+you're ruined if I turn you adrift empty-handed? Don't you know where
+you'd go to? To the bars and brothels! Don't you know it?"
+
+In blissful absentmindedness Lilly looked past him and his gallant zeal.
+
+"There are other ways," she whispered half to herself.
+
+"What ways?" he cried, "Marriage, forsooth? What decent man would marry
+you after you've been my mistress for four years?"
+
+"There are other ways than that, too," she repeated still smiling.
+
+She saw a life full of fight and vigour, a tossing hither and thither
+through storm and stress, a jubilant triumph which led her into the
+community of those who were as proud and true as _he_.
+
+But all that would come later, much, much later. Why think of it now?
+
+Richard put his own construction upon her words. He fixed his eyes upon
+her suspiciously, and stopping in front of her, asked with a shudder:
+
+"I say--are you going to do something foolish?"
+
+She burst out laughing. Probably he already saw her beautiful corpse
+taken from the water and stretched on the bier.
+
+"No, I won't do anything foolish. Certainly not for your sake. And even
+if I intended to, I'd have the good taste not to threaten you with it."
+
+He drew a deep breath of relief, though by no means quite calmed.
+
+"At any rate," he said, "I greatly dislike your poking here alone.
+You'll simply get the blues and feel irritated at me. I say, while I'm
+gone, wouldn't you like to take a little trip to a bath--Ahlbeck, or
+Schreiberbau, or some other place of the sort, where respectable people
+go?"
+
+Nothing on the surface but a faint twitch of her eyelids betrayed the
+laugh of scorn that shook her internally.
+
+"You know," she said, "I don't like to make up to people, and so I'd be
+all the more alone."
+
+He wrinkled his forehead lost in thought.
+
+"Well--then--" He hesitated and chewed his words as people are wont to
+do when they dread their own bravery, "--then--it would be best if
+you--come and stay near--"
+
+"Near--near what?"
+
+"Oh, don't act that way. You know what I mean."
+
+"I do, but I cannot believe it."
+
+"What's so awful about it? I could look after you now and then--or talk
+over matters--different things."
+
+"And show her to me so as to get my opinion and my blessing--eh?"
+
+"Well and supposing it's so? The way we are to each other--the way we
+haven't done a thing for years without asking each other's advice,
+what's so monstrous about it?"
+
+Lilly felt a patronising pity arise within her. She stroked his hands
+and said:
+
+"Dear friend, I don't think I'd furnish the right sort of assistance to
+you in your courtship."
+
+Her superior tone increased his ill-humour.
+
+"Goodness gracious! 'Assistance,' 'courtship!' You talk as if you were
+on the stage. Altogether you're so puffed up--so puffed up! Of course
+you simply want to revenge yourself on me by making me angry. I must say
+it's not at all noble of you at such a time."
+
+She laughed and stretched herself. How low it all was! How ridiculous!
+And how indifferent to her! After all did it concern her?
+
+To be alone--alone with him! There was nothing else in the world beside
+that.
+
+"Then you don't want to?"
+
+She shook her head, "No."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He prepared to leave in anger, but lacked the strength.
+
+"Lilly."
+
+"Hm?"
+
+"I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. You seem to think I'm not in
+earnest this time."
+
+"By no means, Richard. I wish you all possible happiness. But really,
+with the best of intentions, I can be of no service to you in this
+affair."
+
+"Of service to me! Of service to me! Who's speaking of service to me?
+Mama was quite right. If I break off this time, there won't be anything
+else for me any more. So make it quite clear to yourself. In a few weeks
+all's over between us."
+
+"So much the better," she came near saying. But she saw the tears in the
+corners of his eyes, and refrained from hurting him.
+
+Four years lived together lay behind them. He was too tightly tied to
+her apron strings. She felt she ought not to let him go without her
+advice and encouragement.
+
+So she spoke to him as to a child. She said his mother was right,
+praised his project, and counted up all the reasons why it absolutely
+had to be. In order to calm him as to her own attitude, she recalled how
+it had always been her ambition to let him feel his freedom and never
+stand in his way. She also assured him she would cherish friendly
+sentiments for him until the end of her days.
+
+Finally, on parting, they both wept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Now the way was clear. Now she might consecrate the new life and rejoice
+in it.
+
+July came and scorched the deserted streets.
+
+The denizens of the aristocratic west side who remained in town with no
+employer to drive them dreamed away idle days behind drawn shades,
+hovering between the couch and the bathtub.
+
+Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world
+endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when
+dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond
+the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the
+red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the
+street lamps.
+
+Then she strolled at Konrad's side in the blue twilight of the streets,
+always alert to escape the observation of acquaintances.
+
+Staid middle-class families promenaded to the beer gardens, love-couples
+met at the appointed street corners; and among them surged the mass of
+those whom life has left solitary with shy passionate yearnings, and who
+hope to steal from smiling chance that for which they no longer dare
+implore sterner gods. Over the exhausted city hung a sultry haze of
+secret desire, in which formal restraint and genuine feeling flickered
+and went out, leaving no sign of ever having been.
+
+How remote those days when Lilly herself wandered about in the same
+fashion, hoping for the intervention of fate, yet lacking the courage
+to compel it. And shuddering at dangers she had escaped, she clung
+closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
+
+She and Konrad always managed to find a secluded nook where gypsy bands
+played their fiddles, or Tyrolese strummed their dulcimers, or the host
+himself, some musician come down in the world acted as orchestra leader.
+In the ivy-hung corners between laurel trees planted in green painted
+tubs they had little fear of discovery.
+
+Their intercourse had undergone a change.
+
+There were still instructive discourses upon all sorts of subjects and
+Lilly intently hung upon Konrad's lips; but her holy ardour for
+knowledge had cooled down.
+
+That God does not exist, that Fra Lippo Lippi had been a
+good-for-nothing, that baroque art has it good points, and that a line
+gone crazy ought to be sent to the madhouse, even if it poses as
+ultra-modern, these and many more novel, interesting things Lilly had
+long known. But they no longer evoked discussion.
+
+Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in
+them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk
+to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning
+to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and
+jealous, and insist on leaving.
+
+She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her
+arm, on her heart.
+
+The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened
+suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the
+shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. The glow accorded
+with their mood.
+
+It was the greatest disaster for either of them to fall asleep, and thus
+shamefully curtail the time they spent together. So they agreed that the
+one who remained conscious longer should rouse the other.
+
+Lilly was invariably the one to remain awake. Konrad was exhausted by
+his work, and in the morning he could not doze off again after a cup of
+tea in bed, or in the afternoon rest on the couch. And when he lay there
+next to her with twitching limbs, like a thoroughbred hunting dog, she
+felt much too sorry for him to keep her promise.
+
+She would sit up in bed, and never weary of gazing at him in the dim
+light of the red-shaded candle.
+
+There was always something in his face to study--the strong-willed fold
+between his brows, deeper than before and still somewhat intimidating;
+the muscles of his temples incessantly working; and the curling upper
+lip, the right end of which every now and then twitched as if he were
+smiling at her in his sleep. He had grown thin. His skin had lost its
+firmness, and on his cheeks lay shadows which darkened at his jaws.
+There was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He looked like a young
+Christ, created just to be adored.
+
+Sometimes while staring at him, she thought:
+
+"If I were to kill him now, run a hat pin through his heart or something
+of the sort, he would belong to me, to me alone, forever."
+
+Then she would hollow her hand and place it on the left side of his
+breast and fancy she held his heart and with his heart his love, which
+she need never more give up.
+
+Once while she bent over him, he awoke with a start.
+
+"What's the matter? Did I do anything to you?" he asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Your expression is so strange, almost as if you were angry with me."
+
+She resolved not to stare at him any more. But she could not resist; she
+loved him too dearly.
+
+It was horrible when dread seized her that she might lose him. Many a
+night it attacked her with such awful force that she felt like screaming
+and raving and tearing her hair. But it would be wrong to rouse him. So
+she gently laid her head under his shoulder, one arm under his back, the
+other across his breast, and pressing close against him told herself she
+had grown into one with him.
+
+Then gradually she grew calmer and could find comfort in tears, or in
+picturing to herself how happy she would make him, unspeakably happy.
+She would envelop him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick as to
+prevent fate's rude blows from reaching him. She would be his muse,
+would wear an invisible aureole about her head, enkindle the desire
+within him for a thousand great deeds; she would give him the devoted
+care of a Sister of Mercy, would learn to cook and make her own dresses.
+No--rather attend scientific courses at the university, and study music.
+Oh, she would do many more things, that he should never weary of her.
+
+For all this, of course, she would first have to be free, with relations
+between her and Richard entirely broken off.
+
+She often thought of Richard also, but without a shadow of blame. She
+had long forgiven him for having led her to the brink of the abyss.
+
+"Each person acts according to the law of his own being," Konrad had
+said.
+
+Besides, Richard had once been her saviour.
+
+So far as the outer world was concerned, the new life was to begin as
+soon as Richard announced his engagement. He had written that his suit
+was progressing, and by right her free life with Konrad ought already to
+have commenced, but Lilly did not feel equal to a crisis. She shuddered
+at all the lies she would continually have to dish up to Konrad, once a
+change took place in her household.
+
+She avoided facing the poverty that was bound to come. It was only at
+night when she had worked herself into a joyous ecstasy on the sleeping
+man's breast, and her future with him stretched before her in gold and
+purple, that privation seemed to her the very sum and substance of
+happiness and plenitude.
+
+At three o'clock in the morning, when the street lamps went out one by
+one, and the grey of dawn came creeping over the ceiling, Lilly would
+have to awaken him.
+
+He must not meet any of the tenants of the house. She owed it to his and
+her own reputation.
+
+While dressing he groped about, drunk with sleep, among Lilly's ivory
+toilet articles, still resplendent with the seven-pointed coronet, and
+managed to get himself into shape for a stimulating cup of black coffee
+at the nearest Vienna café.
+
+For he felt that from Lilly's bed he must go to his desk with all
+possible speed.
+
+He could not be dissuaded from this madness.
+
+The passionate hours of the night demanded atonement; an idea to which
+he clung tenaciously, no matter that he spent the early morning hours in
+vain, wearisome brooding over his papers.
+
+Lilly, on the other hand, fell into a deep sleep, from which Adele
+roused her at about ten o'clock, when she brought in the breakfast tray,
+smiling contentedly.
+
+Lilly let Konrad have every other night for himself.
+
+She did not want to suck his lifeblood away. Even so he gave her
+sufficient cause for worry. His colour was bad, his eyes vacillated, his
+mood varied abruptly from violent gaiety to vacant-eyed self-absorption.
+
+All that would surely be different when once--what?
+
+To think of nothing, to plan nothing, to wish for nothing. Just to love
+him and know he was happy.
+
+She spent her days dreaming both pleasant and tremulous dreams. Her
+intense fervour for mental occupation had departed. Besides, all sorts
+of new and important things intervened to distract her; especially the
+need to please him, to hand him daily the draft that intoxicated him and
+kept him her own.
+
+Hitherto she had taken the beauty of her body as a matter of course, and
+had paid as little regard to it as to a hidden and useless object. Now
+she felt she must constantly take thought of the ideal he treasured in
+his mind, must try to resemble it--she well knew that in reality she
+approached it a little only when drunken bliss exalted her above herself
+and the stale and unprofitable flats of her life.
+
+Thus arose an eager cult of her flesh, something she had always
+despised.
+
+She took care of her body like a woman in a harem, perfumed her baths,
+manicured her toe nails, lengthened her eyebrows, and powdered her arms
+and shoulders. Every day she discovered new blemishes, which discouraged
+her and for which she sought new remedies.
+
+At the same time she was ever haunted by the fear that through sheer
+attention to her toilet she would acquire the look of a beautiful
+prostitute. So she locked away her jewellery and dressed very simply.
+None but the connoisseur could discern how much artistic care had gone
+into the creation of this faultless simplicity.
+
+When she was alone what troubled her most was jealousy. Not that she
+suspected him of relations with another woman. He stood too high in her
+estimation for that. But she was jealous of everything he did. The
+thought of his desk fairly tortured her. Each hour he spent away from
+her seemed traitorous to her love, and she thought of his friends with a
+hostility of which she had never deemed herself capable.
+
+On the evenings she was left alone, she held watch over his room from
+the opposite side of the street, where she stood pressed in a doorway
+exactly as formerly in Alte Jakobstrasse.
+
+When his lamp was lighted she was satisfied, but when she saw him come
+or go at a late hour, she did not sleep the whole night.
+
+He lived a short distance from her in a third-storey room. It was long
+before he permitted her to call on him.
+
+In the room next to his, he explained, lay a sick woman who had to be
+kept from the slightest excitement. The sound of a strange voice might
+aggravate her condition.
+
+While telling this to Lilly he strangely avoided her eyes and she felt
+that a hundred chances to one he was keeping something from her. But
+when upon her insistence he admitted her to his room one afternoon she
+found nothing to confirm her suspicions. She merely had to speak very
+low; which she had known beforehand.
+
+His room was just an ordinary student's room. It had two windows, a high
+ceiling, cheap furniture, and no couch and no carpet. But valuable
+engravings adorned the walls, and the customary pier-glass was hidden
+behind an old copy of the Madonna di Foligno, who looked down in serene
+loftiness upon the poverty of northern philistinism. There were long low
+bookcases full of books; and more books, for which there was no room on
+the shelves were piled up high in the corners, protected against dust by
+pieces of crushed oil-cloth, such as pedlars use for wrapping about
+their wares.
+
+As was to be expected, the desk was the only article that displayed a
+certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures, it was Konrad's own property.
+With its noble carving and broad top, it stood in the centre of the
+room, solemn as an altar.
+
+Not one woman's picture to be seen on it. Lilly had not given him hers,
+and evidently others were not deemed worthy of the place of honour.
+
+There was only one photograph, that of an old gentleman, framed with
+glass, which stood back of the blotting pad and the ink well. A
+weather-beaten, epicurean face, with fine snow-white hair, and shrewd
+eyes beneath half-sunken lids, eyes peculiar to old connoisseurs of
+women.
+
+It was the picture of the uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and
+supported him.
+
+Lilly felt a dull oppression, as if those eyes were looking her through
+and through, and needed but a glance to unveil the great secret that she
+concealed from her lover with a thousand subterfuges.
+
+"I'll be careful never to meet him," she thought.
+
+Konrad took from a drawer his precious treasure, the preliminary work on
+his great history of human emotions, and showed Lilly the reams of paper
+closely covered with writing.
+
+This work was his real love, and she, Lilly Czepanek, was nothing but a
+dark, bloodless shadow, which greedily glided through his nights.
+
+"Put it back again," she said discontentedly, and turned away to take
+leave.
+
+But even his great work was not enough for Konrad. In addition, he
+drudged over a number of short articles. As his name become known in
+professional circles, he received an increasing number of orders, all of
+which he accepted and tried to fill.
+
+And one day Lilly found out what the important position was of which he
+had spoken three weeks before on that never-to-be-forgotten excursion.
+
+"I couldn't make up my mind until to-day," said Konrad. "But now I have
+actually decided to take the position. It is assistant editorship on a
+magazine. The editor-in-chief called on me himself, and wouldn't let go
+of me until I said yes. A fascinating fellow. In spite of his great
+intellectual ability, a man of childlike innocence. And so frank and
+friendly. You must get to know him immediately, if you don't already."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Dr. Salmoni."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+No. It came about differently.
+
+Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.
+
+Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an
+act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the
+great passion that had blessed her life.
+
+After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on
+the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them
+must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the
+house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had
+then.
+
+In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a
+lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked
+with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always
+appeared.
+
+The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.
+
+Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with
+a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their
+happiest hours were wont to begin.
+
+The following day light was thrown upon the situation.
+
+Konrad came at twilight, paler than usual, his eyes shining unnaturally.
+
+"Listen, darling," he said, "I spent the night thinking everything over,
+and now I know what I ought to do. We can't go on this way."
+
+She thought he meant that he must leave her. An icy numbness spread over
+her body. She looked at him quietly awaiting the death blow.
+
+"Since we belong to each other," he continued, "we have never spoken of
+your betrothed. That doesn't mean I didn't think of him. And you have
+been very reticent about his friend, Mr. Dehnicke. All I know is Mr.
+Dehnicke is now off on a trip and has left you, so to speak, without a
+guardian."
+
+She forced herself to smile. Why did he prolong the agony?
+
+"I must confess, in the midst of all my happiness, I have always felt
+that this exploiting of the situation was nothing more nor less than
+contemptible so far as I myself am concerned. But I am not the one to be
+considered. The question is: what will become of you? The thing I
+dreaded from the very first has come to pass: your friends have begun to
+notice us together. You can't ask one person not to tell another. That's
+degrading. So your friend will discover everything. He will call you to
+account, you will be too proud to deny the truth, and the end of the
+story will be that you will be left alone, utterly unprotected. Because
+the way things are now, _I_ haven't even the right to protect you. The
+thought of it is sickening."
+
+He jumped up, ran his outspread fingers through his imaginary shock of
+hair, and tramped up and down.
+
+Lilly felt the blood begin to course through her veins again, and with
+it life and thought.
+
+The dear, noble, unsuspecting boy!
+
+She came near bursting into laughter. But she refrained herself and
+said:
+
+"You can be perfectly calm, Konni. Mr. Dehnicke won't find out, and
+even if he does, he won't believe it. Or if he believes it, he will take
+good care--"
+
+She could not continue. The great innocent eyes troubled her.
+
+"So you still think he will--?"
+
+Konrad also faltered. He, too, was unable to utter the unspeakable.
+
+Lilly regarded the buttons on her skirt, and said nothing.
+
+"When is Mr. Dehnicke coming home again?" he asked.
+
+"He's not certain. He's gone a-wooing," Lilly replied with a little
+feeling of triumph. She thought she was saying something which raised
+her above suspicion in the future--there was still a possibility of
+suspicion.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Why do you want to know?"
+
+"I want to speak to him."
+
+Lilly started. She could not believe her ears.
+
+It _could_ not be. Either she must have lost her reason or Konrad.
+
+"Don't be afraid," he reassured her. "I know quite well what I owe your
+reputation. But I should like to find out at last what _he_ thinks of
+your situation. There's a man in the United States whom you are pledged
+to, yet he doesn't let himself be heard from. He doesn't come for you.
+He doesn't write. Why doesn't he write? If he's ignorant of your
+whereabouts, he's perfectly aware that Mr. Dehnicke's business is known
+in Berlin. You can't be sure he's still alive. At first I tried to
+explain his silence in various ways. But now I say to myself, he's
+either dead or as good as dead. And are you to consider yourself bound?
+Should you make your entire social existence dependent upon a sort of
+guard of honour, which has nothing more to guard? I'd like to hold all
+this under Mr. Dehnicke's nose. He'll have to answer me. Don't you think
+he will?"
+
+"Konrad has less worldly knowledge than is permissible," thought Lilly,
+pityingly, and replied: "But I don't understand, Konni, what right you
+have to call a stranger to account."
+
+"That's my affair," he rejoined, tossing his head defiantly. "I must
+know if he will set you free. I won't brook his playing the slave-master
+over you."
+
+"And I won't brook your getting yourself into a false position," cried
+Lilly in reawakened alarm. She already heard blows and pistol shots. "I
+myself will speak to Mr. Dehnicke. I will free myself, I promise you.
+But you, if _you_ go to him, what will he think of me? At best you will
+merely succeed in compromising me."
+
+He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed victoriously.
+
+"If a man loves you and wants you to be his wife, why should that
+compromise you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was hot and murky when these words were spoken. The canary ran about
+on the sand of his cage chirping wearily, his wings drooping; the gold
+fish hung motionless behind their glass walls, and the naked monkey
+whined in its sleep.
+
+The slimy canal water reflected bluish black clouds; a storm hovered in
+the atmosphere, and this was the thunder-clap.
+
+Lilly's first sensation was one of surprise--not joyous surprise, indeed
+not. Then came an unspeakably mournful cry, which no mortal ear heard,
+though all the more painful in its muteness.
+
+"Too late--a lost chance--nothing to hope for--no more happiness on
+earth--too late!"
+
+She leaned back on the sofa and studied the ceiling attentively and
+thoroughly.
+
+He was awaiting his answer.
+
+If she lowered her eyes, she would have to encounter his eyes, which ate
+into her soul. No salvation from those eyes, no salvation from that
+which must perforce come.
+
+And he was waiting.
+
+Then she heard her own voice, very clear and very calm, as if Mrs. Jula
+were speaking in her place, that little artist of life with the iron
+brow.
+
+"I thought, Konni, you and I had agreed never to marry."
+
+"How can you remind me of it?" he cried violently. "Did I know how
+things would turn out when I said it? Did I know who you are and what
+bliss and torture a goddess of a woman like you can bestow on a poor
+devil? Yes, torture. I must tell you everything to-day. I'm at my wit's
+end. There's a break in my life. Everything is torn asunder--my work, my
+thoughts, my belief in you. You want to be my good genius. Instead
+you're almost my evil genius. Don't be frightened. It's not your fault.
+I am not reproaching you--only myself, for being so weak. I want to
+work. I must work. I have assumed a number of _new_ duties. I thought if
+duty came from the outside, I could force myself into the right path.
+The very reverse has happened. I'm growing stupid just from wrestling
+with myself. I must bring peace into our lives, else we're both lost.
+And I can't have peace unless you belong to me _altogether_, unless your
+bed is next to my bed, and the desk is in the next room, and you're
+always with me."
+
+"I can move to you in the autumn," Lilly interjected timidly.
+
+"No, nothing of that sort any more. No self-reproaches, no
+secretiveness. Should I have it on my conscience that each additional
+day on which you sacrifice yourself, you're drawing nearer to ruin? And
+it's bound to ruin you. It will cling to you like dirt. And why should
+we create dirt out of what is most sacred to us? Or am I not good enough
+to be your life-companion? Do you think you will be too poor as my
+wife?"
+
+She repudiated the idea with a lively exclamation of scorn.
+
+"I don't know, and I don't need to know, how much you have. I am rich
+enough now. I get three hundred marks a month from my uncle; Dr. Salmoni
+pays me four hundred--"
+
+Oh, how she started at the name!
+
+"And I can easily earn another three hundred by writing articles--in all
+a thousand a month, a general's salary. You may be satisfied."
+
+"Keep quiet," she cried, almost beside herself. "It isn't that."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+He planted himself in front of her challengingly. Between his brows were
+those folds of wrath which cut her like a knife. She ducked her head.
+Never since the colonel's time had she experienced such fear of a human
+being.
+
+"Tell me what it is. Apparently you don't love me enough. You still
+cling to the man who forgot you long ago. You probably say to yourself:
+'The stupid boy is good enough for a passing love; he's good enough for
+whiling the time away. But if he shows any intentions of interfering
+with my life, I must get rid of him with all possible speed.' Am I not
+right? Tell me. Be brave! What harm can I do you? Just tell me that I'm
+nothing but a _pis aller_, the sort of man you wouldn't want as a
+husband. When I've made a name for myself, then you will be willing to
+consider marriage, too. Am I not right?--Well, then."
+
+He picked up his hat to go.
+
+"Have pity on me, Konni," she implored. She had glided down from her
+seat to lay her head on his knees, and now she crouched between the sofa
+and Konrad's chair, and groped for support.
+
+"I don't need _your_ pity, you don't need _mine_," he cried. "Until
+to-day you've been the noblest thing on earth to me. But I won't suffer
+myself just to be expunged from your life. Tell me why you don't want to
+marry me--_one_ plausible reason, and I'll never return to the subject
+again. I promise you."
+
+"Give me until to-morrow," she groaned.
+
+"Why? For what? To-day is as good as to-morrow. I've come to the end of
+my tether. I can't spend another night of torture."
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+That surprised him.
+
+"What will you write?"
+
+"Whether I may or not. And the reasons and everything."
+
+"During the night I'll manage to find some way out," she thought.
+
+"When will I get the letter?"
+
+"To-morrow morning by the first delivery."
+
+"Very well. I will wait until then. Good-by, Lilly."
+
+When he helped her back on the sofa, and held his hand out in farewell,
+and she saw his eyes fastened on her with their candid, magnanimous
+expression, which a lie had never clouded--unsuspicious still--she was
+suddenly convinced that evasion was no longer possible.
+
+"Truth! Nothing but the truth. Even if it lead to perdition, Konrad must
+now be told the truth." The thought flooded her soul like a warm,
+soothing stream.
+
+But she could not tell him the truth face to face. Nobody would have the
+strength of will for that.
+
+The reaction did not set in until she was left alone. The impulse for
+self-preservation asserted itself. If Mrs. Jula could do it, she could,
+too. Mrs. Jula had much worse things to conceal.
+
+Richard, of course, would say nothing; which was the main consideration.
+Now that he wished to go his own way, it was to his interest for her to
+vanish decorously from his life. The rest of the "crew" might tattle to
+their heart's content. Konrad was immune against their poison. The only
+dangerous person was Dr. Salmoni. But if she went to him soon and begged
+him, he, too, would maintain silence. He had sufficiently strong motives
+for hushing his disgraceful attempt upon her. Besides, Mrs. Jula had
+said: "You must wear a smile on your brow but beneath the smile your
+brow must be of iron."
+
+Thus Lilly revolved the situation in her mind.
+
+But in the midst of her brooding and planning she was seized with
+disgust of herself and her intentions, which tore the whole tissue of
+deceit into ragged bits.
+
+Why, it was sheer folly to think she would always be able to play the
+false part. If upon the mere mention of Dr. Salmoni's name she dreaded
+appearing on the street with Konrad, how could she go through a lifetime
+at his side haunted by that ever-present fear? What repulses and
+humiliations she would have to undergo whenever Konrad led her into the
+society in which as his wife she would belong--she, whom the papers had
+taken up and treated as a rising star in the fashionable demi-monde?
+And, worst of all, if Konrad should begin to suspect! How he would eat
+his heart away in shame and abhorrence, he, with his pride and delicate
+susceptibilities and that unworldly purity which alone accounted for the
+fact that no surmise as to her real life had ever touched his soul.
+
+What an awaking from a short, torturing dream!
+
+No, she could not do what Mrs. Jula had done.
+
+And she threw far from her the shameful thought with which the stress of
+the hour had stained her wrestling soul.
+
+An exultant craving for self-annihilation came over her, the desire to
+tear her breast open and throw her throbbing heart at his feet.
+
+So she sat down and wrote:
+
+     "My dear, sweet Konni:--
+
+     I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something
+     not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is
+     a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly
+     broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of
+     marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me
+     his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for
+     years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from
+     decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them
+     form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your
+     innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire,
+     clamoured for respect.
+
+     Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my
+     kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.
+
+     Lilly."
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. Adele had gone to bed. It occurred to
+Lilly that she would have to go down to mail the letter herself.
+
+But the storm that had been impending the whole afternoon, was just then
+giving full vent to its fury. The rain was coming down in sheets, and
+gusts of wind blew through the open window across Lilly's desk.
+
+Once a shower of drops spattered the paper, at which she was staring
+with hot, dry eyes. It looked as if tears had fallen upon it while she
+was writing.
+
+"Very good," she thought.
+
+Then she felt ashamed. The time for farce was ended. But when she
+started to rewrite the letter, she stopped short with a shudder.
+
+What did those monstrous self-accusations signify? Were they the truth?
+
+Perhaps so in the mouth of a backbiting woman who needs facts about her
+friend in order to twist them into a crime, or in the mouth of one of
+those social hangmen who hold a halter in readiness for everybody's
+past.
+
+For herself, who knew how everything had come about, how from inner need
+and outer compulsion, from trustfulness and defencelessness, link after
+link of the chain had been forged which now clanked about her body, a
+burden of sin--for her there was another, a milder truth, which must win
+pardon and atonement for her in the eyes of every person who understood.
+
+She tore up the sheet, and began anew. She draughted a sketch, and
+polished it until it thoroughly satisfied her.
+
+     "My dearly beloved friend:--
+
+     She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom
+     you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until
+     to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you,
+     was at stake.
+
+     And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am
+     sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which
+     sanctified my life.
+
+     The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in
+     man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right
+     to go through life at your side.
+
+     I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core
+     of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a
+     piece of my virtue.
+
+     I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised
+     to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a
+     tool of base desires.
+
+     Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left
+     without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I
+     sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a
+     fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his
+     adventure he went to perdition.
+
+     He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his
+     care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for
+     his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent
+     upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while
+     thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I
+     was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at
+     him, I was so slavishly in his power--until now.
+
+     So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle
+     out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but
+     nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I
+     seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still
+     lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of
+     discouragement.
+
+     Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew
+     light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained
+     sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.
+
+     And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had
+     taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had
+     passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my
+     desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity.
+     These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them
+     to activity.
+
+     Even if I may not be your wife--your wife should be free of
+     stain--I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a
+     distance--wherever you tell me to go.
+
+     Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have
+     been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a
+     new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You
+     have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear,
+     tender, industrious hands.
+
+     Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again.
+     If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you
+     as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me
+     adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that
+     belongs to you unto death.
+
+     Lilly."
+
+She read and reread the letter, and read herself into a state of
+enthusiasm over it.
+
+Now the truth wore quite a different aspect.
+
+Then suddenly the question arose in her mind:
+
+"_Is_ it the truth?"
+
+Had she not luxuriated in choice words? Had she not smuggled in
+high-flown emotions foreign to her nature? Phrases like "dull night in
+which my spirit was enveloped" and "tried desperately to struggle"
+belonged in sentimental novels. They were inapplicable to her life. She
+had suffered not so much from despair as from boredom and during that
+"dull night" she had enjoyed herself greatly on many an occasion.
+Richard, the good fellow to judge by her insinuations, was a rank
+despot, and she herself a sorry, subjugated victim, whereas in reality
+she had been able to do or leave undone whatever her caprice dictated.
+
+It _was_ the truth, and yet it was not. Just as much and as little as in
+the first, dreadful letter. Each was correct enough in its way, and many
+another might have been written equally correct; but the truth, the
+genuine truth, which penetrated and illumined the whole, would appear in
+none. That truth she herself did not know, nor did anybody else. That
+truth vanished with the moment in which an event occurred, and no
+earthly power could summon it back. All that her words reflected were
+distorted images varying as her mood varied and as her pen travelled
+over the paper.
+
+"But I don't want to lie," she cried to herself. "I want to be true
+to-day."
+
+So she tore up the second letter also.
+
+What now? Should she write a third letter?
+
+It was long past midnight. Her eyes burned. Her temples throbbed with
+over-excitement, and Konrad was to hear from her by the first mail in
+the morning. She had promised him.
+
+At this point the full force of what had happened suddenly struck her.
+She realised that in the last four hours she had been face to face with
+the danger of losing him at once and forever.
+
+She was beset with an anguish of fear that threatened to rob her of her
+senses. She cried his name aloud, ran about the apartment, reeled,
+knocked against the walls, and wanted to throw herself from the window.
+
+She must go to him forthwith. That was the one idea she was capable of
+grasping. She would have the porter open the front door; she would wake
+Konrad up, force her way into his room and stay with him that night and
+forever. No matter what the consequences! It was all the same. Only to
+rid herself of that dread which burned her body like a living flame.
+
+The storm had subsided, but the rain was falling in a steady downpour.
+Lilly scarcely took the time to put on a cloak.
+
+In low shoes, without hat or umbrella, she dashed out on the street and
+splashed through the puddles.
+
+Light was shining from the two third-storey windows.
+
+She clapped her hands and cried:
+
+"Konni, Konni, Konni!"
+
+Again and again.
+
+But the windows were closed. He did not hear her.
+
+She saw his figure glide back and forth like a shadow, from one end of
+the room to the other, to and fro, to and fro, ceaselessly.
+
+And all the time the rain beat down on her, soaking through her clothes,
+while the cold wet of the pavement crawled up her legs.
+
+"Konni, Konni," she called louder.
+
+Passersby offered her their umbrellas; others taunted her, and cried,
+"Konni, Konni."
+
+At last the shadow halted. One of the windows went up.
+
+"Lilly--you?" his voice called, hoarse with fright.
+
+"At last--do come, my sweet Konni," a tipsy man, who had persistently
+held his umbrella over her, answered in her place.
+
+"For God's sake!"
+
+The light disappeared from the windows, and a few moments later Konrad
+appeared in the doorway with the front-door key and his lamp in his
+hand.
+
+The tipsy gentleman said good-by, bowing and scraping.
+
+"Lilly--what has happened? What are you doing here?"
+
+She pressed against the doorpost trembling. She was unable to speak.
+
+"I am with him," was her one thought. "So all's well."
+
+He passed his hand over her clothes.
+
+"Why, you're dripping wet. You're in house slippers. For God's sake,
+Lilly!"
+
+She wanted to say something, but was ashamed to let him see how her
+teeth were chattering.
+
+"And I can't even take you to my room. You know why. But I must. If I
+were to let you go back home again in the state you're in, you might
+catch your death of cold. We will be very careful--just as we were that
+time. We can't speak above a whisper. The girl's not out of danger yet.
+Give me your hand. Come on."
+
+With half-closed eyes she let herself be led up the stairs. Her wet
+dress flapped against the balusters. She felt she would have to crouch
+down on one of the steps and lie there until the porter came to sweep
+the dust and dirt away. But each step only took her nearer to the fate
+awaiting her up there in the third storey.
+
+Then with bent head she crept along the corridor into his room, where
+the imprisoned sultriness of the summer day suffocated her.
+
+Konrad pressed her into his desk chair. He drew off the soggy velvet
+rags from her feet, and brought her dry stockings; and after peeling her
+wet dress from her body he wrapped her in his great coat and blankets.
+
+She sat there accepting his service without a will of her own. She
+wanted to taste the delicious sensation of his loving care of her until
+the last moment.
+
+She had not said a word.
+
+When she had attempted to thank him, he pointed to the door leading to
+the next room.
+
+"Speak very low," he said, his mouth close to her ear. "The poor thing,
+it seems, is having a good night for the first time."
+
+Languid pity awoke in Lilly.
+
+But she had to talk.
+
+"What's the matter with her? Tell me," she breathed.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"My landlady swore me to silence. But you're mine now. You will keep the
+secret. Her daughter, her one child, ran away four months ago and gave
+birth to a baby. The mother went to fetch her back home. She's been
+hovering between life and death for six weeks. She's at last getting
+better."
+
+"Poor thing," said Lilly. And then the consciousness of her own misery
+came upon her with redoubled force.
+
+"Konni, Konni," she moaned on his neck. "Now it's all over. I was
+willing to starve with you, go begging with you. But what's the use?
+When once you know everything--"
+
+"That can't be so very bad, darling."
+
+"About me. About my life--my past."
+
+With a little jerk he freed himself and sat down opposite her.
+
+The look of questioning and terrified presentiment that congealed his
+pale face, seeming to turn it into a mask, filled her with fright, such
+fright as she had never experienced, because it was not on her own
+behalf; she was afraid of converting her own pain into his pain.
+
+"I wanted to write it to you--just the way it was, but I couldn't. It
+turned out wrong while I wrote. So I came to you before morning. If you
+want, I will tell you now--everything--"
+
+She could not continue. She turned her face aside and buried it on the
+desk.
+
+"Why don't you speak?"
+
+Konrad had quite forgotten the need for quiet, and both of them shrank
+at the sudden sound of his voice. "She's probably asleep," he said
+lowering his voice again. "Now tell me! What can it be?"
+
+He breathed heavily under the growing oppression of his soul.
+
+She began to speak. In a whisper, her upper body inclined toward him,
+she tried to tell him the things for which she had not been able to find
+words in her own home.
+
+The truth did not come out this time either. She felt it.
+
+Less, much less of it, than her letters would have given him. To
+distress him with every detail--never! No power in the world could have
+driven her to that.
+
+Her life became a long list of martyrdoms--a funeral procession draped
+in black--insults, humiliations, mortifications--an imprisonment without
+a ray of light or mercy--and all the time a constant struggle for
+deliverance--a noble withdrawal into herself--a dismal sacrifice for
+nothing.
+
+She talked and talked.
+
+He listened, with wide-open eyes. But when she uttered the name she had
+no right to omit, "Dr. Salmoni," he started and shrank back.
+
+Both of them had completely forgotten the sick girl in the next room.
+
+Sometimes Lilly had to wipe tears away, sometimes she grew indignant;
+now she ventured to glide by difficult points, now she lingered over
+touching self-reproaches.
+
+"It _is_ the truth after all," she said to herself defiantly, yet in
+fear, as she drew near the end of her narrative.
+
+It was the truth in so far as it was a résumé of the good in her, the
+truth as it might take shape in his troubled mind, regardless of
+fact--and this truth, too, had its rights.
+
+Silence ensued.
+
+Her guilty look glided past him and rested on the photograph on the
+desk, which leered at her with its crafty, worldly eyes, as if to say:
+
+"My child, I know you much better than you do yourself."
+
+Something familiar and confidential lay in them, like a reflection of
+the merry world which a moment ago had seemed to her the abode of
+torture.
+
+She did not venture to remove her gaze from those omniscient eyes, which
+smilingly examined and disrobed her, and killed her last shy hope.
+
+The unbroken silence in the room became a burden.
+
+Suddenly Konrad and Lilly heard a low moan. It came from the next room,
+where the sick girl lay, who, because of her secret sin, had been
+wrestling with her poor life for weeks. The next instant the sound was
+partially stifled, as if she had stuck a handkerchief into her mouth.
+Then it broke out again all the more violently. Anxious words of comfort
+mingled with the groans. They came from the mother, who probably slept
+in the farther room, and had come in to find out the cause of her
+daughter's outburst of grief.
+
+Konrad's and Lilly's eyes met.
+
+"She heard everything," their look said.
+
+For a brief instant the stranger's unhappiness caused them to forget
+their own. The great flood of the world's suffering poured over them
+easing the sting of guilt and drowning their personal pain.
+
+The sobbing in the next room was muffled under pillows.
+
+"My own darling," the comforting voice implored, and each tone swelled
+with love. "Don't worry. It isn't so bad. We will take the little baby.
+Even if he doesn't marry you, what difference does it make? Think of it,
+we have the baby! And then it will smile at you and say mama. You see,
+it isn't so dreadful."
+
+The sobbing quieted down, and turned into a heavy breathing, the first
+earnest of peace.
+
+"Oh," thought Lilly, "it must be good to have someone say: 'It's not so
+dreadful.'"
+
+Nobody would say that to her.
+
+A burning desire to be petted and comforted, like the young sinner next
+door, arose in her.
+
+"She has her mother," she groaned, bursting into tears, "but whom have
+I?"
+
+Konrad leaned over and took her hands from her face. His troubled eyes
+shone with such infinite loving kindness that they seemed not to be of
+this world.
+
+"Am I not here?" he asked.
+
+"What can you do for me?" she complained. "How can you bear me?"
+
+There were no sounds from the other room any more.
+
+Now the mother also knew that Konrad had a visitor at that late hour.
+
+"Listen," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear again. "We mustn't
+talk much more. Besides, my head's in a whirl. But there's one thing I
+see clearly: how ridiculous everything called guilt is when two people
+love each other, and when one has suffered like you. You have always
+been a saint to me, and you shall--continue to be in the future."
+
+"Future," Lilly faltered, starting up anxiously, "what sort of a
+future?"
+
+He wiped his forehead, yellow and dank with sweat.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "All I know is I can't live without you."
+
+She closed her eyes. She wanted to dream longer.
+
+"To be sure, it cannot be what we wanted." She noticed the hesitating,
+dragging gait of his speech. "Everything, of course--will have to be
+different."
+
+"Your life must not be different--it ought not to be different."
+
+"You can't blink facts, darling. Of course, I don't know _where_ we will
+live. But we'll manage to find some spot on the globe where nobody knows
+us."
+
+Now she understood.
+
+And forgetting herself and the sick girl and everything around she sank
+down at his feet with a cry and sobbed:
+
+"I don't want you to--you mustn't. You're entirely too young. You don't
+know the world. You don't know what you're doing. I don't want the
+sacrifice. I don't want to ruin you. I love you too much for that."
+
+He bent her head back and stroked her hair from her forehead.
+
+If only his eyes had not shone with that suffering loving kindness.
+
+The unhappiness of a lifetime already glowed in them.
+
+"If the question of sacrifice enters," he said, "then _I_ must ask a
+sacrifice of _you_. Will you make it for my sake?"
+
+"Everything, everything! Shall I die? Tell me."
+
+"I want only one thing of you. Come to me as you are. Don't bring a
+single possession of yours with you. Never return, not once, to your--to
+that apartment. From this moment on nothing of all that is to be. Will
+you promise me?"
+
+Lilly battled against violent alarm.
+
+Not to return home! Never to see her dear drawing-room again; never to
+feed the little canary or Peter--never!
+
+An ugly feeling, that such a sacrifice was rank folly, came and went
+again, as if a daub of dirt had been flung upon her, and immediately
+been wiped away. Then she decided hastily, and replied:
+
+"Yes, I promise."
+
+He drew a deep breath.
+
+"Now we will be perfectly quiet," he said. "The patient ought to sleep,
+and to-morrow morning I'll explain the matter to my landlady."
+
+"But what is to become of your great work?" Lilly asked, self-reproach
+rising up in her again.
+
+A melancholy smile passed over his face.
+
+"Who knows? That will depend upon my uncle. If he gives his consent, we
+can live as we please. Everything will be all right."
+
+"But if he doesn't?"
+
+Konrad's right hand, which had been gliding ceaselessly from her
+forehead to the nape of her neck, for an instant pressed her head
+painfully as if to fetch strength for the approaching life struggle from
+closer contact.
+
+"That will be all right, too," he said and smiled again.
+
+A little while later she lay at his side in the narrow bed, the edge of
+which cut her body. She put her head under his shoulder, and with both
+arms clasped his body, as always in her distress when she sought
+protection with him.
+
+
+But this time she slept, and he kept watch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Mrs. Laue was not a little astonished when one day her former tenant,
+the _grande dame_, appeared at her door in an ill-fitting alpaca suit
+and a sailor hat, trimmed with a green band, begging for admittance.
+
+The young lady tenant of the year had just been married, and the best
+room was vacant.
+
+Thus, it came about that Mrs. Laue's red plush furniture once more cast
+a fiery glow upon Lilly's life.
+
+The photographs of famous mimes smirked upon her patronisingly. And
+while performing her morning toilet, she was admonished:
+
+    To keep your body clean, be sure
+    To have your conscience just as pure.
+
+The way Konrad looked out for her was touching. He instantly drew all
+his money from the bank, five hundred marks, and himself went to buy an
+outfit for her, since she could not appear on the street in the garments
+she had worn when she had come to him.
+
+He had let the salesladies persuade him into buying the absurdest
+things. Lilly would have split her sides laughing over them, if they had
+not represented a goodly portion of his money.
+
+The shoddy dress struck her as a temporary masquerade; and nothing in
+the world would have induced her to wear it outside the house.
+
+Mrs. Laue shook her head dubiously.
+
+"When you moved away from here four years ago, you had the finest gowns
+and brooches and bracelets and all sorts of things; and now you come
+back in rags. It seems to me you're on the wrong road, Lilly dear."
+
+Konrad found as little favour in Mrs. Laue's eyes.
+
+"He's too young for you, and not stylish enough. Maybe he has ideal
+sentiments--if he hadn't he would snap his fingers at you. But I tell
+you, ideal sentiments always go hand in hand with trouble."
+
+Lilly thought the old woman's chatter abominable. But for lack of
+something better to do during the daytime--Konrad was busy and could not
+come until evening--she again took to pasting flowers in Mrs. Laue's
+company. Occasionally it seemed to her she had never gone away from her.
+
+Lilly had written to Adele the very first day, without, of course,
+mentioning her address. She told her not to be troubled by her absence,
+and to attend to the apartment as usual until Mr. Dehnicke's return.
+
+It was more difficult to pen her farewell to her old friend. She said
+nothing of Konrad. For the present her engagement was to be kept a
+secret. She gave as the sole cause for her flight her irresistible
+desire at last to live a different life. She also referred to her wish
+not to stand in the way of his future, and wound up with cordial words,
+which robbed separation of its bitterness.
+
+When she read the letter over, she felt a genuine pang, at which she was
+a bit ashamed.
+
+The days passed.
+
+The new life that had been the dream of her dreams for years had begun,
+freighted with boundless confidence, such as she had not ventured to
+hope for in her wildest fancyings.
+
+With her sins washed away, redeemed, reborn, she stepped back into
+virtuous society at the side of the beloved man, whom only a few days
+before, it would have been arrogance, sacrilege to wish to possess.
+
+Who would have believed it?
+
+And yet Lilly was unable to attain to perfect enjoyment of her
+unspeakable happiness.
+
+No matter how often she told herself it was nothing but a transition
+period, soon to pass, the misery of her old quarters, the poor-peoples'
+odour, the spiritual mustiness that pervaded the place, bad food, the
+lack of suitable clothes, money and service, all this worked upon her
+sufficiently to delude her into the belief that instead of rising to new
+honours, she was suddenly sinking from splendour and brilliance to a
+dull, dead level.
+
+No matter that she found fault with herself for this ungrateful frame of
+mind, the fact was, the feeling was there, and she could not dismiss it.
+
+And how account for it that five years before when she had descended
+from the genuine heights of life, delicately nurtured, a spoiled
+darling, accustomed to luxury and attention, such as is granted to few
+persons in the world, she had scarcely suffered from the wretchedness of
+these surroundings? In fact, though utterly without prospects, she had
+felt tolerably secure. But now that the idle comfort of a vapid
+existence fortunately lay behind her, and her beloved walked by her side
+ready to throw open the gates to a happiness she had never divined, she
+was unable to breathe among the red plush chairs. Trifles annoyed her,
+and she hankered for a bathroom and a hairdresser.
+
+Something must have departed from her during those years. She thought
+and thought, but failed to discover what it was.
+
+Added to all these troubles was her worry over Konrad's condition.
+
+Whenever her soul conjured up his image, her heart throbbed with mingled
+sensations--secret pangs of conscience, longings for atonement,
+reproaches, not to be stilled, of herself and--why conceal it?--of
+Konrad also.
+
+Her yearning for him no longer had a quality of joyousness; and yet, she
+was ever expectant of a letter from him by the pneumatic tube.
+
+If he wrote, he said too little; and if he sent no message at all she
+felt angry, though she well knew he had not a second to spare for her
+during the day, and was drudging as never before in his life.
+
+He would come at last between eight and nine in the evening; and then
+loaded with papers and books. He had manuscripts to read, proofs to look
+over, and letters to answer. He scarcely took time to eat, and while he
+snatched a few bites, troubled recollections of things he had forgotten
+during the day kept flashing up in his harassed brain.
+
+There was no thought of amorous nights. As a rule Konrad fell asleep in
+the midst of work.
+
+As he reclined there in the corner of the sofa, Lilly could appreciate
+how tired and worn he was. He no longer cared for his person. His
+clothes hung on him impressed, and in place of the velvety sheen on his
+cheeks, which had been her delight, she saw dark boils and coarse
+stubble.
+
+She would have given a great deal to learn what he thought of her in the
+depths of his soul. But she could extract nothing from him. He remained
+mute, with glowing eyes, and lips tightly compressed.
+
+Certainly she had no right to doubt him. She knew that he spent every
+spare minute trying to arrange for their life in the future.
+
+In Buenos Ayres the position of a high school teacher of German was
+vacant; the same in Caracas; and he could even become a university
+professor, though of course on the other side of the Atlantic. All he
+needed to do was present a few letters of recommendation from well-known
+professors.
+
+Such efforts, however, were necessary only in case his uncle refused his
+consent to Konrad's marriage with Lilly, and dropped his disobedient
+heir.
+
+If he said yes, if he furnished the means for their household, they
+could live aloof from the world wherever they wished, wherever
+conditions were best adapted for the precious work.
+
+Konrad had immediately written to his uncle about his engagement, and
+told of Lilly's past in the most touching words. He had not concealed
+the stains on her life, but he brought out strongly her fine qualities,
+the virginity of her soul, her nobility, her rich intellectual
+endowments, the number of her ideal interests.
+
+After he had sent off the letter, he read to Lilly a few passages from
+the draught of it. It was a bold document of revolutionary ideas.
+
+"I know that _I_ and you, too, are raised above the narrow conventions
+of philistinism, above the merciless judgments of social court-martials,
+above a Pharisaism which constitutes itself the watchdog of morality,
+and which with its code of formal, pedantic family relationships knocks
+to the ground all aspirations for free, high-minded conduct. You have
+lived in many parts of the world, and you have learned to know how
+mutable moral laws are everywhere, how hollow the pretence of regarding
+each as the sole God-ordained dogma, you know the sly, hypocritical
+paths and by-ways by which one manages to escape their tyranny, and you
+know that in the province of ethics there is only one thing which
+commands respect and admiration: the will to _kallokagathia_, to that
+form of life in which the noblemen of all times combined the beautiful
+with the good. Yes, beautiful and good. That is what Lilly is, her
+aspirations, and sufferings."
+
+How glorious!
+
+Who could be dull enough to resist such words?
+
+That is what Lilly said to comfort Konrad when uncertainty as to the
+immediate future weighed upon him heavily.
+
+Five days passed before the answer came upon which depended the weal or
+woe of two human beings.
+
+In reading it, Lilly saw the crafty eyes of the photograph turned upon
+her as if the old man stood there in person.
+
+     "My dear boy:--
+
+     I don't understand anything about _kallokagathia_ or similar
+     phrases. It's nearly half a century ago, since I ran away from
+     school. But I flatter myself that I can measure things pretty
+     accurately with my eyes, and size people up by their faces,
+     whether striking a bargain or on the Yoshiwara, whether on the
+     various exchanges or at baccarat. Which did not keep me from
+     being fleeced, or my life from being a series of stupidities,
+     especially in regard to women. Once I wanted, whether or no, to
+     bring along a young Circassian, because her eyebrows met
+     prettily; and once I wanted to marry a little Musme because she
+     massaged my legs so well, etc. I won't say anything of my
+     various attempts to save souls, because everybody goes through
+     that.
+
+     However, the god of old rogues and bachelors--perhaps with your
+     classical knowledge you can tell me his name--mercifully kept
+     any of my plans from maturing.
+
+     But your case seems to be essentially different. If it's really
+     as you say, if your betrothed is really such a paragon of
+     virtues--the world is full of surprises--and, chief of all, if
+     she does not pose as a repentant Magdalene and bank upon your
+     pity, it will be a pleasure to me to tweak Mr. Respectability's
+     nose and give you my cordial blessing.
+
+     But if your intentions bear a certain family resemblance to my
+     own in the past, then pardon me if I refuse to shoulder the
+     responsibility for what you are pleased to call your "future,"
+     even with this in view, and if I feel compelled to beg you
+     kindly to break off your connections with me.
+
+     In order to settle the matter to the best of my ability, I will
+     be in Berlin day after to-morrow; and I herewith ask you and
+     your betrothed to keep the evening free for your old uncle. As
+     I do not know where you metropolitans dine and drink, I will
+     have to let you know the place of our meeting after I reach
+     Berlin.
+
+     Until then,
+
+     Yours faithfully,
+     Uncle Rennschmidt."
+
+For the first time in that gloomy period Lilly saw Konrad's face relax
+with a smile of relief.
+
+"If that's his attitude, then there's no danger," he said. "He will have
+to drop his distrust at the very first glance. Who in the world can
+withstand you? You just have to be a little pleasant to him, and he'll
+be your adorer."
+
+But Lilly had her private opinion.
+
+Yes, if she had her former wardrobe to choose from, perhaps she might
+be sure of presenting the appearance she should to his uncle. But in
+either one of her two ridiculous shop-girl dresses, which she had to pin
+painstakingly before she could wear them, without jewellery, or the
+thousand little appurtenances of a fine toilet, from where, in such
+circumstances, was she to summon the self-confidence that would force
+the shrewd old woman connoisseur to capitulate?
+
+"I'm afraid I'll have to have some of your money for getting an evening
+costume," she said hesitatingly.
+
+He acquiesced with pleasure. She was to have whatever she still needed,
+and a hat with plumes and a lace mantilla, just like the one she had
+had.
+
+All this for two hundred and sixty marks.
+
+This, the entire sum he had left, was what he handed over to her for her
+new purchases.
+
+The dear boy, what sort of an idea did he have of fashionable dressing?
+
+After he left she carefully considered ways and means.
+
+While she wore herself out devising methods of patching up some sort of
+costume, the most glorious dresses hung by the dozens in her old
+closets, dresses which Konrad had not seen, because he had never gone to
+any festive gathering with her. The lace mantilla which had cost a small
+fortune was also there, and goodness knows what else!
+
+But with all her might she cast the temptation from her. She had given
+him her word of honour.
+
+She might deceive everybody else in the world, but not Konrad.
+
+So she decided to go on a shopping expedition the next morning and see
+whether she could not ferret out a good garment at Gerson's or
+Wertheim's in the reduced stock.
+
+But she was known in the shops, and the salespeople had had the
+experience that despite her economy she always bought nothing but the
+very best. How they would stare if she appeared at the counter in her
+tawdry trash.
+
+No, with the best intentions she could not place herself in so
+distressing a situation.
+
+She pondered a long time, but her thoughts kept returning to those
+wardrobes where her exquisite treasures reposed, and silently offered a
+wide choice.
+
+But nowhere a little back door to slip through; nowhere a pretext for
+lessening the gravity of the offence.
+
+Despite all these vexations, the night passed in caressing dreams,
+lighted by newly arisen hope.
+
+And as always when Lilly's frame of mind in sleep was healthy, she felt
+she was being peacefully rocked to the rhythm of familiar melodies. She
+recognised the "Moonlight Sonata," and Grieg's "Ung Birken," and the
+motifs of the Rhine Daughters, and mingling with them all the Song of
+Songs.
+
+As she was coming out of her sleep in the morning, she still heard:
+"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field."
+
+Suddenly with an exclamation of fright she sat up in bed.
+
+The Song of Songs--the score--her treasure--her legacy--where was it? In
+the drawing-room secrétaire--buried, forgotten.
+
+Not to have thought of it once!
+
+Now there was no possibility of abiding by her promise. If she had kept
+her wits about her that momentous night, she would never have given it.
+
+She had been at a loss for a pretext, and here she had a justification.
+
+She did not experience the slightest pangs of conscience. It was a
+sacred cause that she was upholding.
+
+By eight o'clock she was already on her way to her former home.
+
+The sunny haze of the red August morning floated up to the
+violet-coloured heavens; sooty drops fell from the yellowing trees, and
+the wires of the electric trams sang their stormy song.
+
+Lilly joined the group of people at the nearest stopping place, which
+from minute to minute waxed and dwindled. While waiting for a car to
+convey her to the distant west side, she looked about in all directions
+to see whether by chance Konrad was coming down the street.
+
+In the car she sat with a newspaper held close to her face, and on the
+short path along the canal she slipped from tree to tree like a wild
+animal seeking cover.
+
+At last she reached her house.
+
+The porter, who was sweeping the front, greeted her with a shout of
+surprise. The green-grocer smiled a mischievous greeting up to her from
+his cellar door, and his two urchins, in whose mind Lilly was connected
+with sweets, hung to her skirt with happy little noises.
+
+All this instantly produced a sensation of returning home.
+
+Adele was still asleep. Why should she not be? She had nothing to do.
+
+When she opened the door, she showed the greatest delight. She even wept
+great tears, and Lilly suddenly realised what she was losing in her.
+
+Everything shone spick and span in the morning sunlight. Even the
+flowers had been kept watered.
+
+The canary beat his wings by way of greeting, and Peter wanted to break
+the bars of his cage to reach Lilly's shoulder.
+
+She did not know to whom or to what to turn first from sheer love, nor
+what question to ask first.
+
+Three letters and two telegrams lay on the card tray.
+
+The letters were in Richard's writing. The telegrams were directed to
+Adele and urgently inquired for Lilly's address.
+
+But after sending these missives, Mr. Dehnicke, Adele informed her, had
+given up his affairs in Harzburg and returned to Berlin. He had inserted
+advertisements for her in the papers, and came every day at the usual
+hour to find out if they had met with success. Then he sat on his
+customary seat, very quiet, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes until
+the time for returning to his office.
+
+"Did you tell him about Dr. Rennschmidt?"
+
+"What do you think of me, Mrs. Czepanek? Do you suppose I don't know how
+to look out for my mistress's honour? But the best thing would be if you
+were to come back and behave as if nothing had happened. That's what all
+my ladies used to do."
+
+Lilly asked her to fetch from the basement the smaller of the two
+leather trunks, explaining that she wished to take a few of her old
+possessions with her.
+
+After Adele had swung herself out of the room sulking, Lilly gathered up
+Konrad's letters from the secret drawer in which she had hidden them,
+and then ran hastily to her large wardrobe, from which she pulled out
+all her dresses and threw them on the bed in order to select whatever
+might be of use to her.
+
+At last the Song of Songs occurred to her.
+
+She opened the secrétaire.
+
+The score, which had dreamed away its aimless existence for years in
+the back part of the lowest drawer, had acquired a strange aspect.
+
+The rubber band about it was sticky, and fell to bits when Lilly wanted
+to undo the roll.
+
+The sheets glided from her hand and flew over the carpet one by one.
+
+There they all lay--the arias and recitatives, the duos and orchestral
+interludes--mingled and confused, and on top the turtle dove solo for
+the clarionet, which she had sung with her mother while still a lisping
+babe.
+
+She looked at the scattered leaves in dismay.
+
+They had turned yellow and mouldy. Many of them were plastered with
+blood, her own blood, which had squirted from the knife wound her mother
+had inflicted, and covered large spots with black and reddish brown
+stains. Some of the stains had been eaten into holes, the work of the
+mice at Lischnitz.
+
+So there it was--her Song of Songs.
+
+Nevermore any hope. No rock of salvation for the future--no faithful
+Eckhardt in life's stress, and no guide to golden heights! A mere
+weather-beaten remnant, worn, though unused, honourable ballast which
+one drags along for unknown reasons--a light extinguished, a piece of
+wisdom without sense.
+
+Shrugging her shoulders, she kneeled on the floor, and gathered up the
+thin rolls hastily, without regard for their order.
+
+"I can arrange them some other time," she thought, though a faint doubt
+arose within her whether she ever would.
+
+Adele came with the trunk. It had taken her an extraordinary length of
+time. She replied to Lilly's questions in a confused way, and glanced at
+the clock furtively.
+
+She opened the trunk lid, and Lilly threw the score on the bottom.
+
+The empty open trunk was like a mouth gaping for fodder. The clothes lay
+spread on the bed. Her shoes stood next to the washstand. Hats, veils,
+blouses, lace mantillas, silk petticoats--all waited and seemed to cry:
+
+"Take me along."
+
+For an instant Lilly closed her eyes and groaned, remembering the
+sacrifice, the only one, he demanded of her.
+
+But it had to be.
+
+Both his and her future depended on it.
+
+"Mrs. Laue will hide them for me, and she can keep them afterwards," she
+thought.
+
+She made her decision. Blindly she gathered up whatever her hands fell
+upon--in addition to her dresses the ivory toilet articles with the
+seven pointed coronet, the triple hand mirror, the powder box, the
+receipt for her furs in the storage house, and numberless little _objets
+de luxe_.
+
+She did not forget her jewellery either.
+
+"In case _he_ needs some money," she thought.
+
+She sent Adele to order a cab. This time again it was an eternity before
+she returned.
+
+The porter helped carry the trunk down, and two hat boxes dangled in
+Adele's free hand.
+
+One more caress of the canary's greyish green wings, one more kiss on
+the monkey's velvety snout, then the door closed behind her forever.
+
+"Won't you leave an address?"
+
+What a secretive air Adele wore!
+
+"I will write to you, Adele, and sometime, I hope, you will come to me
+again."
+
+Adele did not respond, but looked down the street expectantly.
+
+A minute later Lilly, glancing from the hansom window as she was being
+driven along the canal, saw a taxicab whizz past from the opposite
+direction. In that second she recognised Richard seated inside.
+
+Red as a lobster, his head inclined to one side, he stared ahead of him
+with wild, searching eyes at the house she had just left.
+
+She hastily told the coachman to turn down a side street. She must not
+meet Richard until her fate had been decided before the world.
+
+But in a few moments, her heart throbbing, she heard behind her the
+rattle and clatter that had just died down in the distance. It grew
+louder and louder.
+
+The yellow wall of the taxicab shot by, turned about suddenly, and
+stopped. A man's voice called to Lilly's driver, and her cab was also
+brought to a stop.
+
+Richard was standing close to her, holding the open door in his
+trembling hand.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+His voice shrilled in a feminine falsetto. His Adam's apple rose and
+fell convulsively over his high collar.
+
+Lilly felt quite calm, quite equal to the situation.
+
+He who had so long been her lord and master now seemed like a poor,
+helpless shadow.
+
+"If you please, Richard, let me ride on," she said. "I took leave of you
+in my letter. I just came to fetch a few of my things, and now all's
+over between us. Why should we go on tormenting each other?"
+
+"Come back!" he hissed.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Come back, I say! You know where your home is. I won't let you stray
+about in the world any more. Heaven knows what may happen to you.
+Driver, turn back."
+
+The coachman turned his russet face inquiringly to the lady in the
+hansom.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Richard. I have the sole say as to this cab--and as
+to my future life, too. Just as you have had over your own."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense! I suppose you're alluding to the American heiress.
+She can go to the devil for all I care. That's the way I've felt for
+some time. But you--_must--come--back. You--must--come--back.
+You--must--you--must_."
+
+He grasped the hem of her skirt with both hands, as if to drag her from
+the carriage by her clothes.
+
+"I beg you to come back--I can't sleep--I can't work--I'm so used to
+you. If I had married, I should have come to you directly after the
+wedding. Our relationship wouldn't have changed an iota. And everything
+in your apartment is just as you left it. You saw it. Adele says Peter
+won't eat, and Adele herself is worried. She says she simply can't do
+without you. I'll give you a life-long annuity of twenty--by God! thirty
+thousand marks a year. What's the difference? Mother hasn't anything
+against it. She sees how I take it. She knows I won't ever marry after
+all. She'll never do anything to you again. You can come to the office,
+too. You can use our carriage instead of the hired one. I'll have a
+telephone put up between your apartment and the stable. And if you want
+I'll buy an automobile a thousand times finer than this one."
+
+That was the highest trump. No one could outbid an automobile. So he
+stopped to see the effect. Kneeling on the steps he leaned far into the
+hansom and stared into her face.
+
+Lilly realised she could not free herself from him, unless he learned
+the truth.
+
+She felt very sorry for him, but it had to be.
+
+"Listen, Richard! What you offer doesn't count with me anymore. Because
+I love another man--who wants to give me much more than you."
+
+"What! I'd like to know what sort of a young Vanderbilt he is!" he cried
+in jealous scorn. "Why, I never knew _that_ side of your nature."
+
+"He's not a young Vanderbilt, Richard. On the contrary, he's so poor he
+doesn't know where he'll get his bread from day to day. But I am engaged
+to him, and as his affianced I will have to ask you to stand out of my
+way."
+
+His mouth gaped. His eyes grew large and round. He reeled back against
+the hindwheels of the taxicab.
+
+"Go on!" Lilly cried to the coachman.
+
+She leaned back in her seat, drawing a deep breath of relief, though
+with a faint consciousness of guilt, as if she had rid herself of her
+old lover too lightly.
+
+Throughout the ride she heard back of her the chug-chug of a slow-moving
+automobile; and when she descended from her hansom, Richard descended
+from the taxicab, at a slight distance, though near enough for Lilly to
+catch the look in his eyes.
+
+It was the look of a whipped dog.
+
+As if someone were pursuing her, she ran up the four flights without
+concerning herself about the trunk. But a little while later the driver
+came panting up the stairs with it, apparently of his own accord.
+
+When she held out the money to him, he refused it.
+
+The gentleman downstairs, he said, had already paid for everything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was the evening of the following day.
+
+The carriage that was taking Lilly to the dreaded meeting stopped in
+front of the renowned Linden restaurant which has been the resort of
+elegant folk for years.
+
+Although it was some time since Lilly had been there, she knew every
+stone of it.
+
+She knew Albert, too, the tall, dignified porter, who stood in the
+doorway, and put his hand to his braided cap. It was he who had acted as
+the go-between for her and the handsome hussar of the guards.
+
+With downcast eyes, pressing close to Konrad, she passed by him, hoping
+he no longer remembered her.
+
+"This is Lilly, uncle."
+
+An old bow-legged gentleman, slightly under medium size in an
+ill-fitting jacket and crumpled collar, came shambling out of a back
+room, and held out a broad, fleshy hand, the brown skin of which played
+loosely over his bones like a large glove.
+
+Lilly threw a timid glance of scrutiny at the all-powerful person, whom
+she had pictured to herself as a commanding yet complaisant thunderer.
+In reality he was a tottering, rotund, somewhat common-looking gnome.
+
+When she told herself that her conduct now and during the next hour
+would decide Konrad's and her own future, the old miserable timidity,
+which had not troubled her for some time past, began to paralyse her
+muscles and turned her into a doll, which smiled inanely and could not
+tell its own name.
+
+But the old uncle also seemed to have lost his power of speech.
+
+He looked her up and down repeatedly and well-nigh forgot to invite her
+to enter the back room.
+
+As with everything else about the place Lilly was familiar with this
+back room, its pressed leather walls, its red silk hangings, and the
+blue oriental rugs over the high-armed sofa.
+
+In the period when Richard was still possessed of the ambition to belong
+to the aristocracy of high livers, she had spent many a mad hour there
+late at night with him and his chance friends.
+
+An immaculate waiter helped her off with her brocade jacket and lace
+mantilla, and looked at her the while as if to say:
+
+"I ought to know you."
+
+Oh, that was a moment of agony.
+
+The uncle, who had not ceased furtively to cast awed yet sullen glances
+at Lilly, pulled himself together and said:
+
+"Well, let's have a cosy time together, children. Nice and pleasant,
+eh?"
+
+Lilly inclined her head.
+
+Her gesture was stiff enough apparently to increase the bow-legged old
+gentleman's respect. He seemed to be at a loss, and tramped about the
+room, played with the gold knobs which hung as a charm from his watch
+pocket, and two or three times nodded his solemn appreciation to Konrad.
+
+They seated themselves at the gleaming white table, resplendent with
+flowers and cut glass.
+
+About the bronze lamp--Lilly remembered it with its claws and slim lily
+design--hung a veil of violet orchids, which had surely cost an enormous
+sum.
+
+He knew how to live, the old untidy rogue. One had to admit that.
+
+Lilly saw her reflection in the mirror opposite her seat. It was
+reassuringly aristocratic.
+
+She had chosen a pleated dress of black Liberty silk with a waist of
+Chantilly lace, which despite its costliness lay in simple lines of
+grace about her breast and arms.
+
+Unsuspecting spirits might believe that a similar costume was to be had
+everywhere from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, from Cape Town to
+Christiania for two hundred marks.
+
+She had wisely refrained from wearing any jewellery, except the thin
+gold chain which she was wont to wear next to her skin. It encircled her
+high collar in maidenly modesty.
+
+She looked like a young noblewoman who has been held in strict
+seclusion, and who is taking her first look into the great world with
+shy, inquiring eyes.
+
+His uncle had assigned the seat on her right side to Konrad, and kept
+the place nearest the door for himself.
+
+The instant he took his seat at table he began to feel somewhat in his
+element.
+
+He uttered hoarse ejaculations and gave orders and was dissatisfied with
+everything.
+
+"See here, boy," he said to the waiter, who was placing the
+_hors-d'oeuvres_ on the table, "do you call that the right kind of a
+carafe for port wine? Don't you know that if port wine doesn't sparkle
+in the carafe, it takes away your thirst?"
+
+The waiter, intimidated by his snarling, wanted to go off in search of
+another carafe, but Mr. Rennschmidt declared he could not wait, he
+needed a "starter."
+
+"I'm still a little constrained," he said apologetically. "I'm not
+accustomed to associating with such beautiful and ungracious ladies."
+
+Lilly felt a prick at her heart.
+
+She met a reproachful look from her lover, which seemed to say:
+
+"You mustn't be so dumb. You must be agreeable to him."
+
+In the same mute language Lilly humbly implored his forgiveness.
+
+"I can't. You speak for me."
+
+In his anxiety Konrad began to converse as if he had been paid for
+entertaining them. He described the collection of antiques in his
+uncle's castle on the Rhine, touched upon the competition of the
+Americans, and, passing on to the subject of art in Italy, discussed the
+harmful effects of the Lex Pacca, and goodness knows what else.
+
+It was a highly illuminating little discourse, which his uncle seemed to
+follow with moderate interest, while squinting at Lilly and smacking his
+lips from time to time over a piece of canned tunny. Then Mr.
+Rennschmidt said:
+
+"All very true and edifying, my son. But couldn't you also impart some
+valuable information as to the state of the whiskey in this place?"
+
+Konrad jumped up to pull the bell rope, but his uncle restrained him.
+
+"Stop--stop--stop. This is my affair.... Here's the port for you....
+After all a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, even if she belongs to
+others. Here's to you, beautiful woman."
+
+That sounded like mockery. Did he wish to make sport of her before
+repulsing her?
+
+"In fact," he continued, addressing Lilly, "permit me to congratulate
+you. You've already worked a perceptible change in him. I see he already
+dances beautifully to your tune, eh?"
+
+Whether or no, she had to say something in reply.
+
+"I don't play tunes, and he doesn't dance," she said, making a mighty
+effort to pull herself together. "We're not free enough for that."
+
+"Aha, there's one straight from the shoulder for me," he laughed, but
+his laugh sounded resentful.
+
+"Lilly didn't mean any harm," Konrad interjected, coming to her rescue.
+"And really, we are not having an easy time of it. If Lilly hadn't
+helped me every day with her sweet comprehension, I don't think my
+strength would have held out."
+
+"All very well and good--or--or, or all very deplorable. But your old
+uncle hasn't gotten even a look from her--as advance payment on our
+future relationship."
+
+"Oh, if that's all," thought Lilly.
+
+And raising her glass to touch his, she tried to thank him for his
+having come around with a little coquettish shamefaced smile.
+
+It filled him with evident satisfaction. He twisted his pointed beard
+and ogled her confidentially with his leering eyes as if to extract from
+her a sign of secret understanding.
+
+"Thank goodness! Maybe he's not so dreadful after all," she thought. She
+drew a breath of relief as she felt the chains of her embarrassment
+loosening a bit.
+
+When the waiter returned, a grave discussion arose between him and Mr.
+Rennschmidt as to the brands of whiskey the hotel had to offer. It was a
+long parley and debate, ending in a call for the hotel-keeper himself,
+who went down into the cellar to hunt up a bottle he thought he must
+have somewhere with the label of a certain famous house and the date of
+a certain famous year.
+
+At length Mr. Rennschmidt was ready again to bestow his attention upon
+his beautiful niece to be.
+
+"I'm a sort of barnswallow. I built my nest of mud and such stuff. I
+traded in guano, train-oil, Australian blennies, pitch, and other more
+or less unclean things. So you can't blame me for wishing to recuperate
+by devoting myself to appetizing objects, such as you, my ungracious
+lady. All I wish is a little attention in return."
+
+"Oh dear," thought Lilly. "I'll be impertinent for once." So she said:
+"Mr. Rennschmidt, you know I'm sitting here like a poor, trembling
+student going up for the examinations. I beg of you"--she raised her
+clasped hands--"don't play with me like a cat with a mouse."
+
+She had struck the right note.
+
+"Is she opening her mouth at last?" he cried beaming. "And she has a
+wonderful little snout, Konrad, one of those mice snouts with long
+teeth, in which the upper lip says to the lower lip, 'If you don't come
+and kiss, I'll run away.' Isn't it so, Konrad, you stupid fellow, eh?"
+
+Lilly had to laugh heartily, and the _entente cordiale_ was finally
+concluded.
+
+And for a moment Konrad's dear tired face brightened with a smile of
+reassurance which expanded her heart as with a heaven-sent reward. She
+loved him so dearly she could have thrown herself at his uncle's feet
+for his sake. With a rising sense of triumph she thought:
+
+"_Now_ he shall see how agreeable I can be to that old horror."
+
+And indeed to make herself agreeable proved to be not so very excessive
+a task. When she looked at the old man with his round, crumpled roguish
+face, his darting, sly little grey eyes, and the fine, wavy, snow-white
+diplomat's wig--it actually was a wig, sharply defined on his forehead
+and brushed forward into locks over his ears--she felt more and more
+strongly that he was an old acquaintance with whom she had many a time
+played pranks and to whom the recollection of those pranks secretly
+bound her.
+
+Yet, surely, she had never met him before.
+
+Despite his proletarian exterior his assured manner breathed an air of
+gentlemanliness. And the way he constructed the menu was really
+wonderful. The sixty-eight-year-old Steinbergerkabinett, which looked
+like amber-coloured oil when he poured it into the Rhine wine glasses,
+suited the blue trout as perfectly as if it were its native element. And
+the next course, the sweetbread patties _à la Montgelas_, was worthy of
+what had gone before. Neither Richard nor any member of the crew was so
+skilled in the epicurean art as he.
+
+If only he had not kept tossing off one glass of whiskey after the
+other.
+
+"My brain has been dulled by long money-making, like a nail hammered on
+cast-iron," he said in self-justification. "I must whet it every now and
+then, or else it'll get as dull as the edge of a tombstone."
+
+When the Roman punch was served, a brief but hot discussion arose as to
+the merits of certain American drinks from which Lilly, with her
+knowledge of the whole range of beverages, came out with flying colours.
+She even knew accurately the ingredients of Mr. Rennschmidt's favourite
+mixture, the "South Sea bowl," a fiery concoction of sherry, cognac,
+angostura bitters, the yolks of eggs, and Château d'Yquem--in case of
+emergency Moselle might be used. She ventured to ask, might she not
+prepare the rare mixture for him after dinner; she could do it so
+expertly that he would have to admit he had not drunk anything more
+delicious between Singapore and Melbourne.
+
+Konrad, who had evidently never suspected her talents in this line,
+listened to her with an astonishment which filled her with pride.
+
+She sent him one furtive look after another, which asked:
+
+"Are you satisfied? Am I pleasant enough to him?"
+
+But he failed somehow to respond. He remained silent and abstracted, and
+sometimes he seemed to be remote from the company.
+
+"Dream on," she thought blissfully. "_I_ will look out for our
+happiness."
+
+The friendship between her and the old man waxed apace.
+
+By the time the wild duck came and with it the glowing Burgundy, which
+slipped down their throats like caressing flames, she had already been
+calling him uncle.
+
+And he for his part, repeatedly declared that he was "totally wrapped up
+in his dear, dear little Lilly."
+
+So this was the test, the cruel test, from which she had thought there
+was no concealment, no escape, the test that would bare her, dissect
+her, and turn her soul inside out.
+
+She could scarcely contain herself when she thought of it.
+
+Yes, yes. There sat that awful danger, whose moneybags held victory or
+defeat--a little monster grown tame, who stroked her fingers with his
+horrid wrinkled hands, and fawned on her for a crumb of her favour.
+
+He was really amusing, especially when he told jokes.
+
+What a lot of gossip from the colonies!
+
+She had not heard so many anecdotes in a whole year.
+
+For example there was the story of the German governor, Mr. Von So and
+So--she had met him once at Uhl's. He went to his post with his suite,
+consisting of his secretary, his valet, and his cook. Six months
+afterwards the cook went to him and said: "Governor, it's so and so
+far." He gave her two thousand marks and said: "But be sure and hold
+your tongue." Then she went to the secretary and said: "Mr. Müller, it's
+so and so far." He gave her three hundred marks and said: "But be sure
+and hold your tongue." Then she went to the valet and said: "John, it's
+so and so far. We can get married." Three months afterward the valet
+went to the governor and said: "Your Excellency, that woman did us all.
+The brat's a nigger."
+
+And many another story he told of like nature.
+
+She had to hold her sides with laughter.
+
+"Laugh, Konrad, darling, laugh."
+
+He smiled, but his eyes remained serious, and his forehead tense.
+
+When the champagne was brought they drank "fellowship."
+
+It was horrible to kiss those thick, greedy old lips, but their future
+happiness demanded it.
+
+Konrad, too, was to get a kiss. But he refused it. Worse still, he
+wanted to prohibit her drinking.
+
+"She isn't careful enough," he muttered. "Please, uncle, don't give her
+so much. We have never drunk so much."
+
+But they both laughed at him.
+
+"He's always been a country yokel," the old man teased, "and has never
+known what's good. It's too bad for you to throw yourself away on him,
+Lilly dear. You ought to take a man like me. Not a booby in corduroy.
+He's a regular funeral torch."
+
+But on this subject Lilly brooked no teasing.
+
+"You let my little Konni alone, you old fright. You'd better tell your
+old chestnuts. Come along! Forward, march!"
+
+No, she would not permit a word against her sweet little Konni.
+
+The uncle fell to telling his stories again.
+
+Now they were anecdotes in pigeon-English, that lingo which the Chinese
+and other interesting personages in the Far East use as a means of
+communication with the white sahibs. "Tom and Paddy in the Tea House,"
+"The Virtuous Miss Laura in Macao," "The Guide and the Bayadere," each
+received a good box on the ear.
+
+"But Konni ought not to hear any more of this, uncle. I don't want my
+Konni to be spoiled for me."
+
+So she put her left ear close to the old gentleman's lips, and made a
+"whispering cave" with him, as was the wont of members of the "crew"
+when they flirted too outrageously or misbehaved in other ways.
+
+Anyone who had thought she was tongue-tied or unable to repay like with
+like would have been sadly mistaken. The general's club jokes suffered
+from no lack of juiciness, and what she had learned from the "crew" was
+certainly of no mean parentage.
+
+It was worth while to exert an extra effort for so appreciative an
+audience as "uncle." But Konrad, the innocent, had to submit to having
+his ears stuffed with the cotton batting upon which the calville apples
+had been served.
+
+After the coffee the old man demanded that Lilly make good her promise
+and prepare the South Sea bowl. He was sure her assertion had been a
+mere idle boast.
+
+No need to taunt her a second time.
+
+All sorts of bottles were called into requisition, besides the sherry
+and the angostura, an old sweet Yquem. It was really a pity to put it
+to such uses, so Mr. Rennschmidt suggested taking a glass or two on the
+side.
+
+To be sure the eggs broke at the wrong place and spilled over her gown
+and the carpet. But that made no difference; it only added to the
+pleasure. At any rate, the dear old uncle was paying for everything.
+
+To compensate, the flame of the alcohol lamp leapt in the air all the
+more wildly--up to the orchids--up to the sky--it would have delighted
+her to drink in the tongues of fire the way witches do.
+
+"Your luck, Konni--_our_ luck, Konni!"
+
+"Don't drink," she heard his voice. It was harsher than usual, and
+strange in its severity.
+
+"Country yokel," she laughed, thrusting out her tongue at him.
+
+"Don't drink," the voice admonished a second time. "You are not used to
+drinking."
+
+She not used to drinking? How dared he say such a thing? That was
+questioning her honour. Yes, it was questioning her honour.
+
+"How do you know what I'm used to?... I'm used to quite different
+things. I've sat on this very seat I'm sitting in more than once--more
+than ten times--and have drunk much, much more."
+
+"Dear heart, think of what you're saying. It isn't true."
+
+His voice once more sounded soft and gentle, as if he were reproving a
+naughty child.
+
+Such a shame. It was enough to make one cry.
+
+"How can you say it is not true? Do you think I'm a liar? Do you think
+I'm not familiar with such fashionable places as this? Pshaw! Shall I
+prove it to you? Very well. I can. I believe you'll find my name on the
+base of this lamp--Lilly Czepanek--Lilly Czepanek. Just look for it,
+look for it!"
+
+He started to his feet and fixed his eyes upon the mirror-like surface
+defaced by a jumble of characters scratched on it.
+
+But he could not find the L. C. for which he was looking. She had to
+come to his assistance. Not here.--Not there. The letters swam before
+her eyes. She had to try to catch them like the gold fish in her
+aquarium.
+
+Aha! There it was. There it was! L. v. M., with the coronet above. For
+at that time she had still dared to use the prohibited name for an
+occasional adornment.
+
+"Now you see I was right, Konni. Now you will let me drink, won't you.
+Here's to you, you sweet little yokel."
+
+He was so struck by this proof that he sank back in his chair and said
+not a word.
+
+But the uncle and she continued to drink and laugh at him.
+
+When she threw a look into the mirror, she saw as through a billowy haze
+a red swollen face with rumpled hair under a hat tilted back on the head
+and two deep flabby furrows running from her mouth to her chin.
+
+This caused her some disquiet. But she had no time to heed her feeling
+because that unspeakable old uncle had a new joke on the carpet.
+
+"Do you know, Lilly dear, the Chinese way of singing the Lorelei?"
+
+Before she had even heard a syllable she burst out into a wild laugh.
+
+He put one of his bowed legs over the other, pretending it was
+a Chinese banjo, and played a prelude on the sole of his foot:
+"Tink-a-tink-a-tink." Then he began in a nasal, croaking, gurgling
+voice, drawing out his l's endlessly:
+
+    O my belong too much sorry,
+    And can me no savy, what kind;
+    Have got one olo piccy story
+    No won't she go outside my mind.
+
+When he came to the second verse,
+
+    Dat night belang dark and colo,
+
+he tore his wig from his head to heighten the effect; and he now
+actually looked the very image of an old, nodding "Chinee," with his
+shiny pate and his bright slanting slits of eyes.
+
+It was a fascinating, an overpowering spectacle.
+
+Never in her life, not even on the professional stage, had she seen a
+clown's performance so provocative of side-splitting laughter.
+
+She would have died of envy had she not been Lilly Czepanek, the famous
+impersonator, who when the spirit moved her, needed but to open her
+mouth to evoke a storm of applause.
+
+Her matchless repertoire had lain fallow too long. But the beautiful
+Otéro had not yet grown old, Tortajada still set your senses a-whirl
+with her dancing, and Matchiche had just come into fashion.
+
+Lilly merely had to shove her hat a little further back on her head and
+lift her black dress--even a Saharet would have had no cause to be
+ashamed of the silk petticoat she had brought in her trunk--and then off
+she could go.
+
+And off she went.
+
+Like a whirlwind over the carpet slippery with the yolks of eggs.
+
+"Heigh-ho--olé--olé.
+
+"You must shout olé and clap your hands.
+
+"Olé--é--é!"
+
+The uncle bawled. The floor rocked to and fro in long waves. The lamps
+and the mirror danced along. All hell seemed to be let loose.
+
+"Do shout, Konni,--olé--don't be so downcast. Olé."
+
+"Uncle, you have this on _your_ conscience!"
+
+What did he mean by that?
+
+Why did he burst into sobs?
+
+Why was he standing there white as chalk?
+
+"Olé--Olé--é--é--é."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It was nearly noon when Lilly woke in a glow of happiness.
+
+The uncle won over--the last obstacle removed--the future lying before
+her, a land of blossoms and golden fruits.
+
+What a farce and a lark the dreaded examination had been! What a
+jumping-jack, what a buffoon he was, that keen, penetrating man of the
+world, who had probably ground women's destinies as he would munch betel
+nuts.
+
+When she tried to review the events of the evening before, and arrange
+them in sequence, it came to her with a slight sense of oppression that
+at the end everything had resolved itself into a fog, shot with light
+and echoing with song and laughter, just as had happened yonder--in that
+other life, when she had romped wildly with Richard and the "crew."
+
+She could not puzzle out how she had mounted the steps and reached her
+room.
+
+As the fog lifted a little, she saw peering out of it a pale, set face,
+with an expression of pained surprise; she heard an outcry that sounded
+like a sob or a groan, and saw herself sobbing next to someone who was
+kneeling, who pushed her away with his hands.
+
+Had that happened?
+
+Had she dreamt it?
+
+Why, she had sung and danced so beautifully, she had disclosed her
+greatest talents. Could they by any possibility have displeased him? Had
+she gone too far in her self-abandonment?
+
+Her anxiety waxed.
+
+She jumped out of bed and dressed herself, possessed by one thought: "To
+go to him!"
+
+At twelve o'clock the door-bell rang.
+
+It was, it must be he!
+
+But when she hurried to the door to throw herself into his arms with a
+cry of relief, she found, not him, but his uncle, who stood twirling his
+hat in his horrid fingers like a petitioner, and looked up at her with
+an oily, wry smile, most obnoxious to her.
+
+"Is the examination to begin again?" The question rose in her mind. "Or
+is it just going to begin?"
+
+Her welcome died on her lips.
+
+Without speaking she let him in. She experienced a sickish sensation of
+vacancy and incorporeality, as if she might melt through the wall into
+her room.
+
+The old gentleman did not wait for her to open the door to the "best
+room," but opened it himself, and walked in, as if he were an old
+acquaintance.
+
+"Where is Konrad?"
+
+"Konrad?" With his little finger he scratched the silk band of his wig.
+"Oh, thereby hangs a tale." He drew out his watch with the clinking gold
+chain, and studied the dial. "It is just ten minutes after twelve. I
+suppose by now he's on his way to the station. Yes, he must be."
+
+"Is--he--going--away?" she asked, her breath beginning to fail.
+
+"Yes, yes, he's going to take a trip. Yes, last night--hm--last night we
+talked it over. So now he's going to take a little trip."
+
+"That's absurd," she thought. "How can he go away without me?" But she
+checked herself, and entering into the game, asked with apparent
+nonchalance, "Where's he off to so suddenly?"
+
+"Oh, just a little trip. Not worth talking about. A favourable opening
+presented itself. There happened to be a double cabin vacant on the
+steamer leaving from--thingumbob--well, never mind from where--outside
+cabin, you know--on the promenade deck--the best situation, you
+know--the water doesn't splash in and there's plenty of air--and air's
+what you always want, especially during those four days on the Red Sea."
+
+Then it was true. Her suspicions on awakening were being verified more
+swiftly than she had thought they would be. It was only the beginning of
+the test of her character and intentions.
+
+"What do people do in the Red Sea, uncle?" she asked with her most
+innocent smile.
+
+"What do people do in the Red Sea, child? Four thousand years ago the
+ancient Hebrews probably asked the same question. And everybody still
+asks it when he melts into perspiration there. But that's the only way
+of going to India. And I want to go back to India once again. I'm tired
+of trotting about on red brick pavements. So I persuaded him to come
+along for a little while--you know he's overworked; you'll admit that. I
+think it's the best thing to do in such cases, you see."
+
+Lilly felt a lump in her throat, as if all the gold knobs on his watch
+chain were choking her.
+
+"Rather a poor joke," she thought, "but goodness knows what he means by
+it."
+
+Whether she would or no, she had to keep up the game.
+
+"Konrad ought to have been polite enough to come and say good-by," she
+replied, pouting a bit, as if he were about to start off on a trip to
+Dresden or Potsdam.
+
+"Why, he wanted to, child; of course he did. But I said to him: 'You
+see, my boy,' I said, 'it always means such dreadful excitement. It's
+enough to give you an apoplectic stroke.' He agreed, and asked me to
+arrange matters with you."
+
+"Well then, let us arrange matters," she answered with the condescending
+smile that the farce, whatever its nature, merited.
+
+"He is probably down below in a cab waiting for a signal," she thought.
+
+The old gentleman put his stylish Panama beside him on the floor, leaned
+his short body back against Mrs. Laue's plush upholstery, and tried to
+assume an expression of sympathy and grief.
+
+The old clown!
+
+"If it were my affair, little one," he began, "I frankly confess I've
+gone crazy over you. Wrapped up, as I said yesterday. I know women from
+one end of the world to the other, and it is as clear as cocoanut oil to
+me: you're first rate stuff. You're fine as silk. But there are people
+who take themselves seriously and have great illusions, don't you know?
+People utterly without an idea that a human being is a human being,
+people who think they're something extra, and want life to dish up extra
+tit-bits to them. Oh, those people, I tell you, those people! That's the
+way the great disappointments come about--and reproaches--and
+despair--and tearing out your hair. He came near giving me a thrashing
+last night."
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" Lilly asked, growing more and more
+fearful.
+
+"As if I had led you into overshooting the mark! No, indeed. Nothing of
+the sort. I don't do such things. I don't set man-traps. And I told him
+so ten times over. But the misfortune is, we understood each other too
+well. We both belong to the same business. We're like two old
+shipmates."
+
+"What do you mean by 'we both'? You and I?" Lilly asked with frigid
+astonishment in her tone.
+
+"Yes, you and I, my child. Don't fall overboard. You and I. To be sure,
+you're a splendid beauty of twenty-five and I'm an old fool of sixty.
+But you and I have gone through the same mill. What need to explain to
+you at length? Have you ever searched for diamonds? I don't mean at a
+jeweller's--that you probably have. Well, a diamond lies in hard rock,
+in funnels, in so-called blue ground. If you come upon a blue ground
+funnel, you can imagine what it's like. There you squat. I went digging
+for diamonds once--with twenty men--day and night--for weeks and weeks.
+The blue ground was there, oh, indeed, it was, but the diamonds had been
+washed away. Do you see what I'm driving at? The fine ground is still in
+both of us, but what actually makes it fine, the devil has already
+extracted."
+
+"Why are you saying all this to me?" Lilly asked. Tears were rising to
+her eyes from sheer perplexity, because what he said could not possibly
+have anything to do with the great test.
+
+"I'll tell you, little girl. There are people who think there's no going
+back on their word. They have to swallow whatever they once put into
+their mouths. They won't spit it out even if it is a strychnine pill.
+Now _I_, on the other hand, think that nobody need consciously plunge
+into misfortune. Neither you nor he. And since it's best to wash the
+wool directly on the sheep's body, I came to you to make a little
+proposition. You see, here's a check book You're familiar with check
+books, I'm sure. On the right side are printed ciphers from five hundred
+up to--you can see for yourself. All the ciphers that make the amount
+higher than the sum written on the check, are cut off to keep little
+swindlers from cheating a man out of a hundred thousand marks with one
+stroke of the pen. Now look. This check is dated and signed. All that's
+missing is the sum, because I should never permit myself to offer you a
+certain amount. I leave it to you to specify what you think you need for
+a decent living in the future."
+
+He tore a check from the book and laid it on the table in front of her.
+
+"Thank heaven," thought Lilly, "all my tremours were needless."
+
+It was a clumsy trap. Even a blind man must see that his procedure was
+nothing more than a test of her disinterestedness.
+
+So, instead of throwing the old man out of doors--which she should have
+and would have done, had he proffered the check in all seriousness--she
+smiled and took the check from the table, and methodically tore it into
+bits, and with the middle finger of her right hand flicked one little
+pile of them after the other into his face.
+
+He jerked about uneasily in his chair.
+
+"Permit me," he said, "permit me--"
+
+"By no means--I will _not_ permit such vile jokes, uncle."
+
+"But you are rejecting a fortune, child. Consider--we've torn you from
+your moorings. We've thrown you, as it were, on the street. Upon us
+rests the responsibility of seeing to it that you are not driven to
+ruin. And if you think that by accepting the check you are lowering
+yourself in Konrad's eyes, I can swear to you he doesn't know a thing
+about it. And he never will, I'll swear to that also."
+
+She merely smiled.
+
+His little blinking eyes turned bright and staring. Suddenly there was a
+cold threat in their look.
+
+"Or--perhaps you intend to hold the boy to his promise and mean to twist
+his pledge into a halter about his neck? Is that the sort you are--eh?"
+
+"No, I'm not that sort."
+
+Her smile flitted past him and went to meet her beloved, who must soon,
+very soon, come storming up the stairs. Surely he could not endure
+waiting down there in the cab so long.
+
+"His word is in his own keeping. He never gave me a pledge. Even if he
+wanted to, I should never have accepted it. And even if what you said is
+true, he could go on his trip quite calmly--and return quite calmly. I
+would never attempt to meet him or reach him by letter, or remind him of
+what he is to me and will continue to be as long as I live. But I know
+it is _not_ true. He loves me, and I love him. And take care, uncle, not
+to play such low tricks with his future wife as to offer blank checks
+and the like. If I were to tell him about it, you'd all of a sudden find
+you're a lonely old man who can leave his money to a cat and dog
+asylum."
+
+Now he must see what a blunder he had committed. His mistake annoyed him
+so that he jumped from his seat with a muttered "Pshaw!" and tramped
+about the room playing with his watch charm, and murmuring two or three
+times something like "a hangman's job."
+
+But she probably misunderstood him.
+
+Finally he seemed to have reached a decision.
+
+He stopped close to her, laid his disgusting hands on her shoulders, and
+said:
+
+"Listen, my dear, sweet little girl. We can't part without arriving at a
+conclusion. If I weren't such a cursed mangy old pariah-dog, and if over
+and above this, I didn't have to be considerate of the boy's feelings,
+the matter would be perfectly simple. I should say: 'Little one, if you
+want to, come let's go to the nearest magistrate. But hurry, I haven't
+much time to lose.' Don't stare at me so. Yes, that's what I mean--with
+_me_--with me. You wouldn't need to regret it either. As for Konrad, see
+here, you must really say so to yourself--it won't do--we shouldn't hit
+it off--it would be harnessing before and aft. Because he is a rising
+man. He wants to climb to the top. He is still blessed with faith and
+you no longer possess it. Too early in life you tumbled into the great
+meat-chopping machine, which finally converts us all into complacent
+wormy mush. You yourself wouldn't feel happy. You wouldn't be able to
+keep pace. You would lie on him a lifeless cargo, and be conscious of
+it, too. I'm not laying so much stress on last night's eye-opener. It's
+not the appearance of a coast line that counts. It doesn't matter
+whether it's covered with palms or sand. The important thing is the
+interior. And in the interior I see steppes--scorched--waste-land--no
+birds flying across it--a desert where confidence will not strike root.
+Crawl into whatever shelter life offers you, little one. Cling to those
+who brought you to the pass you are in. But let the boy go. He's not
+meant for you. Be frank, didn't you say so to yourself long ago?"
+
+So that's what it was!
+
+No test--
+
+The end. The end.
+
+Lilly stared into space. She seemed to hear a tread dying away--a step
+lower, another step, another step, and another--growing fainter--ever
+fainter--as when Konrad had slipped away from her at dawn.
+
+But this time they would never return!
+
+She felt a slight gnawing disenchantment creep about her heart--nothing
+more. The worst would come later, she knew from of old.
+
+Then she saw herself dancing and yodeling and telling hoggish jokes with
+her hat tilted to one side and her petticoats raised to her knees--a
+drunken wench.
+
+She of the "lofty spirit" and "head divine,"--a drunken wench, not a
+whit better.
+
+Now she knew why he had stood there white as chalk, why that sob of
+distress had burst from his lips.
+
+And the feeling that poured over her in that second like a stream of
+boiling water was compounded as much of pity for Konrad as of shame of
+herself.
+
+"How does he bear it?" she faltered.
+
+"You can imagine how," he replied, "but I think I can pull him through
+it."
+
+"Uncle--I didn't _mean_ to!" she cried with a great sob.
+
+"I know, child, I know. He told me everything."
+
+For an instant wounded pride flared up within her. She stopped, picked
+up a few of the scattered bits of paper, and held them out to him in the
+hollow of her hand.
+
+"And you dared to offer me this?"
+
+"Why, what was I to do, child? And what _will_ I do with you?"
+
+"Bah!"
+
+She struck at him with both hands; but the next instant threw her arms
+about his neck, and wept on his shoulder. That was the place perhaps on
+which Konrad's tearful face had also rested the night before.
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt began to speak again. He made various proposals for her
+future. He would help her begin a new life, would give her the means for
+cultivating her great talent for the stage.
+
+But she shook her head at each of his suggestions.
+
+"Too late, uncle. Waste-land, you yourself said, where confidence will
+not strike root. I might aspire to music-hall fame. But to be quite
+frank, that wouldn't pay me."
+
+"The damned curs!" he hissed.
+
+"What curs?"
+
+"You know."
+
+She reflected as to whom he could possibly mean.
+
+"There was really only one," she observed. "Oh, yes, and another--and
+then one more. And later there were two besides, but they don't count."
+
+"It seems to me that's quite enough, little girl."
+
+He stroked her cheeks, smiling kindly, and she did not find his fingers
+so disgusting.
+
+She even had to smile in response, though she fell directly to crying
+again.
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt prepared to take leave. She clung to his shoulder; she
+did not want to let him go. He was the last bridge that joined her
+departing vessel with the land of happiness.
+
+"What message shall I take to him?" he asked.
+
+She drew herself up. Her eyes widened. She wanted to pour out all her
+grief. Her squandered love sought for words which would carry it to him
+purged and sanctified.
+
+But she found none.
+
+She looked about the room as if help must come from some quarter. The
+pictures of the ancient actors smiled upon her. Those who had once been
+so eloquent had become dumb, dumb as her own soul. The framed lamp shade
+greeted her as if the future she had to pass at Mrs. Laue's side was
+greeting her.
+
+"I don't know what to say," she faltered. Then something occurred to her
+after all. "Please ask him--please ask him--why he himself didn't come
+to say good-by. I know him. He is not a coward."
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt made his queerest face.
+
+"Since you're so remarkably sensible, child, I'll tell you. Of _course_
+he wanted to come and say good-by. I even told him I'd try to drag you
+to the station."
+
+Without an instant's reflection she made a dash for her hat.
+
+"Stop!"
+
+He had laid his hand on her arm.
+
+The little fat figure grew taller.
+
+"You will _not_ go."
+
+"What! Konni is waiting for me--Konni wants to speak to me--and I am
+_not_ to go?"
+
+"You--_will--not--go_, I tell you. If you're the brave girl I took you
+to be, you will not nullify the sacrifice you're making. You can reckon
+upon it, if he sees you again, you'll both remain hanging on each
+other."
+
+Her hat slipped from her hand.
+
+"Then--tell him--I'll love him--forever--forever--he'll be my last
+thought on earth--and--and--I don't know what else to say."
+
+He left the room without a word.
+
+Then she collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had
+occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life,
+disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being
+had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground
+helplessly with dimmed eyes.
+
+Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling
+in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour
+greeted all who entered its realm.
+
+Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been
+expelled from Lischnitz; she did not sink into a state of apathetic
+brooding, nor wrestle desperately with fate.
+
+All she felt was a dim void stretching endlessly before her, broken now
+and again by a sharp outcry like that of an animal bereft of its mate; a
+sense of faint-hearted acquiescence, a consciousness of inevitable
+imprisonment, of a fearful descent into dark depths, of a dismal death,
+lacking strength and dignity.
+
+Between the present and the future, the sort of future that beckoned to
+her from every street, rose the railing of the bridge she had tried to
+climb after seeing "Rosmersholm." And when she stared into space with
+tearless eyes, she saw far below the black, purple-patched water rolling
+idly along, and heard the iron rail clink under her sole.
+
+This clinking became stronger, and turned into an accompaniment of
+everything that came and went during the uneventful days.
+
+It drilled her brain, hammered at her temples, and tingled in every pore
+of her body.
+
+There was a text to the miserable melody.
+
+The text was: "To die!"
+
+Well, then, to die!
+
+What could be simpler? And what more compelling?
+
+But not to-day. To-morrow perchance, or day after to-morrow.
+
+Something might still happen. A letter might arrive, or even he himself.
+Or if neither of these contingencies came to pass--who could tell what
+miracle fate held in readiness for the morrow?
+
+To let hour after hour of one additional day pass in the same melancholy
+monotony.
+
+One evening, a week after Konrad's sudden departure, it happened that
+Mrs. Laue entered the best room at an unusual time with an emphatic
+manner, and said: "Now, Lilly dear, you cannot go on the same way. If
+you were to cry, I shouldn't say anything. But _this_ way you'll never
+come back to reason. There's only one sane and natural thing for you to
+do, return to your Mr. Dehnicke. If he had an inkling of how things are
+with you, he would have come to fetch you long ago. So you'll either sit
+right down and write him a nice letter, or to-morrow morning I'll give
+up my work and go to see him in his office. I'll get my expenses back."
+
+Lilly felt violently impelled to drive the old woman out of the room,
+but she had grown too discouraged to do more than turn away in impotent
+repugnance.
+
+"I haven't much time, I must say," continued Mrs. Laue. "I have to
+complete the dozen before going to bed. But you can make up your mind
+to one thing: if he's not here by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, he'll
+come at twelve at the very latest, because by that time I myself will
+have gone for him."
+
+Lilly laughed sadly in scorn. So that was the way the miracle looked
+which fate held in readiness for the morrow.
+
+Should she submit all over again to a man's puny supremacy? Crawl back
+into the cowardly comfort of perfumed imprisonment? Vegetate among inane
+festivities, in a sort of doze, or walk the streets when driven by
+disgust and boredom?
+
+She would not have the force to resist the next day when he came. She
+knew it well. Richard needed merely to look at her once with that
+whipped-dog expression which was entirely new to her in him. The very
+thought of it filled her with humiliating softness. Something was
+already stirring within her that would compel her to throw her arms
+about his neck and cry on his shoulder.
+
+It was really not worth while to bide the morrow for so pitiful a
+reward.
+
+So--she would die--that very day!
+
+That very day.
+
+It came to her like a cup of intoxication.
+
+With clasped hands she ran about the room weeping, rejoicing.
+
+She would be a heroine like Isolde, a martyr to her love.
+
+And the railing of the bridge was waiting. How it would quiver and hum
+when she climbed on it.
+
+Then the buzzing in her head grew louder. The air was filled with a
+medley of tones. The walls re-echoed with the refrain--the noise on the
+streets, the mighty roar of the city--everything sang:
+
+"Die--die--die."
+
+She tore off her gown and dressed to go out.
+
+At first she thought of wearing one of her two ill-fitting dresses,
+because they had come from Konrad, but she could not prevail upon
+herself to do so.
+
+"Die in beauty," Hedda Gabler had said.
+
+"Oh, if only I had his picture," thought Lilly, "so that I could take
+one last look at his eyes."
+
+But all she had from him were his letters and a few poems. They were to
+accompany her on her last walk.
+
+They were lying at the bottom of the leather trunk which was still
+hidden in Mrs. Laue's hole of a room, although the need for concealment
+was past.
+
+When she rummaged for the little packages among the contents of the
+trunk she came by chance upon the old score of the Song of Songs.
+
+She tenderly regarded the yellow stained roll.
+
+She was no longer angry with her Song of Songs or scorned it, as she had
+on that unfortunate morning when she had gone to her former home to
+break her promise to Konrad.
+
+Once again it became a dear, valuable possession, though neither a
+monitor, nor worker of miracles, nor a sanctuary. It still was an old
+remnant, but one to be kissed and petted and cried over, because a part
+of her own life clung to it.
+
+And some of her blood also.
+
+There were the dark stains.
+
+On the day of her going forth they had fallen upon it and on the day of
+her coming home, the deep waters would wash them away.
+
+Then her mind glided past the score back into the hazy past.
+
+Mists seemed to be lifting and curtains to be drawn aside, and her way
+seemed to lie behind her like a sharply defined band.
+
+She had been weak. And stupid. And had never considered her own
+interests. Every man that had entered her life had done with her what he
+would. She had never closed the doors of her soul, never shown her
+teeth, never given free play to the power of her beauty; but had always
+been ready to serve others, to love them, and make the best of
+everything.
+
+As thanks she had been persecuted and beaten and dragged in the mud her
+life long. Even the one man who had esteemed her had gone away without
+saying good-by.
+
+"But," she thought, "I have never hated a single one of them, and I have
+always had the right to regard myself as above the common, however I
+have suffered. However I have sinned. And the end was a heaven-sent
+gift."
+
+Did it not seem as if this Song of Songs, which lay there debased,
+stained, decayed, like her own life, had in truth hovered over her,
+blessing her and granting her absolution from her sins, just as in her
+early dreams and just as in her rhapsodies to Konrad during that hour of
+blissful self-surrender?
+
+"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."
+
+She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.
+
+Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several
+times again--but she did not understand what she was reading.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when she softly closed the tall door behind
+her.
+
+Mrs. Laue was still asleep.
+
+Nobody met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without
+being seen.
+
+Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at
+midnight.
+
+The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light--the trolley
+poles sparking and flashing between--silent, shadowy figures--it was all
+as if she were looking upon it for the first time.
+
+An oppressive fear beset her.
+
+Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon
+which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she
+would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on,
+irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.
+
+At the approach of each passerby she was impelled to hide herself, in
+the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.
+
+So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where
+withering linden trees scattered rain drops.
+
+Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind
+dark garden walls, past barns and factories.
+
+And her heels kept rapping: "Tap--tap--tap," as if she were wearing a
+pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.
+
+She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.
+
+But she cast the temptation from her.
+
+"If it were done, 'twere well it were done quickly," she had read
+somewhere.
+
+Forward with clenched teeth!
+
+The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the
+invisible waters.
+
+"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression
+at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the grassy slope.
+
+But she recoiled with a shudder.
+
+It had to be the bridge on the northwest side--fate had willed it so.
+
+It was still a great distance off, about an hour's walk.
+
+She came to livelier streets.
+
+The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent
+their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.
+
+On, on she must go!
+
+From the open doors of a basement café was wafted a hot garlic-laden
+vapour.
+
+What smelled like that?
+
+Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a
+farewell dinner.
+
+Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing
+stream over the pavement.
+
+What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?
+
+Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered
+the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.
+
+Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am
+lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the
+lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,--and it is all in
+the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen's dose of medicine
+has happily worked."
+
+The city noises swelled and called her back to life.
+
+She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin's unwearying
+night life.
+
+She passed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Strasse unrolled before her, a
+stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist
+enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by
+a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafés and cabarets
+glimmering red.
+
+The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She moved them without
+realising that she was moving them.
+
+She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole
+body like the vibrations of a mill.
+
+On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.
+
+Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their
+laughing quarry.
+
+The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped
+along.
+
+"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought
+Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with
+questions of honour and death."
+
+Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in
+whose shelter a person may die as he will.
+
+And her heels kept beating: "Tap--tap--tap." She could hear them even in
+all that noise.
+
+"Couldn't I go to some café?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one
+were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."
+
+Lights--mirrors--upholstery--curling blue cigarette smoke--a tingling in
+her parched throat.
+
+Once--once again! Not a quarter of an hour--a _whole_ hour--and still
+longer if she wished it--a poor bit of life which would do nobody any
+harm.
+
+But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not
+want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.
+
+So on--on.
+
+The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind--the dagger-like
+lights no longer pricked her.
+
+Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.
+
+She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to
+the northwest side.
+
+The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The
+pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The
+dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything
+about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom
+glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.
+
+Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.
+
+She passed a florist's shop, where the blinds of the show window had not
+been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the
+prickly foliage of laurels and cypresses.
+
+What had gleamed like that?
+
+Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase
+of the house of Liebert & Dehnicke.
+
+Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in
+triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.
+
+She reached a bridge.
+
+She crossed it quickly.
+
+That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker
+silence.
+
+"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three
+kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity.
+One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to
+ruin."
+
+Who had that been?
+
+Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured
+to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had
+helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never
+entered.
+
+He had spoken of blue olive vapours--the sea blackened by the breath of
+the sirocco--and shining meadows of asphodel.
+
+"What kind of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?"
+
+How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.
+
+But her heels said: "Tap--tap--tap," and the railing of the bridge
+called to her.
+
+A man spoke to her. Wouldn't she--?
+
+She shook him off like a worm.
+
+She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.
+
+By whom?
+
+Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.
+
+She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and
+tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:
+
+"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous
+rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."
+
+"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my
+promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an
+account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had
+not made superfluous confessions--"
+
+What then?
+
+"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and
+forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.
+
+She walked on reeling.
+
+More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a grass
+plot with a hedge about it.
+
+What sort of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?
+
+Suddenly she stood at the bridge.
+
+Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide,
+silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled
+into tiny sparks.
+
+A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the
+illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed
+by the darkness.
+
+Half-past one o'clock.
+
+Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.
+
+She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by
+horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.
+
+"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.
+
+"Yet--I will," she answered.
+
+She tried to go on--straight ahead--on the bridge, where the rail
+awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.
+
+The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary
+bank wavering.
+
+She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it
+into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger
+than she.
+
+Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on--on--whether
+she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail
+awaiting her.
+
+Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.
+
+All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even
+the lamps were reflected in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, one leap--and the thing was done.
+
+"Yes, I'll do it, I'll do it," a voice within her called.
+
+But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to
+her as she climbed over.
+
+She threw it--a bit of white flitted by--a splash below--sharp and
+distinct, which made her tingle all over like a slap in the face.
+
+When she heard the sound, she knew she would never do it.
+
+No! Lilly Czepanek was not a heroine; she was not martyr to her love;
+she was no Isolde, who finds the strongest affirmation of herself in the
+desire not to be.
+
+She was nothing but a poor thing who had been crushed and exploited, and
+would drag along through life as best she could.
+
+At the same time she began to array all the possibilities of a
+livelihood remaining open to her.
+
+She would _not_ return to the old life of dissipation. That was certain.
+No matter how much Richard's whipped-dog look might plead and beg.
+
+Anything else would do.
+
+To be sure, she had been completely robbed of her desire to work, and it
+seemed very doubtful whether it would ever come back to her again.
+
+But after all: something would present itself which would enable her to
+live in peace and virtue.
+
+Millions of human beings ask for nothing better and call it "happiness!"
+
+She sent one more searching look at the lazy waters, in which the Song
+of Songs had just disappeared.
+
+Then she turned and went back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the spring of the next year the business world of Berlin was
+surprised to read in the papers that Mr. Richard Dehnicke, senior member
+of the old, well-known firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, manufacturers of art
+bronzes, had married the much-talked-of beauty, Lilly Czepanek, and had
+gone to Italy to live there temporarily.
+
+Those who knew her were not surprised.
+
+She had always been a dangerous woman, they said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Song of Songs
+
+Author: Hermann Sudermann
+
+Translator: Thomas Seltzer
+
+Release Date: December 30, 2010 [EBook #34791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF SONGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE SONG OF SONGS</h1>
+
+<h2>(DAS HOHE LIED)</h2>
+
+<h2>BY HERMANN SUDERMANN</h2>
+
+
+<h3>TRANSLATED BY<br />
+THOMAS SELTZER</h3>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK<br />
+THE VIKING PRESS<br />
+MCMXXVI</h3>
+
+<h3>Copyright, 1909, by<br />
+J. G. <span class="smcap">Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger</span>, Stuttgart</h3>
+
+<h3><i>All rights reserved</i></h3>
+
+<h3>Published in Germany, November 21, 1908</h3>
+
+<h3>Privilege of copyright in the United States reserved<br />
+under the act approved March 3, 1905,<br />
+by J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger</h3>
+
+<h3>Published November 20, 1909<br />
+Second printing, January, 1910<br />
+Third printing, February, 1910<br />
+Fourth printing, April, 1910<br />
+Fifth printing, September, 1910<br />
+Sixth printing, September, 1911<br />
+Seventh printing, March, 1913<br />
+Eighth printing, December, 1913<br />
+Ninth printing, January, 1915<br />
+Tenth printing, June, 1916<br />
+Eleventh printing, 1919<br />
+Twelfth printing, April, 1921<br />
+Thirteenth printing, September, 1923<br />
+Fourteenth printing, December, 1926</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#PART_I">PART I</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#PART_II">PART II</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IA">CHAPTER I</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIA">CHAPTER II</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IIIA">CHAPTER III</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IVA">CHAPTER IV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VA">CHAPTER V</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIA">CHAPTER VI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIA">CHAPTER VII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIIIA">CHAPTER VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IXA">CHAPTER IX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XA">CHAPTER X</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIA">CHAPTER XI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIA">CHAPTER XII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIIIA">CHAPTER XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIVA">CHAPTER XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVA">CHAPTER XV</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIA">CHAPTER XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIIA">CHAPTER XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIIIA">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIXA">CHAPTER XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXA">CHAPTER XX</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIA">CHAPTER XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIIA">CHAPTER XXII</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE SONG OF SONGS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>Lilly was fourteen years old when her father, Kilian Czepanek, the
+music-master, suddenly disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>It happened in this way. He had been giving piano lessons the whole day,
+in the interim swearing and drinking Moselle and Selters, for it was
+intensely hot. Occasionally he had slipped into the dining-room to take
+a cognac or arrange his Windsor necktie. He had pulled Lilly's brown
+curls as she sat labouring over her French vocabulary, and had
+disappeared again into the best room, where the girl pupils changed from
+hour to hour, and only the dissonances and the curses remained.</p>
+
+<p>When the last victim had stumbled through her lesson and closed the hall
+door behind her, Czepanek failed to reappear in his usual bad temper and
+with his usual appetite. He remained in the front room, where this day
+he neither whistled nor whined nor played out his rage on the keyboard,
+as he sometimes did after a day's labour. In fact, he gave scarcely a
+sign of life. Now and then a deep sigh&mdash;that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who took warm interest in everything her handsome father did or
+did not do, let her French textbook slip from her lap, and stole up to
+the keyhole.</p>
+
+<p>Through it she saw him standing before the large pier-glass, absorbed in
+a close study of himself. From time to time he raised his left hand and
+pressed it as if in despair against his soft, silky, dark artist's
+curls, which Lilly's mother devotedly fostered every day with bay-rum
+and French oils.</p>
+
+<p>He and his reflection gazed at each other's moist red face with wild,
+eager eyes, and Lilly's heart expanded in love of her adored papa.</p>
+
+<p>To Lilly his standing before the mirror was a familiar sight. It was his
+manner of squaring accounts for his lost life and wasted love, his
+manner of charming back the great world, in which duchesses and prima
+donnas yearningly cherished the memory of their vanished idol.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there like an elderly god of love, with small alcoholic puffs
+under his eyes, and a tendency toward a paunch.</p>
+
+<p>Both mama and Lilly cared for him with unremitting zeal. They regarded
+him as a sort of bird of paradise, who by a lucky chance had been caught
+between the walls of a room, and who required the greatest effort, the
+utmost circumspection, to keep him safe in the cage.</p>
+
+<p>By right, Lilly should long ago have been sitting at the piano, for in
+the house of Czepanek a quiet keyboard was a waste of time and a sin
+before the Lord. She had to practice four or five hours every day. Often
+when her father was seized by the holy spirit of creativeness and forgot
+the time set aside for her practicing, she did not begin until nearly
+midnight. Then she sat at the piano frozen, with heavy eyes, striking
+out in all directions until the small hours of the morning. Sometimes
+her mother found her the next day lying with her arms crossed on the
+keyboard in that profound child's sleep from which there is almost no
+rousing.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that she cared little for the artistic future for which
+her father's ambition had destined her. She preferred to dally with
+some old forbidden book, and often drove her father to despair by a
+false pretence at cleverness in playing at first sight. But to-day she
+had the Sonata Pathétique to do, and there is no trifling with that, as
+any babe in arms knows.</p>
+
+<p>So she was just about to interrupt her father as he stood there plunged
+in dreamy self-observation, when she heard a click at the door from the
+kitchen. She bounded away from the keyhole with one great leap of her
+long legs, and the next instant her mother entered, carrying the supper
+dishes.</p>
+
+<p>The mother's prematurely faded cheeks were now glowing from the heat of
+the kitchen fire. She held her lean figure erect, taut as a whip cord,
+which seemed to be tied in a knot at the abdomen by a protrusion, the
+result of abortive child-bearing. Dull marital sorrow had long ago
+transformed her eyes, once beautiful, into two lustreless slits. But at
+this moment they were beaming with pride and expectation.</p>
+
+<p>For to-day Mrs. Czepanek hoped to satisfy her lord and his palate.</p>
+
+<p>At the clatter of the plates on the table, the door to the parlour
+opened, and papa's dark curly head, about which the evening sunlight
+cast a halo, appeared in the bright opening.</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce, supper already?" he said, and his eyes wandered with a
+peculiar, confused gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"In ten minutes," the mother replied, joy at the surprise in store for
+him playing about her parched, chapped lips like secret bliss.</p>
+
+<p>He entered the room, took a few deep breaths, and said with the air of a
+man to whom speech comes hard:</p>
+
+<p>"I've just noticed that one of the straps of my hand-bag is torn."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do you want it?" asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"One's hand-bag must always be kept in readiness," he answered, his eyes
+continuing to rove about the room. "Suppose I were suddenly to be called
+to act as substitute somewhere. I must have my bag ready."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, he had been called upon the previous winter to take
+the place of a Berlin virtuoso, who had undertaken to "do" the towns in
+eastern Germany and whose train had been snow-bound near Bromberg. The
+committee telegraphed to papa requesting him to play in his stead. But
+now, in midsummer, when the concert season was dead, such an emergency
+was scarcely within the realm of the possible.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell Minna to take it to the saddler's right after supper," said
+mama, who took good care not to contradict her choleric husband.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded meditatively and walked into his bedroom, while the mother ran
+to the kitchen to do the final honours in her own person to the titbit
+she had prepared for him.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later he returned with the bag in his hand. It looked
+rather bulgy. He stopped before the linen chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly, dear," he said, "I wonder whether the score would go into the
+grip crosswise? In case I am called to a concert, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The score of the Song of Songs was kept in the linen chest, so that,
+should fire break out during papa's absence, anyone in the family might
+easily get at this greatest of treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked for the keys, but could not find them.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go ask mama," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he cried hastily, and a shiver went through his body, such as
+Lilly had often noticed when mother was mentioned to him. "I'll first
+take this old thing to the saddler."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was shocked at the idea that her celebrated father should himself
+go to the saddler's dingy workshop.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" she cried, and reached out for the handle of the bag. She would
+take it to the saddler herself.</p>
+
+<p>But he warded her off.</p>
+
+<p>"You're too grown up now for such things, my girl," he said, and his
+eyes lighted up as they scanned her tall, virginal body, her hips and
+bosom, already beginning to show delicate curves. "Why, you're almost a
+<i>signora</i>."</p>
+
+<p>He patted her cheeks and pulled a little at the lock of the linen chest,
+gnawing his lips the while in intense bitterness. Then suddenly he shook
+himself, and with a shy, contemptuous look toward the kitchen&mdash;Lilly
+knew that look, too&mdash;went quickly out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>He went and never came back.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The night following that red summer evening remained graven in Lilly's
+memory hour by hour.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother sat on the window-sill in her nightgown, and her fervid,
+anxious eyes kept glancing up and down the street. Whenever she heard
+steps at a distance knocking on the pavement, she would start and cry:</p>
+
+<p>"There he is."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt there was no need to bother about the Pathétique to-day. A
+dull oppression in her left breast determined her to turn to St. Joseph,
+to whom she had stood in tender relations since her confirmation. She
+had already passed many a dreamy, idle hour before his altar at St.
+Anne's&mdash;right front, second chapel&mdash;and secretly sent up many an
+abstract sigh to the dear, good face with the beautiful beard. But
+to-night he failed her utterly. She could get no consolation from him,
+and vexed and disillusioned, she dismissed him.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the last vehicle passed the house.</p>
+
+<p>At one the pedestrians, too, grew less frequent.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past two a dusty wind arose, smelling of sand and threatening to
+blow out the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>Between two and three only the night watchman was heard shuffling along
+the narrow, echoing street.</p>
+
+<p>At three the early delivery wagons began to rattle, and it grew light.</p>
+
+<p>Between three and four Lilly prepared a boiling hot cup of coffee for
+her mother, and ate up all the cold supper. Long waiting and crying had
+made her ravenously hungry.</p>
+
+<p>Between four and five a band of young night revellers passed by,
+throwing kisses to her mother, and when their importunities forced her
+to withdraw from the window they serenaded her. Fine, pure voices, Lilly
+had to admit despite her grief; rendition good and precise, without that
+pedantic stop-like effect which papa so detested in the singing
+societies. Perhaps they were even pupils of his who did not know his
+residence.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely were they gone when the mother was again at her post.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly struggled against sleep.</p>
+
+<p>She saw as through a veil the thin blond hair waving over her mother's
+forehead in the morning breeze, saw the pointed nose, red with weeping,
+turn now to the right, now to the left, according to the direction from
+which a sound came; saw the nightgown fluttering like a white flag, and
+the lean legs incessantly rubbing against each other in nervous
+agitation. Then she had to retell, perhaps for the hundredth time, the
+story of the hand-bag and the linen chest, but her eyes closed.</p>
+
+<p>And then suddenly she started up with a cry; her mother had dropped back
+in a swoon, and lay supine on the floor like a log of wood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>So Kilian Czepanek never came back.</p>
+
+<p>Good friends were not wanting, of course, who had for years foreseen the
+event. In fact, they failed to understand how he could have endured it
+so long&mdash;he, the man of genius, of God-given fancy, with the hall-mark
+of creative restlessness on his thunder-headed brow. Others called him a
+good-for-nothing, a dirty scoundrel, who ran after innocent girls and
+enticed young men to gamble. They declared Mrs. Czepanek lucky to be rid
+of him, and charged Lilly to erase her unworthy father from her memory.</p>
+
+<p>Most unpleasant of all, however, were those who said nothing, but
+presented bills. Mrs. Czepanek sold or pawned all the articles of luxury
+left her from the middle-class comfort of her youth, or from her
+husband's liberal moods. But these soon gave out. Furniture, dress and
+linen not absolutely indispensable followed; then at last the creditors
+were stilled.</p>
+
+<p>The singing society, to the leadership of which Kilian Czepanek had been
+called fifteen years before, and which, during that period, had carried
+off no less than six prizes, expressed its satisfaction with the
+accomplishments of its conductor by holding the position open for half a
+year and paying the salary in full to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>But this period of grace also came to an end. Now began the bitter
+begging pilgrimages to the eminent citizens and officials of the city,
+the sorry pulling of bells, the anxious scraping of shoes before
+strangers' doors, the half-hour waitings in dark corridors, the abashed
+sitting down on the narrow edges of chairs, the sighs, the stammering,
+the wiping of eyes, which, however honestly meant, came to have somewhat
+the appearance of professional hypocrisy. The more it was calculated to
+produce an impression the more it failed of its purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Now came the chase for work in shop and factory, in all places where
+bed-linen and shirts and nightgowns are made, where cheap lace is added
+to cheap underwear, where white goods is vitalised with hems and yokes
+and bindings and strings. Now came the whizz of the sewing machine the
+whole day and the whole night. Now came pricked fingers, inflamed eyes,
+swollen knees, vinegar compresses about feverish temples, a simmering
+tea-kettle at four o'clock in the morning, watery coffee heated three
+times over, with bread and butter instead of the midday roast and the
+evening eggs. In short, now came poverty.</p>
+
+<p>And strange to say, the more remote the day on which Kilian Czepanek had
+disappeared, the more confidently his abandoned wife looked forward to
+his return. The first half year had passed; another conductor appeared
+and challenged comparison. For a couple of weeks the papers contented
+themselves with mortifying him by flattering allusions to the former
+leader. But this also passed. And now followed the great silence of the
+grave. At most, Czepanek's picture remained alive only in a few
+bar-rooms and a few girls' hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Czepanek, however, who had so long compressed her lips in smothered
+shame when the conversation turned upon her husband, began to speak of
+his coming back as of an established fact definitely prearranged. More
+than that, she who in the course of fifteen years had gradually lost her
+youth, her beauty, her ready wit and laughter, everything she had
+brought as a marriage dowry to her husband, sinking it, for no reason
+at all, in a grey pool of self-reproach and anxiety; she who for many
+years had not tried a coloured ribbon on her sunken breast, who had not
+troubled to arrange a lock of hair on her forehead, which kept growing
+higher and higher&mdash;this woman became vain again. Each time she received
+her meagre pay she made haste to invest part of it in powder and beauty
+creams. In moments of exhaustion, when she could no longer stand on her
+feet, she quickly whipped a red stick from her pocket and passed it over
+her thin lips. And about eight o'clock every morning she bustled between
+the kitchen fire and the sewing machine with a freshly burned wreath of
+curls.</p>
+
+<p>In this way she prepared herself for his return. She would receive her
+repentant husband in her outstretched arms, bedecked and radiant as a
+bride.</p>
+
+<p>For he was bound to return; that was certain. Where else would he find a
+comprehending smile like hers, where else the secret soul-harmony which
+consoles by silence and compels happiness by prayer, which, with the
+dropping of the rosary beads, secretly insinuates dreamy stipulations
+with Providence, and dissolves the whole universe into one great minor
+harmony of yearning? Where else was there a human being who served as
+she did, without malice and without regret, with body and with soul, who
+allowed herself to be taken or rejected according to impulse or desire?</p>
+
+<p>Thus she had once welcomed him, a young, blond, laughing, unsuspecting
+thing. She had given herself to him without stint and without
+questioning; just because he desired it. And she had scarcely felt it as
+her right and his atonement, when he led her to the altar at the command
+of her father, an honest subordinate in a court of justice. In fact,
+Czepanek had been forced into marriage by half the city, which
+otherwise would have ostracised the seducer and ousted him from his soft
+berth.</p>
+
+<p>Happier she could not be, that she knew. Of the nameless misfortune
+bound to come she had not the least presentiment; and when it came she
+took it without complaint; she loved him so very much, she regarded it
+as the natural indemnity for the unnatural gift of having possessed him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he would come back in spite of all. Whether he wished to or not, he
+would come. She had in her possession a pledge which chained him to her
+for all time, and which, sooner or later, must force him to cross her
+threshold.</p>
+
+<p>It was not Lilly. True, he loved his child, loved her with a tenderness
+strangely compounded of pleasure in a toy for idle hours, and of
+aesthetic delight in her inner and outer loveliness. But for a real
+father's love, she knew, there was no room in his gypsy heart. Even in
+hours when he would feel himself most alone and abandoned, the thought
+would never occur to him to seek solace and comfort with a child of his.</p>
+
+<p>But the wife had something else in her keeping which gave her a far
+stronger hold upon him&mdash;a roll of music; that was all. He might easily
+have put it in the bag with which he had departed on his great journey.
+In fact, he had attempted to. But so great at the decisive moment was
+his desire to escape that he did not dare to face his suspicious wife.</p>
+
+<p>This roll of music contained everything that had linked his past with
+his future during the fifteen years of his Philistine life, everything
+remaining from the titanic storm and stress of his youth, from the giddy
+hopes and ambitions of the days when he starved.</p>
+
+<p>This roll of music&mdash;it was slender enough&mdash;contained the work of his
+life; it contained the Song of Songs.</p>
+
+<p>Since Lilly could think, nothing in the world had been spoken of with
+such respect, with such tender and reverent awe, as this work, of which,
+with the exception of the two women, no one knew a note.</p>
+
+<p>It was something that had never yet been, something unheard of, a new
+world of sound, the beginning of a musical development, of which the end
+was lost in the twilight of mystic anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>The opera had reached its culmination in Wagner, the road from which
+pointed straight down into the abyss; symphonic composition no longer
+answered modern requirements for sense music; the song had been split up
+by the newest school into a series of small subtle effects. The art of
+the future belonged to the oratorio, but not that constrained wooden
+production hitherto suffered to pass by the name from a false belief
+that we have to make concessions to a misunderstood ecclesiasticism,
+but&mdash;and here it was that the new world of sound, the Song of Songs,
+began.</p>
+
+<p>The score had been completed years ago. To entrust it to the heavy
+execution of the musicians of Czepanek's provincial town would have been
+desecration. So it lay there and lay there, and interwove the day with a
+mild, mysterious light, which no one saw, yet every one felt. It shot
+rays of light into the distant future, and so filled a child's
+palpitating heart with anticipation, prayer and love that that heart
+would rather have stood still than exist without this fountain of the
+good and the noble, from which the acting forces of life daily drew
+their sustenance.</p>
+
+<p>For Lilly the roll of music lying in the upper drawer of the linen
+chest, held together by two rubber bands, was a kind of household
+divinity, which gave purity and sanctity to the home. She had imbibed
+reverence for the sheets of paper, scrawled over with curly-headed
+runes, since the dawn of her recollections, and their music was
+familiar to her from her early childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Papa, it is true, did not like to have the themes of his creation
+bandied about in everyday life. "Why don't you sing 'O du lieber
+Augustin' or 'Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan?'" he used to say when
+he caught one of them dreamily humming his arias. "They are plenty good
+enough for you."</p>
+
+<p>Later his warnings grew unnecessary. Mama gradually forgot everything
+sounding like a song, and Lilly withdrew more and more into herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had arranged a sort of mass from the Song of Songs, which she
+celebrated before the mirror when she knew she was alone in the house.
+She draped a sheet about her waist like a skirt, hung window-curtains
+over her shoulders, wound old lace about her neck, and wove spangles
+taken from shoes into her hair. Singing, weeping, and uttering shouts of
+joy, with genuflections, magic dances and airy embraces, she lived
+through Sulamith's bridal yearning and ecstasy as awakened to life again
+in papa's Song of Songs after a slumber of twenty-five hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>The manuscript of this song became the anchor to which the hopes of
+Kilian Czepanek's family were henceforth fastened. It was conceivable
+that he, a vagabond, cast out by his own parents when a child, might
+abandon wife and daughter to want and pining&mdash;but to believe that he
+would desert the work of his lifetime, the sword wherewith he was to
+fight his way back into the great world, was sheer folly.</p>
+
+<p>And while the sewing-machine whizzed and whirred day and night in the
+attic to which Mrs. Czepanek and her daughter had removed, while the
+body of the forsaken woman dried up entirely and grew ever more
+deformed, and the layer of paint with which she kept herself young
+rested upon cheekbones sharpening from week to week, there lay in the
+upper drawer of the linen chest (the chest had been saved from
+bankruptcy) an earnest of future reunion, working miracles by its
+proximity, the Song of Songs.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>Lilly was now a tall young woman with a well-developed figure for her
+age, who carried her school-bag through the streets with the air of a
+princess.</p>
+
+<p>Her plaid dress of mixed wool was always wrinkled by rain, and despite
+the let-out tucks was ever too short. Her rainy-day boots went to the
+cobbler time and again, and between the wavy ends of her cotton gloves
+and the hems of her sleeves laboriously stretched to meet them, gleamed
+a strip of red, slender arm.</p>
+
+<p>But whoever saw her come down the street with the easy swing of her
+beautifully curved hips, with the careless, rhythmic tread of exuberant
+youth and strength, with the mobile head, too small for her tall body,
+set on a long neck, with the two mouse teeth that looked out eagerly
+from behind an upper lip somewhat too short, and with the two famous
+"Lilly eyes"&mdash;he who saw her did not think of the shabbiness of her
+dress, did not suspect that this delicately shaped, broad breast was
+bent for hours and hours over sewing, that this whole glorious, youthful
+organism, whose sap, as it chased through her veins, manifested itself
+in causeless blushings and passionate palings, was grandly maintained
+and preserved on boiled potatoes, bread spread with clarified fat, and
+bad sausage.</p>
+
+<p>The high school students followed her all afire, and for a long time the
+poems composed in her praise in the first year class were to be counted
+by the dozen.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be said that she remained indifferent to their homage. When a
+troop of them came toward her on the street she felt as if a rosy veil
+were descending over her eyes from shame and dread; and when the young
+men passed by, doffing their caps&mdash;they had met her at the
+skating-rink&mdash;she was overcome by giddiness, or a sinking sensation, so
+suddenly did the blood mount to her head. The aftertaste of the meetings
+was delicious. For hours she recalled the picture of the young man who
+had greeted her most respectfully, or the one who had blushed like
+herself. That was the one she loved&mdash;until at the next encounter he was
+replaced by another.</p>
+
+<p>Despite her adorers she was subjected to less teasing by her schoolmates
+than is usual in such cases. The contented defencelessness of her manner
+disarmed all enmity. If they hid her school-bag she merely entreated,
+"Please give it back to me." If they stuck her up on the stove, she
+remained there laughing, and if they wanted to copy her English
+exercise, she gave them the solution to an arithmetic problem besides.</p>
+
+<p>The only discord in her relations with them arose from the jealousy that
+set her bosom friends by the ears. In this she was not quite blameless,
+as she changed her friendships with startling rapidity, feeling in duty
+bound to respond to all overtures of intimacy. Consequently her
+affections could not be fastened on a single companion for long, and she
+herself was amazed when she saw one sentiment pushed aside by the next
+attack.</p>
+
+<p>The teachers, too, had kindly feelings for her. The words, "Lilly, you
+are dreaming," which sometimes came from the platform, sounded more like
+a caress than a reproach. As head of the newcomers in the 1 B class she
+sat for a time at the end of the sixth row, and more than one hand gave
+her hair a paternal stroke in passing.</p>
+
+<p>Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such
+eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes <i>could</i> not exist. "Cat
+eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them.
+Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her
+lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and
+nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.</p>
+
+<p>When fifteen and a half years old Lilly passed from the first-year class
+into the Selecta, the class for advanced pupils, for it had been decided
+that she was to earn her living as a governess.</p>
+
+<p>With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of
+study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. Nobody was
+addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper balls ceased, and no
+one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like
+"sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by
+repetition; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy&mdash;she was
+neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such
+trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription,
+"Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course,
+not to be counted.</p>
+
+<p>But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple
+pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and
+yearning for the far-off, of a pupil's adoration for her teacher, and of
+a desire to save.</p>
+
+<p>He was assistant instructor in science in the girls' high school, and
+taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils'
+knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher's back in revenge.
+He gave no instruction whatever in the higher classes, but delivered
+lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.</p>
+
+<p>"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy
+through a maiden's soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering
+young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds
+the subject!</p>
+
+<p>His first name was Arpad.</p>
+
+<p>But there the romance ended. What remained was a poor consumptive, who
+had painfully earned his way through the university by private tutoring,
+only to fall a victim to the grave just when he had hoped to reap the
+scant fruit of the sufferings of his youth. His superiors helped him to
+the extent of their ability. They assigned him the easiest classes, and
+as soon as they noticed the fever stains burning on his cheeks, they
+obtained a substitute in his place and sent him home. But they succeeded
+in securing only a short respite, during which the dying man became a
+burden to the teaching staff. Feeling this himself he put forth suicidal
+energy to disarm whatever criticism might be made against his ability to
+work. He eagerly assumed all possible duties in his line, and what the
+most industrious and ambitious man found too difficult he, who stood
+with one foot in the grave, with no career ahead of him, gladly took
+upon his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>The day the principal introduced him to the Selecta remained fixed in
+Lilly's memory. It was between three and four o'clock, the last hour,
+when the almighty principal's portly belly unexpectedly appeared in the
+doorway. He entered followed by the slender, good-looking young man with
+a slight stoop, who stood at Miss Hennig's right side during morning
+services in the main hall and dog-eared the pages of his hymn-book while
+the anthem was being sung. He wore a tight grey coat, which emphasised
+his slimness, and his shining modish silk vest cast a false glitter of
+the world of society over him. He made two or three abrupt bows to the
+class, like a lieutenant, and looked very shy and embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Mälzer," said the principal, presenting him. "He will introduce you
+to the art of the Renaissance. I should like you, young ladies, to
+listen most attentively, for although the subject is not obligatory, and
+you will not have to pass an examination in it, it is of great
+importance for general education, and I shall have occasion to test your
+progress in the literature class when we take up, for example, Lessing,
+Goethe, or Winckelmann."</p>
+
+<p>With these words he strutted out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The young pedagogue twirled his little blond moustache, which fell in
+two thin scraggly tufts over the corners of his mouth. A smile both
+bashful and sarcastic flitted across his face. He looked around
+irresolutely for the chair, hesitating, apparently, whether to sit down
+or remain standing.</p>
+
+<p>Meta Jachmann, with her usual inclination to be silly, began to giggle,
+and soon half the class had followed suit. A hot red spread over the
+teacher's wan face.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh, ladies, laugh," he said with a voice which despite its weakness
+shook his narrow chest. "Persons in your position may well laugh; for a
+life full of activity and vigour lies ahead of you. I may rejoice, too,
+for I am permitted to speak to you as soul to soul; which is a piece of
+good fortune that rarely falls to the lot of a novice in the teaching
+profession. You will find that out from your own experience soon
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>The class grew still as a mouse. From that moment on he had the girls in
+his grip.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's not the whole of my good fortune," he continued. "The theme
+which the authorities of this institution have entrusted to my slender
+ability&mdash;whether from magnanimity toward me, or lack of respect for the
+subject, I cannot say&mdash;is the highest theme which human tradition knows.
+Every personal expression in history, however defiant, revolutionary, or
+alien the voice of the chosen one that uttered it, later exegesis used
+as moral fodder with which to satiate the masses. The only personages
+with whom this did not succeed were the men of the Renaissance. The nine
+times wise branded Plato as a shield bearer of Christianity, Horace as a
+pedant, Augustine as a church saint, Jesus as the Son of God. But no one
+has ever undertaken to make of Michael Angelo, of Alexander Borgia, of
+Machiavelli, anything but an ego, an ego which faces surrounding
+conditions and the world either as creator or destroyer, relying on the
+fulness of his own power."</p>
+
+<p>The young souls sat up and listened. Never had anyone spoken to them in
+such a tone. They felt he was talking his life away, but in the very
+moment they realised this, they drew a chain of freemasonry about him
+with which they shielded him.</p>
+
+<p>He continued. With bold rapid strokes, which wrung new life from the
+dead, he pictured to them the time and the men. The accumulation of many
+years of repression now burst from him in passionate utterance.</p>
+
+<p>His auditors suspected that here was more than a school lesson, more,
+even, than the harvest of scholarship. They divined that they were
+listening to a confession of faith; and they attached themselves to him
+with all the rapturous abandon of a woman and pupil, most rapturous when
+they did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly being one of the younger girls sat nearest to the instructor. She
+had a vague feeling, as of a flood of new, ineffably beautiful melodies
+being poured over her. Since everything in her life and imagination had
+hitherto centred about music, she had first to translate pictures and
+thoughts into the world of sound, before her perceptions could grasp
+them.</p>
+
+<p>She turned pale, and sat there squeezing her handkerchief in her left
+hand. Her eyes staring at him clouded over with moisture in the joy of
+surmise. She saw his breast working, saw the drops of perspiration on
+his forehead, saw the flames burning on his cheeks; she wanted to weep,
+to laugh, she wanted to cry: "Stop!" But she might not. So she sat
+motionless, and listened to the poor suppressed voice proclaiming the
+evangel of that old time which is still new. She listened also to
+another voice which cried jubilantly deep down in her heart: "Let there
+be&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"But how does the world look," he continued, "in which that high-keyed
+life developed? Like Moses, I have viewed it only from the mountain. I
+have loitered a little in its outer courts, but I have seen enough for
+me to know that my soul will never cease to desire it while breath
+remains in my body. There between cypresses and evergreen oaks, temples
+and palaces sprang up in white glory from the soil, seeming like a part
+of it. What is clay here is marble there; what is routine here is free
+creative energy there; our feeble imitation there is spontaneous growth.
+Here laborious, grafted culture, there the grace of a happy nature; here
+poverty-stricken pursuit of the useful, there voluptuous passion for the
+beautiful; here sober, subtly reasoning Protestantism, there glad,
+naïve, Catholic paganism."</p>
+
+<p>This came to Lilly like a blow on the head. She had been raised by
+Catholic parents in a Protestant country. Though there had been little
+place for piety in her home, a great deal of religious enthusiasm dwelt
+in her soul, fostered by an imaginative faculty and a compelling
+emotionalism. To hear her Catholicism praised did her heart good, but
+why it should be linked, almost as a matter of course, with the wicked
+heathens, whom she had been taught to despise and deplore, was a riddle
+to her. Her mind was a whirl of anxious thoughts and queries. She was
+unable to follow the speaker any longer, and lost the thread of his
+discourse, until after a while she heard him, in soft caressing words,
+give a picture of the southern country.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the golden-blue summer sky rising over the isles of the blessed,
+she saw the sun's bloody disk dip into the sea blackened by the breath
+of the sirocco, saw the shepherd with his flute of Pan pasturing his
+long-haired goats on the shining meadows of asphodel, saw the evergreen
+forest clambering up the slopes of the Apennines to their snow-clad
+peaks. She breathed in the fragrance of the laurels and strawberries and
+inhaled the olive vapours, which, at the sounding of the Angelus,
+ascended heavenward in blue pillars, like the offerings of a prayer.</p>
+
+<p>When she glanced up again, she almost started back in fright. A
+consuming, tortured look of yearning shot from his eyes as they stared
+with clairvoyant gaze, past them all, into emptiness.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang, the hour was over. He looked around like a somnambulist
+roused from sleep, snatched up his hat, and rushed from the room. Sacred
+silence remained. After a while the tension was broken by a whisper here
+and there and by a shy fumbling for school-bags.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly spoke to no one, and managed to make her escape into the street
+alone. Humming and weeping softly she walked home.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next morning there was profound excitement in the Selecta. The waves
+set in motion by the great event of the day before continued to
+vibrate.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Marholz, the daughter of a physician, who was a member of the Board
+of Health, brought some facts about the young instructor's life. It was
+absolutely necessary, she reported, for Dr. Mälzer to go to the south.
+If he remained at home, he would probably not survive the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's heart stood still. The others considered ways and means of
+helping him. Since he lacked the money and since the city would not
+assume the cost of so long a leave of absence, especially as his
+position was not yet assured, the means for saving him would have to be
+obtained privately.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been
+prolonged by forty or fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>At the ten o'clock recess they lost no time in getting together for
+urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the
+inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein's confectionery
+shop&mdash;they did not venture into Frangipani's, the resort of military
+officers and city officials&mdash;in the course of which fifteen young ladies
+consumed fifteen small meringues glacés and fifteen cups of chocolate,
+business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various
+promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested
+that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with assigned rôles be given
+in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to
+take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for
+this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever
+found his way into girls' hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys' high school quartette,
+proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the
+Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme
+for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens.
+This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that
+one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three
+projects into execution.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went
+pit-a-pat, "For him!"</p>
+
+<p>The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so
+also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues
+glacés and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but
+enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Mälzer's
+subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in
+substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense
+sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with
+serious obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at
+the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission
+to coöperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department
+was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared
+apply for it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating
+in a confectioner's bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly's
+share. Lilly well knew the way to the pawnbroker's, and she did not have
+to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she
+wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was
+all for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each
+time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it
+furtively.</p>
+
+<p>One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art
+would be discontinued until further notice.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dying, he's dying!" was the cry in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in
+one of her father's books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in
+his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain.
+But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours,
+despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the
+damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for
+having robbed her toiling mother of her help.</p>
+
+<p>The adventure was repeated the following evenings, and anxiety waxed in
+Lilly's soul. She pictured him lying there gasping for breath, with no
+woman's hand to wipe the death sweat from his brow.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday her solicitude drove her from her work-table early in the
+afternoon. To patrol his house in broad daylight was impossible, but she
+ventured to pass it once, and lacked the courage to return. Then she was
+seized by a heroic resolve. She went to the florist's shop, and
+sacrificing the two marks eighty left over from the transaction of the
+little cross, she walked back to his house with a brownish yellow
+bouquet of drooping autumn roses.</p>
+
+<p>Without stopping to think she ran up the steps, and rang at the door of
+the second story, where she had seen the green lamp.</p>
+
+<p>An old woman in a soiled blue apron and mumbling her lips opened the
+door. Lilly stammered Dr. Mälzer's name.</p>
+
+<p>"In the rear," said the woman, and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>Then the little green lamp did not burn for him. An old woman lived
+there, who wore a dirty apron and whose lips kept mumbling. For a week
+she had been worshipping a false idol. Disappointed, she was about to
+steal down the stairs, when her eye caught his name among four
+door-plates. Her heart leapt, and before she knew it, she had knocked.</p>
+
+<p>A brief interval elapsed before his head appeared behind the door, which
+he held only partly open. The lapels of his grey coat were raised to
+cover his neck, which apparently was collarless. His hair was in wild
+disorder, and the ends of his moustache were more matted than ever. And
+how his eyes glared as they seemed to demand in embarrassment, "What do
+you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but
+failed to recall her name.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained
+rooted to the spot as if paralysed.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been sent here by your class, I presume," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.</p>
+
+<p>"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come
+in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious
+consequences for both of us. But as a delegate&mdash;" he reflected a
+moment&mdash;"come in, please."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had imagined him living in high, spacious apartments, surrounded
+by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay
+she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open
+card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly
+unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling
+less embarrassed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought
+them nearer to each other.</p>
+
+<p>"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.</p>
+
+<p>He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"They don't smell," he said, "they are the last&mdash;but my first. So you
+can imagine how precious they are to me."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you still in pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she managed to ask.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Pain? No. I don't suffer from pain. A little fever now and then&mdash;but
+the fever's pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon
+away over everything&mdash;over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too;
+and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so
+beautiful&mdash;that is to say&mdash;I beg your pardon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the
+pupil.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his embarrassment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to
+drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in
+two blue hollows.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoarser than
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly, Lilly Czepanek."</p>
+
+<p>The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a
+short time.</p>
+
+<p>"You intend to become a teacher?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Dr. Mälzer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what? Get yourself exiled to Russia and throw bombs. Go to
+a pest-house and wash sores. Marry a drunkard, who will beat you and
+sell your bed from under your body. <i>Don't</i> become a teacher&mdash;not
+<i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not just I?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you why. A flat-breasted person with watery eyes and
+falling hair who can only see one side of a subject&mdash;such a creature
+should be a teacher. Somebody without the blood and nerve to live his
+own life can teach others to live&mdash;he's good enough for that. But he
+whose blood flows through his body like fluid fire, whose yearning
+spurts from his eyes, to whom the problems of life exist for seeing and
+knowing, not for paltry criticism, he who&mdash;but I mustn't talk to you
+about that, though I should very much like to."</p>
+
+<p>"Please do, please," Lilly implored.</p>
+
+<p>"How old are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sixteen."</p>
+
+<p>"And already a woman." His eyes scanned her in pained admiration. "Look
+at me," he continued. "I, too, was once a human being&mdash;you wouldn't
+believe it&mdash;I, too, once stretched two sturdy arms longingly to heaven;
+I, too, once looked with desire into a girl's eyes, though not into such
+as yours. Let me prattle. A dying man can do no harm."</p>
+
+<p>"But you shall not die," she cried, jumping from her seat.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, child, and don't excite yourself about me. It doesn't pay. A
+friend of mine once broke the back-bone of a cat that had gone mad. He
+did it with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn't run away, she
+couldn't howl, she couldn't do anything but just remain on all fours and
+cough and choke and cough and choke&mdash;until the second blow came. That's
+the way it is with me. There's nothing to be done. Go away, child, I've
+already made my peace, but when I look at you my heart grows heavy
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly turned her face away to hide her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Must I?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Must?" He laughed again. "I shall feed on every minute of your presence
+as a hungry man feeds on the crumbs he digs out of his pockets. You sat
+on the left end of the first bench. I remember. I said to myself, 'What
+a pair of improbable eyes! Such eyes the magic dogs of Andersen's tales
+must have, eyes to which you would like to say, Please don't make such
+big eyes. And from being thought big, they grow still bigger and
+bigger.'"</p>
+
+<p>Now Lilly laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "I have made you merry again. You must not carry
+away too deathlike a picture from here. Our lessons were beautiful,
+weren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly answered with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"When I spoke of Italy, you gasped a couple of times from sheer longing.
+I thought to myself: 'She's gasping just like yourself, yet she doesn't
+need it.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to go there very, very much?" Lilly ventured to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask a man on fire whether he would like to take a cold plunge."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's the only thing that would save your life?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked her up and down a moment with a black, morose gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you questioning me? What do you want to find out? Tell the
+young ladies of your class that I'm very grateful to them, tell them I'm
+touched by their sympathy, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>An attack of coughing choked him. Lilly jumped up and looked about for
+help. She instinctively seized a glass from the folding-table, which was
+half filled with a pale liquid, and held it to his mouth. He groped for
+it eagerly. After drinking he fell back exhausted, and looked at her
+gratefully, tenderly. She returned his look with a feeble smile,
+thinking only one thought:</p>
+
+<p>"What happiness to be here!"</p>
+
+<p>It was so quiet in the dark, overheated room that she could hear the
+ticking of his watch, which hung on the wall not far away. He wanted to
+sit up and speak, but he seemed not to have recovered sufficient
+strength. Lilly gave him an imploring look of warning. He smiled and
+leaned back again. So they sat in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What happiness!" thought Lilly. "What great, great happiness!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he stretched out his hands to her wearily. She took them in an
+eager grasp of both her own. They felt hot and clammy, and his pulse
+beat down to his finger-tips. It went twice as fast as hers, for she
+could feel hers, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, child, sweet," he whispered. "I want to give you a piece of
+good advice to carry away with you. You have too much love in you. All
+three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from
+pity. One of them everybody must have if he's not to be a fossil. Two
+are dangerous. All three lead to ruin. Be on guard against your own
+love. Don't squander it. That's my advice, the advice of one on whom you
+cannot squander it, for I can use it&mdash;God knows how well I can use it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you nobody to stay with you?" she asked, dreading to hear that
+some other woman had the right to nurse him.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"May I come again?"</p>
+
+<p>He started, struck by the ardour with which she asked the question.</p>
+
+<p>"If the class sends you again, of course."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly cast aside all reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a lie," she stammered. "Not a soul knows I came here."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang to his feet, almost like a man in good health. His face
+lengthened, his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out his hands,
+which were trembling violently, as if to ward her off.</p>
+
+<p>"Go," he whispered. "Go!"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not stir.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't go," he went on, excitement almost stifling his words,
+"you will ruin your future. Young ladies do not visit unmarried men who
+live the way I do&mdash;even if the man is their teacher and sick as I am.
+Tell no one that you have been here, no friend, not a single human
+being. Your livelihood depends upon your reputation. I cannot steal your
+bread. <i>Please go.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"May I never come again?" Her eyes pled with him.</p>
+
+<p>"No!!" he shouted in a voice like riven iron.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt herself being shoved through the doorway. The key was turned
+in the lock behind her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>She disobeyed his injunction that very hour. She ran to Rosalie Katz,
+her friend <i>du jour</i>, to confess everything and relieve her feelings in
+tears. The little brown Jewess had a soft heart and was also head over
+heels in love with her teacher, and so the girls wept together.</p>
+
+<p>But they had forgotten to lock the door, and thus it happened that Mr.
+Katz, whose wealth and social position found pictorial expression in a
+round paunch, and whose waistcoat buttons consequently were always
+coming loose, entered his daughter's room to have one sewed on.</p>
+
+<p>When he discovered the girls in tearful embrace, he discreetly retired.
+But the instant Lilly had left the house, he extracted all the completer
+a confession from his daughter. He learned the story of the sick
+teacher, the abortive committee meetings, and the futile meringues
+glacés.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we can fix that," he said with a smirk, twirling the very thin
+watch chain&mdash;heavy watch chains were worn only by those among the grain
+merchants who had remained below on the social scale&mdash;which branched out
+to the right and to the left from the third buttonhole of his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>A week later Dr. Mälzer received a registered letter from two strangers
+informing him that means had been found to enable him to make a lengthy
+sojourn in the south. All he needed to do was obtain leave of absence
+and draw the first payment at the office of Goldbaum, Katz &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>He departed on a cold, crisp October evening. The faculty accompanied
+him to the station. Lilly and Rosalie, who had learned the time of his
+leaving at papa Katz's office, also were present, but they kept
+themselves in the background.</p>
+
+<p>He glided past them muffled in a thick scarf, his fiery eyes turned upon
+the distance.</p>
+
+<p>When the train left, the two girls flung themselves into each other's
+arms and wept for love and pride.</p>
+
+<p>On their way home Rosalie invited her friend to have an éclair with
+her, for it had grown too cold for meringues glacés.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later they were sitting in the confectionery shop smiling
+at each other and looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>With the advent of spring a new and gayer existence began for Mrs.
+Czepanek.</p>
+
+<p>He was soon coming, that was certain. But even if the time was short,
+why spend it over that disgusting sewing? There was a less wearing way
+of making a living.</p>
+
+<p>The thing was simple enough&mdash;rent an apartment of nine rooms, buy the
+furniture on credit, and have a plate hung on the outside of the house
+inscribed: "Board and Lodging for Students." As for the rest, well, a
+way would be found.</p>
+
+<p>This little set of thoughts took exclusive possession of Mrs. Czepanek's
+poor brain, riddled like a sieve by the incessant whirr of the
+sewing-machine.</p>
+
+<p>Though such a careless existence appealed to Lilly's fancy, she
+harboured some small doubts. In the first place the clamouring,
+threatening duns that had besieged their home after papa's departure
+were still fresh in her shuddering memory. Then she did not see quite
+clearly where so many students, enough to fill a nine-room apartment,
+were suddenly to come from after the beginning of the summer semester,
+since all had secured quarters already.</p>
+
+<p>But her mother would listen to no objections.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to the directors, I will go to the mayor, I will&mdash;" and the
+attic room resounded with the new triumphant, "I will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Now began a series of mysterious expeditions. Frequently, when Lilly
+returned from school, she could tell at the bottom of the stairs that
+the machine, whose industrious clatter had greeted her for years, was at
+a standstill, and she would find the key to the room under the door-mat.</p>
+
+<p>As the time drew near for the great event, the mother became more
+taciturn. A crafty smile lay on her face, which, but for an admixture of
+scorn, was like the smile parents wear before Christmas. She painted her
+cheeks more carefully than ever, and the jar of rouge, which previously
+she had kept locked away from Lilly, reposed unabashed on the top of the
+chest.</p>
+
+<p>But money grew rapidly scarcer. Lilly had to give up every minute she
+could spare from school work to make up for her mother's remissness,
+while Mrs. Czepanek went about calculating and speculating. She put her
+foot to the treadle only on rare occasions, when Lilly pled with her
+urgently. The delivery of finished articles became more and more
+irregular, and the two women were in danger of losing their entire means
+of subsistence.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's vast hoard of youthful strength threatened to give out. Yet this
+did not cause her overmuch concern.</p>
+
+<p>"Something'll turn up," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>If only she could have gotten one good night's rest, instead of lying
+dressed on the edge of the bed from two to six in the morning, she would
+not have grudged her mother her youthful intoxication born of young
+hopes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sat in school with tired, reddened eyes, a filmy veil between her
+and the world, between her and the thoughts she was expected to think.
+Her teachers began to find fault with her.</p>
+
+<p>It was high time for the new life to begin.</p>
+
+<p>It began on a hot, drab July day.</p>
+
+<p>On returning from school Lilly saw two waggons standing outside the door
+loaded with furniture smelling of fresh varnish. Even before she set
+foot on the lowest step she could hear her mother's shrill voice
+apparently raised in altercation with strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly ran upstairs, her heart beating fast. Two drivers wearing black
+leather aprons were standing there, one with a bill in his hand
+demanding money. A look of amusement was on their red faces. Mrs.
+Czepanek was tripping to and fro, running her fingers through her
+freshly-curled hair and screaming all sorts of things about rascality
+and broken promises and grinding down the poor. Whereupon the men
+laughed, and said they'd like to get back home that day.</p>
+
+<p>This set Mrs. Czepanek off completely. She tried to snatch the bill from
+the man's hand. He refused to give it up, and she set to pummelling him
+with her fists.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sprang between them, caught hold of her mother, who fought
+desperately, and called to the men to leave, telling them everything
+would be arranged. So the men took themselves off.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother's wrath now descended upon Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"If you hadn't come," she screamed, "I would have gotten hold of the
+receipt, and everything would have been all right. Now I have to go
+there to-morrow again, while if you hadn't mixed in, the furniture could
+have been unpacked in the new apartment this very day."</p>
+
+<p>"What new apartment?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Czepanek laughed. How could Lilly be so stupid? Did she think her
+mother had been going about idle all that time?</p>
+
+<p>Then everything was revealed. The nine-room apartment had already been
+rented, and all they needed to do was move in. Even the plate had
+already been made. When hung it would act like magic. So much for the
+outside. But hadn't she self-sacrificingly strained every nerve on the
+inside equipment, too? She wasn't going to describe the furniture, for
+it might make her angry again, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She had bought curtains for twelve windows&mdash;the pattern a Chinese lady
+and a palm leaf. And six rugs, good ones, because students usually have
+a pretty heavy tramp, and cheap stuff would wear out like chiffon. Big
+English wash basins with gold flowers, the pattern exactly matching the
+pattern of the ten stands. Unfortunately the dishes were not ready for
+delivery because it always took three or four weeks to have the monogram
+burnt in. But they would have to have something to eat from, so for the
+meantime she had bought a cheaper set&mdash;for eighteen people&mdash;everything
+thoroughly refined and respectable. She had been very clever and very
+careful in the entire matter.</p>
+
+<p>While engaged in this description, Mrs. Czepanek walked about the
+centre-table with long shambling steps. Her small eyes, with the traces
+of many sleepless hours upon them, glistened and gleamed, and beneath
+the false glowed the genuine red on her haggard cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who was beginning to be a bit uneasy, ventured to inquire
+concerning the payments. Her mother simply laughed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are either a lady and impress the tradespeople, or you are not a
+lady. I think that I, the wife of Kilian Czepanek, conductor of the
+singing society, am thoroughly entitled to be treated with respect."</p>
+
+<p>"Are the things at the apartment?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Czepanek laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"What should I do with them before the apartment is in order? Apartments
+have to be freshly painted and papered." Then with the graceful gesture
+which only the ability to pay bestows upon a person, she added: "I was
+especially careful in selecting the wall-paper to get artistic
+patterns."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had a sickish feeling. It was like being in doubt as to whether or
+not your schoolmates were teasing you.</p>
+
+<p>Added to all the other annoyances nothing had been gotten for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly set the coffee on to boil and put the afternoon rolls on the
+table. Well, then, they would simply skip a meal again. The two
+Czepaneks had grown nimble in that sort of skipping.</p>
+
+<p>The mother hastily gulped down the hot drink. No time must be lost, she
+said, they would have to get at the packing.</p>
+
+<p>At this point she was seized by another attack of fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you held my hands, you good-for-nothing, you," she screamed, "we
+should have had that lovely furniture in its place by to-morrow morning.
+As it is, we shall have to move in with all this trash. What <i>will</i> the
+people say when they see it?"</p>
+
+<p>She tore at her artificial curls and despairingly brandished the
+bread-knife, with which she was slicing her roll.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned up the sleeves of her blouse, and said the packing
+should begin.</p>
+
+<p>She emptied the wardrobe and piled the clothes over the bottom of the
+bed. The underwear and linen, the contents of their linen chest, she
+sent flying over the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The sinews of her withered arms jerked, the sweat trickled down her
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, watching the aimless pother with an oppressed feeling at her
+heart, noticed the score of the Song of Songs, the home's greatest
+treasure, lying on the floor, heedlessly thrown there by her mother
+along with nightgowns and bed-clothes.</p>
+
+<p>She stooped to pick it up.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you after with the Song of Songs?" screamed the mother. She
+had been kneeling, and now jumped to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was just going to put it on the
+table."</p>
+
+<p>"You lie," the mother screeched, "you low-down thing. You want to steal
+it, the way you stole the receipt. I'll spoil your little game for you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly suddenly saw a gleaming something pass before her eyes, and felt a
+pain at her throat, felt something warm spread soothingly down to her
+left breast.</p>
+
+<p>Not until her mother prepared for a second thrust did Lilly realise it
+was the bread-knife she was holding in her hand. She uttered a piercing
+scream, and grasped her mother's wrist.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother had developed giant strength, and Lilly would probably
+have succumbed in the struggle that ensued, had not the noise they made
+drawn the neighbours to the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Czepanek was caught from behind, and bound with handkerchiefs. She
+held the bread-knife in a tight clutch, which the strongest man could
+not relax, and did not drop it until an opiate had been administered by
+the physician who had hurried to the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's wound was dressed, and she was taken to the hospital, where she
+remained temporarily, because they did not know what else to do with
+her. While at the hospital she learned that her mother had been placed
+in the district insane asylum, and in all likelihood would never come
+out of it again.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was left alone in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Well, young lady," said Mr. Pieper, the prominent lawyer, "I have been
+appointed your guardian. I accepted the office because I thought it my
+duty&mdash;the papers in Lemke <i>vs.</i> Militzky," he interrupted himself to
+call to his managing clerk, who had just then entered. "What was I going
+to say? Oh, yes. Because I thought it my duty, despite my being an
+extremely busy man&mdash;to assist widows and orphans to the best of my
+feeble ability."</p>
+
+<p>He passed his exquisitely cherished left hand over his shining bald pate
+and straw-coloured beard, beneath which a worldly mouth half concealed
+an epicurean smile.</p>
+
+<p>"My wards all make their way in the world," he continued. "It's my pride
+to have them succeed. The way they do it&mdash;well, that's my affair, a
+business secret, so to say. I am convinced, my child, that you, too,
+will get along. If I didn't think so, I should not be so interested in
+you probably. The first thing is to get the young ladies the right
+positions. The homely ones give most trouble, unless they happen to
+possess a certain measure of self-abnegation. It pays them to assume the
+so-called Christian virtues. But of course you don't belong in that
+category&mdash;you probably know it yourself&mdash;I tell you merely that you may
+learn with time to make demands. I must explain&mdash;the main art in life is
+to determine the boundary line between demands justifiable and demands
+unjustifiable. That is, you must have a feeling for exactly how far your
+powers will reach in each circumstance as it arises. A girl like you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The managing clerk, a tall, bony fellow, suddenly appeared at the
+lawyer's side shoving a bundle of documents at him.</p>
+
+<p>"At four o'clock the Labischin divorce case. At quarter past five
+Reimann&mdash;Reimann <i>vs.</i> Fassbender&mdash;get everything ready, and have
+someone here to accompany this young lady&mdash;the papers will tell you
+where. That will do."</p>
+
+<p>The managing clerk vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Lilly's guardian resumed, "the time I have to spare for you is
+nearly gone. You cannot continue with your schooling, that's plain.
+There's no money for it. But even if you had the means, I'm not certain
+whether in view of your future&mdash;however, a governess may make a
+brilliant match&mdash;it sometimes occurs, chiefly, to be sure, in English
+novels&mdash;but there's the danger, too, that you might&mdash;excuse me for the
+word&mdash;on the spur of the moment I can't think of another&mdash;besides, it's
+the right one&mdash;that you might be seduced. What I'd rather see you than
+anything else is the lady in a large photographic establishment who
+receives customers. But it seems to me you haven't enough
+self-confidence as yet for that. One must make a deep impression at
+first sight, because people who leave an order have to have some
+inducement for coming back to call for their pictures. I've selected
+something else for you, for the purpose more of giving you a short
+period of trial than of providing you with a permanent position.
+It's in a circulating library. It will give you plenty of
+opportunity&mdash;discreetly, you know&mdash;not to hide your light under a
+bushel. The remuneration, I need scarcely say, will be moderate&mdash;free
+board and lodging and twenty marks a month. You will have a chance to
+let your fancy&mdash;I suppose you're not yet <i>blasé</i>&mdash;let your fancy roam at
+will in the fields of general literature. There you are, young lady!
+Mercy on us! Why are you crying?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly quickly dried the tears from her eyes and cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just come from the hospital," was the only excuse she could find.
+"I'm still a little&mdash;I beg your pardon."</p>
+
+<p>The prominent lawyer shook his head. His bald spot looked as petted and
+pampered as a lovely woman's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"You must get out of the habit of crying, too, if you want to make your
+way in the world. Tears are not in place until you are 'settled.' Oh,
+yes, something else&mdash;the things your poor mother owned must be sold. The
+proceeds will serve as a small capital. I lay stress on having such a
+sum, no matter how insignificant. Now you will go back to your home with
+my man&mdash;the key was deposited at my office&mdash;and select what you think
+you absolutely need or"&mdash;he smiled a little&mdash;"what filial devotion leads
+you to prize. Good-by, my dear. In six months come to me again."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a cool, soft hand, which seemed incapable of bestowing a
+pressure, lie in her own for an instant; then she found herself
+staggering down the dark steps behind a clerk who had been waiting for
+her outside the door with the key to her home.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to speak to him, ask him questions, beg him for something.
+But for what? She herself knew not.</p>
+
+<p>When the clerk opened up the musty room, where the twilight was broken
+by shafts of light, as in a tomb, the tomb of her life, the tomb of her
+youth, Lilly felt that now everything was over and all left her was to
+fall asleep here and die.</p>
+
+<p>The clerk threw the shutters back and raised the windows.</p>
+
+<p>The clothes were still lying on the bed, the underwear and bed-linen on
+the floor, and close by were two brown stains, the blood that had
+flowed from her wound. The knife, too, was still there.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly restrained her desire to cry, shamed by the presence of the clerk,
+who stood there stupidly, whistling, with his lower lip thrust out.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly threw her clothes into the basket-trunk which her mother had
+intended to use in moving to the nine-room apartment, added a few pieces
+of underwear and some books chosen at random, and then looked around for
+mementos. Her brain was befogged. She saw everything and recognised
+nothing. But there on the table, there, bound with rubber bands, soaked
+in her blood, untouched because no one knew its value, lay the Song of
+Songs.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly snatched it up, shut down the trunk lid, and with the score under
+her arm, stepped out into the new life, hungry for experience.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen's two daughters had run away from home again. The whole
+neighbourhood knew it. Lilly had scarcely set foot in the dusky room
+smelling of dust and leather, where soiled volumes on pine shelves
+reached to the ceiling, when she, too, became acquainted with the fact.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen was a dignified dame, whom nature had endowed with
+gracious rotundity. She received Lilly at the entrance to her
+circulating library, and amid kisses and tears declared that even before
+seeing Lilly she had conceived a love for her such as she would cherish
+for a child of her own; and now that she had met her face to face she
+was completely bewitched.</p>
+
+<p>"And people speak of the cold world," thought Lilly, whom this sort of
+reception pleased very well.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I say&mdash;a child of my <i>own</i>? Nonsense! I love you more, much
+more, ever and ever and ever so much more. Daughters are venomous
+serpents, on whom love is wasted. They are parasites to be torn from
+one's breast&mdash;torn&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped because the stupid clerk, who had accompanied Lilly in a
+cab, was shoving her trunk over the threshold. After he left Mrs.
+Asmussen continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I loved my daughters, or didn't love them? Did I, or did I
+not, say to them every day: 'Your father's a blackguard, a cur, and may
+the devil take him'? How do you think they rewarded me? One morning I
+get up and find they're gone&mdash;mind you, absolutely gone&mdash;beds empty&mdash;and
+a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You beat us too much, and
+we're sick and tired of that eternal mush.' Look at me, my dear. Am I
+not goodness itself? Do I look as if I could beat <i>any</i>body, much less
+my own daughters? And do you suppose this is the first time they did it,
+the first time they overwhelmed me with shame and disgrace in the eyes
+of the whole world? What would you say if I were to tell you it's the
+<i>third</i> time&mdash;twice before I pardoned them and took them to my bosom. I
+found them lying outside my door in tears and rags. Yes, yes, that's the
+way it was, that's the way it is, the way it is. But if they dare to
+return <i>again</i>, here's a broom, here, look, behind the door&mdash;I put it
+there the instant I found out they had gone, and there it will remain
+until I take hold of it and beat them out, beat them out through the
+door to the street, this way, this way, this way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a gesture of ineffable disgust Mrs. Asmussen swept an invisible
+something through the hall, and let it lie outside, giving it a look of
+unspeakable contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor, poor woman," thought Lilly. "How she must have suffered!" And
+she registered a silent vow to do her utmost to replace the faithless
+children in the abandoned mother's heart.</p>
+
+<p>At this point a young man entered, a customer, who wanted to exchange a
+book. He asked for one of Zola's works, and looked at Lilly
+triumphantly, as if to say, "You see, that's the kind I am!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen went to fetch the book, shaking her head softly in
+deprecation. The customer took it hastily without paying the least
+attention to the look of warning with which she handed it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, my dear," she said after he left, "that's the way youth goes to
+its ruin, and I myself am condemned to point the way."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" queried Lilly, who had been listening with the keenest interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what's inside an apothecary's shop?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly said she had often been in an apothecary's shop, but could not
+itemise the contents.</p>
+
+<p>Her mistress continued:</p>
+
+<p>"One closet is marked 'Poisons.' It contains the most awful poisons
+mankind knows. That's why it's always locked and only the owner and his
+assistant may have the key to it. Now look about you. Half of what you
+see here is poison, too. Everything written these days vitiates the soul
+and lures it to its destruction. Yet I must keep the wicked books, and
+though my heart bleeds I must hand them over to any and everybody who
+asks for them. Oh, I need but to think of my undutiful daughters. No use
+my telling them not to&mdash;they read at any rate. They read and read the
+whole night long, and when they were crammed full of impudence and
+corruption, they didn't like the food I prepared for them, and all they
+wanted to do was to go out walking. On top of it all they went sneaking
+off to their father, that miserable cur, that common cheat, that
+pock-marked scum of the earth. Child, I warn you against that man.
+Should you ever meet him, lift your skirts and spit, the way I'm
+spitting now."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shuddered at the man's frightful vileness, but took some courage
+in the thought that she had found her natural protector in this
+excellent woman.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later they went to supper, which consisted of mush and
+sandwiches, with nothing but clarified fat between. Lilly, whose palate
+had not been pampered, was easily persuaded that nobody in the world
+knew how to prepare such dainty mush, and that the emperor himself was
+seldom served with more delicious sandwiches. Had a little ham been
+added to the repast, such as she had gotten for supper every evening at
+the hospital, the acme of earthly enjoyments in her opinion would have
+been attained.</p>
+
+<p>Going to bed provided her with another pleasure. The books of the
+circulating library were kept in a large room with three windows,
+divided into four compartments by two bookcases running from the
+windowed wall deep into the room and by a counter opposite the door
+leading into the hall. A passageway along the wall dividing the library
+from the inner room was the only means of getting from one compartment
+to another.</p>
+
+<p>When bedtime came Mrs. Asmussen had Lilly carry to the compartment
+farthest from the hall door two bench-like pieces of furniture and mount
+a spring-mattress on them. This completely blocked the space crosswise,
+so that, to get into bed, Lilly had to jump over the bottom rail of the
+benches. She thought it great sport.</p>
+
+<p>Wedged in between perpendicular bookcases, the window-sill at her head,
+a chair holding her impedimenta at her feet, the Song of Songs clasped
+in her arms, Lilly fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning her apprenticeship began.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was instructed as to the system according to which the thousands
+of volumes were ranged on the shelves. As she knew her A B C's, she
+would have been able to fetch any book from its place at the end of five
+minutes if only Mrs. Asmussen had followed her own scheme and not
+produced utter confusion by disposing the books arbitrarily.</p>
+
+<p>Still harder a task was finding records in the large ledger. Here, too,
+the plan was supposed to be alphabetic; but some customers filled the
+space allotted to them more rapidly than others, and when there was no
+more room Mrs. Asmussen had simply turned to the next blank page
+regardless of alphabetic succession. The result was such a jumble that
+finally neither Mrs. Asmussen nor her decamped daughters knew where to
+look for what they wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Inspired by holy zeal Lilly began the great task of getting order out of
+chaos. This constituted her entire life.</p>
+
+<p>The very day after her arrival Mrs. Asmussen provided her with some
+singular experiences.</p>
+
+<p>During the working hours the worthy dame had for the most part kept out
+of sight. When Lilly went in for supper she found her mistress dreamily
+inclined over a steaming cup of tea in a room pervaded by a pleasant
+aroma of lemon and rum.</p>
+
+<p>"I suffer very much from a catarrhal affection of the mucous lining of
+my nose," explained Mrs. Asmussen, blinking at Lilly with somewhat
+watery grey eyes. "So I must take some medicine which one of the most
+eminent physicians in the city prescribed for me."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stirred her mush while Mrs. Asmussen sipped tea, every now and
+then giving vent to a distressed sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I told you about my daughters?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, certainly," said Lilly, respectfully.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, too, Mrs. Asmussen had spoken of scarcely anything but
+those miserable creatures and the contemptible wretch they called
+father.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it's possible for you to get even a remote conception of
+the charm of those two girls. They are my own flesh and blood, and
+modesty should forbid me to speak of them this way. However, from a
+purely objective point of view, I may say that never, never in the wide
+world have I ever seen, even from afar, two young ladies endowed with
+such striking qualities of mind and character. Such tender filial
+devotion, such self-sacrificing industry, such touching modesty, so much
+genuine feeling in all the small relations of life, such quiet strength
+in the judgment of great questions, have never before, I warrant, been
+united in two such youthful souls. Let them be an example to you, my
+child. You are far removed, far, far removed from those models of
+maidenhood."</p>
+
+<p>In her astonishment and shame Lilly dropped her spoon. The old lady went
+on:</p>
+
+<p>"It was with a bleeding heart that I had to part from them. As for them,
+they cried day and night before leaving me. But what was to be done?
+They had to go to their father. Have I ever told you about my splendid
+husband? An untoward destiny has separated us, but his love, I know,
+clings to me, and I will love him all the days of my life. Oh, what a
+man he was! My child, pray to the Lord that he may make you worthy to
+become the wife of such a man. Alas, I was not worthy, no, not I!"</p>
+
+<p>Two tears of infinite contrition ran down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>She related a good deal more on this second evening concerning the
+virtues of her two daughters, her husband's nobility of character, and
+her own unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>After she had taken several more doses of the medicine prescribed by one
+of the most eminent physicians of the city, she finally wept herself to
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she began the day's work by bursting into a rage
+because Lilly had used the broom, which was to remain undisturbed behind
+the door, for sweeping the library.</p>
+
+<p>"This broom is here for only one purpose&mdash;to beat those two monsters
+when they come to my door. And if you, wretched creature, take hold of
+it once again, you will be the first to make its acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly now began to divine that the strange world was not so roseate as
+her eagerness for experience had led her to picture it.</p>
+
+<p>But worse was to come.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen, who seemed to be greatly concerned for the salvation of
+Lilly's soul and the purity of her virgin fancy, immediately forbade her
+to read any of the books in the library.</p>
+
+<p>"Experience with my daughters," she said, "taught me where such
+misconduct leads. And I will see to it that you are spared a similar
+fate."</p>
+
+<p>So long as the work of ordering the books and the ledger continued, the
+temptation to disobey this mandate did not arise very frequently. But
+when fall came, when despite increase of custom, unoccupied hours grew
+more frequent, and the lamp hanging over the counter shone invitingly,
+when Mrs. Asmussen from day to day succumbed earlier to the effects of
+the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians in the
+city, and fell into an untroubled dream existence, curiosity and
+loneliness drove Lilly irresistibly on to commit the sinful deed.</p>
+
+<p>The final impulse was given by a girl of about her own age, who had come
+one rainy October evening to exchange the first volume of a novel for
+the second. But the second had been loaned already, and the girl
+actually cried in disappointment. She couldn't bear waiting, she said.
+She <i>had</i> to know how the story ended. She would <i>die</i> if she didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly good-humouredly advised her to go to one of the other circulating
+libraries, which were said to be larger and more aristocratic. She even
+returned the three marks deposit for use at the other place. Happy in
+reawakened hopes the novel-reader left.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly examined the torn and soiled volume on all sides and took a
+cautious peep between the covers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Soll und Haben</i>, by Gustav Freytag," was on the title page. She
+recalled that even the girls of the first year high school had gone into
+raptures over the book. But the seamstress's daughter had had no time
+for reading novels.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly glanced timidly at the first page, then slipped to the glass door
+and listened for a while to Mrs. Asmussen's peaceful breathing&mdash;now,
+with sails spread, she launched forth on the high seas of romance.</p>
+
+<p>When she finished the volume at four o'clock in the morning she could
+have torn her hair in sheer desperation at having so lightly put the
+sequel into the hands of some stranger, who might not bring it back. She
+mapped out ways and means of unearthing his name and address and
+slipping to him secretly in order to hasten the return of the book. Then
+she fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She spent hours going over the ledger time and again to find the name.
+In vain! The entries were made by numbers, not by titles, and each time
+she skipped the number of <i>Soll und Haben</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So, like a toper who seeks intoxication in a new drink, she greedily
+devoured another book.</p>
+
+<p>From now on Lilly's life was one great orgy, and bore all the marks of
+such an existence&mdash;blurred eyes, aching limbs, huge bills for midnight
+oil, and spying and lying every few minutes to allay Mrs. Asmussen's
+suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>One winter morning the dreadful crime came to light.</p>
+
+<p>The fire in the library stove would die out about midnight and Lilly's
+feet would then grow cold. So she got into the habit of reading in bed,
+with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, set on the
+broad window-sill directly back of her head. She indulged in the luxury
+even though reduced to the bitter necessity of getting out of bed later
+to replace both the lamp and the book, for nowadays Mrs. Asmussen was
+frequently at her post earlier in the morning than Lilly. But Lilly, for
+the sake of the few extra hours thus gained, would not have been
+deterred from allowing herself this great joy, even if it had involved
+going out on the icy street in her nightgown.</p>
+
+<p>But once she started up from sleep in terror to find Mrs. Asmussen
+standing at the bottom of the bed all dressed. A black strap lay across
+her white shirt, and the lamp, which she had gotten up at one o'clock to
+refill, was still burning behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Never having been beaten in her life, she refused at first to take it
+seriously when Mrs. Asmussen, despite her corpulence, suddenly jumped
+over the bottom of the bed and squatted on the covers like a great
+turkey and began to strike her over the ears with the black strap.</p>
+
+<p>Bad times set in.</p>
+
+<p>Of what avail that Lilly felt genuinely repentant and swore to herself
+to reform. She was so steeped in the new passion, so absorbed by that
+lovelier existence, where people experienced and loved, suffered and
+enjoyed, where there were no pert servant girls who came to exchange
+books, no wet umbrellas, no second volumes loaned out, no ledger numbers
+not to be found, no mush, and no blows, that she could not have returned
+to her former self had she had the self-renunciatory ability of a martyr
+and saint.</p>
+
+<p>To such an extent was she dominated by her fancy that what was her
+actual existence, moving on from day to day in monotonous prison-like
+loneliness, seemed to her a dream, an oppressive death stupour,
+painless, but also pleasureless. Her being did not expand in real life
+until the sticky pages of a novel began to rustle in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Intimidated and unresisting as she was, she did not find the courage to
+justify what was holiest to her even in her own eyes. She felt it to be
+a sin on which her hungry soul fed as on manna.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen had bethought herself of a diabolic way of still further
+humiliating Lilly. Like many a believing Protestant, she regarded
+religion solely as a scourge. Hitherto she had not shown the least
+solicitude concerning Lilly's piety, but now she began each meal with a
+long prayer of repentance, and while the steam curled invitingly from
+the soup tureen, she would beseech God with sighs and tears to raise
+Lilly from the depths to which she had sunk.</p>
+
+<p>And woe to Lilly if caught backsliding!</p>
+
+<p>That first chastisement was not the last. Every pretext was seized for
+beating and cuffing her. Storms of abuse showered down on her
+unprotected head. She did not dare breathe until the medicine prescribed
+by the eminent physician began to have its soothing effect.</p>
+
+<p>Then she would pounce on the first book she came across, and amid the
+forging of signatures and broken marriage vows, amid death by poisoning
+and the mad acts of love, she would suffer and triumph, triumph and die,
+blissful in her sufferings, intoxicated to the very end.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was on a March afternoon, when the sun was shining with young
+impertinence and the heat was untimely.</p>
+
+<p>The black slabs of snow at the edge of the pavement had melted into
+gleaming puddles, and a sparkling shower fell from the icicles clinging
+to the roofs. Over to the south-west the red evening glow lay spread on
+the house fronts like gay rugs separated by an oblique line from the
+shadow of the walls on the near side. The window-panes glowed as if they
+were suns radiating their own light, and the sparrows chased one another
+along the dripping eaves.</p>
+
+<p>But best of all in this sorry spring of city streets was the rare spicy
+smell of thawing. Even the vapours rising from the gutters, now running
+again, gave an inkling of greening meadows and bursting boughs.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who had gone out on hardly more than three occasions the whole
+winter, sat behind the counter and looked through the window longingly.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere she saw that windows and doors had been opened wide,
+everywhere breasts hungering for air greedily drew in the breath of
+coming spring. So she, too, opened the casement wide and gave the door
+to the hall a push, which sent it flying back and knocked down the
+broom, standing at its post, as always.</p>
+
+<p>Through the open doorway she could see into the parlour of the tenant
+who lived on the other side of the hall and who, likewise, had flung
+back his door for spring to enter.</p>
+
+<p>She saw a cherry-red sofa with embroidered antimacassars symmetrically
+plastered on its old-fashioned scroll arms. She saw framed wreaths of
+dried flowers with inscriptions hanging on the walls; she saw an
+artillery officer's helmet and two swords with sword-knots crossed
+beneath. She saw China lions serving as cigar holders, ladies in dancing
+attitudes holding tallow candles, photographs of family groups with
+peacock feathers stuck behind, a spherical aquarium containing gold
+fish, and a spotted goat skin. Amid all these comfortable-looking
+knick-knacks she saw a young man walking up and down with a book in his
+hand murmuring studiously. He would appear and reappear in the field of
+vision allowed by the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>This young man awakened Lilly's sympathy at the very first glance.</p>
+
+<p>He wore his waving light hair brushed from his forehead in free and easy
+fashion, and carried his head boldly erect. His brown and lilac necktie
+seemed to her aristocratic perfection.</p>
+
+<p>She passed in review all her favourite heroes to see which of them he
+most resembled. After some wavering she finally decided he came nearest
+to Herr von Fink, the rogue in <i>Soll und Haben</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Since the young man did not notice her, she could study him at leisure.
+Each time he appeared she felt a warm wave pour over her body, and when
+he remained away too long by the fraction of a second, she experienced a
+sensation of nausea, as if some one were trying to cheat her of a dear
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>This continued until once he looked up from his book, became aware of
+the open door to the circulating library with the young lady on the
+other side observing him, started in dismay, and quickly stepped back to
+the invisible part of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The next time he came into view he had assumed a conscious and studied
+manner. He looked at his book a little too closely and moved his lips
+one degree too zealously, while a severe frown clouded his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, too, had found it necessary somewhat to improve the picture she
+presented. She smoothed her hair, which she wore parted Madonna fashion,
+and let her arm droop over the side of the chair in idle dreaminess.</p>
+
+<p>Some maids, who had come to exchange books for their mistresses, put an
+end to this dual posing. On leaving they closed the door and Lilly did
+not venture to open it again.</p>
+
+<p>But that night she carried the vision of the new hero into her dreams.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late in the day to speak to Mrs. Asmussen, who was now in the
+habit of preparing her medicine some time before the evening meal. The
+next morning, however, she seemed to be in a gracious humour, and Lilly
+felt emboldened to make a few inquiries concerning the neighbours, of
+whom she knew practically nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"What are the neighbours to you, Miss Inquisitive?"</p>
+
+<p>Such was the tone of intercourse that had developed from the first state
+of enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly took heart, and concocted a story of a steady customer who had
+asked about the neighbours the day before, and Lilly had not been able
+to give any information.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen, who cherished boundless respect for the customers'
+wishes, forthwith became communicative.</p>
+
+<p>They were two very good people, but of low station, with whom she, Mrs.
+Asmussen, a woman of greater aristocracy both of mind and heart, could
+not, of course, associate. The man, a sergeant out of service, was clerk
+in some office, and the woman sewed neckwear for a living.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly blushed. She recalled the brown and lilac tie, the sheen of which
+had been dazzling her eyes since the day before.</p>
+
+<p>An idea might be obtained of the vulgar existence those plebeians led,
+Mrs. Asmussen continued, if one knew they considered potato soup with
+sliced sausage in it a festal delicacy, whereas anyone with refined
+tastes would shudder at the mere thought.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who, like the good-for-nothing daughters, had long lost her joy
+in the daily mush, could not quite sympathise with this statement. On
+the contrary, she felt her mouth watering, and in order to change the
+subject quickly she timidly inquired whether anyone else was living next
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of," replied Mrs. Asmussen. "But there's a son. He goes
+to high school. I don't know why such people have their sons study."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," thought Lilly. "Because he's one of the elect, because genius
+shines in his eyes, because destiny has marked him to be a ruler on
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon she kept the door open. But it had turned bitter cold,
+and the idea of friendly reciprocation occurred to nobody next door.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour spent in studying the oval door plate on which was
+inscribed:</p>
+
+<h4>L. Redlich<br />
+Please ring hard</h4>
+
+<p>she found herself under the necessity of closing the door, because her
+legs were depending from her body like icicles and she had the
+humiliating consciousness of being scorned.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth she kept on the watch for one o'clock, when the students
+living in the house returned from school. Holding her forehead pressed
+against the window-pane, she could recognise at an inconceivable
+distance the blue and white rimmed caps worn by high school students.</p>
+
+<p>When he came up the steps leading to the porch in front of the house,
+she slipped behind the curtain, and in a joyous tremour caught the
+shamed, sidelong glance he sent her. If he looked straight ahead she was
+unhappy and afraid she had hurt his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Other blue and white rimmed caps besides his entered the house. They
+belonged to friends who came to cram with him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly loved them all. She felt she was a secret member of the union of
+these young souls who were going to storm the world, and when they
+seated themselves in the room she took her invisible place in the
+circle.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them Lilly recognised, not by their features, because they
+passed her too quickly for that, but by their caps, which she
+distinguished accurately. There was the "sad one," the "washed-out one,"
+the "stylish one" and the "wireless one." She could also recognise their
+walk and the manner in which they rang the bell at the opposite door.
+Even if occupied with customers, she could tell, without having looked
+through the window, exactly how many and which of the friends were
+working with young Redlich, and she would revolve in her mind why this
+or that one had not come that day.</p>
+
+<p>Spring advanced. The inmates of the house began occasionally to sit on
+the front porch, where there were benches on either side of the door.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving, the young gentlemen would remain there a while chatting,
+and now and then He would lean over the railing in the twilight,
+dreaming, no doubt, of future conquests.</p>
+
+<p>With fluttering heart Lilly would stand behind a bookcase where she had
+cunningly contrived an observatory for herself by removing a number of
+books, and from there read the world-stirring thoughts that lay on the
+bold soaring forehead.</p>
+
+<p>The benches on the right side of the porch, in front of the windows of
+the circulating library, generally remained unoccupied, because Mrs.
+Asmussen, to whom this side belonged, preferred not to desert her
+evening medicine, and Lilly lacked courage to ask for permission to sit
+there by herself.</p>
+
+<p>But one evening in May, when dark blue clouds hung in the heavens shot
+with red, enticing rather than threatening, when the streets were so
+quiet that Lilly could hear the distant plashing of the fountain in the
+market-place, when the only stir was created by swallows darting hither
+and thither, she could no longer stand the library's pasty, leathery
+smell, and fetching her embroidery&mdash;more for show than from eagerness to
+sew&mdash;she went out to sit on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>She knew he had gone out and was not in the habit of remaining away
+after ten o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>So he would be bound to pass her at all events.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour went by, another half hour, then a quarter of an hour.
+Finally she saw a blue and white cap come swinging down the street in
+the last glow of evening.</p>
+
+<p>Her first thought was to run into the library with all possible speed.
+But she was ashamed of the idea, and remained seated.</p>
+
+<p>He came, he saw her, he raised his cap and went in.</p>
+
+<p>She thought gleefully:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he bowed at last."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of scarcely ten minutes he reappeared on the scene, seated
+himself on the bench belonging to <i>his</i> side of the house, toyed with
+pebbles, whistled softly, and acted altogether as if he did not see
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sat in her corner with her face turned aside, rolling and
+unrolling her embroidery, and every now and then fetching a little sigh,
+not to show her love&mdash;oh, certainly not!&mdash;but because her breath came
+short.</p>
+
+<p>About half an hour passed in this fashion and Lilly was beginning to
+lose all hope of a rapprochement, when all of a sudden he said, half
+raising his cap:</p>
+
+<p>"The front door, I believe, is soon going to be closed, Miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!" she cried, feigning lively astonishment. But if she were
+to act on the suggestion implied in his words her chance of at last
+becoming acquainted with him would certainly be lost, and she added in a
+tone lighter than accorded with her mood: "But it doesn't matter. The
+window is open."</p>
+
+<p>He uttered,</p>
+
+<p>"H'm, h'm."</p>
+
+<p>Whether in agreement or blame she could not determine, and the
+conversation would have come to a standstill without fail had not Lilly
+made an effort to keep the ball rolling.</p>
+
+<p>"We are neighbours, aren't we?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped from his seat and with a sweep of his cap describing a
+semicircle between his head and his trousers' pocket, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to introduce myself. Fritz Redlich, senior in the high
+school."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly once more experienced the reverential thrill that used to pass
+through her soul when she was in the Selecta and the last year class of
+the boys' high school was mentioned. The fact was suddenly borne in upon
+her that now she was nothing better than a shop girl, and she grew hot
+with shame at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>But she would not have it that her glorious past was to have been lived
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"I was in the Selecta. I left last autumn," she said, "and I got to know
+some of you then."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly mentioned the names of two young men who had fluttered about her
+at the skating-rink, and asked whether he knew them.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," he answered with scorn, which did not seem wholly
+sincere. "They loaf too much for fellows like us, and they're going to
+join a students' corps. We don't do that sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>Silence ensued.</p>
+
+<p>It had now grown so dark that Lilly could see only the outline of his
+figure as he idly leaned against the corner post of the balustrade.</p>
+
+<p>Fine drops of rain fell and lay in her hair. She could have remained
+there forever with the dark youthful form before her searching eyes and
+spring's blessing lying cool on her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You are engaged here in the circulating library?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly said "Yes," and was grateful to him for the elegant word
+"engaged," which seemed somewhat to improve her position.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are preparing for the examinations?" she inquired in turn.</p>
+
+<p>"In autumn&mdash;if everything goes well," he answered with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are going out into the wide, wide world," she said with the
+rapt expression that girls adopt in compositions. "Going out to fight
+your way through life. Oh, how I envy you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked in wonder. "Aren't you fighting your way through life
+already?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if I were you," she cried, "what wouldn't I do&mdash;oh!"</p>
+
+<p>She exulted in her sensations. She felt her limbs stretching. She knew a
+gleam of triumph was flashing in her eyes, a gleam which could not
+triumph simply because it dissipated itself unseen in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible for her, from sheer joy, to remain where she was. She
+would have gone mad had she been compelled to stay there, formulating
+stiff words, while everything in her cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"I love you."</p>
+
+<p>She bade him a hasty good-night and ran into the library, bolting the
+door behind her. She ran up and down the narrow aisles between the
+cases, laughing and sighing, raising her arms aloft like a priestess at
+prayer, and knocking her elbows painfully against the shelves.</p>
+
+<p>A yearning for symphonies, for great sustained major chords, welled up
+within her. She wanted to sing the Walhalla motif, but the Walhalla
+motif cannot be sung.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly an aria flitted through her mind, one of those songs which had
+palpitated through her childhood, without conveying any meaning to her,
+but which, for that very reason, had been the more purely consecrated.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sought him whom my soul loved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sought him, but I found him not.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I called him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he gave me no answer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The watchman that went about the city found me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They smote me, they wounded me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She sang in a soft, uncertain voice, loud enough, however, to be heard
+through the window. But when she peeped from her observatory to convince
+herself that he was listening, she no longer saw him standing there.</p>
+
+<p>She sang louder and leaned out. She tore open her tight-fitting dress to
+expose her bare breast to the rain drops.</p>
+
+<p>Then all of a sudden she was overcome by a feeling of wretchedness; why,
+she did not know, but so strong it was she thought she would die of it.
+She felt how the cruel watchers seized her; she felt the smart of the
+wound which rude hands caused her; she felt how the veil was being torn
+away which concealed from the eyes of the world the holy nakedness of
+her body. In shameless nudity, yet weeping drops of blood for bitter
+shame, she tottered through the streets, and sought and sought, yet <i>he</i>
+was farther off than ever.</p>
+
+<p>She sank on her knees at the window-sill, and pressing her face on its
+edge, wept bitterly in sweet dark sympathy with that image of herself
+straying through Jerusalem's nocturnal streets.</p>
+
+<p>Yet all this was sheer happiness!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>And the happiness endured.</p>
+
+<p>It nestled in the dusty corners, it perched on the bookshelves, it span
+golden cobwebs from beam to beam, it rode on every ray of light
+reflected from the windows opposite on the leather backs of the books.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever she went, Lilly was accompanied by a humming medley of
+quivering tones, half motifs and snatches of melodies, strains from an
+æolian harp, the chirping of a cricket-on-the-hearth, the singing of a
+boiling kettle, and the soft twittering of birds.</p>
+
+<p>Awake or asleep, she always heard it.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then a few measures of the Song of Songs joined in exultingly.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly everything went along in the old ruts. Mrs. Asmussen was
+sometimes sober, sometimes full of sweet drugs. Husband and daughters
+rose and sank, sank and rose, through the entire gamut of ethical
+appraisement, plunged one moment into the deepest pit of depravity,
+exalted the next to the shining heights of apotheosis. One day a volume
+of Gerstäcker was missing, another day a Balduin Möllhausen seemed to
+have been sucked into the swamps of the Orinoco.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a puff of wind blowing through the window carried a little
+cloud of yellow powder to the edges of the shelves, from which it was
+wiped off like ordinary dust. Yet it conveyed a greeting from swaying
+boughs in bloom, which was all this spring brought to Lilly, except for
+a loads of lilacs carted past the library on their way to market.</p>
+
+<p>The young hero from the other side of the house had not approached her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She trembled whenever she heard him go down the steps, and twice a day
+with beating heart she received his shy greeting&mdash;that was all.</p>
+
+<p>And he was not to be seen on the porch again. The digging and cramming
+with the other young men lasted until late at night, and it was often
+two o'clock before she heard their departing tread.</p>
+
+<p>Not until then would she throw herself in bed, where she lay staring
+into the dusk of the summer night, her spirit roving over the world to
+find <i>the</i> throne worthy to serve as her hero's goal. She saw him a
+general winning epoch-making battles in the open country, she saw him a
+poet walking up the steps of the capitol to receive the laurel wreath,
+she saw him an inventor soaring through the ether in the airship he
+himself had perfected, she saw him the founder of a new religion&mdash;but
+here she came to a terrified halt, for in her heart she had remained a
+good Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>Under the oppression of bodily and spiritual castigation she had not
+dared seek refuge in religion. Quickly enough the courage had gone from
+her to ask Mrs. Asmussen for permission to visit St. Anne's early every
+morning, and soon she had completely forgotten that such a thing as a
+confession or a mass ever took place.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, in the exuberance of her feelings, feelings such as she
+had never before suspected, her longing for spiritual disburdenment grew
+so strong that she decided to acknowledge her Catholicism to Mrs.
+Asmussen and beg for the privilege to pray in that quiet corner where
+St. Joseph, who had always been good to her, stood behind six
+gold-encircled candles and smilingly shook his finger.</p>
+
+<p>In Lilly's avowal Mrs. Asmussen found an explanation of all her vices;
+her sneakiness, her hypocrisy, her laziness, her lack of a sense of
+order. Mrs. Asmussen, therefore, concluded her daily prayer with the
+wish for immediate and complete conversion.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she did not refuse Lilly two excursions a week to early
+mass, which was all Lilly had dared hope for.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph was touching.</p>
+
+<p>Really, going back to him was like going back home. The cherubs that
+fluttered in the gay glass case behind him greeted her with a knowing,
+confidential look, like brothers and sisters who have been let into the
+secret that the punishment after all is not going to be so very severe.
+The golden-yellow carpet extended a hospitable invitation to kneel, and
+the flowers on the Holy Virgin's altar close by perfumed the air.</p>
+
+<p>The saint at first seemed a little hurt because she had not visited him
+for so long. But after she had made her moan&mdash;telling of her loneliness,
+the daily mush and the blows&mdash;he softened and forgave her.</p>
+
+<p>Since her last visit he had received three new silver hearts, which shot
+out rays of light the length of a finger. She felt like dedicating one
+to him, too, but on what grounds she did not know, since the miracle to
+be worked in her was yet to be accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's only jealousy in me, or a desire to show off," she
+thought, for it was painful to her that others should stand in closer
+relations to her saint than she. "After all," she comforted herself,
+"how can I expect anything else when I neglected him so long?"</p>
+
+<p>After confessing everything&mdash;except, of course, her love story&mdash;he had
+become too much of a stranger for <i>that</i>&mdash;she hastened away. The clocks
+were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his
+way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose
+nor significance.</p>
+
+<p>She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath,
+remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a
+great danger.</p>
+
+<p>From now on there were two such encounters a week.</p>
+
+<p>Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and
+enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the
+faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the
+tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when&mdash;blushing
+a bit&mdash;he raised his cap to her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when
+one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating
+library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell.
+She opened the door&mdash;there <i>he</i> stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Did she happen to have Rückert's poems in her library?</p>
+
+<p>Lilly knew for certain she did <i>not</i> have them, but if she admitted
+forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for
+entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't
+he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the
+customers' chair placed close to the door.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly spent some time searching, because she was afraid the inevitable
+"no" would send him off with a curt "thank you," and she ran up and
+down the aisles between the shelves aimlessly, reiterating:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I saw the poems just a little while ago."</p>
+
+<p>Then, in order to think the matter over more quietly, she seated herself
+opposite him with the counter between. But he encouraged her to renew
+the search.</p>
+
+<p>"If you saw them only a short time ago, then they are bound to be here."</p>
+
+<p>When finally convinced that Rückert's poems were not in the library, he
+fetched a deep sigh and murmured something like, "What shall I do?" and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, completely dazed, stared at the doorway, which a moment before
+had framed his figure.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to cry out and plead, "Stay here! Come back!" But she heard
+the door on the other side of the hall fall shut, and everything was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>She crouched at the window-sill indulging in speculations of what
+<i>might</i> have taken place if he had happened to remain.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart throbbed violently.</p>
+
+<p>About quarter of an hour later the bell rang again.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped up. Supposing it was he?</p>
+
+<p>It was he.</p>
+
+<p>He begged pardon; he had forgotten his umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>"This time you don't slip away!" something within her cried.</p>
+
+<p>He caught up his soaking umbrella, which she had failed to notice
+despite the shining puddle which was crawling along the crack between
+two floor boards, and was about to escape again, when Lilly essayed:</p>
+
+<p>"For what do you need Rückert's poems?"</p>
+
+<p>He began to complain:</p>
+
+<p>"Life is made so hard for us, you have no idea how hard."</p>
+
+<p>He went on to tell about the speeches they had to deliver offhand on a
+subject sprung on them without warning, regardless of whether or not the
+students had prepared the theme. But this time they had gotten wind of
+the surprise in store&mdash;the next day in literature class they would be
+required to give a comprehensive view of Rückert. That was why he would
+have to glance over the poems once again to find out exactly who had
+been buried in the three graves at Ottensen.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly thrilled with joy.</p>
+
+<p><i>She</i> could help him&mdash;she, the low-flying sparrow, could help <i>him</i>, the
+soaring heaven-dweller.</p>
+
+<p>She timorously related the story of the poor, defeated count of
+Brunswick and Klopstock, the pious bard of "The Messiah." The only thing
+she had forgotten was who the twelve hundred exiles were who lay in the
+first of the graves.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed unwilling to believe in this unexpected good fortune. Was she
+sure of what she said? That about Klopstock was correct; he knew it from
+the tables of his history of literature. But the rest of it? Oppressed
+by grave doubts he shook his triumphant mane.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly eagerly allayed his fears. To be sure, it was more than a year
+since she had heard of those lovely things, but she had a good memory,
+and would certainly not misinform him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>At last he seemed relieved. He drew a deep breath, and observed, with
+his mind bent more upon general matters:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's very hard, very, very hard."</p>
+
+<p>Once embarked on the current of open talk, he went on to offer his views
+concerning the other difficulties of human life. Mathematics was all
+right; in fact, he had done very well in analytic geometry. But history
+and the languages, and above all, German composition! A fellow was
+sometimes driven to despair by the wretched state of things in this
+world.</p>
+
+<p>In this Lilly fully concurred. She, too, had little cause to be
+satisfied with the course of mundane events, and she gave eloquent and
+passionate expression to her sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>"As for you," she concluded, "what tortures your spirit must undergo
+when it feels itself hampered in its flight by the humiliating demands
+of the schoolroom!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in some wonderment and remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, it's hard, very hard."</p>
+
+<p>"I in your place," Lilly went on, "would not care a fig inside myself
+for all that vapid stuff. I would just do what is necessary in an
+offhand way, and then in complete spiritual freedom climb to the height
+where the great poets and philosophers dwell."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the examinations!" he exclaimed, utterly horrified.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, those stupid examinations!" she rejoined. "What difference does it
+make whether or not you pass?"</p>
+
+<p>Here he became eager.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand at all, not at all. Examinations are in a sense
+the avenue leading to every good position in life, no matter whether you
+enter the university or study architecture, or merely try for a good
+place in the postal service. But that, of course, I wouldn't do."</p>
+
+<p>"A man like you!" she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled faintly, feeling stroked the right way.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to storm the heavens exactly," he said, "but I have my
+ambitions. What would a fellow be if he had no ambitions?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so, isn't it?" Lilly cried, looking up to him with a grateful
+gleam in her eyes. The feeling that she had never experienced such an
+hour of joy took complete hold of her.</p>
+
+<p>When he arose to go&mdash;it had grown quite dark&mdash;she felt actual physical
+pain, as if a piece of her body were being torn from her.</p>
+
+<p>He had almost closed the door when he turned and said as one who wishes
+to be sure where he treads:</p>
+
+<p>"If it's not troubling you too much, do hunt for the poems once more.
+Perhaps you will find them."</p>
+
+<p>Turning back a second time:</p>
+
+<p>"You might lay the book under the door-mat if you find it."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hastily lighted the lamp and obediently started on the search.
+After a time the futility of doing so occurred to her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He spent the summer vacation in the country with a companion in misery,
+with whom he crammed for the examinations. The written tests were to be
+given immediately after the opening of school, and the oral tests about
+the middle of September.</p>
+
+<p>The young hero looked pale and exhausted, and reddish-brown stubble lay
+in the hollows of his cheeks like blotches of blood.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was unable to witness such wretchedness in silence, and one
+morning, when, returning from mass, she met him alone in the deserted
+street, she ventured to stop and speak to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You must spare yourself, Mr. Redlich," she broke out anxiously. "You
+must keep well for the sake of your parents and those who love you."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed more embarrassed than pleased, and before finding a reply, he
+cast rapid sidelong glances in all directions.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he stammered. "But later, if you please, later."</p>
+
+<p>He dashed past, scarcely daring to raise his cap.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly realised she had committed an indiscretion. The houses began to
+dance before her eyes, she chewed her handkerchief, and feared the
+passersby might laugh and jeer at her. When ensconced in her corner
+behind the entry book, she no longer doubted that she had lost him
+forever.</p>
+
+<p>She had!</p>
+
+<p>He came and went without greeting her&mdash;he came at suppertime and
+left&mdash;she heard his steps all the way down the street.</p>
+
+<p>Over and done for! Over and done for!</p>
+
+<p>But lo and behold! At dusk a knock was heard on the door. No, not
+exactly a knock, rather a scratching at the door, the way a dog with a
+guilty conscience scratches when he wants to be let in.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood. Not with the embarrassed yet business-like manner with
+which he had entered that Sunday evening when the graves of Ottensen had
+justified his coming. No, this time his heart throbbed anxiously. He was
+like a thief who lacks skill in the art of thieving.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mrs. Asmussen here?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Asmussen doesn't come in here at this time," she whispered back,
+with a deep sigh of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Then may&mdash;I come in&mdash;for a moment?"</p>
+
+<p>She stepped aside, and let him enter, thinking:</p>
+
+<p>"How can a person endure so much joy without dying of it?"</p>
+
+<p>He stammered something about "begging her pardon" and "not answering
+her."</p>
+
+<p>She responded with something about "having reproached herself" and
+"having meant it well."</p>
+
+<p>Then they sat down opposite each other with the counter between, and did
+not know what to say next.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first to discover the way into the region of the permissible.</p>
+
+<p>"A fellow sometimes likes to exchange thoughts with a congenial young
+lady," he said with an emphatic air of importance. "But he seldom finds
+the time&mdash;or the opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as for the opportunity," thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Since she had manifested such kindly interest in him, and since an
+exchange of views would certainly be edifying to him, especially because
+of the growing emancipation of women&mdash;which&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He had steered into a tight place, but his sense of dignity did not
+forsake him. He looked at Lilly somewhat challengingly, as if to say,
+"You see how able I am to cope with this difficult situation."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had not caught the drift of his talk. From the moment she
+recovered her power of thinking, she was dominated by one feeling: help
+him, save him, so that he doesn't work himself to death.</p>
+
+<p>"Once we girls had a teacher," she began, "who delivered glorious
+never-to-be-forgotten lectures in class. He worked too hard, like you,
+and by this time he must certainly have died of consumption. The same
+will happen to you, if you don't take care and go more slowly."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, life's hard, very hard."</p>
+
+<p>"You must get enough sleep, and go walking. Walking a great deal is the
+very best."</p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> go walking?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly taken aback considered a moment. Since she had been in that hole
+among the books, she had not seen a field of snow or a green tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I!" she threw out, shrugging her shoulders. "What have I got to do
+with it?" Then, inwardly rejoicing at her own boldness, she added: "How
+would it be if we were to take a walk together?"</p>
+
+<p>Now it was his turn to be taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>"There are such a lot of obstacles," he observed, thoughtfully shaking
+his mane. "The thing would be misinterpreted. There are considerations,
+especially so far as you are concerned&mdash;certainly, especially for you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had read of young cavaliers whose solicitude for their lady's good
+name exceeded their very passion for her, and she looked up at him in
+gratitude and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother about me! I'll manage. I'll just shirk early mass."</p>
+
+<p>Though she felt a tiny prick at her heart because of her blasphemous
+words, she knew that for the sake of such a walk she would betray God,
+betray St. Joseph himself, without the least hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've got to get through with the examinations first," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was settled and the plan sealed with mutual promises.
+Accompanied by Lilly's good wishes and warnings, he took leave, but not
+before carefully scanning street, porch, and hall.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>From now on Lilly's life was one glow of hope and dreamy anticipation.
+She would lie awake half the night, picturing to herself how she would
+wander over the golden meadows with him in the light of dawn, her hand
+pressed against her throbbing heart, her arm now and then slightly
+grazing his elbow. Each time she thought of this she felt a little
+shock, which quivered down to the very tips of her toes.</p>
+
+<p>She read nothing but hot, passionate books, in which there was much of
+"intoxication," "transport," and the "giddiness of endless kisses." But
+she did not dream of kisses in connection with herself. Whenever she
+found herself drifting in that direction, she checked herself in
+dismay&mdash;so exalted was he above every earthly desire.</p>
+
+<p>Now she knew what reasons justified her in promising St. Joseph a silver
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday morning she told St. Joseph the whole story&mdash;about Fritz
+Redlich's examinations, his high ideals, and her solicitude for him. The
+only thing she refrained from mentioning was the walk they had planned;
+which she had to omit on account of the shirked mass.</p>
+
+<p>She had saved about sixty marks, which she carried in a leather pocket
+next to her body. The silver heart would cost twelve marks at the very
+most. Plenty of money remained for buying a gift for her friend. She
+wavered long between a gold-embroidered college portfolio and
+gold-embroidered slippers, and finally decided on a revolver in a case,
+naturally assuming that in the wild struggle for existence he would be
+exposed to many dangers, from which only reckless daring and instant
+decision could rescue him. A revolver and case cost twenty-five marks,
+gold thread for embroidering the monogram, five marks. Thus everything
+was arranged in the best possible manner.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw him step on the porch the morning of examination day, white
+as the glove with which he waved farewell to his parents&mdash;he seemed to
+have forgotten her&mdash;she felt as if she should have to run after him and
+press the weapon of deliverance into his hand without further delay. But
+she reflected that in all likelihood the examiners would not show
+themselves susceptible to that sort of eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment, as he stepped from the porch to the pavement, a
+timid glance of his fell upon her, and she was happy.</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock there was some stir on the street.</p>
+
+<p>They were bringing him home. He looked weary and completely crushed, but
+the others whooped and huzzaed.</p>
+
+<p>The old sergeant out of service ran to meet him in torn slippers, and
+violently wiped his green-grey bristly beard on his son's face. From the
+kitchen came the spicy smell of cooking sausages.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly ran rejoicing up and down the aisles of the library, and thought
+with a sort of superior satisfaction:</p>
+
+<p>"St. Joseph's fine! <i>Isn't</i> he fine!"</p>
+
+<p>The very next morning she ordered the silver heart, and blushingly asked
+to have a monogram of L. C. and F. R. engraved on it.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned she found an envelope addressed to her among the order
+slips in the letter-box. Inside was a soiled menu card from a
+restaurant, on which was written: "Sunday 5 a.m. on the porch."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The first grey of dawn entered the library through the lunettes in the
+shutters.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sprang out of bed and threw the windows open.</p>
+
+<p>The street resembled a great bowl of milk, so heavily the white mist of
+early autumn weighed upon the ground. The cold damp drizzle did her hot
+limbs good. She spread her arms and washed herself in the icy air as in
+a bath.</p>
+
+<p>Her light summer dress, which she herself had washed and ironed the
+evening before, hung like a bluish drift on the white wall. She
+smartened herself as never before. This festal day should find her
+worthily adorned.</p>
+
+<p>With the paltry remnants of her savings she had bought a large yellow
+shepherdess hat tying under the chin, so doing away with the need for a
+collar. And openwork silk gloves suddenly came to light, having been
+discovered at the bottom of the trunk, where they had long lain
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>She would carry the heavy revolver in her work-bag. Before slipping it
+in, she kissed it several times, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Watch over him faithfully, destroy his enemies, and lead him on to
+victory."</p>
+
+<p>It was a genuine consecration of arms.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock sharp the door opposite creaked on its hinges. She
+glided into the hall. On the porch they shook hands.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were bleared, yet he looked rather enterprising. There was even
+something of the beau in his get-up. He wore his hat tilted a bit to one
+side, and in his left hand swung a light bamboo cane tipped by the head
+of a sea gull in silver.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stammered congratulations.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked somewhat condescendingly, as if so insignificant a matter
+were not worth all that to-do.</p>
+
+<p>"We loaf about dreadfully now," he went on. "I can't say I get a great
+deal of sport out of it, but a fellow has to know something of the
+follies of human life, too."</p>
+
+<p>When they passed St. Anne's, a thought suddenly flashed into Lilly's
+mind, which filled her with bliss. If they were to go into the church
+for a moment, the sin of silence would be removed from her soul, and St.
+Joseph could even bestow his blessing on the day.</p>
+
+<p>Timidly she gave voice to her wish&mdash;and found herself in a pretty mess.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a free-thinker," he said, "I would never go counter to my
+convictions. Nevertheless, it is an enlightened man's duty to be
+tolerant, and if you want to go in, I will wait outside."</p>
+
+<p>No, she no longer wanted to, and she was terribly ashamed. Of course, he
+could not know what close connection existed between St. Joseph and his
+good fortune. Otherwise he would not have been so ungrateful.</p>
+
+<p>They walked in silence through the deserted streets of the suburbs. The
+fog lifted a little. Lilly chilled through and through shivered at each
+step. Perhaps excitement was the cause. On the whole, however, she felt
+much calmer than she had expected to. Everything was so altogether,
+altogether different. A little disenchantment had occurred, she did not
+know how.</p>
+
+<p>She cast a yearning gaze down the street, at the end of which dark trees
+showed their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"When once we are out there!" she thought, and clenched her teeth to
+keep them from chattering.</p>
+
+<p>The silence began to paralyse her thoughts. She would gladly have
+started a conversation, had she been able to think of a suitable
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>A baker's boy was walking ahead of them whistling.</p>
+
+<p>"When we worked all night," said Fritz Redlich suddenly, "we always
+bought warm rolls. We might get some now."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly became joyous again.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, had he said "we might steal some," she would have liked it
+better.</p>
+
+<p>The baker's boy was not permitted to sell his rolls&mdash;just the right
+number for delivery had been doled out to him&mdash;but on the opposite side
+was an open shop.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly saw her hero reappear with a large bag in his hand, she had a
+pleasant sensation, as if they were beginning housekeeping together.</p>
+
+<p>They now walked along gardens under a veritable shower of dew falling
+from the trees. Lilly shrugged her shoulders, and did not know what to
+do she felt so cold.</p>
+
+<p>At last they were out in the open country.</p>
+
+<p>Mats of silver-grey cobwebs, each weighted down with a burden of dew,
+were spread over the fields of high stubble. Yellow ridges of hills
+bounded the semicircle of the landscape, and in the distance rose the
+walls of the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stretched her arms like a swimmer, and drew in through her open
+mouth five or six deep breaths.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you feeling well?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I must make up for all I've lost," she said. "I haven't <i>breathed</i> for
+a whole year."</p>
+
+<p>Feeling frozen still she began to run. He tried to keep pace, but soon
+fell behind, and panted after her, hopping rather than running.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the top of the first hill, the sun began to rise over
+the plain. The brushwood seemed to be on fire, and the cobwebs shone
+like silver. Each dew-drop became a glittering spark, a flame ran along
+each thread.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, warmed and excited from running, pressed her hands to her heaving
+breast, and stared into the sea of red with drunken eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look, look," she stammered, giving his face a questioning,
+searching glance.</p>
+
+<p>She half expected him to recite odes, sing hymns, and play the harp.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there trying to get his breath, to all appearances occupied
+exclusively with himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Do recite something, Mr. Redlich," she begged. "A poem by Klopstock, or
+something else." She had not gotten up to Goethe in school.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a short laugh, and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Catch me! Now that examinations are over German literature may go to
+the dogs for all I care."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt ashamed and said nothing more, fearing the expression of
+such crude desires must make her culture appear half baked. When she
+looked up again, the glow was gone. The fields still sent up
+yellowish-red vapours to meet the climbing sun, whose effulgence hung
+coldly, almost indifferently, over the earth begging for light.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on toward the woods.</p>
+
+<p>He swung the paper bag. From either side of the road she gathered
+blackberries, which depended like bunches of glistening black beads from
+bushes overlaid with a film of cobwebs.</p>
+
+<p>Some distance on, at the edge of the woods, they came upon a bench.
+Without discussing it, they simply made for the seat. It was the place
+they needed.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a little oppression at her heart. Here she was finally to
+receive the revelations for which her soul languished; here she was to
+look into the heaven-gazing eyes of the young genius.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the bag, and she laid her handkerchief filled with the
+blackberries alongside.</p>
+
+<p>The work-bag containing the heavy revolver was deposited for the time
+being between the rounds of the bench. Lilly hollowed out the rolls, and
+filled them with blackberries, and the two breakfasted together very
+cosily.</p>
+
+<p>The golden shimmer of early autumn poured its enchantment over them.
+Lilly's brain grew heavy with longing and happiness. She could have sunk
+to the ground, and laid her forehead against his knees merely for
+support, because approaching fulfillment was more than she could bear.</p>
+
+<p>He had removed his cap. A curly lock fell over his forehead down to his
+eyebrows, giving his face a sombre expression, as if he were challenging
+the whole world. This "genius lock" was the fashion among the boys of
+the last year high school and was especially cherished by those who did
+not aspire to the stylishness of belonging to a students' corps.</p>
+
+<p>His gaze rested on the church towers of the old city, which resembled
+awkward, faithful, sleepy watchmen looking down on the wide-spreading
+clusters of house tops.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me what you are thinking about?" asked Lilly, bashfully
+admiring. The great moment&mdash;at last it had come.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a short and somewhat mocking laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I am calculating how many ministers get their living in a nest like
+that, and how comfortable it is for a fellow if he just studies
+theology."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you? Learning flows in on one from all sides."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand," he reproved her gently. "Learning is not the
+chief thing. Conviction is. One must do everything for the sake of one's
+conviction, suffer want, suffer all sorts of privations. The city has
+six scholarships to bestow upon theological students, but I would rather
+chop my hand off than accept one. A man must take up the fight for his
+convictions, and that's what I'm going to do&mdash;day after to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>His small, short-sighted eyes sparkled. He stroked the genius lock from
+his forehead with a trembling hand.</p>
+
+<p>Now she had him where she wanted him. Perhaps this was the very instant
+in which to hand him the revolver. But out of respect for the greatness
+of his mood, she deferred the matter for a while.</p>
+
+<p>Taking a firmer hold of the bag in which the revolver was lying, she
+went into raptures as once before on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Redlich, what is finer than such a fight? To dive into the
+waves of life! To spite the dark powers who control our destiny, and
+wrest our fortune from them, to come out of the struggle each time with
+greater strength, a more iron will. Can you conceive of anything more
+up-lifting?"</p>
+
+<p>But this time, too, her adjuration failed to awaken an echo.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens," he said, "on close inspection what after all is this
+much-vaunted fight? Everybody walks over you, in winter you lie in a
+cold bed, and all year round you have nothing to eat. Of course, I'm
+going to go into it, of course I am, but it's hard, yes, indeed, it's
+hard! If I had a scholarship I should feel much better."</p>
+
+<p>"So that's all the joy you have in facing the world?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear young lady," he rejoined, "a fellow who starts out with nothing
+but a satchel of darned wash and a hundred-mark bill&mdash;where's he to get
+much joy from?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's the very one!" Lilly exclaimed, eager to cast a ray of her own
+confidence into his heart. "When somebody is like you, with the mark of
+greatness on his face, then the world lies at his feet."</p>
+
+<p>She described a semicircle with her right hand, taking in the entire
+plain, its green bushes and silvery streams and the city with its wreath
+of swelling gardens lying embedded in the fields like a lark's nest in a
+meadow. Lilly felt as if she were showing him a small copy of his future
+realm.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded several times in the dejected consciousness of knowing better
+than she what the world is like.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, it's hard," he observed, "very, very hard."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted whether or no to convince him of his own ability to conquer,
+and growing warmer and warmer continued with her peroration.</p>
+
+<p>"If only I could express what I know and feel. If only I could give you
+some of my own assurance. Look at me, poor thing that I am. I have no
+father or mother, and no friends. If at least I could have stayed at
+school and graduated. But here I am, without a vocation, without money,
+without clothes for the winter&mdash;not even a decent pair of shoes." She
+stuck out the worn tips of her old boots, which until now she had kept
+carefully hidden. "I don't get as much to eat as I need either; and if I
+come home too late to-day, I shall be whipped. Yet I know that happiness
+is lying in wait for me. It is here already&mdash;in every breeze that blows
+my way, in every sunbeam that smiles at me&mdash;the whole world is
+happiness&mdash;the whole world is music&mdash;everything's a Song of
+Songs&mdash;everything's a Song of Songs!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned from him with an impetuous movement, to keep him from seeing
+how she was quivering all over.</p>
+
+<p>Down in the city the chimes began to ring. St. Mary, once the cathedral,
+now the chief Protestant church, came first with its three resounding
+clangs. St. George uttered a clear third E-G&mdash;on high festivals it added
+a paternal, rumbling C. More bells followed. St. Anne's thin tinkling
+joined in&mdash;modest, yet to be distinguished the instant it began. There
+was a secret whispering and calling in it: "We know each other, we love
+each other, and St. Joseph says 'Good morning.'"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's friend seemed to have used the period of her silence in order to
+win back his spiritual balance. With the little air of didactic dignity
+that he liked to assume when he felt he had the advantage in a
+situation, he began:</p>
+
+<p>"I am almost inclined to think we don't quite understand each other. I
+was at great pains to make a careful study of the problems of life, and
+so I see somewhat deeper into things than you. I'm up to snuff about the
+so-called illusions of youth. I know what men are worth, and I should
+advise you to be a little more cautious about what you do."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she asked, astounded.</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a sidewise smile with an air of mingled superiority and
+uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, beauty carries certain dangers in its train."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, beauty!" Lilly cried, glowing all over. "Who thinks of such
+silliness?"</p>
+
+<p>"The person upon whom nature has bestowed such a gift," he went on, "has
+many reasons for being on her guard. For instance, it's a piece of good
+luck for you that you chanced upon so strict and correct a young man as
+I am. Another man with a more frivolous nature than mine would have made
+an entirely different use of an excursion like this. You may be sure of
+that."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stared at him. She was carried away by a whirl of obscure and
+disagreeable thoughts. What did he want of her? Was he reproaching her?
+Did he scorn her because of her most sacred feelings?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear," she said, utterly discomposed. "I wish we were at home."</p>
+
+<p>"Understand me," he began again. "I am by no means a Pharisee. I have a
+thorough comprehension of the weaknesses of human nature. I am only
+offering you a bit of advice in all modesty, and some day you will thank
+me for it. It is not for nothing that a fellow has his principles.
+Should we ever meet again later in life, you will, I hope, not have to
+be ashamed of the friend of your youth."</p>
+
+<p>"If it's a question of shame," something within Lilly cried, "then I
+ought to feel ashamed now, and of myself."</p>
+
+<p>Forward, undignified, ill-bred&mdash;that was what she held herself to be for
+having begged him to take this morning walk.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there had been nothing evil in the thing! Where had the evil
+suddenly come from?</p>
+
+<p>The chimes were still making music, the sun was still weaving its net of
+gold about her. She saw nothing, she heard nothing, so very ashamed she
+was. She wanted to run away, but did not dare even to stir.</p>
+
+<p>As for him he no longer looked as if he needed comforting. His manner
+expressed the quiet satisfaction a man feels with a piece of work just
+completed.</p>
+
+<p>A blackberry had remained sticking in a crevice in the seat of the
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>"One mustn't get spots on one's clothes," he admonished, and stuck the
+berry in his mouth, slowly crunching the seeds between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly pulled herself together, and caught up her work-bag.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you carrying there?" he asked. "It looks so heavy."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly in terror clutched the bag tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Only the house key," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>Then they went home.</p>
+
+<p>"If only I could change his mind," she thought, "so that he would have a
+favorable opinion of me again."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing better occurred to her than to stoop at the wayside and pluck
+the finest field flowers she could reach to offer to him as a farewell
+gift instead of that other gift, the mere thought of which made her feel
+like a goose.</p>
+
+<p>She handed him the bouquet keeping her eyes turned aside. He thanked her
+with a pretty bow, and twirled the bamboo cane with the silver
+handle&mdash;an heirloom of which he had just come into possession. He swung
+it boldly about his head, the way future corps students do before making
+a high carte.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly in her dejection and humiliation was unable to say a word.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't an inner voice," he asked, "tell you we shall meet some time
+again?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face away. She had all to do to force back the tears
+welling up in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I hope you will receive proof of what unremitting effort and
+unshakable fidelity to one's convictions can accomplish even with small
+means."</p>
+
+<p>His voice now sounded full and vibrant with self-satisfied energy. While
+making her small and timorous he seemed to have sucked up some of her
+joyous mood.</p>
+
+<p>When they drew near the Altmarkt, however, he became greatly disquieted
+again, and kept spying about on all sides. Finally he remarked that the
+streets were getting pretty lively, and it would be better perhaps if
+they were to part company and go back by different ways.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later he left home, and the house was perfumed with the
+garlic of the sausage that Mrs. Redlich sliced into his soup as a
+farewell offering.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stood behind the window curtain with burning eyes, and thought in
+her sorrow:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish I had never seen him!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>One grey October morning, which hid the threat of approaching winter
+behind a mask of moist, warm mist as behind a hypocritical smile, the
+wonderful happened: Mrs. Asmussen's runaway daughters came back again.</p>
+
+<p>Without casting a shadow before them, there they were all of a sudden,
+shoving several bulging hand-bags into the library, measuring Lilly with
+an astonished look of gracious frigidity, and ordering her to pay for
+the cab&mdash;they had no change.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt the throbbing of her heart up to her neck. The moment the two
+grand, voluptuous figures appeared on the scene and, though looking a
+bit weather beaten and washed out, swept victoriously into possession of
+the territory, she knew they were Mrs. Asmussen's daughters.</p>
+
+<p>She cast one anxious look at the pretty, pug-nosed faces, where two
+pairs of bright grey eyes challenged the door of the rear room, and
+another anxious look at the broom of welcome, whose hour had come. Then
+she hurried off to avoid the terrors bound to follow upon the opening of
+the middle door.</p>
+
+<p>In the cab she found two withered bouquets of gladioli, a Scotch plaid
+rolled in a shawl strap, from which two umbrella handles&mdash;large blue
+glass knobs, the size of a man's fist&mdash;were sticking out, some cushions
+trimmed with diagonal bars, and a whisky flask. There was also a tin box
+of lemon drops sans lid, and a disjointed paper hat-box, between whose
+cracks a comb and a piece of buttered bread were striving in unison to
+find their way into freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly gathered up the effects, and stopped in the hall, listening in
+terror. She expected to hear the screams of the maltreated girls. But
+all was serene, and when she entered she saw mother and daughters
+hugging and kissing.</p>
+
+<p>Since there was no time left before the midday meal to buy a roast in
+honor of the festive occasion, dinner consisted of cabbage as usual,
+with the addition of a mountain of cakes from the confectioner's, to
+which the girls helped themselves before the meal in order to lay some
+aside for days of less plenty.</p>
+
+<p>This was the first evidence of their housekeeperly thrift.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen beamed with motherly joy and tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she said, "did I exaggerate when I told you about these glorious
+creatures? Too bad I had to do without them for so long. But I am modest
+in my demands, and I am glad enough to get what I do. I know their
+hearts draw them now to their father, now to their mother, because they
+cannot make up their minds to deprive either of us permanently of the
+gift of their pure filial love."</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting between the girls, and she pressed a hand of each. All
+three looked into one another's eyes devotedly.</p>
+
+<p>The absent pater familias was remembered touchingly. Their gay, talented
+father, the girls said, intended to give up his large business, to
+assume the management of extensive farms in the south of Russia at the
+urgent invitation of influential patrons.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in Mrs. Asmussen's gloomier hours, it transpired that that
+"pock-marked scoundrel" had had to scurry off because of some
+questionable notes, and hide in Odessa until the atmosphere in the north
+cleared.</p>
+
+<p>To Lilly's unpracticed eye the girls were as like as two
+sparrows&mdash;saucy, greedy, inconstant, and amorous. It was only after a
+time that she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the older, who
+possessed some beauty of a coarse kind, had the ways of a clutching,
+grasping barmaid, and was the sharper of the two, usually dragging her
+sister Mi in tow, whose chief characteristic was a sort of flabby
+drollness.</p>
+
+<p>In their treatment of Lilly they observed for the time being the pacific
+attitude of suspicion willing to bide its time. Hints were not omitted
+to inform a certain person that they would soon learn what position to
+take and whether there was to be peace or war.</p>
+
+<p>When they were finally convinced that Lilly was shy and harmless, the
+waves of their tender confidences met over her head.</p>
+
+<p>It now became the regular thing for all three of them to sit on the edge
+of the bed until late at night with their corsets open and their knees
+drawn up to their chins, talking, talking, talking, while they sucked
+candies bought on the sly, or dressed one another's hair. Beautiful
+souls poured forth confessions. Whispered confidences about love
+adventures and man-baiting flowed on steadily, flooding Lilly's pure
+fancy with a turbid stream of sexual mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>What the Asmussen girls liked above all was to have their bodies
+admired.</p>
+
+<p>"When I turn this way, isn't the set of my shoulders classic?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I a marble bosom?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I weren't so bashful, I'd take off my shirt and show you my hips.
+They are like a goddess's."</p>
+
+<p>They made less frequent appeals for criticism of their features.</p>
+
+<p>"We've gotten so many compliments about our good looks that we can't
+have any doubts on that score."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless when cold weather set in, and necessitated the wearing of
+woolen scarfs over their heads, they did not scorn to discuss the truly
+Greek way their hair had of growing low on their foreheads, or the
+seductive curves of their mouths.</p>
+
+<p>They could also be severely self-critical.</p>
+
+<p>"Our eyes are not beautiful, we know. Yours, for instance, are much
+lovelier. But whether <i>you</i> cast sheep's eyes at anybody or not, it's
+all the same. Now, if <i>we</i> just chuck a little sidelong glance&mdash;you'd
+think no one could possibly notice it&mdash;why, in a jiffy they're after us
+like mad."</p>
+
+<p>Their iridescent, cattish eyes would twinkle with the pleasant sense of
+unbounded power and triumph over the weakness of that strong animal man.</p>
+
+<p>The advice they dispensed liberally to Lilly might be summed up in one
+sentence: "Do what you please, but don't surrender yourself."</p>
+
+<p>They laid no restraint upon themselves in retailing spicy stories, which
+set Lilly's pulse to bounding, and in which they proved their absolute
+seriousness in the observance of this motto.</p>
+
+<p>They manifested a strong sensual craving. One of them once remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"My highest ideal is to be queen of the bees, but to have no children."</p>
+
+<p>The other, who seemed inclined to ethical speculations, rejoined
+vivaciously:</p>
+
+<p>"My highest ideal is to be a nun and horribly immoral."</p>
+
+<p>She pursued the theme, entering into all details after the manner of the
+Renaissance narrators, while Lilly's pious soul trembled and shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>Their libertinism of thought notwithstanding, all their hopes and dreams
+centered about marriage.</p>
+
+<p>To marry, as quickly as possible and as advantageously as possible, was
+salvation, career, a specific for all ills, earthly bliss, and eternal
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"That is, he must be <i>old</i>, he must be <i>rich</i>, and he must be <i>stupid</i>."</p>
+
+<p>This trinity embodied all their demands of fate. As others invest their
+husbands-to-be with supernatural virtues, these girls revelled in
+picturing their future spouses' infirmities and in recounting the tricks
+they meant to play upon them by virtue of their bodily and spiritual
+superiority.</p>
+
+<p>They were not always agreed as to the ways and means of obtaining this
+precious possession so absolutely indispensable to life. A favorite
+subject of debate between them was: "Is it expedient, or is it not
+expedient, to compromise oneself with the man of one's choice?"</p>
+
+<p>Lona, whose daring in hatching difficult schemes of action knew no
+bounds, upheld the positive side. Mi, who wished to be sure where she
+trod, inclined to the negative.</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew those male milksops half as well as I do," Lona scolded,
+"you'd realize that the best way to catch them is through fear. Make
+them sin, and twist their sin about their necks like a halter. That's
+the only way to be sure of them."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very odd," Mi returned with inexorable logic, "that you haven't
+practised what you preach, because if you had, you'd long ago&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Discretion bade her break off. Her sister's fingers, crooked ready to
+scratch, boded no good.</p>
+
+<p>Only a week after their arrival a love tilt took place between them, in
+which hair puffs and petticoat strings flew about, and from which Mi
+emerged with a laceration which Lilly had to treat with vinegar
+compresses the rest of the night.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of their contention was a "swell" who had followed them on
+their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi, had been discouraged
+from coming closer because her sister had not responded sufficiently to
+his advances.</p>
+
+<p>Lona asserted the principle that one must have nothing at all to do with
+so-called "swells," while Mi was of the opinion that he would have been
+good enough for a husband at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>Strolling through the streets and permitting themselves to be accosted
+soon became their chief and daily occupation. Lilly, who had credited,
+and been greatly disturbed by, the threats they first made that they
+would assume the management of the business, soon realized she had
+nothing to apprehend in this regard.</p>
+
+<p>They slept until nine, and took two hours for dressing. Then they went
+out for their morning walk to make the necessary estimates of the
+gentlemen of the garrison, who at that hour of the day promenaded in
+groups near the main guard.</p>
+
+<p>If the first half of the day was dedicated to the military, the second
+half was devoted chiefly to ordinary citizens.</p>
+
+<p>It goes without saying that afternoon coffee was taken nowhere else than
+at Frangipani's confectionery shop, where a few lieutenants and a number
+of city officials and young lawyers gathered to play chess or skat; and
+where, too, many a more dashing high school teacher came to display his
+kinship with the proper world of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>After this hour, spiced by all sorts of sweets, followed the promenade
+at twilight, which proved highly advantageous for establishing possible
+connections, and provided the subjects needed for discussion at home.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be stating the full truth to say that Mrs. Asmussen brought
+a loving sympathy to bear in her judgment of this kind of life.
+Certainly not. The mutual adulation of the first few days had given
+place to a period of sultriness, when cutting remarks flashed in the
+murky atmosphere like streaks of lightning. Then a season of protracted
+storm set in, and mishaps occurred in swift succession, gradually
+becoming so purely a matter of course that even Lilly, who at first had
+wept and screamed along with the other three, began to consider this the
+normal condition of the Asmussen household. Abusive epithets of
+unsuspected vigor flew hither and thither, and the place resounded with
+cuffings. Even the broom, which in the beginning had not been given a
+thought, was now drawn into its strictly limited field of activity.</p>
+
+<p>Peace did not come until evening, when Mrs. Asmussen's medicine asserted
+its rights. The two girls might have taken advantage of her oblivion to
+give free play to their desires, had not their highly developed sense of
+propriety strictly forbidden going out at night.</p>
+
+<p>"Persons meeting us would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then
+no wedding bells for us."</p>
+
+<p>One would scarcely believe with what a number of conventions the young
+ladies circumscribed their apparently unrestrained existence.</p>
+
+<p>You may let yourself be kissed as much as you like, but on no account
+kiss back.</p>
+
+<p>You may let a gentleman call you by your first name in conversation, but
+if he does so in a letter it is an insult.</p>
+
+<p>You may let a gentleman treat you to coffee and cake, but not to bread
+and butter.</p>
+
+<p>You may let a strange man tread on your foot, but if he attempts to
+press your hand under the table you must get up.</p>
+
+<p>And so on.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had absolutely no comprehension for this set of thoughts and
+desires. Hitherto man as a male had been a piece of life non-existent in
+bodily form, which came to her notice on occasions, but glided by like a
+stranger without holding her attention. She had solely loved the man of
+her dreams, the man of her novels, the man of her own creation. The
+thing that stared at her on the street, the thing that came to exchange
+books and found all sorts of little pretexts for entering into
+conversation with her, the thing that officiously held aside the wadded
+curtain of the church door as she entered, or played the amiable over a
+shop counter, this thing was a strange, annoying fact; it was stupid and
+brazen, a matter of unspeakable indifference, to think of which would be
+a waste of time and a degradation.</p>
+
+<p>A girl's entire life, she now learned, was here simply for the sake of
+that gross and disgusting race; and a girl could concern herself about
+them from the moment she rose to the moment she fell asleep, without
+cherishing the thought of the one for whom she had been created as for
+work and faith and God.</p>
+
+<p>Though Lilly knew she was infinitely above being influenced by the two
+girls' advice and example, she felt, in spite of herself, a small desire
+arising within her to find out what the nature of those creatures might
+be about whom such a fuss was made, whose approval brought pleasure,
+whose coldness meant annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>She was beset by a tormenting fear of that dreadful, seething world
+outside there, of the dirt that was carried to her door every day anew,
+and of the disquieting curiosity with which she picked it up to examine
+it. For whether or no, her thoughts <i>would</i> return to the gay pictures,
+painted in colors of poison, which the two sisters, growing ever more
+demoralized, unrolled before her eyes evening after evening.</p>
+
+<p>It was a piece of good fortune that the hot friendship both at first
+bestowed upon her cooled off somewhat after a month or so.</p>
+
+<p>The cause was the enigmatic shortage in the cash box, which occurred
+time and again, and came to be a permanent phenomenon. Lilly would spend
+hours calculating feverishly, entering and counting every cent, until
+finally there was no other conclusion to be reached than that some one
+had used the few moments of her absence to dip into the drawer where the
+box was kept.</p>
+
+<p>In order to save herself&mdash;in case of discovery she would be accused of
+the theft&mdash;she once carried the key of the drawer away with her as if
+unintentionally, and did so repeatedly, until the girls' manner, which
+had grown increasingly estranged and scornful, assured her that she was
+on the right tack.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion they gave vent to their wrath and disillusionment.</p>
+
+<p>Did <i>she</i>, stray dog that she was, think she was mistress of the place?
+If need be, books and keys would be taken from her by force.</p>
+
+<p>In mortal fright Lilly ran to the mother and threatened to leave that
+instant unless she was allowed to control affairs as before.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen, who knew her scapegrace offspring through and through,
+took sides with Lilly, and the storm seemed to have blown over.</p>
+
+<p>The girls took to entreaty and in reawakened intimacy gave Lilly new and
+comprehensive views into the depths of their soul life.</p>
+
+<p>Did she think they cared a row of pins for the miserable little
+meringues they ate at Frangipani's? Not a bit of it. They were clever
+enough to know how to provide for the future. At any rate they couldn't
+stay with that old guzzler forever, especially since the place had
+turned out to be absolutely unproductive in regard to good matches. So
+for a long time they had been saving money industriously for another
+flight. It was no exaggeration to say they were starving themselves
+miserably. Lilly with her paltry desires could have no idea how many
+temptations they withstood when they sat at a table in the confectionery
+shop at suppertime, and had to look upon all sorts of glorious goodies
+without tasting them.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly remained unmoved by their persuasive wiles. Their manner cooled
+off again, and they began to pass her by, tacitly showing their sense of
+injury.</p>
+
+<p>Soon events occurred that fanned their enmity into a lively fire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was dusk of a wet November day. The spouts were streaming and an
+endless chain of grey drops glided down the iron rods of the porch
+railing and fell precipitously into the pool gleaming on the pavement
+below.</p>
+
+<p>A miserable sort of sport to watch the game! But what better diversion
+had the day to offer?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the front door opened, the library bell rang sharply, and in
+came a nimble little fellow, capering and stamping, and exhaling an
+aroma of Russia leather and Parma violets. His coat collar was turned up
+and his hat pulled far down. His close-cut blond hair shone like
+yellowish-white velvet.</p>
+
+<p>He measured Lilly from between lids masterfully narrowed to a slit with
+a cursory and apparently disillusioned glance, threw out a strident
+"good evening," and examined the back part of the room, as if expecting
+some one to emerge from behind the bookcases and give him a special
+greeting.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly asked what she could do for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are the young lady in charge of the circulating library?" he
+asked. The existence of such a young lady seemed to transport him into a
+kind of careless gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly said she was.</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" he replied. "Just splendid!" And a thousand little merry
+devils danced in his blinking, white-lashed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly asked what book he wished.</p>
+
+<p>"Be it known to you, most honored and erudite miss, I am not exactly
+familiar with German literature and the allied sciences, but ever since
+yesterday I have been possessed of a fabulous and downright sophomoric
+zeal for culture. If you would help me with your valuable&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He came to a sudden halt, stuck a monocle in his eye, looked her up and
+down, first on the right side, then on the left, the way an intending
+purchaser scrutinises a long-legged horse, murmured something like "the
+devil," and asked to have the light turned on immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Since it had actually grown so dark that the numbers on the backs of the
+books were illegible, Lilly saw no reason for refusing his request.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached up in all her glory to raise the chimney from the
+hanging lamp, he uttered a second and more audible "the devil." And when
+she stood there before him, the light shining on her sidewise, with an
+uneasy, questioning look in her improbable eyes&mdash;those long-concealed
+"Lilly eyes"&mdash;he sank back on the customers' seat to show how utterly
+nonplussed he was, and folded his hands and implored her forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a hot sense of insult rising in her. So low was she esteemed
+in her position that an aristocratic young man&mdash;the first who had
+strayed in to her in the course of one and a half years&mdash;did not deem it
+necessary to show her the most ordinary courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"If you do not wish to borrow a book, sir," she said, giving him a
+superior look, "please leave the place."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what did you say?" he rejoined, outraged. "I borrow a book? <i>One</i>
+book? One beggarly book? For every five minutes I am permitted to stay
+here I will take out a whole shelf of books, for all I care, a whole
+case of books&mdash;but with the proviso that I may return them to-morrow. I
+will immediately contract with the best express company in town to keep
+hauling the cases away and back again. But one moment&mdash;one moment. It
+seems to me I once heard that for every book taken from a circulating
+library you have to leave three marks deposit. Isn't that so?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stared at him in blank astonishment and said it was so.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since I haven't such an amount of money in my possession just
+now, I must ask you to keep <i>me</i> here as a deposit. So, in a measure, I
+yield myself up to you for imprisonment. Very vexatious for both
+parties, I'm sure. But what else is to be done in the circumstances?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of herself Lilly had to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's reconciled!" he cried triumphantly. "Her majesty is
+reconciled. And now let us speak to each other as decorous friends.
+Observe me well. Do I look as if I read books? To be sure I have my
+favourites, Schlicht, Roda-Roda and Winterfeld, and others who purport
+to know the humour of soldiering life. But if I come here, it's not to
+get books. The thing goes deeper than that. I hope I may confide in
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"If you think it necessary," stammered Lilly, whose eyes were fascinated
+by a gleaming chain peeping from under the sleeve of his tan overcoat.
+She did not know men ever wore gold bracelets.</p>
+
+<p>"Evenings I like to get into mufti&mdash;the rest of the time, you know, I
+wear uniform&mdash;but not for long any more&mdash;in a few weeks I depart this
+life, because&mdash;do you know what debts are? No? Then rejoice. Debts are
+the sour sediment in the lemonade of human existence, and the lemonade
+at that is none too sweet. But what was I going to say? Oh,
+yes&mdash;evenings I like to play Harun-al-Rashid and strive to win the favor
+of the populace by honouring the populace's more commendable daughters
+with a little conversation. Understand? So, in remoter districts, where
+high are the hedges and silent the new villas&mdash;so yesterday I&mdash;behind
+two young ladies&mdash;laughing over their shoulders and swinging their
+skirts, exactly the way well-bred girls are wont to do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, but I should like this talk to end," said Lilly, red
+with shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," he said; "I knew at once you are a perfect lady, and have
+nothing to do with such ticklish matters. I am merely confessing in
+order to secure a little absolution from your purity."</p>
+
+<p>This turn did Lilly's soul good, and she did not oppose him further.</p>
+
+<p>"So the two young ladies were walking in front of me arm in arm. The
+moment I reached-them I slipped in between like a slice of sausage in a
+sandwich. They weren't a bit offish. They told me they owned a large
+circulating library and intended shortly to open an art shop in Berlin,
+and so on. But they didn't mention their address, and since&mdash;I admit it
+with shame&mdash;until a few moments ago I thought they had some good points,
+I am simply making the rounds of all the libraries in the directory.
+Besides the well-known bookstores there are only three. I investigated
+the other two, and now that I know the third, the art shop
+proprietresses may go to the devil for all I care."</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of scorn and mischievous delight arose in Lilly. She gave a
+short laugh, but took good care not to disclose the existence of the
+Asmussen girls.</p>
+
+<p>To prove to her that in the presence of her majesty all desire for an
+adventure ended, he presented himself formally: "Von Prell, future
+ex-lieutenant."</p>
+
+<p>Observing her questioning look he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"As I delicately indicated, my days in the regiment are numbered."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly timidly inquired whether an officer's life no longer pleased him.</p>
+
+<p>"Until now I knew of no sort of life that would <i>not</i> have pleased me."
+Wanton spirits shot little gleams from his small grey eyes. "But the
+paternal riches have taken wing, and my wages as army serf will just
+about buy radishes, and even radishes get expensive around Christmas
+time. So the best thing for me to do is to buy an old herring keg and
+let myself be salted and packed. If you should happen to know of one to
+be had cheap, I give the best prices."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly frankly laughed a joyous laugh. He joined in, holding his hands to
+his hips and emitting a thin, falsetto tehee, which, though scarcely
+audible, shook his slim, sinewy body as with a storm of merriment.</p>
+
+<p>They now sat opposite each other like two good friends, with the counter
+between. Lilly wished the hour would never end.</p>
+
+<p>A maid entered to exchange a volume of Flygare-Carlén for her mistress.
+He unassumingly disposed himself for a stay, examined the backs of
+several books, and acted altogether as if he were at home. When the maid
+left he pulled the door open obsequiously and bowed and scraped as she
+passed through.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly grew more and more hilarious and restrained her laughter with
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Before the next customer comes you must go," she said, "else they'll
+begin to think something."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked. "The customers change."</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly insisted, whereupon he took to pleading.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he said. "I am known as a man utterly devoid of moral fibre.
+Do <i>you</i> be my stay in this mundane existence&mdash;at least until the door
+opens again. While I'm sitting here I can commit no follies, and that
+must convey some consolation to your charitable heart."</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed, therefore, that he might keep his place until the next
+time the bell rang. He leaned back in his chair comfortably and scanned
+Lilly with the tender emotions of unlimited ownership.</p>
+
+<p>"All earthly ills flow from garrulousness," he began. "If Columbus had
+just kept the discovery of America to himself nobody would have made it
+disagreeable for him. I will be wilier. I will consider my discovery as
+a family secret between you and me. What a feast for the fellows! Let
+them keep to the moths that fly at twilight, like the two prospective
+art-shop proprietresses, to whom I owe the good fortune of your
+acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had completely forgotten the sisters. It was about time for them
+to be coming home. Suppose they were suddenly to open the door!</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang. No, it wasn't they. It was a spinster, who daily devoured
+several volumes of love affairs, and came every evening for fresh
+fodder.</p>
+
+<p>The blithe lieutenant, remembering the compact, shot up out of his
+chair. His demeanour stiffened into business-like coolness.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please," he twanged, "will you kindly let me have the latest
+work by&mdash;by&mdash;" Evidently no German author occurred to him. After racking
+his brain the delivering name came, "by Gerstäcker."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly brought him the "latest work," which bore the date 1849. He
+deposited the requisite three marks, and took leave with too sweeping a
+bow, while the little imps frolicked between his silver-white lids.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the sisters came home, cast a suspicious look at Lilly's
+flaming cheeks, and passed by without greeting her.</p>
+
+<p>The next day went after the fashion of every other, but something
+troubled Lilly, something like Christmas expectations, a premonitory
+restlessness, which pressed on to a new life.</p>
+
+<p>And behold! At the same time as the day before the door opened, and in
+stepped two elegant young men, who emitted a strident "good evening."
+Their manner was both a bit assured and a bit abashed as they asked for
+"an interesting book," while measuring Lilly with the stare of a
+connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>She felt her limbs grow heavy and rigid, as always when conscious of
+being observed and admired. But she maintained her dignity, and when the
+young gentlemen after selecting their trash (which they scarcely glanced
+at) wanted to start up a bantering conversation, she tossed her head and
+withdrew behind the bookcase L to N, which sheltered her when she sat at
+the window-sill making her entries and calculations.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen took whispered counsel with each other, said a low
+"good-by," and beat a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>So her jolly friend had betrayed her after all!</p>
+
+<p>From now on Mrs. Asmussen's poor little hole of a library swarmed with
+slim young men of fashion, who were driven by an insatiable desire for
+reading to exchange one musty old volume for another.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few dared come in uniform, but they did not withhold their names,
+and the last page of the customers' book looked as if extracted from an
+Almanac de Gotha.</p>
+
+<p>Some wrapped themselves in a coat of business-like correctness, others
+came with careless assurance of victory. One man began to make love on
+the spot, and another even had the audacity to bandy gross language over
+the counter. The naïvest one condescendingly inquired when within the
+next few days he might expect a visit from her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly soon came to see that these attentions neither honoured nor gave
+hurt. She chatted freely with those who were courteous, refrained from
+replying to those who were impertinent, and the instant a conversation
+threatened to become lengthy she disappeared behind case L to N.</p>
+
+<p>Within a few days the sisters had discovered the aristocratic visitors.</p>
+
+<p>Their rage knew no bounds. Decency was thrown to the winds. Lilly was
+not spared a single insult, a single abuse. Vile epithets such as she
+had never heard poured over her in a dirty stream. The girls demanded
+that she cede her place at the counter to them. She refused point blank,
+whereupon they took to maltreating her.</p>
+
+<p>On occasions of greatest need Mrs. Asmussen came to her assistance. The
+broom rained blows on the white nightgowns of the jealous furies, and
+drove them into the back room, where the battle was drowned in rivers of
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>Hostilities continued. In case business exigencies necessitated some
+self-restraint during the day while customers were present, feelings
+were given all the freer play in the morning and evening.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's life became a veritable hell.</p>
+
+<p>A crust of hate and bitterness laid itself over her soul. Partly in
+fright, partly in satisfaction she felt herself growing harder and
+sharper. It was only at night that she melted, when she buried her
+burning head in the pillows and gave vent to her misery in silent
+weeping.</p>
+
+<p>The merry friend with the white lashes, who had caused the entire
+catastrophe, did not put in appearance for about two weeks. He came in
+dragging his legs a little, and his eyes were swollen and bleared.</p>
+
+<p>"This flower," he said, undoing the tissue paper of the package in his
+hand, "is the picotee, which keeps fresh five or six days longer than
+any parting pangs."</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of him Lilly felt a little comforting joy light up within
+her. She took the bouquet as a matter of course, and reproached him for
+not having kept his mouth shut.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you," he replied imperturbably, "that I am a man utterly devoid
+of moral fibre."</p>
+
+<p>Then he informed her that the regiment had given him a farewell dinner
+for good and all, and now there was nothing more urgent for him to do
+than secure passage for somewhere&mdash;if he only knew where.</p>
+
+<p>"But we won't scratch our heads about <i>that</i>," he continued. "Brilliant
+people such as you and I have brilliant careers. The path of my life
+leads by still waters of cool champagne, and is paved with little meat
+patties. That's kismet. No use struggling against it. Even if it finally
+leads to a sugar-cane plantation in Louisiana, it's all the same to me.
+One always comes across something new, and that's the main thing. For
+the present the old man, who's taken a tremendous liking to me, wants me
+to run about his estate as Fritz Triddelfitz."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed his high-pitched, almost inaudible laugh, which shook him
+like a storm.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to know who the "old man" was.</p>
+
+<p>That a person should have to ask this seemed inconceivable to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you the least idea of life, if you don't know who the old man is?
+The old man is the cat-o'-nine-tails. The old man decides what is good
+and what is bad on earth. The old man breaks one man's neck and pays
+another man's debts. He is the punch bowl of all our virtues and all our
+sins. Withal the old man is eternally young. The old man sees you and
+says to you: 'Come here, little girl. I'm a grey old horror, but I wish
+to have you.' Then you have just enough courage left to ask 'When do you
+want me, high and mighty lord?' You see, child, that's the old man.
+They hist him on to you long ago, and if ever he should find his way to
+you, then may the Lord have mercy on you! Then all's over and done for
+with my poor young queen."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't know yet who the old man is," said Lilly, whom this
+enigmatic alarum was beginning to make a little uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't ask," he replied, and held out his freckled hand in good-by.
+"It's a pity for us two," he added, smiling at her tenderly and
+compassionately from between his blinking lids. "We could so cosily have
+enriched history with another famous pair of lovers." Leaning far over
+the counter, "Since I am a man utterly devoid of moral fibre, I should
+like to bestow one kiss upon you before I go."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laughingly held her mouth up.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her and walked to the door stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can scarcely crawl, I'm so knocked up by my bout," he said, and with
+that was outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>After this visit Lilly was seized with the same disquieting sense as
+after his first visit. It seemed to her she was being flicked in sport
+with tickling switches. But this time, joined to the other feeling, was
+a certain anxiety which set her nerves a-tingle with a tormenting yet
+soothing sensation, as if she were waiting outside a locked door of
+gold, behind which an unknown fate was crouching ready to pounce on
+her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Outside on the street the hilt of a sword and the buttons of a uniform
+glittered in the noon sunlight of a December day.</p>
+
+<p>"A new one," thought Lilly. The stiff, thickset figure of the man who
+clanked up the steps of the porch was unfamiliar to her.</p>
+
+<p>A masterful stamping outside the door. The bell rang more sharply than
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>No, she did not know him. He was not a frivolous lieutenant, nor yet one
+of the maturer ones, who played the dignified and watched with an
+expectant smile for the first shy glance in order to extract from it
+whatever they dared.</p>
+
+<p>She saw eyes piercing sharp as a falcon's with a close ring of mobile
+crows' feet about them; she saw a severe high-bridged aquiline nose, and
+gaunt cheek bones on which lay a well-defined spot of red finely chased
+with purple veins. Under a short, bushy moustache she saw thin,
+compressed lips, the corners of which turned up in a smile of mocking
+benevolence. She saw a receding chin, polished to a shine by the shave,
+and disappearing in two limp folds near the high collar.</p>
+
+<p>She saw all this as in a dream. Her heart began to throb so violently
+that she had to lean against the bookcase.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this is what I was afraid of," a voice within her spoke. "This is
+the old man."</p>
+
+<p>He raised his hand carelessly to his cap, but did not think of removing
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel von Mertzbach," he said in a voice whose rough intonations
+spread a whole world of authoritative power before her. "I should like
+to speak to you a few minutes. I have reasons for wishing to know you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt she was to be subjected to a humiliating examination, which
+she was by no means in duty bound to suffer. But never in her life had
+she seemed so defenceless as at that moment. She felt as if she were
+standing in the presence of a judge who had the right to pardon or
+condemn entirely at his own discretion.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips trembled as she stammered something meant to express consent.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be an extremely dangerous young woman," he said. "Why,
+you've fairly crazed my men, especially the younger ones&mdash;there's no
+managing them."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," replied Lilly, summoning all her courage.</p>
+
+<p>He uttered "h'm," stuck a monocle in his eye, and looked her up and
+down, or rather looked down to the point where the top of the counter
+cut her figure off. Then he uttered another "h'm," and observed:</p>
+
+<p>"It's very easy to play the innocent in cases like this. However that
+may be, I can thoroughly comprehend my young men. Probably I myself
+should not have behaved differently. But it seems that despite your
+youth and&mdash;inexperience, you possess a very respectable amount of
+feminine cunning, otherwise you would not have succeeded, in spite of
+your irreproachably reserved manner&mdash;or, perhaps, just <i>because</i> of your
+manner&mdash;you would not have succeeded, I say, in bringing the young men
+here on repeated visits&mdash;they are somewhat fastidious."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt the tears rising. It would have been easy to repudiate the
+insults he offered her; but from where derive the strength to oppose a
+word in defence to this man whose eyes disrobed her and drilled her
+through and through, whose smile held her in a wire net?</p>
+
+<p>So she sat down and cried.</p>
+
+<p>He, in his turn, rose from his seat and stepped close to the counter.</p>
+
+<p>"How deeply your sense of honour has been wounded I cannot say offhand.
+At any rate, it is not my intention to make you cry. On the contrary, I
+should like you to give me with the utmost composure possible a little
+information which will enlighten me and which may be of some importance
+for your future."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was conscious of only one thought: "You must pull yourself
+together because he wants you to."</p>
+
+<p>She wiped her eyes and looked at him obediently, sniffling a little, as
+when she had been scolded in her childhood.</p>
+
+<p>He asked her name, where she had been born, where her parents were, what
+school she had attended, and what she was doing in the library. At the
+mention of her guardian's name an ironic smile passed over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the gentleman's views," he said. "So, in short, you have been
+left absolutely alone in the world?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly assented.</p>
+
+<p>"And it would not be disagreeable to you to have some mainstay&mdash;to know
+someone to whom you could turn in moments of need?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is a person like that to come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think it over at leisure," he said, wrinkling his forehead. "In
+any case, you cannot remain in this hole. Do they treat you well here at
+least?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tolerably," said Lilly, and added between laughter and tears,
+"Only&mdash;the food is bad and sometimes I get&mdash;" she was going to say
+"beaten," but was ashamed to, and substituted "punished," which was a
+perversion of the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel burst into a laugh that sounded like the crack of a whip.</p>
+
+<p>"Very commendable in you to take the matter humorously," he said, and
+rose to go. "Well, I know what I wanted to know. My men may continue to
+come to you&mdash;in uniform, in civilian's clothes, whichever way they want.
+They will find no more irreproachable company among the young ladies of
+this town. Should they ever forget their manners, just drop me a line.
+But I am sure they won't. Good afternoon, Miss Czepanek."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly watched him walk across the porch with the jerky, springy strut of
+an old cavalry man. The wintry sun seemed to be shining for the sole
+purpose of casting a dancing radiance about his figure.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the pavement he turned to her window and lifted his cap
+slightly but respectfully. The eyes behind the lowering brows pierced
+hers, searching, almost threatening. Then he passed out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's soul was assailed by a tumult of questions:</p>
+
+<p>"What was it? What was expected of her? Why wasn't she let alone?"</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to cry, wanted to pour out complaints and feel herself
+pitied. But her trouble had a certain festal tinge, a certain
+shadowyness and unreality. She bedizened herself with it as with a new
+hope, and what he had said about some one to whom she could turn in
+moments of need re-echoed in her soul like a soothing, easing melody.
+Didn't it seem almost as if he himself wished to be the mainstay so
+sorely lacking in her floundering young life?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he would get Mr. Pieper, who did not concern himself about her
+at any rate, to give up his guardianship over Lilly. Or, perhaps the
+colonel might even adopt her, or something like that. There was no
+knowing.</p>
+
+<p>If only there had not been those dagger eyes, that amused laugh, and
+that evil, evil look at the end, and above all her friend's warning: "If
+ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>However, for all that, what could possibly happen to her behind the
+counter? Nobody had ever dared to raise the drop leaf and pass through.
+And surely she was safe behind the bookcase L to N, where she could not
+even be seen.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel's visit seemed to have acted like a cold douche on his men,
+despite&mdash;or, perhaps, on account of&mdash;the guarantee he had given for
+their good behaviour. Not one of them came to visit her again.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a sign of the protection he is to favour me with?" Lilly
+wondered.</p>
+
+<p>Something was missing, she did not know what.</p>
+
+<p>A week passed, and one day the younger sister, who held watch every
+morning for possible billets-doux, threw an envelope at Lilly's feet,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Something else again, with a coronet on it, you flirt, you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Flirt" was one of the milder titles of honour that the sisters lavished
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly opened the letter and read:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dear Miss Czepanek:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Remembering the interview that took place between us recently,
+I take the liberty of making a proposition to you. The position
+of private secretary and reader with me is open. Would you be
+inclined to accept it? Since I am an unmarried man, it would be
+in better form for you not to live in my house, but I pledge
+myself to provide for your maintenance in a suitable and
+respectable family. Your guardian, whom I took the opportunity
+to consult in the matter, has given his consent to the plan.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Respectfully yours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freiherr von Mertzbach,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Colonel and Commander of the&mdash;&mdash;Regiment of Ulans."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>So here it was&mdash;her fate!</p>
+
+<p>It was there, on the other side of the gleaming snowy street, beckoning
+and calling to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Come out of your hole. I will show you life. I will show you something
+new."</p>
+
+<p>But then she pictured herself sitting at the colonel's great desk
+writing at his dictation. She saw his eyes drilling her, searching her
+soul, and threatening, always threatening. The pen would fall from her
+fingers, she would have to jump up and run away, but she would not be
+able to; the eyes would hold her in a spell.</p>
+
+<p>So Lilly sat down and wrote a very correct letter declining his
+proposition. She fully appreciated, she said, the honour he did her, but
+she felt she was not qualified to assume so difficult a position, and
+she thought that even if she was not so well off she did better by
+remaining in her modest situation, since she could fulfil the duties it
+involved. "Very gratefully yours, Lilly Czepanek."</p>
+
+<p>Done! Peace at last restored&mdash;as much peace as the bad sisters
+permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas was drawing near. It cannot be stated with accuracy that the
+preparations in the Asmussen household produced an atmosphere of mirth.</p>
+
+<p>For weeks Mrs. Asmussen had been sighing over the bad times and the
+nuisance of having to give everybody in the world a gift. The sisters
+discussed as frequently and as loudly as possible the question whether
+it was necessary for refined and aristocratic young ladies to share a
+Christmas tree with low and vulgar hussies. There was no indication
+whatsoever of those gladsome mysteries that at this time brighten the
+saddest of human habitations.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly knitted a brown sweater for her mother, bought her two picture
+puzzles, a box of sweets, and a wooden vase for flowers&mdash;objects of
+china, being breakable, were not desired&mdash;and sent them to the asylum.</p>
+
+<p>At this time her thoughts frequently wandered from her mother to her
+father, who had now been gone four and a half years, and in that time
+had given no sign of his existence.</p>
+
+<p>In the forlorn condition she was in, her confidence in his return waxed
+strong. Christmas eve, about six or seven, he would suddenly enter, snow
+covering his havelock, and draw her into his embrace with that
+demonstrative ardour peculiar to him. She almost breathed in the
+fragrance always streaming from his anointed locks. That was one way.
+Another was, a servant would bring a little package as a preliminary
+greeting. Inside would be costly material for a dress. A hat would come,
+too. She needed it badly.</p>
+
+<p>After the others had gone to sleep she would fetch from the bottom of
+her trunk the score of the Song of Songs and softly hum the more
+beautiful arias.</p>
+
+<p>There were some passages which always made her cry. Oh, she cried a
+great deal these nights. Yet at this very period a tiny, hesitating
+sense of happiness found its way into her being.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely, dreamy feeling of being lifted up, of growing wings, of
+astonished listening to inner voices, which sounded sweet and familiar
+as words from a mother's lips, yet strange, like a gospel from the mouth
+of one who was still to come.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then she found herself kneeling in her nightgown, but not
+praying, merely dreaming, with arms outspread and rapturous eyes raised
+to the lamp, as if the salvation she was awaiting would approach from
+somewhere up there.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, after all, she celebrated Christmas in the quiet of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas eve was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>At the eleventh hour a few gifts were scraped together. The sisters ran
+about like wild animals making their preparations. They even bestowed a
+few kindly words on Lilly, who showed her gratitude by winking when the
+older sister had to look for something near the cash box. Lilly knew
+there was not much inside, and should anything be missing later she
+would replace it from her own funds.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes before suppertime she was summoned to the back room, where
+the Christmas tree was already lit. The company was embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters held out their hands. Mrs. Asmussen, who was already sitting
+over her medicine glass, delivered a few dignified words about the
+significance of Christmas in general and her misfortune in particular in
+having to forego the company of so splendid a husband on such an
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Then everybody asked everybody else's pardon because the presents were
+not more munificent. First of all, there had been a "must," which ought
+not to exist for refined souls, and which at first caused great chagrin.
+Then all of a sudden time had grown short. Besides, the apron with the
+red edge was very decent&mdash;they themselves had long been wanting one like
+it&mdash;and the pen-wiper was not to be despised, either. Above all,
+business had been bad.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ashamed to say, I have nothing at all to give," Lilly answered.
+But what she was most ashamed of was that she now felt kindly disposed
+toward the sisters.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't a bit of character," she thought, as she bit into the
+marchpane which the older, the wickeder one, offered her.</p>
+
+<p>The library bell rang. A lackey loaded with parcels stumbled in and
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Does Miss Czepanek live here?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's heart leapt.</p>
+
+<p>"From papa&mdash;actually from papa!" she rejoiced.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments she scarcely dared touch the packages. She ran about
+the room helplessly passing her hands over her hair. She did not venture
+to undo the cords until urged on by the sisters. They stood next to her,
+staring with great, greedy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The things those boxes contained! A light cloth dress trimmed with lace,
+a delicate foulard dress, a pink silk petticoat, black patent leather
+and tan shoes, six pairs of glacé and undressed kid gloves, some of them
+elbow length, three kinds of collars, a fichu of Valenciennes lace to
+wear with empire gowns, books, writing paper, conserved fruit, and more
+things, and still more, many more&mdash;the boxes seemed bottomless. Even the
+hat she had hankered for was there, a simple shepherdess shape of light
+grey felt, which shape had always been most becoming to the grand style
+of her features. It was trimmed with light brown ribbons and
+silver-tipped pompons.</p>
+
+<p>A veritable trousseau!</p>
+
+<p>The sisters began to pull long faces. Lilly, too, soon ceased to
+rejoice. She was full of apprehension. All she wanted now was to find a
+letter, a card, some token of the sender's personality, which surely
+accompanied the gifts. She groped for it nervously. Though she had long
+given up all thought of her father and his return, an instinct of
+self-preservation impelled her to pretend in the sisters' presence that
+it was he, and only he, who had poured this flood of treasures over her.</p>
+
+<p>At last&mdash;underneath the gloves&mdash;she found an envelope and ran off to the
+library with it.</p>
+
+<p>There beneath the hanging lamp she drew out a visiting card and paled
+with fright as she read:</p>
+
+<p>"Freiherr von Mertzbach, Colonel and Commander of the&mdash;&mdash;Regiment of
+Ulans," followed by a few lines in the heavy, bold strokes with which
+she was acquainted: "from the depths of his own loneliness wishes his
+lonely little friend an hour of Christmas joy."</p>
+
+<p>She returned to the back room, where the sisters, green with envy,
+received her with a chilly smile, while Mrs. Asmussen, nodding over the
+steaming glass, dropped fragments of mysterious words.</p>
+
+<p>"The things actually do come from papa," said Lilly, amazed at the
+strange, stifled sound of her own voice.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters gave a short laugh, and silently began to put the gifts back
+into the boxes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was holding a little porcelain bon-bon dish filled with fragrant,
+odd-looking confections. She glanced hesitatingly from one sister to the
+other without daring to offer them the sweets for fear of being repulsed
+with some abusive word or other. She set the lid&mdash;a little rose-wreathed
+Cupid&mdash;back on the delicately cut rim, let the dish sink down among the
+other gifts in one of the boxes, crawled to the corner where she slept,
+and cried bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters whispered together a long time. They built a pyramid of the
+boxes on the counter and passed by it at a respectful distance.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Lilly summoned a porter from the street and returned
+everything to the donor without a word of explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went to the sisters and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't tell you the truth yesterday. The gifts did <i>not</i> come from
+papa. So I returned them."</p>
+
+<p>The sisters, who had come toward her with a sweet-sour air of
+attentiveness, made no effort to conceal their disillusionment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't take her for such a muff!" said the younger.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not," said the older sarcastically, who, true to her nature,
+scented an <i>arrière pensée</i>. "On the contrary she's particularly
+calculating&mdash;wants to drive her adorer still madder. I hope she doesn't
+get stuck at her own game. Even the blindest mortal soon comes to know
+the difference between false and <i>genuine</i> worth."</p>
+
+<p>Therewith, in order to furnish on the spot an example of the genuine
+quality, she drew her petticoat tight about her legs with her left hand
+and with her right hand gathered her matinée close under her bosom, and
+sent Lilly a smile of utter contempt from over her shoulder, such a
+smile as only lofty souls can summon on occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Lilly noticed that from now on she was treated with a
+certain heedfulness, from which she deduced that something was still
+expected of her.</p>
+
+<p>During the next few days nothing of importance occurred, though the day
+after Christmas a few of the young gentlemen had put in appearance
+again. Their manner was jerky as they exchanged their books, they outdid
+themselves in politeness and they showed no disposition to make
+themselves at home on chair or counter.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;the day before New Year&mdash;Lilly received this letter:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Dear Miss Czepanek:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>You shamefully mistook the motives that led me to send you
+those Christmas gifts. I feel I must justify myself and bring
+about a perfect understanding between us. I have plans
+concerning you which I should like to set before you
+personally, but my position forbids my visiting you repeatedly,
+and I would ask you, if your future is dear to you, to come to
+my house to-morrow evening. I shall expect you some time before
+eight. I give you my word of honour for your safe return.
+Yours,</p>
+
+<p>Mertzbach."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>To go or not to go.</p>
+
+<p>That night Lilly did not sleep a wink.</p>
+
+<p>If only the feeling of dread had not obsessed her, dread which robbed
+her of breath and the power to defend herself. If the mere thought of
+him brought it on, what would become of her should she stand before him
+face to face?</p>
+
+<p>She finally decided not to go, while she knew for a certainty she <i>was</i>
+going.</p>
+
+<p>She lived through the day as in a dull dream.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon she obtained permission from Mrs. Asmussen to attend
+New Year's eve service. The sisters, who spied upon her every movement,
+exchanged significant looks, but seemed too preoccupied with their own
+affairs to give hers their usual sweet attention.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly donned the old felt hat which many a storm had buffeted and many a
+shower discoloured. Her winter coat made her look narrow shouldered, and
+tug as she would, the sleeves refused to reach her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>If she had had her wits about her she would have been much too ashamed
+to show herself before so aristocratic a gentleman in that garb. But she
+was driven to her acts by something outside herself, not by her own
+volition. Strange, mysterious powers seemed to be pushing her, invisible
+hands to be helping her dress, smoothing her hair lower on her forehead,
+raising the arch of her brows, and opening the buttons at her throat to
+give her constricted chest the freedom of its young fullness. They
+rubbed her cheeks, pale from lack of sleep, until they glowed with a
+triumphant red.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached the street and the frosty breath of the winter evening
+stroked her gently, she felt she was waking up at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" a voice within her asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps to St. Joseph," she answered evasively.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not go to St. Joseph. She made a wide détour about St.
+Anne's, crossed the Altmarkt diagonally, saw the sisters sitting at
+Frangipani's in the company of two admirers, with difficulty avoided the
+assiduities of a gallant, and suddenly found herself in front of the
+latticed gateway behind which, four flights up, the sewing machine had
+rattled and clattered the last remnant of reason out of her poor, ruined
+mother's head.</p>
+
+<p>Light was shining from the two dormer windows up there where Lilly had
+once lived.</p>
+
+<p>Some one else was probably sitting there now, sewing shirts and drawers
+and nightgowns, day and night, night and day. Lilly, too, would be
+sitting there some day, bitterly ruing her lost youth as one regrets an
+act of criminal folly.</p>
+
+<p>"If your future is dear to you," he had written.</p>
+
+<p>She faced about abruptly, and ran&mdash;ran&mdash;ran&mdash;without coming to a stop
+until she reached the lighted house, in front of which a sentinel was
+pacing and freezing as he kept guard over the highest dignitary in the
+city.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" the voice within her asked again.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid answering, she rushed up the wide carpeted stairway and came
+upon a lackey in silver-striped knickerbockers, who without question
+quietly relieved her of her umbrella, while the shadow of a mischievous
+smile flickered across his pudding face.</p>
+
+<p>High white doors were held open for her, red-shaded lamps shone like
+great flowers, beautiful bare-shouldered women with tiaras in their hair
+smiled down on her from oval gilt frames.</p>
+
+<p>It was so silent and warm in the spacious rooms you could lie down on
+the soft carpet and go to sleep. If only there had not been that feeling
+of dread which was tightening about her throat and brow like a net drawn
+closer and closer.</p>
+
+<p>Another door flew open. Beyond was green twilight, as in a thick forest,
+and from out of the twilight <i>his</i> figure came toward her, broad,
+resplendent, clanking. She felt her hand being taken, felt herself being
+led into the green dusk. Bookcases towered before her like black walls.
+From somewhere came the threatening glitter of swords, helmets and
+armour.</p>
+
+<p>She did not dare look at him. Even after she had been seated in a tall,
+dark arm-chair, whose top hung over her head like a canopy, she had not
+given him a single glance.</p>
+
+<p>She heard his voice, whose resounding roughness seemed to have been
+muffled to vibrating organ tones.</p>
+
+<p>It was all unearthly, all that she perceived and felt. It was not
+heaven, it was not hell. It was a region of anxiety and dreams, where
+souls hovered between deprivation and fulfillment in a state of
+lethargy.</p>
+
+<p>At last she understood his words. There was nothing unearthly about
+them. They dealt most rationally with the Christmas gifts, the return of
+which he did not consider final. They were securely stowed away biding
+the time when their mistress would graciously deign to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly with a frozen smile on her lips merely shook her head. She could
+not summon the courage to voice a refusal.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you will ask me, my dear," he began anew, "what impels me, a
+man advancing in years, to hang on to your skirts like a pertinacious
+lover."</p>
+
+<p>At the words, "advancing in years," she looked up instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>There he sat, too sharply illuminated by the light of the green
+student's lamp. The orders on his breast gave out a subdued, golden
+lustre. The silver tassels of his epaulets quivered and glittered like
+little snakes. There was a shimmer upon and around him like the halo
+about a saint in gold and brocade.</p>
+
+<p>Confused and abashed by all this glory Lilly quickly sank her gaze
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"I went to you that time," he continued, "because a dispute had broken
+out among some of my younger men, of which you were the subject. The
+matter promised to take a dangerous turn and it had to be adjusted. I
+expected to find a pert, coquettish little shop girl, and I found&mdash;well,
+I found&mdash;<i>you</i>. Now you will ask what I mean by 'you,' because you
+yourself cannot possibly be aware of your good points, or, rather, your
+potentialities&mdash;everything in you is still in process of becoming. I am
+what they call a connoisseur in women, my child, and behind that which
+you are to-day, I see that which you will be some future day, <i>if</i>&mdash;this
+'if' is the main thing&mdash;if the opportunity is afforded you for proper
+development. You might go to ruin among your old books. In case you have
+the courage to entrust your fate to my hands, I should like to assume
+the care of directing your life into fitting channels."</p>
+
+<p>That sounded composed and paternal.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt herself breathing easier, experienced a little relaxing
+hopefulness. She ventured to raise her look once more, and beyond the
+gold and silver dazzle she saw a pair of brilliant glassy eyes, which
+had lost their sharpness and were fairly forcing themselves on her with
+a mighty, greedy questioning. The shuddering and stiffening came upon
+her anew. She sat there motionless with paralysed will, while she
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Of what avail? He will do whatever he wants with me at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>He went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I own a beautiful old estate, Lischnitz, in West Prussia, near the
+Vistula, to which my duties prevent me from going frequently. My
+household there is managed by a middle-aged aristocratic lady, Miss von
+Schwertfeger&mdash;but her name's immaterial. If you were to go there she
+would receive you with open arms, I promise you that, and you would have
+an opportunity to develop under the most favourable conditions into the
+woman I already foresee in you. Your problems for the time being would
+be solved, and I should benefit by finding my home, when I visit it,
+lighted by a ray of youth and beauty."</p>
+
+<p>He had risen and in his eagerness to persuade began to pace about her
+with short see-sawing steps. Each time he moved there was a clinking and
+jingling like delicate dance music played on small bells. Finally all
+she heard was this metallic ringing, and she no longer understood what
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed against the back of her chair with an indistinct feeling
+that he was tying her with cords, packing her up, and carrying her off
+to some spot where no rescuer could hear her cries of distress. She knew
+she would not offer the least resistance, so completely was she in his
+power.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to obey, certainly&mdash;oh, she was so obedient! But she could
+not.</p>
+
+<p>He put a finger under her chin and shoved her head back. She kept her
+eyes almost closed and saw nothing except the red border of his military
+coat.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she felt herself sinking. The red border mounted to the
+ceiling, bees buzzed about her ears&mdash;then nothing.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to, something cold and wet was lying on her breast, and a
+woman's clothes smelling of smoke grazed her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The green twilight was still there.</p>
+
+<p>A breastplate was hanging in front of her. It looked like a brightly
+scoured kettle.</p>
+
+<p>She did not dare move, she felt so comfortable and easy.</p>
+
+<p>A rough, bony hand kept chafing her forehead and a kindly voice repeated
+two or three times in succession:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little thing! Poor little thing! So young!"</p>
+
+<p>After a time Lilly could not help giving a sign of consciousness, and
+the instant she stirred a sure arm came to the support of her head, and
+the kindly voice asked, was she feeling better and did she want
+anything?</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go home."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so easily done," said the voice, "because he gave orders that he
+wanted to speak to you again. But if you'll take a good piece of advice,
+say 'much obliged,' and 'good-by,' and be off as quickly as you can.
+This is no sort of place for a poor young girl like you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sat up, and pulled down her waist.</p>
+
+<p>The cook was standing beside her&mdash;a brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face.
+Stroking Lilly's shoulder she asked if she should bring her something to
+strengthen her heart, a cordial beaten up with the white of an egg, or
+something else.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go home."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall, pretty soon, my dear. But I must call him in first."</p>
+
+<p>She hustled out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly reached for her hat, on which she must have been lying, because it
+was completely crushed and misshapen.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I must certainly get a new one," she thought, and tried to reckon
+how much she could spare for it.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened. He entered, followed by the cook.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was no longer afraid. Everything seemed far, far away. Even he.
+Nothing seemed to concern her any more.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she's fit to be taken to the cab already," said the cook.</p>
+
+<p>"You are no longer needed here," he said imperiously.</p>
+
+<p>The cook ventured to stammer another suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out!" he thundered.</p>
+
+<p>With that she was outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly experienced merely a lazy sensation of being startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what he means to do with me now," she
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>But her interest in her own fate was not great.</p>
+
+<p>He walked up and down with a heavy tread. The silver spurs on his heels
+jingled.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have some light," he said. "The subject we're now to discuss
+requires clearness."</p>
+
+<p>He summoned the lackey who had smiled the furtive, cunning smile. The
+lackey lit the gas jets of the chandelier, and on leaving the room gave
+Lilly a glance of wildly eager curiosity, this time without a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly still sat on the couch on which she had come back to
+consciousness, twirling her old hat without a thought in her brain.</p>
+
+<p>In the full light of the chandelier she saw the colonel in all his
+resplendence still pacing silently up and down.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could look him in the face without a flutter.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all the same to me what he does," she thought. "I cannot defend
+myself at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>He moved a chair in front of her, and sat down&mdash;so close that his knees
+almost touched her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen to me, my child," he said. His words rang out steely and
+choppy as words of command at a drill. "While you were lying here in a
+faint, I thought about you in the other room, and came to a
+decision&mdash;but more of that later. You have long noticed, I suppose, that
+my feeling for you is not paternal. The older I grow the less I
+comprehend so-called fatherliness. To be brief&mdash;I am seized by a passion
+for you which&mdash;rather upsets me. If I were ten years older than I am&mdash;I
+am fifty-four&mdash;I should say: 'That's senile.' Do you know what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>She saw his face next to hers so distinctly that, had she never looked
+upon it again, she would have remembered it to the end of her days.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes embedded in red puffs, burned and bored again in the way that
+had frightened her so at first. His hair lay in bristling strands of
+grey at his temples and over his ears, but his moustache was black as
+coal, and shadowed his dark teeth like a spot of ink with a white line
+down the centre. From his mouth started the two limp folds which passed
+his shiny chin and disappeared in the collar of his military coat.</p>
+
+<p>"How strange," thought Lilly, "that I must be the mistress of that bad
+old man."</p>
+
+<p>But he wanted it so, and there was nothing else to do.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were to make inquiries concerning me," he continued, "they'd
+tell you that despite my age, I know how to subdue women&mdash;probably
+because I never respected them any too highly. But this time&mdash;how shall
+I say?&mdash;the affair is in a manner peculiar. I need not conceal it&mdash;I
+cannot sleep. I haven't slept for many nights; which has never happened
+to me before. Such a state of matters may not continue, and I pledged
+myself to make an end of the absurdity in some way or other at the death
+of the old year." He looked at the clock. "I have half an hour still.
+I'm expected at a function. In short: it's true, I wanted to seduce you.
+That is, for a man of my years, who hasn't anything seductive about him
+any more, seduce is not the right word. At any rate not here; I'd given
+my word of honour in my letter. But you <i>were</i> in my power&mdash;you need not
+doubt that an instant."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," thought Lilly, who was listening to all he said with as
+little concern as if she were reading it in a thrilling romance. The old
+fear had not returned. She was still waiting with lazy curiosity for
+what was to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had showed fight, you would have been defeated all the more
+certainly. I am somewhat of an adept in such things. But your fainting
+spell occurred, and gave me an insight into your soul. I had to admit I
+should never have taken joy in my conquest. You're fine stuff, and I
+have no use for someone who would pine. Tearful mistresses have always
+been a horror to me. I love my comfort. I have had experiences I should
+not like to repeat. So, while you were lying here with my cook to take
+care of you, I determined I was on the wrong course."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had a warm sensation of happiness, as if some great act of
+kindness were being shown her.</p>
+
+<p>"How noble, how glorious of him," she thought, "to let poor stupid me
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>She cast a furtive glance at his hands hanging between his knees. They
+were yellow and long and bony. Had she not been ashamed to, she would
+have leaned over and kissed them, to show her gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment she felt almost sorry that so noble a man should have
+nothing to do with her any more.</p>
+
+<p>"I took further counsel with myself," he continued, and his voice was
+still steelier, as if tempered in the fire of his resolve. "The idea was
+not a new one. It had occurred to me frequently. At first it seemed
+ridiculous, then it came to be a last resort, from which I would not cut
+myself off, in case circumstances warranted&mdash;I am taking that way now.
+Why shouldn't I? I'm not very ambitious. I'm too well acquainted with
+the vile machinery of the government. It doesn't pay to oil it any
+longer than need be with one's sweat and blood. So the idea of quitting
+doesn't frighten me&mdash;of course I shall have to leave service. Perhaps I
+should at any rate. There are days when I can scarcely keep the saddle
+because of that cursed rheumatism in my hips."</p>
+
+<p>"Why is he telling me all this?" thought Lilly, not a little flattered
+that so great and aristocratic a man should discuss such weighty matters
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>"What exercises me more is that a whole generation stands ready to
+revenge itself for the robbery perpetrated upon it. To be sure, a strong
+hand would do some good. We should have to dare something&mdash;why not our
+side as well as the other? Well, what do you say, child?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not reply. She was ashamed that she was so stupid as not to
+have extracted a single idea from all he said. His words sounded like
+Hottentotese.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, will you&mdash;yes or no?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I don't understand what you mean," she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! I've been asking you all this time whether you'll be my
+wife," said the colonel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The great moment of her hopes had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this you, Lilly Czepanek, to whom such things happen? Or, is it
+someone else, with whom you changed places, some character in one of
+your brown-backed books, who will cease to live the instant you close
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>He had not insisted on an answer that New Year's Eve. When she had
+fallen back in a tremble, incapable of uttering a syllable, incapable of
+thinking, he had taken her hands in his, and with the smile of a
+gift-giving god had begun to talk to her in a softer, gentler tone than
+she had thought possible in him. He told her to think the matter over;
+she might take three days, no, a week; he would have patience. But she
+must promise not to say a word about it to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>She promised willingly, though she could not look him in the face, she
+was so horribly ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>Then she had run home, and cried and cried without knowing whether from
+bliss or misery. When the sisters came creeping in at four o'clock in
+the morning&mdash;they had let down the bars of their propriety on New Year's
+Eve&mdash;she was still crying.</p>
+
+<p>On rising, she came to the conclusion he could not possibly have been
+serious and he would take the first opportunity to recant&mdash;perhaps that
+very day.</p>
+
+<p>She would not complain if he did. On the contrary she would breathe
+freer, and thank God for having rid her of the presence of a phantom.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock the bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>A box of roses was delivered, the size and cost of which aroused the
+disapproving amazement of the sisters, who knew to a penny the price of
+roses at that season, and reckoned a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages
+for several months.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot for the life of me see," said the older, "why you don't yield
+to such a magnificent admirer. With us, of course, it's different. We
+belong to society, and we cannot give ourselves up. But you, nothing
+more than a shop girl, with no family to have to consider! Besides,
+there's no doubt but that shame has its charms. I in your place would
+make a venture&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The younger and more sentimental sister opposed the older one's advice.</p>
+
+<p>"The first time it should be from pure love," she said. "You owe it to
+your own soul, even if you are only a shop girl."</p>
+
+<p>Without coming to an agreement upon this debatable point, they went off
+to witness the change of guards, which Colonel von Mertzbach, they said,
+contemplated directing in his own person on New Year's day, and the
+Colonel, reputed to be a very handsome man pursued by all the
+marriageable girls in society, was someone they wanted to see.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly patted and kissed the roses of the upper stratum, and would have
+done the same to all in the box, had there not been so many.</p>
+
+<p>Then she took heart, locked the door, and went to St. Anne's to pay St.
+Joseph a visit.</p>
+
+<p>She nearly met the officers hastening to the main guard face to face,
+but managed in the nick of time to escape down a side street.</p>
+
+<p>High mass had just concluded and had left an odor of incense and poor
+people between the arched aisles. A few persons were still praying at
+the side altars.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly kneeled before her saint, leaned her head against the
+velvet-covered rail, and tried to lay bare her torn heart in order to
+obtain counsel and help.</p>
+
+<p>"May I? Shall I? Can I?"</p>
+
+<p>Oh, she longed to. Such a piece of fortune would never come her way
+again, never, never. To be rich, a baroness, to have all the splendours
+of the universe laid at her feet. Where outside of fairytales do such
+marvels occur?</p>
+
+<p>If only there hadn't been one thing about him. But what that one thing
+was she could not determine.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't his eyes, no matter how dagger-like they looked. It wasn't the
+bristly hair on his temples either, nor the grating voice of command.</p>
+
+<p>Now she knew! It was the two dewlaps that fell from chin to throat. Yes,
+that's what it was. No use trying to dissemble with herself and pretend
+she did not see them. She shuddered at the mere thought of them.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, the sisters had called him a <i>handsome</i> man, and rich,
+aristocratic women ran after him. It would be sheer folly to refuse.</p>
+
+<p>And wasn't he the noblest, the best, the most exalted of men? Wasn't he
+like God Himself?</p>
+
+<p>She imagined herself living and breathing for him. She would sit at his
+feet and learn. She would flutter about him like a gay bird. No, she
+could not imagine a person being gay in his presence. But a person could
+be poetic. You could languish away into unknown remotenesses, gaze at
+the evening clouds, present a noble, pale picture, up to which strange
+young men would look with consuming passion, and be honoured by not a
+glance in return&mdash;she could do this, because her life would be dedicated
+to the one who was to be her protector, friend, and father, who would
+elevate her to heights from which otherwise a ray would never have
+fallen upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"I will, I will!" life within her cried. "Dear St. Joseph, I will!"</p>
+
+<p>St. Joseph raised a threatening finger.</p>
+
+<p>But St. Joseph always raised a threatening finger. He couldn't help
+himself. That was the way the sculptor had made him. The sight of that
+finger, however, was vexatious and not calculated to help a poor human
+being out of a dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>The next day she received a letter from Mr. Pieper, asking her to call
+at his office on a matter of great importance.</p>
+
+<p>Hot and cold waves shivered up and down her back.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows," she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen was greatly displeased when Lilly asked for permission to
+go out.</p>
+
+<p>"You get flowers and expensive gifts, and you want to leave the library
+every day. I very much fear me I shall have to offer up a daily prayer
+for you again."</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly showed her the guardian's letter, and she yielded.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had not seen her guardian since the day, a year and a half before,
+when she had left the hospital tottering from weakness. Timidity had
+prevented her from availing herself of his invitation to visit him
+again. Besides, there had been no occasion to. Nobody had inquired for
+her. From time to time a tall, dry man, whom she recognised as Mr.
+Pieper's managing clerk, had called on Mrs. Asmussen and held a short
+conversation with her. This was the one sign that the man to whose
+protection Lilly had been consigned thought of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pieper says, will you please walk in," said the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>The prominent lawyer, as on the previous occasion, was sitting behind
+his desk. When Lilly entered, he raised his head, and inspected her a
+few moments in silence. Then he smiled and rubbed his shining pate, and
+said in a long drawl:</p>
+
+<p>"U&mdash;m&mdash;m! So&mdash;o&mdash;o!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes glided over her body as over a piece of goods for sale.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, whose respect for the man rendered her breathless, made a gesture
+which was half bow, half courtesy, and pulled at the short sleeves of
+her overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I understand," continued Mr. Pieper. "You have developed in a way,
+my child, which in a measure excuses all sorts of masculine absurdities,
+even if it does not justify them&mdash;the masculine intellect is here to
+suppress all ebullitions. I forgot my manners&mdash;good morning, Miss
+Czepanek."</p>
+
+<p>He rose and held out his cold, spongy hand, which under pressure felt as
+limp as if it were boneless.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do please show me your gloves," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started like a guilty thing, drew her elbows back, blushed and
+stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to buy a new pair."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" he rejoined, smacking his lips with gusto. "Grey rags like
+these arouse emotion. Your cloak arouses emotion, too. Your clothes make
+a piquant contrast to your general appearance. Lovers of such naïve,
+sentimental things are easily moved by them to lyric outbursts, even if
+lyricism is not their forte."</p>
+
+<p>He laid his arm in hers with a confidential manner, and led her to a
+heavily upholstered settee.</p>
+
+<p>"Be seated in this chair of torture," he said, "though to-day we're not
+going to extract even a tooth. Taking everything into consideration,
+you have done well for yourself. I am content with you, my child."</p>
+
+<p>He stroked his straw-coloured beard complacently, and grinned like a
+trickster after the performance of a particularly artful dodge. "When do
+you think the wedding will take place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there has not been&mdash;an engagement&mdash;yet," stammered Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there won't be what is called a real engagement&mdash;sending out
+notices and receiving visits, and so on. As little stir as possible,
+Miss Czepanek, as little stir as possible. That's my advice. In the
+delicate situation in which we find ourselves, contrary influences are
+always to be feared."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't said 'yes' yet," Lilly ventured to interject.</p>
+
+<p>This amused him immensely.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'd have thought it! A mock refusal! Who'd have thought it! I didn't
+take you for so good a business woman, Miss Czepanek."</p>
+
+<p>"I am at a loss as to your meaning," said Lilly, who without fully
+realising why, was growing hot with indignation.</p>
+
+<p>He put one hand to his hip, and continued to be amused.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, that's all very fine and practical. But you can't carry
+such jokes too far. Let <i>me</i> arrange matters. I have some knowledge of
+these affairs, though, I admit, so important a case has never come to me
+before. I will endeavour to hasten the wedding as much as possible&mdash;for
+the reasons I have already mentioned. I will also ask for all possible
+secrecy, at least until his resignation has been accepted. Then nothing
+need stand in the way of securing the banns, since getting an adequate
+trousseau need concern us in only a lesser degree. As for your conduct,
+my dear child, I advise you for the present to remain as undecided, as
+maidenly, as fresh as possible. The only change I suggest is to use
+better soap. Everything else may continue to be just as it is. Perhaps
+you will have to be placed with another family. In that case it will be
+necessary, of course, to get an outfit, for which the sum realised from
+the sale of your mother's effects, amounting to&mdash;one moment, please." He
+opened a large account book lying on a rack next to his desk, "amounting
+to&mdash;A, B, C, Czepanek&mdash;amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks and
+seventy-five pfennig, will come in very handy. Æsthetic enjoyment of the
+circumstances leads me to place my own purse also at your disposal.
+Well, so much for the time preceding the wedding! As to the incomparably
+more important time following, I should not like you to leave my office
+before I had given you a few delicate hints, although <i>unfortunately</i>, I
+must deny myself the pleasure of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, and rubbed his hands, while an epicurean, satyr's
+smile widened his broad face.</p>
+
+<p>"The pleasure of taking a mother's place and giving you the advice with
+which a mother usually sends off a bride."</p>
+
+<p>This time Lilly understood him, and her hot shame seemed to spread a red
+mist before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You may trust me implicitly in such matters as a will, life insurance,
+and alimony in case of divorce, provided, of course, you are the
+innocent party&mdash;or even, in a sense, a bit guilty. You were not placed
+in my keeping for nothing. However, there is <i>one</i> circumstance&mdash;which
+circumstance has to be taken most frequently into consideration in
+marriages like yours&mdash;<i>one</i> circumstance in which my professional skill,
+I am sorry to say, cannot provide you with adequate security. As to
+that, you must keep your eyes wide open for yourself. We human beings
+have been put in this world, my child, to do what gives us pleasure.
+Whoever says the reverse steals the sun from your heaven. But I warn you
+of three things: first, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand
+no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous
+confessions. You cannot fully comprehend this yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact Lilly comprehended not a single word.</p>
+
+<p>"But when the occasion arises, think of what I've said. The recollection
+may prove useful. And&mdash;here's something very important&mdash;do you love
+jewels?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say I have ever seen any."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the jeweler's window at the Altmarkt?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were always forbidden to stand in front of shop windows."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pieper laughed his vilest laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I advise you when you are out walking with your husband to stand in
+front of <i>every</i> shop window. Such little attentions may seldom be
+reclaimed. Pay special regard to pearls. In that way you will lay by a
+little reserve which will stand you in mighty good stead in your hour of
+need&mdash;and your hour of need will come, you may be sure it will."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly nodded her head and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"I will never, never, do that."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pieper stroked his shining bald spot several times with his plump,
+white hand, and continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what else have I to say to you? I have a good deal more advice to
+give, but I fear not being understood. Just one thing, for the first few
+months. Marriage, no matter what sort of marriage, causes a peculiar
+derangement of the nervous system in natures like yours. Should you feel
+an inclination to cry, take a bromide. In general, take plenty of
+bromides&mdash;whether in case of great love, or&mdash;hm&mdash;great aversion. At
+certain times pull a cap over your head, so that you see nothing, hear
+nothing, and feel nothing, and, as it were, shunt yourself off from what
+goes on around you, yourself, your volition, and your feelings. The
+close atmosphere of the chamber which will at first envelope you will
+gradually evaporate&mdash;in this case probably at the end of a few months.
+Then you will breathe fresh air again, and instead of a tester, you will
+once more see the heaven of your maiden days. But, whatever happens, it
+is dangerous when one's nerves are overstimulated, to direct one's fancy
+too much upon the immediate environment and seek the necessary
+compensation that very instant. Turn from what is near, and dream about
+the remote blue mountains. Let your happiness ever dwell at a safe
+distance. You are young. It will draw closer. Give it time to become
+full fledged. I assume you haven't understood a word."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes I have," stammered Lilly, who wished not to be considered
+stupid, though he was right&mdash;his words fell upon her like hailstones, of
+which she was able to gather only a few here and there. Nevertheless,
+she had understood the last part, that about dreaming of the remote blue
+mountains. It did her heart good, and she would take his advice.</p>
+
+<p>"However that may be," Mr. Pieper continued, "some sentence or other
+will occur to you on occasion. One point more, the most delicate of all,
+because it is, so to speak, the most spiritual. If what is about you
+gives no sound or response, if it does not echo to your call, you must
+not grieve, nor attempt to alter it. Cracked bells should not be rung.
+Rather make your own music. If I am not mistaken, you have a whole
+orchestra at your disposal."</p>
+
+<p>"I have the Song of Songs," thought Lilly, triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot imagine, my child, how important it is, when one lives in
+such close contact with another human being, not to lose one's touch
+with oneself. Keep a corner reserved for your own thoughts&mdash;they will
+amuse you greatly. He who likes to eat fresh eggs must raise his own
+chickens. Don't forget that. But keep your corner to yourself. Offer no
+superfluous resistance. No obstinacy. From the very start you must
+provide the course of your life with a double track, so that you can
+ride in either direction, as need be. I shouldn't wonder if under such
+conditions it wouldn't turn out to be quite a happy marriage, entirely
+apart from the external advantages&mdash;so long as they last&mdash;these are
+matters of adaptation and good luck which our will cannot control in
+advance. I will send you the marriage contract sealed. Until your coming
+of age&mdash;in about two years, I believe&mdash;I am at your disposal. If after a
+time you see that the milk in your cup has turned permanently sour,
+break the seal. A thorough lawyer can read all sorts of surprises out of
+the contract, which laymen do not immediately realise. But, as I said,
+in <i>one</i> case he cannot. Beware of that one case. It is called <i>in
+flagranti</i>. Some time cautiously inquire into its meaning. There you
+are! Now, may I give the colonel your consent?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the
+window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far
+into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void
+purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with
+yellow.</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful and strange it was!</p>
+
+<p>Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet
+cushion.</p>
+
+<p>It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and
+forth in her brain.</p>
+
+<p>A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it
+asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a
+myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war
+office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful
+Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked
+like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you
+wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay
+gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay
+gentlemen, the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"The colonel's wife&mdash;the colonel's wife," throbbed the wheels.</p>
+
+<p>But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the
+gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:</p>
+
+<p>"La&mdash;dy Mertzbach&mdash;La&mdash;dy Mertzbach."</p>
+
+<p>Keeping time. Keeping time.</p>
+
+<p>The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and
+tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-glass
+a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had
+to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every
+day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy,
+she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to
+ask his forgiveness later.</p>
+
+<p>There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>That was the only embarrassing thing. If she weren't such a
+chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a
+change.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread
+had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear
+he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn't speak to
+anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular
+cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body,
+giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were
+endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had
+donned civilian's clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time he leaned forward and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you comfortable, little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest
+of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft
+kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and
+then peeping from under her travelling gown.</p>
+
+<p>What a crowd there had been at the station!</p>
+
+<p>No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort.
+To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater.
+They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried
+to be inconspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or
+three muffled cries of admiration. And God knows, they did not issue
+from friendly lips.</p>
+
+<p>It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in
+through the window.</p>
+
+<p>She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and
+weeping like rain spouts.</p>
+
+<p>So great was Lilly's fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the
+evil poison in these girls was transmuted into pained participation in
+another's joy!</p>
+
+<p>And there he sat, the creator of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Overcome by a sense of well-being and gratitude, she knelt on the
+carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and
+looked up to him worshipfully.</p>
+
+<p>He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his
+left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from
+under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded&mdash;with a smile that seemed to
+say:</p>
+
+<p>"My hour will come in due time."</p>
+
+<p>It was there sooner than she had suspected.</p>
+
+<p>"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" she asked, frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"At the station&mdash;you know&mdash;from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had
+always spoken of going to Dresden.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their
+bags and trunks.</p>
+
+<p>The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and
+white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped
+into a circle of light.</p>
+
+<p>The train glided off.</p>
+
+<p>They stood there, and nobody concerned himself for them.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at
+drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.</p>
+
+<p>His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body
+quivered, as if she were at fault.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar
+from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a
+lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.</p>
+
+<p>A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly
+intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.</p>
+
+<p>The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw
+confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with
+a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were
+still seething within him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't
+know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you."
+A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open
+the coach door, and run away into the night?"</p>
+
+<p>She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped,
+would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she
+managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next
+morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen
+perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont
+to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she
+returned his pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by
+the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and
+Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the
+fleeting thought beset her again:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run
+away and never come back?"</p>
+
+<p>She was already walking up the steps on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered
+carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.</p>
+
+<p>In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards,
+smoothly covered with a white counterpane.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about in vain for another bed.</p>
+
+<p>"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel&mdash;when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel
+still&mdash;behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit,
+fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.</p>
+
+<p>She remained leaning against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out
+of the window."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so,
+I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."</p>
+
+<p>A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure
+of his possession.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and
+looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested
+herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.</p>
+
+<p>A knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated
+bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It
+gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for
+her in the trunk."</p>
+
+<p>She clinked glasses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely
+moistened her lips with the wine.</p>
+
+<p>He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening."</p>
+
+<p>Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh,
+and observed:</p>
+
+<p>"All the better, all the better!"</p>
+
+<p>He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her
+uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.</p>
+
+<p>"You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown."</p>
+
+<p>She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before,
+lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous,
+lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before
+the wedding.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape
+from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating, faint-hearted she stood there, her fingers hanging to her
+collar, which she did not venture to unfasten.</p>
+
+<p>Growing impatient he jumped up.</p>
+
+<p>He was about to seize her, but the look she gave him was so full of
+despair that a knightly impulse bade him desist.</p>
+
+<p>To account for his action he picked up a roll of paper that had dropped
+from the trunk while she had been rummaging for the nightgown.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw something white gleam between his dark fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"The Song of Songs!" occurred to her.</p>
+
+<p>With a cry she jumped on him and tried to snatch away the roll. But his
+hand held it as in a vice.</p>
+
+<p>He defended himself with ease, laughing all the time.</p>
+
+<p>The thought that the secret of her life had strayed into alien hands,
+deprived her of her senses. She cried, she screamed, she beat him with
+her fists.</p>
+
+<p>The matter began to look suspicious. A doubt as to the virginity of her
+soul, yea, even of her body, began to assail him.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, little girl," he said. "There are no nooks or crannies for
+hiding in now. Either you'll kindly let me see what this is without
+further delay, or I'll take you between my knees and hold you so fast
+you won't be able to move a muscle."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly took to pleading.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel, dear, <i>dear</i> colonel! A few sheets of music, and some songs,
+that's all, I swear to you, <i>dear</i> colonel."</p>
+
+<p>The droll innocence of her plea stirred his emotions; that humble,
+unconscious "colonel" set him laughing again. Besides, the daughter of a
+musician, as he knew her to be, might be expected to have ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>"You yourself probably compose?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;it's not that," she moaned. "But don't look in&mdash;give it
+back to me&mdash;if you don't, I'll jump out of the window. I will, by God
+and all the saints!"</p>
+
+<p>She pleased him so well with her eyes stretched in deadly terror, with
+her hair loosened by the struggle, with the expression of a tragic muse
+on the sweet, delicately cut child's face, that he wanted to enjoy the
+rare sight a little longer.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, he assumed a black expression, and pretended to be what a
+few moments ago he had actually been.</p>
+
+<p>She fell on her knees, and clasping his legs, stammered and whispered,
+almost choked with shame and distress:</p>
+
+<p>"If you give it back to me, you can do with me whatever you want. I will
+do whatever you want. I won't resist any more."</p>
+
+<p>The bargain, it struck him, was to his advantage.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake hands on it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake hands," she replied. "And never ask questions&mdash;yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you swear to me by your St. Joseph it's nothing but music."</p>
+
+<p>"And the libretto, I swear."</p>
+
+<p>He handed her the roll, and she gave herself up to him&mdash;sold herself to
+the man who already possessed her for the Song of Songs, of which he had
+robbed her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The rays of early morning shining on her eyes through curtains striped
+with yellow awoke her. She was resting comfortably pressed against
+something warm. She had slept deliciously.</p>
+
+<p>What had happened to her came back to her slowly.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned over and wanted to kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying with his head thrown back, his mouth open. The light from
+the windows was playing on his shiny, furrowed chin. Little veins
+crisscrossed his gaunt cheeks like streams on a map. The inky moustache
+glistened with pomade. His eyelids were folded over so often that Lilly
+thought if they were stretched to their length they would reach to the
+tip of his nose.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't look bad," she said to herself, but the idea of kissing him
+passed out of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>She got up without making a sound, and all the time she dressed he did
+not stir. The old cavalry man was blessed with sound sleep.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote on a sheet of hotel paper, "have gone to church," laid the
+sheet between his fingers, and slipped out, down the steps and past the
+porter, who was so astonished he forgot to pull off his cap.</p>
+
+<p>The streets of the little town were dreaming in the quiet of the winter
+morning. Hillocks of snow swept from the middle of the street were
+heaped in rows along the gutters. A black swarm of crows squatted in a
+circle about the frozen fountain in the market-place. The faint sound of
+sleigh bells penetrated the grey air.</p>
+
+<p>Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the
+sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks
+sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to
+others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one
+spring, goggled after her.</p>
+
+<p>Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing
+gloves&mdash;but no overcoats&mdash;came tramping along the middle of the street,
+puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals.
+All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of
+command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one
+another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which
+towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure
+with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks.</p>
+
+<p>The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously
+gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere
+to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who,
+however, did not have much to say to her.</p>
+
+<p>An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if
+she had broken something, she did not know what.</p>
+
+<p>She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed
+of herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her
+fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to
+close her eyes and clench her teeth&mdash;she was ashamed of the shiver, too.</p>
+
+<p>Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was
+pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out
+of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set
+with pearls and precious gems.</p>
+
+<p>"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have <i>something</i>. Then I
+could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St.
+Joseph&mdash;and the swords in <i>my</i> heart would be sumptuous to behold."</p>
+
+<p>As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at
+the wedding.</p>
+
+<p>She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had
+stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot,
+surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint&mdash;how she had been
+borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon
+the fair and blessed distance.</p>
+
+<p>None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and
+shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return,
+that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted,
+distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.</p>
+
+<p>"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.</p>
+
+<p>At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She
+prayed to be able to love him&mdash;with as much passion as she had drops of
+blood&mdash;with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much
+delight as there was laughter in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>And behold! Her prayer was heard!</p>
+
+<p>With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and
+returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and
+trust&mdash;as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he
+happened to wish.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The colonel wishing, on account of his mésalliance, to avoid his many
+military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went
+directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.</p>
+
+<p>He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost
+to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple.
+Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath&mdash;that was all they needed. Close
+companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring
+about inward intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel had good cause, indeed, to be satisfied with his honeymoon!</p>
+
+<p>He, who in the course of his many amours had probably dandled hundreds
+of girls on his knees, who thought he knew women through and through,
+the tart and the sweet, the chaste and the coquette, the sensitive and
+the bold, the genuine and the flashy, those who confined their coy
+caresses to a man's hand and lower arm, and those who hung on men's lips
+biting and sucking them in a wild frenzy, he, the old voluptuary, to
+whom nothing feminine ought to have been strange, stood astounded,
+incredulous before this lovely marvel.</p>
+
+<p>So much abandon and so much pride, so much tenderness and so much fire,
+so much ready comprehension and so much artless childishness, all
+mingled in one dreamy, laughing Madonna head, had never before presented
+itself to him, for all the fine art he had exercised in his roué's
+career.</p>
+
+<p>What touched him most and completely puzzled him was the modesty of her
+desires, the fact that she made no demands of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>When they took dinner <i>à la carte</i> he might be sure her eye would travel
+to the cheapest orders for herself; and the expression with which she
+would sometimes prefer a request to be allowed to drink orangeade, was
+as hesitating and shamefaced as if she were making a love avowal.</p>
+
+<p>One day, on returning from the Grosser Garten by way of side streets,
+Lilly stood still in front of a poverty-stricken little provision shop.
+As a rule nothing could induce her to look into shop windows, and the
+colonel, curious as to her interest in the place, extracted from her the
+confession that she loved sunflower seeds&mdash;and would he be very angry if
+she asked him to buy some?</p>
+
+<p>The more he overwhelmed her with gifts, the less she seemed to realise
+that money was being spent for her sake.</p>
+
+<p>The long dearth she had suffered prevented her from appreciating the
+value of money, and whatever he put into her purse she handed out again
+without hesitation to the first beggar she met on the street. Then again
+it smote her conscience when he gave a flower girl two marks for a rose.</p>
+
+<p>Once, upon her doing one of these incredible things, which usually sent
+the colonel into epicurean transports, he was seized with sudden
+distrust.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, little girl," he said, "are you an actress?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not even understand him. She looked at him with the great, sad
+eyes of innocence she always made on such occasions, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you thinking of! Since papa left I haven't even <i>seen</i> an
+actress. I haven't been inside a theatre once."</p>
+
+<p>That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the
+tickets in her hand wild with joy.</p>
+
+<p>But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress.
+Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and
+shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the
+magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in
+awe about the gleaming gala robes as circumspectly as about a thicket of
+nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no
+real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to
+introduce Lilly to society.</p>
+
+<p>When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely
+fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her
+delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the
+fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat&mdash;taller,
+lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever&mdash;the old robber
+was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the
+magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the
+tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked
+down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the banal delight of
+shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old
+bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave
+himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a
+time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her
+alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together
+aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the
+lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and
+questioning and pointing of opera glasses began anew.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started
+back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she
+now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel
+pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object
+of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the
+woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone
+else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.</p>
+
+<p>She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into
+darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the
+land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.</p>
+
+<p>After this, two Lillies sat in her seat&mdash;the one in blissful
+self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike
+fancy through heavens and hells; the other making precise gestures like
+a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred;
+at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation
+creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.</p>
+
+<p>The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the
+colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as
+usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a
+gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were
+spreading their peacock feathers.</p>
+
+<p>The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried
+away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness.
+Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she
+ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.</p>
+
+<p>Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress&mdash;white shirt front
+and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot
+persistence, as if she were a strange animal.</p>
+
+<p>She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which
+spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob
+of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down
+her body.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very
+act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the
+miscreant vanished.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand
+again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome
+asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its
+traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room&mdash;off
+with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!</p>
+
+<p>He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with
+greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate
+his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen
+youth.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done.
+In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last
+veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again&mdash;she
+danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for
+help, as a Mænad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her
+fingers&mdash;as anything he wished.</p>
+
+<p>This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her
+blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of
+repulsion&mdash;a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while
+secretly hankering for something else&mdash;for the sobbing of violins and
+the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the
+deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.</p>
+
+<p>When he had had his fill of the spectacle&mdash;and this came soon because of
+his years&mdash;he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver
+thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their
+stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a
+while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and pricked like needles,
+she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then,
+while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette
+in bed, and laughingly retailed smutty jokes; which he called, "singing
+his baby to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common
+dining room. He wanted to re-experience the prickly delight of seeing
+his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his
+property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and
+envied him the possession of it.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken
+sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she
+might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young
+eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins
+and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed
+distances to which the way had been barred&mdash;she did not know by
+what&mdash;since the hour her great happiness had come to her.</p>
+
+<p>Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the
+glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her
+lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary
+as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the
+white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue
+spirals.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the
+street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.</p>
+
+<p>It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her
+in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as
+with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.</p>
+
+<p>She felt as if she would have to hurry after the passerby and ask:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"</p>
+
+<p>She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.</p>
+
+<p>For only the fraction of a second!</p>
+
+<p>But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about
+again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.</p>
+
+<p>And he nodded several times as if to say:</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.</p>
+
+<p>That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent
+watch for him; but a host of others took his place.</p>
+
+<p>Passersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through
+whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at
+a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered
+while waiting for him to draw near:</p>
+
+<p>"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"</p>
+
+<p>If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet
+was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which
+said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are
+walking."</p>
+
+<p>And each occurrence saddened her.</p>
+
+<p>It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no
+attention to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder
+why he scorns me."</p>
+
+<p>In the dining room, on the Brühlsche Terrasse, and at other elegant
+places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her
+bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change.
+She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of
+her eyes, and she looked without embarrassment directly into the faces
+of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a
+falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this
+she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the
+man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve&mdash;just
+as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would
+do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was
+starving, starving, starving&mdash;as she had never starved in her life.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her,
+though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose
+glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the
+look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was
+stabbed with a dart from his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and
+even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows.
+This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and
+begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and,
+as a rule, wind up with:</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."</p>
+
+<p>Despite his uncomfortable experiences he could not get himself to live
+alone again with his young wife. Habituated from youth up to motley
+associations, he required noise and light and laughter. But his
+suspicions waxed, and finally fastened upon Lilly, too.</p>
+
+<p>He forbade the matinal visit to church, to which she clung so ardently.</p>
+
+<p>What she had done, following a mere impulse, after the first awaking at
+his side, had by and by become a custom; and while he slept his profound
+sleep she dressed without making a sound and slipped out into the
+freshness of early morning.</p>
+
+<p>Going to church served as a pretext.</p>
+
+<p>Generally all she did was dip her fingers in the holy water and make her
+three genuflections. Sometimes she even contented herself, untroubled by
+scruples, with merely passing the church.</p>
+
+<p>For here was an hour of golden liberty, the only one throughout the day.</p>
+
+<p>First she hastened to the Augustus bridge to offer her breast to the
+winds always blowing there and watch the waters course by far below.
+Then she walked along the banks of the river, usually at a wild pace, in
+order to gather in as large a harvest of pictures and incidents as
+possible before creeping back to her husband's home.</p>
+
+<p>Everything the hour brought was pregnant with significance.</p>
+
+<p>The early morning mist lying red on the hills and descending to the
+river in golden ribbons; the chorus of the bells in the Altstadt; the
+first timid bursting of the boughs already russet with sap; the joggling
+carts on their way to market; the hissing and sparking of the swaying
+wires when the trolley-pole of an electric tram swept along underneath
+them&mdash;all this was joy, it was life.</p>
+
+<p>Since she was not threatened with a gift in consequence she ventured
+also to look into shop-windows, and greedily, in amazement, devoured
+every morsel of art.</p>
+
+<p>An end to all this from now on!</p>
+
+<p>The gates suddenly swung shut through which she had escaped for a single
+hour her perfumed life-prison overheated by desire and indolence.</p>
+
+<p>But she was so soft and pliant that she yielded without a murmur even in
+her innermost being.</p>
+
+<p>It was his wish&mdash;that was sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Such a quantity of love lay fallow in her soul and cried for activity
+that in this time of inner conflicts she proffered him a double measure
+of tenderness. She had to, whether she wished to or not, whether her
+thoughts dwelled with him or glided off on the viewless path of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>She was his slave, his plaything, his audience; she dressed him, admired
+his good looks, rubbed his hips with ointment, adjusted the hare's skin
+about his loins to protect him against his gout; brought him his sodium
+carbonate when he had eaten too much; massaged his grizzled head with
+hair tonic, the pungent perfume of which nauseated her, and stood by to
+help and advise when he trimmed his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>She did it all with eager devotion and ingenuous confidence, as if in
+ministering to her husband she had found the end and aim of her
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he lost his supernatural, god-like qualities in her eyes,
+became nothing more to her than a man, knightly to be sure, but
+whimsical and vain; for all his mental force intellectually indolent;
+for all his sensitiveness utterly brutal, and for all his thirst for
+love an oldish man, whose powers had long been enervated.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she ever put it in this way to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Had she seen his characteristics so clearly she might have come to hate
+and scorn him; for she was too immature to know that the witch's
+cauldron of worldly life brews the same out of most men's souls,
+provided the great feelings grow grey along with a man's hair, and he
+has erected no altar for himself at which he may seek refuge while
+sacrificing to it.</p>
+
+<p>But the picture her fancy had made of him shifted and changed colours
+from day to day, taking on now one aspect, now the reverse, until a
+little pity mingled with her terrified respect, and her childlike
+relation to him was tinged by a certain motherliness, which would have
+been ridiculous had it not had its roots in the unfailing warmness of
+her heart, which transmuted another's weakness into cause for her
+solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if only she had not had to starve so!</p>
+
+<p>Starve, when sitting at a festive board each day decked anew with choice
+viands.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning Lilly eagerly read the theatrical and musical
+announcements posted in the hotel lobby, only to be drawn away swiftly
+by the colonel, who in his little garrison town had lost all interest in
+the arts. For lack of exercise his organs for perceiving and enjoying
+had lost their functions, and he shrank back petulantly from the
+intellectual work she expected of him.</p>
+
+<p>Everything in which he took pleasure, the exaggerated gaiety of the
+music halls, the display of physical strength and agility, the loud
+colours, soon became an abomination to Lilly after her first curiosity
+had been stilled.</p>
+
+<p>Wild horses, the colonel said, could not drag him to Shakespeare or
+Wagner again, then certainly not to a concert, the object of Lilly's
+profoundest cravings.</p>
+
+<p>One day she saw an announcement of the Fifth Symphony, which was bound
+to her childhood days by a thousand ties. She maintained silence, as was
+proper; but when she reached their room she threw herself on the bed and
+cried bitterly. He questioned; she confessed. With a bored laugh he made
+the sacrifice and took her to the concert.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been at a concert since her father's last performance.</p>
+
+<p>When she entered she trembled, and suppressing her tears, drew the air
+in through her nose.</p>
+
+<p>"You snuffle like a horse when he smells oats," joked the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you notice there's the same atmosphere at all concerts?" she
+asked in a joyous tremour. "Our concert hall at home smelt just like
+this."</p>
+
+<p>But he had not noticed the similarity of smell, and he did not recall
+the Fifth Symphony.</p>
+
+<p>"Such matters&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>She was indifferent to all that preceded the symphony. She wanted to
+hear nothing but that trumpet call of fate which had once filled her,
+when just blossoming into womanhood, with a shudder of foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband amusedly hummed:</p>
+
+<p>"Ti-ti-ti-tum, ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all he understood of it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;it brought her no triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Tortured, debased, undone in her own eyes, she left the hall at the side
+of her yawning husband.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, an event occurred which lent new wings to her being and
+flushed her with the intoxication of bold hopes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Unsuspecting as always, Lilly blurted out her two little experiences.</p>
+
+<p>She told of Fritz Redlich first&mdash;because that had been the greater
+love&mdash;and then of the poor, consumptive teacher.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her
+own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of
+the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her
+with the flame burning in his own heart.</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the
+weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How would it be&mdash;would you like to go there?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.</p>
+
+<p>He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one
+place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might
+just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run
+down to Verona or Milan.</p>
+
+<p>She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet&mdash;it
+<i>was</i> too much bliss.</p>
+
+<p>Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to
+anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the
+trip.</p>
+
+<p>First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk
+jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a
+dozen other hindrances.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace
+with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to
+hasten their departure.</p>
+
+<p>The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a
+pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid
+pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.</p>
+
+<p>To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon
+race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's
+threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw her husband fall for the first time into a lasting mood of
+thoughtfulness. He paced up and down the room, repeatedly muttering:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to box his ears," or "I'll have to look for a second."</p>
+
+<p>The next day, when the colonel observed the importunate person trotting
+about ten feet behind them, he veered about suddenly and accosted him.</p>
+
+<p>The blond Titan looked him up and down without so much as removing the
+short pipe from his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I may look at anyone I want to, and I may go anywhere I want to," he
+declared.</p>
+
+<p>With that he slightly shoved up the sleeves of his overcoat and struck a
+boxing attitude, which, foreboding a street row, stifled all desire for
+a knightly mode of chastisement.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel in a final attempt to settle the matter in an honourable
+fashion handed the stranger his visiting card, which was received with a
+friendly "Thank you, sir." And the colonel's opponent stuck the card in
+his pocket evidently without the least inkling of the ominous import of
+the formality. Passersby began to gather and there was nothing left for
+the colonel to do but turn his back.</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of the rencontre was that the Englishman now assumed the
+right to honour Lilly and her husband with a greeting, and the colonel,
+who tried to drown the consciousness of having made himself ridiculous
+in a torrent of oaths, decided to leave Dresden immediately. This was
+about the middle of April.</p>
+
+<p>In Munich, where they stopped off a few days to render homage to the
+Hofbräuhaus, nothing especial occurred.</p>
+
+<p>But the colonel had grown nervous. He cast challenging, pugnacious looks
+at the most harmless admirers and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's
+head. "It seems," he would say, "everybody can tell at a glance that you
+are no lady; otherwise you would not be the object of such a number of
+indelicate attentions."</p>
+
+<p>At any other time Lilly would have grieved bitterly. Now she listened to
+him with an absent smile on her lips. Her soul no longer dwelt on German
+soil. She was breathing the air of the beloved country on whose
+threshold, she thought, she was already standing.</p>
+
+<p>One night's ride still, a short day in Bozen, and then the gates would
+open.</p>
+
+<p>Now nothing could intervene.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was in a section of the express that leaves Munich late in the
+evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the dusk of early morning. Lilly
+and her husband sat in the seats by the window. The seat next to the
+corridor had been taken by a young man, who on assuming it had saluted
+the other occupants with a smile, and then paying no further attention
+to them had become engrossed in a book written, apparently, in Italian.</p>
+
+<p>So he was an Italian, a messenger from Paradise, who had come to bid
+them welcome. That was enough to ensure Lilly's interest.</p>
+
+<p>She regarded him from under lids to all appearances closed in sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He had a clear-cut, high-spirited face of a peculiar, milky yellow tint,
+without lines or shadows, as smooth as if enameled. A small, dark
+moustache, somewhat crispy, and the hair on the temples cropped so close
+that the skin shone beneath.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to see his eyes, too, but he kept them obstinately bent on
+his book, though he seemed merely to be skimming through it.</p>
+
+<p>What she admired most was the peculiar roundness and softness of his
+movements. You might suppose a woman was clothed in that black and white
+checked suit, which attracted her by its unusually aristocratic
+appearance. The silk shirt was violet and dark red, and a green necktie
+was tied carelessly about the soft collar.</p>
+
+<p>All these colours, strange as they looked, went so well together and
+seemed to have been selected with so much care and refinement of taste,
+that Lilly grew quite uncomfortable. She almost felt the young stranger
+was trying to force himself upon her by his manner and bearing and
+dress, and above all by his ostensible disregard of her.</p>
+
+<p>It was ridiculous; she was afraid of him.</p>
+
+<p>When the customs officers entered the compartment at the Austrian
+frontier he uttered a few strange-sounding words, which the officers
+understood, for they turned away from him with deep bows.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment he raised his eyes and let them rove about the
+compartment; and while the colonel was opening his bag they rested for
+an instant, as if by chance, upon Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>What singular eyes he had!</p>
+
+<p>They sent out sharp rays like black diamonds, yet they gave a caress, a
+wicked, sure caress, which asked impatient questions, questions that
+made one blush.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant nothing had happened. He was bending over his book as
+before and seemed not to notice her.</p>
+
+<p>But her husband scrutinised her with watchful cunning, as if he had
+found a something in her face for which he had long been searching
+there.</p>
+
+<p>When the train started again the colonel disposed himself to sleep. For
+the sake of greater comfort he chose the unoccupied seat next to the
+corridor. The stranger in order not to be opposite him instinctively
+moved nearer to the centre, by this greatly diminishing the distance
+between Lilly and himself. A little more and he would have been sitting
+directly face to face with her.</p>
+
+<p>If she had harboured an <i>arrière pensée</i>, she would have bestowed more
+attention upon her husband's sleep. But all her senses were engaged in
+the desire to avoid the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a
+thousand needles.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed close into her corner, and spasmodically stared out of the
+window, where the illuminated interior of the coach was reproduced on
+the black background as in a dark mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she could observe the stranger quietly, without his catching her in
+an occasional raising of her lids.</p>
+
+<p>The light of the ceiling lamp sharply lit up his smooth, soft cheeks,
+whose even sheen merged into bluish darkness at the temple, a cheek
+formed for pressure and petting. To let your hand stray over it gently
+must be a great delight.</p>
+
+<p>And what long, dark lashes he had, longer than her own. Their shadow
+formed dark semicircles reaching to the finely cut nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>There it was again, that black-diamond, caressing gleam, cold, yet how
+seductive!</p>
+
+<p>She started in fright, and grew still more frightened at the thought
+that he might have noticed her fear.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled a very, very faint smile and continued to read.</p>
+
+<p>Her fancy wove more and more anxious, flattering thoughts about him,
+thoughts tantamount to a crime, which weighed upon her like a nightmare
+of which she could not rid herself.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly&mdash;an icy stream poured over her heart&mdash;she felt a soft, tender
+pressure on her left foot, which she must have moved nearer to the
+centre quite involuntarily, for only a short time before it had been
+close against her right foot, and her right foot touched the outer wall
+of the compartment.</p>
+
+<p>What should she do?</p>
+
+<p>A rebuking "I beg pardon!" an angry flaring up, would have roused the
+colonel and given occasion again for suspicion, perhaps even for an
+encounter. So she slowly withdrew her foot, using the utmost caution,
+and pressed it against the wall to prove to herself she had rescued it.</p>
+
+<p>But those few moments of hesitation, she knew it well, had made her
+<i>particeps criminis</i>, and this consciousness tormented her as the
+thought tantamount to a crime, which she had permitted to obsess her
+before.</p>
+
+<p>Dishonoured, besmirched, she seemed to herself, a prey to each and any
+man that waylaid her path.</p>
+
+<p>Why find fault with him? The thing he had impudently desired, was it not
+the fulfillment of her own impure wishes?</p>
+
+<p>This notion fairly stifled her. She wanted to jump up, cry aloud, and
+beg for forgiveness. The stranger continued to read quietly, as if
+nothing had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly started out of a state of wakeful torpor a grey day was
+peering in through the window. She saw a foaming torrent tumbling into
+depths below, and beyond gigantic green masses towering into the
+heavens. It was a picture she had seen only in her dreams, convincing in
+its greatness, dwarfing all else with its might.</p>
+
+<p>What she had experienced before falling asleep was now a grotesque dream
+and had lost its vital essence.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about the compartment cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was lying stretched out in repulsive sleep. His cheeks
+swelled and sank as he puffed heavily. He looked sallow and effeminate,
+and disgusted her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned more to the side and suddenly saw her husband's wide-open
+eyes resting upon her with a rigid, chastising look. She started as if
+caught in guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you awake already?" she asked with a constrained smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't sleep a wink all night," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>Something in the tone of his voice set her a-tremble. It was both a
+rebuke and a sentence.</p>
+
+<p>And how he looked at her!</p>
+
+<p>They rode on without speaking. Lilly utterly disregarded the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>At the hotel in Bozen the colonel entered Lilly's room and said:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, I have something to say to you. I am tired of the
+annoyances to which we are subjected day after day. To what extent your
+appearance and conduct are to blame, or to what extent my age is the
+cause, I will not discuss. However that may be, I do not reproach you
+with gross infringement of the laws of duty or good taste. And I may not
+demand a <i>grande dame's</i> matter-of-course reserve of one who two or
+three weeks ago was serving behind a counter. To teach you propriety
+requires time, and it is a matter that I may leave entirely without
+qualms of any sort to Miss von Schwertfeger. We will take the noon train
+back to Germany and we will reach Lischnitz day after to-morrow in the
+evening, perhaps earlier in the day."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not even grieve, she felt so humiliated and bruised.</p>
+
+<p>And the land of her dreams sank below the horizon.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>They reached Lischnitz late Saturday night. Since the colonel had
+prohibited a formal reception, all Lilly could see of the castle and
+outbuildings were black shadowy masses, which the veiled moon painted
+light on the edges.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of servant maids stood on the steps holding lanterns, and a
+very slim lady with a wasp-like waist and a halo of red hair streaked
+with white put a pair of long, extremely thin arms about Lilly's neck,
+and in a melancholy, cracked voice spoke motherly words of welcome,
+which, though intended to bring about a speedy friendship between them,
+intimidated Lilly and inspired her with dread.</p>
+
+<p>Overcome with weariness, Lilly sank into a swelling white bed, with
+gleaming brass rods draped in light blue ribbons, the bows of which
+perched there like great exotic butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>It was these butterflies which the next morning carried her from a doze
+into full wakefulness, into the new existence.</p>
+
+<p>From the ceiling hung a gilded lamp with opaline shades and blue silk
+covers over the shades. A white-enamelled wainscoting about four or five
+feet high ran about the entire room, and the walls between the
+wainscoting and the ceiling were panelled in silk of the same light blue
+as the counterpane and scarfs set in frames of white enamel.</p>
+
+<p>All this was revealed by a beam of light, which came in through the
+narrow space between the curtains and threw a shining bridge across the
+Persian carpet of a yellowish colour intertwined with blue.</p>
+
+<p>Joyfully Lilly sprang out of bed and trod on the carpet, which seemed to
+ripple in waves, so soft and long was its nap.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of the colonel was to be seen or heard.</p>
+
+<p>Long before, he had told Lilly his bedroom would be apart from hers.
+"But it cannot be far off," she thought; "it must be on the other side
+of that shining white carved door."</p>
+
+<p>Opening it softly she peeped into the next room.</p>
+
+<p>The window curtains had scarcely been drawn aside. The bed, a huge piece
+of dark mahogany, was empty, though the crushed sheets and pillows
+testified to its having been occupied. There were engravings of racers
+on the wall, tall boots, whips, pistols, some uniforms, and on the round
+side-table a rack for pipes, and next to the bed the tube of gout
+ointment. So, the evening before, though it was her sacred duty to
+massage him, he had treacherously done it himself.</p>
+
+<p>She felt hurt, and then a little shudder ran through her. It was all so
+strange and hard, as if mysterious threats were lurking somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>She hastily shut the door and retreated into her sky-blue silk realm.</p>
+
+<p>Her room had two other doors, one of which opened on the corridor. This
+was the one through which Miss von Schwertfeger had led her in the night
+before.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shuddered again. Without question, without asking permission, the
+thin, melancholy person of the extinct eyes and commanding manners had
+taken possession of Lilly. The colonel and his housekeeper had exchanged
+a glance, a brief glance of mutual understanding, which, on the
+colonel's part, said:</p>
+
+<p>"I put her into your charge."</p>
+
+<p>And Lilly was thrown on Miss von Schwertfeger's mercy.</p>
+
+<p>The lady, to be sure, had afterward tried to insinuate herself into
+Lilly's good graces by calling her pet names and embracing her, and with
+her own hands bringing the comforting cup of tea to Lilly's bedside. But
+a voice within Lilly, who usually flew to meet everybody, whether man or
+woman, with expectant trustfulness, had called to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Be on your guard."</p>
+
+<p>While staring at the door which the spidery fingers had thrown open for
+her the night before and faint-heartedly recalling the incidents of the
+arrival, Lilly was overpowered, there in the midst of her gay glory, by
+a feeling of strangeness and solitude, which nearly broke her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She rapidly put on the morning gown, which Miss von Schwertfeger must
+have unpacked and hung next to Lilly's bed after she had fallen asleep.</p>
+
+<p>The third door had still to be investigated. Lilly hoped it would lead
+out into the open.</p>
+
+<p>She cautiously turned the knob and drew back with a little cry. What she
+saw fairly dazzled her.</p>
+
+<p>A small room flooded with sunlight and filled with flowers smiled at her
+like a tiny paradise. Azaleas as tall as a man spread their rosy
+coronets over a much-becushioned couch. And there was a dear little
+secrétaire inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell, over the top
+of which a palm placidly waved its flattering fronds. But that was by no
+means the most beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing was the toilet
+table, which sent a lovely, shamefaced greeting to her from the corner
+where it stood. It was draped with white lace and the surface was
+covered with a large, smooth, even-edged plate of glass. The mirror was
+tall and composed of three adjustable faces, so that you could see
+yourself on all sides&mdash;the hair at the back of your neck, the fastening
+of your dress, everything.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had long desired such a mirror, but had not dared to ask for it.</p>
+
+<p>The room, doubtless, was her "boudoir."</p>
+
+<p>She, Lilly Czepanek, owned a "boudoir!" Was the wonder conceivable?</p>
+
+<p>On the glass plate lay all sorts of things which you couldn't take in at
+first glance, yet expanded your eyes and your soul like a divine
+revelation. There were ivory-backed brushes&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;of varying
+degrees of hardness or softness; an ivory-backed hand-mirror with a
+charmingly carved handle, a powder puff in an ivory box, a glove
+buttoner, a shoe horn, everything of silver and ivory. And many more
+things, mysterious in their functions, the significance of which would
+have to be learned gradually. On each shone resplendent the gold
+monogram L. M. with a seven-pointed coronet above.</p>
+
+<p>It was enough to set one wild.</p>
+
+<p>After having inspected her treasures to her heart's content, Lilly
+prepared to extend her expedition of conquest to outlying districts.</p>
+
+<p>The room in which she was had only one window, or, rather, a glass door,
+leading to a balcony, on which there was a rocking chair, and the high
+railing of which was partly overgrown with young creepers. Later in the
+season, when the leaves had unfolded all the way, a person standing on
+the balcony would be completely screened by walls of green; but now, in
+early spring, there was still so much space between the shoots that he
+might easily be seen from below.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly softly opened the casement door and slipped out into the open air.</p>
+
+<p>To the left, rising above a wall, were the barns and stables, which
+formed a large quadrangle about the yard. To the right, giant trees, a
+chaos of mazy, moss-green branches set with the golden-green buttons of
+the leaf buds. Inside the labyrinth the birds kept up a scandalous riot,
+which deafened one's ears as with a hail-storm of sounds. Straight
+ahead, about thirty paces away, rose the gable roof of an ancient
+one-story structure, which also bordered on the park wall and seemed to
+open in front on the yard.</p>
+
+<p>There at last a few mortals were to be seen. Two gentlemen, one with a
+round grey beard, the other stout, middle-aged and copper-coloured, were
+walking up and down the lawn at the back of the house smoking and
+conversing, while a third&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Who was that?</p>
+
+<p>The slim, sinewy young man with the high collar and light yellow
+gaiters, sitting at a window, pulling a red dog to his lap by a thin
+chain, that was&mdash;no, impossible!&mdash;yes, it was&mdash;it actually was&mdash;Walter
+von Prell!</p>
+
+<p>It was her merry friend, who had, so to speak, slunk off around the
+corner, the little lieutenant, famed as one utterly devoid of moral
+fibre&mdash;the only man that had ever kissed her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Except the colonel, of course; but the colonel didn't count.</p>
+
+<p>There were the silvery white lids and the clinking bracelet and the mute
+laugh, which shook him like a storm each time the red dog with the
+pointed ears fell from his knees. The only change in him was that the
+close-cropped, velvety head of hair had been replaced by a somewhat
+unkempt growth shining with pomade.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laughed aloud and stretched her arms to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. von Prell! Mr. von Prell!" she was about to call out, but checked
+herself in time.</p>
+
+<p>No matter&mdash;now, she knew, she was no longer solitary in that strange
+world. Her merry friend was here, her comrade, her playmate, the man to
+whom she owed her good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered his having said, "The old man has taken a tremendous
+liking to me and wants me to run about his estate as Fritz
+Triddelfitz"&mdash;Lilly knew her Fritz Reuter well.</p>
+
+<p>Strange that in all these months it should not have occurred to the
+colonel to mention a word about Von Prell's being at Lischnitz. To be
+sure, he had seldom spoken of his estate. Even Miss von Schwertfeger
+cropped up in his mind only when he wished to reprimand his young wife.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he suspected it was Von Prell and no other who had discovered
+Lilly and brought her forth from concealment. However, she would tell
+the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger without an hour's delay that she
+had met an old acquaintance. They need not be informed of the kiss. To
+what end? It had no more significance than a kiss in a game of forfeits.</p>
+
+<p>She slipped back into the bedroom, and a moment later, while she was
+drawing aside the window curtains, someone knocked at the door&mdash;three
+short, sharp, rapid taps, which seemed to probe to the marrow of her
+bones.</p>
+
+<p>It was Miss von Schwertfeger, of course. Who else would have frightened
+Lilly so?</p>
+
+<p>Lilly received a kiss on her forehead; and her cheeks were patted with
+every appearance of consideration and fondness. But the great colourless
+eyes travelled silently up and down her body, and a wry, bitter smile
+hovered about Miss von Schwertfeger's fleshy yet severely cut mouth,
+the skin about which was reddened, as often happens when women with a
+fine skin age before their time.</p>
+
+<p>She carried clothes thrown over her arm, which Lilly recognised as her
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought you these necessaries, my dear," she said, "so that you can
+dress this morning. Here in the country we don't go about in matinées.
+Besides, directly after you have breakfasted, we will make a little tour
+of the grounds to give you an opportunity of getting acquainted with the
+household and the people."</p>
+
+<p>"May I keep house myself?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"If you know how," said Miss von Schwertfeger, and gnawed her lips and
+squinted.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly vaguely felt that her harmless query suggested the infraction of
+the housekeeper's rights, and, trying immediately to atone for her
+thoughtlessness, she added, stammering:</p>
+
+<p>"That is&mdash;I am only asking for what I will be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was going to say "permitted," but Miss von Schwertfeger interrupted
+her and said, drawing herself up:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, you are the mistress here; nobody is better aware of
+that than I. But I mean well by you when I advise you to ask for nothing
+at present. Pay attention to nothing but your deportment. Upon that
+depends how soon you will really be that which, unfortunately, you are
+now merely in name."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, depressed and humiliated, maintained silence.</p>
+
+<p>The disciplinarian was already showing her fangs.</p>
+
+<p>"And I advise you," she continued, "to bear in mind that you must first
+study the ground you will have to tread in the future. For this you need
+a guide, who knows a thing or two of which you are ignorant. Otherwise
+you will find yourself in difficult situations, from which it will be
+impossible to extract you. And that in view of your relations with the
+colonel, would be greatly to be deplored."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt the tears rising. The old inability to defend herself, which
+was her gravest weakness, took hold of her again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please," she begged, folding her hands, "don't <i>you</i> feel hostile
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger's extinct eyes, which lay half buried under heavy
+lids, lighted up&mdash;was it with a question, or with amazement, or pity?</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she stared into space, turning her head aside, and Lilly
+saw a noble, bold profile of cameo cut, which appeared to belong to a
+different person.</p>
+
+<p>Then Lilly felt long arms about her neck. The embrace in which she was
+held seemed warmer, more genuine than any of the caresses Miss von
+Schwertfeger had yet bestowed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a dear child, you <i>are</i> a dear child," said she, and with that
+left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later Lilly, dressed in the garments Miss von Schwertfeger
+had brought, entered the dining room, where breakfast was being served
+by old Ferdinand, a dried-up, spindle-legged heirloom of a servant. That
+smooth, round-faced fellow with the mischievous smile, had been
+dismissed, thank goodness!</p>
+
+<p>The colonel came in from his early ride, his eyes sparkling with the
+pride of proprietorship. The little crisscross veins of his gaunt cheeks
+were filled with blood, and the grey brushes over his ears glistened
+with dew drops. The heavy jacket he wore was becoming to him, and the
+O-shaped legs were hidden under the table. He looked like a kingly old
+warrior, both evil and kind-hearted.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly flew into his arms, and he said with a sweep of his hand about the
+place:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do you like&mdash;your home?"</p>
+
+<p>She kissed his hand for the "your home."</p>
+
+<p>The dining room was a long chamber, arched at each end and filled with
+carved pieces of furniture darkened by age. It was only moderately
+lighted by three large bow-windows giving upon the terrace, from which a
+flight of railed stone steps led down to the park.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast they discussed the walk they had planned for showing the
+young mistress her new realm. The colonel would not hear of such a thing
+as having the people come to the castle and wait upon Lilly
+ceremoniously. They were wearing their Sunday-best that day at any rate
+and with no derogation to themselves could receive her in the spots
+where they lived and toiled.</p>
+
+<p>The upper employés, the inspectors and bookkeepers, would come to dinner
+Sundays, as had been the immemorial custom, and take that as the
+occasion for paying their respects.</p>
+
+<p>"The youngest of them used to be one of my men," remarked the colonel,
+"a Mr. von Prell&mdash;" He stopped short, looked Lilly over thoughtfully,
+then, as if reassured, continued: "But he left service some time before
+I did, and he's to learn farming on my estate."</p>
+
+<p>This was the very moment for Lilly's happy avowal. But the words died on
+her lips. She could not&mdash;for all her good intentions, she could not. As
+it was, those great colourless eyes, resting on her face, were putting
+her to the proof.</p>
+
+<p>However, one thing was certain&mdash;the colonel knew nothing. His silence
+had been due simply to the fact that he had not deemed the gay dog
+worthy of mention.</p>
+
+<p>"How's he behaving?" asked the colonel, turning to Miss von
+Schwertfeger.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Colonel," she said with a smile, regarding her long, bony fingers,
+on which her crescent-shaped nails shone like mother-of-pearl, "you know
+I never denounce unless I have to."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a good-for-nothing rascal," laughed the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, instinctively taking her friend's part, thought the lady's words
+were in themselves sufficient denunciation.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast they started out on their little expedition.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was placed between the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger, and a
+pack of dogs all of a sudden appeared to keep them company. Lilly
+thought them more likable than anything else about her.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was visited first. A perfect marvel of a kitchen, with tiled
+walls, porcelain sinks, and all sorts of up-to-date arrangements. Lilly
+did not know at what to look first.</p>
+
+<p>A face was there, an old, brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face, with a
+pair of moist eyes turned upon Lilly in mute questioning:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you recognise me?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's eyes answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not dare to speak with her lips as well as with her eyes,
+for fear Miss von Schwertfeger would inquire concerning the decisive
+moment of her life and come to despise her still more.</p>
+
+<p>She gave the old woman her hand, and the bond of friendship was renewed.</p>
+
+<p>Next they went to the servants' kitchen, where the Sunday soup was
+bubbling like a seething sea in a huge copper vessel. After this came
+the laundry with its wringers and mangles resembling brightly armoured
+monsters. It was good to smell the ancient odour of soap which had
+nestled permanently in every nook and cranny.</p>
+
+<p>In the pantries and storerooms, rows of hams wrapped in grey gauze
+depended from the rafters like gigantic bats. Sausages hung there, too,
+and last winter's golden pippins and other fine apples were still lying
+on straw beds. Long lines of wide-mouthed jars were ranged on the closet
+shelves&mdash;you could pilfer sweets to your heart's content.</p>
+
+<p>The party now cut diagonally across the paved yard, where the waggons
+and harvesters stood like soldiers on parade, to the barns and stables.</p>
+
+<p>The stable of the pleasure horses! Heavens! It was like a drawing-room.
+Upholstered wicker chairs with footstools in front stood about
+invitingly. A matting strip ran along the stalls, over each of which a
+porcelain plate proclaimed the name of the noble animal within. The
+horses moved supple, slender, lustrous necks and turned knowing human
+eyes to greet their beautiful mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"You will choose one of these for yourself," said the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how to ride," replied Lilly, embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>The grooms standing about, cap in hand, grinned at her
+uncomprehendingly. A lady who could not ride had never before stepped
+into their world.</p>
+
+<p>The home of the draught horses was not nearly so interesting; it was
+dirty and malodorous, and the cow stalls nauseated Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>But she took good care not to betray her sensations. Ready to learn, she
+patiently listened to the explanations the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger gave in turn.</p>
+
+<p>A difficult piece of work was still ahead of them, the visit to the
+cottagers, who had just returned from church and were standing before
+their doors in expectant groups.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest and most trustworthy came first. There were many new names to
+learn, many dirty hands to shake and many eyes to look into which stared
+at her in respectful suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt she was fairly well able to cope with the situation. She
+found a few friendly words to reach the hearts of the old and the sick;
+and when she stooped and drew on her lap a blubbering little urchin a
+pleased whisper ran before her to smooth her path.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the settlement were two structures originally erected for
+barns, but later converted into dwellings. Small windows in red and blue
+frames were set in the walls at irregular intervals, and what had once
+been the broad entrance had been built up with yellow bricks.</p>
+
+<p>Here lived the Polish immigrants, who had come as contract labourers
+from distant regions. The district in which Lischnitz lay had been
+German from times of old and had remained a German island amid the
+invading flood of Slavs.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason it was necessary to hold aloft the banner of Germanism,
+as Miss von Schwertfeger admonished lovingly. And Lilly felt mortified,
+as though she had been in the habit of disavowing it.</p>
+
+<p>Red head cloths gleamed. Great, blue, intimidated eyes prayed to her.
+Here and there an awed bobbing to the hem of her skirt, a shy attempt to
+kiss her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus</i>," she heard in a whisper about
+her, and involuntarily she answered: "<i>Na wieki wiekow!</i> Amen!"</p>
+
+<p>In the course of her Catholic bringing up she had learned that this is
+the answer to a Polish greeting.</p>
+
+<p>A glad humming and buzzing, a ripple of happiness ran through the
+fearsome huddling little group. The lovely young <i>pana</i> had spoken
+their language, the language of their God.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea you could speak Polish," said the colonel, his voice
+grating with blame of her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly gave an embarrassed laugh and explained.</p>
+
+<p>They tarried a shorter time at the next entrance, where a group of young
+fellows in heavy grey jackets were twirling their caps and making
+awkward bows. Lilly scarcely ventured to give them a cordial nod. Even
+that, she felt, was forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger said not a word, but with aquiline nose in the air
+held aloft the banner of Germanism.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my dear," she said when they reached the castle door, "put on your
+dark blue cloth dress. I have already had it taken from the trunk and
+pressed. You will find it in your room, and a lace collar to wear with
+it. That is the correct thing here for Sunday dinner, which we take in
+the middle of the day."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly obediently donned the blue gown. It enhanced her slim grace. Her
+heart beat for fear that her merry friend, who could not suspect she had
+disowned him, would betray both of them at the first meeting by a
+careless word of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner bell rang and the next instant came those three probing taps
+on the door.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly in alarm started away from the mirror. Miss von Schwertfeger
+should never discover she was vain. She looked Lilly up and down a
+while, then grasped both her hands, and buried her pale blue eyes, which
+now flared up again, in the improbable eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"God grant," she said, "that you don't cause too much mischief in this
+world, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I cause mischief?" Lilly faltered, mortified again. "I don't
+do a bit of harm to anybody."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"The one good thing is, you don't know who you are," she said, and drew
+her to the corridor and down the old stairway, which cracked at every
+step.</p>
+
+<p>In the dining room were four dark men's figures besides the colonel's.
+At Lilly's entrance they hastily drew up in line.</p>
+
+<p>One was the man with the round grey beard&mdash;"Mr. Leichtweg, our chief
+inspector," said the colonel. The next was the stout, copper-coloured
+man&mdash;"Mr. Messner, our bookkeeper." Somebody else was introduced, and
+then&mdash;then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Lieutenant von Prell, who is learning farming here," said the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Just a slight inclination of her head, the same as to the others, no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>But my poor, merry friend, how you look!</p>
+
+<p>A long frock-coat fell below his knees, his narrow-pointed head was lost
+in his high collar, his clothes hung in loose, limp folds. Every feature
+of his, every marionette movement bespoke rigid formality and
+obsequiousness.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stood there lost in pity and astonishment. If she had not seen him
+that very morning while he was&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Shake hands with the gentlemen," she heard whispered behind her.</p>
+
+<p>She started and pressed the honest country fists more firmly than
+beseems a chatelaine. But she quickly let go Von Prell's freckled hand,
+which was still well kept.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank the Lord, he won't betray us," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then came grace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The finches were the maddest of all. The titmice, too, made a racket,
+and so did the nuthatches, and the blackbirds behaved as if they were
+lords of the place, while the stay-at-home starlings formed in groups
+among themselves and paid no attention to the rest of the world. Beside,
+there were the hedge-sparrows and wrens, who added a fair share to the
+chorus. But the fanfare of the finches was too much for ears accustomed
+to the tiny twittering of a caged canary.</p>
+
+<p>Old Haberland knew them all. Old Haberland was the gardener, who
+pottered about in felt shoes and lived, in a measure, from the colonel's
+bounty, since he held sway now over nothing but the lawn sprinkler. He
+knew which birds nested on the ground and which in the branches. He knew
+the time each began to sing and the best place to stand if you wanted to
+study their plumage and habits.</p>
+
+<p>It was terrible to think that the squirrels had to be shot. Lilly almost
+hated the old man when he sallied forth, his pea-rifle under his jacket,
+with evil intent against the jolly little marauders&mdash;Haberland
+maintained the vermin recognised his gun and scurried off when they saw
+it. The magpies and jays were no friends of his, either. His love was
+the shy, green woodpecker, whom he had actually coaxed into nesting in
+the park. And that gay marvel of a bird, the hoopoe, came without fear
+at any hour of the day to the back of the castle, where it sang its
+hututu and transfixed the insects in the grass with its curved sabre of
+a bill.</p>
+
+<p>Those were mornings full of glow and brilliance, such as could not have
+been since the creation of the world.</p>
+
+<p>When you opened the door at five o'clock in the morning the cool purple
+mist crept in and folded itself about your body like a royal mantle. On
+the pond, where the reeds rose up over night, pushed by underground
+powers, lay sunlit vapours, which gradually lifted and ascended
+heavenward. Everything steamed. Sometimes white lights seemed to have
+been kindled on the lawn, and the little clouds in evaporating rolled
+heavily from the glistening campions, as though surfeited with the dew
+they had drunk.</p>
+
+<p>Such mornings!</p>
+
+<p>Who can describe the mad delight of the dogs when their beautiful young
+mistress appeared on the steps smiling, clad in a white blouse and short
+skirt and armed with garden shears? They had been awaiting her there a
+long time, every now and then emitting short, impatient sounds, half
+whine, half yelp. For <i>they</i> had not hesitated an instant to recognise
+her absolute rule, in utter disregard of the pitying benevolence with
+which Miss von Schwertfeger&mdash;whom they detested&mdash;stood by and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Bebel, the terrier, the cleverest of all, did not count, because he sped
+after the colonel on his early cross-country gallop. But there was
+Pluto, the long-eared setter, who, out of employment at this season,
+gave chase to the rabbits on his own account. There were Schnauzl, the
+poodle, and Bobbie, the dachs, living in constant feud with each other
+for the first place in Lilly's favour. Dearest of all was Regina, the
+panther-like Great Dane, one of whose forelegs had been broken. As if to
+apologize for her disgraced existence, she always crept back of anyone
+she met; but at night, to compensate, she was untiring in her
+watchfulness, and maintained a steady reign of terror.</p>
+
+<p>Who can describe the joyous caracoling of the colts in the pasture, the
+craving for love the yearling manifested when the mistress, who always
+carried sugar with her, pushed back the bars, and stretched her arms to
+caress the slender heads of her favourites?</p>
+
+<p>Who can describe the chagrin of the turkey cock, great enough when the
+pheasants got first peck at the bread crumbs, but knowing no bounds when
+those stupid ducks squatted right on Lilly's feet, as though that were
+the most natural thing in the world? At times his jealousy so swelled
+him with rage that he even dared to nab one of Pluto's ears. But Pluto
+disdained to do more than shake him off in scorn.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, those were wonderful mornings!</p>
+
+<p>And when the height of the flowering season came, she never wearied of
+wandering about and filling baskets with blue, golden and snowy blossoms
+until she was fairly drowned in a floral sea.</p>
+
+<p>After the morning stroll came breakfast, when from sheer joy and
+tenderness Lilly hesitated about whose neck first to throw her arms, the
+colonel's or Anna's&mdash;on certain confidential occasions she was called
+Anna. Lilly, in general, was very affectionate with Miss von
+Schwertfeger, despite her fear of that lady's censoriousness and despite
+other fears of which she could not rid herself.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she thought, it was a strict school, indeed, which she had entered.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word, not a step, not a movement remained unobserved, or, if
+necessary, unreproved. She learned to sit at table and in an arm-chair,
+how to prepare and serve tea, how to invite a person to be seated, how
+to begin a conversation, how to introduce strangers to each other
+without getting into a muddle, how to pass over forgotten names, and
+offer everybody at table a fair portion of cordiality. All these things
+Lilly learned, and, oh, much more.</p>
+
+<p>But they were only the rudiments to be practised in the small world of
+the castle or when occasional visitors dropped in. Real instruction was
+to begin in the fall; for then expeditions to neighboring estates would
+be undertaken. In the meantime the colonel wished to avoid all contact
+with the families round about. He could do this without provoking
+comment, his long bachelorhood serving as a plausible pretext for
+wishing to prolong his honeymoon to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>By autumn Lilly was to have been converted into a veritable <i>grand
+dame</i>, who would do honour to her husband's name and rank, and whose
+tact and ease would conquer all mistrust whether at the festivities in
+the homes of the gentry or in the club house.</p>
+
+<p>This, the highest ideal on earth, Miss von Schwertfeger kept before
+Lilly's eyes every minute of the day, and Lilly dreamed of it as she had
+dreamed of approaching examinations when in the Selecta. Full of fears
+and doubts she worked over herself night and day.</p>
+
+<p>Her soul found calm only when she went on one of her rambles, or, better
+still, when she sat behind locked doors in her boudoir.</p>
+
+<p>No, no, Heaven preserve her! Not her boudoir! That wasn't its name.</p>
+
+<p>The first time she had said "boudoir," Miss von Schwertfeger turned very
+condescending. It was a sitting-room. Only butchers' and bankers'
+wives&mdash;in Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes one and the same&mdash;would disfigure
+it with the other name.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Lilly stumbled at every step.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, when he quartered officers on their way through the
+country, the colonel, as if to test Lilly's social ability, would have
+her preside at table with Miss von Schwertfeger's assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Each time the same scene was enacted. At first Lilly would be stiff as a
+mechanical doll, incapable of addressing a word she had not learned by
+rote to these guests gleaming in military resplendence. A glass or two
+of wine would give her courage. Gradually she would liven up, and even
+grow merry, and finally bubble over with harmless pleasantries&mdash;from
+where they came flying into her head she did not know&mdash;which would so
+enrapture the gentlemen, most of whom were well past their prime, that
+they directed all their remarks to her, as if to pay her court, while
+their eyes hung on her face in enjoyment and desire.</p>
+
+<p>Now the colonel would grow uneasy. He would cast furtive glances at Miss
+von Schwertfeger, who usually sat with her eyes on her plate and a wry
+smile on her lips; and then despite the gentlemen's protestations of
+regret, the ladies would leave the table.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly grew hot with the fire she herself had kindled in the heads of her
+guests. It caused her pleasure and distress, and forced her to sit at
+her window until midnight, staring into the blue twilight of the park
+with beating heart and quivering nerves and flushed cheeks streaming
+with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Forebodings of mad acts and riotous self-abandon flashed up in her
+brain. A parching fever enervated her body. Her clothes, her room, the
+park, the world became too contracted. A wild dance of looks and flames,
+a whirl of fiery red, inured, desirous masculinity chased through her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>On such nights, when the guests had at last retired, the colonel, more
+or less intoxicated, would force himself into her bedroom, and begin by
+reproaching her for not having been ladylike enough. Lilly would cry and
+try to excuse herself. Then he would kiss the tears from her lashes,
+snatch her clothes from her body, and throw himself next to her in bed.</p>
+
+<p>Shuddering with foolish pangs of conscience, quivering in disgust of his
+drunkenness, happy, nevertheless, to feel that tormenting tenseness
+relax, she gave her body up to him.</p>
+
+<p>On other nights when she felt uneasy and alone and desired his presence,
+when her body as well as her soul longed to cling to him in the humble
+sense of belonging to him entirely, then he was not to be had. He kept
+his door locked.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole he was loving and gracious to her. He handled her as if she
+were a gay, fragile toy, to be wound up not too often, and each time it
+has been played with enough, to be laid aside carefully for use on the
+next occasion. This treatment suited her. At least she was spared dread
+of those outbursts of wrath which set the walls a-tremble two or three
+times a day, and frightened every living thing in the vicinity. Even
+Miss von Schwertfeger was not sure how to take them. She silently set
+her teeth, and bowed her head as before the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could never fathom the relation existing between the colonel and
+his housekeeper. Usually it seemed to her the many years of mutual
+confidence had welded them together inseparably. Then came times when
+they studiously avoided each other, the colonel in haughty preoccupation
+with his own affairs, Miss von Schwertfeger squinting sarcastically and
+suggesting by her manner a feeling of rancor, a menace.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then it even occurred to Lilly that when the lady had been young
+and fair, she had been the colonel's love. But Lilly dismissed this
+idea. Miss von Schwertfeger was far too proud to endure the bitterness
+of such companionship, and <i>he</i> was too dominating to tolerate the
+presence of such a creditor.</p>
+
+<p>All that Lilly learned of her past was that she was the daughter of a
+poor yet aristocratic army officer, and had been left an orphan with her
+own living to earn after her confirmation. She had now been managing the
+colonel's household for nearly twenty years. The fact that Miss von
+Schwertfeger, homeless and without resources, like herself, had also
+been thrown upon the colonel's tender mercies gradually aroused in Lilly
+a sense of sympathy and kinship, although she could never cast off a
+slight feeling that she must be on her guard against this woman.</p>
+
+<p>She really owed Miss von Schwertfeger a debt of gratitude. Without her
+ready advice, Lilly would have fallen innumerable times from the road
+leading to the lofty heights where she would sit enthroned as aristocrat
+and lady of a manor. Ridiculers would have taken base advantage of her
+modesty; her sportive manner of equality would have invited
+impertinence; she would have ended in losing every vestige of power.
+Perhaps people would even have come to despise her.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, everybody loved her. She found shining glances to greet her
+in the kitchen, in the stables, among the villagers, and at the lodge;
+while in the barn, where the Polish women dwelt behind smouldering
+brushwood and drying wash, she was a veritable idol.</p>
+
+<p>Whether a rumor had gotten about of her Slavic name, or her Catholicism,
+could not be determined. However that might be, the fact remained that
+these strange, despised people, who glided among the stiff and haughty
+Germans with the humble look of a child in their eyes and the plaintive
+melodies of their country on their lips, revered Lilly as their redeemer
+and patron saint.</p>
+
+<p>She liked to busy herself with the gentle, good-natured folk. She
+visited the sick, and cared for the destitute. The girls seemed to her
+like poor sisters, who needed watching over; and as for the boys, why,
+they were a charge that God Himself had put into her keeping.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger looked askance at these kindly attentions. "The
+people belonging to the place," she said, "are beginning to complain
+that you prefer the immigrants to them. You would do well to take your
+walks in another direction."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly remonstrated. Henceforth Miss von Schwertfeger kept close watch,
+and did not leave her side when the barn dwellings happened to be in
+seductive proximity.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger even converted Lilly to Protestantism.</p>
+
+<p>Not in her soul. Heaven forefend!</p>
+
+<p>"Love your Holy Virgin and your St. Joseph as much as you want to," she
+said, "but just remove that font and those little images from your
+bedside. As for going to church, you may drive to Krammen to attend mass
+on Sunday; of course you may; the colonel would not think of forbidding
+you to. But take my advice, dearest, and sit next to us in our pew. Do
+it for my sake, you won't regret it."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not offer much resistance, and by way of reward received a
+small altar to keep in her room. When locked, it looked like a dainty
+jewel casket, but inside was the infant Jesus in the arms of the Madonna
+and&mdash;oh joy!&mdash;there was St. Joseph on the left leaf of the folding door,
+and St. Anne on the right leaf.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wept with delight.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she could not love the donor with all her heart and all her
+soul. No matter how often they sat together chatting confidentially,
+Lilly remained in solitude.</p>
+
+<p>And in fear.</p>
+
+<p>She did not dare even to eat her fill. As if to make up for Mrs.
+Asmussen's long-forgotten mush, Lilly had developed a ravenous appetite;
+but noticing Miss von Schwertfeger's apprehensive sidelooks at her
+heaped plate, she usually rose from table only half satisfied. To stay
+herself until the next meal she drew upon the treasures of the
+storeroom.</p>
+
+<p>Old Maggie the cook, in whom she possessed a sworn ally, kept watch to
+warn Lilly of Miss von Schwertfeger's approach. Once, however, the
+omnipotent housekeeper caught her there, and Lilly dished up the excuse
+that she wanted to learn housekeeping; which declaration was received
+with condescending merriment.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for old Maggie, Lilly would never have learned a single
+detail of the management of the large household, Miss von Schwertfeger
+studiously keeping her from regular activity of any sort, whether out of
+vainglory or consideration Lilly could not determine.</p>
+
+<p>If Lilly wanted to help with a piece of work, it was done already, or
+she mustn't spoil her hands, or she might injure herself.</p>
+
+<p>Her passionate desire to learn horseback riding was also thwarted by
+Miss von Schwertfeger, who was always discovering signs of approaching
+motherhood, though they proved each time to be false.</p>
+
+<p>Even playing on the piano was denied her. The yellow old instrument of
+torture, the keys of which resembled the decayed teeth of a smoker&mdash;just
+like the colonel's&mdash;was not to be replaced by a new piano until autumn,
+when they would go to Danzig to select one.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of the times preceding her marriage, hardly more than half a
+year ago, as belonging to her long-vanished youth. She would have
+ridiculed one who had told her, youth still lay ahead of her nineteen
+years.</p>
+
+<p>It was good that over there in the lodge a witness of her sweet, foolish
+past was living along in madcap thoughtlessness. This alone persuaded
+her that her maiden days had not been a mere dream, that she had not
+been a colonel's wife from the cradle upward.</p>
+
+<p>In all this time she had met her merry friend only at Sunday dinners,
+when he played a comic rôle making his jerky reverences in his long
+frock coat.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when standing on her balcony at twilight behind the foliage
+now closegrown, she saw him at his window in the lodge cutting capers
+with his wild little red fox of a dog. A feeling would then come over
+her that the only person who actually belonged to her in this alien
+world was yon light-haired good-for-nothing, who pursued all the maids
+on the demesne. Old Maggie told tales. At night he would ruin the
+toughest horses trying to get back from his secret excursions before
+dawn; and in his den behind closed shutters&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>At this point Maggie lost her faculty of speech. The things that took
+place behind those closed shutters must have been dreadful.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>One red August morning Lilly, sprinkled with dew from head to foot and
+clasping a bunch of dewy roses in both arms, entered the dining-room,
+where Anna von Schwertfeger, tall and thin in her greyish blue linen
+dress, was standing at the table smiling to herself.</p>
+
+<p>It was not her manner, it was not her greeting; both were as usual. It
+was an intangible something which instantly caused Lilly to realize that
+an extraordinary event had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Katie, she noticed, who helped Ferdinand with the serving, had red
+eyelids and kept gnawing her lips while setting the table. Katie was of
+finer material than the average servant girl, her father having been a
+teacher, and was very pretty besides; owing to which qualities Miss von
+Schwertfeger had selected her as Lilly's special maid.</p>
+
+<p>When Katie left the room, Lilly began to ask questions.</p>
+
+<p>In reply Miss von Schwertfeger merely kissed her with redoubled
+tenderness, and observed:</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you sully your pure young spirit with such ugly things? If
+certain people are bent upon breaking their necks, that's their
+business. We cannot help them."</p>
+
+<p>"Breaking their necks&mdash;that must mean Walter von Prell," thought Lilly,
+and said aloud: "After all this is my home, and nothing that happens
+here in my future province"&mdash;she modestly said "future"&mdash;"ought to be
+kept from me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger yielded to her arguments.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be painful to you," she said, "because I know you like him."</p>
+
+<p>"Him&mdash;whom?" queried Lilly, conscious of blushing.</p>
+
+<p>"In fact all of us like him," continued Miss von Schwertfeger by way of
+mitigation, "the colonel most of all. So long as he confined himself to
+the rooms of the labourers' girls I winked my eyes, and begged the
+kitchen help not to annoy me with gossip about his adventures. But if he
+commits the outrage of breaking into the castle, it's time the matter
+ended."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what did he do?" asked Lilly, in fright.</p>
+
+<p>"For some weeks past I noticed certain things which struck me as rather
+curious. In spots the vine on your balcony was withered&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"On&mdash;my&mdash;" Seized with a wild suspicion Lilly stepped a pace nearer to
+Miss von Schwertfeger, and clutching her arm asked: "What has my balcony
+to do with Mr. von Prell, Miss Anna?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger avoided Lilly's look.</p>
+
+<p>"Calm yourself, my dear," she said, "calm yourself. Persons in my
+position have to keep their eyes wide open. That's what they are there
+for. I was simply acting for your protection, because anyone who does
+not know you as I do might come to the vile conclusion that if a man
+climbs up to your balcony&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so low, so low."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger drew her to the sofa and stroked her brow.</p>
+
+<p>"I have gone through much worse things, dear child. At any rate, I
+wanted to get at the bottom of the affair, and although, I need not say,
+I hadn't the least suspicion of you"&mdash;she turned her eyes away
+again&mdash;"nevertheless I spent a few nights outside your door."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started. While she had been sleeping in innocent unconsciousness,
+someone had lurked in hiding close by&mdash;so fast was she held captive!</p>
+
+<p>"And about one o'clock this morning I caught him in the act. Fancy! The
+dare-devil had the temerity to lean one of Haberland's ladders against
+your balcony&mdash;that was the cause of the broken, withered vines&mdash;and
+enter your sitting room through the glass door&mdash;glass doors, dearie,
+ought never be left open. He passed your bedroom, and went to the
+corridor without seeing me, of course. Since Katie is the only person
+who sleeps on that side I charged her with it early this morning. She
+made no denials. I always act in such matters with the utmost mildness
+and reserve, and I told her she might give notice and leave on the
+first. But what shall we do about the young man? I know this is the one
+place where he can be brought to turn over a new leaf. Should the
+colonel dismiss him, all's over with him. And I have no right to conceal
+his conduct from the colonel. An affair that so nearly compromises his
+wife's honour&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What has my honour to do with Mr. von Prell if he runs after servant
+girls?" Lilly ventured to interject, hoping to improve his prospects a
+bit by playing the innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger had just time enough to enlighten her innocence
+concerning all the evil results of Mr. von Prell's mad conduct, when the
+table began to quiver from the colonel's tread as he came tramping down
+the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say anything&mdash;not yet!" begged Lilly, and with that was hanging
+on the colonel's neck to hide her confusion.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel noticed nothing amiss.</p>
+
+<p>His suspicions, ever alert, had gone to sleep now that he knew his young
+wife secure under the Argus eyes of his old and tried housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>He was no longer that greedy lover, simulating youthfulness, who had
+spied upon her every look and emotion, jealous of his mastery. The
+humourous condescension with which he watched the doings of the lovely
+gentle child gave him a natural semblance of fatherliness, which became
+him well.</p>
+
+<p>His visits to the club house in the garrison town nearby, at first only
+occasional, had begun to grow more frequent. Sometimes he even departed
+from his custom of leaving after supper, and took the afternoon train.
+But whatever time he left, he never returned before two o'clock in the
+morning, since there was no train to bring him back earlier.</p>
+
+<p>During breakfast he good-humouredly explained to the ladies that he
+would have to go to town that day to unload the barley crop on the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>An idea occurred to Lilly which filled her soul with sacred joy. The
+colonel's absence must be employed for rescuing Von Prell. How, she did
+not yet know, but save him she must. She was the only one to do it. If
+she did not concern herself in his behalf, who else was there in the
+wide world to tow his drifting vessel to security?</p>
+
+<p>After the colonel had left the room, she plucked up the courage to put
+in a plea with Miss von Schwertfeger, who, however, refused to relent.</p>
+
+<p>"On the next occasion he will do even worse things," she said. "Then the
+shame both for him and for us will be still greater."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he won't do anything worse," Lilly averred. "He will get better.
+You need only take him to task."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm old enough to," replied Miss von Schwertfeger, with a bitter-sweet
+smile, "and I possess the authority. But, to be quite frank, the subject
+is rather a delicate one, and I should like nevermore to have a thing to
+do with such sordid affairs."</p>
+
+<p>The extinct eyes, over which the lids lay like heavy blankets, fell into
+a fixed stare, which Lilly had frequently noticed. It seemed to bring to
+the top an old, dark, bitter hatred which had long lain buried. Then
+Miss von Schwertfeger herself returned to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"All I can agree to," she said, "is, that if he comes to me of his own
+will and begs my pardon, maybe I will yield. That's all I can do without
+incurring the blame of being underhanded."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he doesn't even suspect he's been discovered."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to wager," rejoined Miss von Schwertfeger, "that Katie
+will use her first free moment to run over to him."</p>
+
+<p>"And if she doesn't?" cried Lilly, scarcely mastering her anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger took her head between her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"If I did not know, dearie, what a sweet, harmless young creature you
+are, I should say your interest in the little rake is most curious. Now,
+you needn't blush. I know there's nothing back of it. At all events, I
+will wait until to-morrow, because you plead for him, my love."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the conversation ended. Nothing more was to be expected of Miss von
+Schwertfeger.</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't save him, he will be driven away, and if he's driven away,
+he'll go to rack and ruin, and if he goes to rack and ruin, I shall be
+to blame."</p>
+
+<p>In this fashion Lilly's thoughts kept revolving dizzily in her brain.</p>
+
+<p>The simplest thing would be to come to an understanding with Katie, but
+that was unbefitting Lilly's station. Besides, it had not occurred to
+the poor girl, who crept about apathetically, to run over to see Von
+Prell. Later in the day, in fact, she got an attack of cramps and had to
+be put to bed.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock the colonel drove off to the station. He had stuck a
+package of blue banknotes into his bill-folder; which was an unfailing
+sign that he would not return before early morning.</p>
+
+<p>Evening came. The lowing of the cattle and the cracking of whips
+proclaimed the end of the day's work.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly crouched behind the vine on her balcony, and listened to what was
+going on at the lodge. Finally the scapegrace appeared at his dormer
+window dragging his little dog by a chain. He was wearing the sort of
+greenish grey jacket with innumerable pockets that managers of estates
+affect; and each pocket was stuffed full, giving his figure a warty
+appearance. Nevertheless he was a dear, bright little fellow, well worth
+the saving.</p>
+
+<p>If she were to signal to him and throw down a piece of paper, would it
+be possible for him to pick it up later without being seen?</p>
+
+<p>She went into her room and scrawled a few lines in pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything has been discovered. Miss von Schwertfeger promises to keep
+silent provided you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short. Should the note fall into strange hands the stupidest
+mortal would construe them into a confession of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"I will speak to him," she decided.</p>
+
+<p>The supper bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>How strangely Miss von Schwertfeger regarded her, as if she had gotten a
+glimpse into the depths of Lilly's soul and discovered her bold design.
+But she did not refer to the malefactor again.</p>
+
+<p>On rising from the table she put her arm through Lilly's, after her wont
+when she intended to bar the way to Lilly's Polish friends.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't let go the whole evening," thought Lilly, raging inwardly.</p>
+
+<p>In a short while, however, word was brought that Katie had grown sicker,
+and it might be necessary to send for the physician.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back directly," said Miss von Schwertfeger, as she left the
+room giving Lilly a look expressive of stubborn resistance.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant Lilly had slipped out of the door and was running down the
+terrace steps leading to the park.</p>
+
+<p>Profound silence reigned. The only sound was of a splashing which came
+from behind a cypress tree where old Haberland, still occupied with
+watering the roses, was filling his cans.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly made straight for the lodge considering ways of making him look
+from his window and see her.</p>
+
+<p>She was saved from committing this indiscretion.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying at full length on the green bench outside the house,
+smoking a cigarette with evident gusto, the dog's chain wrapped about
+his left wrist, and the dog himself asleep at his feet. None of the
+other men were about.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart's throbbing almost deprived her of breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. von Prell!"</p>
+
+<p>He jumped to his feet, the dog along with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. von Prell, I should like to speak with you."</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand to his head to remove his cap, but no cap was there.</p>
+
+<p>"I am at my lady's service."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you accompany me a little way?"</p>
+
+<p>"At my lady's service."</p>
+
+<p>He threw away the stump of his cigarette, glanced about hastily for his
+vanished cap, then walked at her side bare-headed, stiff as a puppet in
+his extravagant respect.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly led the way into the interior of the park, where the clusters of
+trees and the open grassy spaces melted into purple-edged darkness. She
+had gotten back her calm. The desire to save him gave her strength of
+which she had not deemed herself capable.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not misunderstand my coming to you," she began.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, my lady," he replied, bowing obsequiously. "The evening
+is so lovely, and old acquaintances like to chat with each other once in
+a while."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had wanted anything like that," said Lilly, making no effort to
+conceal her sense of insult, "I should have invited you to the castle.
+If I come to you instead, you can readily imagine the matter is more
+important."</p>
+
+<p>"What can be more important to me than strolling here at my lady's
+side?"</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. von Prell, if you knew the difficulty you were in, you would
+take care not to indulge in such talk."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had never thought herself capable of so much haughtiness.</p>
+
+<p>"What difficulty can I be in, my lady?" he rejoined, raising his brows
+and wrinkling his forehead. "My soul has worn half-mourning ever since I
+was condemned to live in a certain close distance from, or, rather, a
+certain distant proximity to&mdash;my gracious lady. Whether Tommy and myself
+possess the character for enduring this trial&mdash;come, come Tommy, don't
+be a goose. Our lady benefactress will have no objections to your not
+treading on her train."</p>
+
+<p>Tommy obstinately planted his forelegs and had to be dragged along like
+a lifeless toy.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll strangle the poor little beast," said Lilly, happy to have found
+a way of avoiding his personalities.</p>
+
+<p>"He will simply be sharing the sensations of his master," said Von
+Prell, illustrating his reply by clutching at his throat and emitting a
+horrible gurgle.</p>
+
+<p>Such behaviour must no longer be permitted. Lilly owed it to herself and
+her position to resent it.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. von Prell," she said very condescendingly, "do you realize that by
+the same time to-morrow you will probably have been dismissed?"</p>
+
+<p>He was touched at last. He frowned and bit the ends of his moustache;
+but then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"What gives me some satisfaction in the fact is that my lady seems to
+take no slight interest in the matter."</p>
+
+<p>Now she became angry in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. von Prell," she cried. "I wear
+myself out and take great risks trying to help you, and you show your
+gratitude by making silly remarks all the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Courage, Tommy," he said, taking the dog in his arms. "First they flay
+us, then they kick us out. Our one comfort is, we are innocent
+sufferers. Poor, poor Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to whitewash yourself," Lilly reprimanded. "Miss von
+Schwertfeger discovered everything&mdash;your relations&mdash;you understand&mdash;your
+nightly trips to my balcony and through my room&mdash;everything. Do you
+think I take pleasure in having to treat you like a criminal when I've
+always thought so much of you? Don't you think I'd much rather be proud
+of you, than stand here and see you driven away like a stray dog? Or can
+you say anything in justification of yourself? Can you? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>She talked herself into such warmth that she forgot the unseemliness of
+her being there with him. She was now that which she wanted to be&mdash;the
+benevolent chatelaine, who turns everything to good account; and her
+breast swelled with the consciousness of her lofty ethical undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>They had stepped from under the dark arches of the linden walk. A few
+sharply defined streaks of red still coloured the west, and cast a deep
+glow over his narrow, freckled face.</p>
+
+<p>He looked completely crushed and penitent, and Lilly regretted having
+dealt with him so harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"I realise," he began after a short pause, his voice quivering as with
+suppressed excitement, "I realise I must not let so grave a charge go
+without justifying myself. And I can justify myself, I most undoubtedly
+can. But in doing so, I am compelled to disclose a secret, which&mdash;I
+really do not know if I ought to initiate you into the horrible
+mysteries that threaten to ruin my life."</p>
+
+<p>"What are they?" queried Lilly, in terrified curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, from my boyhood up I have been pursued by an awful fate,
+which comes upon me when I am utterly defenceless and imposes upon me
+responsibility for misdeeds of which I am absolutely innocent, and
+places me in breakneck situations, which&mdash;I will be outspoken&mdash;I
+am&mdash;well, I am a somnambulist."</p>
+
+<p>The merry little devils frolicked between his silvery lids, and Lilly,
+in spite of herself, burst out laughing. He joined in with his dear,
+mute tehee, which shook him like a storm; and they stood there laughing
+till they wearied. Lilly no longer thought of her chatelaine's dignity,
+or her ethical mission.</p>
+
+<p>As if by mutual agreement they turned into the deserted depths of the
+park, which bordered on a bosky beech grove with neither fence nor hedge
+between.</p>
+
+<p>It grew darker at each step.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy resigning himself to his fate trotted behind his master
+obediently.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Von Prell, after they had recovered from their laugh, "why
+should I try to throw dust in your eyes? I am a poor pickerel floundering
+here on dry land. Have you the faintest notion of what it means to keep
+company with three plebeians and lead a useful vegetable existence, and
+from morning till evening steadfastly practise dutifulness and
+uprightness? It's more than a fellow can stomach. I tell you, it's enough
+to drive him to a dose of castor oil. Tommy self-denyingly helps me tide
+over the worst moments, but every now and then he, too, is a
+disappointment to me. Will my lady permit me to use this occasion for
+asking her an extremely important question?"</p>
+
+<p>Pleased at his having grown serious, Lilly assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you&mdash;can you wag your ears?"</p>
+
+<p>She succumbed to another paroxysm of laughter as to a spell of sickness,
+leaning against a tree and panting for breath, while he continued with
+profound affliction in his voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I am master of the modest art and have been proud to exercise my skill
+ever since I was at high school, where it was considered the acme of
+human accomplishments. I made up my mind to train Tommy to do the same
+trick, and I spent many an hour over him in difficult intellectual
+effort, but without result. One day, however, I discovered he could wag
+his ears much better than I can, and, I assume, always had been able to.
+Only he did it when he wanted to, not when I wanted him to. Isn't that
+distressing? Doesn't it reflect the general aimlessness of human
+endeavour? O dearest baronissima, I am afraid I shall soon become a
+great philosopher out of sheer boredom."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could now see only the outline of his figure, behind which the
+dog's eyes glowed like two beacon lights. Since her school days she had
+not abandoned herself so completely to a spirit of pure fun, and she had
+to wait until a pause came in her laughing before she could tell him it
+was high time to be returning.</p>
+
+<p>He obediently turned on his heels, transferring Tommy's chain from one
+hand to the other.</p>
+
+<p>The catastrophe that menaced him seemed to have passed from his mind.
+Lilly, therefore, since time pressed and something had to be done for
+him, took the bit between her teeth, and reported what Miss von
+Schwertfeger intended to do, and what she demanded from him as the price
+of her silence.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was helping him, but not with that beautiful, dignified air of
+superiority with which she had wanted to hold out her rescuing hand. She
+felt she was like a playmate of his, and every few moments a
+half-suppressed giggle interrupted her speech.</p>
+
+<p>"The worthy dame has an unconquerable desire to stand about on people's
+toes," said Von Prell. "But since we've gotten ourselves into a scrape,
+my dear little Tommy, we'll have to juggle to get ourselves out of it.
+Thank you very much, my lady. In accordance with your instructions I
+will go to her and ask her to forgive me&mdash;before going I'll oil my
+speaking apparatus. I will be more than repentant, I will even be
+roguish. That works on respectable old maids like Spanish fly. And I
+will use the opportunity to the best advantage for our future
+intercourse with each other&mdash;provided of course, my young queen agrees."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, she agreed fully!</p>
+
+<p>"But how will you do it?" she asked fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the matter to me," he replied. "Your duenna is a knowing old
+beast. But I am even more knowing. I shouldn't be surprised if to-morrow
+I didn't earn an occasional supper in the castle, at which I shall have
+the opportunity of looking into the eyes of my exalted mistress without
+being observed by the two High Mightinesses."</p>
+
+<p>There were several things in his speech that grated on Lilly. He might
+make merry as much as he pleased at Miss von Schwertfeger's expense, but
+the colonel stood on too high a plane to be the butt of his ridicule.
+And now that Von Prell was out of danger, it occurred to Lilly for the
+first time how detestable his conduct had been, and how lacking in
+character she was to be sauntering about with him in the dark, laughing
+at his sallies.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, Mr. von Prell," she said. "I warned you of the danger you
+were in, because I thought I owed it to our former friendship. But now
+that I have told you, we have nothing more to do with each other. My
+time is up. Good evening, Mr. von Prell."</p>
+
+<p>With that she hurried on ahead along the obscure wood path, and gave no
+look around. Suddenly she felt something soft and warm and living slip
+between her feet. She screamed and turned about for Von Prell's help. At
+the same instant a chain wound itself about her ankle, and held her
+fast.</p>
+
+<p>Since she and Von Prell had turned back, the dog in his eagerness to get
+home, had been straining on the chain with all his might, and had taken
+her hastening off as a signal to break away, thus entangling himself in
+her dress. The more he tugged the more painfully the chain cut into her
+flesh.</p>
+
+<p>That made an end of Lilly's ire.</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell had to kneel and hold down the unruly little animal, while he
+unwound the chain from her ankle.</p>
+
+<p>"Tommy, Tommy, what have we done? We have grievously hurt our noble
+mistress. We can't be blamed for pulling at our chains, but if in doing
+so we get under people's skirts, we give great offence. Shame on you,
+you rascal."</p>
+
+<p>He planted a kiss on the dog's pointed little snout.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't he ever bite?" asked Lilly with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"He has had the benefit of a rigorous military training, as a result of
+which he has grown accustomed to kisses."</p>
+
+<p>Another burst of gaiety. Von Prell held the struggling little ball of
+wool up to Lilly, and asked whether she would like to try a kiss, too.</p>
+
+<p>Laughing she declined, and, laughing, she went home with him.</p>
+
+<p>Characterless as she was.</p>
+
+<p>Still laughing aloud, she entered the lighted hall of the castle, where
+Miss von Schwertfeger met her with great reproachful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been, my dear?" she asked, evidently prepared to meet
+the grave situation in a mild spirit, while subjecting Lilly, none the
+less, to a keen cross-examination.</p>
+
+<p>"He's so funny!" Lilly sang out, hiding her face red with laughter on
+Miss von Schwertfeger's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I did. Do you suppose I'd leave such a delightful, jolly old
+friend of mine in the lurch?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger's face became rigid.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly gave herself a little shake and uttered a joyous gurgle. Then she
+ran off to her room, undressed, and burying her head in the pillows
+laughed herself to sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In laughter it began, and in laughter continued.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly awoke the next morning she saw that everything about her, the
+chandelier, the washstand, and the pretty, sentimental gleaner on the
+wall, had assumed a new aspect, and the sun was shining twice as
+brightly.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped to the mirror in her nightgown, and forthwith had to laugh
+again at the reflection she saw there, a veritable street Arab's face
+with sly, darting eyes and saucy nose.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast she fairly sparkled with playful conceits, chased the
+stiff-legged colonel about the table, and felt a warm sense of gratitude
+toward Miss von Schwertfeger rise within her.</p>
+
+<p>As for Miss von Schwertfeger, she smiled to herself significantly; and
+when the colonel left the room, caught Lilly by her ears, kissed her on
+her forehead, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You baby, you."</p>
+
+<p>She made no reference to the confession Lilly had let slip that she and
+Von Prell were old friends. In fact, to judge by her manner, you might
+suppose she had not heard it.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly ran up to her balcony, pushed aside the creepers, and sent a
+summoning nod to Von Prell, who was walking up and down uncertainly
+between the castle and the lodge.</p>
+
+<p>He understood, bowed, and disappeared in the direction of the terrace
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>What took place between him and Miss von Schwertfeger remained a secret;
+and there was no finding out whether or no she had questioned him in
+regard to his former relations with the colonel's wife. But whatever the
+doubts on that score, the success of his interview was indisputable. So
+far from having to slink away from the place, he appeared at the supper
+table that very same day, ushered in by the colonel himself. In his
+striped coat, white waistcoat and high collar, in which his face lay
+almost buried, and wearing his most respectful expression, he was the
+very embodiment of correctness.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard," said the colonel, leading him to Lilly, "that Mr. von Prell
+doesn't feel entirely happy over there in the lodge. If you have no
+objections he will come to meals oftener after this."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hadn't the slightest objections. The thought, however, that Katie
+would appear in the doorway the next instant almost choked her. But
+another maid took Katie's place in handing old Ferdinand the dishes.
+Lilly gave Miss von Schwertfeger a questioning look, which she answered
+in a whisper, so as not to be overheard by the gentlemen:</p>
+
+<p>"The poor girl got very sick, and asked for a long leave of absence.
+Most likely she will never come back again."</p>
+
+<p>In her gratification Lilly impetuously pressed Miss von Schwertfeger's
+hand under the table. She had a dim idea that Katie had been dismissed
+in order to spare her the repugnance of witnessing something impure.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen without delay plunged deep into a discussion of the
+cavalry, richly interlarding their talk with proper names.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. von Prell sat inclined toward the colonel to take in the
+instructions of his old commander, and kept blinking his lids in
+respectful attention. The colonel dominated like a wrathful god. He
+spoke gruffly and noisily and shot out his dagger glances as if to mow
+down rank after rank of the enemy's army. But this was nothing else
+than a craftsman's vain joy in his work.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly listened, and would gladly have taken part in the conversation,
+but the men had forgotten her presence, and a jealous gloom clouded her
+spirit, for which she did not know whether to blame the colonel or Von
+Prell.</p>
+
+<p>When Von Prell rose to take leave the colonel laying his hand on the
+young man's shoulder said:</p>
+
+<p>"See here, why haven't we done this before?" The glance he sent Lilly
+seemed to signify: "Such an amount of caution was really unnecessary."</p>
+
+<p>When the first cool days in September brought on the colonel's gout
+again, and his visits to town had to be postponed indefinitely, Von
+Prell's invitations to supper grew more frequent.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel groaned and cursed each time he mounted a horse, though he
+refused to listen to Lilly when she pled with him to give up his morning
+gallop.</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad all of you are always so dreadfully concerned about me," she
+observed, "because sometimes I might take your place in riding about the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>The colonel and his housekeeper exchanged looks.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, it's a shame she can't ride horseback. Any decent sort of a
+riding master might take her in hand. My morning excursion is more than
+enough for me. What do you think, Anna, can we entrust her to that
+humbug Von Prell?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's face lighted up with joy. Miss von Schwertfeger let her eyes
+rest on her glowing cheeks and said very slowly, as if to chew the cud
+of every word:</p>
+
+<p>"You know Von Prell is reckless. What if he should bring our darling
+back to us some day with broken bones? At all events, it seems to me,
+before deciding, we had better consider the matter carefully."</p>
+
+<p>Though Lilly took good care not to utter a syllable expressive of desire
+or opposition, she was not successful, apparently, in concealing her
+secret wishes; for the next time they were alone together, Miss von
+Schwertfeger suddenly took Lilly's face between her hands and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Get rid of the idea, darling. Do. Believe me, it's better so."</p>
+
+<p>About this time Lilly made a remarkable and somewhat suspicious find.
+She enjoyed going on expeditions of discovery through the spacious
+castle, only part of which was inhabited; and on one occasion while
+rummaging about in one of the third-story guest rooms, now seldom used,
+she extracted from a chiffonier a light gauze shirt, covered with silver
+spangles and shot with silver thread, resembling the shirt she had often
+had to wear during the Dresden stay before going to bed. Her own shirt
+these days hung undisturbed in her closet, from which it had not been
+removed even for Miss von Schwertfeger's inspection, because Lilly was a
+little ashamed of it.</p>
+
+<p>Her curiosity was piqued by the vestment she had found, and folding it
+carefully she went down to question her friend about it.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger was sitting over her account books, and scarcely
+looked up when Lilly entered. But suddenly the gleam of the tinsel in
+the sunlight attracted her attention. A quiver ran through her body. Her
+eyes widened, her figure stiffened, as if she were looking at a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I had cleared up thoroughly," she said, shaking herself.</p>
+
+<p>She snatched the garment from Lilly's hand, wrapped it up in a piece of
+paper, and carried it to the kitchen, followed by Lilly, who saw a
+whirl of smoke carry bits of silver thread up the hearth chimney.</p>
+
+<p>Old Maggie stood by looking in bewilderment from one to the other. She
+seemed to know what the discovery involved, but later, when Lilly tried
+to extract information from her, she had lost her faculty of speech.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't always use to be just where the colonel was," she stuttered.
+"Ask Miss von Schwertfeger. She knows. She'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>But Miss von Schwertfeger would not tell. She went about with compressed
+lips, gave short answers when spoken to, and kept her extinct eyes
+fastened upon empty space.</p>
+
+<p>One evening at supper, her demeanour, apparently from no external cause,
+underwent a sudden change. She laughed, chatted, was tender to Lilly,
+and attentive to her master, pitying him on account of his pain,
+suggesting new remedies, and obtaining his promise to give up his
+morning ride.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," she went on, "as to Lilly's taking riding lessons, I've
+thought it over carefully, and have come to the conclusion that if we
+are present&mdash;at first, at least&mdash;we may entrust her to the young man."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly fetched a deep sigh of joy; but the two pairs of eyes could not
+have detected the trace of a smile on her face, the faintest glimmer of
+delight, so well had she learned to keep herself under control.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the riding lessons began, with the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger, of course, in attendance.</p>
+
+<p>Walter von Prell appeared in riding boots and a jockey's cap. The
+forward inclination of the upper part of his body seemed to signify, "I
+am awaiting orders," and his respectfulness and obsequiousness kept him
+shifting from one foot to the other.</p>
+
+<p>For the first essay they had chosen a lamblike grey mare, narrow-chested
+and somewhat overtrained in the fore-hand, yet a smart, well-fed animal.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. von Prell proceeded very methodically to explain the construction of
+the saddle and bridle, showed Lilly how the girths are buckled, how the
+snaffle and curb rein have to lie, and how to keep the curb chain from
+choking the horse.</p>
+
+<p>Next came learning how to mount. When Lilly for the first time put her
+foot on his interlaced fingers she felt a warm thrill to the very back
+of her neck, as if this contact with him were a sign of secret
+understanding between them.</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three," he counted, and there she was in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel clapped his hands in approval, and Walter von Prell blushed
+with pride to the roots of his blond hair.</p>
+
+<p>From now on he had the game in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'd have thought that blusterer has such a lot of pedantry in his
+make-up?" said the colonel turning to Miss von Schwertfeger, who nodded
+silently and took a deep breath, as if something were oppressing her.</p>
+
+<p>By the time Lilly was ready to dismount, she had learned how to draw in
+the reins and slacken them and to turn to the right or the left; and she
+had even ventured a trot about the yard. In short, as the colonel
+good-humouredly remarked, "She was on the road to becoming the most
+dashing horsewoman in the army."</p>
+
+<p>The lessons followed in quick succession. Either Miss von Schwertfeger
+or the colonel was always present, and there was no opportunity for
+private conversation between Lilly and Von Prell.</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell maintained his stiff, abject obsequiousness, while Lilly
+burned with the desire to see his waggery flash up in a look or word
+intelligible to her alone.</p>
+
+<p>One day, it chanced, both guards were absent.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel was busied with the construction of a riding-ring, in which
+his gout might defy the inclemencies of the weather, and Miss von
+Schwertfeger was nowhere to be found.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's heart beat violently when she met her friend, and the smile with
+which she held out her hand to him, expressed uneasy triumph.</p>
+
+<p>He responded with a sly thrust of his tongue in the direction of the
+terrace, where her honour was wont to stand.</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't be found anywhere," whispered Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What</i> will we do?" he moaned, wringing his hands. "Why, without the
+worthy dame's protection we shan't even be able to mount."</p>
+
+<p>Deep blue heavens arched above. A cool breeze, heavy with the smell of
+freshly turned soil, blew across the courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed with a wily look to the open gate.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>The next minute she was galloping at his side along the grassy wood
+path, where no Argus eyes could follow her, in utter abandon, inwardly
+exulting and eagerly expectant of mad pranks to be played.</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell, for his part, seemed indisposed to avail himself of his
+unhoped for liberty. He held his eyes fixed on the road in front, every
+now and then caught at her reins, regulated the length of the stirrup,
+and made her sit better in the saddle. He was the riding master,
+nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>"How's Tommy?" she asked at length, bored.</p>
+
+<p>"Tommy sends his regards," he replied, without removing his gaze from
+the road, "and says we'd better pay attention to nothing but the horses
+to-day, because if something should happen we'd never be allowed to go
+out again."</p>
+
+<p>"And I send my regards to Tommy, and tell him he's a goose."</p>
+
+<p>"I will without fail," he rejoined, and nodded his riding crop.</p>
+
+<p>They now entered a grove of birch trees, where the ground was somewhat
+boggy and demanded added attention.</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly had eyes for nothing but the silvery gleam of the trunks and
+the golden webs which quivered in the wind and floated down on her
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, see how beautiful!" she said with a blissful sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Walk your horse, please."</p>
+
+<p>A demon took possession of Lilly. Touching her horse with her crop she
+went off in a mad gallop that was contrary to all the rules and
+regulations of horseback riding.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant, however, Von Prell was at her side gripping her reins
+and pulling up both horses.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other with flashing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt she had to throw herself over toward him just to be nearer to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Lilly, what do you mean by that?" he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>She started and showed her white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Walter, what do you mean by that?" she retorted.</p>
+
+<p>They turned the horses' heads and rode back home slowly, in silence,
+without looking at each other.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>The threshing machine had been singing its autumn song for many a day.
+Its monotonous whirr could be heard far beyond the castle court. It
+carried no message of golden blessings or glowing crystallised sunlight.
+From morning till late at night it moaned and howled like an æolian harp
+in stormbeaten branches; and sometimes soft, long-drawn cries burst from
+its entrails, as if the sheaves it was torturing and tearing had been
+endowed with speech.</p>
+
+<p>So much dreamy bliss dwelt again in Lilly's soul that she got nothing
+but allurement and yearning from this music, which entirely obsessed her
+in her morning slumber and kept her lying in bed a long time in a drowsy
+half-sleep the better to listen to its even, unvarying singsong.</p>
+
+<p>All the while she thought of him.</p>
+
+<p>A comrade, a playmate, that was what she had needed all along, some one
+in whose company to make merry and complain, some one who would confess
+all his follies, his most secret sins, and then receive laughing
+absolution. For whatever his crime, he was not the guilty one; his youth
+was the sinner, the same sweet, mischievous youth which filled her soul
+with melancholy and her body with shuddering, which dominated them both
+like a beneficent yet tormenting divinity, who favoured the one and
+ruined the other.</p>
+
+<p>He had to be saved&mdash;saved from his own frivolity, from that fatal
+condition of his soul which threatened to entangle and choke him in a
+net of vulgar escapades. Rumours of the low life he was leading kept
+cropping up not to be silenced, and she needed but to step inside the
+servants' hall for a stream of gossip to come gushing over her like a
+jet of dirty water.</p>
+
+<p>Her first intervention was to be only the beginning of the great mission
+she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, walking
+before him and holding up her hands against every evil temptation, until
+he had become as pure, as undesirous as herself.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing machine.</p>
+
+<p>The first ride beyond the castle gates, though taken without permission,
+had been approved, even commended; and others were to follow. But Lilly
+hesitated. She wanted to learn a decent canter, she said, before
+venturing upon new roads. As a matter of fact, she was burning with
+eagerness for another such hour in Von Prell's company, and merely
+lacked the courage to bring it about.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after that first ride he was the same cringing riding master
+as before, outdoing himself in respectfulness and over-polite while
+rigorous in imparting instruction. Lilly had fully expected he would
+whisper a familiar word hinting at the day before, a soft "Lilly." There
+was plenty of opportunity, but nothing of the sort took place.</p>
+
+<p>The next few lessons went in the same fashion. Neither Lilly nor Von
+Prell thought of leaving the courtyard. But one day the decree went
+forth from the colonel himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Enough of this hopping about on the gravel. Get out of here and air
+yourselves in the wind of the fields."</p>
+
+<p>"At your command, Colonel," said Von Prell, touching his cap. He rode
+his horse up to Lilly's and gently steered both of them out of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart stood still. She forgot to say good-by to the colonel, she
+was so preoccupied with anticipation of the pleasure in store for her.</p>
+
+<p>They went the same road that had brought her the great experience of the
+week before.</p>
+
+<p>The willows dripped with dew and at the slightest touch showered down a
+rain of drops. Lilly laughed and shook herself. Instead of joining in,
+he guided his horse to the edge of the road, leaving the middle to her.</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>want</i> to get wet," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"As my lady says," he replied, stiff as a poker in his stupid,
+artificial respect.</p>
+
+<p>Then they rode on in silence.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the spot where the great event had occurred which gave
+the lie to his present behaviour, she ventured to send him a furtive
+sidelong glance. But he did not respond, seeming not to have noticed her
+look. His jockey cap pulled close over his head down to the back of his
+neck, his thin, tightly-drawn face, sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish
+body, all muscle and bone, he sat on his saddle as if he and his horse
+were one.</p>
+
+<p>"How I love him, in spite of everything, the dear little fellow," she
+thought, and pictured to herself how horribly abandoned she would feel
+if ever he were to leave the place. And it became clear as day to her
+that the gay excitement in her soul, the sense of abundance in her life
+here where she dwelt, had arisen from nothing else than his always,
+always being near by.</p>
+
+<p>They rode along at an even gait. The brown ridges bordering the opposite
+bank of the stream drew nearer and nearer. Von Prell seemed to be making
+for them, but this did not serve her purpose, because the hour for a
+frank talk had struck.</p>
+
+<p>To-day or never!</p>
+
+<p>She made a great effort to go over in her mind what she would say to
+him. But her thoughts were incoherent. She had to keep her attention
+fixed on the horse; and so long as she remained in the saddle she felt
+herself too much under Von Prell's control.</p>
+
+<p>Summoning all her courage she asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Can't we dismount?"</p>
+
+<p>He paused to consider, but she had jumped from her horse already, and he
+had just time enough to grasp the mare's snaffle. He reprimanded her,
+though in the end he had to yield.</p>
+
+<p>They walked side by side, Von Prell leading both horses.</p>
+
+<p>The path led through a stone pit sparsely grown with oak trees and
+alders. Golden marigold buttons dotted the marshy spots, and the
+bur-reed stretched out its bristly fruit on crinkled arms. Reddish dock
+raised its aging stalk and the floating grass was drawing in its blades
+in expectation of approaching autumn.</p>
+
+<p>A mountain-ash, felled by a storm, stretched diagonally from the side of
+the road across the ditch. Its purplish red clusters of berries glowed
+like flames which by right should have been extinguished long ago, but
+which a mysterious life-force kept feeding.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to sit here," said Lilly</p>
+
+<p>He bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please."</p>
+
+<p>"But you must sit down, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I must hold the horses, my lady."</p>
+
+<p>"You can tie them to a tree."</p>
+
+<p>He considered a while.</p>
+
+<p>"I can," he said, and tied the reins about the stump of the fallen tree.</p>
+
+<p>When he was about to sit down next to her, she moved nearer to the
+middle of the trunk to make room for him, and she sat with her feet
+dangling over the ditch water.</p>
+
+<p>He shoved himself after her, swinging his upper body between his arms,
+which held him like props.</p>
+
+<p>"No further," she said. She did not want him too close to her.</p>
+
+<p>"At my lady's service," he answered, and kicked his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The grotesque stiffness of his speech annoyed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know a better way of addressing me when we are alone?" she
+asked, looking him full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"I do, but I mustn't"</p>
+
+<p>"And last time&mdash;how about then?"</p>
+
+<p>"It happened to be my birthday," he replied, "and I wanted a pretty
+gift, so I presented that to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"And to-day's my birthday," she laughed. "What will you present me
+with?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever my lady wishes."</p>
+
+<p>"Call me comrade."</p>
+
+<p>"Once or always?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always."</p>
+
+<p>"Just <i>say</i> comrade, or be comrade, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Be, be, be," she cried. "The being is the chief thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed!" he said, cautiously sliding his right hand along the swaying
+trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed!" she said, and they shook hands on it.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something else to be passed upon in connection with this," he
+observed, and cleared his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is this comradeship to be accompanied or not to be accompanied by the
+use of the first name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not," rejoined Lilly, thinking she had made a great sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>He took the prohibition at its face value and said obediently:</p>
+
+<p>"As my comrade wishes."</p>
+
+<p>Now her time had come. Lilly drew in a deep breath and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have something very serious to say to you, Mr. Von Prell."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to suspect evil.</p>
+
+<p>"Ouch," he said, and bit his gloved thumb.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly began. She would say absolutely nothing about that affair with
+Katie, even though it was very dreadful, because what is to be forgiven
+must also be forgotten. But if he thought the life he had been leading
+ever since he had come to Lischnitz had remained a secret, he was
+greatly mistaken. Even the scrubbing women laughed at him behind his
+back. But he couldn't expect anything else, if he&mdash;and she recounted the
+list of his sins, which, in spite of herself, had reached her ears from
+the servants' hall.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was ashamed of what she said. She had meant to speak of entirely
+different things&mdash;of the loftiness of human existence, of the greatness
+of self-abnegation, of keeping oneself pure for the sake of genuine
+feelings, of the mysterious spiritual union of the elect on earth, and
+much more in the same strain. But when she saw him, as he sat there with
+his back curved and his feet turned inward, causing bulbs to appear and
+disappear on the soft leather of his riding boots where they covered his
+big toes, nothing better occurred to her.</p>
+
+<p>He did not interrupt her.</p>
+
+<p>When she had concluded he maintained silence and occupied himself with
+following the movements of an insect which was wriggling in the dark,
+slimy water of the ditch.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you nothing to say," she asked, "after I have reproached you with
+such disgraceful behaviour?"</p>
+
+<p>"What should I have to say?" he asked in turn. "My one claim to
+celebrity is my being a man utterly devoid of moral fibre. Should I lose
+that one claim, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you have nothing within yourself to hold you up, lean on me," she
+cried, glowing with eagerness. "Let me be your friend, your adviser,
+your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Foster-father," he suggested, and swished about the slime with his
+crop.</p>
+
+<p>She realised that everything she said was lost on him; that he even
+seized whatever opportunity offered to make merry at her expense.</p>
+
+<p>"Please get up and let me by," she said. "Why should I cast what is best
+in me before one who is unworthy?"</p>
+
+<p>He made no movement to leave his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, comrade," he said, pointing to the dark, mirror-like surface of
+the water. "A water spider is gliding about there all the time with its
+legs up and its head down. If you were to ask it why, it would say it
+doesn't know how to glide differently. That's its nature. What's to be
+done?"</p>
+
+<p>"A man can restrain himself," she cried, flaring up and casting
+indignant glances at him. "A man can look up to heights, to an ideal. He
+can listen to the advice of a friend who means well by him&mdash;that's what
+he can do."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does his friend advise?" he asked flatteringly, while swinging
+himself nearer.</p>
+
+<p>But this time she did not answer. She covered her face with her hands
+and cried, cried so that her body shook with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, sit still," he exclaimed, stretching his arms about her
+in a wide circle, for she was in danger of losing her balance on the
+slim, swaying trunk of the mountain-ash. "Do sit still, Lilly, else
+you'll fall into the water."</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered. She heard nothing of what he said except that sweet,
+secret, criminal "Lilly," for which she had been longing the whole
+week.</p>
+
+<p>Then he promised her everything she wanted of him. He wouldn't run after
+any more servant girls, he wouldn't spend nights boozing with the
+inspector and the bookkeeper, he wouldn't&mdash;oh, what wouldn't he do, if
+only she stopped crying.</p>
+
+<p>"Your word of honour?" she said, raising her wet, reddened eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"My word of honour," he replied without an instant's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him, happy and grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't regret it," she said. "I'll be close at hand, I'll be your
+friend, I will do whatever I can."</p>
+
+<p>"And whatever the two High Mightinesses permit," he added.</p>
+
+<p>This time the epithet "High Mightinesses" did not annoy her. She
+shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, they&mdash;yes, of course."</p>
+
+<p>Then they both laughed till they came near falling into the ditch after
+all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Delightful times followed. A game of hide-and-seek with herself, a
+long-drawn draught from an unfailing fount of expectancy, anticipation,
+delicious aftertaste and joyous recollections. Each day brought new
+pleasures and untold wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when Lilly threw open the shutters in the morning and the
+fresh red September air flowed in over her she felt as if God had spread
+a mantle of sunny gold over the heavens to wrap both of them in, so snug
+and close that the whole world disappeared, leaving no one but
+themselves behind, pressed against each other in laughter and drunk with
+all that light.</p>
+
+<p>She felt she was growing more beautiful from day to day and emanated a
+sort of radiance which caused all who met her to look up with a smile of
+astonishment and satisfaction, mingled, however, with a touch of
+melancholy, such as always comes over us when we see a human being or a
+flower developing too happily, too proudly for its glory to endure.</p>
+
+<p>The two High Mightinesses did not keep their eyes closed, either.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel found no formula for such symptoms in his store of
+experiences. Had Lilly gone about downcast, staring dreamily into space,
+had she crept about him timidly, had she wavered between ardour and
+estrangement, his suspicions would have grown lively. He would have
+begun to sound and spy on her. But it was not in his power to discern
+aught else than increased spiritual well-being in her pliable, blissful
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>So he smirked complacently at the harmless gaiety his young wife
+radiated, and with paternal calm accepted the lavish caresses, which
+served as an outlet for her overwrought ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Anna von Schwertfeger shared no less benevolently in Lilly's happiness.
+She seemed to harbour as little suspicion as the colonel that a third
+person was playing a part in her life. Otherwise she would scarcely have
+viewed the growing frequency with which the two young people met with
+such unbegrudging kindliness.</p>
+
+<p>Often after supper she drew Lilly into the room on the ground floor,
+where she dwelt amid her account books. A genuine old maid's home, with
+canary birds, flower pots, faded family photographs, and all sorts of
+gilt and china knick-knacks, remnants of past glory such as are handed
+down from generation to generation in families of decayed gentlefolk.</p>
+
+<p>At other times she came gliding into Lilly's bedroom at an incredibly
+late hour, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and did not stir until
+she heard the sound of the colonel's carriage coming from the station.</p>
+
+<p>The two women would plunge into profound conversations concerning life
+and death, solitary old age and overflowing youth, the measure God has
+set for each mortal, and the misfortune of trying to exceed that
+measure. Anna von Schwertfeger no longer pried or warned, yet her
+fashion of hopping from subject to subject, of heedlessly expressing an
+opinion the very reverse of one she had uttered a moment before, seemed
+sufficient reason for supposing that her mind was occupied with very,
+very different things.</p>
+
+<p>Often while her speech flowed on monotonously Lilly would be astonished
+to look up and find her eyes resting on her intently, almost
+apprehensively. Then again Lilly would feel herself stroked and kissed
+with such pitying inwardliness that she herself was touched, and later,
+when left alone, she began to feel afraid of the dark, as if a menacing
+fate were crouching at the bottom of her bed ready to pounce on her and
+choke her.</p>
+
+<p>But from where was misfortune to drop on her? Wasn't she more securely
+stowed away than ever before in her life? Whom did she deceive? Wherein
+did she sin? Even if the few little secrets binding her to Walter should
+be discovered, how would she be punished? She would simply get a fine
+sermon like a naughty child, nothing worse.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she comforted herself before the aftertaste of Miss von
+Schwertfeger's late visits was dispelled by new dreams of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>September neared its end.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly went horseback riding with Von Prell almost every day, or she met
+him at twilight, as if by chance, in deserted parts of the park. They
+would spy each other strolling about some one of the various places they
+had fixed upon once for all. Then there was the pea-shooter to fall back
+upon in case different arrangements had to be made.</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell had brought the convenient instrument from the city, and it
+reposed innocently in a corner of Lilly's balcony, to all appearances
+nothing more than a superfluous curtain-rod. It enabled her to blow
+whatever message she wanted through the foliage on the balcony directly
+into his open window.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes it was only "Good morning, comrade," sometimes the hour of
+meeting, or sometimes a harmless jest, the outgrowth of a moment's
+exuberance.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Lilly nor Von Prell moved a muscle and the two High Mightinesses
+sat there unsuspecting.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the regiment.</p>
+
+<p>The time of the autumn man&oelig;uvres had come, and both gentlemen read
+the papers with feverish interest to see what part was being taken by
+their former regiment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+man&oelig;uvres and had signed their names along with the other officers.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was the first Sunday in October.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel had left at dawn to go to a neighbour with the intention of
+not returning until late at night.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The sunflowers in the tenants' gardens were already sinking their singed
+heads and the asters showed signs of having suffered from the murderous
+blows of Jack Frost.</p>
+
+<p>But the air was as sweet and spicy as in spring, and from the fields
+came a singing as of meadow larks.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a day, such a day!" thought Lilly, and stretched herself in a
+vague yearning for secret conversation and glad pranks.</p>
+
+<p>She must have thought a little too loud, for Miss von Schwertfeger
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," replied Lilly, blushing. "I feel as if it were some
+festival."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger looked at her askance and said, emphasising each
+word:</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to make a festival of it for myself and visit a friend of
+mine in the city. But the colonel is away and I don't know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started so violently that she lost her breath for an instant. But
+she mastered herself cleverly and began to persuade Miss von
+Schwertfeger, first speaking coolly, then more warmly and urgently. She
+needed a little outing; she hadn't left the place all summer; she lived
+like a prisoner, and ought to grant herself at least one hour of
+freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger nodded meditatively, and that glassy stare came
+into her eyes which always discomfited Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>At the midday meal, which the two took in each other's company, she was
+still undecided; but as soon as they rose from table she ordered the
+carriage to be brought around and drove off without saying good-by.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who watched her departure, ran for the pea-shooter. The foliage
+of the creepers still hedged in her little domain so perfectly that Von
+Prell could not see her. But she could see him as he sat at the open
+window brooding over a book with a deep fold between his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"My good influence," thought Lilly triumphantly, and it almost made her
+feel sorry to tear him away from so salutary an occupation.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector and the bookkeeper were walking up and down near the lodge
+smoking their Sunday afternoon cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>So more than ordinary caution was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The pellet containing her missive hit Von Prell's forehead, rebounded,
+and fell on the grass outside the window.</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell had himself so well in hand that he even refrained from
+looking up to show he understood. After a while, however, he let the
+book fall out of the window as if by accident, and then got up to fetch
+it with an indifferent air.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later they met behind the carp pond.</p>
+
+<p>He was wearing a new black and white checked fall suit, similar to the
+one the fateful stranger in the railroad train had worn.</p>
+
+<p>"You're entirely too elegant," Lilly joked. "I'd rather not be in your
+company to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be a sin and a shame," he observed. "I had these trappings
+constructed extra for to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Why for to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because to-day's our festival."</p>
+
+<p>"How did that occur to you?" she faltered, startled that their thoughts
+had taken the same course.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a person gets notions," he replied, and smiled significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Under the same impulse they took the path leading to the beech grove
+which they had wandered through on the first evening of their renewed
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"How's Tommy?" Lilly asked, recollecting the third party to the
+alliance.</p>
+
+<p>"He bit away the flooring in my room and dug a hole for himself, where
+he snarls like an eagle-owl. I shouldn't advise you to stick your
+wedding-ring finger into his hole. You might suddenly lose your ring and
+your finger, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why have I let myself get so wild?" he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're growing tame again," replied Lilly, caressing him with her
+eyes. His recent tameness was all her doing.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?" he asked, and drew his brows together masterfully, as
+in his lieutenant days.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I your word of honour?" she exulted.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly basked in the superbness of her mission of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter how much you disdain my influence," she replied, "everybody
+sees that a change has taken place in you. Mr. Leichtweg says you're
+always the first to begin work now. You've borrowed that great book on
+agriculture from the colonel&mdash;it impressed him tremendously&mdash;and Miss
+von Schwertfeger said a little while ago you always look so appetizing
+now. Yes, Mr. von Prell, I take the credit for all this, and if things
+continue the same way we shall remain good friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Apropos of appetizing," he said, "your neck beginning back of your ears
+is all covered with tiny, silky hairs. Do you know from what that
+comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nonsense," Lilly exclaimed, blushing. "Why? Do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"A wise man has theories. For instance, observe this plot of grass." He
+pointed to a clearing below them, through which a rill trickled, and
+which was closely grown with tender, juicy grass of a vivid green. "From
+the way it looks you'd suppose it was still spring. Until late in the
+summer that plot stood under water, and the spots that least often or
+never get dry grow the finest down&mdash;that's nature."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was on the point of taking his botany lesson in earnest when she
+chanced to notice the wicked grimace he was making. Then she understood
+the shameless allusion and had to laugh over it helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, baronissima, how about playing tag? We owe it to the
+circulation of your excellency's blood."</p>
+
+<p>The words were scarcely out of his mouth when with a blithe shout she
+darted off down the slope, the bottom of which was lost in the purple
+darkness of autumn. But at the end of a short stretch she tripped over
+the Scotch plaid she had taken along and had refused to let Von Prell
+carry. She fell full length and he came just in time to help her to her
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>This having spoiled Lilly's taste for tag they mounted the hill like
+well-behaved children.</p>
+
+<p>Here their eyes could travel over a rippling lake of leaves far, far
+away. The beeches glowed a deep red, the maples danced in all the
+colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered with bright flames, the elm
+flaunted its flakes of gold, while the oak alone obstinately retained
+its green garb of summer.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stared into the violet-veiled distance.</p>
+
+<p>The sun hid itself behind gold-rimmed clouds, from which fiery tracks
+descended to earth. A narrow band of scarlet edged the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit down here?" asked Von Prell.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not here," said Lilly, seized with a vague dread. "I'll begin to
+cry here."</p>
+
+<p>She ran ahead of him, back into the woods, and came again upon the path
+leading along the rill.</p>
+
+<p>Here the darkness of evening prevailed, but the sun-charm in which they
+had been enveloped worked its magic here, too, and filled her heart with
+a happy devoutness.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how happy she was! How happy she was!</p>
+
+<p>No fear and no danger so far as her thoughts could reach; and no danger
+from her own heart, for the man walking by her side was her friend and
+playmate, nothing more. He might not and could not be anything else. No
+secret wish, no distorted desire came from him or went to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Everything uniting him to her was clear and transparent as sunlight.
+Even if the others must not have a suspicion of their intercourse, there
+was no sin in it&mdash;only salvation for him and laughter for her and youth
+for both.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a warm-hearted impulse to take his hand, but fearing to be
+misunderstood she checked herself.</p>
+
+<p>Thus they walked at each other's side to the spot where the rill was
+caught up in a rotting wooden conduit, from which it spouted with a soft
+singsong.</p>
+
+<p>Withered ferns covered the light green moss with their ragged red
+fronds and tired leaves came fluttering down out of the beech trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us rest here," suggested Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's damp."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll spread the plaid," she said eagerly, taking the blanket from
+him&mdash;he had managed to snatch it away from her&mdash;and threw it over the
+fern stalks, which cracked under the weight.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on the right side of the plaid and invited him to make use
+of the left side, to keep his fine new suit clean.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear the vesper bells?" he asked. "We ought to be eating supper
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"We poor church mice, we have nothing," she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you so?" he asked, triumphantly producing a small paper
+package from his pocket, which contained a mashed, crumbly piece of
+cake. They laid it between them and ate the morsels from their hollowed
+hands, laughing all the while. The cake tasted like sweet wine, and
+Lilly felicitously hit upon its correct name, punch-tart, of which she
+was especially fond.</p>
+
+<p>"The English call it tipsy-cake," he explained. "It quite befuddles
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"That amount of intoxication I'll risk," she laughed, and threw herself
+on her back, folding her hands behind her head.</p>
+
+<p>She lay there a time without moving and looked up to the sky, of which
+jagged oval bits shimmered through the foliage. Rosy flakes swam in the
+opalescent ether, and way beyond appeared the vault of another heaven,
+which in some places burst through the nearer sky like a deep blue
+foreboding.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stretched her arms upward yearningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to catch the larks?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>No, not that, but she would like to have one of the falling leaves.</p>
+
+<p>They kept dropping, dropping from the boughs like birds with broken
+wings, and fluttered over the ground in little spirals, as if undecided
+where to rest.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see to which of us the first one comes," he said, and also
+stretched himself on his back.</p>
+
+<p>"The one to whom a leaf comes first will be blessed with a great piece
+of good fortune," she added.</p>
+
+<p>They lay still and waited.</p>
+
+<p>At last one floated toward him and prepared to settle on his nose.</p>
+
+<p>But he would not permit this&mdash;hers must be that great piece of good
+fortune&mdash;and he blew the leaf back to her.</p>
+
+<p>She in turn was too proud to accept so munificent a gift and blew it
+back to him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus laughing and tossing themselves about, they kept the leaf whirling
+between them, and suddenly in the heat of the struggle their lips
+touched&mdash;touched and would not separate.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant they held each other in close embrace, and the instant
+after she was his.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The rill purled, the leaves fell as before. But a fiery mist lay upon
+the earth, and all over small suns winked rainbow coloured eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Why had it happened?</p>
+
+<p>She fell back without thinking and noticed that the heavens above were
+also clothed in fire.</p>
+
+<p>Her comrade sat beside her with his back curved like a berated schoolboy
+and rubbed his nails against one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's go home," said Lilly, downheartedly.</p>
+
+<p>"As my lady commands," he replied, grotesquely respectful again.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a weary, mirthless laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently he was concerned with getting rid of what had happened as
+speedily as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, now it's all the same," she sighed; "now we can quite calmly call
+each other by our first names."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>First came dread, the same senseless dread that had dominated Lilly's
+being before her engagement. It stiffened her limbs, bound her arms to
+her body, crippled her knees, beat against the walls of the veins in her
+neck and created a black void in her brain.</p>
+
+<p>But after she had gone through the first meeting with Von Prell and
+nothing fateful occurred, her fear died down and what remained was a
+searching attentiveness, a readiness to jump aside at the least sign of
+danger, a tense anticipation of ticklish questions to be answered
+properly and pitfalls to be avoided with a crafty assumption of
+innocence.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel noticed nothing&mdash;he, the most suspicious of married men,
+with the keenest scent, who harboured the least illusions concerning the
+opposite sex, he noticed nothing. He even believed the headache myth and
+lavished mocking yet tender pity upon her, while he sat at her bedside
+laughing and helping her change the compresses that Miss von
+Schwertfeger had solicitously prepared.</p>
+
+<p>It was more difficult for Lilly to endure the woman's caresses. Behind
+them lurked a squinting pair of eyes, shy, heedful, and endeavouring to
+look harmless, while, in spite of themselves, revealing a greedy desire
+to know.</p>
+
+<p>The anxiety that so far as the colonel was concerned gradually lulled
+itself to sleep, grew sharper with regard to the self-sacrificing
+friend, who at any moment might become her enemy and betrayer.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not dare to cry until night time, when she felt sure of being
+alone. She would jump out of bed to wash her eyes, go back to bed again
+and cry until sleep took her in its soothing arms.</p>
+
+<p>It was not shame, nor regret, nor longing love. It was a feeling of
+infinite solitariness, it was a straying about in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"What will happen now?"</p>
+
+<p>For something must surely happen&mdash;confession, convent, flight together,
+suicide together, or one of all those events described in Mrs.
+Asmussen's books as following upon so atrocious a deed.</p>
+
+<p>The week passed.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had arisen from her sick bed several days before, but she had not
+seen Von Prell. She could discover no signs of him, even when she locked
+all the entrances to her room and rushed to the window for a glimpse of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>All the while the colonel kept recommending horseback riding. There was
+Von Prell to take her and the exercise would do her good.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Saturday at dusk, she felt she had to yield&mdash;they would meet at
+dinner the next day at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>The horses were pawing before the door.</p>
+
+<p>The moment for the meeting before which she had recoiled had arrived
+with its threat of fresh dangers.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw her friend ascend the terrace steps in his high, shiny
+riding boots, looking pale and thin, and moving as if by springs to
+display his counterfeit respect, something within her suddenly turned
+numb.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that young man there is an utter stranger," she felt. "He doesn't
+concern you in the least&mdash;you are looking upon him for the first time in
+your life."</p>
+
+<p>They rode out of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel had gone to the stables, but Miss von Schwertfeger stood on
+the terrace with her hands clasped and looked after them.</p>
+
+<p>The road, muddy with recent rains, plashed under the horses' hoofs and a
+cold evening wind crinkled the winter wheat. A yellow sheen hiding the
+poverty-stricken sun glimmered behind the ragged birch boughs.
+Everything looked sad and weary. It even seemed a vain task to have
+sowed the winter wheat.</p>
+
+<p>They trotted on side by side in silence&mdash;a long, long series of anxious
+moments.</p>
+
+<p>"He must speak some time," thought Lilly, biting her tongue till it
+bled.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his eyes fixed undeviatingly upon the road ahead, making only
+slight movements of his right hand from time to time to adjust his
+reins.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll call me 'my lady' again," she thought, and felt ashamed in
+advance for both of them.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she took heart and spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do walk your horse," she said, almost crying.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, comrade," he replied, and reined in his chestnut.</p>
+
+<p>"Comrade! Comrade!" she burst out, and passionately searched his eyes
+with hers.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders, as always when he feared a scolding, and said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Say something, won't you?" she screamed, quite beside herself.</p>
+
+<p>"What should I say?" he queried, making a little gesture, as if to
+scratch his head. "It's a nasty business. We know it." And muttering to
+himself, he repeated, "Nasty business, nasty business!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear friend," he replied, "I am small, my heart is small. It's not
+a suitable spot for harbouring great anguish of the soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, who's speaking of anguish of the soul? But what's to become of
+us, that's what I should like to know."</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as I come into possession of an unencumbered manorial estate,"
+he replied with a gesture of invitation, "a castle, stables, vehicles
+and other animate and inanimate things thereunto appertaining, I shall
+take the liberty of applying to your husband for your hand."</p>
+
+<p>This completely robbed Lilly of her self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"If you keep on making such jokes," she screamed, bursting into tears,
+"I'll ride to death, now, before your very eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"A difficult thing to do with that well-behaved nag of yours."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was at her wits' end and simply let the tears course down her
+cheeks in silence.</p>
+
+<p>At last he changed his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, child," he said, "be sensible for a change. All I want to
+do is tickle the superfluous tragedy out of your soul. And as soon as
+you make a glad face again I'll try to give the matter most serious
+consideration."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wiped her tears away with the flap of her riding gauntlet and
+smiled at him obediently.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine," he praised her. "'Twas not idle in the poet to write '<i>O weine
+selten, weine schwer. Wer Tränen hat, hat auch Malheur.</i>' I'll tell you
+something. We two pretty orphans were exactly meant for each other and
+we've been brought together here in this enchanted castle. But we should
+have <i>had</i> to meet, no matter where, even if we hadn't been two hearts
+that beat as one long before. To be accurate, the colonel married us
+right at the beginning, and the only shame is that your marriage
+contract with him wasn't drawn up accordingly. But that's not to be
+altered, and we shall have to get around the matter in secret ways. See
+here, child, we both are headed in the same direction on the sea of
+life. We have the same to win and the same to lose. So cheer up! Go it!
+We're ragtag and bobtail both of us, at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not ragtag and bobtail!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "I have pride and
+a sense of honour, and even if I have sinned a thousandfold, I know how
+to die for my sins."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not so easy to die. Usually the opportunity is lacking, and when
+the opportunity once presents itself we show it a clean pair of heels."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a hot desire to protect him against the self-degradation in
+which he indulged.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe what you say," she cried. "You are the boldest, the
+most daring of men. I know you are. Without a moment's hesitation you
+would face death for the sake of your honour. If you would only summon
+all your strength the whole world would lie at your feet. I will always
+keep reminding you of that. I will work over you until you get back
+belief in yourself, until you feel you are on the upward road. I will
+share all your hardships, all your temptations, and I will protect you
+from all evil. For what should I be here if not for you?"</p>
+
+<p>She felt she was so completely his that she could have thrown herself at
+his horse's hoofs; and when she recalled the first moments of their
+meeting that day she could scarcely realise why he had seemed so
+repulsive and alien.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a touching creature," he replied. "It's really lucky the
+creepers on your balcony are so thoroughly knit together."</p>
+
+<p>She started.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?" she faltered, oppressed by a foreboding of
+ill.</p>
+
+<p>"And lucky the ladder was left there. It can be leaned against the
+balcony and the vines can break all they want to, even Miss von
+Schwertfeger wouldn't notice anything amiss. Well?"</p>
+
+<p>He blinked his silvery lids at her enticingly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know where to turn to hide her face from his gaze, she felt
+so ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never belong to you again," she cried. "I swear I won't by all the
+saints! I should be a thing of loathing to myself. As for you, I should
+utterly despise you. Pah!"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity to lose the opportunity," he observed, and turned the horses'
+heads.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He appeared at dinner the next day, virtuous in his frock-coat and black
+necktie. He strutted and scraped and bowed, pursed his lips in
+extravagant respect, and scarcely dared to take the demitasse from her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes passed between the two, watching and
+questioning.</p>
+
+<p>Late that Sunday night the following occurred:</p>
+
+<p>The colonel had gone off to town, Miss von Schwertfeger had retired to
+her room, and Lilly sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown brushing
+her hair.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she heard a gentle tapping at the window, as if the autumn wind
+were blowing a twig against the closed shutter. But the action of the
+wind is irregular, and this sound kept time&mdash;now a little louder, now a
+little softer&mdash;and recurred at even intervals.</p>
+
+<p>It frightened her, and she wanted to run down to Miss von Schwertfeger;
+but she bethought herself in time. She hastily put on her dressing gown,
+cautiously raised the window, and opened the shutters the least bit.</p>
+
+<p>At first she saw nothing.</p>
+
+<p>There were no stars in the heavens and the whole of the lodge seemed
+buried in darkness. Then she thought she saw a staff waving up and down
+close to the shutter.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the shutter an inch wider and recognised&mdash;the pea-shooter.</p>
+
+<p>Now she knew what was up.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped back and drew the bolt. Then threw herself back in bed, where
+she lay holding her fingers in her ears. But when she withdrew them she
+again heard that short, regular tapping, which now rose almost to a
+knocking.</p>
+
+<p>The nightwatch, who made the rounds of the court and park once an hour,
+need only find the ladder leaning against the balcony and all was lost.</p>
+
+<p>Her fright deprived her of her senses.</p>
+
+<p>Trembling in every limb, she ran into her dressing room, where there was
+no light, and opened the balcony door about half an inch. Through the
+crack she whispered into the darkness:</p>
+
+<p>"Go away, and never try such a thing again."</p>
+
+<p>Then she listened with her ear to the opening.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing to be seen or heard.</p>
+
+<p>But when she wanted to close the door it would not go shut. She groped
+along the crack in search of the obstacle, and came upon a round,
+hollow, wooden something, which an invisible hand had shoved there.</p>
+
+<p>The wretched pea-shooter!</p>
+
+<p>She moaned and covered her face with her hands, and the next moment was
+hanging in his arms in a half swoon.</p>
+
+<p>After that evening he had her completely in his power&mdash;defenceless,
+without a will of her own, at the mercy of his wishes and whims.</p>
+
+<p>It was not happiness. She experienced scarcely a single transport of
+feeling. That came later, when she had conquered her horror of the
+monstrous deed, and her fear of discovery had weakened. Nothing occurred
+to disturb them, and Lilly expanded in a sense of defiant security.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was a blissful sailing over awful abysms, a delirium of the
+senses, a nebulous ecstasy, a delightful writhing under lacerating
+blows, an ebb and flow of magnanimous scorn of self and blasphemous
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Laughter came again. Not the old simple laughter that had dominated the
+play of her spirit until within a short time before. No, this laughter
+was sardonic exultation, the exultation of the hounded thief, who
+carries his booty off to security, behind the backs of his pursuers.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly also found reasons for justifying herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I am merely fulfilling my destiny. I am now getting back the possession
+which fate promised to me and which the old man so long kept from me."</p>
+
+<p>In addition there was a redeeming element in all she did, consecrating
+the most arrant deception and endowing it with purity. This was the
+consciousness that he was being saved. Under the spell of a lofty love
+he would learn to scorn vulgar escapades and, borne on the wings of a
+woman's expiating favour, he would rise to the heights on which men and
+heroes dwell.</p>
+
+<p>With these thoughts she drugged her conscience each time; and when he
+lay in her arms she gave them whispered expression&mdash;the doors were not
+heavy and all sounds must be muffled.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and kissed the words from her mouth. If she grew uneasy and
+demanded pledges, he vowed the stars out of the heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger now never stayed in Lilly's room later than
+eleven o'clock. This was the hour he might come, and by half past one he
+had to be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he had to confine his visits to the evenings when the colonel
+went to town. On account of the time the trains ran, the colonel could
+not possibly return before two. Besides the carriage could be heard at
+some distance.</p>
+
+<p>Before Walter left he had to unlock the door to the colonel's room, and
+smoke a cigarette to rid the atmosphere of the stable and leather smell
+he brought with him from his own room. For it often happened that the
+colonel stuck his head in before going to bed; or, if the wine had
+loosened his tongue, he would even awaken Lilly, seat himself at her
+bedside, laugh, cast about his dagger glances pick his yellow teeth, and
+tell the juiciest stories which had arrived fresh from the Berlin
+centres of obscenity and made the rounds of his club in town.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly played the drowsy pussy, and purred and yawned She began to feel
+so secure that once she actually fell asleep right in the middle of a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if only there had been no Miss von Schwertfeger!</p>
+
+<p>Not that Miss von Schwertfeger had noticed anything. The horrors of such
+a possibility were inconceivable. But her restless, hasty comings and
+goings, the almost anxious greed with which she pried about, gave
+sufficient cause for concern.</p>
+
+<p>She looked very pale and worn, while the fleshy region about her mouth
+and her sharp, scenting nose glowed a still deeper red.</p>
+
+<p>You might suppose she tippled in secret. But such thing would be bound
+to leak out, and at table scarce a drop passed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Let her do whatever she wants to," thought Lilly, "if only she doesn't
+come spying on me as she did on Katie."</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes it occurred to Lilly that she herself was no better than
+the poor maid Katie, whom they had chased from the castle.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was shortly before midnight one evening late in November.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger had said good-night, and <i>he</i> was sitting at
+Lilly's pillow wet and frozen through. He had been standing in the
+chilly drizzle a long time before the signal agreed upon&mdash;two rattles of
+the shutter bolt&mdash;had summoned him to her room.</p>
+
+<p>Now, everything was serene. The entire house was asleep; the watchman
+had made his rounds, and the ladder, which Von Prell drew up after him
+for greater security, reposed peacefully on the balcony.</p>
+
+<p>The blue-shaded chandelier bathed the warm, perfumed room in the light
+of a summer evening. Drops of rain splashed softly against the shutters,
+and the November wind whined like a beggar.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly lay comfortably under her blue silk quilt, holding his hand and
+dreaming up into his face, which, even in moments of self-abandon,
+retained its expression of abashed roguery. She saw the freckled bridge
+of his nose, the white-lashed, blinking eyes, the peaked chin covered
+with stubble and almost hidden by the green collar of his working
+jacket. He could no longer smarten himself for her sake. His housemates
+might notice the change.</p>
+
+<p>They did not say much to each other. If only he was with her, he who
+belonged to her in life and death, who like herself had been cast astray
+in this strange world.</p>
+
+<p>She drew his head down and stroked his forehead smooth from lack of a
+man's cares, and wiped away a few drops still clinging to his temples.</p>
+
+<p>The clock on the wall struck twelve softly, the hanging lamp swung back
+and forth, casting long sliding shadows on the ceiling, like the shadow
+of a rocking cradle, or like great raven's wings flitting to and fro
+inaudibly.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from the court came the rumble of carriage wheels, whether in
+arrival or departure they could not determine. Both started up and
+listened and looked at the clock.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve&mdash;impossible! The horses were never harnessed before quarter to
+two. They would have to wait entirely too long at the station.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the milkman who had been delayed at the railroad in
+getting his cans.</p>
+
+<p>They calmed down.</p>
+
+<p>A long, precious hour was still ahead of them, rich in care-free
+pleasures and oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>To express his triumph Von Prell sucked in his cheeks and rounded his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>With a luxurious smile Lilly put out her arms and drew herself up to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant three short, sharp raps sounded on the door opening into
+the corridor, and Miss von Schwertfeger called:</p>
+
+<p>"Open the door, Lilly! At once!"</p>
+
+<p>Walter jumped to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly looked around he had already left the room.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a ringing in her ears, a dull desire to let herself sink down;
+but renewed raps at the door tore her out of bed and insisted upon her
+turning the key.</p>
+
+<p>Before she could stow herself under the covers again to conceal her
+overwhelming shame, she noticed Miss von Schwertfeger look about the
+room hastily, make a dash for something round and grey unostentatiously
+lying in a corner&mdash;Lilly did not realise it was Walter's cap until
+later&mdash;shove back the bolt of the door to the colonel's room, and then
+in sudden transition to tranquillity seat herself alongside Lilly's
+pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful not to cry," Lilly heard her say; and that instant the
+colonel's step resounded in the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, so late! How time does fly when you talk!" cried Miss von
+Schwertfeger for the benefit of the colonel before he entered. Her voice
+expressed endless astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>There he stood disagreeably surprised, it seemed, not to find his young
+wife alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you drop from all of a sudden, colonel? You didn't order a
+special train, did you? You couldn't have flown here either. At least
+I've never observed that you possess the art of flying, have you Lilly
+dear? Poor Lilly's lying there perfectly stiff with surprise."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Miss von Schwertfeger talked against time, evidently trying to
+secure a few moments for Lilly in which she might pull herself together.</p>
+
+<p>And the colonel willy-nilly had to render account. On the way to the
+station it had occurred to him that one of the neighbours&mdash;he mentioned
+the name&mdash;was celebrating his birthday that day. So he drove over to his
+place instead of going to town.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss von Schwertfeger, "the greatest marvels have the
+simplest explanations. Good-night, dear, I hope you sleep well and get
+rid of that headache of yours."</p>
+
+<p>The colonel pricked up his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"If she has a headache, why didn't you let her go to sleep long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>When once aroused, not the least inconsistency escaped his attention.
+But Miss von Schwertfeger was his match, and rejoined without an
+instant's hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"She wanted compresses again, but I thought it better simply to hold my
+hand to her forehead. She was just about to go to sleep; and we ought
+not to disturb her any more. Don't you agree with me, colonel?
+Good-night, colonel."</p>
+
+<p>With that she extinguished the lights.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to cry to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Stay here, stay here, he'll choke me."</p>
+
+<p>But Miss von Schwertfeger was already out in the corridor; and she had
+done such excellent preliminary work that the colonel after a brief "I
+hope you feel better," to Lilly, left the room without further question.</p>
+
+<p>Had he remained, the game might have ended in a nervous breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly lay in bed paralysed by a dull fright, listening now for sounds in
+the colonel's room, now to the wailing of the wind, interrupted for
+three or four seconds by a very, very soft rustle.</p>
+
+<p>That was the ladder gliding over the rail as Walter let it down from the
+balcony. So long as he had seen the light in Lilly's room, he had wisely
+remained on the balcony. She could hear him remove the ladder and set it
+where it belonged. Now at length, now that she felt they were both
+secure, came a shuddering realisation of what had happened, accompanied
+by a desire to call out and cry aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Anna von Schwertfeger! What had her conduct meant? What had impelled her
+to implicate herself in so sinful a deed? Wasn't she risking her name,
+her existence, the reward of many years' labour? How had Lilly, wretched
+sinner that she was, come to deserve so great a sacrifice? Her heart
+expanded in gratitude. She could no longer endure lying in bed. She
+would have to go down and thank Anna forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed without making a sound, took the precaution to bolt the door
+between the two bedrooms, and slipped out into the dark corridor, where
+she peeped through the keyhole of the colonel's room, and saw him lying
+in bed already. The old oak steps cracked frightfully; but they had that
+habit even when no one was walking on them, and often kept up the sound
+of a tread all night.</p>
+
+<p>Light was shining in Miss von Schwertfeger's room. Lilly heard her
+sharp, hard steps as she paced to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she ventured to knock.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I, Anna. I&mdash;Lilly."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want? Go back to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no. I must speak to you. I must."</p>
+
+<p>The door opened.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, come in."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to throw her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger's neck, but
+she shook her off.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not in the mood for scenes," she said. Her trumpet-toned voice,
+which she muffled with difficulty, had lost all traces of sympathy. "And
+you needn't thank me, because I did not act from love of you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly seemed very small to herself and very much scolded. Since the days
+of her thrashings at the hands of Mrs. Asmussen no one had ever given
+her such a reception.</p>
+
+<p>"First you help me," she faltered, "and then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Since you are here, you might as well answer some questions I have to
+ask," said Miss von Schwertfeger. "Close your dress&mdash;it's cold here&mdash;and
+sit down." Lilly obeyed. "In the first place: did I in any way ever help
+to bring about a meeting between you and that man?"</p>
+
+<p>"When could you have?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I am asking."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary. You weren't even willing for me to take the riding
+lessons."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, later, did I ever leave you without supervision while you were
+taking your lessons?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without supervision? Why, almost always you yourself were present."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it I who proposed your going out riding alone with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"You? Of course not. The first time we went without asking, and after
+that it was the colonel who wanted us to."</p>
+
+<p>"Was I careful to see that everything in your room was in order?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I think so. Why, even lately I've noticed you come to my
+room before you went to bed as if to say good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"You've probably taken me to be your enemy, your spy."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't put yourself out for me very much, I thought."</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger laughed a hard, dreary laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say is very valuable," she said. "It proves to me that I made
+no blunders in carrying out my plan, and need not reproach myself for
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"What plan?" asked Lilly, utterly bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger measured her with a glance of pitying scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, I knew everything. I saw it coming from the very first,
+the moment you met him. I calculated it on my fingers the way I
+calculate the cost of a meal. I simply let matters drift. I could do so
+without dishonouring myself. Besides there was no use interfering. You
+were bent upon your own ruin."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done to you," Lilly stammered, swallowing her tears, "to
+make you hate me so? I never wanted to oust you from your position. I
+subjected myself to you from the very first. I put myself completely
+into your hands, and now you do this to me."</p>
+
+<p>"If I hated you, you wouldn't be sitting here. You would probably be
+straying along some country road. I had you in my grasp and could have
+crushed you at least a dozen times, but didn't. However, I'll tell you
+the truth. I <i>did</i> hate you, that is, before I knew you. I imagined you
+a sly, fresh little thing, who held off from the colonel in a pure
+spirit of calculation, until he adopted the extreme measure to which old
+libertines resort in such cases. But when I saw you, you dear child,
+without malice or guile, defenceless, and with the best intentions in
+the world to love the colonel and me, too, if possible, I had to back
+down&mdash;I and my hate. Then you became nothing else to me than a small,
+insignificant creature, which one uses so long as it is serviceable, and
+shoves aside after it has fulfilled its purpose. I am not concerned with
+you any more. You dropped out of the game long ago, and now the colonel
+and myself are playing it alone. I'll have to have it out with him, and
+then my work's done."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt nothing but dull, impotent astonishment, as if doors were
+being opened and curtains drawn aside, and she were looking into men's
+hearts as into a fiery abyss.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were so attached to him," she said. "I thought&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it occurred to her that her first suspicion had not been far
+from the truth. This hardened, commanding spinster, whose beauty was not
+yet entirely faded, had found favour in the eyes of her employer some
+ten or fifteen years before, had then been neglected, and was now
+taking revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger divined her thoughts, and dismissed them with a
+shrug of her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Had it been that," she said, "I should have known how to acquiesce in
+my fate. And if I had still retained my place in the castle, I should
+have cherished it as my sanctuary. No, my dear, matters in this world
+are not so simple. There are even worse hells."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly now heard a story which filled her soul with horror and pity&mdash;the
+story of the house she lived in, the story of which she was the
+concluding chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel, who had always been a man of violence and a mad voluptuary,
+had insisted upon taking in pupils in housekeeping under the pretext
+that when he came home on leave, he had to have youth and jollity about
+him. He reserved for himself the choice of the pupils. In this way only
+those came whom he had decided upon in advance. For a long time Miss von
+Schwertfeger noticed nothing amiss. But the servants began to tell her
+stories of secret orgies and mad chases on the upper floor, of how the
+colonel pursued girls clad in glittering raiment&mdash;the colonel had always
+liked transparent robes of silver. Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes were
+completely opened when some of the girls attempted suicide. She left.
+But she was poor and accustomed to command, and she could not endure
+subordinate positions. Dreadful distress was the result. The colonel had
+not lost her from sight; and when it seemed to him she had sunk low
+enough, he again offered her the position of housekeeper in his castle,
+promising she would have nothing to complain of. She crawled back to him
+like a starved dog. Soon he broke his word, and the indecent goings-on
+began again. But she no longer had the courage to resist. She learned to
+be blind and deaf when lewd glances were exchanged at table and screams
+and laughter penetrated to her room during the night. She even learned
+to keep curious servants at a distance, and throw a cover of concealment
+over the house's shame. Her relation to the girls became motherly.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be surprised," she interposed, "if he hadn't made the same
+proposition to you, saying I would take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>The fateful evening in which she had become the colonel's betrothed
+arose in Lilly's memory. While walking about her greedily, still in a
+state of indecision, he had spoken of a fine, aristocratic woman under
+whose protection she should live in his castle until she had grown into
+womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger went on with her recital. She described how rage
+at the disgraceful position she was in ate into her soul like a
+malignant cancer, how it finally took sole possession of her being to
+the exclusion of every feeling except the desire for reprisal. His
+marriage should furnish the weapons. She would be blind and deaf, just
+as she had been compelled to be before. Nothing else. She would simply
+let matters take their natural course.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she had acted until that night.</p>
+
+<p>And that night the sword must surely have fallen on Lilly and the
+colonel; but at the last decisive moment she realised her strength would
+not hold out. That young, good-natured, guiltless yet guilty wife, had
+become too dear to her. She could not sacrifice Lilly to her scheme of
+revenge.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you said you hadn't acted out of love for me," Lilly ventured
+to interject.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger fixed her eyes on Lilly's face in an aggrieved
+stare.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, if you weren't a stupid thing, who has to sin in order
+to mature, you would have a better understanding of what goes on inside
+a person like myself. For the present be satisfied that you are out of
+danger."</p>
+
+<p>In a gush of gratitude Lilly threw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger, and
+kissed her face and hands; and Miss von Schwertfeger no longer repulsed
+her. She stroked her hair, and spoke to her as to a child.</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling at her feet Lilly confessed. She told how her relations with
+Walter had developed insensibly, how they had been old friends, and how
+he had really been the author of her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Happiness?" Miss von Schwertfeger drawled, and drew in the air through
+the right corner of her mouth, causing a sound like a whistle.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started, looked at her, and understood.</p>
+
+<p>The question burned in her brain: "Am I better than I should have been
+had I allowed the colonel to drag me here without marrying me?"</p>
+
+<p>Eleven months had passed since that night when he courted her.</p>
+
+<p>She put her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger, and cried, cried, cried.
+It was so good to know there was a sisterly, no, a motherly, person in
+whose dress she could bury her tearful face. She had not experienced
+such easement since the day a certain knife had been waved over her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>The affair with Von Prell, of course, could not go on. He and Lilly must
+not meet even once again. Miss von Schwertfeger demanded it, and Lilly
+acquiesced without a word of protest.</p>
+
+<p>If only she had not had her mission!</p>
+
+<p>"What mission?" asked Miss von Schwertfeger.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly told of the holy task she had to perform in his life; how her love
+had awakened him to the realisation of a loftier, purer life; how she
+had to answer with every drop of blood in her body for his rising to
+better things and entering upon a noble, beneficent field of activity.</p>
+
+<p>It was Miss von Schwertfeger's turn to be astonished. She listened, and
+looked at Lilly with great, doubting eyes, then got up, and paced the
+room agitatedly, muttering:</p>
+
+<p>"Incredible! Incredible!"</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly asked her what was incredible, she kissed her on her
+forehead, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"You poor thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you will suffer much in life."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon it was agreed that Miss von Schwertfeger should speak with him
+once again, and the price of her silence was to be the breaking off of
+all relations between him and Lilly. They must not take their rides
+together, either.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly begged for only one thing, to be allowed to write him a farewell
+letter. She thought she owed this to him so that he should not harbour
+doubts of her and his future.</p>
+
+<p>Then the two women parted.</p>
+
+<p>Released, redeemed, born into a new life, Lilly walked upstairs,
+forgetting every precaution. But, thank goodness! the colonel was
+snoring.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck four, and the shuffling of the stablemen already
+resounded in the courtyard.</p>
+
+<p>Before Lilly threw herself in bed, she cast a look of farewell at the
+lodge, and rejoiced that renunciation was so easy. She had not thought
+it possible.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<blockquote><p>"Dear Beloved Mr. von Prell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>From what has happened you can imagine that everything between
+us must come to an end. Yes, all's over. We shall never see
+each other except at meal times. If you ask me whether I am
+very sad, I will be brave and say, "no," hoping thereby to
+assuage the pain of parting for both of us.</p>
+
+<p>But easy or difficult&mdash;that's not the question. The main thing
+is, our feelings should raise us to pure heights. True
+greatness of renunciation must illumine our lives. Yes, I
+expect you to show the greatness of renunciation. Our lives
+after this must be dedicated entirely to recollections of the
+past. Besides, can we hope ever again to find anything so
+beautiful as those unspeakably exquisite hours we passed
+together? I have given up thoughts of happiness, and you must
+do the same. From now on my one sacred interest will be my
+husband's welfare; and I ask you, with all the strength you
+possess, likewise to labour at the reconstruction of your life.</p>
+
+<p>Life is earnest, solemn, holy. I feel it is. The conviction
+comes upon me with force, and has possessed me ever since I was
+led back to the right path by a friend of mine. You must feel
+it, too.</p>
+
+<p>This letter is my last to you. Write to me once again. Oh, only
+once. And stick the answer in the pea-shooter, which still
+stands on the balcony. I shall have no peace until I know our
+souls are united by the same ideal. Farewell, and at table
+don't make any secret allusions to the past. You would merely
+hurt me and make me doubt your good faith.</p>
+
+<p>Ever with feelings of sisterly friendship,</p>
+
+<p>Your L. v. M."</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<blockquote><p>"Dearest Friend:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The profound emotions which have held me in their grip since my
+interview with our honoured friend, have, if possible, been
+deepened by your lovely letter. I feel a tremendous impulse to
+accomplish by deeds of atonement that which has never yet been.
+I am prepared to scorn the seven deadly sins. I will carry in
+mind all the paragons of virtue from the young Tobias to St.
+Helena, and will try to find that pure happiness in the great
+renunciation you demand of me, which alone, they say, is
+unalloyed with regret&mdash;an advantage which bears little weight
+with me, since I am acquainted with that evil institution only
+by hearsay.</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, dearest, most charming of women, farewell. It was
+<i>very</i> delightful. I can swear to that without perjuring
+myself. Should you require pledges for the future, I can
+further swear that: 1, I will shun alcohol; 2, I will declare
+war upon the female sex; 3, I will devote myself to the
+encyclopedia of agriculture with inordinate, unalterable love.
+Ha, do you smell the rarified atmosphere?</p>
+
+<p>Once more, farewell. After I have climbed the ladder of my
+hopes for the last time, I will lay it to repose under a wintry
+grave of pine branches. When the time comes, may it awaken to a
+new spring.</p>
+
+<p>With a kiss on your slim, refreshingly large hand,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your much improved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Walter von Prell."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Lilly found this letter the second morning after the great event in the
+shape of a pellet stuck into the mouth of the pea-shooter, which leaned
+innocently against the jamb of the balcony door.</p>
+
+<p>It did not provide her with unqualified satisfaction. There were turns
+of expression in it which raised doubts as to the sincerity of his
+conversion. Nevertheless, his asseverations were so plain and
+unmistakable she felt she might take the core to be sound. It was simply
+that he could not refrain from his wanton way of speaking, which the
+person who loved him would have to acquiesce in.</p>
+
+<p>She kissed the letter and stuck it in her bosom, to lie there warm and
+secure awhile before she tore it up.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon she took a walk about the grounds, and actually found
+under her balcony a long heap of pine branches from between which a few
+ladder rungs peeped at her familiarly.</p>
+
+<p>Rejoiced at this token of his pain she ran off to the park, now soggy
+from the autumn rains, and sauntered about, marvelling from time to time
+that renunciation was so easy.</p>
+
+<p>After all it was not so easy.</p>
+
+<p>She discovered it was not in the course of the next few days, when life
+began to lose its content and intensity, when the hours jogged along in
+dreary autumnal greyness, and the evening came and the morning came
+without a reason why.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, she failed to find that support in Anna von Schwertfeger which
+she had expected to. Although her friend withdrew none of the promises
+she had made, yet a shadowy wall circumscribed her, which no insinuating
+love could penetrate. She seemed almost to fear that too great
+familiarity with Lilly would bring down upon her own head the sin of the
+adulteress.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had much to suffer from the colonel these days. She, like the
+rest, now fell a victim to his attacks of fury. And what was worse, in
+moments of quiet self-abandon, she would suddenly feel his dark,
+lowering look fastened upon her, betokening many a thought in his mind
+which boded her no good.</p>
+
+<p>She began to fear he had gotten wind of her affair with Von Prell; but
+Anna pooh-poohed the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"The symptoms would be rather different," she remarked. "Such a
+suspicion would not pass without leaving a few broken chairs or lamps
+behind. My opinion is, he feels bored at home. He's hankering for the
+regiment, and holds you responsible for the change in his life. I
+sincerely hope he doesn't come to hate you on that account. In that
+event only two courses would be open to you: separation or suicide."</p>
+
+<p>Here was small comfort. And no less dispiriting was his hesitation to
+introduce her to the neighbours. Long before, Miss von Schwertfeger had
+declared Lilly's education complete. No colonel's wife or high-born dame
+could now find fault with her manners. But the colonel looked at her
+distrustfully, and deferred the visits from week to week.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly kept up bravely in all her tribulations. Faith in herself and,
+still more, faith in him, gave her peace and strength.</p>
+
+<p>She regulated her days strictly according to rule with a fixed
+occupation for each hour. She learned Goethe's poems by heart, studied
+Shakespeare in English, read histories of art, and lost herself in the
+mazes of the French Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>She took special delight in a large geographical work, in which there
+were many pictures of southern ports, tropical forests, and bald, rocky
+mountain ranges.</p>
+
+<p>There were also full illustrations of Italy&mdash;pious pilgrims on crusades,
+enigmatic churches, and slender-columned porticos, which filled her with
+an ardent longing to be there.</p>
+
+<p>When she travelled great distances into strange countries and looked
+about timidly to find her way back again, whom did she see standing
+there all of a sudden, blond, freckled, in a black and white checked
+fall suit, making deep reverences? "As my lady commands."</p>
+
+<p>The tears welled up in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her one diversion was to stand behind her balcony door&mdash;without his
+knowing she was there, of course&mdash;and look over to the lodge through the
+openings in the vine, the last leaves of which fluttered like little red
+flags.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, she might be proud of him. When he sat at the window in his leisure
+hours he never let himself be seen without the encyclopedia of
+agriculture in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>He closed his shutters early every evening. In his frivolous days he had
+hung heavy portières at the windows, which, with the help of the
+shutters, prevented the tiniest ray of light from penetrating to the
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly doubted not in the least that his student's lamp burned until late
+at night, while he sat there over his book copying valuable extracts and
+soaring on the pinions of great creative ideas.</p>
+
+<p>She soared with him. She knew he could not lose his footing now. She had
+his vow, and he held her honour in his keeping. That would serve as a
+talisman, a guide on the road leading upward to a new life.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks passed.</p>
+
+<p>He begged to be excused from coming to Sunday dinners; for which she was
+grateful to him. Fortune had favoured her still further by having
+bestowed a cold upon her that fateful night, as a result of which the
+physician forbade horseback riding throughout the winter. In this Miss
+von Schwertfeger probably had a hand.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Once on a day early in December, the colonel, as if to spite his
+customary surliness, appeared at dinner in high feather. He chuckled to
+himself, his eyes danced and looked cunning, secret laughter, as it
+were, ran down his cheeks in rivulets.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly ventured to ask what was amusing him.</p>
+
+<p>At first he refused to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stuff and nonsense, mind your own affairs." But he could not
+contain himself, and finally began: "Well, guess what happened to me.
+One of the men at the club said to me I'd better look sharp to my Prell,
+because stories were afloat that he kept knocking about in vile joints
+night after night and had even gotten mixed up in a nasty brawl on
+account of a hussy of a barmaid."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt an icy numbness creep slowly upward from her feet. Her limbs
+grew rigid. She smiled, and the smile cut into her cheeks like a
+sharp-edged stone.</p>
+
+<p>"At first, of course, I merely laughed at him, because, you know,
+there's only the one train to take going and coming, and lately <i>I've</i>
+been on that train nearly every day. No horse can stand twenty miles
+each way night after night, and the pocket money I give him won't hire a
+special train. That's what I said to the major; but he insisted. The
+younger gentlemen had told him; and it would be a pity if after all Von
+Prell had to be deprived of his uniform. When I got to the station at
+one o'clock, the business was still buzzing about in my head. I had a
+few moments' time, so I looked through the whole train&mdash;fourth class and
+all. Of course, not a sign. I did the same thing three times in
+succession. Well, I thought, it's a lie. And now listen. Yesterday, when
+I was just about to get into the train at this end, I remembered I had
+left my umbrella in the carriage. I can't get used to that piece of
+furniture. So I went back. The platform was already empty, but the train
+was still standing there; and when I passed the baggage car&mdash;sliding
+doors open&mdash;I saw someone on the opposite side jump out to the tracks
+and scamper off. 'Stop!' I called. But he ran and ran, into the woods. I
+was going to tell the baggage master, who was on the platform next to
+the locomotive, but Prell flashed into my mind. I said to Henry: 'Drive
+as if the devil were after you,' and we reached here in five minutes.
+But then, I reflected, he must have heard the carriage wheels from the
+path. So I went up to my room to hurry and turn on the lights. I wanted
+him to think I was in my room already. Did I wake you up, Lilly?" The
+colonel started. "How you look, Lilly!"</p>
+
+<p>"I?" she said, and smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>"She hasn't been feeling very well all day," Miss von Schwertfeger
+interjected hastily. "Besides, your story's very exciting, colonel. I'm
+all keyed up, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm," he muttered, twisting the end of his black dyed moustache,
+evidently little desirous of concluding his tale. But Lilly could not
+calm herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I must know, I must know," she cried, clasping her hands. She was
+beside herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then," said the colonel, fixing his eyes on her, "down I go again
+in a jiffy&mdash;in ambush in front of the lodge&mdash;there he comes, stooping
+like a polecat&mdash;stands still&mdash;eyes my window&mdash;sees the light&mdash;aha, he
+thinks, all right. And just as he's about to stick the key in the lock,
+I tackle him by the collar."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly burst out into a mad laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that funny, isn't that funny!" she cried. This time the colonel
+believed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Something funnier's coming," he continued. "'If you confess
+everything,' I said, 'I'll pardon you. But only on that condition.
+Otherwise you're off to-morrow bright and early.' Well, what do you
+think the rascal was up to? The good-for-nothing has a lady
+love&mdash;barmaid in the Golden Apple&mdash;where the sergeants and clerks
+resort. So, for the sake of bumming with her, he bribed a railroad
+official and actually went to town and came back as a piece of the
+king's baggage. Night after night rode in the same train as I did&mdash;each
+way. If <i>that</i> isn't rank impudence, what&mdash;Lilly!"</p>
+
+<p>A pause ensued. Lilly experienced a sensation of swaying and reeling as
+if tossed on stormy seas, a buzzing and singing; at the same time she
+felt Miss von Schwertfeger press her hand under the table by way of
+warning.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel rose, took Lilly's head between his hands, and pressing it
+until she thought her ears would split, said:</p>
+
+<p>"It seems you <i>do</i> need rest."</p>
+
+<p>With that he faced about, and left the room abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now gather your wits together," Lilly heard her friend's disturbed
+voice behind her, "because after this he'll be on the look-out."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to throw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger's breast and be
+petted and comforted. But Miss von Schwertfeger, as if afraid somebody
+might catch her in too intimate a conversation with Lilly, held herself
+aloof, and said coolly, though in a friendly tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, dear, I have something I must attend to this minute."</p>
+
+<p>With that, she, too, left the room.</p>
+
+<p>What now?</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stared into space. The remnants of the precipitate meal littered
+the table; the dark carved furniture cast black-edged rays from out of
+the room's wintry twilight; the brass chandeliers gleamed palely. All
+was as usual, and yet nothing was there, nothing but an awful,
+all-devouring void, an abyss which drew her into its bosom with the
+enticements of grappling hooks and huge tongs.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped to the window and looked out apathetically.</p>
+
+<p>The bare branches swayed in the wind, the ivy on the railing fluttered,
+even the arched stalks of the rose bushes, the heads of which the
+gardener had secured under heaps of earth, trembled and quivered this
+way and that. The world was writhing in the clutch of winter. The only
+still things were the leaves lying on the thin coating of snow which
+covered the ground; but the leaves were dead already.</p>
+
+<p>What now?</p>
+
+<p>If <i>that</i> could happen, then the very earth beneath her feet gave way;
+then there was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no strength, and
+no fidelity; then you might as well throw yourself down beside the
+leaves out there and die.</p>
+
+<p>But before that&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>Dishes rattled behind her. No one had rung for the maid, but she had
+come of her own accord and was helping Ferdinand clear the table.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly thought of Katie and that other creature in whose arms he had made
+mock of her and her faith in him.</p>
+
+<p>She dragged her torpid legs up the steps to the rooms where she felt at
+home. In passing the colonel's door, she caught the sound of his tread
+as he fairly ran to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>She experienced not the faintest fear of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him run, if he wants to," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>When in her own room, she heard him give orders to have the carriage
+brought around immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"For all I care, he may stay here."</p>
+
+<p>She stepped out on the balcony.</p>
+
+<p>The iciness benumbing her neck crept into her arms and spread down to
+her very finger tips.</p>
+
+<p>There sat Walter, as always in his free time after dinner, completely
+absorbed in the great encyclopedia of agriculture, so full of zeal for
+study that every now and then he would pass his hand through his hair in
+a preoccupied way and without looking up&mdash;he hadn't so much time to
+spare, Heavens! no!&mdash;he would flick the ashes from his cigarette into a
+flower pot.</p>
+
+<p>In the face of this infamous game, which he played for the sole purpose
+of deceiving her, Lilly was seized by a wild, infuriated desire to
+denounce him, which completely robbed her of her senses. A stinging and
+pricking lifted her paralysed arms. The iciness gave way to a painful
+fever, which throbbed in her temples, and hung a red curtain before her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She saw nothing, heard nothing.</p>
+
+<p>She rushed down the staircase, tore open the garden door, leapt down the
+stone steps, and ran at full speed straight across the lawn to the
+lodge.</p>
+
+<p>Whether someone spied her or not she did not care.</p>
+
+<p>The door to his room banged against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>She had not stopped to knock.</p>
+
+<p>A rank, pungent smell, as in a menagerie, assailed her nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>There he was, sitting at the window. He jumped to his feet. The grey
+daylight glided over his head.</p>
+
+<p>"He's had his hair cut brush fashion again," thought Lilly. "The
+dissolute life he's living demands it; the elegance of the dives demands
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" he said, crumbling his burning cigarette between his
+fingers, "a pretty howdy-do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;? Why did you&mdash;?" she screamed at him. "You're a blackguard! Your
+word's not to be trusted! You're a liar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it!" he said, and looked about helplessly. "<i>How</i> will my lady
+get out of this mess?"</p>
+
+<p>"You broke your promise&mdash;the most sacred bond uniting us.
+You&mdash;you&mdash;threw it away on a barmaid&mdash;a barmaid, a creature who would
+hang herself on anybody's neck for a couple of pennies. You're a vulgar
+profligate! You're not worth a woman's having tried to save you&mdash;you
+don't <i>want</i> to be saved&mdash;you <i>want</i> to go to the bad&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All very good and fine," he said, "and probably very saddening and
+incontrovertible truths; but will my lady please explain how she expects
+to get out of here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything I am more indifferent about," she cried. "I came
+for you to give me an account of yourself. I am asking you to answer
+me&mdash;immediately&mdash;here&mdash;now&mdash;on the spot."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my lady, I will without fail. But first&mdash;damn it! hell! Get
+away from the window!"</p>
+
+<p>He cast a sharp, all-embracing glance at the castle. Nothing suspicious
+to be detected at that moment, at least.</p>
+
+<p>Alarmed by his snarling at her in that way, Lilly fled into the interior
+of the room, which was low, dark, and ill furnished. Here the vile
+animal smell was still stronger. From where it came was made clear to
+her the next instant. As she approached the rear wall, something
+suddenly snapped at her foot, and two little circular torches gleamed up
+at her wickedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Down, Tommy!" called Von Prell, while Lilly recoiled with an
+exclamation of fright.</p>
+
+<p>So that was Tommy, the other member of the triple alliance.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly leaned against the arm of the old spindle-legged sofa. Its worn
+springs squeaked under her pressure and pricked her thumbs, and the
+thought flashed into her mind:</p>
+
+<p>"What am I doing here? What is it all to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Von Prell the while stepped from door to door listening.</p>
+
+<p>"If that old Leichtweg had happened to be in the next room," he said,
+"we should be dying a dog's death. But if you go this instant, the front
+way, into the courtyard, they might suppose you had come to ask
+something, and perhaps we can patch it up still."</p>
+
+<p>All Lilly perceived in his words was a sly attempt at evasion, and a
+fresh flood of indignation overwhelmed her.</p>
+
+<p>"First justify yourself," she cried. "Until you do, I won't go this way,
+or that way, or the other way."</p>
+
+<p>To enforce her resolve she dropped down on the screeching sofa, which
+was covered with a dirty grey horseblanket folded into several
+thicknesses for protection against the sharp points of the springs.</p>
+
+<p>He was compelled to yield.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then, look here&mdash;a fellow's a human being, isn't he? And if
+he's given the go-by in that common way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Common way?" faltered Lilly. "What was common in my letter? Didn't I
+tear my heart out and throw it at your feet, and didn't Miss von
+Schwertfeger&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>She could not continue. Wrath and despair choked her utterance.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Von Prell, who at first had been at a complete loss,
+arrived at the proper policy to adopt.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's just it," he said, growing more aggrieved with each word.
+"Is a love like ours to be concluded with a lukewarm homily? And that
+Schwertfeger&mdash;did I deserve being dismissed by you like an asthmatic old
+dog through the intermediation of a third person, a horrid, disgusting
+creature? Isn't it enough to make a man desperate after all he's done
+for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;did you&mdash;do for me?" queried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;wasn't I a self-sacrificing comrade the whole time? Wasn't I
+disloyal even to my old colonel for your sake, that fine old gentleman,
+who saved my life, you might say? You see, all that's no small matter.
+Do you suppose it didn't cut me to the quick? Do you suppose I didn't
+get the blues? And then to be fooling round here alone night after night
+with that dung-beetle, that Tommy&mdash;the beast smells, I tell you. So why
+not try to dull one's feelings? Shouldn't I&mdash;how shall I say?&mdash;deaden
+the anguish of lost love? Not even deaden it? It's a perfect mystery to
+me how you can demand such a thing of me. We speak different languages,
+my dear child&mdash;there's a yawning chasm dividing our natures&mdash;and you're
+even willing to risk our two lives for such mummery. As a rule, I'm
+<i>not</i> an old aunt, but indeed, if only I had you out of this place."</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this long speech he had walked about Lilly in a semicircle,
+with one hand thrust in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, making short,
+jerky steps, which forcefully expressed his righteous indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sat on the sofa stiffly upright, mechanically turning her head
+after him now to the right, now to the left, and staring at him with
+great, uncomprehending eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When he stopped speaking, he drew a cigarette from the case and
+energetically beat off the superfluous tobacco with the index finger of
+his left hand.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly rose in all her height, leaving the sofa and the table next to the
+sofa far below her.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Walter," she said, "from this moment everything between us is
+at an end."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, wasn't it long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean&mdash;inwardly, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, inwardly, too!" He made a little grimace. "With you that probably
+means if you have something in your stomach."</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly saw her love so ridiculed and mutilated, she could no longer
+restrain herself. With an outcry she ran from the sofa, and hid her
+face&mdash;anywhere at all&mdash;on the wall next to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Get away from the window!" she heard him hiss.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what did she care!</p>
+
+<p>In the extremity of his fright he took to pleading.</p>
+
+<p>"Just come away from the window," he said. "It was all mere twaddle. I
+simply wanted to make you laugh again, nothing more. Please come away
+from the window."</p>
+
+<p>She did not budge.</p>
+
+<p>To crawl off somewhere! To crawl away and hide herself and all her
+shame.</p>
+
+<p>She felt his hands seize her rudely.</p>
+
+<p>That, too! To suffer violence, too!</p>
+
+<p>She flung him off, wrestled with him, clawed at his neck&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A whistling, a clash and clatter&mdash;shivers of glass flew over their
+heads, and a long, dark something, like the shaft of a lance, sped past
+them, knocked against something, rebounded, and fell at their feet.</p>
+
+<p>The same instant Lilly felt a rush of cold air on her forehead, which
+aroused her from the stupefaction of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>One of the two upper window panes had been broken.</p>
+
+<p>No living creature was to be seen. But the balcony door yonder, which
+had been closed a moment before, now showed a dark opening, and was
+swinging shut.</p>
+
+<p>"A narrow escape," murmured Walter, and stooped to pick up the
+mysterious thing from the floor, while the fragments of glass gritted
+beneath his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"The pea-shooter," Lilly faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"A mercy he didn't happen to have his fowling-piece at hand," said
+Walter, "else we'd be riddled into sieves."</p>
+
+<p>With the back of his hand he wiped away the sweat of fright standing on
+his forehead in bright beads.</p>
+
+<p>None the less he was a brave little chap, and knew on the instant what
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>He sprang to the wardrobe under which Tommy had burrowed, fetched out
+his army revolver, and tested all its parts. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, please go into Leichtweg's room, and lock yourself in. The
+colonel's simply gone to load his gun. Then he'll be here."</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly refused. Her wrath against him had completely evaporated.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me stay with you, let me stay with you!" she begged, clasping his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible, child," he replied, with the old masterful lift to his
+brows. "What's coming is men's business."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll stand out in the hall, and receive him at your door."</p>
+
+<p>He bit his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "if you take it that way, I can't help myself. Sit
+down, please."</p>
+
+<p>He removed the key from the outside of the door, stuck it in the lock on
+the inside and cautiously turned it several times.</p>
+
+<p>"Between loading and shooting," he said then, "there's a great big
+difference&mdash;but the devil knows."</p>
+
+<p>He took out his watch, and listened intently for sounds from the
+outside, while he counted, "a half&mdash;one&mdash;one and a half&mdash;two. Probably
+can't find his cartridges." Then commandingly: "Do sit down. You'll need
+your legs to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sank in one corner of the sofa, and he seated himself in the
+other, placing the watch between them on the bumpy seat. Both counted
+now with their eyes fastened on the second hand. "Two and a
+half&mdash;three&mdash;three and a half&mdash;four&mdash;four and a half&mdash;five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Not a sound, save the wind howling in the bare branches.</p>
+
+<p>Then it seemed to them they heard the trot of horses starting in the
+courtyard and dying away on the other side of the gates.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom's he gone to fetch?" asked Walter. "We're not ready for seconds
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>Red suns danced before Lilly's eyes. The ceiling began to rise and sink.</p>
+
+<p>Walter kept on counting.</p>
+
+<p>"Seven&mdash;eight&mdash;eight and a half."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Nine&mdash;nine and a half&mdash;ten&mdash;" Suddenly he emitted a faint whistle, and
+grasped his revolver.</p>
+
+<p>The front door grated on its hinges, steps resounded, but not the
+threatening, thundering steps of a vengeful husband. They were soft,
+hesitating, dragging steps.</p>
+
+<p>Then for a while nothing again&mdash;no sound, except the breathing of two
+persons&mdash;and someone else&mdash;on the other side of the door, it seemed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" called Walter.</p>
+
+<p>Now came a knock.</p>
+
+<p>Soft, broken, as if of trembling, failing fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there, in the devil's name?" he called again.</p>
+
+<p>"Anna von Schwertfeger."</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>There she stood, ashen-hued, red about the mouth, her lids quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"The colonel has just driven off to Baron von Platow. He will return in
+three hours. He charged me to tell you, Lilly, that when he comes back
+he doesn't want to find you on his premises."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he charge you to tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.</p>
+
+<p>Miss von Schwertfeger, without regarding him, took Lilly's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Come. You haven't much time. We must pack."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but where am I to go?" she asked, helplessly, suffering herself to
+be drawn to her feet.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>When she got to the door of the lodge, she saw the carriage that was to
+convey her from the castle already rolling up the driveway.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IA" id="CHAPTER_IA"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>She was Lilly Czepanek again.</p>
+
+<p>In the divorce proceedings there had been no attempt at dissimulation or
+concealment, and the case moved along rapidly. Lilly alone was found
+guilty, and, upon the colonel's deposition, was deprived of the right to
+use her married name.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to be saved from the ruins," wrote Mr. Pieper, "except
+the jewels which I hope you diligently accumulated by following my
+advice and standing in front of fine shop-windows. The pearl necklace
+your ex-husband put about your neck on your wedding day&mdash;owing in part,
+I may now say, to my suggestion&mdash;which I will try to get back for you,
+is in itself sufficient to keep your head above water several years."</p>
+
+<p>The result of this letter was that Lilly took the pearl necklace, which
+after her flight she had found in one of her trunks among the laces and
+evening gowns, carried it to a jeweller, had him pack it up, and
+addressed it to Miss von Schwertfeger.</p>
+
+<p>She felt justified in considering the less valuable trinkets to be her
+personal property. She had already disposed of a considerable number of
+them, and what was left would scarcely suffice for more than half a
+year. Then poverty.</p>
+
+<p>But her material condition gave her little concern.</p>
+
+<p>Her regret for what she had lost was too profound, her consciousness of
+the shame she had undergone too lively, but that her future should not
+have been hidden from her perceptions behind a veil of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, tears, tears&mdash;oh, she learned to shed tears.</p>
+
+<p>She learned to swallow tears like salt sea water; she sucked them into
+her mouth with her lower lip thrust out, she shook them from her cheeks
+like drops of rain. And they kept welling up again, finally without
+cause, even after the pain had subsided&mdash;awake or asleep, they just
+came.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone away that grey, windy December day just before nightfall in
+a trembling state of stupefaction without complaint, without attempts at
+self-justification.</p>
+
+<p>Gone away blindly&mdash;anywhere&mdash;simply gone away&mdash;in all haste.</p>
+
+<p>She landed in Berlin, the haven of all the wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>In that world where oblivion spreads its blessing hands alike over the
+righteous and unrighteous, where enticing possibilities flash and
+sparkle, illuminating the dark days of inertness and prostration, where
+regret over a lost past by and by becomes tense, desirous expectation of
+happiness, and where the god Chance reigns supreme&mdash;in that world of the
+unknown and forsaken, in which none but those who are both old and poor
+sink into nothingness, hopeless outlaws&mdash;into that world Lilly crept.</p>
+
+<p>Many a dreary month she knocked about in lodging houses where divorcées
+with lost reputations huddle together, reminding one of little heaps of
+decaying apples; where the tone is given by Chilian attachés and agents
+of mysterious trades from Bucharest and Alexandria. In a friendly way
+she avoided the confidences of companions in misery, who lavished words
+of comfort, and with mute disregard repelled the advances&mdash;physical
+advances as well&mdash;of her enterprising, olive-complexioned neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>After a while she began to look about for a position&mdash;something unique,
+something between a lady in waiting and a chaperon, which would not be
+incongruous with her former station and the quiet dignity of her
+bearing.</p>
+
+<p>But positions of that sort seemed remarkably scarce.</p>
+
+<p>And all she reaped of her endeavours were the tender attentions of a few
+old gentlemen who came to see her in the evening, and could not find
+their way out again until the door was held wide open for them.</p>
+
+<p>Discouraged, she gave up going to employment bureaus and the useless
+ringing of front door bells. But her expectations had not yet sunk to
+the level of those of a shop-girl or model in a dressmaking
+establishment. And they never would sink so low, because "general's
+wife," as she was branded, no matter where she went, was written all
+over her.</p>
+
+<p>In that seething sea of humanity she tossed about without so much as a
+straw to clutch at; except, indeed, Walter's letter, which Miss von
+Schwertfeger forwarded to her two months after her expulsion. The poor
+boy was now completely ruined. Nevertheless, his letter gave proof of a
+modest attempt to offer her some support.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Dearest Friend:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I'm done for. I've been shot. A mere trifle when it happens to
+others; but when it happens to oneself, the consequence is, it
+considerably lessens one's hopes of entering upon a glorious
+career as head waiter on the other side of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless I thank fate for having been gracious enough to
+lead across my path so good, so touching a lamb, one so filled
+with the desire to redeem, as my baronissima.</p>
+
+<p>You will readily understand, O dearest, supergracious woman,
+that I in turn also feel a slight obligation to play the
+redeemer, if only to preserve our souls for each other.</p>
+
+<p>But "the how" presents some difficulties, to be sure. If I were
+to recommend you to the care of my former friends, your future
+would be settled. For in blissful hours leaves and virtues
+still fall.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I descend a step to those regions in which a sturdy
+Philistinism creeps on its belly before our coronets, even when
+those coronets lie shattered on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>In Alte Jakobstrasse in Berlin there dwells a respectable
+manufacturer of bronze ware, a comrade of the reserves, etc.,
+by name Richard Dehnicke, who feels he is indebted to me
+because I pumped him for coin.</p>
+
+<p>I am writing to him by this mail. Step boldly in among his
+lamps and vases. The former, I hope, will brighten your nights,
+the latter, daintily line your way in life, and he will not ask
+the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of
+beautiful women. Some queer fish there have to be in the world.</p>
+
+<p>My address will be</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Walter von Prell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Street-lounger &amp; Candidate for Fortune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chicago, First Stockyard to the Left.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>P. S.&mdash;Tommy sends his regards. Before going I planted a ball
+in his forehead."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This letter, the last and only greeting from her friend, left Lilly
+untouched. Soon after, Miss von Schwertfeger wrote, he set sail for the
+United States with a crippled arm. Their love had deserved an honourable
+burial, even if its rapture had not been genuine, even if its lofty
+purpose had set in dirt and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>"If only to preserve our souls for each other," he had written, the dear
+little fellow.</p>
+
+<p>The letter, however, offered a certain guarantee that in her hour of
+need, a helping hand would be stretched out to steady her. But the
+measure he recommended, she never, never thought of adopting. What she
+feared above all was that something which emanated from the eyes of men
+fixed upon her face in desire, that something which issued from men's
+lips persuasively, masterfully.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to keep her fate in her own hands and go her own way.</p>
+
+<p>What that way was to be, she had not yet determined.</p>
+
+<p>So irresolute had sorrow and anxiety made her that nothing but a faint
+breeze would have been required to head her life in a certain direction.</p>
+
+<p>But no breeze blew upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Months passed. Miss von Schwertfeger ceased to write. Lilly's money gave
+out. The little treasure of trinkets dwindled rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>The lodging houses to which she moved grew ever more modest. Chilian
+attachés and Greek trafficers were replaced by bankrupt real estate
+agents and unemployed bank clerks, who wanted to solace her in her
+loneliness by spending the evenings with her. And the women who came in
+soiled kimonos to pay her neighbourly visits cast greedy glances at the
+few brooches, bracelets and rings she still had left.</p>
+
+<p>So Lilly determined to make an end of this life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIA" id="CHAPTER_IIA"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>One of the best of the "best rooms" in Berlin which are to be found in
+houses having once known those renowned better days and which are let
+out to decent young women for thirty marks, including service and
+breakfast, was to be had from the widow Clothilde Laue.</p>
+
+<p>It contained red plush furniture, which embodied the acme of good taste
+at the time of the Franco-Prussian War. It contained a pier glass
+fantastically stuck from top to bottom with New Year's cards, cards of
+congratulation, and illustrated advertisements of soaps and powders. It
+contained photographs on the walls of actors once famous, whose fame in
+the meantime had faded no less than the autographs they had written
+beneath their pictures. It contained a washstand, whose marble top was
+covered with a tidy embroidered with the sententious couplet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To keep your body clean, be sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have your conscience just as pure.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It contained photograph albums, card-cases, a cigar clip in the shape of
+a windmill of olive wood, a green glass punch bowl, and a shaky pine bed
+modestly hidden behind blue woolen portières.</p>
+
+<p>It contained, finally, hung over the sofa in a gilt-edged glass case, a
+mysterious round creation. The thing consisted of six strips of paper
+braided together and radiating from a common centre. It was covered with
+gauze, beneath which the outline of pressed flowers could dimly be
+distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this best room on Neanderstrasse, four flights up, over a
+china shop, a piano-renting establishment, and a "repair studio," from
+the windows of which room an oblique view was to be obtained of the
+greenish grey waves of the Engelbecken, and into which a broad expanse
+of genuine Berlin smoky sky actually shone, that Lilly one day landed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue was a woman of fifty, worn out by overwork, with a face like a
+dried apple, and great staring, tearful eyes. She circled about Lilly in
+incredulous admiration, as if unable to comprehend that so much
+brilliance and beauty had strayed into her home.</p>
+
+<p>The very day of her arrival Lilly was informed of her history. Her
+husband had been cashier and bookkeeper at one of the favorite variety
+theatres in Berlin, and twenty years before had departed this world,
+leaving her without home or protection. There was no rosy glamour to
+glorify tears wept in solitude, no comic songs to drown the cry of
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved
+to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by
+an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for
+making others to sell.</p>
+
+<p>After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and
+disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her
+"pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist
+in her field.</p>
+
+<p>In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and
+where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table&mdash;she
+herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time&mdash;she had worked
+for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and
+weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned&mdash;thanks to her renown as a
+specialist!&mdash;so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her
+treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few
+betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of
+unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine
+aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because
+she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists
+only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and
+"pearl necklace"&mdash;Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers&mdash;and other such
+things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are
+taken as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She
+helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she
+encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held
+before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future.</p>
+
+<p>In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every
+day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There
+were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their
+fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the
+artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the
+hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated
+artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a
+pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had
+become vacant.</p>
+
+<p>The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift
+her jubilantly to the throne of mistress.</p>
+
+<p>More months passed.</p>
+
+<p>Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights
+became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because
+some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible
+vividness.</p>
+
+<p>But one thing she did not learn: to consider the brief span during which
+she had wandered on the heights as a mere episode that had interrupted
+her true, modest life like a caprice, a dream. In her consciousness she
+was and remained a sort of enchanted princess in the guise of a beggar
+until it pleased Providence to reinstate her in her own.</p>
+
+<p>She solicitously cherished everything reminding her of her vanished
+glory.</p>
+
+<p>The gala robes the colonel had had made for her in Dresden hung in Mrs.
+Laue's wardrobe; her underwear embroidered with the seven-pointed
+coronet filled Mrs. Laue's empty drawers with their blossom-like
+delicacy, and in a long row in front of the tall mirror in Mrs. Laue's
+best room lay the superb toilet articles of ivory and gold which had
+once been the pride of her "boudoir." These, too, still bore the
+seven-pointed coronet. Lilly would have considered it an outrage upon
+her most sacred rights had she had to part with them.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time she awaited the future. She still studied
+advertisements, and wrote letters applying for positions; but the
+advertisements were usually forgotten and the letters seldom mailed.</p>
+
+<p>However, feeling the need of occupation and companionship, she got into
+the habit of sitting with Mrs. Laue in the back room and helping her
+with her work. Soon she, too, was tapping, pasting, daubing, threading,
+and weaving just like her teacher. Having inherited taste and talent for
+everything artistic she soon outstripped Mrs. Laue. After having sold
+the shades Mrs. Laue would relate without envy how the patterns she
+designed and set together were instantly recognised and preferred.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's ambition was aroused. She strove to create works of art. She
+could not toil enough.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wouldn't fool such a time over every little spray," was Mrs.
+Laue's criticism, "you would make more money than I do." After each
+transaction Mrs. Laue honestly settled accounts with Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly was satisfied with the forty or fifty marks a month that her
+work brought in. Her newly aroused fancy flew toward higher goals.</p>
+
+<p>The dried grasses, the "grass flowers," as Mrs. Laue called them,
+charmed her especially. Their slender, aspiring stalks, the delicate
+grace of their branchings, the weary mourning of their hanging sprays,
+caused them to resemble tiny trees, weeping willows at the edge of a
+brook, ash-trees inclining over marble urns, or palms longingly rooted
+on parched rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly dreamed of a new sort of art&mdash;paintings on transparent glass with
+foregrounds of dried grass; lamp shades and window shades, on which
+woods of flowering grass and ferns charmingly shaded pasteboard houses
+standing out in relief with their windows cut out to let light shine as
+if from within; fleecy clouds, glowing sunsets, ridges of hills in hazy
+outline, and dark blue rivers, across which the moon threw swaying
+bridges of light.</p>
+
+<p>An endless succession of pictures suddenly took form in Lilly's mind,
+and new ones kept coming and coming. She did not know what to do with
+all that wealth of imagery.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue, who for twenty years had unswervingly stuck to pasting her
+oiled paper and felt that every desire to abandon her modest work was
+heretical, warned Lilly with all her might.</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly was possessed.</p>
+
+<p>And one day she resorted to extreme measures. She took her arrow-shaped
+brooch set with six small emeralds to the jeweler, who gave her eighty
+marks. It was worth five times as much, of course. She used the money to
+buy polished cut-glass plates, which were held together in pairs by
+brass screws and could be hung at the window by dainty chains. She also
+purchased a box of paints, and while Mrs. Laue clasped her hands in
+dismay, she set to painting bravely.</p>
+
+<p>But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections
+of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors
+ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance
+and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained
+nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the
+stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again
+took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with
+white silk ribbons.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum
+silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that
+had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set
+free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in
+Lilly's outstretched hands.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to
+oppress her soul that as her life went on&mdash;that which she called
+life&mdash;she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper
+every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a
+horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great,
+watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still
+shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out
+of doors, no matter where&mdash;out into the world, into the arms of life.</p>
+
+<p>Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened
+her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young
+fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned
+brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way&mdash;all this
+filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.</p>
+
+<p>A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty
+independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a
+helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy
+security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and
+felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten
+and obviously was in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Then the waiting&mdash;the waiting&mdash;the never-sleeping, ever-hungry waiting.</p>
+
+<p>For what? She herself did not know.</p>
+
+<p>But something <i>had</i> to come. Her life <i>could</i> not end here among those
+bits of oiled paper.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time the thought of the rich bronze manufacturer to whom
+Walter had recommended her rose to the surface of her soul as a vague
+craving. But the fervor with which she clung to this shadow terrified
+her, and she instantly chased it from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>A year had passed since Walter's letter had been written. It was much
+too late to seek help from him.</p>
+
+<p>So she waited a few months more.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing
+and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round,
+slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses,
+glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she
+was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and
+readiness for love.</p>
+
+<p>The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy
+work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies
+to intoxication and flight.</p>
+
+<p>And at twilight, when she stretched herself on the sofa in a brief
+moment of leisure, and saw the blue flash of the electric tram flit
+across the ceiling, dreams came gently gliding upon her, resolving that
+burning expectancy into soft, half-fulfilled desires; a feeling that she
+had been saved stole over her soul like a thanksgiving, and that which
+she usually bewailed as lost happiness became nothing more than a
+nightmare from which a benign destiny had freed her.</p>
+
+<p>But such hours were rare. And they resembled the solacing mirage that
+arises before the eyes of the thirsty traveller, rather than the drink
+itself.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The winter passed in fog and rain.</p>
+
+<p>Now came the mild March evenings when rosy clouds floated like blossoms
+over the house tops. Then came spring itself. The freshly trimmed little
+trees on the open places put forth brownish green buds, which by degrees
+turned into pale bunches of leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw as little of all that glad bourgeoning, that snowy florescence
+of cherry trees, that brilliant glow of the hawthorne as when she dusted
+the yellow powder from Mrs. Asmussen's bookcases.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue did not like taking walks. To her the idea of passing a meadow
+without gathering flowers, or a garden without thrusting her hand
+between the rails, was inconceivable; and she feared being caught in the
+act, an experience she had often had.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly for her part would not venture out alone, dreading the
+unrestrained crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Then came those hot, hazy, oppressive Sunday afternoons when endless
+throngs stream from the city to the suburbs, when the streets lie
+stretched out dead in all their length, and when the overcast heavens
+fairly weigh upon those who have been left to pant between the walls of
+the houses.</p>
+
+<p>On those afternoons Mrs. Laue would stick genuine rhinestone studs into
+her ears, would don a brown velvet dress with a black jet collar on the
+square-cut neck, and in this costume would pay Lilly a formal visit in
+the best room. The Dresden gowns would be taken from the wardrobe and
+carefully compared with the gorgeous dresses worn by the charming ladies
+of the proscenium box twenty-five years before. The faded pictures of
+long-forgotten stars would be fetched down from the walls and examined
+as to their charms. Exciting tales would be told of their own
+adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its
+modest worth.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A
+hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood
+furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if
+polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again
+repeat the tale of her stale virtues.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed,
+burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. From without she would
+hear the shouts of the merry-makers returning from the country.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the pasting of flowers would begin anew.</p>
+
+<p>July came. She could no longer endure it.</p>
+
+<p>One Monday, while she was lying in bed and early dawn found her still
+awake, still waiting, her pillow wet with tears, the desire for life
+suddenly gripped her heart so strongly that she jumped from bed with an
+outcry, a jubilant exclamation, and finally determined: "I will do it
+to-day. I will take the difficult step, and go on a begging pilgrimage
+to that strange man."</p>
+
+<p>But no&mdash;mercy, no! Beg&mdash;she would not beg. Oh, she had long before
+carefully arranged all that.</p>
+
+<p>She would merely ask for a bit of advice, which an experienced
+connoisseur of arts and crafts could easily give without sacrificing
+more than five minutes of his business time. She would simply find out
+from him how and where she could learn transparency-painting.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever his answer, the foundations of a new life would have been
+laid.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IIIA" id="CHAPTER_IIIA"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>Was it a path of destiny?</p>
+
+<p>The street wore its usual appearance. Truck waggons rattled along; women
+doing their marketing crowded in front of the provision shops; young
+men, hastening by with portfolios or books in their arms found time to
+turn and look after her. Lilly perceived this as always with a sense
+partly of satisfaction, partly of chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>Was it a path of destiny?</p>
+
+<p>The throbbing of her heart as she walked along said to her, "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She felt she was going to market to sell herself.</p>
+
+<p>Herself&mdash;everything left of herself; her bit of pride, her bit of
+freedom, her faith that she was one of the elect, her faith in the
+miracle that some day was to be accomplished in her behalf.</p>
+
+<p>The walk lasted nearly an hour.</p>
+
+<p>She lost her way. She asked the policemen. She stood in front of shop
+windows to look at her reflection&mdash;she was afraid of not pleasing. And
+each time she saw the soft, slim contour of her tall figure with its air
+of pleasant self-sufficiency, she drew a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>When she read the name of the street where he dwelt, she started in
+fright. She had secretly hoped she would not find it, and would have to
+return after all.</p>
+
+<p>His house presented nothing remarkable. A grey, four-story structure
+with a broad, unadorned square carriage entrance, across the full width
+of which was a scaffolding</p>
+
+<h4>Liebert &amp; Dehnicke<br />
+Manufacturers of Metal Wares</h4>
+
+
+<p>was inscribed in gold characters on an enormous iron plate stretching
+along half the front of the house.</p>
+
+<p>From the opposite side of the street she scrutinised every detail, still
+oppressed by the question whether she had not better turn back.</p>
+
+<p>The second story windows were closely hung with dainty écru lace
+curtains. On the sills were snowy white porcelain pots filled with
+geraniums and marigolds. That part of the house looked better kept and
+more prosperous than everything round about.</p>
+
+<p>"That's probably where he lives," she thought, and felt a slight dread
+in the face of so much serene yet severe beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door
+with iron grill work, which was next to the carriage entrance and seemed
+to lead up to that awe-inspiring second story.</p>
+
+<p>But the door was locked, and before ringing she peeped through the
+grating. She saw a dark staircase solemnly lined with cypress trees and
+laurel bushes. In the background at the head of the stairs was a window
+glowing blue and red and throwing rainbow colors on a white bust in
+front of it. Lilly recognized the bust, having seen it in the display
+windows of the art shops. It was Clytie, whom she had always loved
+because of her gentle melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>As she looked upon all this her heart sank again. She seemed to herself
+totally unworthy to step into those formal, peaceful regions. So she
+descended the three door steps and entered the profaner carriage
+entrance, where several labourers in white overalls were busily engaged
+covering the bare brick walls with highly veined marble stucco.</p>
+
+<p>Men were at work in the yard as well. The round cobble stones with which
+it had once been paved were lying in heaps, and the ground was being
+covered with an ornate mosaic, of a light grey broken by white swirls
+and circles, like the flooring in ancient churches.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of the yard rose the bald brick side of the factory, which
+also was undergoing changes in accordance with the general beautifying
+scheme. Up to about the second story the wall was being set with yellow
+and blue tiles. They looked gay and festive, and upon the completion of
+the repairs the old smoky court would have the appearance of a decorated
+salon.</p>
+
+<p>"They're doing things here in great style," thought Lilly, growing even
+more timid.</p>
+
+<p>To her left in a corner of the court she saw a building to which not a
+drop of the varnish being used on the other parts of the establishment
+had been applied. It stood there with bare, dun-colored plastered walls.
+Next to an extremely plain flight of iron steps was a metal plate
+inscribed "Office."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly went up the iron steps and entered a badly lighted, dusty room
+divided in two by a wooden rail, on the farther side of which a half
+dozen young people were sitting at desks covered with spotted,
+threadbare felt. They all stared at her in astonishment. It did not
+occur to one of them to ask her what she wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently a person like herself had never before been seen in the place.</p>
+
+<p>The group was turned to stone and did not regain animation until she
+drew her card from her gold brocade purse and silently laid it on the
+table. Then the six of them jumped up and tried to get possession of
+it. There came near being a row.</p>
+
+<p>But one of them, a tall, straw-complexioned fellow, who seemed to have
+some authority, chased the others back to their seats with a few furtive
+nudges, and bowing and scraping, said to Lilly he would immediately go
+see whether Mr. Dehnicke&mdash;and with the card in his hand disappeared into
+a back room.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments passed. Lilly could hear subdued voices through the
+half-open door.</p>
+
+<p>"Czepanek? Don't know her. Ask her what she wants. What does she look
+like?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer, which lasted several seconds, seemed to have been
+satisfactory, for the clerk came out and without further ado opened the
+gate in the wooden railing and ushered Lilly into the back room.</p>
+
+<p>At last <i>he</i> stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>Stocky, middle-sized&mdash;shorter than herself&mdash;with a tendency toward
+stoutness. A round, well-kept face, good, greyish blue eyes, which said
+little; an arched brow, light brown hair brushed back smooth from his
+temples, a short moustache turned up abruptly at each end, probably to
+proclaim the lieutenant. Remarkably small hands and ears. Everything
+about him breathed tidiness and scrupulousness, though it would not have
+mattered if he had been less well groomed.</p>
+
+<p>He was taken aback at Lilly's entrance. His eyes grew round with polite
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>The consciousness that she had not failed to make an impression
+emboldened her, and gave her a sense of security. It was not in vain
+that she had gone through Miss von Schwertfeger's schooling.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to you at the recommendation of a friend of both of us, who
+prepared you for this visit," she began, inwardly rejoiced to be able
+once again to play the <i>grande dame</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A mirror hung opposite, and Lilly regarded with satisfaction the
+discreet wreath of violets about her lilac turban, and the
+violet-coloured tailor-made suit. Her image looking affably from the
+frame reminded her of a picture by some portrait painter of high life.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke silently drew up a chair for her. An expectant distrust was
+to be detected in his eyes in place of the consternation of the first
+seconds. Evidently he did not dare to place her in the class in which,
+to judge from her appearance, she belonged.</p>
+
+<p>His head was set a bit obliquely on his neck, inclining to the left, as
+if he had recently had an attack of lumbago. This posture increased
+Lilly's impression that he suspected her.</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at her brocade purse, and acted as if she could scarcely
+suppress a smile.</p>
+
+<p>He became still more confused.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask," he stammered, "who that friend&mdash;? I don't recall." In
+perplexity he turned over the visiting card his clerk had brought him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose
+her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having
+received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you
+to interest yourself in a lady who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair.
+His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened
+to pop from their sockets.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I
+received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my
+lady&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's
+consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.</p>
+
+<p>But so it could not remain.</p>
+
+<p>"I call myself Lilly&mdash;Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn,
+though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the
+assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.</p>
+
+<p>Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly
+to be read in his features.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have
+gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why
+didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited&mdash;a month&mdash;several
+months&mdash;then I took to looking for you&mdash;in vain. I even thought of going
+to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of
+reserve&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of
+ever having the great pleasure&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand.
+However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw
+she did not respond.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was
+so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate
+aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of
+one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.</p>
+
+<p>"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your
+door in vain."</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by
+way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers,
+with everything I am and&mdash;" He paused. The word "have," which should
+naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man,
+would allow to pass his lips so lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not make great demands on you, of course," Lilly replied airily,
+to put a little damper on his ardour. "I simply do not want to be
+without someone to advise me as to a way of earning my livelihood, and
+since&mdash;Mr. von Prell"&mdash;at last the name came out&mdash;"said I might place
+perfect confidence in you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You may rely upon me as upon Mr. von Prell himself."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not saying a great deal," flashed through her head, but she kept
+from revealing her thought by so much as a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, what do you hear from him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly blushed. If she admitted his silence, she laid herself bare,
+irremediably. So, not to appear forsaken and cast aside, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"On parting we agreed not to write to each other for the time being. We
+thought in the struggle ahead of us that eternal waiting for news and
+that eternal fear for each other would not leave us with the strength
+necessary for meeting the demands of life. But you probably have gotten
+a letter from him lately?"</p>
+
+<p>He started, and reflected an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;that is, no. Not lately. Sometime ago he wrote&mdash;he was getting
+along. He said he was about to make a career for himself. And he asked
+most urgently as to your whereabouts; in regard to which, of course, to
+my great distress, I could not enlighten him."</p>
+
+<p>This did not sound very likely. A moment before he himself had been
+asking for news of Walter, and now when she inquired for Walter's
+address, he had to acknowledge, stammering, that the letter had not
+contained an address and for that reason&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>It was quite clear he had fabricated.</p>
+
+<p>Probably he hoped to acquire greater importance in her eyes by
+representing his relations with her lover as still continuing. But since
+similar motives had led her to trifle with the truth, she had no cause
+for feeling angry with him.</p>
+
+<p>She now told him the purpose of her visit; described the delicate craft
+she had learned a few months before, the desire she had to perfect
+herself in it, and her helplessness when it came to practical matters.
+Might she ask Mr. Dehnicke to recommend some artist who could instruct
+her? That was all she had come to him for.</p>
+
+<p>He listened to her with professional interest, and acted as if he took
+her plans ever so seriously. But behind the mute thoughtfulness of his
+features lay something that did not please her. It was not pity, most
+certainly not. It was rather a holding back and seeking, then an
+increasing satisfaction, as if he felt he was gaining ground in the
+measure in which the helplessness of her situation became apparent.</p>
+
+<p>"A very easy matter," he replied, his manner less constrained than
+before. "There are several real painters among the artists who furnish
+the models for my business. One of them"&mdash;he turned the pages of a
+book&mdash;"Kellermann&mdash;the very man&mdash;and then&mdash;. However, we'll drop that
+for the present. There are other things to be considered in connection
+with your practising your profession which, it strikes me, are more
+important. So please don't consider me impolite if I put some questions
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>"What artistic training have you had?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, that's just it," Lilly replied, getting the better of
+her embarrassment. "Just because I never had any I should like&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not move a muscle.</p>
+
+<p>"What are your means of support?"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. She felt as if her clothes were being drawn from her
+body piece by piece.</p>
+
+<p>"I need not tell you," he added, "it's not my intention to pry into
+matters that do not concern me. But since you honoured me by asking my
+advice&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I still have some jewels," she said, looking at him severely and
+haughtily. "When they go, I'll have nothing."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded slightly, as if to say, "I thought so."</p>
+
+<p>"One more question: in what sort of a place are you living now?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the sort of place befitting my condition. Four flights up, with a
+poor woman, the one from whom I learned pasting pressed flowers."</p>
+
+<p>As she said this, her glance fell upon the mirror and showed her the
+image of the beautiful aristocratic society dame, who had condescended
+to bestow a visit upon Mr. Dehnicke, "comrade of the reserves," in his
+dark hole of an office.</p>
+
+<p>He rose, and for a few moments paced up and down between the desk and
+the door. He was so spruce and his clothes fitted him so snugly that
+everything about him cracked and creaked. In his polished rotundity he
+looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. He had a little bald
+spot, too. But the expression of his face remained serious, almost
+uneasy, as if he were weighed down by heavy thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>He came to a halt before her and his voice quivered a little as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"What I am going to say has its roots in the many years of genuine
+friendship that unite me to Mr. von Prell&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The mocking, condescending words with which Walter had recommended him
+to her, occurred to Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"I passed so many delightful hours in his company. I owe him so much
+inspiration and&mdash;" He stopped. He owed him so much he could not remember
+it all on the instant. "I will remain in debt to him the rest of my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"Who feels he is indebted to me because I pumped him for coin," was what
+Walter had written. Then there really did exist such touching creatures
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am most grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me by
+bequeathing his betrothed to me, so to speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Betrothed!" The word had been uttered. She had not deceived herself. It
+frightened her, but she did not repudiate it. Until that day she had not
+even dreamed of considering Walter and herself bound to each other,
+neither herself, nor the poor little fellow who did not know how to care
+for himself, much less for a wife and child. But then&mdash;in the eyes of
+this man with his middle-class morals, that was the only justification
+for her bungled, ill-regulated existence. And not only in his eyes&mdash;in
+the eyes of the whole world&mdash;and, if she cared, in her own eyes, too. If
+she clung to the man who was practically dead to her, fastening upon him
+all her wishes and feelings, she would have a support for her entire
+being. She could ask for absolution and justification even before God.</p>
+
+<p>All this flashed through her mind with lightning rapidity while Mr.
+Dehnicke continued to asseverate his friendship for Walter, and look at
+her with his round eyes in undesirous adoration. Finally he came to the
+point.</p>
+
+<p>"In his place and for his sake I advise you most urgently to quit
+surroundings that do not suit you, and create an environment in keeping
+with your past. If you ever wish to realise your plans you will have
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"What has my environment to do with my art?" queried Lilly, shrugging
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the first place you must have a studio where you can receive
+your customers&mdash;where you can show them who you are and the extent of
+your artistic demands, and what the real nature of your artistic
+intentions are. That is the only way of preventing your customers from
+treating and paying you like an ordinary worker."</p>
+
+<p>"But the customers don't come to me," she interjected.</p>
+
+<p>"They should come to you," he exclaimed, talking himself into a degree
+of eagerness. "An artist with self-respect doesn't take one step outside
+his studio to offer his wares for sale. You must treat yourself the same
+way."</p>
+
+<p>She mentally calculated the value of the rest of her brooches, rings,
+and bracelets, and rejoined with a smile:</p>
+
+<p>"Easily said."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke made a bold sally.</p>
+
+<p>"My sincere friendship for Walter"&mdash;now he called him by his first
+name&mdash;"gives me the right&mdash;how shall I say? to make provision, to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw what was coming and shut off further discussion.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel content where I am," she declared, "and until I have created
+with my own efforts the suitable environment that you so kindly wish for
+me, I do not feel I am entitled to make a change."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed. His friendly zeal cooled off markedly. But he asked for her
+address, so that he might know where he should send her the desired
+information.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hesitatingly gave it to him, and added the request that in no
+circumstances should he come to see her.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed again, and his coolness became rigidity.</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly rejoiced that she had known so well how to keep him at a
+distance. Nobody in the wide world should call her a beggar.</p>
+
+<p>She therefore took leave all the more graciously, for she had not come
+to him in order to frighten him away forever.</p>
+
+<p>He was quick to profit by her warmer tone, and became ardent again.</p>
+
+<p>If there was anything else he could do for her&mdash;if she felt lonely&mdash;and
+required company.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked at his right hand, saw no wedding ring there, and smiled
+"no."</p>
+
+<p>He understood look and smile, for he said, hemming and hawing in an
+endeavour to conquer fresh confusion:</p>
+
+<p>"I live alone with my mother, but unfortunately I cannot take you to see
+her because she is sickly and since my father's death has withdrawn
+entirely from society. But I would be most careful as to the company to
+which I should introduce you."</p>
+
+<p>"I took that for granted," Lilly replied with amiable condescension. "In
+spite of that&mdash;thank, you, really&mdash;in the peculiar position I am in it
+is better for me not to mingle with people."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a regal bow, held out her hand, and left.</p>
+
+<p>He followed her respectfully, and the six young gentlemen stood up in a
+row and curved their backs like their employer.</p>
+
+<p>With flushed face Lilly passed the partially completed decorations in
+the yard, and walked along the imitation marble entrance to the street,
+thinking, in mingled triumph and disenchantment:</p>
+
+<p>"No, that was <i>not</i> a path of destiny."</p>
+
+<p>But she had suddenly acquired a betrothed. That was something, at any
+rate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IVA" id="CHAPTER_IVA"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures,
+enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about
+thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got
+great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and
+small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.</p>
+
+<p>He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions,
+like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung
+oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and
+their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused
+light from above&mdash;it was so high it seemed a very part of the
+heaven&mdash;she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green
+unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was
+squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a
+narghile that had gone out.</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without
+rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow,
+hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust
+from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have
+gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen
+herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day
+before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.</p>
+
+<p>"Now his manner will change," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of the sort took place.</p>
+
+<p>"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are
+you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"&mdash;here she was "general's wife"
+again&mdash;"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like
+this comes along."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly,
+who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.</p>
+
+<p>He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver&mdash;dry referring
+to bread as well as to giver&mdash;<i>did</i> say something to me day before
+yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of
+apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into
+unrestrained laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy
+the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a
+treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the
+heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able
+to look a rose in the face again."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic
+lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long
+before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to
+instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.</p>
+
+<p>"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked
+herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain
+matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I
+should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can
+afford to pay for such valuable services&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would
+probably look out for that.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she
+replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that&mdash;" she
+grasped her parasol&mdash;she had kept her gloves on.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few
+moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.</p>
+
+<p>"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is more important to me than the first. It is&mdash;I should like to be
+treated like a lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be
+fine as silk, I tell <i>you</i>, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of
+fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best:
+superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar.
+Now select."</p>
+
+<p>This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that
+for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as a <i>grande
+dame</i>, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her
+court and took her as a "good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she
+came he was wearing boots.</p>
+
+<p>He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild
+flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in
+her childish plan.</p>
+
+<p>He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which
+colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in
+planning new effects.</p>
+
+<p>"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will
+deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely
+conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean,
+of course, Dame Nature."</p>
+
+<p>While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or
+chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the
+centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.</p>
+
+<p>The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul"
+were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour
+bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out
+their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing
+trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs
+which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays,
+finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.</p>
+
+<p>And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty,
+half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the
+floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a
+riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless
+conception and a laughing ability to execute.</p>
+
+<p>One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a
+pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid
+camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead
+lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy
+chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock,
+while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.</p>
+
+<p>There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the
+woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.</p>
+
+<p>One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these
+paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on
+exhibit.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he
+replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric
+lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but
+not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because
+there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from
+dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who
+must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for
+twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers.
+Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"</p>
+
+<p>He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length
+on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large
+glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the
+ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.</p>
+
+<p>She declined, and pressed him for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains
+weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my
+manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her
+corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here
+is the foam-born body. Begin&mdash;look and paint to your heart's content.'"</p>
+
+<p>Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his
+clasped hands up to her.</p>
+
+<p>"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have <i>I</i> to do with all
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible
+respect to&mdash;. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for
+freedom long enough&mdash;she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I
+can't sleep&mdash;then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady,
+who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor
+even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see
+her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous
+desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly
+had to forbid his ever referring to it.</p>
+
+<p>Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not
+suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on
+the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's
+opinion, was highly commendable.</p>
+
+<p>In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood
+over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark
+and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic
+and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within,
+constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an
+extremely early period in the world's history.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had
+declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with
+those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to
+let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had
+visited him.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from
+him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.</p>
+
+<p>But one day Mr. Kellermann said:</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil&mdash;the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming
+all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up
+here every day to see how things are progressing."</p>
+
+<p>Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly
+blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a
+degree of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she
+could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and
+wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden,
+seven-pointed coronet&mdash;she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he
+had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to
+come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>His reply arrived without delay.</p>
+
+<p>Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to
+visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her
+wishes.</p>
+
+<p>And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink
+carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the
+windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration
+and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had
+saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace
+blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and
+festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in
+the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and
+scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady,
+who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than
+gotten.</p>
+
+<p>Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room
+from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and
+in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.</p>
+
+<p>How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him
+permission&mdash;he hadn't wished to appear intrusive&mdash;he would have waited
+even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated
+everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which
+did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having
+caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while
+felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the
+rôle of the "general's wife"&mdash;partly against her will&mdash;who does the
+honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She
+said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the
+transparencies at the windows.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into
+exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh
+start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like
+monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I
+ought to show them to you first."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing
+them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by
+inordinate professional conceit, and it might be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only
+slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at
+the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his
+smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:</p>
+
+<p>"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies
+to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the
+buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I
+might even dispose of them as goods of my own."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly flushed with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have
+found customers for myself?"</p>
+
+<p>The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed
+expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home
+worthy of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the
+wherewithal."</p>
+
+<p>"That may mean years."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait years."</p>
+
+<p>"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being
+an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly drew herself up.</p>
+
+<p>"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I
+might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the
+world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would
+merely humiliate me."</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of
+insult.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of
+fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the
+following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been
+settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few
+moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent
+friend. It was his only opportunity&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him
+to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak
+about my betrothed."</p>
+
+<p>"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat
+stirred when she uttered it.</p>
+
+<p>The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen
+and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in
+the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly
+tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very
+dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a
+courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls
+of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great
+actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their
+signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee,
+the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order
+for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke, Mfrs. of
+Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven
+transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."</p>
+
+<p>The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VA" id="CHAPTER_VA"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Now followed happy times.</p>
+
+<p>With part of the sum she had earned Lilly bought new material, and soon
+more sunsets glowed beyond woods of dried grass.</p>
+
+<p>When she lay on her bed during the hot summer nights, sleepless from
+overwork, she would give herself up to wild dreams of what she would do
+when her art had conquered the world.</p>
+
+<p>She would start a workshop, like Mr. Dehnicke's, employ about a dozen
+women with Mrs. Laue, of course, as forelady. Then hunt up her father,
+and transfer her poor crazy mother to a fine private insane asylum. What
+else? Oh yes, provide for Walter, certainly. Now that she felt she was
+his fiancée, and her future was his, this was her bounden duty. To be
+sure he must first let himself be heard from. But some day, Lilly knew,
+when he was at a loss where to turn, he would get word to her in some
+way or other. Then she would send him money&mdash;in abundance&mdash;in
+overflowing measure&mdash;everything her craft threw into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>No, not everything. One task, the greatest, the holiest, merely to think
+of which was presumption, dominated her life.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not her father returned, his work, his immortal work, must
+never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its summons to life the
+score of the Song of Songs still lay asleep in Lilly's locked trunk. But
+its sleep was no longer so sound, so dreamless as in the years just
+gone by. It began to stir and moan. It gave out a humming and ringing
+which echoed through the day's work and crooned in Lilly's sleep,
+causing chords and melodies to sound when she least expected them.</p>
+
+<p>From the blue hills beyond which the sun set in flames came a soft
+strain as if blown by evening winds: "How beautiful are thy feet in
+sandals, O prince's daughter!" And out of the dark depths of the
+fabulous woods fluttered fragments of songs of the rose of Sharon and
+the lily of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost as if invisible little beings were singing who led a
+pleasant existence inside those bright-windowed pasteboard huts.</p>
+
+<p>Like Lilly herself the whole world would some day have a share in the
+treasure whose guardian fate had destined her to be.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever she went or stood, whatever she did or thought, from all
+corners hopes came dancing forth, beckoning and smiling. A new, larger,
+purer existence was now to begin. The ends of that golden thread which
+her insane mother had cut in two with the bread knife, had been tied
+together again, and drew her upward, upward. She had divinations of
+something sacred which gave forth blessings, something to be prayed for
+and struggled for.</p>
+
+<p>A few more months and it would all come to pass.</p>
+
+<p>A piece of good fortune seldom comes unaccompanied by another; and so it
+happened that&mdash;miracle of miracles!&mdash;her betrothed gave a sign of life.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the first days in September between eleven and twelve
+o'clock in the morning when Mr. Dehnicke appeared at her door without
+having announced his coming. Lilly was not completely dressed, and
+refused at first to see him in. However, he was so insistent that the
+business on which he had come was extremely important, that she did not
+venture to dismiss him, and offering a thousand excuses she received him
+in her matinée.</p>
+
+<p>He let a shy glance of admiration travel over her, and then drew a
+broad, strange-looking piece of paper from his pocket, which proved to
+be a check on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and some odd
+marks.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do with it?" asked Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Read the letter it came enclosed in," he replied unfolding a large
+sheet.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Richard Dehnicke, Dear Sir," was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell
+had deposited five hundred dollars to be paid over to Baroness Lilly von
+Mertzbach.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was shaken by a storm of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>She ran up and down the room pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p><i>She</i> had wanted to provide for him, and now <i>he</i> was providing for
+<i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she was fairly overwhelmed by a feeling of distrust.</p>
+
+<p>She came to a standstill, and looked from the check to Mr. Dehnicke and
+back at the check again.</p>
+
+<p>Both were wrapped in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Do explain," she cried, utterly perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is there for me to explain?" he rejoined. "I am merely the
+middleman, or, if you will, the agent in the affair, which really
+concerns no one but you and your affianced."</p>
+
+<p>"If at least he had given his address," cried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"It almost looks as if he wanted to eradicate all trace of himself," Mr.
+Dehnicke observed.</p>
+
+<p>It was so romantic and so unlike Walter&mdash;how could she help being at a
+loss!</p>
+
+<p>But there was "Baroness von Mertzbach." Walter was the only person not
+likely to know of her having had to renounce her married name. That, at
+least, was an indication of the genuineness of the remittance.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke inclined his head to the left as usual, and regarded her
+with calm indifference&mdash;he was the innocent middleman, nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>"After this unexpected turn of events," he finally said, "you will, of
+course, no longer refuse to take up the sort of life that accords with
+your social position and is so essential for the sale of your works."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, biting her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon he became insistent, more insistent than she had thought his
+modesty would permit him to be.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>must</i>. For his sake you must. I am responsible to him for that. If
+he should return and want to marry you, he must not find a déclassée. I
+am responsible to him for that."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly asked for time to consider.</p>
+
+<p>From now on her distant lover held sway over her life with a certain
+emphasis. What had been mere fancy became reality.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she thought of him unqualifiedly as the real sender of those
+mysterious five hundred dollars. On the contrary, the voice would not be
+silenced that said to her: "You are being played with." But she was
+afraid to listen to it, or even draw inferences and come to conclusions.
+For if she were to lose the single friend she had, then what?</p>
+
+<p>In order to down all her doubts and scruples she worked diligently, and
+nearly once a week had batches of sunsets ready to be taken away. And in
+the meantime Mr. Kellermann had brought her new motifs: a Gothic
+cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a hunting lodge with many
+gleaming windows, and&mdash;<i>chef d'&oelig;uvre</i>&mdash;the moon rising over peaceful
+waters, whose silvery sheen was broken by fern fronds.</p>
+
+<p>October came.</p>
+
+<p>The first Sunday of the month Mr. Dehnicke called to take Lilly out
+walking. He had come for her twice before, and Lilly had accompanied him
+gladly. Had he offered to take her to the country, her happiness would
+have been complete.</p>
+
+<p>The autumnal sun lay peacefully upon the tattered leaves of the bare
+little trees that edged the square fountain. Groups of people sauntered
+by aimlessly, looking bored and depressed. The winter was already laying
+its icy touch on men's spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with
+human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and
+protector at her side in all that bustle.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally
+began:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the
+future?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on
+this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel
+you are of some value in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his
+modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would
+delight in."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to
+assume that our tastes are absolutely similar."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I'm not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I
+think would please you, unless I'm very much mistaken. It belongs to a
+lady customer of mine who left town."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than
+to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."</p>
+
+<p>He reflected.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid,
+to be sure, won't be in, because it's Sunday, but the porter's wife
+knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger,
+but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered
+that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses
+are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of
+glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety grass hang over the blue
+waters of a canal.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Königin-Augusta-Ufer."</p>
+
+<p>Dehnicke went to the porter's lodge and spoke a few words through the
+window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs
+of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare
+flagging at home, which hurt one's feet.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the
+maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he
+unlocked the door with the key.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door
+on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in
+the halls.</p>
+
+<p>They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and passed
+through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with glass doors
+curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture
+consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a
+large, dark, highly polished dining-table.</p>
+
+<p>"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn't be
+bad for a sample room and private studio for you."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.</p>
+
+<p>Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with
+strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a
+broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held
+together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.</p>
+
+<p>"Does your customer belong to the nobility?" asked Lilly, seized by a
+vague feeling of envy.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of. Her husband isn't a nobleman. But maybe she herself
+is of noble extraction."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her
+underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue's musty drawers.
+How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in
+the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the
+aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with
+the poor-people's odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with
+deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.</p>
+
+<p>"Happy creature!" she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life
+and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no
+matinée, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.</p>
+
+<p>"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said
+Mr. Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the
+left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was
+flooded with sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely
+outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms
+radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany
+furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables&mdash;a woman about to
+dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in
+prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a
+little bookcase, a lady's secrétaire, paintings on the walls, and even
+an upright piano.</p>
+
+<p>"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.</p>
+
+<p>There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows
+stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the
+sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped
+at them from another window.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact
+all this was&mdash;like a bird's nest&mdash;yet how inconceivably charming when
+contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were
+rising in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly
+had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the
+house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like
+that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for
+your assistants to work in."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others,
+though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table
+with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner
+was a comfortable iron bed.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained
+Mr. Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had
+not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over
+the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of
+the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed
+beneath a curtain of lavender crape.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" Lilly asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the
+secrétaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same
+mysterious veil.</p>
+
+<p>Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the
+covering over the large picture.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a
+theft.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little
+more heavily than usual.</p>
+
+<p>She tugged&mdash;tugged more violently&mdash;the crape fell off&mdash;and before her
+hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the
+uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in
+crayon.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's knees trembled. Cold shivers ran through her body. She refused
+to believe, to understand. Then she felt Mr. Dehnicke take her hand and
+draw her to the outside hall.</p>
+
+<p>He lit a match.</p>
+
+<p>On the porcelain plate she now read what she had previously been unable
+to decipher:</p>
+
+<h4>Lilly Czepanek<br />
+Pressed Flower Studio</h4>
+
+<p>She uttered a cry, rushed back into the drawing-room, threw herself in
+the corner of the sofa, and wept the hot, blissful tears of desire and
+yearning that had so long been repressed.</p>
+
+<p>When she ventured to look up again, she saw Mr. Dehnicke waiting before
+her, modest and correct, with his sober, serious face.</p>
+
+<p>She was ashamed of herself for being so happy; and full of qualms she
+held her hand out to him gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"May I hope that in my capacity of Walter's representative I have
+chanced in a measure to satisfy your taste?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no more thought of refusing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIA" id="CHAPTER_VIA"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The mottled golden tops of the chestnuts grew paler, the gaps ever wider
+that the autumn ate into the foliage. Where a soothing green had cut off
+the view, now glittered the bright wavelets of the canal. Long barges,
+laboriously pushed by poles, trailed along in their cumbersome fashion,
+and the shaggy watchdogs barked up at the aristocratic windows.</p>
+
+<p>Grey, rainy days came stealing upon the city like an enemy, and
+loneliness laid its octopus clutch on Lilly's breast.</p>
+
+<p>But her work! Yes, she had her work. So long as the first infatuation
+had lasted and Lilly felt she might hope for some realisation of her
+plans, she had clung to her work day and night.</p>
+
+<p>But the hoped-for turn of events never came. The announcements she had
+had printed remained unheeded. Mr. Dehnicke, sole purchaser of her
+goods, begged her&mdash;with a hesitating, embarrassed manner, to be sure,
+yet explicitly enough&mdash;not to be hasty, since the general state of the
+market was dull.</p>
+
+<p>By degrees her zest in her profession began to languish. She gave up
+going to Mr. Kellermann for lessons, especially since his insistence
+upon setting free his "chained beauty" grew steadily more annoying. She
+locked the half-filled sample closets and completed none but the pieces
+Mr. Dehnicke ordered.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, those dark, pitiless days, which no laughter brightened, no waiting
+shortened, and no purpose bound together.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was ruled by a young maid, ever silent, whose eyes were
+greedy and too knowing. Each morning, while the little canary peeped,
+the fish were given fresh water.</p>
+
+<p>It was somewhat better in the evening when the lights were lit and the
+crystal chandelier radiated a brilliant white light. Lilly would then
+wander from room to room changing the position of this or that ornament
+and constantly reassuring herself how beautifully she lived and how
+happy she was.</p>
+
+<p>But of what avail was the old rose carpet with its vague vine pattern,
+the wine-coloured furniture, and the bronze bodies looking as if a
+golden breath had blown over them? Those bronze bodies whose innermost
+being after all was nothing more than a zinc alloy, having originated in
+the factory of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke. Of what avail the charming secrétaire
+and the writing paper with the golden coronet stamped on it, of which
+Mr. Dehnicke had immediately ordered five hundred sheets? There was
+nobody to rejoice with her, nobody whom her longing brought to her side.</p>
+
+<p>She would often seat herself at the piano and let her fingers stray over
+the keys. But she did not get the pleasure out of playing that she had
+anticipated. Her father's discipline had long lost its effects. She had
+forgotten the pieces she had once known by heart, and she lacked the
+calm and patience to learn all over again.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was strange what disquiet would seize her the instant she
+touched the keys, a feeling of dread, an anticipation of impending
+danger, a consciousness of her own unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>She could not keep on; she had to shut down the lid and take to
+wandering again from room to room until her legs wearied and ten o'clock
+summoned her to bed.</p>
+
+<p>In those joyless, unoccupied days, a piercing, stinging desire for man
+awoke in her, causing her nerves to tingle and a sweet, tormenting
+shudder to thrill her body.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of the two long years her senses had been mute. Tears of
+regret had drowned that which the colonel's senile depravity had
+enkindled, and the weeks of love with Walter von Prell had fanned into
+lively flames. Drowned it forever, it seemed. But there it stood again,
+transporting and shaming and refusing to be silenced by prayers or
+reproach.</p>
+
+<p>Often she felt she would have to run out on the street just to catch the
+glance of any stranger&mdash;as in the Dresden days&mdash;and see desire flare up
+in eyes veiled with yearning.</p>
+
+<p>But the people she might encounter on the street were rough and common.
+The mere thought of them made her tremble.</p>
+
+<p>The only time she went out was to visit her former landlady.</p>
+
+<p>The walk lasted a full hour, and before she had reached her former home,
+many a naïve admirer, many a keen <i>boulevardier</i>, had bobbed up beside
+her and tried to enter into a pleasant conversation. She always ran to
+the other side of the street, shaking herself. Sometimes, yes,
+sometimes, she would have liked to reply.</p>
+
+<p>When she lay in bed with closed eyes, she dreamed of strong-willed,
+sharply cut men's faces, to which she looked up in yielding happiness.</p>
+
+<p>She often dreamed, too, of Mr. Dehnicke, good, sound, loyal Mr.
+Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>If he were to come to her some day and falter in that guilty way of his
+which she liked so well: "I love you inordinately, and want you to
+marry me," what would she say to him?</p>
+
+<p>Each time she thought this a furtive sense of comfort stole over her.</p>
+
+<p>As for the man who by full right stood closest to her, she never dreamed
+of him. Sometimes, it is true, when her longings did not know where to
+strike root, those anxious yet blissful November nights would recur to
+her. But the part of hero might have been played by any other man as
+well as Walter.</p>
+
+<p>Walter himself had grown to be a sort of tyrannical conscience with her.</p>
+
+<p>She loved him&mdash;of course! How could she help loving him? He was her
+"betrothed," and he was working for her. But sometimes, when she stood
+in front of the sofa and felt his cold, blue eyes resting upon her
+haughtily and masterfully, and she recalled the sorry, inconstant little
+fellow he actually had been, she felt a desire to shake off everything
+that came from him and held her under a spell, as one tries to rid
+oneself of a preposterous nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>If only Mr. Dehnicke had not kept alluding to him with so much devotion
+and respect, treating himself as the modest agent, who would have to
+render account to his dear friend, when that dear friend would return in
+honour and glory.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke came punctually twice a week to inquire after her health
+and drink tea. He would leave in time to reach his office before it was
+closed for the day. These scant hours were always a festival for her.</p>
+
+<p>What wonder? She had no one beside him. He was the only person who bound
+her to the rest of the world and brought incident and interest into her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>She spent hours in fixing up the tea table, in trying different ways of
+lighting the room, in arranging the flowers, and standing before the
+mirror&mdash;for him.</p>
+
+<p>When he came at last and sat opposite her, they conversed long and
+seriously about the cares that oppressed him, the plans he was revolving
+in his mind, his disgust at the artists who considered it a disgrace to
+work for the trade, and did so only if the pistol was held to their
+heads, and then disdainfully, clenching their teeth; his trashy
+competitors, who built palaces in order to throw dust in the eyes of the
+buyers, and who thereby had forced him to transform his good old
+business place in accordance with modern ideas of decoration.</p>
+
+<p>Most distressing of all was his clientele. The artistic ideals of the
+metropolis in a measure made a moral demand upon him to go over to the
+secession and place on the market long-necked, narrow-hipped bodies in
+distorted attitudes. The real public, however, the well-intentioned
+public with purchasing power, would have nothing to do with all that
+rubbish. It clung to knights and high-born dames, to maidens plucking
+flowers or carrying water, to fighting stags and swinging monkeys. So he
+stood between the devil and the deep sea. On the one hand was the danger
+that people would ridicule him as old-fashioned, on the other hand, the
+danger of losing most of his old hereditary customers. So he had to
+steer carefully along a middle course, and that was extremely difficult.</p>
+
+<p>He also spoke frequently of the factory, with its hundreds of
+industrious hands, who laboured day after day for the prosperity of the
+house; and of the alterations being made in his yard and sample room,
+which, to judge by the architect's plans and the sum he calculated they
+would cost, would produce something worth seeing.</p>
+
+<p>But what doesn't competition force a man to do?</p>
+
+<p>Lilly listened with shining eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She shared in all his activities. She wanted to see everything and
+experience it with him, not only the renovation of the sample room, but
+also the doings in the factory with its machines, its clatter of wheels,
+its hissing of flames, and screeching of files. She never wearied of
+questioning. She had to know how the workmen looked and behaved, their
+wages, their lot in life, and what became of them. She felt that there
+in his factory was real existence, while her life was nothing but a
+dull, idle waking dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how happy you must be," she often cried out admiringly, "to have so
+many souls in your keeping!"</p>
+
+<p>"If the whole bunch of them didn't keep you in a stew all the time," he
+rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>But she would not admit the qualification.</p>
+
+<p>He was certainly a beneficent god to them all, she said, even if he did
+not feel it himself. He must be, because of his power and his good
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke gladly listened to such expressions. While she was speaking
+he would jump up abruptly, as if seized by a mighty, revolutionary idea,
+pace up and down the room excitedly, then stop in front of her and stare
+down at her with a dark solicitous look in his eyes, apparently unable
+to reach some great decision against which he was struggling.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly pretended not to notice his behaviour, though she knew exactly
+what was fermenting in his soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him alone, don't help him," she thought. "He must do whatever he
+wants to do of his own impulse. Otherwise he will bear me a grudge."</p>
+
+<p>If only there hadn't been that hateful sense of duty toward Walter,
+which, like herself, Mr. Dehnicke probably felt only in part, and
+shammed as a matter of decorum.</p>
+
+<p>There was something else that gave her qualms. Although he had promised
+to, he had never fulfilled the wish she had expressed to see his
+factory.</p>
+
+<p>However, he spoke openly of his mother, and did not shrink from
+confessing how greatly she had influenced him, though Lilly could read
+into his words that he wished for more freedom to develop his powers.
+When his father had died twelve years before, he had been a minor, and
+had had to yield to his mother's guidance. The old lady continued to
+maintain her authority. Dehnicke discussed each undertaking with her,
+and if she approved, it was executed, even if he did not concur.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a dull terror arise within her of that old lady who sat
+commandingly in her arm-chair behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots, and directed the conduct of so powerful a man as Lilly's
+benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart would contract when she imagined her first meeting with the
+old lady.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Before Christmas Lilly had more work to do. Two dozen transparencies had
+been ordered and had to be completed before the holidays. 24x30=720.
+Well, she could see ahead again.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in four years she forgot to send her mother a
+Christmas gift. To compensate, she made a particularly "poetic" lamp
+shade and had it delivered anonymously to Mr. Dehnicke's mother the day
+before Christmas. She herself did not know why she did this. Perhaps it
+was a sort of propitiatory offering, such as timid souls were wont to
+sacrifice to unknown gods as an expiation for unknown sins.</p>
+
+<p>Counting upon her friend's coming, though by no means certain he would,
+she had made a little heap of her gifts for him, and at the fall of dusk
+with throbbing heart began to listen for the ring of the door bell.</p>
+
+<p>Her fears were idle. At half past five he appeared loaded with parcels.
+He had displayed tact in his choice of the simple presents&mdash;things she
+still needed in the apartment, a few embroidered collars, a boa, because
+she had to be careful of her sables, and a few little pieces from his
+factory to adorn the empty top of her secrétaire. At each of her
+exclamations of delight he protested mildly. The things really came from
+Walter, as she knew.</p>
+
+<p>"And what comes from you?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he replied, turning his palms upward.</p>
+
+<p>"I know of something you could give me that Walter has nothing to do
+with."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Show me your factory."</p>
+
+<p>This time he did not evade her request. A date was immediately set&mdash;the
+first workday after New Year, when everything would be in running order
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Dehnicke added with an embarrassed air:</p>
+
+<p>"But please wear something dark and simple."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Lilly, frightened. "Do I usually dress conspicuously?" She
+felt as if some one had boxed her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not that. But your good clothes might be soiled."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On January the second at about noon Lilly stood in front of the house in
+Alte Jakobstrasse, which she had not seen since she had paid Mr.
+Dehnicke that memorable first visit in his office.</p>
+
+<p>"It has almost turned out to be a path of destiny after all," she
+thought, and looked up furtively at the porcelain flower pots in the
+second story windows. She started. It seemed to her a white head had
+moved behind the lace curtains.</p>
+
+<p>"That smacks of a guilty conscience," she thought, and with awed,
+sidelong glances walked past the door that opened upon the broad,
+laurel-lined staircase which her unworthy feet might never tread until
+she had been received into the circle of bourgeois virtue.</p>
+
+<p>But the carriage gate stood hospitably open. The scaffolding had been
+removed, and the imitation marble of walls and columns shone
+challengingly in their variegated colours. The magnificence of the
+courtyard beyond oppressed her heart again.</p>
+
+<p>The office building had also undergone changes. The dun-coloured plaster
+had given place to a broad sandstone façade adorned by the busts of
+eminent artists; and gilded railings gleamed where once the
+sorry-looking iron staircase had been.</p>
+
+<p>There was her friend hurrying down the steps to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the stinging cold he wore no hat. In holding out his hand to her
+he cast a furtive look of scrutiny at all the windows. It seemed he,
+too, had a guilty conscience.</p>
+
+<p>He first led her to the sample room. Its brand-new magnificence exceeded
+her boldest expectations. Columned halls with coffered ceilings
+stretched out in a long vista as in a museum. There were endless rows of
+tables and cases, on which, gleaming with gold and silver lights,
+sparkling with crystal prisms, glowing with the hot red of copper, or
+shading off softly into the light green of the patina, stood thousands
+of works of German art and industry, "imitation bronzes," destined to
+fill the show windows of shops and carry the semblance of display-loving
+prosperity into the huts of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>There were corpulent begging friars, dancing gypsy girls clad in
+boleros, ogling dandies, postillions blowing horns, pecking chickens,
+dogs fetching game, calenders set in horse-shoe frames, cigar clips in
+the shape of little champagne bottles; tall pelicans holding lamps in
+their bills; figurines of men and women stretching up their arms, just
+as in Mr. Kellermann's studio, though here not aimlessly, since they
+bore aloft vases, candelabra and bowls. There were arbours screening
+love couples, with red electric bulbs hidden in the foliage; brownies
+beside shining mushrooms, sea shells to serve as ash trays, snakes
+writhing about the chalices of flowers, or about porcelain eggs, or
+copper dice. The whole pitifulness of a vulgar sense of art seemed to
+have crept into this glittering conglomeration and been concentrated
+there ready to scatter to all quarters of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly gave her friend a questioning or astonished look because of
+some monstrosity, he shrugged his shoulders and observed:</p>
+
+<p>"That's what the people want."</p>
+
+<p>Despite some dissatisfaction with what she saw Lilly could have walked
+up and down for hours amid all that sparkle. She felt she belonged there
+by right. Had she been asked for her opinion she would have said without
+a moment's reflection: "Throw this away, and this, and this." But nobody
+appealed to her judgment, and everything went its way without her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke then took her to the factory.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the foundry, in which the basic part of all the work is
+done, happened just then to be closed. Through an open window Lilly saw
+the black gaping depths of the hearths, about which dirty troughs were
+standing, and over all, over chimney-hoods and vessels, a thick layer of
+ashes.</p>
+
+<p>They descended a flight of dirty steps and passed through damp rooms
+smelling of all sorts of poisons, where rows of mighty vats stood filled
+with vile fluids, and elderly men bustled about, who looked like sombre
+scholars, whereas they were nothing more than mere labourers. At Lilly's
+entrance they cast a look of surprise at her then concerned themselves
+about her no further. And they did not greet their employer.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the galvanising room," explained Mr. Dehnicke, and continued as
+they walked past the vats, "The nickle bath, steel bath, silver bath,
+and so on."</p>
+
+<p>Up in a loft surrounded by an iron netting, the wheels of a machine
+whirled, and vari-coloured electric bulbs glittered among them.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where the electric current is generated which goes through the
+different baths."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not understand, but she enjoyed the inconceivable rapidity
+with which the wheels span around and the buzzing sound they made.</p>
+
+<p>In the room where the chasing was done many men stood at long tables
+industriously at work smoothing down the unevennesses of the cast metal,
+and preparing the separate parts of an ornament for joining. The joining
+was done in the next room, where the flames of the blowpipes darted and
+hissed and little clouds of metallic vapour shot sparks into the air. At
+each workman's place lay small heaps of burnished limbs, which made one
+feel sorry for the truncated body from which they seemed to have been
+severed.</p>
+
+<p>In the next room the thinner parts were beaten into shape in iron dies.
+It was here that the flowers and foliage were made, the ribbons and
+vines and arabesques, everything that curled and dangled daintily. The
+workingmen looked all the coarser and unwieldier by contrast. They
+scarcely glanced up when Lilly and Mr. Dehnicke entered, and continued
+to hammer as if stupefied into dealing those blows.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had a keener eye for the appearance and bearing of the men than
+for the work they turned out. She made comparisons, decided who was well
+off and who in distress, who took pleasure in his work and who went
+through the day's toil doggedly, because driven to it by need. Each shop
+had its peculiar physiognomy. In one the majority looked fresh and
+agile, in another galled and weary.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as often before when Mr. Dehnicke had spoken to her of his
+employés, a senseless desire arose in Lilly to watch over the fate of
+all these people, help where help was necessary, bring sunshine to the
+gloomy, and relief to the suffering. But she took good care not to
+acquaint Mr. Dehnicke with her absurd ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will see the most delicate of all the operations," said Mr.
+Dehnicke. "It is putting on the patina, which gives the pieces their
+real style."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door to the next shop, and the smell of a thousand poisons
+again assailed Lilly's nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>Here there were women at work also, side by side with the men. They
+applied varnish and acids and brushed and rubbed. They looked sallow and
+jaded. At Lilly's entrance they were so taken aback that they dropped
+their brushes and cloths and stared at her in utter astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"One would have to begin with these to win the confidence of all," Lilly
+thought, and gave them a cordial nod.</p>
+
+<p>But they seemed to take her greeting as mockery or blame, and turned
+back to their work with a grimace well-nigh scornful.</p>
+
+<p>In the packing room, where women and children were employed exclusively,
+Lilly's appearance produced a happier impression. The girls laughed and
+whispered, and nudged one another with their elbows.</p>
+
+<p>The only one who paid no attention to her was a pregnant woman, who
+seemed to find it difficult to keep from sinking to the floor. She held
+her drooping lips tightly compressed and a vivid red spotted her cheeks.
+Nevertheless her arms moved in feverish haste wrapping one paper wisp
+after the other about the limbs of the figure standing on the table in
+front of her, and inclining now to the right, now to the left under her
+manipulations.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly led Mr. Dehnicke aside and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"May I give her something?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's being provided for," he replied, unpleasantly affected, it
+seemed. He quickly opened another door.</p>
+
+<p>"This leads to the store room, where the pieces are kept until sold,
+with the exception, of course, of those which are made to order."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked down a dimly lighted corridor, from which the cold air blew
+upon her. On the shelves and stands stood endless rows of phantom
+beings, shapeless in their grey paper envelopes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how queer," said Lilly, shivering a little, and preparing to walk
+along the narrow passageway. The very same instant, however, she noticed
+her friend start as in fright, and cast a helpless look about him. Then
+he stepped in front of her and blocked the way.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked Lilly, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>He turned colour and said:</p>
+
+<p>"We had better not go in there. We'll go somewhere else. Besides,
+there's nothing to look at there, not a thing. You yourself see there
+isn't."</p>
+
+<p>He planted himself squarely in front of her, so that she could not
+possibly look down the long line of shelves.</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, merely heightened her curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"But I would like to," she said, and assumed the over-bearing, haughty
+expression with which she was wont to get her way with him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he burst out hastily. "It's a business secret. I mayn't
+betray it to a soul. Even the employés are not allowed to come here.
+Really I can't permit it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you shouldn't have brought me here at all," said Lilly, feeling
+insulted; and she turned back.</p>
+
+<p>He poured forth excuses, grew hoarse with excitement, and coughed and
+choked. Then he led her back over the resplendent mosaic of the yard to
+the gateway with its imitation marble columns, through which a chilly
+draught was blowing.</p>
+
+<p>"You will catch a cold," said Lilly to hasten her departure.</p>
+
+<p>His face lighted up with a brilliant idea.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, you know," he said, "the store room wasn't heated."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have thought of that sooner," rejoined Lilly, holding out
+her hand with a smile of partial reconciliation. She was really sorry
+for him in his helpless solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she continued to feel hurt. And a bit disturbed. The day
+she had been looking forward to so happily for months had ended in a
+discord.</p>
+
+<p>And no matter how much she pressed him later, Mr. Dehnicke refused to
+tell her what mystery lay concealed in his store room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIA"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Lilly began to ail. She suffered from headaches, heart-burn, lassitude,
+insomnia and occasional attacks of vertigo.</p>
+
+<p>The physician, called in at Mr. Dehnicke's insistence, was one of those
+extremely busy men who make the rounds of numberless houses a day. First
+he took a good look at the apartment&mdash;a setting he seemed to know&mdash;then,
+upon a cursory examination, prescribed social distractions, walks, and
+iron, much iron.</p>
+
+<p>Social distractions had to be dispensed with; there was no opportunity
+for them. Taking walks was not so easy either. Lilly did not care to
+stroll about alone, and Mr. Dehnicke, the only person to accompany her,
+preferred not to be seen on the street with her too frequently. In
+order, he said, not to compromise her, though in all likelihood the
+truth was, he feared becoming conspicuous by appearing in public with
+that exotic, flowerlike beauty.</p>
+
+<p>For no matter what happened, no matter that trouble, want and all sorts
+of humiliations swept over her, no matter that boredom and displeasure
+with herself crushed her spirits, Lilly's appearance never lost thereby.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, the delicate milky whiteness of her cheeks, which
+before had been a golden brown, lent her a new, soft charm. The great,
+narrow, long-lashed eyes with the heavily drooping lids&mdash;those
+improbable Lilly eyes&mdash;now had a weary, languishing brilliance, as if
+they veiled all the painful riddles of the universe. Moreover, the last
+year had given back to her the slim, regal figure of her maiden days and
+taken away the womanly peacefulness it had acquired at Lischnitz. No
+wonder that many a head turned after her and many an appreciative,
+envious glance was sent askance at her companion, who was considerably
+shorter than she.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke was aware of all this, and being a staid, respectable
+business man, and not wishing to be the object of gossip, he preferred
+to stay indoors with her.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of February she received an invitation by mail from Mr.
+Kellermann, whom she had not seen for several months.</p>
+
+
+<h4>GREAT CARNIVAL<br />
+KELLERMANN STUDIO<br />
+Magic Lantern Show, Flirtation, Opportunity for Crimes<br />
+Passionels, Cream Kisses, and other Attractions</h4>
+
+<p>That seemed like distraction enough, and Mr. Dehnicke, who, it happened,
+had also been invited, was so energetic in his persuasions that he
+finally conquered her timidity and induced her to go.</p>
+
+<p>But when the day for the carnival came Lilly was seized by a great dread
+of it, and at the last moment felt like withdrawing from her engagement.</p>
+
+<p>She saw herself running the gauntlet of a gaping crowd of sardonic
+sneerers, who whispered the story of her rise and fall behind her back.
+She saw herself neglected and avoided, the object of derisive side
+glances. She passed through all the tortures of the déclassées, who must
+drag through life with the mark of the sinner caught in the act branded
+on their brows.</p>
+
+<p>She chose the most beautiful of her Dresden dresses, which in the two
+years had grown to be the very height of fashion. It was a white Empire
+gown embroidered with gold vines. She arranged a narrow bracelet in her
+hair like a diadem, and loosely laid over her head an oriental veil shot
+with threads of gold. In case of need it would serve to conceal the
+bareness of her bosom. When she had completed her toilet, she seemed to
+herself so repulsive and conspicuous that this alone was sufficient
+ground for not showing herself.</p>
+
+<p>She did not venture to cherish a faint hope until her friend came to
+fetch her. He saw her, and held on to the door knob, uttering a slight
+cry of astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I all right?" she asked with a diffident laugh, which entreated
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of replying he ran up and down the room breathing heavily and
+choking over inarticulate words&mdash;a mute language which Lilly immediately
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>While sitting beside him in the coupé, she succumbed to another attack
+of dread.</p>
+
+<p>"You will stay right next to me, won't you?" she implored. "You won't
+leave me, and you won't let a stranger speak to me, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>He promised all she wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Four flights up&mdash;a way she well knew.</p>
+
+<p>The landing outside Mr. Kellermann's door was filled with clothes-racks,
+on which awe-inspiring furs and humiliating lace mantles hung.</p>
+
+<p>She clung to his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Now to her ruin!</p>
+
+<p>The large anteroom, into which not a single ray of light penetrated in
+the daytime, and which Mr. Kellermann used as a kitchen, bedroom and
+dining-room, had been converted into a sort of fairy forest.
+Vari-coloured Chinese lanterns swung on the branches of pine trees, and
+in their dim red glow several couples sat smiling and whispering on
+narrow bamboo benches. They were so absorbed in themselves that they
+paid little heed to the new arrivals.</p>
+
+<p>All the more animated was Lilly's reception in the studio, which was
+filled with a bright, glittering mass of humanity. A general "ah," then
+absolute silence. A passageway naturally formed itself, down which the
+couple seemed to be expected to pass. Lilly made a gesture, as if to
+hide behind her friend. But he reached only up to her nose.</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant Mr. Kellermann came hurrying up to them. He wore a
+brown velvet costume consisting of a jacket, knee-length breeches, and a
+Phrygian cap. Everybody, in fact, wore what seemed to him original and
+becoming.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome, goddess, queen!" he cried in a voice for the entire company to
+hear; and since nothing better occurred to him, he pressed kisses on her
+gloved arm from wrist to elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Then he begged to be allowed to show her the incomparable arrangements
+of his new court of love. She followed him, whispering to her friend to
+be sure to remain at her side.</p>
+
+<p>Electric lights had been hung in the open air directly over the
+skylight, converting it into a many-coloured, starry heaven. On looking
+up one really thought a thousand little suns were shining down from out
+of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Rugs and ivy vines divided the left side, where the gable roof sloped
+downward, into a number of small arbours, the entrance of each of which
+was hung with gaily coloured bead portières. And over each hung a great
+printed placard bearing a highly suggestive inscription.</p>
+
+<p>The first was called "Arbour of Lax Morality." Lilly turned a startled
+look upon her guide, who observed with a smile:</p>
+
+<p>"That's only the beginning, meant for bread-and-butter-misses and little
+afternoon-tea-souls like you." And added:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"This is but an intimation<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of more wicked adjuration,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>while he pointed to the second entrance, the inscription over which
+read: "Arbour of Wicked Vows."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dreadful!" she cried in righteous dismay. Kellermann rolled with
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She could not help reading the next two signs, "Arbour of the Right to
+Motherhood" and "Arbour of the Cry for Man," but she said nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>There were two more divisions, a "Powder Room" and an "Arbour of
+Perversity." This she did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we'll go to the Criminal Side," said Mr. Kellermann, and led her
+diagonally across the room, making way for her among the people, who at
+her approach began to nod and hum and buzz, but with no trace of malice
+or contempt. The very reverse. It was an ovation, a suppressed
+demonstration of her triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Her breast expanded. A faint, humble sensation of happiness stole over
+her body like hot wine. She threw back her scarf. She no longer needed
+to feel ashamed of her bare throat and shoulders. In the looks turned
+upon her she read that no one would scoff at her.</p>
+
+<p>She did not succeed in reaching the Criminal Side. So many gentlemen
+wanted to be presented to her that Mr. Kellermann had all he could do
+telling off their names.</p>
+
+<p>From now on the carnival became something absolutely unreal, a dream
+land, a fairy meadow, on which strange, large-eyed flowers were blooming
+and sweet scents set heads a-reeling, and a haze sparkled with red suns;
+where people laughed and jested and whispered, where bold, unheard-of
+compliments floated in the air, and everything existed for Lilly to
+caress and admire and love.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she loved them all, the men and the women, as soon as she met them.
+They were all good, noble souls, scintillating with delightful conceits
+and ready to perform friendly services. Each awakened a new hope, each
+brought a new joy.</p>
+
+<p>She felt how her cheeks glowed, what blissful intoxication was burning
+in her eyes. And he at whom she looked with those eyes would quiver, and
+respond with a gleam from his own, which seemed to be the reflection of
+her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>That was no longer another strange Lilly, who laughed and returned jest
+with jest and went from arm to arm with a faint pang of regret. That was
+she herself, doubly, triply herself.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when a gentleman became too bold in his talk, when an
+unlicenced <i>double entendre</i> seemed to lurk behind a joke, and Lilly
+became nervous and did not know what to say and involuntarily looked
+around for help, she always found her friend somewhere near at hand,
+glancing over at her as if by mere chance.</p>
+
+<p>That gave her a delicious sense of peace, a consciousness of being cared
+for and hidden away, so that she could be even merrier than before, and
+need not take offence at audacities.</p>
+
+<p>Once she overheard behind her:</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the lucky dog who has her for his mistress?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was:</p>
+
+<p>"A little polished Mr. Snooks. There he stands."</p>
+
+<p>This made her stop and think a moment, though she could not know to whom
+it referred. But in the whirl of incidents it soon passed from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what people she met!</p>
+
+<p>There were young blades in dress suits and white flowered waistcoats,
+who paid her mad court, and asked, as if casually, though their
+eagerness was visible under the nonchalance of their exterior: "What is
+your day at home?"</p>
+
+<p>Alas, she had no day at home. She lived a very retired life.</p>
+
+<p>There were sombre philosophers, who agonised over the world's pain, wore
+very long hair and monstrous neckties. They spoke to Lilly of "spiritual
+high pressure" and the "specific gravity of related individualities,"
+themes which did Lilly's soul good. One of them kept addressing her as
+"Your Excellency." When she asked him why, he looked staggered and said
+he had heard she was&mdash;then he broke off and substituted the paltry joke
+that she so "excelled" all the women present he could find no more
+suitable title.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men was an exuberant old high liver, whose name she had read
+with awe on many a beautiful picture. She would rather have kissed the
+hem of his garment than see him dance about her comically trying to be
+youthful.</p>
+
+<p>There were many others who aroused her curiosity; but she could learn
+nothing of their rank or character.</p>
+
+<p>The company even boasted a real prince, a pale, blond, very young man,
+who did not venture to ask to be introduced to Lilly, because his love
+was always in threatening proximity. So he kept making détours about
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The women, of course, were more distant than the men, though those of
+them who came to make her acquaintance gave themselves up to her with
+effusive warmth.</p>
+
+<p>One was a beautiful, voluptuous brunette with unsteady, glowing eyes and
+a smile betokening wild abandon.</p>
+
+<p>"We must get to know each other," she said. "I will introduce you to my
+friend, and later we'll take supper together like a cosy little family."</p>
+
+<p>Another was an extremely slim young woman with bright blue eyes, who
+towered above most of the men. She wandered through the throng serene
+and unconcerned in a long, white silk secession robe, looking like a
+phantom. She spoke without moving her head and smiled without drawing
+her lips. She had come from Denmark to study painting and at the same
+time "live life," as she expressed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" she asked Lilly. "You are different from the rest. The
+woman who comes here and does not want to be swept along in the current
+must have strong arms."</p>
+
+<p>She boldly threw back the wide sleeves of her gown as far as her
+shoulders and exposed two lily-white, wonderfully curved arms, gleaming
+like marble pillars.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon she wandered further.</p>
+
+<p>The third was an extremely light-haired, very elegant woman, no longer
+young. Her pretty, good-humoured face was tanned by the open air. With a
+merry flash of her eyes she held out her hand to Lilly, as if they were
+old acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how sweet and lovely you are!" she said softly. "We have all flown
+here and don't know how. But where do <i>you</i> come from? My name is &mdash;&mdash;"
+she mentioned the name of a great musician who in Kilian Czepanek's home
+had been revered as semi-divine.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Welter's former wife&mdash;that's who I am," she added gaily, and
+turned to the gentleman on whose arm she had walked up to Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Another general's wife, like myself," thought Lilly, looking after her.</p>
+
+<p>There were some married couples, too; for the most part extremely young
+and extravagantly clad, who at first kept together timidly and looked
+about with great, astonished eyes, and later frolicked about like
+monkeys set at liberty. One couple seemed to have been dragged to the
+carnival as a practical joke. The husband was a genuine complacent
+beery German, the wife, a good, corpulent, black-silk creature. The man,
+Lilly was told, was the landlord of the house, a well-to-do baker, who
+had been invited to the carnival as a reward for good-naturedly having
+permitted his fourth floor to be turned topsy-turvey. But the couple by
+no means felt nervous or out of place. They made coarse, clumsy jokes,
+and were always surrounded by a group of laughing auditors.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock&mdash;Lilly had just been entangled by one of the
+long-haired and linenless in a profound discussion of false human
+values&mdash;when all of a sudden a sort of cry of wrath was raised, issuing
+at first from only one or two throats, then swelling to a loud thunder.
+Lilly distinguished the words "hunger" and "fodder."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kellermann's pacifying voice resounded to still the clamour. An
+accident, he said, had occurred to interrupt the spreading of the bread
+of which each guest would receive a piece&mdash;a poor devil of an artist
+couldn't afford a more abundant repast. He had hurriedly sent across the
+street for what was missing, and would the gentlemen please content
+themselves until it arrived? As for those who were <i>very</i> hungry and did
+not worry about the taking of human life, the hosts had provided arsenic
+sandwiches and strychnine tarts, which were to be found in the closet
+marked "Poisons."</p>
+
+<p>The whole assemblage made a dash for the Criminal Side, where for the
+sake of the <i>crimes passionels</i> a whole arsenal of deadly instruments
+had been prepared. Gallows dangled from the ceiling, ladders led down to
+abysses, and a cannon was discharged. The company immediately snatched
+the poisonous sandwiches from the sideboard, and sometimes even absolute
+strangers offered one another "a bite," like school children.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the regular supper.</p>
+
+<p>A buffet had been set up among the pines in the anteroom, piled mountain
+high with all sorts of goodies, Yorkshire hams, cold game, lobster,
+sliced salmon, and heaven knows what else. So stormy was the onslaught
+on that buffet&mdash;which, providentially had been placed against a
+wall&mdash;that the forest of pines gave way. Twigs flew about, branches
+broke, and a mass of laughing, cursing creatures rolled among the
+overturned tree-boxes.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody had a brilliant idea&mdash;chuck the whole forest down stairs.
+Forthwith the Chinese lanterns were extinguished, and despite the
+protestations of the landlord, who feared for the sleep of his other
+tenants, tree after tree went crashing down the steps and piled up at
+the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies' light dresses were completely strewn with pine needles, pine
+needles settled in their hair and on their bosoms. The whole place
+smelled of Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>One could hardly enjoy eating for all the laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, there were not enough chairs and tables for everybody. So, to
+be able at least to balance the plate on their laps, they sat crowded
+close up against one another on the stairs, where the company was fed
+from above downward each time fresh provisions were procured from the
+buffet and brought out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Some enterprising pioneers even climbed up on the heap of pine trees and
+swayed on the springy branches like birds. Benevolent souls on the upper
+landing handed them their food on forks tied to walking sticks.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, fairly sick with laughter, sat on one of the steps quite
+surrounded by strange gentlemen, all of whom wanted to be fed by her.
+She was in such a state of beatitude that she wished her life might end
+with the carnival. If she had any care in the world, it was to see to
+it that the gentlemen about her got enough to eat.</p>
+
+<p>The last of the refreshments were the cream kisses promised on the
+invitation. They swung on long strings from the ceiling, and each guest
+had to snap like a dog for his portion. If anyone used his hands he was
+rapped over the knuckles.</p>
+
+<p>This sport, which at first created fresh storms of folly, soon had to be
+relinquished because the cream dropped on the ladies' dresses. Lilly's
+Empire gown was also stained, but the instant the cream fell on it one
+of the gentlemen kneeled and sucked the spot away.</p>
+
+<p>When a trumpet blast summoned the company back to the studio, everybody
+was unhappy, Lilly in especial.</p>
+
+<p>But when she saw her friend again, whom she had quite forgotten, she
+quickly took comfort. Pressing against his arm and beaming with delight
+she reported to him amid gurgles of laughter all she had experienced in
+the meantime.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it seemed to her, she again saw the looks of those who passed her
+fastened on her face in strange seriousness, betokening something like
+compassion. But she had too much to relate to give those strange looks
+much thought.</p>
+
+<p>The speeches now began. Lilly begged her friend to stay at her side. She
+had romped enough, she said, and needed something "homey."</p>
+
+<p>He pressed his arm against hers gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you trembling so?" she asked in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing," he replied lightly.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the speakers was one of the long-haired, linenless, sombre
+ones. Something weighty and solemn, like a hymn, was to usher in the
+numbers on the program.</p>
+
+<p>He recited an ode entitled "Super-Smoke," in which such words as
+"sublime mist" rhymed with "amethyst," and "super-desire" with
+"passionate fire."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly understood not a word, though the poem must have been very
+beautiful, because at the conclusion the gentlemen burst into wild
+applause. "Bravo! Bravo! Super-smoke! More Super-smoke!"</p>
+
+<p>The sombre poet, who naturally interpreted these exclamations as a call
+for "<i>da capo</i>," bowed and felt flattered and started off again:
+"Super-Smoke, an Ode."</p>
+
+<p>He found he was in for it. "Enough, enough," came from all sides, and it
+turned out that the gentlemen had merely wished to express their desire
+for something smokeable in the language of super-men.</p>
+
+<p>The next to ascend the platform was a slim, very elegant gentleman with
+a dark brown Van Dyke beard and a gleaming monocle. He had been
+introduced to Lilly. Dr. Salmoni smiled sadly, and held his curved left
+hand close to his nose to scrutinise his long nails. His intention, he
+said was to draw up an intellectual inventory of the evening. For the
+purpose he would make a few remarks as a basis of his "so-to-speak
+destructive construction of this social heterogeneity."</p>
+
+<p>With that, a hail-storm of audacities and personalities came rattling
+down on the heads of hosts and guests.</p>
+
+<p>Though Lilly understood only a fraction of what he said, she felt she
+had to blush with shame for each person his ill-natured words hit. But,
+strange to say, nobody took offence. On the contrary, each one upon
+getting his raking tried to outdo the others in noisy applause.</p>
+
+<p>"What a happy world," thought Lilly, "where people have become
+absolutely invulnerable and the most heinous sins simply add to their
+honour."</p>
+
+<p>Her own misdeed, from which she had suffered so long as from a
+festering sore, suddenly appeared something like a child's amiable
+prank.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it idiocy in me to grieve so?" she asked herself, and pushed her
+hips downward with her hands, as if to brush away all the old chains
+from her limbs.</p>
+
+<p>The elegant doctor could deal in compliments also. Each of the lovely
+women received her little bon-bon rolled in pepper. And when he spoke of
+a lotos flower that had drifted there from fairyland and still seemed to
+dread the glory of the new sun shining upon it, Lilly again saw all
+glances turned upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"But let her take courage," Dr. Salmoni continued. "Should she need some
+one to help her dreamily await the night, she may count, I feel certain,
+upon every one of us."</p>
+
+<p>He was rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of all the gentlemen, and
+Lilly did not even feel ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>Upon concluding, and after gathering in a harvest of praise from the
+auditors, who crowded up to him&mdash;those who had gotten the hottest
+"roast" were the most eager&mdash;he stepped to Lilly's side and said <i>sotto
+voce</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon most humbly for having mentioned you in the same
+breath as this set. People on our level ought to have a tacit code; they
+ought to understand each other without making bald declarations. But I
+was tired of just cracking a whip. Besides, I may assure you, I don't
+<i>always</i> play the fool."</p>
+
+<p>He stuck his monocle in his waistcoat pocket and looked at Lilly with
+his sharp grey eyes as if to tear her heart to tatters.</p>
+
+<p>"People on our level," he had said. Lilly felt flattered that so clever
+and prominent a man should rank her with him.</p>
+
+<p>The next performer was a "minstrel," a mercurial, black young fellow,
+who accompanied himself on the mandolin. He struck up a highly
+sentimental ditty, like a troubadour's.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The lady's name I will not cite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far purer she than the moonlight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is so chaste, she burns with shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hear the stork called by its name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if rash Eros bids you try<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To steal a kiss, however shy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her face grows pale&mdash;Heaven forefend!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stammers she: "Now this must end!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The second strophe, the temperature of which rose many degrees, ended
+with the line:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quoth she: "Now cut it out! Now stop."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the third strophe, whose outrageous explicitness Lilly scarcely
+ventured to understand, wound up with the French:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Tout ce que vous voulez, mais pas ça.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>An endless round of clapping and shouting followed the song.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was astonished, but did not resent it. She resented nothing any
+more. Leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, she let the
+lights, the sounds, the vulgarities, the laughter and applause pass as
+in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time she looked around at her friend.</p>
+
+<p>He stood behind her, and smiled reassuringly, but said nothing. A
+mottled red burned on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps
+he had drunk too much champagne. As for herself, though she had taken
+only a sip, her head was spinning dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>At two o'clock the speech-making ended. Now the final restraints were
+thrust aside. The company romped madly, danced, kissed, drank,
+quarrelled, and fought duels. Lovers stabbed themselves and were carried
+out dead. The cannon shot off crackers. A thin, droll youngster clad in
+a Greek gown, which an obliging model had lent him, stood in front of
+the "Arbour of the Right to Motherhood," and held forth in a singing
+falsetto. Science had shown, he said, by the results of artificial fish
+culture that man as a factor in reproduction would soon be unnecessary.
+At the entrance to the "Arbour of the Cry for Man" a small, wild person
+with curly black hair had climbed on a chair and kept screaming "A
+woman! A woman! A woman!" Into the "Arbour of Perversity" they had
+pushed the baker and his corpulent better half, and each time the two
+kissed on command a shout of laughter went up outside.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's head was a-whirl with the tumult. Everything turned in a circle,
+screeching, darting, hammering, like a series of painful flashes.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better be going," Mr. Dehnicke's voice behind her advised.</p>
+
+<p>She arose and stretched her arms with a shiver.</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> had been life! Life! Life!</p>
+
+<p>Then she followed him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kellermann had noticed her leave, and furtively slipped up to her in
+the hall. His open collar hung over his jacket, his cheeks were puffed
+and shiny. He looked like a young Falstaff.</p>
+
+<p>He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say,
+"It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps.</p>
+
+<p>The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann
+turned to Lilly and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely," she replied with a languid smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"And I tell you"&mdash;he led her to one side next to the banisters&mdash;"I tell
+you, you <i>will</i> come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and
+you won't know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to
+these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the
+bacchic faun.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed at him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down.
+Leaning lightly against her friend's shoulder she walked airily down the
+steps singing and swaying her hips.</p>
+
+<p>The whole world seemed to have passed into a soft, perfumed, chiming
+twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining.</p>
+
+<p>Dehnicke's carriage was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in
+her fill of the invigorating, snowy air.</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang
+and beat time with her feet.</p>
+
+<p>He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Do say something," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his
+bleared eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and
+then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly sank into a drowsy state.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this
+way forever."</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter's arm was clasping her
+waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter's
+neck, as once on blessed November nights.</p>
+
+<p>But&mdash;where did Walter come from all of a sudden?</p>
+
+<p>She started up and sank back, wide awake.</p>
+
+<p>No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great
+shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with
+her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to
+demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written.</p>
+
+<p>He was demanding it after all.</p>
+
+<p>How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on
+the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later&mdash;Walter, whom
+everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered
+to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there
+was salvation for her on earth.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had
+a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But
+now it availed nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously, as if fearing to hurt him, she withdrew from his arm and
+pressed against the other side of the brougham.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you stay?" he asked, stammering like a drunkard. "Weren't
+you comfortable?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated the question several times. She maintained silence. She felt
+any word she might utter would entangle her still further.</p>
+
+<p>Then he clasped her hand, which hung down limply.</p>
+
+<p>"I mayn't," she whispered, extracting her hand from his. "And you
+mayn't, either."</p>
+
+<p>"Why mayn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will reproach yourself dreadfully later when you recall you are
+responsible to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom? <i>Him.</i> Whom else? You always say you're nothing but his agent,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A laugh, a hoarse, guilty laugh, interrupted her. He had folded his
+hands across his knees, and he laughed and drew a deep breath and
+laughed again, as one who has rid himself of a wearisome burden.</p>
+
+<p>A horrid certainty faced her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then all that wasn't true?" she faltered, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, perfect nonsense," he cried. "He wrote me <i>once</i>, before he
+left for the United States. 'Look out for her. Don't let her go to the
+dogs. She's too good for them.' Nothing else and never again. There! Now
+you know it. Now I'm rid of it. I've had a hard enough time over it. But
+what could I do? I had begun so I had to go on. There was no use&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He jerked up the window and leaned against it panting.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to ask, "Why did you do it?" but was afraid to. She knew
+what was coming. One thing stood before her with horrible clearness: she
+was in his hands beyond rescue. She lived in his house, spent his money,
+saw the world with his eyes. She was what he had determined she should
+be: his courtesan, his creature.</p>
+
+<p>The river!</p>
+
+<p>She tore at the brougham door, and set her right foot on the step, but
+he pulled her back and shut the door again.</p>
+
+<p>"Be sensible," he commanded. "Keep your wits about you."</p>
+
+<p>She burst into a fit of weeping, piteous, harrowing, heartbreaking. She
+had not shed such tears since the days of her divorce. She saw nothing
+and heard nothing. Sometimes she seemed to catch the sound of his voice
+as from a great, great distance. But she did not understand what he
+said. Simply to cry, cry, cry, as if salvation lay in crying, as if fear
+and distress would flow away with her tears.</p>
+
+<p>The brougham came to a stand. She felt herself being lifted out. He
+carried the key in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Supported by him she stumbled up the steps and thought from time to
+time:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I was going to throw myself into the river."</p>
+
+<p>He led her to the sofa and turned on the lights of the chandelier. Then
+he undid the buckle of her cloak and removed the veil from her hair.</p>
+
+<p>She lay there languidly, looking apathetically at the tablecloth.</p>
+
+<p>The bird awoke and peeped to her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's late," she heard Mr. Dehnicke say, "and the carriage is waiting.
+But I can't leave you this way. I must vindicate myself. I want you to
+know how everything happened."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," she said, shrugging her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"To me it does," he rejoined. "I don't want you to think I'm a rascal."</p>
+
+<p>"That makes no difference either," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"I loved you," he began, "long before I knew you, when you were still
+our colonel's wife."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there in his short, close-fitting dress suit, with a pale,
+joyless, pleading face, uneasily plucking at the tablecloth, he who was
+really master there, it seemed to her she was looking upon him for the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p>"I had been called into service for the man&oelig;uvres that summer," he
+continued, "and the club was still full of you. Even the ladies of the
+regiment talked of nothing else. There were ever so many pictures of
+you, too, in circulation. Some of the men had snapped you on the sly.
+The instant I saw you I should have recognised you, because I remembered
+every feature. Yes, I may repeat with perfect truth, I loved you even
+then. What's more, after Prell's letter came and you were to step into
+my life, good Lord! what plans for winning you didn't I work out in
+those one and a half years! Then at last you appeared and exceeded my
+wildest fancies. But when I saw that in between you had become a <i>grande
+dame</i>, and how devoted you were to Walter&mdash;you kept talking of him&mdash;I
+lost my last hopes. Of course, I had never seriously counted upon
+winning you, because, though I lay some stock in myself, I'm not really
+self-assured&mdash;and besides&mdash;to have some one like you for a love&mdash;that's
+more happiness than anyone can dream of."</p>
+
+<p>When he said "a love," passionate bitterness welled up within Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"To have me for a wife," she thought, "<i>that</i> is certainty more
+happiness than anyone can dream of."</p>
+
+<p>She burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>He took her laugh as a sign of modest deprecation of his compliment, and
+talked himself into greater enthusiasm. Did she think a single person in
+all that company to-night was worthy of unlacing her shoe-ties? Did she
+realise how immeasurably she was raised above everything bearing the
+name woman?</p>
+
+<p>From out of her tear-stained eyes the question now candidly shone which
+pride and shame forbade her to utter.</p>
+
+<p>He must have understood, because he paused suddenly, clapped his hand to
+his forehead, looked agitated, and paced up and down the room,
+suppressing sobs. She heard him murmur, "I can't&mdash;impossible&mdash;I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;if he can't," she thought, and stared at him with her cheeks
+pressed between her hands.</p>
+
+<p>He halted in front of her, and tried to talk. But he could only choke
+down half-articulated words, and he took to pacing the room again.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly caught snatches of words&mdash;"mother"&mdash;"never persuade her"&mdash;"must
+give up the business." And again and again, "I can't&mdash;impossible&mdash;I
+can't."</p>
+
+<p>"He's right," she thought. "A person like me&mdash;he really can't." And
+feeling her renunciation was final she drew a deep breath, and
+collapsed.</p>
+
+<p>He hastened to her, frightened; leaned over her, and wanted to stroke
+her hands. But she shook him off. Since he could not find a word in
+justification of his weak evasion, he took up the thread where Lilly's
+tortured laugh had cut it off.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember one thing, dearest, dearest friend. I don't want anything for
+myself&mdash;no reward&mdash;nothing. Long ago I gave up all wishes for myself, I
+swear to you. The only thing I wanted was to draw you out of the hole
+where you were being degraded into a proletarian. Oh, I know it from
+experience. It lasts a few years&mdash;no more. They either go on the street,
+or they grow more careworn and uglier and uglier. Soon you'd never
+suspect what they once were. To keep the same thing from happening to
+you, I thought of that device of the check, and wrote to my American
+agents. When I saw you were completely taken in, I didn't sleep for
+several nights out of pure joy, because then I knew I shouldn't have to
+stand by and see you go to your ruin."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I go to ruin?" Lilly interjected. "By the time your check
+came I had already earned a decent little sum. You yourself helped me,
+and you yourself said, if I continued the same way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short in fright at the thought that if she had to separate
+from him, this one avenue would be cut off, too. The idea was a
+nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>No word of encouragement came from him. He kept plucking at the
+tablecloth in dogged reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"Say something! Have you already forgotten everything you did for me?"</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "if you insist. At any rate,
+it may be well to be perfectly frank this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what else is there?" Lilly cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember when you visited the factory, I wouldn't let you into
+the storeroom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. But what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And afterwards I said it was because the room wasn't heated?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but I can't see what that has to do with my work."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had gone the least little bit further, you would have seen every
+one of your transparencies, fifty-six in all. The last were still
+unwrapped."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked up at him as to her executioner. Then she fell down before
+the sofa. She had no more tears to shed, but the soft darkness of the
+cushions was soothing to her eyes. To see nothing more, to hear nothing
+more, to think nothing more. To die quickly, forthwith, before hunger
+came, and shame.</p>
+
+<p>A long silence followed.</p>
+
+<p>She thought he had already gone when she felt his hand stroking her
+shoulder and heard his voice with a mournful quiver in it pleading:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, dear friend, tell me, <i>tell</i> me, what could I do? Could I rob
+you of your one pleasure, your one assurance? Was I to say to you, 'It's
+amateurish, unsalable?' I saw your whole soul was wrapped up in it, and
+you lived from it spiritually, as it were. I thought: 'When her affairs
+are all smoothed out, I'll just let it die a natural death.' And you
+know it was in a fair way to die naturally. You hardly thought of it the
+last month. Dearest, dearest friend, do reflect, what wrong did I do? I
+helped you out of wretched surroundings, I gave you a few months of joy
+and freedom from care, and I didn't even ask for so much as a kiss. If
+you want, return to your Mrs. Laue to-morrow, and it will be as if
+nothing happened. Or remain here quite calmly until you have found a
+position. I won't thrust myself on you. You needn't see me. When
+I&mdash;leave here&mdash;now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He could not continue.</p>
+
+<p>After a period of silence Lilly raised her head in fright and curiosity
+to see what had become of him. She found him in a chair inclined over
+the table, his head hidden in his arms, and his back shaken with mute
+sobs.</p>
+
+<p>She stood next to him a while, and tears rolled down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>She was so sorry for him&mdash;oh, how sorry she was for him!</p>
+
+<p>Then she gently laid her hand on his hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Take comfort, dear friend," she said. "It will be much worse for me
+than for you. I won't have anybody at all."</p>
+
+<p>And she shuddered, thinking of her approaching loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>He straightened himself up and silently reached for his hat. His eyes
+were even more bleared than before; his head inclined still further to
+the left.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how sorry she was for him!</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," he said, pressing her right hand. "And thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"I will write to you," she said. "I should like to think it all over
+to-night. I shall probably move to-morrow, immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you wish," he said.</p>
+
+<p>As he was drawing on his overcoat something long and cylindrical
+gleaming with gold and silver fell noiselessly from his pocket to the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly picked it up. It was a huge cracker.</p>
+
+<p>Both had to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"That lovely carnival had to have this sad ending," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you enjoy yourself? I hope for that at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what's the difference so far as I'm concerned?" said Lilly,
+deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"A great difference. The whole affair was gotten up for you."</p>
+
+<p>"How&mdash;for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, do you suppose Mr. Kellermann, who at the very best earns fifty
+to a hundred marks a week, can afford such an entertainment? The
+physician ordered diversion, and on account of the position you are in,
+I couldn't offer you any, so I hid behind him, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes wide.</p>
+
+<p>If he loved her to that extent!</p>
+
+<p>"You dear, dear friend," she said, and for one instant lightly leaned
+her head against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>He threw his arms about her quickly, greedily, as if she would be
+snatched from him the next instant. His whole body quivered, and she
+felt his warm tears on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Since he did not venture to kiss her even yet, she offered him her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"The third," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>When she glanced up, she saw Walter's eyes on the wall looking down at
+her with a base, sneering smile. Just as she had feared in the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Terrified, she drew Mr. Dehnicke's attention to the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better have it sent right down to the basement to-morrow," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>And since they now had very much to say to each other, the carriage was
+immediately dismissed, because it was half past three, and the coachman
+and the horses needed a rest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIIIA" id="CHAPTER_VIIIA"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>A new life began for Lilly once again.</p>
+
+<p>An end to her loneliness!</p>
+
+<p>Every afternoon Mr. Dehnicke came for his cup of tea, and now he was no
+longer Mr. Dehnicke; he was Richard, dear, beloved Richard, to whom one
+waved and nodded cheerily from the window, whom one received with
+outstretched arms in front of the apartment door, against whose knees
+one crouched on the floor, and from whose forehead one smoothed away the
+naughty frown of care with a tender "poor boy, poor boy."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how needless to have hoarded up such a wealth of love! She could
+lavish it in profusion, yet there was always a fresh supply.</p>
+
+<p>Away with the <i>grande dame</i>, the haughty aristocrat! She stooped to him,
+played the little girl, wanted to be found fault with and scolded,
+looked terrified at the faintest shadow of displeasure on his face, and
+tried to read his every wish&mdash;wishes he himself was not aware of&mdash;from
+his eyes. She wanted to be grateful for his goodness, his tenderness,
+for everything he had done to save her from ruin.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder, then, that by degrees he lost his adoring upward glance, and
+began to make demands, sometimes very whimsical demands, and assume the
+manner of a husband. Now and then he even recalled his benefactions, not
+very emphatically, though with sufficient explicitness to change what
+was at first voluntary humility into a duty.</p>
+
+<p>Since Lilly had become his mistress, his attitude to the world had
+veered about, so that his entire life stood on a different basis.</p>
+
+<p>The pedantic bronze manufacturer so dreadfully concerned for his good
+name and standing in respectable society had changed into a daring fast
+liver.</p>
+
+<p>So far from hesitating to be seen at Lilly's side on the streets and
+promenades, he could not display himself to the eyes of the crowd often
+enough. The good old brougham no longer sufficed. He must also have a
+new-fashioned, spacious victoria, in which to drive with Lilly along
+Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. When they went out together in the
+evening, he chose the places where most of fashionable Berlin is to be
+found, and tried to obtain seats from which they could be observed on
+all sides.</p>
+
+<p>He sat in the boxes at theatre with a swelling shirt front, carefully
+tailored and barbered and manicured, and endeavoured to present an
+indifferent blasé smile to the glasses levelled upon him and his
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>He ordered his clothes from the representatives of London houses that
+bob up in Berlin every spring and autumn in search of customers. He
+adopted a monocle and stuck his handkerchief inside his left cuff. The
+military officer in him came to the surface and endeavoured to ape the
+effeminate gestures of the fops of the Guard.</p>
+
+<p>In short, he bent all his energies upon proving himself worthy of a
+mistress of Lilly's rank and qualities. He soon discovered that
+connection with so exquisite a creature, so far from damaging him, cast
+an unhoped for glamour about his life, even about his business, lending
+it an air of splendour that all his superb remodelling had not been able
+to give it.</p>
+
+<p>If the senior member of the firm of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke, the world said,
+can indulge in such an extravagance, his goods must be selling much
+better than we thought. And many a dealer who had formerly bought of
+his competitors now came to him, impelled by those mysterious powers of
+suggestion whose laws psychologists and historians have in vain
+endeavoured to fathom.</p>
+
+<p>People showed him greater respect, but a respect mitigated by that
+jovial, confidential smile which the world always smiles when it pardons
+a man of proven harmlessness an interesting secret little infirmity.</p>
+
+<p>Questions like "When are we going to see you outside of business?" or
+"What do you say to making a night of it together now and then?"
+questions from persons who had paid no attention to him formerly, became
+as cheap as the bronze wares of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>"By right, I ought to charge you to the expense account of the
+business," he once said with a smile to Lilly, who by and by ceased to
+feel pained at delicate jokes of that sort.</p>
+
+<p>The evening excursions, which took place three or four times a week,
+gradually became a matter of habit, and rapidly acquainted Lilly with
+all the soap-bubble pleasures that float from the witch's cauldron of
+Berlin life.</p>
+
+<p>It was now too late in the winter for those great public balls, at which
+one shams the mysterious lady of rank beneath a silk domino. To
+compensate there were the theatres where observances are lax and the
+lowest vices of the Parisian boulevards, diluted and warmed over, are
+dished up to tickle the palates of hungry pleasure-seekers; all-night
+cabarets, where obscene jests are clothed in literary garb, and wild
+women escaped from the confines of middle-class life vie with
+professional music-hall singers for the palm of vulgarity; bars and
+grill-rooms; back rooms of aristocratic restaurants which the law
+forbids to be locked, and in which chilly orgies are smiled upon
+mockingly by correct waiters; and, to wind up with, certain cafés,
+sparkling with lights and blue with cigarette smoke, where the weary
+nerves seek and find their final stimulation in contact with prostitutes
+selling their wares in open market.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning Lilly opposed these doings. Her senses demanded
+satisfaction of another sort. She had a vague feeling of mournfulness,
+as if each day of this new pleasure-filled life were carrying her
+farther and farther from those laurel-lined stairs to which her longing
+had gone out. But when she saw that her every wish for quiet encountered
+sulky resistance, she gave up her desires voluntarily, and kept her
+dreams for a better time, a time which would bring all her hopes to
+fruition, which&mdash;which&mdash;her fancy might venture no farther.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, it was always so fascinating, so dazzling.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and Dehnicke were seldom left alone. In proceeding from place to
+place they would meet acquaintances, many of whom Lilly had seen at the
+carnival; and they would join company informally; or frequently,
+appointments were made beforehand. So there was quite a group of them, a
+little fixed nucleus, about which newcomers kept crystallising.</p>
+
+<p>One of the faithful was that sweet little brunette with the unsteady,
+glowing eyes and the foolish smile, who had wanted her friend and
+herself to form a little family group at supper with Lilly and Dehnicke.
+Her name was Mrs. Sievekingk. A vague desire for "life" had caused her
+to run away from her husband, a physician somewhere in Further
+Pomerania. After having gone through various experiences she was now
+living with the proprietor of a large steam laundry, a red-haired swell,
+thin as a broomstick, Wohlfahrt by name. He suffered from dyspepsia, and
+Mrs. Sievekingk always had ready in her hand-bag an assortment of pills
+and powders. But this touching, energetic care of him did not prevent
+her from deceiving him for the sake of any man who courted her.
+Everybody knew it and nobody blamed her. She was a poetess and had to
+create experiences to sing about. As a result many a lover who thought
+he was sinning with her in absolute secrecy would a few weeks later
+discover an exact portrait of himself as the hero of a passionate sketch
+or a murky love poem in some magazine of the latest school.</p>
+
+<p>There was Mrs. Welter also, the divorced wife of the renowned composer,
+whose round, russet face&mdash;she had returned lately from a mysterious
+pleasure trip to Algeria&mdash;formed a droll contrast to the golden aureole
+of her mass of dyed hair. It was dangerous to associate with her. She
+borrowed of everybody she met, although she was in comfortable
+circumstances, receiving an ample alimony from her former husband's rich
+relatives. Her constant state of want was due to her infinite goodness,
+which led her to turn over all she possessed and all her friends gave
+her to two cashiered lovers, each of whom in his way was a scamp. Nobody
+knew to whom she was attached at present. She was frequently seen with a
+district attorney, who was stiff as a poker and too formal to use a
+toothpick on his hollow teeth, and so sat for hours in silence busily
+rolling his tongue between his jaws.</p>
+
+<p>Among others was an extremely thin little shrewmouse, dainty and
+devilish, with steely eyes and thin pinched lips turning inward. She
+always wore white silk, and dragged a rustling, fan-shaped train. She
+called herself Mrs. Karla. Nobody knew her real name except her lover, a
+mere boy, the son of a manufacturer. Pale, puny, and completely in her
+toils, he followed her about until dawn indulging her in her sapping
+lust for pleasure. In an unguarded moment he revealed that she was the
+wife of a Jewish scholar who lived in absolute seclusion, and actually
+believed that she was occupied in satisfying the social demands of the
+Berlin West Side. And while she wantoned with all sorts of people in
+music halls and <i>chambres separées</i>, her husband sat quietly at home
+poring over his statistical tables.</p>
+
+<p>There were women of every description, for whose past and whose means of
+subsistence no one concerned himself, provided they were pretty and
+elegant and not exactly <i>cocottes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the ladies' legitimate escorts were a large number of
+gentlemen, who came every evening to fish in troubled waters. These
+gentlemen constituted the real enlivening element, and among them was
+the Dr. Salmoni who had wielded "the big stick" at Mr. Kellermann's
+carnival while smiling a mournful smile. In his company, Lilly felt, she
+always grew embarrassed and reticent, although it seemed to her a secret
+bond united them. As at the carnival, he exercised his caustic wit upon
+every person who crossed his path, with the exception of herself, whom
+he passed by considerately. Now and then he dissected her with his
+probing eyes, and two or three times he whispered softly <i>en passant</i>:
+"What are you seeking to find here, lovely lady?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kellermann, too, presented himself not infrequently; grew befuddled,
+and then threw out remarks about "a chained beauty crying to be set
+free," remarks which Lilly assiduously endeavoured not to hear. At the
+end of the evening he usually discovered he was out of pocket, upon
+which Richard came to his rescue.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the world in which from now on Lilly's days&mdash;and nights&mdash;glided
+along.</p>
+
+<p>She received mysterious messages of all sorts; invitations from strange
+gentlemen to discreet rendezvous, flowers sent anonymously, from modest
+bouquets of violets to gorgeous baskets of orchids, visits from ladies
+of suspicious character, who were organising private charity circles,
+and with highly significant smiles asked Lilly to join&mdash;a turbid surf of
+desire forever rolling up to her threshold. At first it frightened her;
+finally she took no notice of it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Spring came, and with it the races at which everybody appears who lays
+claim for any reason at all to membership in the world of elegance.</p>
+
+<p>Since Lilly had been enthroned at Richard's side, the slumbering cavalry
+officer in him had been awakened to such lively consciousness, his
+passion for native horse-breeding had swelled to such vast proportions
+that he would not have dreamed of missing a single race. Although he
+never betted, his pockets were stuffed with crumpled tips; chances and
+pedigrees constituted his sole topic of conversation, and Lilly, who
+took not the least interest in it all, willingly lent him her undivided
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, on studying the account of the previous day's race in her
+paper, the following passage attracted her notice:</p>
+
+<p>"Among the charming representatives of the world which knows no <i>ennui</i>,
+was the impressive beauty who for some time past has permitted glimpses
+of herself everywhere, and who still radiates the discreet atmosphere of
+the <i>haute volée</i>, which, it is rumoured, was once her native element.
+She favors violet, and in accordance with a famous precedent, she might
+be dubbed '<i>la dame aux violettes</i>.' We congratulate ourselves upon the
+appearance of this new star, who will only add to the reputation of our
+metropolitan life."</p>
+
+<p>"Who can that be?" thought Lilly, slightly envious, and passed in
+review the beautiful women she had admired the day before.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the blood rushed to her head. Her glance sought the
+Redfern costume, which she had not yet hung away, and was lying across
+the back of a chair. It was two years old, but so wonderfully well made
+that it could compete with the new creations of the spring. Since this
+was the only suit of the sort she possessed&mdash;Richard must be spared
+unnecessary expense&mdash;she had worn it several times in succession.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she no longer doubted&mdash;the item referred to her and no other. Her
+first thought was:</p>
+
+<p>"How pleased Richard will be."</p>
+
+<p>She, too, was pleased. Mrs. Laue's boldest prophecies seemed about to be
+fulfilled. She was growing famous. She actually figured in the papers.</p>
+
+<p>But that feeling of dread! That enigmatic, senseless dread which forever
+crouched in the bottom of her heart, and crept to the surface at the
+very moment a new event led her on a stage further toward grandeur and
+happiness. Since she had stepped into the world at Richard's side, she
+had encountered nothing but what awakened gladness, pride and hope.
+Everybody respected and flattered her. Scorn of herself, self-torturing
+thoughts, had passed away, giving place to a quiet appreciation of her
+own value in the presence of strangers. But that stupid, dull dread
+never left her. It would not be silenced.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier in the afternoon than usual, Richard came down the street
+beaming and openly waving the paper up to her.</p>
+
+<p>After they had embraced ten times and read the passage in the paper
+twice as often, Richard turned taciturn and gloomy, folded his arms like
+Napoleon, and paced up and down the room with short, sharp steps.</p>
+
+<p>You could see ambition seething in his brain.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>Little Mrs. Sievekingk was announced.</p>
+
+<p>She had come for a friendly little talk with Lilly several times before,
+though the two had not grown more intimate as a result. This time she
+arrived opportunely, to help them taste the joy of Lilly's fame.</p>
+
+<p>Her grey velvet suit shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, and the red
+turban with the waving aigrette nestled in her dark, curly head like a
+tongue of flame darting downward.</p>
+
+<p>She held her hand out to Lilly with her seductive smile, but when she
+turned to Richard, her eyes flashed with some of the energy with which
+she insisted upon her lover taking a dose.</p>
+
+<p>In the presence of strangers Lilly and Richard still kept up the myth of
+a Platonic friendship. So Richard modestly reached for his hat to
+extract from Lilly the polite request that he stay a little longer. But
+the small, dark woman anticipated them.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be foolish," she said, "don't behave as if you weren't perfectly
+at home here. You may call each other by your first names, as if from a
+slip of the tongue, and I'll pretend not to have heard a thing."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and Richard smiled, and while Lilly poured a cup of tea for her
+guest, Richard played with the paper. He wanted to make certain whether
+Mrs. Sievekingk had learned of the great triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"What I really came for was on account of that stuff," she said, "and
+you are the very person I want to speak to about it. I suppose you're
+awfully proud of it."</p>
+
+<p>Richard made a deprecating gesture, and smiled complacently.</p>
+
+<p>"To be quite frank, I credited you with a grain or two more sense."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," Richard observed, taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started. Her dread of the morning grew into the suspicion that her
+great fortune had a cloven hoof.</p>
+
+<p>"Just let me speak," said the little woman, her eyes now flashing very
+steadily with a conscious purpose. "I have experience in such matters.
+My red-head began the same way with me. Has the thought never occurred
+to you, Mr. Dehnicke, that when a choice creature like this one sitting
+here, something so sweet and glorious that you'll never find her like,
+entrusts herself to you, you have assumed a vast responsibility? Do you
+think we're here to puff and swell your vanity? We're not factory girls
+or ballet dancers to be stuck into silks and laces and led around to
+show the world that you're a fine buck. We have fallen from society, I
+know, but we're not to be classed, not by a long shot, with those women
+to whose ranks you would like to reduce us."</p>
+
+<p>Richard wanted to reply, but could not find the right words, and Mrs.
+Sievekingk continued, bending toward Lilly tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>"So here comes a poor little mite in its unsuspecting aristocracy, and
+says: 'Take me. Do with me what you want.' And what will you do with
+her? You'll make a fast woman of her, at least what the world takes to
+be a fast woman. Don't contradict me. As a beginning you've already done
+very well." She pointed to the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Once the yellow journals take us up, then the counts of the Guard are
+on the spot, and then, may the Lord have mercy on us! They're much
+better-looking and more chivalrous than you; and if we <i>must</i> become
+<i>cocottes</i>, we'd like at least to know for whom and for what. And if
+you affect indifference, then you're nothing in our opinion but a bad
+joke of yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's breath was taken away. She had not thought it possible that
+anyone should dare to speak to Richard in such a tone. She laid her hand
+on his shoulder deprecatingly to pacify him. She feared he might become
+angry and enforce his rights as master of the place.</p>
+
+<p>The very contrary occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"I will gladly do what you say," he replied, mealy-mouthed, "if only I
+knew&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what you don't know. You mustn't lead her around like an
+animal in a show. Don't expose her to the gaze of all sorts of people.
+Don't seat her in the front of the box at opera for every rake to stare
+at."</p>
+
+<p>Richard plucked up his spirits for a defence.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't <i>you</i> to be seen everywhere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. Because I myself want to see things. That's the reason I ran
+away from my horror of a husband. Nevertheless I don't take box seats.
+And I don't fly around race tracks either. I'm by nature a Bohemian,
+while Lilly, with her quiet, refined heart, is a bourgeois, and a
+bourgeois she ought to remain, as if she were your wife by law. But
+neither of us wants to descend to the demi-monde, I mean what we mean by
+demi-monde in Germany. In the French sense we've been in it a long time.
+That's what I have to say to you, my dear sir."</p>
+
+<p>Richard arose helplessly, quite red in the face, gnawing ferociously at
+his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always had nothing but her good at heart," he said. "Beside, it
+was your wish, too, wasn't it, Lilly?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could not make denial. She did not want to shame him any further;
+and she turned aside without replying.</p>
+
+<p>"And supposing it was her wish a thousand times!" the little woman
+rejoined in Lilly's stead. "You should have said to her: 'My dear, you
+don't understand. Since we are not married'&mdash;<i>nota bene</i>, that would be
+the best for both of you&mdash;'we must live modestly, otherwise I should do
+you mortal injury, I should throw you in the mire.'"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt tears rising to her eyes, as always when the subject of
+marriage in connection with Richard and herself; arose. Not to show her
+emotion, she quickly left the room to fetch Richard's overcoat. It was
+already quarter of six.</p>
+
+<p>She accompanied him to the door and kissed him tenderly. He must by no
+means suppose that he had jarred her or that she bore him a grudge.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned to her guest, she took his part eagerly. He was very
+dear and good. He had saved her from ruin, and certainly meditated no
+evil.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not here to sow dissension," said the little woman, laughing. She
+then asked to be allowed to remain a little longer. "My first name is
+Jula, and please avail yourself of it in the future."</p>
+
+<p>They sat hand in hand on the straight sofa, over which Walter's
+masterful smile had been replaced by an extremely indifferent
+sheep-shearing scene. On the glass plate in front of each was a bit of
+nibbled cake. For the first time in her life Lilly enjoyed the pleasure
+of possessing something like a friend&mdash;she had always felt uneasy in
+Miss von Schwertfeger's presence.</p>
+
+<p>The canary bird sang a sorry spring song, and the sparrows outside in
+the chestnut trees responded. The May sun painted red spirals on the
+wall, and from time to time a greenish golden flash darted from the
+aquarium when one of the little fish shot through the waving algæ.</p>
+
+<p>The hour of confidences had struck.</p>
+
+<p>"I put on mighty superior airs just then," said Mrs. Jula. "But it was
+necessary to, my dear. Because you're just like me, you are standing on
+the very edge. One touch, and over we go&mdash;where no one will pick us up.
+If we could rely on our own character, our plight would not be so bad,
+but there are no two ways about it, we can't always be faithful&mdash;we
+don't want to be."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say such a thing?" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula ran her little red tongue along her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait, my dear. The men we meet are really not calculated to make
+us see that we are here for one alone. In fact, the only way to enjoy
+them is in the plural. Oh, I could tell you things! But I don't want to
+alarm you. Besides, there's a danger attached to the plural. Each man we
+give ourselves up to robs us of a piece of what is best in us&mdash;what is
+best, I tell you, even if we can't clearly define it. It isn't
+consciousness of our own worth, because, if possible, that survives.
+It's not purity either. We don't give a fig for purity. Happiness,
+certainly not. We should die of dulness if we stuck to one man. I've
+spoken to a number of women, and they all have the same feeling. Some of
+them think it's better not to fall in love, and do it just from caprice.
+Some swear by the grand passion, which is to consecrate everything. No
+two persons, I suppose, think alike in this respect. And now I want to
+give you a little advice, because your turn will come some day. Don't
+accept any gifts, at least, no gifts of money value. At the utmost
+flowers, and none too many of them. And don't give gifts in return,
+because everything belongs to 'him.' Married women may; but it's not
+seemly for us. In general, avoid the <i>amant de cæur</i>, because
+<i>amant-de-cæurdom</i> is characteristic of prostitutes. Married women may
+do all that, because they have to take revenge for being tied to the
+'one.' We, on the contrary, are free. We are permitted to go whenever we
+want to. But we mustn't. Anything, but not that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why mustn't we?" asked Lilly, who suddenly began to feel her chains.</p>
+
+<p>"Married women may. They <i>may</i> everything. They may be divorced as often
+as they want, and carry their heads just as high as before. As for us,
+each time we're thrust lower into the world of prostitutes; and the
+oftener we change, the more we become free booty. All very well if we
+have money of our own. But neither you nor I have. They hover over us
+like vultures ready to swoop down upon us. If she's allowed herself to
+be supported by him&mdash;and <i>him</i>&mdash;and <i>him</i>, why isn't she to be had
+for <i>my</i> good money, too? That's the reason we must hold fast to the one
+we have, no matter how small and horrid he is, no matter how repulsive
+we think him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," said Lilly. "If you're with a man, you love him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;do you mean to say you loved every man you were with?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there weren't so many," replied Lilly. "Beside my husband, the
+general"&mdash;she could not deny herself the joy of uttering that proud
+word&mdash;"there was only one other, and now&mdash;here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stuff!" cried Mrs. Jula in righteous indignation. "Do you want to
+blossom in my eyes as a rose of virtue?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly protested she was speaking the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula could not credit it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, you're not one of us! You ought really be a judge's wife."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laughed. She who had always thought sentence had long before been
+pronounced upon her immoral conduct, now heard herself ridiculed for her
+excess of virtue.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if I were to tell you the stories of all the women we meet,"
+continued Mrs. Jula. "One of them goes with girls in secret. One rents
+out rooms to students, but only to students she likes. And then there's
+one"&mdash;her voice sank to a whisper&mdash;"who fetches her lovers in from the
+street."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"What! I've sat next to a woman like that, and never suspected it!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula's eyes glowed into space.</p>
+
+<p>"It's dreadful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "Well, it doesn't
+bother me. I have my poems. They lend sanctity to my acts and wash me
+clean again. It's for their sake I do it all. I need sensations, yes, I
+need sensations. I must feel my blood chase through my veins. I must
+study, study&mdash;something new in each one. No matter how inane a man may
+be, so inane that a thimble would hold his soul, nevertheless he has one
+hour of intoxication to give you, one hour in which all the bells chime
+and even the spheres make their heavenly music. And the more men you
+possess, the more life you possess, the more souls you creep into. All
+the doors of life fly open. All the secrets are revealed. If you can
+hear the pulsebeat of a stranger, can feel it under your fingers&mdash;he's
+yours&mdash;he's you yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that's life.
+That's what I call life."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly said to herself she could not possibly take this talk seriously,
+though hot and cold waves shivered through her body.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand what you say," she replied, and rose.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula did not even hear her. A mystic fire smouldered in her eyes.
+She looked like a priestess sacrificing to dark gods.</p>
+
+<p>It struck eight o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The maid had set the table in the dining-room, and had laid a cover for
+the strange lady, who did not seem disposed to leave. She now came to
+announce that the meal was served.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you stay and dine with me?" asked Lilly, somewhat against her
+will.</p>
+
+<p>At last Mrs. Jula woke up. She neither accepted nor declined, but arose
+and disengaged her flaming hat from her dark curls.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm crazy, am I not?" she said, and the foolish, seductive smile
+blossomed about her lips again.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing a breath of relief, Lilly opened the door to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>The table gleamed with snowy damask, strewn with leaves of light formed
+by the pierced shade of the hanging lamp. The gaily coloured dishes,
+which Lilly had bought cheap at a sale, were a copy of an old Strasburg
+pattern. The knives and forks as well as the set of casters and the
+sugar tongs were of the finest plate, to be distinguished from real
+silver only by the mark.</p>
+
+<p>When Richard stayed for the evening meal, he should find everything as
+shining and substantial as at his mother's.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula burst into raptures.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how beautiful your place is. How dear! How charming! Am I not right
+in saying you were born to be a married woman? You ought to see my
+rubbish at home. What's the use? If my red-head has spoiled his stomach
+in a restaurant on larded lamb kidneys or turkey <i>aux truffes</i>, the next
+day I have to prepare gruel and toast and I serve it to him directly
+from the pot. What's the use of making a lot of fuss and setting a
+table?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank the Lord!" thought Lilly. "She's herself again."</p>
+
+<p>The meal was modest enough&mdash;various cold cuts with roasted potatoes, and
+the remnants of a pastry for dessert. But Mrs. Jula ate as if such
+delights had not been spread before her for years. And she had to know
+exactly where Lilly got her supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly informed her accurately. For the sake of cheapness, she said, she
+got her cold meats from a man in the country, whose address she would be
+glad to give Mrs. Jula.</p>
+
+<p>"I divined it immediately," said Mrs. Jula, softly, her eyes staring
+meditatively. After a pause she added more softly: "That's just the way
+it was there."</p>
+
+<p>"There&mdash;where?" asked Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, in my home."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. Jula threw her napkin on the table, jumped from her seat,
+and stepped to the open window, wringing her hands and pressing them to
+her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin!" she moaned
+out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" faltered Lilly in fright, and also jumped up.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go back to my husband. I want to go back to my husband. He's
+a cross old piece, I know. And it's death to live with him. It's true,
+it's true! But I do want to go back to him. I'm going to ruin here. I'm
+going to ruin here."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stepped behind her and stroked her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave
+me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides,
+you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with
+a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower
+woods reposed unseen. "No, you won't go to ruin You will reach the
+heights, from which you will look down on us poor women."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can't pull myself out of this
+whirlpool. It's as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I'm going
+to ruin. I'm going to ruin."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the
+unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where
+she had sat before.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So
+I'm going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There
+mustn't be a ray of light."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly closed the door of the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the canal
+through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey
+over the tear-stained face.</p>
+
+<p>"Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her
+adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who
+that woman is? <i>I</i> am that woman."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake!" cried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put
+on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to
+meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look&mdash;as a
+rule he turns back and speaks to me&mdash;and I go with him to common
+saloons, or to a little confectionery shop&mdash;anywhere he wants to. Or I
+sit with him on a bench in the dark&mdash;and if he pleases me still more&mdash;I
+go with him&mdash;wherever else he wants to."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she
+knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the
+street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed
+through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply
+been too fearsome to answer him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that you know what I am, you won't want me to stay sitting here on
+your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I'm ready to go." She
+reached out pleadingly for Lilly's hands.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is
+grievously ill and must render that assistance which the moment
+requires.</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How
+did it come about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how <i>your</i> life turned out as
+it did? It's all very well and good for people to reproach us with
+weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish
+gives birth to another. And you always think you're doing what is right
+and what fate has prescribed."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"This is what I've always said to myself: my poetry requires it. I must
+have experiences, pictures, that <i>frisson</i>, as the French say. But all
+that's a mere pretext. The truth is, we hunt and hunt and hunt. Your
+husband's not the right one. Your red-head's not the right man, and none
+of the rest of them&mdash;your sporting business man, or your
+eh-eh-lieutenant. But he must be <i>somewhere</i>! The stranger sitting at
+the next table, he's the one, surely. So you come to an understanding
+with him&mdash;after all he's <i>not</i> the right one. It is most certainly not
+the fine ones. Because they take the trouble to possess us without
+taking the trouble to find out whether there's anything fine in us, too.
+So you keep on hunting. Perhaps you will meet him on the street. Finally
+it turns into fever, which wholly consumes you. Sometimes I can scarcely
+fall asleep in anticipation of the next dark evening when I shall rove
+about again. Now, do you see, I must be going to my ruin? When I saw
+your beautifully set table, all of a sudden a longing for my home and my
+husband came over me again. Yes, I sometimes have that longing. He has
+bleared eyes and he smells of carbolic acid. Oh, that vile smell! I'd
+like so to smell it again For all I care, he may even throw the
+stethoscope at me again. Besides, he wrote to me I should return to him
+If I want to, I can. <i>But</i>&mdash;I will remain here&mdash;and go to my ruin.
+Life's funny."</p>
+
+<p>She rose and groped for her hat and hatpins lying on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not want to let her go in such a state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>"If you feel it is driving you to your ruin, that it's a poison in your
+blood, why don't you try to resist? Why don't you pluck it out of your
+system? Mere force of will must help some."</p>
+
+<p>"I've said that to myself," rejoined Mrs. Jula. "But I've never had
+anyone to whom I could speak about it and who could help me. Now I've
+found you, it will be easier for me. Now I feel I might be able to.
+Maybe I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to give me your promise?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I promise," Mrs. Jula cried, and delightedly clapped her hand in
+Lilly's. "You will be my saviour. You are already. I feel it. To show my
+thanks I will stand guard over you and see to it that no one spoils you.
+You shan't get to be what I am, or the others."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll take care of myself," faltered Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's what you say! But when the dreary void comes&mdash;and 'he'
+grows more and more insipid&mdash;just you see! You've nothing left to say to
+yourself&mdash;and you mustn't have children&mdash;for God's sake!&mdash;we <i>don't</i>
+have them&mdash;all of us know how to prevent them from coming. You mustn't
+share his activities with him either. He acquaints you with as many of
+them as he is compelled to. And behind it all you feel the hostility of
+his family, who look upon you as a species of harpy. Then those cursed
+schemes of his for marrying that he dishes up whenever he's angry. Above
+all, the longing. It's like a steady toothache. That's it&mdash;like the
+toothache. You don't want to think of it, but wherever you go, it
+tortures you. For life <i>cannot</i> end that way. Something <i>must</i> happen.
+It's much worse than if you're married. Just you wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula's wild words increased the pain at Lilly's heart. A desolate
+mournfulness threatened to attack her.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop," she said. "If it must come, it will come soon enough. I don't
+care to think of it beforehand."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are, my dear. It doesn't help any, either."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula now took leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you remember your promise?" asked Lilly from the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>"Forever and ever, I swear to you," and Mrs. Jula slipped down the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>With her brain in a whirl Lilly returned to her dark drawing-room, sad
+and distraught, and leaned her head out of the open window for a whiff
+of fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the little woman, who had just emerged from the front entrance,
+lightly and gracefully trip along the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman in a chimney-pot and patent leather shoes came towards her,
+passed her, started, stopped abruptly, turned about, and, when he
+reached her side, raised his hat with exaggerated politeness.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of the street-lamp Lilly saw her face smiling up at him
+curiously, insinuatingly&mdash;and then they went on their way&mdash;together.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IXA" id="CHAPTER_IXA"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Richard reluctantly adapted himself to a less showy existence. He still
+wanted to parade his possession of Lilly; but little Mrs. Jula's homily
+had sunk deep into his conscience, and he did not dare to disobey her.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he was bored and vexed and sulky, and Lilly was on the
+point of herself suggesting that they go to the races, when she received
+news of her mother's death.</p>
+
+<p>She shed the number of tears and suffered the amount of affliction
+befitting her tender heart. In reality her mother had been dead to her
+so long before that her grief could not be very profound.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving Berlin to attend the burial at the insane asylum, her
+greatest concern was to have as simple a mourning dress made as
+possible. She felt ashamed that she had provided so poorly for her sick
+mother during her lifetime, and she wished to avoid giving offence by
+elegance of appearance; which did not prevent the officials and
+physicians of the institution from dancing attendance on her and
+treating her as if she were a sort of shining black bird of paradise.</p>
+
+<p>She spent three glowing spring evenings at the little heap of earth in
+prayer and meditation, and returned to Berlin in a serious frame of mind
+with thoughts stirred up like soil freshly turned by the plough.</p>
+
+<p>When at her mother's grave she felt she hated Richard; but when she
+found him awaiting her at the station she sank into his arms
+helplessly, eager for consolation. Now he really was her all.</p>
+
+<p>For the next few months it was taken for granted that her mourning stood
+in the way of pleasure seeking. Richard, it must be said to his credit,
+behaved sweetly and considerately. He sat at home with her many a night,
+read unintelligible books, played backgammon, and preferred falling
+asleep on the sofa to luring her into the world of gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>But since it was not right that he should become entirely estranged from
+society, it was arranged that he was to have every other evening for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>His beautiful mistress's reputation had smoothed his path. Relying upon
+the support of two of her admirers, he ventured to apply for admission
+into one of the aristocratic clubs, which welcomed him without a single
+black ball. From now on he could enjoy the supreme delight of losing his
+firm's well-earned money to young scions of the aristocracy, foreign
+attachés, and other superior beings.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly disliked hearing of his losses. She worried over his annoyance,
+which he invariably revealed. Whenever he told of his bad luck, she felt
+constrained, and then offered to make up by saving even more than she
+had heretofore. Though he laughed each time and assured her that what
+she cost him signified as little as if he were to indulge in one
+additional cigarette a day, she clung to her conviction that she was a
+parasite, and was partly responsible for the welfare of Liebert &amp;
+Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>When he spent a quiet evening with her resting from his nocturnal
+campaigns, they always "talked business." Lilly displayed a sharp sense
+for practical matters, even for accounts, and her artistic judgment was
+sure.</p>
+
+<p>Richard very often brought home drawings of models, and the two sat
+bent over the outspread rolls planning and consulting with each other
+like partners.</p>
+
+<p>Those were well-nigh blessed hours.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly never wearied of inquiring about the factory; how many people were
+employed there at that particular time; whether this or that man or
+woman was still working for him&mdash;she did not know the names, but
+designated the people by an accurate description of their
+appearance&mdash;what pieces were in process of making; and whether the
+supply of articles of one or other model had not yet given out, so
+thoroughly informed she kept herself as to the firm's sales.</p>
+
+<p>The factory, as she often jestingly remarked to Richard, was her unhappy
+love. To call for him at his office at closing time was her greatest
+delight, and had she been permitted to, she would have busied herself at
+the factory every day. But he objected. His employés knew of the close
+relationship between them, and he must avoid gossip and ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt sure this was not the only motive. She had long fully
+realised that his mother was not kindly disposed to her. Though at first
+he had spoken of her quite freely, he now evaded a reply when Lilly
+directly asked for her. Probably he feared exciting the old lady's
+indignation if he permitted his mistress to make herself at home in his
+office.</p>
+
+<p>So Lilly contented herself with sympathetic interest from afar in the
+welfare of the little kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>On the evenings she was left alone, at a loss what to do with herself,
+she got into the habit of visiting the house in Alte Jakobstrasse.</p>
+
+<p>She left a little before ten o'clock, and took up her station on the
+opposite side of the street, from where she gazed reverentially at the
+old grey structure. She admired the imitation marble columns, which
+formed a decorative frame about the entrance after the fashion of a
+Renaissance gateway. She stared up at the dimly lighted second story
+where his mother dwelt, and pressed timidly into the darkness of a
+doorway if she saw the threatening shadow of a woman's figure glide
+across the curtains.</p>
+
+<p>When it grew late and the tenants of the house ceased to come and go,
+she ventured to cross the street, mount the three front-door steps,
+press her face against the iron grating, and peep into the hall. The
+sheen of the leafy pyramid, the subdued milky whiteness of the Clytie
+bust, the dark glow of the stained glass window mingled to produce the
+mysterious, alluring impression of a dusky chapel.</p>
+
+<p>The front-door steps became like a goal of a pilgrimage up to which
+penitents crawl on their knees; the stained glass window became a
+heavenly aureole, the Clytie bust a benedictory saint.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Late in the summer Richard was called to the man&oelig;uvres.</p>
+
+<p>His letters were curt and reserved, and unsuccessfully concealed his ill
+humour. Finally they were dated from the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>He had fallen from his horse and his left knee joint was inflamed. He
+would be unable to ride for a long time, perhaps forever.</p>
+
+<p>He returned in October wearing a gutta percha knee cap, and promptly
+sent in his resignation from the regiment.</p>
+
+<p>The fall from his horse in truth was a fortunate incident. Rumours of
+his relation with the divorced wife of its former commander had reached
+the regiment. The comrades noticeably held aloof from him, and
+evidently his chiefs were merely awaiting confirmation of the report to
+call him to account officially; a procedure which in the circumstances
+would have brought his lieutenancy in the reserves to a catastrophal
+end.</p>
+
+<p>The accident was his salvation; and his object in adopting an irritated,
+reproachful manner in Lilly's presence was merely to make her aware of
+what he was sacrificing because of his love of her.</p>
+
+<p>Indirectly he had heard news of the colonel which filled Lilly with
+horror. It had gradually become a fixed idea of the colonel's that Anna
+von Schwertfeger had acted in collusion with Lilly and Von Prell; and
+man of violence that he was, he had chased her from his castle. Since
+then he lived alone, a maddened misanthrope, and it was feared he would
+come to a sad end.</p>
+
+<p>An ominous greeting from those sunny days of Lilly's past.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A few months later that occurred which Mrs. Jula had prophesied: one day
+Richard spoke to Lilly of marrying another woman, not, however, for the
+purpose of annoying her, but because he had formed the habit of
+disburdening himself of every vexation by talking it over with her.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was entertaining an enormously wealthy orphan girl.</p>
+
+<p>Of course for Richard&mdash;wholly and entirely for Richard.</p>
+
+<p>She sat at table every day, a pale, strawy blond, and looked at him
+questioningly with great, strange eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you soon going to propose?"</p>
+
+<p>His mother delivered long sermons. It could not go on the same way. A
+few more seasons like the last and all the respectable families would
+point the finger of scorn at him.</p>
+
+<p>It was enough to drive him distracted.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt as if glacial waters were trickling down her back.</p>
+
+<p>But she bore up bravely. She smiled at him, and betrayed no more
+excitement than if he had been consulting her about some doubtful
+factory model.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel you could get to love her?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What does 'to love' mean?" he rejoined, avoiding her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, everything has to be taken into consideration."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk just as if I were serious about it," he cried. "Altogether you
+act as if you didn't care, as if you would like to be rid of me in a
+twinkling."</p>
+
+<p>With languid eagerness Lilly tried to assure him she did not wish to
+stand in his way, not in the least, least bit. She had only his
+happiness at heart, and if he cared to make her proud by showing
+confidence in her, he would not take this step, neither now nor later,
+without discussing it with her beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>He was touched. He kissed her and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>But the conversation left Lilly as in a nightmare, and the one thought
+obsessed her:</p>
+
+<p>"If he deserts me, I shall sink into the mire after all."</p>
+
+<p>Grief over her mother's death was a vanishing cloud compared with this
+torturing anguish.</p>
+
+<p>The vultures Mrs Jula had spoken of occurred to her, all those vultures
+with their white fronts and black dress suits, who were waiting to
+snatch her to themselves with their moneyed claws the instant her friend
+and protector abandoned her. From them her thoughts flitted to those
+other vultures in Kellermann's picture, who perched on the sunburnt
+rocks ready to pounce on the naked beauty when she should lose the
+strength to defend herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Her chains are her weapons," thought Lilly. "And that's the way it is
+with me. If I am set free, I am lost."</p>
+
+<p>The next day she and Richard carefully avoided the dangerous topic,
+though Richard remained distraught and uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Lilly took courage, and though her feelings compressed her
+throat like a murderous clutch, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I see you haven't come to a decision yet, Richard. Wouldn't you like to
+bring me her picture, so that I can see what she is like? No one knows
+you so well as I do, and no one will know so well whether she suits you
+or not."</p>
+
+<p>Richard violently denied that he was undecided. What did <i>he</i> care for
+that doll of a girl?</p>
+
+<p>But his resentment was disingenuous, and his eyes stared into vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>She had five millions.</p>
+
+<p>And the next day he actually brought the photograph.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laid it down without unwrapping it. Mere contact with the picture
+made her hands tremble. She feared the first sight of the girl's face
+would expose her own great distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're not even looking at it," said Richard, with some
+disappointment in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Time enough after you've gone," said Lilly, rejoiced that she could
+smile so indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>She called to him when he was out in the hall:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you to-morrow&mdash;you'll know then."</p>
+
+<p>The next instant she caught up the picture. Her heart knocked at her
+ribs. But first she had to wave "good-by" to Richard, as was her habit
+and duty.</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A girl's face, good, placid, somewhat peaked, with poor, though amiable
+eyes. Her blond hair was plaited country fashion, and the heavy braids,
+thick as a woman's wrist, drew her head back a bit. A timid smile
+played about her full lips.</p>
+
+<p>Something just to be loved, something which would revive with happiness
+as a spray of lilacs in fresh water. Not turbulent, none too
+gifted&mdash;wifely and yielding.</p>
+
+<p>Just what Richard needed.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees in
+front of it. She prayed and wrestled with her soul.</p>
+
+<p>She had to reiterate again and again:</p>
+
+<p>"Just what he needs. He won't have another such chance."</p>
+
+<p>And the five millions!</p>
+
+<p>If she were not to set him free she would be one of those harpies which
+Mrs. Jula said the world of respectability considered her and her like
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am in possession, therefore mine is the right. What good are her
+five millions to me, if I go to ruin on account of them? Why need I
+sacrifice myself for him, for him or for anybody in the wide world?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harpy, harpy!" rang in between.</p>
+
+<p>So thought the vampires described in children's mythologies as having
+beautiful hair and murderous claws.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tear to shreds the flesh of him whom I possess."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what a night!</p>
+
+<p>She crouched in bed with her knees drawn up and her face buried in her
+lap, sobbing, sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>At last, toward morning, she found what she had been seeking. Out of
+tears, out of bitterness, out of shuddering and prayer arose the
+alleviating resolve: that very afternoon when he came she would tell
+him&mdash;but no!&mdash;why wait until the afternoon? Why wait until he entered
+the rooms where the force of familiarity, his loving resistance might
+shiver the great sacrificial work to bits?</p>
+
+<p>It must be in some other place where she seemed more of a stranger to
+him, which she could leave the instant she felt his proximity caused her
+to waver.</p>
+
+<p>She was not allowed to visit him in his office without special
+permission. But at the midday recess, when it was quieter than at other
+times, he retired to his back room for his actual work of the day, and
+she might be sure of entering unseen and speaking to him without fear of
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>So sacred a resolve sanctioned everything.</p>
+
+<p>She used the morning for assorting his letters and tying them together.
+She wanted to hand them to him along with his betrothed's picture when
+she bade him farewell. He need never fear she might cause him trouble in
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>Then she dressed&mdash;more carefully than usual&mdash;washed herself with milk of
+lilacs to remove the traces of tears, waved her hair, and drew it into a
+knot at the nape of her neck, as she had seen on statues of Greek women.
+She was their equal&mdash;like them, serenely raised above sorrow and joy.</p>
+
+<p>She drove to the office.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck quarter past one when she stood in front of the
+columned gateway.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody was to be seen in the yard except the porter, who lifted his cap
+with a confidential smile.</p>
+
+<p>She was still their employer's mistress.</p>
+
+<p>If only she had taken the precaution to send in her card.</p>
+
+<p>The front office door was open as usual when he worked in the back room,
+and she well knew the secret spring of the gate in the railing.</p>
+
+<p>She prudently knocked at the inner door, which as a rule stood slightly
+ajar, but which to-day was closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped in and faced&mdash;his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had never seen her, and she had imagined her quite, quite
+different, a tall, thin, imposing old lady. Next to Richard's desk sat a
+medium-sized, rotund woman with a black lace cap on her grizzled hair.
+She looked at Lilly with an expression of surprise and displeasure in
+her cold, grey eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly instantly knew it was she.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, who had been leaning back comfortably in his revolving chair,
+jumped to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Rigid with fright, Lilly stared at the old lady, who now rose from her
+seat also, while an evil gleam of anger and contempt lighted up those
+cold eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine state of affairs," she cried, turning her head jerkily from
+Richard to Lilly and back to Richard. "I'm not secure even in my own
+home. I beg of you, Richard, do not expose me to another meeting with a
+person of this sort."</p>
+
+<p>With an indignant snort she pushed past Lilly, who stood to one side in
+respectful terror.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here? What do you mean by coming here in this way?"</p>
+
+<p>Richard had never shouted at her so before.</p>
+
+<p>He planted himself squarely in front of her, thrust his hands in his
+trousers' pockets, and gnawed the ends of his moustache. His head hung
+on his left shoulder. He looked like a treacherous, butting bull.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to hand him the picture and the letters, tell him everything
+she had intended to; but her voice failed. Her knees threatened to give
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;" she faltered, and choked.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;" he mimicked her. "I&mdash;I&mdash;I'd like to wriggle myself in here.
+I&mdash;I&mdash;I'd like to be mistress here&mdash;isn't that so? No, my little angel.
+This can't go on! It has to stop&mdash;at once! I've long had my suspicions
+of what you call your unhappy love of the factory. Get out of here! Get
+out of here, I say."</p>
+
+<p>Before he had finished Lilly was out.</p>
+
+<p>She still held the parcel in a convulsive grip.</p>
+
+<p>She reeled as she walked along&mdash;past bright red houses, which threatened
+to fall on her. A truck loaded with flour bags scattered white clouds. A
+pulley screeched in a factory yard. When someone came toward her, she
+made a wide détour, keeping to the edge of the pavement. She feared he
+might grin his contempt at her.</p>
+
+<p>A skein of silk thread lay on the pavement. Lilly picked it up, and
+thought of hanging herself.</p>
+
+<p>Something must be done.</p>
+
+<p>To be abandoned&mdash;very well&mdash;if it could not be helped. Each one, when
+her turn came, would have to resign herself to her fate.</p>
+
+<p>But to be chased away&mdash;thrown out&mdash;like a thief&mdash;like the vilest woman
+of the street&mdash;to be shaken off like a disgusting worm, to be spat upon!</p>
+
+<p>Something must be done.</p>
+
+<p>Anything to take revenge upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Even if he was now unsusceptible to her revenge&mdash;all the same! He would
+discover he had been to blame throughout. If she descended into the
+mire, which had heretofore filled her with horror, if she went to
+ruin&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>Something must be done&mdash;any deed of self-degradation which made her fit
+to be treated in that way and no other&mdash;and freed her from those
+torments&mdash;those torments.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart hung in her breast like a painful swelling. She could have
+drawn a line about it, so sharply defined it was against her side. It
+seemed to be in the clutch of sharp claws.</p>
+
+<p>Again those lurking vultures occurred to her, the vultures of
+Kellermann's picture.</p>
+
+<p>They were waiting for Lilly Czepanek. For whom else?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly something flashed and hissed in her brain like a tongue of
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>That was it! That was it!</p>
+
+<p>She summoned a cab.</p>
+
+<p>On! On!</p>
+
+<p>Whither?</p>
+
+<p>She ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to Mr.
+Kellermann's studio.</p>
+
+<p>She ran up the steps, the same steps down which eight months before she
+had glided at Richard's side rocked in bliss. All a-tremble she stepped
+into the dark anteroom, which had the stuffy smell of a badly aired
+bedroom. Her hand almost failed her as she knocked at the studio door.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kellermann in his breeches and slippers was squatting on the floor
+beside the Turkish tabouret in exactly the same position as at her first
+visit. He was busied with a coffee machine, and looked contented and
+seedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy on us!" he said, and drew the collar of his night-shirt together.
+"What signifies this sudden appearance, O noble goddess? Are the suns
+setting again?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not reply. She laid her hat and wraps on a chair, and began to
+unhook her waist, looking about for a screen. There was none.</p>
+
+<p>The models who came to pose for Mr. Kellermann were not squeamish.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up and stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>When he realised what she meant to do, he broke into exclamations of
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I say? What did I say? I said you'd come. You see! We've
+reached the point at which we're screaming to be set free."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not screaming," she replied, drawing up the corners of her mouth
+disdainfully. "If you please, look somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p>He made a dash for the picture leaning against the wall in its blind
+frame, blew the dust off, drove the wedge in tight, and adjusted the
+easel, laughing all the while, and grunting:</p>
+
+<p>"She came after all."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had torn off her outer garments and was pulling at the drawing
+ribbon of her chemise. Her paralysed fingers could scarcely untie the
+knot.</p>
+
+<p>Now she stood entirely unclothed.</p>
+
+<p>The garish studio light pricked her flesh painfully as with a thousand
+needles.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to groan and creep into a corner, but she turned her clenched
+fists outward, threw back her shoulders, and presented herself to the
+painter's greedy gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you begin?" she asked. As she spoke she felt that her
+smarting scorn was distorting her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll begin immediately," he stammered, choking over each word. "I won't
+utter&mdash;a syllable&mdash;or the vision will vanish. I'll begin."</p>
+
+<p>He snatched up the palette, pressed the tubes, and readjusted the
+picture on the easel.</p>
+
+<p>He made a few strokes, then threw the brushes down. He reeled like a
+drunkard.</p>
+
+<p>"No use this way," he said, mumbling to himself. "You must pose."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you wish," she replied, still with that mocking smile, and
+stretched out her arms like the beauty of the picture.</p>
+
+<p>He was not yet satisfied, and wanted to approach her. He did not dare
+to.</p>
+
+<p>"I will move the mirror, so that you can see for yourself what is wrong
+in your pose."</p>
+
+<p>He did so.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shuddered. A strange wild animal, which was not even beautiful,
+seemed to be standing there.</p>
+
+<p>"Not right yet," she heard him say. "The attitude is meaningless&mdash;you've
+got to know what it's for."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the back of the studio and rummaged among all sorts of gear
+and fetched out a tremendously thick chain, the colour of rusty iron,
+which did not clank while being handled.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be cold and won't weigh you down," he said with a short,
+forced laugh. "It's made of papier maché."</p>
+
+<p>Then she had to suffer his coming close to her and laying the chain
+about her body.</p>
+
+<p>He was panting and his breath streamed upon her hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Each tremulous touch of his fingers was like a sabre slash.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the easel, groped for the brushes and began to paint
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he cast everything from him, seized the picture with both hands
+and dashed it against the easel. One of the rods tore through the canvas
+and split it in two.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She feebly attempted to defend herself with the chain.</p>
+
+<p>But the chain was made of papier maché.</p>
+
+<p>And she would not have had it otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Down into the mire, quickly, with closed eyes!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next day Richard paid his customary afternoon visit. His lids were
+reddened and his eyes glassy. He looked completely crushed, but he
+behaved as if nothing had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had scarcely expected him, and she received him with frigid
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he said, "on account of yesterday. After you left I had a tough
+discussion with mama. You mustn't come to the factory. I had to promise
+her that. As for the rest, I think we'll not speak of it any more. The
+young lady's leaving this evening. So let's kiss."</p>
+
+<p>They kissed. And all was as before.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XA" id="CHAPTER_XA"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>Once more the chestnuts put on their yellow cloaks and the peep holes in
+the foliage widened. From her window Lilly could see the ducks foraging,
+and the odorous, fruit-laden barges on their laborious way to market
+sunk deep in the water under their summer cargo.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the world muffled itself up for winter weather; once more
+metropolitan amusements turned on their gay lights.</p>
+
+<p>In decent half-mourning the chase began again. Richard objected to
+remaining like a pickle in a jar.</p>
+
+<p>This time, however, they entirely renounced box seats at dazzling shows
+and suppers at aristocratic restaurants. Richard no longer had to
+establish himself triumphantly in the possession of a famous&mdash;at the
+same time cheap&mdash;<i>horizontale de grande marque</i>. They quietly remained
+on a middle-class level, where German champagne reigns supreme and the
+star Kempinski is in the ascendant.</p>
+
+<p>But here, too, in cabarets and theatres where smoking is allowed, in
+jolly little nooks and respectable looking back rooms, they passed
+numberless hours in riotous abandon.</p>
+
+<p>The women, who in the other world had felt somewhat out of place and
+embarrassed, enjoyed themselves better in these more modest
+surroundings, and the gentlemen were content that their shirt fronts
+retained the starch longer.</p>
+
+<p>The personnel remained about the same. Only a few dandies dropped away,
+who saw no fun in life unless it offered them an occasional opportunity
+to receive a condescending nod from a few lieutenants of the Guard in
+citizens' clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly followed the crowd, and thought it had to be so.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part she sat there saying little and smiling a friendly
+smile. She permitted the gentlemen to pay her court and was moderately
+responsive. She listened indifferently to the confidences of the ladies,
+all of whom were well-disposed to her, because as everyone soon
+realised, Lilly had no desire to poach on another's preserves.</p>
+
+<p>They might have taken her to be limited or phlegmatic, if from time to
+time the champagne had not relaxed her rigidity and enlivened her with a
+different spirit. She slowly came out of her state of torpor. Her eyes
+flashed, her cheeks reddened. She laughed aloud, made madcap remarks,
+told the colonel's club jokes, and finally fell into a sort of ecstasy,
+in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous chirp, imitated well-known
+actors, and even danced the bold dances she had seen on the variety
+stage.</p>
+
+<p>Her memory was incredibly good. She remembered things she had heard only
+once, and quite unconsciously, for in her normal state she recalled even
+less than others. The wine first had to wash away the barriers that
+always hemmed her being.</p>
+
+<p>Her associates soon became aware of this, and tried to trick her into
+the condition that promised them a merry entertainment. But she resisted
+with all her might. She waged constant warfare without even Richard as
+an ally. It flattered his vanity to have his beautiful mistress admired
+because of her talents.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Lilly always felt bruised and battered and despondent.</p>
+
+<p>And sometimes when the field of her spiritual vision was completely
+filled with red, kicking legs and the empty teasing dribble of comic
+songs, she heard a still small voice in admonition:</p>
+
+<p>"There was a time when you lived otherwise. There was a time when you
+aspired to the heights."</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly feared to listen to this voice.</p>
+
+<p>She felt she was worthless because she was defenceless.</p>
+
+<p>And because nobody was there who understood her and held out his hand to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Frequently, on the evenings she was left to herself, she slipped out of
+the house as if she were committing an evil deed, and took a seat in the
+gallery of some good theatre, where she thought no one would recognise
+her; or at a concert, among the music students, who sat on the steps or
+leaned against the railings, following the selections with thick scores
+in their hands. Lilly behaved as if she were one of them.</p>
+
+<p>But concerts no longer touched her. She felt uneasy and out of place,
+and turned her attention to some young man because of his bold profile
+or his fine head of hair.</p>
+
+<p>"He is one of those favoured talented persons," she thought, tormented,
+and looked at him long and languishly, until he returned her dallying
+with ardour.</p>
+
+<p>Though she burned to have him speak to her, she lacked the courage to
+grant him additional signs of her favour, having before her eyes Mrs.
+Jula's appalling example. Besides, the throbbing of her heart was
+sufficient enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>Already she was so completely under the spell of an erotic world that
+every excitement of her mood was immediately transmuted into a desirous
+love game.</p>
+
+<p>And the longing, that eternal toothache, of which Mrs. Jula had spoken,
+had begun to drill her nerves.</p>
+
+<p>It had come like a thief in the night. It filled her sleep with flaming
+pictures and converted her waking hours into a twilight doze.</p>
+
+<p>She waited, but nobody came. Nobody took the trouble to pick up her lost
+soul from out of the dust.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one man who observed her and seemed to have a suspicion
+of what was taking place in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>He was Dr. Salmoni.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Salmoni was considered a great man, one of the luminaries in
+Berlin's intellectual life. He was editor of an art magazine, which had
+once conducted a revolutionary campaign against the great men of the old
+school, and had fashioned new gods, erected new altars at which the
+masses might burn incense. But the steady burning of incense was not in
+Dr. Salmoni's line. He promptly bethought himself that the divinities
+before whom every Tom, Dick, or Harry was crawling on his knees, were,
+at bottom, creations of his and of his friends, fetiches to be rejected,
+just as they had been exalted. And he began a merry war upon them also.
+People easily endured Dr. Salmoni's hate; his quips sputtered in the air
+harmless as skyrockets; nobody believed his imputations. The only time
+he was dangerous was when he showed pitying benevolence. Then somebody's
+reputation was surely at stake. In certain circles Dr. Salmoni's praise
+was equivalent to a death sentence.</p>
+
+<p>As in the previous winter, the distinguished Dr. Salmoni condescended
+every now and then to take part in the innocent sport of the little
+circle whose forte was not exactly intellectuality. His appearance
+always caused a flutter of joyous reverence; the company instantly moved
+closer to make place for him, and as soon as he leaned back gently in
+his chair, smiled his sad, compassionate smile, and stroked the peak of
+his light-brown Van Dyke beard, they hung on his lips expectantly
+awaiting a titillating stream of spiteful sallies.</p>
+
+<p>But the jester's rôle did not always suit him. He plunged into profound
+tête-à-têtes, or dreamed in silence, according to his mood. Sometimes he
+even showed a naïve, trusting side of his nature, like a leopard playing
+with dogs.</p>
+
+<p>He seldom addressed Lilly; but his piercing eyes often glided over her
+face, as if to spy upon her feelings and grope about in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he seated himself next to her, and asked her to cut his meat
+for him&mdash;he had strained his wrist throttling a certain celebrity.
+Waxing more intimate, he next asked her to feed him, though his left
+hand had by no means been disabled.</p>
+
+<p>So for the first time they entered into a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly quailed. She feared she might not acquit herself creditably.</p>
+
+<p>"I am surprised," he said. "You've been going about with this loud crew
+for over a year, and I don't read the slang in your eyes yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Slang in my eyes? What do you mean by slang in a person's eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do me the favour to regard the women here." He pointed furtively at
+Mrs. Jula, Mrs. Welter, Karla, and a few others. "Look at the way they
+roll their eyes and exchange glances. It's the lingo of a&mdash;well, I won't
+say vice&mdash;I despise words without nuance&mdash;I'll say of a thievish fancy.
+Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so," faltered Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you still have some of the childlike expression you had when you
+made your début. Not altogether. A fleck of disdain is in your eyes.
+Disdain is not the right word. At the edge of deserts there are certain
+salt seas&mdash;dark green and empty. Do you catch the idea? Because the
+ground is poisonous."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly," said Lilly, constrained.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, it's wonderful. Your soul's like a filter. It assimilates
+nothing but what it wants to. Or have you a secret store to draw on,
+which gives you the right to mock at us&mdash;some constant ideal&mdash;some goal
+in the hazy distance&mdash;some great song&mdash;a Song of Songs?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started up with a faint outcry, but not so faint as to fail to
+attract general attention.</p>
+
+<p>"I merely stepped on her foot," Dr. Salmoni explained, "and she is still
+innocent enough <i>not</i> to consider it unintentional."</p>
+
+<p>All laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"A joke exactly suited to their understanding," he whispered, bending
+toward her shoulder. "I'll pretend not to have heard your involuntary
+avowal. That alone has value in my estimation which is voluntary. And I
+will not ask you as I did a year ago: 'What is thy quest here, lovely
+lady?' I will ask you: 'What hast thou to lose here?' I myself will
+furnish the answer. Your style&mdash;you have your style to lose. You are on
+the point of becoming styleless; which is always a misfortune and a
+crime. To me style is virtue, greatness, genuineness, force, religion, a
+God-ordained quality&mdash;all in one and a few things more. Remain bodily
+and spiritually intangible. Rise to a healthy, gladsome vice&mdash;<i>tant
+mieux</i>. Dress your hair for evening prayers, or let it flow over the
+pillow like a bacchante&mdash;but decide which."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe a moment ago you were pleading for nuance," said Lilly, the
+edge of whose wit was sharpened by his, "and now you're advocating a
+dogma."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" he praised her. "Excellent. But no. I'm not preaching a
+dogma. I'm preaching the exercise of one's will, the will to
+personality. Do you understand? The result will be rich enough in
+nuances. Undoubtedly you have the material in you for a <i>grande
+amoureuse</i>, but alas not the courage."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, not the material," she flashed back happily.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed like a child.</p>
+
+<p>"In one's old age one gets lectures on logic from little, virtuous
+women." He magnanimously allowed her the pleasure of having outdone him
+in repartee.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter Lilly reflected much upon the conversation. What a vast deal
+he knew of her! Was he in alliance with supernatural powers?</p>
+
+<p>"The will to personality," he had said.</p>
+
+<p>She felt blissful. Up to the heights again!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On another occasion, as they were walking behind their companions along
+Friederichstrasse, still gaily alive at midnight, he adopted a different
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a sure feeling that you are afraid of me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I?" she queried, confused and drawing a deep breath. "Why should I be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you know I have a message for you, a message to which, in the
+bottom of your heart, you don't feel equal."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," she stammered, though she fully took in his
+meaning. She knew precisely what rôle he could play in her life if&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am a man who likes tones pianissimo. I don't care to blow my
+sensations on a comb. Otherwise your ears might have tingled on certain
+occasions. However, I must say, it's abominable to see a woman like you,
+a woman created to wander on the heights of thought and enjoyment,
+seduced by a few Bismarck herrings into cutting capers with them. I
+won't mention names, but I assure you, you can't get drunk on lukewarm
+dish water, and intoxication is the great thing in life, at least while
+our blood runs lively in our veins."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly trembled on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>They were passing a crowd of roysterers, young fellows shouldering their
+canes, with swimming eyes dreaming into space. One whistled Wagner,
+another sang a students' song; and sweet little street-walkers cast
+longing, seductive glances at them. Lilly and Dr. Salmoni passed more
+people, adults and half-grown girls, men and youths. All seemed under
+the spell of the same transport. It was like a great dance, at which
+each offered his neighbour hand and mouth and body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do?" she whispered, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you," he replied with a smile which harboured dark
+promises. "You must learn to live another life along with this one. One
+all for yourself, for yourself and a few select. Do you understand? As a
+Frenchman once said, you must lay out a secret garden, in which you will
+cultivate in absolute quiet those thoughts and desires that seem dear to
+you, and above all, those that seem to be forbidden and those that you
+have stolen by the way, no matter how. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever I have stolen has brought me misfortune," said Lilly,
+hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather the law which calls it stolen. The distinction is a difficult
+one to make. However, you may believe me in this: so long as we are not
+permeated with the religion of self-exaltation&mdash;do you understand me,
+child?&mdash;so long as we haven't rooted out the words 'attachment' and
+'duty' from our thoughts, our road is not perfect. We continue to knock
+our toes on the crushed stones that the others heap up ahead of us under
+the pretext that they are levelling the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes they do," said Lilly, recalling all the good things she had
+received from Richard.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her with compassionate indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be suffering from what I call chain madness."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" asked Lilly, suspecting, to her dismay, that he again
+divined what lay in her innermost being. Could he know of the shameful
+rôle that a certain chained beauty had played in her life?</p>
+
+<p>"It is said," he continued, "that if galley slaves who have worn chains
+for many years are liberated, they cannot endure their freedom. They
+complain that their arms and legs have been chopped off. They miss the
+support and weight of their chains. You have such beautiful arms for
+stretching upward. Just exercise them a little."</p>
+
+<p>"And such long legs for running away," she supplemented with a tortured
+laugh. "The only question is: Whither?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh! Why run away immediately?" he asked, stroking her hand, which
+rested on his arm, and speaking as to a child. "You would simply run
+into the arms of another so-called duty. First you must be free
+inwardly. You must first forget to fetch and carry for persons who are
+themselves meant to fetch and carry."</p>
+
+<p>"Teach me," she burst out.</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring you some books," he said, as if deliberating, "books which
+will lead you back to yourself. To-morrow at noon, I will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment they were separated.</p>
+
+<p>In bed Lilly lay with clasped hands smiling up at the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>She was again aspiring to the heights.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>But the next day when he was to come, dread fell upon her again, dread
+of him, of Richard, of herself.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first secret visit, the first to knock a breach in the peace
+of her home.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw him step from the cab with several volumes in his arm, she
+flew into the kitchen and told the maid to say she was not at home.</p>
+
+<p>But the instant he left she seized the books which he had brought.</p>
+
+<p>Some were printed in Roman type and looked dreadfully scientific.
+However, they were intelligible, and Lilly took up one after the other.
+What she read sent the blood coursing turbulently through her veins, and
+mounted to her head like sweet wine.</p>
+
+<p>All the books spoke of the "will to power," "the free man," "the right
+to live one's life," "the religion of passion," and similar things. In
+each pure beauty was extolled as the goal of human endeavours; in each
+the word "individuality" recurred numberless times in numberless
+connections. Each taught you to look down upon your fellow-beings with
+vigorous pride, and despise them as a blunted, debased, tortured and
+enslaved mass. In each you wandered along in blessed solitude&mdash;or in the
+company of a very few like-minded, noble souls&mdash;on free wind-swept
+mountain heights surrounded by an eternally bright ether.</p>
+
+<p>It was a constant offering of incense, an insatiable lashing of oneself
+into satiety, pleasant murder, hymn-singing rape. The main subjects
+invariably were intoxication, dreams, life's festivals, and ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, a veil of intoxication and dreams was spread over Lilly's soul.
+She felt she was enveloped in a sapphire haze shot with the purple of a
+distant glow. She heard hot, wrathful music storming onward in discords
+like mænads tearing down every hindrance in their way. She felt she was
+climbing up perpendicular rocks, ever higher, ever higher, fighting the
+whole time against the dizziness which threatened to cast her back into
+the abyss. But she did not sink. She clung to the edge, which bruised
+her hands, and laughed down&mdash;laughed&mdash;laughed&mdash;at the sorry wretches
+there below crawling along in flocks, permitting themselves to be ground
+to death for their bit of daily bread.</p>
+
+<p>Then she felt sorry that she alone had scaled such heights, that she
+alone should be up there enjoying the wild, golden sunlight, while all
+the others little conceived that deliverance was at hand. She wanted to
+hold out her hand to her poor, starving brothers and sisters and draw
+them up after her. But they could not understand her message of
+salvation&mdash;he had said "message of salvation." She saw wasting faces,
+dank with the sweat of death; glassy eyes unable to turn from the
+gleaming penny, their pay. She saw pregnant bodies, swollen yet
+emaciated.</p>
+
+<p>The working woman in Richard's wrapping room recurred to her. She
+recalled her hands flying in feverish haste about the swaying doll. She
+and others recurred to Lilly, with the timid hate and the hopeless
+yearning in their weary eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her unhappy love for the factory, which she thought had been
+extinguished forever on that day of shame, awoke within her again, as a
+quiet, painful tenderness, like the spring anticipations that tremble in
+us when the February snows begin to melt.</p>
+
+<p>This, to be sure, was hardly the sense or purpose of Dr. Salmoni's
+books. But they served another purpose most admirably. Her faint
+toothache rose to a veritable anguish. The desire for a man, any man not
+Richard, who understood her and swept her along with him, overwhelmed
+her with such force that she could only twist this way and that and feel
+she would perish under the lash.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere the "one" was surely to be found. Was it not possible for a
+favouring wave in this sea of humanity to toss him to her feet?</p>
+
+<p>One evening she put on simple, dark clothes&mdash;she might have been taken
+for a seamstress returning from work&mdash;and slipped down the street, as
+she used to when Richard's house drew her to it with a thousand secret
+threads.</p>
+
+<p>Since she was unskilled in strolling about aimlessly and needed a goal,
+she listened to the voice of her newly awakened love, and took the
+accustomed route to Alte Jakobstrasse. On the way she shudderingly
+avoided two old beaux and a fresh clerk.</p>
+
+<p>The latticed gates of the famous marble-columned portal cried an iron
+"Halt!"</p>
+
+<p>She stood a long time pressed up against her old door on the opposite
+side of the street, and stared at the house to which fate had anchored
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Lights were burning in his mother's room.</p>
+
+<p>The two gas jets of the chandelier resembled her cold, clear eyes. The
+rest of the jets were not turned on, probably from motives of economy.</p>
+
+<p>Of the factory nothing was to be seen save the dark top of the chimney
+towering above the roof of the house in front.</p>
+
+<p>A sorry greeting. Nevertheless a greeting. She would have liked to say
+"How do you do?" to the beloved staircase also. But she no longer dared
+to cross the street.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if after a good deed accomplished, she turned homeward feeling
+at ease.</p>
+
+<p>She repeated the visit three times in the course of the week. She began
+to feel that the aimless journeys were a life necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Once, just as she was disposing herself comfortably in her protecting
+doorway, an elegant slim gentleman, who evidently had come the same way
+behind her, stopped and raised his hat.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Salmoni.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly in her fright nearly forgot to return his greeting.</p>
+
+<p>If he were to betray her to Richard! Richard would assume that jealousy,
+or even worse, had driven her there.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," began Dr. Salmoni, complacently rolling the words in his
+mouth. "It strikes me as somewhat touching that we should meet directly
+opposite Liebert &amp; Dehnicke. As you know, I'm a gentle nature, a soul in
+socks, as it were. So I refrain from asking you what stirrings of your
+heart prompted you to come here. You know the fairy-tale of the queen
+who sallied forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd.
+Thus a pearl may stray into a bronze ware factory. I should not have
+permitted myself to follow you intentionally. I was seduced by a certain
+play of lines and curves. Perhaps a certain suspicion of brilliance
+shone through&mdash;but a young pheasant should not be shot out of season.
+Let your fruit ripen, is a very sound motto, and not only with respect
+to <i>soi-disant</i> love. But it's questionable whether mottoes are worth
+the while. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of
+Virginia tobacco, and Virginia tobacco smells, and is celebrated far and
+wide <i>because</i> it smells. Do you get my profound meaning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing
+with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume
+that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you
+wish."</p>
+
+<p>He offered her his arm. She declined.</p>
+
+<p>They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther
+west side.</p>
+
+<p>He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire
+set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally
+forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play
+of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and
+her sorry existence.</p>
+
+<p>But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He
+merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head
+downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk
+necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked.
+Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that
+she was being stroked tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to
+contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always
+thought the same, it seemed to her.</p>
+
+<p>He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from
+country life, extolled discreet horseback rides <i>à deux</i>, and the
+transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been
+present at all the events of her life.</p>
+
+<p>"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation.
+"I know it all."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if his past had been similar!</p>
+
+<p>So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.</p>
+
+<p>When he began to speak of the books he had brought her&mdash;he
+considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had
+called&mdash;she ventured a languid resistance.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"The books confuse and sicken me&mdash;I don't know. You said they would lead
+me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing
+strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing.
+"Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a
+higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time
+there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual
+craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is
+really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must
+accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for
+enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows
+and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of
+miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom
+they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But
+scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they
+took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death&mdash;on account
+of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same
+to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral
+exactions."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.</p>
+
+<p>Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to
+withdraw it.</p>
+
+<p>They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark masses a
+lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings
+stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel
+streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going out of the way of society. And if I wanted to exploit the
+present conjuncture of circumstances I should profit by your being lost,
+your feeling that you need protection. But I'm not a calculating nature.
+In matters of emotion I'm like a child. I take whatever the heavens rain
+down on me. Aren't you the same way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm too heavy," replied Lilly, ready to bare her soul to him. "I'm full
+of scruples. I think a lot over everything."</p>
+
+<p>"The question is <i>what</i> you think," he said gaily.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to reply and talk to him&mdash;tell him all her thoughts. She felt
+like holding out her heart on her open palm, so that nothing should
+remain concealed from him. But shame before his great wisdom sealed her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you take the trouble to bother with a stupid thing like me?" she
+asked, to show him her humility at least.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps because I have a mission to fulfil in your life. 'Perhaps,' I
+say, because one can never be sure whether there is such a thing as
+reflex action of the emotions. Certain <i>moments psychologiques</i> will
+teach us."</p>
+
+<p>Though his meaning was not at all clear to Lilly, a hesitating sense of
+happiness stole over her that so mighty a man should actually concern
+himself with her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are entirely in his power," she thought, "and you will be whatever
+he wants you to be."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment he drew her arm a little closer, and her pressure in
+response brought his hand for an instant on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>She was overwhelmed with fright. He might think she was offering herself
+to him. If he were to take her home, were to ask&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to get into a tram," she faltered. "I'm very tired."</p>
+
+<p>He whistled for a cab, which just then came swaying out of the fog.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she burst out, thinking of nothing but that she must not
+lightly forego the joy of his friendship. "Not with you&mdash;I must go home
+alone&mdash;on account&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She tore her arm from his and ran to the next stopping place so quickly
+that he was just about able to reach her before she jumped on the first
+tram that came along. She scarcely said good-by.</p>
+
+<p>The smile with which he looked after her was by no means melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>He might, he should triumph.</p>
+
+<p>She, Lilly Czepanek, was once again aspiring to the heights.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Three days later they met again; this time in a large company which had
+visited a <i>café chantant</i>, and was to wind up the evening at a
+respectable bodega.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily somebody else took the seat at her side, which she had
+carefully reserved for him.</p>
+
+<p>That upset her.</p>
+
+<p>The champagne heated up everybody's spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, out of spite and boredom, drank more than was good for her.</p>
+
+<p>Provocative merriness burned in her eyes. Her cheeks took on the Baldwin
+apple hue that they all dearly loved. Her laughter rang out clear, her
+body moved more nonchalantly.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she heard a general outcry: "Lilly! Lilly! We want Lilly!"</p>
+
+<p>Terror stopped her pulse.</p>
+
+<p>She had never ventured to perform in his presence. In fact, she had not
+been asked to when he had been there, for then <i>he</i> formed the centre of
+attraction.</p>
+
+<p>But she felt:</p>
+
+<p>"I can do it to-day. To-day I will show him what I am."</p>
+
+<p>She rose, brushed her hair from her forehead, and gave herself a little
+shake, as was her wont when she jerked aside the everyday Lilly, the
+craven-hearted Lilly, the Lilly of the oppressed feelings, the Lilly who
+feared to face her fellow-beings, the stiff-jointed Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>She made a dash and began.</p>
+
+<p>First she imitated the beautiful Otéro, and crowed and cuckooed. Her
+auditors rolled with laughter. Then she hit off certain cabaret stars.
+Sucking her fingers like an innocent babe, she sang in flute tones:
+"Please let me in your room."</p>
+
+<p>She croaked in a droll, bull-frog bass: "Once I was ambassador," and
+peeping from behind the clothes rack she cooed the song of the
+passionate dove: "Coo&mdash;coo&mdash;coo&mdash;kiek!"</p>
+
+<p>They insisted on her concluding with a fandango. She protested. In vain.</p>
+
+<p>They shoved the tables against the wall, and Lilly, making her own music
+through her teeth, whirled about the room more madly than ever before,
+and finally collapsed in a corner almost swooning.</p>
+
+<p>The tumult of applause promised never to subside.</p>
+
+<p>The women kissed her again and again, the men stroked her hair and arms,
+the stiff district attorney sounded a trumpet blast, and Richard, quite
+pale with pride, stood there in his Napoleon attitude, tugging at his
+moustache.</p>
+
+<p>But Dr. Salmoni remained at a distance, sad and modest, as if it all
+concerned him not in the least.</p>
+
+<p>The only sign by which she knew he realised it was all meant for him was
+a rapid glance of understanding which he threw to her like a laurel
+wreath.</p>
+
+<p>She was still rocking in the tempest when the company prepared to break
+up.</p>
+
+<p>That had been intoxication, the sort of which he had spoken. It hissed
+like a flame through her heart and limbs.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Salmoni himself helped her on with her fur coat&mdash;Richard was busy
+paying the waiter&mdash;and while he deliberately laid the sable scarf about
+her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"May I come to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she screamed, alarmed at herself.</p>
+
+<p>Then in defiance of her own cowardice, she turned abruptly on her heels
+and shouted sharply, as in anger, directly in his face:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" everybody asked.</p>
+
+<p>She merely laughed shortly. What did she care for the others? Wasn't she
+aspiring to the heights again?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next morning it was all a spectral dream. The one clear point was:
+"He's coming."</p>
+
+<p>With the applause still ringing in her ears she had stretched herself
+and thought:</p>
+
+<p>"Now he knows what I am. Now he knows I'm no dull, shrivelled, half-way
+creature for the valleys, no slave nature, no sheep that runs with the
+flock, no Mrs. Grundy-made fool, who voluntarily conforms to each and
+every convention. Now he knows I'm a free, proud woman, who, like
+himself, drinks in the light on the heights, one of those complete
+women, those mænads who dance a wild dance over abysms and mock at death
+even when he has them in his clutches."</p>
+
+<p>Then her faintheartedness crept over her again. What after all had she
+done besides drink herself into a champagne mood, sing a few comic
+songs, and dance an abandoned dance? She had behaved like a music-hall
+danseuse, and had harvested the very doubtful approval of a
+semi-intoxicated audience.</p>
+
+<p>If that alone was required for belonging to the elect, to the mighty,
+laughing, chosen ones, of whom Dr. Salmoni's books spoke!</p>
+
+<p>No, oh, no! After last night's performance he could feel nothing but
+contempt for her, or, at most, pity. It was to tell her this to her face
+that he would come to visit her, if at all. He would let her feel her
+lowness and then go his own way, benevolent but untouched.</p>
+
+<p>She would not suffer him to go. She would cling to him and cry:</p>
+
+<p>"You promised to lead me up to the heights out of these depths of
+distress, out of this insipid existence, out of this void! Be true to
+your word. Do not desert me. I will do whatever you wish. I will be your
+thing, your creature. But don't desert me."</p>
+
+<p>In feverish expectancy she dressed, waved her hair, and rouged her lips,
+pale from nights of pleasure. She made herself as beautiful as she
+could.</p>
+
+<p>A little before twelve the bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>He?</p>
+
+<p>No. Mrs. Jula.</p>
+
+<p>As if by mutual agreement she and Mrs. Jula had avoided each other since
+that evening of confidences. And now, without having announced her
+visit, here she stood, wearing her most cordial expression, and asking
+for a brief interview.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Really I shan't keep you long, my dear. I understand&mdash;you're expecting
+some one."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of," replied Lilly, aware she was blushing.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't deny it. Dr. Salmoni is coming. I know the joke. I once stood the
+same way, pale one instant, the next instant red, and waited for him.
+The only difference is, my house gown wasn't such an angelic red. I was
+plain Bordeaux red. All the same to him. He takes us in Bordeaux red,
+too."'</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Lilly faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I mean? Do you know what our circle with all our pretty legères
+women is to Dr. Salmoni? It's a sort of fishing pool, where he angles
+from time to time to land something for which he just then happens to
+have an appetite. There you have it, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He's never made approaches
+to me. We've never so much as mentioned the word love to each other."</p>
+
+<p>"No need," replied Mrs. Jula, and laughed exultingly. "He doesn't bother
+with such petty things. He knows when the time comes we shall swim into
+his net without it."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt herself getting still angrier.</p>
+
+<p>"We've always spoken of pure, noble things, of a proud humanity. And if
+you and your like cannot understand his language, if you insist&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"One moment, my dear," Mrs. Jula interrupted her. "No need to be
+insulting. I came to you out of good motives. As for the others&mdash;it was
+<i>toute même chose</i> to me. I even licked my chops. But <i>you</i>, I love
+you, even if you don't want to have anything to do with me. <i>You</i> he's
+to leave as you are. And last night, when I saw how far things had gone,
+I couldn't quiet down. I had to come to you before he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Really, you're mistaken," said Lilly, though unable to refrain from a
+furtive glance at the clock.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula, upon whom the glance was not lost, made a little grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. When the bell rings I'll slide out through the guest room.
+But before then I am in hopes of having completed my work. See here,
+child"&mdash;she seated herself at one end of the sofa and drew Lilly down
+beside her&mdash;"why, all of us poor women crave to rise again, or once did,
+when like you we were tolerably faithful to the one. At the
+psychological moment, enter Dr. Salmoni. He doesn't have to work so hard
+for some of us, but he seems to like it. He must first salivate on us
+like an adder on a sparrow. He has various methods. With a cold mug like
+Karla, of course, he behaves very differently from the way he behaves
+with such as you or me. To us he says in the beginning: 'I cannot get
+over my astonishment at seeing you in these surroundings. Tell me, what
+seek you here?'"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, did he, or didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, yes. That's all I want to know. Then he describes the
+dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet
+abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully
+particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it
+went?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but&mdash;" stammered Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Then <i>he</i> will deliver us. <i>He</i> will guide us. He's the mountain
+guide ordained. 'Upward&mdash;up to the heights!' <i>N'est-ce pas?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature
+little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we
+all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It
+quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that
+we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the
+mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we're such
+sheep, and he's so clever&mdash;so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give
+the devil his due."</p>
+
+<p>"But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield
+him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our
+entire past with us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, child. People in similar circumstances usually have similar
+experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past&mdash;of those of us who came
+from the country. I'm a landed proprietor's daughter. Didn't he tell you
+in a by-the-way that he had passed a great part of his youth in
+castles?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased
+estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was
+saucy."</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well
+feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because
+afterwards, oh, how it hurts!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, tell me, how is it&mdash;afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very simple. After he's gotten what he wants, finis. He buttons up his
+coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, '<i>au revoir</i>,' but there
+never is a <i>revoir</i>. You never see him again."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can't treat a woman
+so currishly."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;<i>never&mdash;see&mdash;him&mdash;again</i>, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man
+has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore&mdash;not a line
+in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she
+was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later
+in company, you don't read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the
+very most he 'jollies' you like the rest."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later"
+encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every
+recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his
+comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this
+world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.</p>
+
+<p>She hid her face on the sofa arm shaken with a storm of shame and guilt.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," Mrs. Jula comforted her. "Nothing has happened yet."</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid to dismiss the visitor,
+but Mrs. Jula restrained her.</p>
+
+<p>"What's gotten into your head?" she whispered. "Would you have him think
+you're afraid of him? That way you'll never be rid of him. Laugh at him.
+Do you understand? <i>Laugh</i> at him&mdash;long and hard."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to run after her and beg her to remain. Was she, Lilly,
+his match? He was already entering the room.</p>
+
+<p>Drawn to her full height she looked at him as at a dead enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," he said, kissing her hand, which she quickly withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>He had exercised great care in dressing. He wore straw-coloured gloves,
+and held his silk hat pressed to his breast. His monocle danced on his
+white waistcoat. An air of smug self-confidence, of unpretentious
+mastery enveloped his being like a mild glory. The way he settled
+himself comfortably in his chair, the way he amiably crossed his legs
+indicated that of course she had been subjugated.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was no longer fearful or timid, nor did she experience the pangs
+of disillusionment. She was simply possessed of cool, conscious
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>She followed each of his movements with astonished eyes, as he passed
+his hand over his shining hair cut brush fashion, and pulled his
+trousers up and exposed the red-dotted stockings on his ankles.</p>
+
+<p>She kept saying to herself:</p>
+
+<p>"So <i>that's</i> what you are, <i>that's</i> what you are."</p>
+
+<p>He began to speak in a soft, compassionate, caressing voice, while his
+peering eyes glided up and down her body.</p>
+
+<p>"You're excited, dear child. I understand. When two people like us are
+brought alone together for the first time in their lives, their feelings
+run away with them. Don't be ashamed. What led us to each other is such
+a delicate, subtle understanding&mdash;the fluid between us is of such a
+rare, fleeting quality&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;fleeting, especially," thought Lilly, "&mdash;that it would really be
+a shame if we did not taste every drop of it. And a superabundance of
+feelings would simply be a hindrance to the spiritual epicureanism in
+both of us, particularly in me."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, slightly smacking his lips and swaying back and forth, the
+refrain of a Viennese ditty in her repertoire occurred to her: "I have
+much too much sentiment."</p>
+
+<p>"He has much too much sentiment," she said to herself, and smiled
+involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the smile, which she tried to conceal by lowering her face, but
+he misinterpreted it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a coy virginity about you," he said with an admiring shake of
+his head, "which always fills me with astonishment."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you jackanapes," thought Lilly, and smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>Now he hesitated a bit. He had not had all his experience for nothing,
+and a flash of greed and suspicion darted from between his lids.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he continued, "has some of the delightful humour that you
+surprised us with last night remained over for to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," she replied with an upward glance which was almost
+coquettish.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, splendid!" he cried. His face now brightened into a mischievous
+smile, in which gaiety and devilishness counterbalanced each other. "Are
+you one of those who can laugh in her sleeve at&mdash;at&mdash;how shall I
+say?&mdash;at the whole humbuggery of it all&mdash;and at yourself? At yourself,
+my child, that's the main thing. Then you and I are one&mdash;nothing divides
+us. Then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"May God forgive me," she thought, and held her handkerchief to her
+mouth to suppress her tittering.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh at him," Mrs. Jula had said.</p>
+
+<p>But he seemed to take it as an invitation, as a delicate, friendly hint
+to cut the preamble short; for he sprang toward her and clasped her
+body.</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him back&mdash;she wrestled with him.</p>
+
+<p>Tears of shame and indignation welled up in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of a thing have I become?" a voice within her cried, while
+she struck at him with her fists.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the struggle she succeeded in reaching the bell.</p>
+
+<p>The maid appeared.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his hat from the carpet, murmured something like
+"riffraff," and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Disappeared also from the little circle that he had sometimes honoured
+with his presence.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Henceforth Lilly ceased to aspire to the heights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIA" id="CHAPTER_XIA"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next year Lilly went through two little love affairs which were of
+no significance in her after life.</p>
+
+<p>During a four weeks' stay in the Riesengebirge, she met a novelist whose
+name was then on everybody's lips. He was airing his newly acquired fame
+in the Bohemian resorts and plucking what flowers he found by the
+roadside. He forced himself upon Lilly without much ceremony, and a few
+days later went his way in search of pastures new.</p>
+
+<p>And in Berlin she favoured a handsome, extremely elegant hussar of the
+Guards, who had flirted with her from his seat at the next table in an
+aristocratic restaurant. But he wounded her pride by attempting to repay
+her with a little leather box which came from the jeweler's. She sent
+back the box and turned him off.</p>
+
+<p>She disliked the thought of both adventures, and soon wiped them
+entirely from her memory.</p>
+
+<p>At Christmas a companion came to live with her. She had frequently
+complained to Richard that her life was empty; she craved something
+alive and loving to take care of. So he gave her a little naked monkey
+which could not warm itself even in her bosom. When angry, the monkey
+spat his scorn of her yearning in her face.</p>
+
+<p>Every now and then a marriage scheme was again propounded.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly knew the signs perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>When Richard paced through all the rooms, taciturn and distraught,
+wrinkling his forehead; when apropos of nothing he began to philosophise
+on the futility of all things earthly; when mama required the carriage
+at unwonted hours, and little packages of concert and opera tickets
+filled his purse, she knew something was impending.</p>
+
+<p>And then it seldom lasted long before Richard broke silence.</p>
+
+<p>One had two millions, the other three. Influential relatives, mines,
+factories, legacies, government contracts, whole blocks of houses, and
+innumerable building lots nodded in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Lilly's drawing-room hummed with so many figures that it might
+have been a stockbroker's office.</p>
+
+<p>One of the prospective brides even was poor. But she was a general's
+daughter, and mama adored her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a general's widow," said Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Whether rich or poor, they all disappeared, because none of them was
+good enough for him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly meditated and schemed; this is the way she should be, and this
+way, and this way. She must have white, column-like arms such as the
+Danish girl at the carnival; and she must have an extremely delicate,
+scarcely perceptible bosom&mdash;her own seemed to Lilly to have become too
+voluptuous&mdash;and when she laughed, two dimples must form in her cheeks,
+because dimples were a sign of peaceableness.</p>
+
+<p>Peace she demanded for him above all. She knew he could not bear
+disputes. As a matter of fact they never did quarrel. But if a little
+disagreement arose, he went about for days looking miserable, spoke in a
+woebegone, sick tone, and had to be petted like a child. Which she did
+with joy, though he by no means deserved it.</p>
+
+<p>For, whatever the standpoint from which you viewed such things, he had
+become an out and out good-for-nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He might be pardoned the very respectable sums he lost at the club, but
+he debauched like a married man, and his experiences were none of the
+purest.</p>
+
+<p>One day a pretty young thing with an eight weeks' old baby on her arm
+came to Lilly and wept and screamed, and declared Lilly must cede her
+place to her because she had the child by him and so the greater right.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly comforted her and gave her some wine, and, filled with envy,
+tickled the baby's wet little chin until it laughed. Whereupon the girl
+left quieted, and even kissed Lilly's hand on parting.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Richard listened to an eloquent discourse.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt herself to be entirely free from jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever he appeared looking embarrassed or with a crafty expression in
+his eyes, his head inclined all the way to the left, and radiating an
+odour of cheap perfumes, she always received him with an indulgent
+smile, which he understood very well and feared like a plague.</p>
+
+<p>However valiant his resolve to maintain silence, it scarcely lasted half
+an hour before he sat there hopelessly stranded, making partly veiled
+confessions and asking for praise and comfort.</p>
+
+<p>In a life of this sort, which reflected all the faults and perfidies of
+marriage without bestowing its sense of dignity and natural rights, it
+was inevitable that Lilly should withdraw into herself more and more and
+look forward to her future with increasing gloom.</p>
+
+<p>She passed her days as on a swaying bough in momentary expectation of
+being blown into the depths. Then again her life seemed to her like a
+straight, bare road, which gave no signs of coming to an end, but ever
+unrolled hopeless stretches ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Always the same pleasures, the same faces, the same aimless drifting
+from place to place until dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she felt so weary&mdash;as if after a day's hard labour.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, too, she went on strike, and remained in bed reading the
+<i>Fliegende Blätter</i>, or dreaming of old times with closed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Asmussen's sunless hole among the books became a paradise, her
+mush, food for the gods. Lilly's thoughts stepped cautiously about the
+pictures of her girlhood loves, as if it were a crime to charm them back
+into being. From this arose a happy, yet fearful presentiment that one
+or the other of them would return, and hold out his hand, and say: "Now
+you have strayed in strange lands long enough. Come back home."</p>
+
+<p>Which of them it was she did not venture to say. But one of them it must
+be. Something, something <i>must</i> happen. It could <i>not</i> go on the same
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, when her secret disquiet filled her with unrest, she took
+again to her nocturnal strolls. In the electric tram she would ride to
+distant districts, where, with a guilty soul, she sauntered along lively
+streets.</p>
+
+<p>Just like Mrs. Jula.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she could never bring herself to listen to any of her pursuers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was on one such excursion in May far out on the north side, somewhere
+near the Rosentaler Tor, that she met a young man who paid not the
+slightest attention to her, who did not look like a gentleman, and yet
+seemed familiar.</p>
+
+<p>So familiar that her heart pained her.</p>
+
+<p>She racked her brain, but could not place him.</p>
+
+<p>Making up her mind quickly she turned about and followed him.</p>
+
+<p>He wore a brown, sweat-soaked hat and a salt and pepper suit with a
+yellow tinge to it, which had seen better days. His coat collar was
+shiny, and his knees had worked great bags into his trousers, the bottom
+of which hung in black fringes over his crooked heels.</p>
+
+<p>None of her friends in disguise. Her friends wore different trousers.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped in front of various display windows&mdash;a cigar shop, a
+butcher's, and, longest of all, a haberdasher's. From which Lilly
+concluded his undergarments also required a change.</p>
+
+<p>When he turned his profile toward her, she saw a lean, bony face with a
+prominent nose and a bush of reddish-brown hair on either side of his
+chin. He did not appear to be sickly; rather seedy or withered. But the
+lids of his small, slit-like eyes were swollen and inflamed, and before
+he stepped into the garish illumination of the shop window, he planted
+dark-blue goggles on his nose.</p>
+
+<p>He carried a thin cane, which he pressed into the shape of a bow on the
+pavement and then let shoot out straight again. The silver handle of
+this cane, which did not harmonise with the shabbiness of his clothing,
+recalled something to Lilly connected with chilliness, warm rolls,
+autumnal glow, and Sunday chimes.</p>
+
+<p>She cried aloud. Now she remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Fritz Redlich! Yes, it was Fritz Redlich. No doubt of it. Her girlhood
+love! Her girlhood love! Her great warrior in life's battles! Her St.
+Joseph's protégé!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, God, her St. Joseph! And the revolver! And the potato soup with
+sliced sausage! And the three graves at Ottensen!</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Redlich! Mr. Redlich!"</p>
+
+<p>Trembling, laughing, she stood behind him and stretched out both hands.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his goggles and blinking his weak eyes, suspiciously
+scrutinised the tall, elegant lady from behind whose lace veil two
+great, tear-filled eyes were shining a blissful greeting. Then he
+awkwardly pulled at the brim of his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Redlich&mdash;I'm Lilly&mdash;Lilly Czepanek. Don't you remember me any
+more?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, now he remembered.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," he said, "why shouldn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he gave a furtive jerk at his waistcoat, as if that were the
+readiest way of improving the poverty of his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, Mr. Redlich! We haven't seen each other for an eternity. I
+think it must be seven or eight years. No, not quite. But it seems much
+longer. Everything's gone well with you in the meantime, hasn't it? And
+I suppose you're dreadfully busy. But if you're not, we might spend a
+little time together now."</p>
+
+<p>He really was quite busy, but if she so desired, they might remain
+together a while.</p>
+
+<p>"How would it be if we went to a restaurant and took a glass of beer?"
+she suggested, still between laughter and tears. "Well, well, Mr.
+Redlich, who'd have thought it possible?"</p>
+
+<p>He was decidedly opposed to taking a glass of beer.</p>
+
+<p>"Restaurants are always so stuffy and full of people, and the beer here
+is so wretched&mdash;unfit to drink."</p>
+
+<p>"The poor fellow has no money to pay for it," Lilly thought, and
+proposed sitting on a bench instead. It made no difference, just so they
+were together.</p>
+
+<p>"That's worth considering," he said, "although&mdash;" He looked about warily
+on all sides to see if anyone was scandalised at the ill-matched couple.</p>
+
+<p>They turned into the quieter Weinbersgsweg. Lilly, looking at him
+sidewise with pride and emotion, as if she had created him out of
+nothingness, kept murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible? Is it possible?"</p>
+
+<p>In a dark spot near a church they found a pleasant bench overhung with
+lilac buds which a love couple had just vacated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now tell me all about yourself, Mr. Redlich. My, the things we
+have to say to each other!"</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>is</i> a good deal to tell," he replied, hesitating, "but perhaps
+my lady will begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pshaw, I haven't been a 'my lady' for a long time," cried Lilly,
+blushing consciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure&mdash;I heard something of the sort," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt there was a note of blame in his tone, as if his
+susceptibilities had been offended.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm not in the least sorry," she hastened to add. "All in all I
+lead a much freer and pleasanter life. And I haven't the slightest
+cares. I have a charming little home. In fact, I'm in the best of
+circumstances. And I'd be ever so happy if you were to come and see for
+yourself. I'm always at home in the middle of the day. And I'd like you
+to dine with me some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," he said, obviously moved by the pleasant prospect.</p>
+
+<p>She drew a breath of relief at having steered so smoothly past the rocks
+of her autobiography.</p>
+
+<p>And he asked no questions. On the other hand he seemed as little
+disposed to be communicative in regard to his own situation past or
+present.</p>
+
+<p>"Life has a sunny and a shady side," he said, "and he who sits on the
+shady side would do well to reflect whether or not he should speak much
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can trust an old friend like me," cried Lilly. "Imagine we're
+sitting here on our porch in Junkerstrasse. Do you recollect? That
+evening we spoke to each other the first time was an evening just like
+this, in May."</p>
+
+<p>"It was warmer," he rejoined quickly, and drew his coat together at his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you chilly?" she asked, laughing, because she was aglow.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't bring&mdash;" he paused an instant&mdash;"I didn't bring my spring
+overcoat along to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'd better get up," she said, becoming meditative.</p>
+
+<p>"We can tell each other all we have to say just as well walking as
+sitting."</p>
+
+<p>So they strolled about the dark church a number of times, but no
+autobiographical narrative resulted. She evaded and he evaded, and when
+forced to speak, they regaled each other with generalities.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly praised her happy lot in life, and he sighed repeatedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's hard, very hard!"</p>
+
+<p>Exactly as once during examinations. The rhythm of it still sounded in
+her ears, as if she had heard it the day before.</p>
+
+<p>"How are your father and mother?" she asked to change the subject.</p>
+
+<p>His father had died two years before after a short sickness, and his
+mother still sewed neckties.</p>
+
+<p>He adjusted something invisible under his raised coat collar, probably a
+gayly patterned testimony of maternal skill and goodness.</p>
+
+<p>After Lilly had expressed her sympathy she ventured with throbbing heart
+to inquire after Mrs. Asmussen and her daughters.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Redlich smacked his lips audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very unpleasant neighbours. The elder girl married a paymaster, who
+will probably be dismissed soon on account of his irregularities. The
+younger has charge of the library, the mother is completely in the
+clutches of drink."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with the same offended air as when Lilly had referred to her
+divorce.</p>
+
+<p>"He must be extremely moral still!" she thought, with a sense of her own
+guilt and unworthiness.</p>
+
+<p>But he was unhappy. That was certain.</p>
+
+<p>And poor, very poor. Poorer than she had ever been in her life. Perhaps
+he was suffering the pangs of hunger while he walked at her side
+shivering in his thin, shabby jacket.</p>
+
+<p>"How would it be, Mr. Redlich, provided your business permits you to, if
+you were to come to dinner to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>His business, as a matter of fact, made it practically impossible for
+him to get off in the middle of the day, and he hadn't a moment's time
+for changing his clothes; but if she would receive him in the suit he
+was wearing&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh of course," she laughed. "I'll even serve you with your mother's
+potato soup."</p>
+
+<p>With that she pressed both his hands and slipped into a street car.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what a piece of good fortune!</p>
+
+<p>Now she had the thing she had so long been seeking. Some one whom she
+could care for and pet and spoil; some one to whom she meant more than a
+toy or a show piece, who needed her as he needed bread and air, who
+languished for a gentle hand to lead him back to hope and joy.</p>
+
+<p>Some one all to herself, all to herself!</p>
+
+<p>Out of the grave of her youth he had risen exactly as she had dreamed in
+her dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Life would again become rich&mdash;and happy&mdash;and full of secrets, tiny, gay,
+absolutely innocent secrets.</p>
+
+<p>That night she slept little, wakeful as a child the night before
+Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, to the vast astonishment of the maid, a buxom wench
+from the country, who had rapidly fallen into city ways, Lilly rose
+early&mdash;the maid knew her to be a bit lazy&mdash;and went off to market.</p>
+
+<p>"A friend is coming to dinner," Lilly laughingly explained.</p>
+
+<p>She had to buy everything herself, the meat, the radishes, and above all
+the sausage that had once been the pride of his mother's potato soup.</p>
+
+<p>She even attended to the cooking herself.</p>
+
+<p>She set the table and removed the palm from beside the aquarium to have
+something green in the dining-room in place of flowers, which she had
+forgotten to buy.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first dinner guest she had had for two and a half years, and
+such a dear one&mdash;the dearest, perhaps that life could present her with.</p>
+
+<p>At half past twelve the maid, turning up her nose, announced a young
+fellow who insisted upon speaking to the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's he!" cried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't look it," observed the maid with a haughty upward inflection
+in her voice. Shrugging her shoulders she dawdled behind her mistress,
+who ran to meet the guest.</p>
+
+<p>At first he shyly hesitated to step into the lighter part of the room,
+and hugged the door post and pulled at his suit, which really looked
+dreadfully frayed, even more so than the night before.</p>
+
+<p>His inflamed eyes, two red rifts, blinking behind his round glasses,
+gave him a sheepish, groping, helpless appearance. The bold thinker's
+forehead had acquired an unpleasant backward slope because the genius
+lock no longer fell over it. And the triumphant blond mane had turned
+into a strawy, matted mass, apparently untouched by a comb this many a
+day.</p>
+
+<p>He was unable to say much.</p>
+
+<p>He swallowed the potato soup with tremulous devoutness, leaving the
+slices of sausage for the last. When his plate was quite dry he spitted
+them on his fork one at a time, and on conveying each bit to his mouth
+cast suspicious glances to right and left as if somebody were standing
+nearby to snatch it away.</p>
+
+<p>The roast he received with greater composure. He heaped his plate high
+without paying the least attention to the maid, who grinned
+villainously.</p>
+
+<p>He drank Richard's good claret in long draughts. A mottled red flecked
+his cheeks; he laughed and felt he was himself again.</p>
+
+<p>At first Lilly had been somewhat depressed; but as he gradually thawed
+out, she began to hope he might be made to pass muster after all.</p>
+
+<p>Then it suddenly occurred to her that now at last an opportunity
+presented itself for the genuine salvation of a human being, not merely
+a game of enamoured self-deception as with Walter von Prell.</p>
+
+<p>The thought filled her with blissful, confident hope.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal they went into the drawing-room. With masterful ease of
+manner born of the unwonted drink, he promptly seated himself in the
+rocking chair and tickled the snarling monkey.</p>
+
+<p>He sat leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched out. The
+fringed ends of his trousers slipped into the expanded tops of his
+boots, exposing the tattered rubber drawing loops.</p>
+
+<p>It was an appalling sight.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to do something," thought Lilly, and cogitated on the best
+way to help him.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mr. Redlich, now that his spirits were in turmoil, he turned his
+innermost being outward and aired his views of life.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what a display of gall and poison!</p>
+
+<p>He had become so embittered by long privation and eternal envy of those
+who seemed gay, happy, and favoured by fortune, that no values, no
+attainments, no prosperous undertakings could withstand his onslaught.
+Everybody was hollow, corrupt and hypocritical. Everything depended on
+birth, cliqueism, "pull." Success, no matter in what line, was an
+ineradicable stain.</p>
+
+<p>But this time also he said little of his personal experiences. Lilly
+could not even discover if he was still a student. He acknowledged only
+one thing, with bitter resentment, that his deepest feelings had been
+badly damaged in his constant struggle for existence.</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke and laughed spasmodically, two lugubrious, sarcastic
+folds cut a deep semicircle in each emaciated cheek. Lilly dimly
+recalled that a tendency to those folds had existed in the times long
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you poor, poor fellow!" she thought, and vowed soon to make a man
+of him again, both outwardly and inwardly.</p>
+
+<p>But his visit left her feeling sad and depressed.</p>
+
+<p>"After all&mdash;am I better off?" she thought. "Where is the confidence in
+life I used to have? Where is my joy of life? Where is my Song of
+Songs?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which
+she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's
+purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea
+together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy
+one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to
+know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the
+same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked
+simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes
+again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the
+stuff I have at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"What's he like?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she
+began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a
+highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his
+university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant
+career&mdash;a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else.</p>
+
+<p>What was his specialty?</p>
+
+<p>She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he
+would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she
+scarcely knew what she was saying.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a
+tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked
+uneasy and nettled.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction
+so smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>"Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and
+added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him."</p>
+
+<p>Perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge
+bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest
+style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky
+underwear.</p>
+
+<p>Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly
+striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line.</p>
+
+<p>The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich
+without offending him and having him refuse them.</p>
+
+<p>When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to
+show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally
+as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases,
+withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left
+the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging
+here."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them?</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold
+a glance at his own trousers.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he
+gave him the suit?</p>
+
+<p>No, he could think of no one.</p>
+
+<p>Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn't
+believe she was mistaken&mdash;a remarkable similarity of figure&mdash;though the
+general had measured a bit more about the waist&mdash;and if he wanted to
+entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? Nobody
+could class him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his
+principles would never permit him to wear a person's cast-off clothes.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the
+drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go,
+because Richard might enter any moment.</p>
+
+<p>At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked,
+stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded,
+taken aback. For Richard's sake she did not care to receive visitors
+late in the day.</p>
+
+<p>No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was&mdash;it was&mdash;. He hung
+on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and?"</p>
+
+<p>"And if it's dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>With that he jumped down the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought,
+looking after him.</p>
+
+<p>The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a
+letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for
+enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the
+second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor.</p>
+
+<p>When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The
+suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his
+boots from turning up&mdash;they were too long for him&mdash;he had stuffed them
+with cotton wads.</p>
+
+<p>Even the maid sent him friendlier glances.</p>
+
+<p>A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair.
+But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him.
+His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help
+of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and
+gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or
+picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink
+claret.</p>
+
+<p>His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the
+peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination,
+and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly's situation,
+and she was grateful to him.</p>
+
+<p>Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional
+allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture
+of his unsuccessful career.</p>
+
+<p>After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and,
+consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology
+in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships.</p>
+
+<p>"After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny
+morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the
+green valley.</p>
+
+<p>But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During
+the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing
+envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not
+explicit.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor
+and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do."</p>
+
+<p>He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and
+ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who
+had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p>To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried
+to find out what lot in life he desired for himself.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man
+again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to
+breathe pure air.</p>
+
+<p>"All of us want something lovely like that," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country,
+preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself.</p>
+
+<p>"And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the
+wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to
+water."</p>
+
+<p>She nearly cried with envy.</p>
+
+<p>From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire.
+She gave him money to insert advertisements in the <i>Kreuzzeitung</i>, wrote
+letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little
+circle of friends to do what they could for him.</p>
+
+<p>All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid
+attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him
+these days.</p>
+
+<p>He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being
+cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word.</p>
+
+<p>"That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask
+your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease.</p>
+
+<p>One day the bomb exploded.</p>
+
+<p>Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were
+present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table
+with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown
+of revenge puckered his brow.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly jumped from her seat, paling.</p>
+
+<p>As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there
+awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from
+his buttonhole into his soup plate.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment silence prevailed. Nothing but the tittering of the maid in
+the kitchen was to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," said Richard in the same threatening manner. "I merely
+wanted to make sure how you are really getting along."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dehnicke, a good friend of mine&mdash;Mr. Redlich, my old friend," said
+Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Now Richard scrutinised his dread rival more closely&mdash;looked in
+amazement and disapproval at the rank growth of his beard and shaggy
+mane&mdash;his gaze travelled downwards&mdash;and brightened&mdash;a nonplussed look,
+but also a joyous look of recognition, betrayed itself in his features.
+Wasn't that <i>his</i> suit and <i>his</i> shirt?</p>
+
+<p>His eyes dropped lower without halting at the napkin in the soup plate.</p>
+
+<p>Weren't those <i>his</i> trousers? Weren't those <i>his</i> discarded boots which
+the brilliant intellectual scholar was wearing?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's it," he said. "Nothing more." With a wicked grin of scorn
+he turned to Lilly, who could scarcely keep on her feet. "May I speak to
+you alone for an instant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you excuse me, Mr. Redlich?" she said, and in her confusion and
+from force of habit, she opened the door to&mdash;the bedroom, as if that
+were the prescribed place for single ladies to receive their gentlemen
+friends. Richard, who was as accustomed to the way as she, followed her,
+unconscious of the exposure of intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he said upon shutting the door. "I was a donkey for having
+been jealous of your affinity. But now I swear to you, your friends may
+come and go, morning or evening, any time you wish. I'll always keep old
+suits on hand for them. Good-by&mdash;goosie!"</p>
+
+<p>He left. She could hear him laughing even after the door fell shut
+behind him.</p>
+
+<p>She was frightfully ashamed. How would she ever summon the courage to
+appear before her girlhood friend again, before that moral person who
+had shrunk at the mere mention of her divorce?</p>
+
+<p>Then she realised she was standing in the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was revealed, all the disgrace of her existence, all, all.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how unworldly he might be, the rôle of the man who had so
+suddenly intruded in the apartment and as suddenly disappeared, must be
+patent.</p>
+
+<p>A long time she hesitated, the knob in her hand, listening to what Fritz
+Redlich was doing. She feared his tread, the clearing of his throat. His
+very silence boded evil.</p>
+
+<p>At last, trembling, ready to confess everything amid tears of
+contrition, she stepped into the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>Lo and behold! He sat quietly at his accustomed place rubbing at the
+spot the wet napkin had made on his waistcoat. The blue goggles lay next
+to his plate, and he blinked at her amiably with no air of constraint.</p>
+
+<p>"Has the gentleman left already?" he asked innocently.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the roast was brought in, and he fell to with avidity,
+making no further mention of the interlude.</p>
+
+<p>Actually&mdash;so pure was his conscience that he did not detect the impure
+even if thrust under his very nose.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how grateful she was to him!</p>
+
+<p>To prove her gratitude she told him he might come evenings also&mdash;Richard
+permitted it&mdash;without waiting to be invited.</p>
+
+<p>If she should happen to be out, the maid would prepare supper for him,
+and see to it that he lacked nothing, absolutely nothing. And mindful of
+the wry face the maid had cut the first day he came, she enjoined her
+emphatically:</p>
+
+<p>"Now be real pleasant and friendly to him, so that he always feels at
+home here."</p>
+
+<p>The buxom wench turned down the corners of her mouth and said nothing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Lilly now went to work in behalf of Fritz Redlich with redoubled zeal.</p>
+
+<p>She again found a ready assistant in Mrs. Jula.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the thing to me," said Mrs. Jula one day "There's somebody up
+there I've known a long time"&mdash;she hesitated a bit&mdash;"he's all-powerful,
+and has taken the Good Lord's place in many a minister's family. If I
+were to write to him&mdash;but, of course my name must be kept out, it's
+still a red rag to the bull up there."</p>
+
+<p>The next day Lilly sent her one of the advertisements that Fritz Redlich
+had inserted in the paper. Mrs. Jula was to forward it to a certain
+person, and the response would then go directly to Fritz Redlich without
+the intermediation of a third party. Lilly preferred that his future
+fortune should appear to be due entirely to his own efforts.</p>
+
+<p>And behold! Mrs. Jula was successful.</p>
+
+<p>One evening the next week Fritz Redlich appeared at Lilly's
+unexpectedly&mdash;a frequent occurrence now, whether she was at home or
+not&mdash;and complacently informed her his advertisement had been so
+convincing that he had immediately received an invitation from a
+minister in Further Pomerania to send his references and be ready to
+leave Berlin at short notice. The minister seemed to be quite keen for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's heart throbbed with pride. Nothing in the world would have
+induced her to betray that she was at the bottom of his good luck.</p>
+
+<p>His happiness was her work! He himself, therefore, was her possession,
+more absolutely her possession than anything in the world.</p>
+
+<p>During the meal an exalted, blissful silence prevailed. Since he had not
+announced his coming, there was no potato soup, the usual first course.</p>
+
+<p>She excused herself for the omission, and added with a little pang:</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate you won't take many more meals with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," he said with an embarrassed glance at the maid, whose
+presence evidently troubled him. Had she not been there, he would very
+likely have given warmer expression to his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the
+naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered
+even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to
+which he submitted, snarling all the while.</p>
+
+<p>The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell.</p>
+
+<p>Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge
+after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as
+before."</p>
+
+<p>Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune!</p>
+
+<p>She told him so for about the hundredth time.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles
+is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When
+I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence
+to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not
+only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the
+doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no
+wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts
+one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard,
+very hard."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out.
+We're old friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I will gladly if you wish it."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since
+her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a
+motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit
+of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer
+hesitatingly, like a light in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have
+you ever been in love?"</p>
+
+<p>He started as if he had been hit.</p>
+
+<p>"In love? What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;what do you think&mdash;I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of
+the rocking chair with her thumb nail.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to breathe more easily.</p>
+
+<p>"For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the
+desire."</p>
+
+<p>"And hasn't any woman ever loved you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>His embittered dejection annoyed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little
+teasing.</p>
+
+<p>He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled
+him with dread.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm
+had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme
+delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman.</p>
+
+<p>An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago,
+which would prove to him how mistaken he was.</p>
+
+<p>She choked it down.</p>
+
+<p>Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving
+Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and
+ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the
+little canary also slept.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she
+passed the rocking chair.</p>
+
+<p>She halted in front of him again.</p>
+
+<p>There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected
+nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow.</p>
+
+<p>Poor, poor fellow!</p>
+
+<p>"You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said
+with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women."</p>
+
+<p>With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly
+raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank
+under the light touch like a cushion.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and
+coughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That's good advice. If I want to
+make a pleasant impression in my new position&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on
+his neck.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave.</p>
+
+<p>She was too embarrassed to invite him to remain.</p>
+
+<p>The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked
+away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless she was glad she had.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had
+gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly's
+protégé was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling
+expenses had already been forwarded to him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wept tears of joy.</p>
+
+<p>Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back
+to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him
+her own.</p>
+
+<p>And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell
+him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl&mdash;everything.</p>
+
+<p>And once again&mdash;before parting&mdash;she would lay her hand on his mass of
+hair. Then what would might follow.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her
+wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked
+his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him&mdash;he no
+longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in
+the saucepan.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck eight. He had not come.</p>
+
+<p>"He's busy packing," she comforted herself.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was
+standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard
+sometimes did.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went to bed sad and weary.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning she received the following letter:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dear Mrs. Czepanek:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a
+livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former
+life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too
+frequently forced me into circumstances conflicting with my
+principles. My firm character was led into temptations from
+which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge
+intact.</p>
+
+<p>I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I
+hereby duly express my thanks. Nobody shall say Fritz Redlich
+is an ingrate.</p>
+
+<p>I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circumstances
+compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the
+suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But
+had you really respected me, you would have spared me that
+humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in
+question evidently once belonged.</p>
+
+<p>I may not conclude without making the following remarks:
+improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face
+of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this
+advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had
+continued to let you think me a dunce.</p>
+
+<p>I remain your ever grateful</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fritz Redlich,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">cand. phil. et theol."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because
+the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained
+without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the
+incident had its humorous aspect.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIIA" id="CHAPTER_XIIA"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a
+married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently passed for a
+widow of rank in a hall resort on the Baltic sea.</p>
+
+<p>She accepted the homage of several old maids, allowed a young missionary
+to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and respectfully declined the
+honourable proposal of a widower, the city treasurer of Pirna. Those
+were six weeks to her liking.</p>
+
+<p>The following winter went in much the same way as the preceding.</p>
+
+<p>At Christmas Richard presented her with a hired carriage, the door of
+which, of course, was decorated with the seven-pointed coronet. He had
+engaged it in order to avoid disagreeable encounters with his mother,
+who spoke of Lilly with increasing severity, and had frequently demanded
+the equipage when he was out driving with his mistress.</p>
+
+<p>He also gave Lilly a sable cloak, one of the new-fashioned sort, with
+countless tails, which cost a small fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Despite Richard's reproaches she made little use of either. That feeling
+of dread, never to be stilled, told her that such false display would
+drive her ever on into the world which she wanted to flee.</p>
+
+<p>And while Richard endeavoured with dogged greed to drain the cup of
+worldly delights to the very dregs, Lilly's desires went out more and
+more to middle-class respectability. She clung to it as the last hope,
+which enabled her to drag through her existence, the complete poverty
+of which tormented her increasingly there amid the lights and music and
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her
+intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she
+showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she
+elaborated with a lively fancy.</p>
+
+<p>But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that
+foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish
+disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little
+tales were nowhere to be found.</p>
+
+<p>When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she
+would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula,
+having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could
+not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her
+longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date,
+because it was St. Joseph's day.</p>
+
+<p>A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its
+instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring
+symphony.</p>
+
+<p>The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks
+going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy
+shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure
+remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences,
+throw herself on the bare earth&mdash;no matter what&mdash;but get away for a few
+hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was
+burdened by the spirit of idleness.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the
+maid&mdash;this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to
+service with single ladies&mdash;and without troubling to order her carriage,
+took the electric tram to the Grunewald.</p>
+
+<p>At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an
+end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man,
+Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction.</p>
+
+<p>A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed
+and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually
+recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So
+she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss.</p>
+
+<p>Here nobody was to be seen far or near.</p>
+
+<p>The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the
+reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered
+near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each
+little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through
+the holes.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to
+extinguish timid spring hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought
+Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>But the freshness of the wind redolent of moss and pine needles did her
+good. She battled against its might, taking long strides. Her cheeks
+tingled, her frozen blood thawed, and sent fresh life pulsating through
+her fallow body.</p>
+
+<p>And her fallow soul.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she shook with a fit of laughter. It was all nonsense, her
+regret and her yearning, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's
+eternal marriage schemes. Even the respectability she desired was
+utterly vapid.</p>
+
+<p>What would she do with it? She, Lilly the free, the wild, the ruined?
+There was something else, something higher. There must be. Not in Dr.
+Salmoni's sense. No, oh, no. Something as hard and pure and
+life-bringing as this March wind sweeping through her limbs.</p>
+
+<p>Above her in a pine tree she heard a chipping sound which she had
+learned to recognise at Lischnitz. It was a call both of fear and
+invitation, which ended in a snappy "Tshek-tshek."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stood still, looked up, and whistled.</p>
+
+<p>A pair of squirrels had been chasing about the trunk in corkscrew lines,
+and now, at her appearance, stood stock still in fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Tshek-tshek," Lilly clucked to incite the little red coats to play. She
+did not succeed, and picked up a pebble from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Just as she was about to throw it, she saw, behind a tree trunk, two
+eyes fastened on her, large, questioning astonished eyes, which narrowed
+under her gaze, and darkened, and tried to turn away, but could not. She
+knew those eyes. She had looked into them long, long, long ago.</p>
+
+<p>But, no, she had not; she had never before seen them.</p>
+
+<p>The young man who, like herself, had been watching the squirrels play
+and was still standing half-concealed behind the trunk, his hat in his
+hand, was an utter stranger. Impossible that she had ever in her life
+met him. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy to forget that serious, reserved Greek face, with the
+nervous nose narrow across the bridge and the shining dreamer's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His appearance was not extremely elegant. It pleased Lilly better so.
+He wore a brown, somewhat old-fashioned overcoat, and the suit beneath,
+of which she caught a glimpse, was of a woolly material sprinkled with
+little tufts, by no means of German make and certainly not English.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually life came into him. He put on his hat, and stepped from behind
+the tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Now he'll speak to me," the sickening thought shot through Lilly's
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>No. He merely raised his hat, glanced at her again for the fraction of a
+second with an expression of query, astonishment, and, at the same time
+recognition, walked past her, and took the way she had just come.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly also wanted to leave the spot, but she was unable to; and since
+she must not be discovered looking after him she hid behind the same
+tree that had concealed him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether he will look back."</p>
+
+<p>No. He did not look back either. She felt hurt and neglected.</p>
+
+<p>The tall figure dwindled in the distance. "Never been in the army," she
+thought, judging from his rather heavy gait. Then it seemed to her that
+he stooped, drew himself up again, and looked back. In fact, he spied
+about a long time as if compelled to discover her.</p>
+
+<p>But she kept herself carefully hidden and did not move.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on and disappeared behind a curve.</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity I didn't take the carriage," thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>She might be overtaking him now without appearing to follow him, and the
+seven-pointed coronet would not have failed of its effect. As it was, he
+naturally cherished a bad opinion of the lady who walked about alone
+whistling like a boy and throwing pebbles at poor enamoured squirrels.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, while walking homeward, she felt as if she had been
+presented with a lovely gift.</p>
+
+<p>Where could she have seen him before?</p>
+
+<p>She recalled a young man of the Dresden days. It was once when she was
+out walking arm in arm with the colonel along the Prager Strasse. She
+had seen eyes fixed upon her with the very same sad flash of recognition
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;she remembered it well&mdash;she had wanted to look back and ask him:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you want me to belong to you?"</p>
+
+<p>But even the partial turn of her head would have been a crime in her
+husband's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And now, now that she was free, free to choose her friends according to
+her heart's desire, she had let him go, him, the one&mdash;whether the same
+as the Dresden man or another&mdash;who belonged to her, perchance, as she to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She walked along with half-closed eyes, and conjured up his image. A
+small, dark, two-cornered beard, so close-cut on his cheeks as to give
+them a blue sheen. Such beards were seldom to be seen in Berlin.
+Frenchmen and Italians affected them. Full, firm, tightly compressed
+lips, lips such as a sculptor chisels. A high, square forehead, on which
+something like wrath seemed to be imprinted, not ordinary wrath against
+herself or any poor mortal. It was not of this world, and it really was
+divine love.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Lilly's enthusiasm fed itself. She forgot the way, and strayed
+about, finally arriving at a spot in an entirely different direction
+from that which she should have taken. The most dreadful things might
+have happened to her in the woods, where solitary ladies are exposed to
+encounters with tramps at any hour of the day. But she scarcely gave
+heed to her danger. She reached home two hours too late, tired, but in a
+glow.</p>
+
+<p>She could not eat. She threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamt.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang. She heard a man's voice.</p>
+
+<p>It could not be Richard. He never came before half past four.</p>
+
+<p>Adele entered. There was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know
+whether the lady had lost her card-case. He had found one in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly jumped to her feet. Actually the little brocade case which she had
+held in her hand with her silver net purse was gone. In her excitement
+she had not missed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what does the gentleman look?"</p>
+
+<p>Tall and young and handsome, in fact, very handsome.</p>
+
+<p>"A short, dark beard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly reeled.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him come in," she stammered. She did not think of beautifying
+herself. She merely ran her hands over her face and hair in a dazed way.</p>
+
+<p>When he appeared in the doorway she scarcely recognised him, so thick
+was the red mist before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," she heard him say&mdash;it was the serene voice of a man
+whose ways are not impure&mdash;"I would not have disturbed you had your
+address been on your cards. I found your number in the directory, but I
+couldn't be certain whether there were not more of the same name in the
+city."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very kind to have taken all that trouble," she replied, inviting
+him to be seated.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting behind the back of his
+chair until she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa. On sitting
+down he drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled her thanks; and feeling she must enhance the value of his
+courtesy, she said the case was a memento she prized highly, the loss of
+which would have distressed her.</p>
+
+<p>"A memento of my husband," she added.</p>
+
+<p>His face grew a shade more serious.</p>
+
+<p>A little pause ensued, during which his eyes rested steadily on her
+face, reading, questioning, comparing, and wondering. Nothing of that
+bold groping of other men's glances. A clean, unconscious joy amounting
+to devoutness lay in his look.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't we meet just a little while ago at the edge of the woods?" Lilly
+asked warily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied with animation. "And if I hadn't been so awkward I
+should have begged your pardon immediately for having unintentionally
+spied on you. I saw how startled you were. But I myself was so&mdash;how
+shall I say? All I thought was: 'Clear out. You'll be serving the lady
+best that way.'"</p>
+
+<p>His frank, blithe manner did her good, though it shamed her a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you've done me a much greater service," she said, feeling as
+appreciative as if he had saved her life.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't speak of it. If only I had turned back instantly. But the
+earth seemed to have swallowed you up. I was worried about you."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled to herself, fearful in her happiness. A little more, and she
+would have acknowledged where she had stowed herself.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think of me when you saw me strolling about the woods
+alone?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That you don't feel alone when you're with nature. Otherwise you'd have
+had company with you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," she replied eagerly. "Besides, my carriage was waiting
+in the Hundekehlenrestaurant"&mdash;after all the carriage would play its
+part&mdash;"but it was imprudent of me. I suppose you are also very fond of
+nature?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very? I hardly know. I must say in Cordelia's words: I love it
+'according to my bond; nor more nor less.' To love nature is really no
+merit nor peculiarity. It is simply a vital function. Don't you agree
+with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," she faltered, and thought, "Oh, how clever he is? How will
+I acquit myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"But to be quite frank," he continued, "I am having a strange experience
+with nature here. I cannot accustom myself to it. Its poverty oppresses
+me. I am like one who has outgrown his home and reproaches himself for
+it. I try to get back to my old attitude, and I admire and flatter
+German nature whenever I possibly can. But first other pictures in my
+mind must fade. You see I have just returned from Italy, where I spent
+the last two years."</p>
+
+<p>Heaving a deep sigh Lilly stared at him. She felt as if now he were
+absolutely unearthly.</p>
+
+<p>"Two whole years?" she asked in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"I am working on a large scientific work, on account of which&mdash;no, I was
+really sent to Italy on account of my health. My uncle, who's a father
+to me, wanted me to go. I didn't think of the work until I got there.
+Then my own country and my studies, everything, fell into the
+background."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke his eyes glowed and stared into space, full of will and
+enthusiasm. The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings
+again in Lilly's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There
+all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you
+wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but
+I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything
+great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more
+beautiful&mdash;and&mdash;everything&mdash;sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"</p>
+
+<p>He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he replied almost solemnly. "It is so, exactly."</p>
+
+<p>She tingled with delight. Did it not seem that with these words he made
+an avowal of the inner union between them, the avowal she had hoped for
+from the very first instant of their meeting? Did it not seem that
+nothing now separated them?</p>
+
+<p>She looked down helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>Was he really the embodiment of that shade which had so senselessly
+fastened itself upon her soul since the Dresden days?</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if we had met before," she said softly without raising her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly the way I feel," he rejoined hastily. "But it cannot be, for I
+should know where and when."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you in Dresden six years ago at about this time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said. "Six years ago I was studying at Bonn. The semester came
+to an end at this season, but I went directly to my uncle, who was
+having his castle restored."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is his castle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Near Coblenz."</p>
+
+<p>So they had not met in Dresden.</p>
+
+<p>"But if we both have the same feeling&mdash;" said Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"There are pictures in our souls which seem to be recollections, but in
+fact are previsions."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that one&mdash;that one&mdash;walks as on the edge of a knife between the
+past and the present, and reels and falls into a void the instant&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"The instant&mdash;" he broke off&mdash;"I beg your pardon, are you an artist?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she asked, unpleasantly taken aback. Did he want to make merry at
+her expense?</p>
+
+<p>"I read your sign outside."</p>
+
+<p>The sign! "Pressed Flower Studio."</p>
+
+<p>Violently torn out of sweet dreams and plunged into bitter reality!</p>
+
+<p>But now she must be on her guard. She must not lose his esteem.</p>
+
+<p>"In a way," she replied. "A very modest sort of art which I used to
+pursue. But it made me very happy. I learned it just after I lost my
+husband"&mdash;the fatal "divorce" would not pass her lips&mdash;"less for the
+sake of a livelihood than to lend my life content. But then I had to
+give it up&mdash;because&mdash;of a trouble with my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Three lies in the same breath.</p>
+
+<p>Why not? She was lies within and lies without. Every gesture, every
+thought was a lie. But the great cry of her soul vibrating through her
+entire being, "You shall be mine; I will be yours," was <i>not</i> a lie. And
+for his sake she continued to lie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to speak of it." She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.
+"It still pains me. And please don't ever again refer to it in the
+future."</p>
+
+<p>"Again," "in the future," she had said, as if taking it for granted that
+they would continue to meet. Her words filled her with shame and
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and turned her face aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon," he said, abashed. "I could not have divined&mdash;" He rose
+to take leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, stay, stay!" her soul cried. But she was unable to speak. She was
+benumbed.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he had seen through her lies, and had instantly realised who
+she was, and did not care to remain. She felt haughtiness congealing her
+features.</p>
+
+<p>"It was very kind of you," she said, graciously extending her finger
+tips.</p>
+
+<p>The moment had come in which to invite him to visit her, but the words
+froze on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>He had turned very pale and looked straight into her face expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope we meet some time again," he said finally.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," she replied very formally.</p>
+
+<p>He lightly touched her hand with his lips and left.</p>
+
+<p>Over! Over! And her fault!</p>
+
+<p>Happiness had come, had laid its blessing hand on her forehead, and had
+flown away again, leaving behind nothing but this pain, a wild pain,
+such as she had never before felt. It fairly tore at her throat and
+heart like a physical affliction.</p>
+
+<p>During the night she devised a thousand schemes for hunting him up and
+meeting him again.</p>
+
+<p>He was a scholar and probably frequented the library. She would go there
+and read and study, and some day she would surely meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Or, simpler still, she would write to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't love you," she would say. "Why should I? I scarcely know you.
+But I am confident that I could be something in your life. Therefore&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then, disgusted with her lack of dignity, she rejected every plan.</p>
+
+<p>No, Lilly Czepanek after all would not throw herself away in such
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Once more it became impossible for her to remain at home.</p>
+
+<p>In the daytime she walked along the Potsdamer Strasse and Leipziger
+Strasse, where the metropolitan bustle is the greatest. In the evenings
+she did not visit distant districts as formerly, but with a busy air
+hurried incessantly up and down the lonely banks of the canal near her
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Despite her strict economy she always kept the light burning in her
+drawing-room, and did not confess to herself why.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was about eight o'clock in the evening four days after the meeting.
+The stars hung like lamps in the heavens. Lilly was pacing along the
+further bank of the canal, when she noticed the figure of a young man
+who was looking fixedly in the direction in which her home lay.</p>
+
+<p>She could not distinguish his features, because he kept his back turned.
+Besides, he had selected a dark spot for his coign of observation.</p>
+
+<p>With a slight throbbing of her heart she continued on her way, though
+after a while her legs refused to carry her further in the same
+direction. She had to turn about.</p>
+
+<p>She found the dark figure still standing motionless among the trees.
+From across the water the light in her drawing-room peered through the
+bare branches.</p>
+
+<p>This time he heard her tread, and faced about.</p>
+
+<p>She recognised his features and started.</p>
+
+<p>He also thrilled with the shock of surprise. For an instant he foolishly
+pretended not to see her, but then he drew a deep breath and took off
+his hat with an abashed smile.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly trembled so, she could not hold out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr.&mdash;Rennschmidt," she managed to say.</p>
+
+<p>He was the first to recover his composure.</p>
+
+<p>"You will wonder," he began, stepping alongside of her, "why I stand
+here in the dark and look over there. If I were to say it was a mere
+chance, you wouldn't believe me. So I will frankly confess I could not
+rid myself of the thought that at our parting something went
+wrong&mdash;there was a misunderstanding&mdash;precipitancy&mdash;I felt I ought to beg
+your pardon for something."</p>
+
+<p>"If you felt that way, why didn't you come up to me, and tell me so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was I permitted to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see, we men have no rights with women except such as they give us.
+No others exist for us. To be sure, we may stand in the dark here, and
+bite our lips&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me."</p>
+
+<p>His voice did not quiver, but a tremour ran through his arm, which
+grazed hers.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, alarmed, stopped and helplessly looked back at the dark way she
+had come.</p>
+
+<p>"That means&mdash;I&mdash;I must say good-by?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of the lamp she saw his eyes clinging to her with a look of
+fearsome inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," she replied slowly, as if some one else were speaking in her
+stead. "Now that we are together, we will remain together."</p>
+
+<p>"I think so, too," he said. The same gravity of an oath lay in his words
+as she had put into hers.</p>
+
+<p>They walked along in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then he began in a lighter tone.</p>
+
+<p>"But I must call your attention to something. Your light is burning. If
+you really do want to favour me with an hour, I'm afraid the thought of
+the waste will disquiet you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll put it out!" she replied gaily, and turned on her heels so
+abruptly that he continued to make two or three steps forward.</p>
+
+<p>As they crossed the slender arch of the Hohenzollernbrücke, he pointed
+up to the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>"Jupiter shines on our undertaking. I like him better than Venus, who
+runs after the sun and needs a rosy flooring for her feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Which is Jupiter?" asked Lilly standing still.</p>
+
+<p>He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six
+constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look
+out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the
+light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take
+supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying
+down again.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and
+sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite
+proper.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I
+know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's
+practically in Italy."</p>
+
+<p>She drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for
+nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian
+restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>They walked along the canal for about five minutes talking nonsense. The
+medley of lights of the Potsdamer Brücke was quite near when he paused
+in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen
+wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of
+sand.</p>
+
+<p>"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to
+be had in Florence," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the
+proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the
+bar.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sera, padrone</i>," Lilly's friend greeted him.</p>
+
+<p>From the anteroom they passed into a rather long, hall-like room filled
+with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of
+crisscrossed garlands of shiny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of
+being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets
+and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion
+for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wishing them
+on this March evening a "Happy New Year."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the
+waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in
+his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.</p>
+
+<p>At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long,
+thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the
+knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting
+Italian with fascinating rapidity.</p>
+
+<p>"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great
+sculptors employ them as assistants. They earn a great deal of money,
+and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish
+a household."</p>
+
+<p>Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, lustreless hair drawn
+very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches
+burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their
+dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made
+brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then
+fell to whispering busily.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air,
+as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.</p>
+
+<p>"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader
+deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?" thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a
+strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin,
+Germany, near the Potsdamer Brücke, was the placard's complacent "Happy
+New Year."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt,
+after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot
+cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has
+no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order
+some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded to the waiter, Francesco by name&mdash;Francesco, as if he had just
+stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively
+conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.</p>
+
+<p>The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in
+yellowish red gravy.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told
+him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her
+life, never since she could remember, felt so good.</p>
+
+<p>The last course was a "<i>giardinetto</i>," a "little garden," of mandarins,
+dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.</p>
+
+<p>The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the glasses
+scattering bright drops.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new
+friend's face.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements
+like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or
+perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional
+attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of
+life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously.
+The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his
+seething ardour.</p>
+
+<p>He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness.
+He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them
+through a heavy mass of hair. But the mass was no longer there, and his
+hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.</p>
+
+<p>Everything about him bespoke force and decision&mdash;to Lilly's admiration,
+well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of
+health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not
+robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and
+sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward,
+a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely
+youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"So <i>that's</i> what you are," she thought and stretched herself in
+blissful peace. "At last."</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you
+feeling well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about
+down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive
+teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under
+all the ashes life had cast upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never
+been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back&mdash;as a
+punishment&mdash;because a young man ogled me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you
+divine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why at me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you shine like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>He became serious.</p>
+
+<p>"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life
+and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been
+opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout&mdash;sometimes I hardly know
+what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers bloody, and more keeps
+coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to
+whom."</p>
+
+<p>"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so
+miserably poor."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that the same thing?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.</p>
+
+<p>"What was your husband?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;am&mdash;the divorced wife&mdash;of an army officer of high rank," she replied
+with downcast eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This time&mdash;thank the Lord!&mdash;it was not a lie.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, to be accurate, she had lied.</p>
+
+<p>For see what she was <i>now</i>!</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her hand, which lay next to his on the table, and held it an
+instant.</p>
+
+<p>"If it is difficult for you to speak of your life, don't," he said.
+"Later, perhaps, when we know each other better, you will tell me. I
+will tell you about myself&mdash;and how I&mdash;came to do my work."</p>
+
+<p>"The work of which you spoke that time?" Lilly asked, strangely stirred
+by the sudden solemnity of his tone.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing a deep breath he stretched out his clenched fists and his eyes
+stared into space.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and
+future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and
+lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour
+created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and
+your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how
+restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung,
+painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have
+grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost
+frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the
+final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be
+formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm neither a poet nor a painter, nor a historian, nor a psychologist.
+Yet I must be something of each, and more to boot. My work requires it."</p>
+
+<p>Then he told his story.</p>
+
+<p>His father had been instructor at a university and an eminent jurist.
+His mother had died in giving him birth, and his father did not survive
+her long. He then came under the care of his uncle, a rich, experienced
+old bachelor, who had passed a lively life in business and
+pleasure-seeking, and now dwelt in merry singleness in his castle. He
+had given Dr. Rennschmidt an education and had assured him a small
+income which enabled him in a modest fashion to indulge his wishes and
+whims. Dr. Rennschmidt had intended to follow in his father's footsteps
+and enter an academic career, but the examinations, which he had passed
+honourably, had tried his health. So, to satisfy his uncle, he had given
+up the idea of a university career for the time being, and had gone out
+into the world. He had been drawn to Italy by his studies in the history
+of art, which he had always pursued with interest, though without
+considering them his life work. What fascinated him more than the
+churches and the museums was the free, beautiful humanity in which the
+lively southern race expressed its personality. He felt as if it had
+awakened in him a new, free humanity, conscious of its own powers. He
+felt more and more strongly the original unity of artistic and personal
+experience, past and present. The heroes of mythology and history, the
+characters in poetry and painting, and the poets and painters themselves
+all became so real and familiar that they seemed to be part of his own
+being. Surrounded by a people saturated with its own history, possessing
+the skill of a thousand years' exercise of art, always in touch with the
+spirit of the time, it seemed possible to him to penetrate into the
+emotional world of past generations. He learned to distinguish
+monuments of different periods and follow those related to each other
+step by step along the course of time.</p>
+
+<p>His guide always had been and remained art. Art was best able to wring
+speech from the silence of death and bid the dust add new forms to the
+old. Only one thing was still missing, knowledge of the sources of its
+convincing might, the A B C's of the language in which it expressed its
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly strained herself to follow him. She had never before listened to
+such language; yet it was not strange. Remnants from of old, from
+long-forgotten times seemed to cling to the bottom of her soul, which
+harmonised with what he said.</p>
+
+<p>"One day," he continued, "while I was staying in Venice, I went off on a
+short excursion to Padua. By railroad it's about the same as going from
+Berlin to Potsdam. I wasn't keen about seeing the art there, because I
+was still in the honeymoon intoxication of my love for the early
+Venetians. It was only for the sake of completeness. I got into a little
+church in which there are frescoes by Giotto. Do you know who he was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly&mdash;Giotto and Cimabue," she said proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I needn't say more. I really had little left in me for him and his
+people, because, as I said, the quattrocentists had heated my
+imagination. Now just conceive a Roman amphitheatre completely ruined
+and overgrown with ivy, nothing but the outer walls still standing, like
+the walls of a garden. In the enclosure is the little church built of
+brick, as sober and prosaic as a Prussian Protestant praying barn."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly smiled gratefully. A side-thrust at Protestantism was still a
+personal favour to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Services are no longer held there. It has been set aside as a national
+monument. When I entered I saw nothing at first but a blue radiance from
+the walls, a sort of modest background, with long rows of pictures on
+it, the story of Christ told quite simply, the way a preacher speaking
+to poor people would tell it on Good Friday, provided he is the right
+preacher for poor people."</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't we all poor people in the presence of Christ?" Lilly
+ventured to interpose.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, looked at her with large eyes, then assented eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. But not only in the presence of Christ, in the presence also
+of every great personality, of every great truth. But it isn't easy for
+us to cultivate that feeling&mdash;to make it clear to ourselves that we must
+be poor when what is given to us ought to enrich us. Religion is best
+able to inspire us with the feeling, if it finds the correct means of
+expression. And the Italians did. A poor man spoke to poor men. Therein
+lay the wealth of Giotto's gift. For what moves us to tears is not his
+vast competence, it is his incompetence. Do you get what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I do," said Lilly, her face lighting up. "If a man desires
+something of us, and can merely stammer and stutter his desire, he
+affects us more than if he says it in a prepared discourse."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly!" he cried joyously. "That's why Giotto's scant speech, his
+stammering created the whole language of art. Everything before him had
+simply been learned by heart from dead, Byzantine models. For the first
+time a man read life with simple eyes and a simple heart, and extracted
+from it what he had to say. That is why he became the universal master.
+To this very day if anyone succeeds in portraying supreme suffering and
+supreme delight with his brush, he owes his skill to that little
+church."</p>
+
+<p>"I can conceive," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source and a
+man were suddenly to come upon it, he would feel as you do."</p>
+
+<p>In the exuberance of his emotion Dr. Rennschmidt seized Lilly's arm with
+both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the missing figure. It's strong enough to express what took
+place in me. But I came upon another source. While I walked along those
+frescoed walls, something suddenly stood before me clearly&mdash;and my work
+was there, sprung from nothing: the history of emotions. Emotions, you
+know, as art has seen and portrayed them in all generations. Not only
+the pictorial and plastic arts. They are only a fraction. Literature
+also. Poetry as well as painting, sculpture as well as music. I thought
+in that way I might succeed in creating a true, genuine history of the
+development of the human heart, which no moralist, no historian, no
+psychologist has yet attempted. Why not? The documents are at hand; just
+as fossils lie embedded in rocks for the guidance of zoölogists. They
+need merely be cut out. What do you think? Isn't it a work worth
+spending a lifetime on?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said Lilly, with the same solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but there's much to be thought over first," he went on. "You cannot
+make an impetuous onslaught like a bull on a red rag. Often art leads us
+astray because it strove to reproduce something entirely different from
+the emotional life of its time. Whether it succeeded or not is another
+question. And often it was wanting in the necessary means of expression.
+Oh, you and I will speak of this many more times. Don't look so
+frightened. I need you. After this evening I could not get along without
+you. Nobody before you ever listened with such faith and understanding.
+Besides, I've grown to be an utter stranger here. The people I know are
+full of their own interests, and scarcely listen to me. Then, too,
+there's a bit of madness in my undertaking, of which I really ought to
+be ashamed. But one thing comforts me: a bit of madness has underlain
+every great work until that work was completed and had compassed its
+end. Of course everybody has the same idea of his own work. So some time
+I'll rise above that feeling. But now, while I'm wrestling, and every
+day I think I have discovered a new vein of gold and then am compelled
+to throw a good deal away because it's pinchbeck, if I have nobody on
+whom I can pour out what oppresses and torments me, why the jumble
+fairly chokes me. So fate sent me to you. It was like an inner voice,
+which would not let me rest at my desk, but sent me out to watch your
+light. Now I have you, and I won't let you go. God knows, I shouldn't be
+so bold in my own behalf, but it's for my work. It is clamouring for
+you. For heaven's sake, why are you crying?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not crying," said Lilly, and smiled at him.</p>
+
+<p>But the tears kept rising, and veiled his lovely picture.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what it is," he said sadly. "I wasn't considerate. You are
+regretting your lost art, because I spoke so happily of my own work."
+Lilly started back as if she had seen a ghost, and made vehement denial.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, it isn't that! Really not!"</p>
+
+<p>But he persisted in his belief; which drove the thorn of her own
+unworthiness all the deeper into her soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go," she requested. "There is so much assailing me&mdash;happiness
+and unhappiness and all sorts of things&mdash;outside I'll be calmer."</p>
+
+<p>It was long after midnight. A cold wind swept across the water and
+soughed in the bare branches.</p>
+
+<p>He offered her his arm, and Lilly nestled in it as if she had been at
+home there from times immemorial.</p>
+
+<p>For a while they were both silent</p>
+
+<p>"In five minutes he'll leave me," she thought. She could not bear the
+grief of impending loss.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing is lying heavy on my conscience," he began. "You might think
+me overweening because I make so much of myself. But I don't wish to
+appear more important than others. I know every vigorous young fellow
+must have a similar work to bring purpose into his life. One has a book
+to write, another a business to carry on, another a dependent to
+support. For some it's enough if they keep their heads above water. It
+doesn't matter what. If you let yourself go, you're lost. And none of us
+want to be lost, do we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I lost myself long ago," whispered Lilly, shuddering and
+crouching like a whipped dog.</p>
+
+<p>He burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"You, the best, the finest, the noblest."</p>
+
+<p>She knew how undeserved his praise was. Yet how delicious, oh, how
+delicious.</p>
+
+<p>They were now walking so closely pressed against each other that their
+cheeks almost touched. She closed her eyes and ardently drank in the
+warm breath of his life. She felt she was being wafted to unknown
+blessed distances.</p>
+
+<p>She did not come to herself until they reached her home.</p>
+
+<p>"When?" he asked her.</p>
+
+<p>She had no time the next day. She was invited out. But the day after.
+Yes, the day after, she had the whole evening free. He need only call
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>For fear she might after all ask him to come the very next day, she
+hurried into the house, ran up the steps, and concealed her happiness in
+the hushed apartment.</p>
+
+<p>She did not turn on the lights. The street lamps, shining on the walls
+of the drawing-room and touching rainbow colours on the chandelier
+prisms, provided sufficient illumination.</p>
+
+<p>She began to wander through the open doors from room to room, into the
+corner where the bed stood, around the dining table, across the
+drawing-room, into the cold guest room, which had never received a
+guest, up and down, back and forth, singing, crying, exulting.</p>
+
+<p>And from amid her tears and singing and exultation suddenly arose&mdash;how
+did it go?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, my beloved! Let us go forth into the field,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us spend the night in the villages.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us get up early to the vineyards,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us see if the vine have blossomed.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No, not quite&mdash;a little different. But she would surely get it.</p>
+
+<p>Impetuously she raised the lid of the piano, which had long remained
+closed. As if the neglected instrument, unforced into silence, had
+suddenly acquired a life of its own, a flood of sound rushed toward her,
+of which she had deemed neither the piano nor herself capable.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us see if the young grape have opened,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether the pomegranates have budded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There will I give my young love unto thee.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yes, that was the way it went. Exactly. She had found each note again.</p>
+
+<p>Where had it kept itself hidden all those long years?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if the last time she had sung it had been the very day
+before.</p>
+
+<p>Yet worlds of suffering lay between.</p>
+
+<p>No, not suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"If only it had been suffering," thought Lilly, "the Song of Songs would
+never have become mute."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIIIA" id="CHAPTER_XIIIA"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next morning on awaking Lilly began to worry anew.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody was so blind as not to detect, on coming closer how worm-eaten
+was her existence. Least of all he whose fine feelings vibrated under
+each spiritual touch and awoke an anxious echo in her soul.</p>
+
+<p>Even if it were possible for her to create a sort of island on which she
+might prevent him from coming into contact with her world, wasn't her
+very appearance a traitor? All those mad nights could not have passed
+over her without leaving traces. Two years before Dr. Salmoni had
+already remarked a change in her appearance. "A cold, disdainful look,"
+he had said.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped from bed, and ran to the mirror to subject every feature to
+suspicious scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes had grown tired. There was no disputing that. But they did not
+look disdainful. "Virgin Mary eyes," Dr. Rennschmidt had said, not
+"Madonna eyes." Was there a difference? On her brow were faint cobwebby
+lines; but she could well-nigh rub them away with her finger. "They will
+disappear with a little massaging," she said to herself. But the deep
+grooves on either side of her mouth were bad. They gave her face a
+haughty, satiated expression. "The paths that consuming passion long has
+trod," she quoted from "Tannhäuser in Rom," which she knew almost by
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;had she not preserved her noblest, her profoundest feelings? As
+if to save them up for this One, and now that the One had come, it was
+too late perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>She spent the day in misery, and when Richard came for his tea, he found
+red eyes.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon proved to her clearly what she possessed in Richard. He
+asked so few questions, and was so sympathetic and full of solicitude,
+that for a moment or two she felt comforted and secure. She almost
+succumbed to the temptation to tell him a little about her new
+acquaintance, as was right between two such good friends. Fortunately
+she resisted the impulse. Rather let Adele into the secret, who had
+several times observed encouragingly:</p>
+
+<p>"You may trust me fully. I know life far too well not to take the lady's
+side."</p>
+
+<p>Wishing to avoid "the whole crew," as she dubbed the circle of her
+friends, Lilly pled sickness, and Richard rested satisfied. In the
+evening it occurred to her she had told Dr. Rennschmidt she was going
+out. She hastily put out the light, and sat brooding in the dark until
+bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the mail brought her a letter addressed in an unknown
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>She tore the envelope open and read:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cannot rest, I cannot sleep before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I speak to you, before the prayer torn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From out my breast in passionate outpour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swiftly on wind and wave to you is borne.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sit and dream by lighted lamp; still lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My work. With hours stolen I entwine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A crown of flame that heavenly aspires<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In tongues of fire up round your head divine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, chide me not for uttering words uncalled;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chastise me not for sacred spell I've broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In which your lofty spirit is enthralled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am a struggler&mdash;I must needs have spoken.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Good Heavens! Did this refer to her, to Lilly Czepanek, who ate her
+heart out in dull self-depreciation?</p>
+
+<p>If any human being in the world could think of her so, above all <i>he</i>,
+the most glorious&mdash;she knew the poem, though unsigned, came from
+him&mdash;then after all she was not in such a bad way; then perhaps her life
+had not taken a permanent hold upon her; probably her innermost being
+had remained intact, and values lay strewn in her soul which needed only
+to be used in order to sanctify and bless herself and others.</p>
+
+<p>Long after she knew the verses by heart she read them again and again.
+She could not tear her eyes from the beloved writing.</p>
+
+<p>Then she tried to set the words to music. She opened the piano, and
+fantasied. Her playing came back to her as on the other night;
+everything she had known as a girl and had thought long forgotten came
+back. She needed merely to drop her fingers on the keys, and there it
+was&mdash;or nearly so.</p>
+
+<p>But her finger joints were stiff, and the muscles of her lower arm soon
+wearied. She would have to practise and limber them.</p>
+
+<p>"When he visits me, I can even play a classic for him," she thought.
+Buoyed by the new hope she floated further along on the current of her
+newly won self-esteem.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time she kept careful count of each minute that separated
+her from the evening.</p>
+
+<p>Richard found her practicing assiduously.</p>
+
+<p>"What's gotten into you to-day?" he asked. "I hadn't the slightest idea
+you could play so well."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither had I," laughed Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must play for the others this very evening."</p>
+
+<p>"This evening?" Lilly asked, alarmed. "I thought I had this evening
+free."</p>
+
+<p>"Free! What do you mean by free?" he rejoined, evidently annoyed. "You
+act just as if our going out in company were heaven knows what a
+sacrifice. You keep to yourself whenever you can possibly get a chance.
+Yesterday, in fact, Karla said nobody really knows what sort of life you
+lead."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that applies much better to Karla than to me. Nobody really
+knows her name."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter. Others have criticised your reserved ways, too. One
+man even hinted I'd better keep my eye on you more than I do, and not
+let you go your own way so much. So to hush them up I promised I'd bring
+you this evening instead of yesterday. There's no getting out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly instantly reflected that a refusal, far from helping, would merely
+arouse his dormant suspicions. So she bravely choked down fright and
+tears. But when he left the anguish of disappointment was all the
+keener.</p>
+
+<p>What would Dr. Rennschmidt think if he came at the appointed time and
+found her out? Since he had not mentioned his address, she could not
+write to him, and he would have a full day in which to nurse evil
+suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>In an agony of apprehension she sought comfort with Adele, whose dry,
+peevish face perceptibly brightened. She seemed to be in her element
+when it came to deceiving a person, or, better still, two persons.</p>
+
+<p>"The best thing," she said, "would be for you to say a sick friend had
+asked you to come. Something sad like that takes them all in." She knew
+it from experience, she assured Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>That evening her friends did not get much entertainment out of Lilly.
+She disregarded the gentlemen, and gave the ladies rude answers. Mrs.
+Jula, the only one whose presence would have pleased her, was absent,
+as had become usual of late. They finally left her to herself and
+Richard, the dear fellow, who had hoped to parade his possession,
+helplessly gnawed the ends of his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Lilly again suffered the torments of dread.</p>
+
+<p>When she had come home the night before, despite the late hour, she had
+awakened Adele, who said he had come and had looked dreadfully upset. He
+had gone away without saying anything.</p>
+
+<p>Another day spent in nervously counting the minutes. She stood in front
+of the mirror, utterly despondent, and dressed herself for him. She
+would have liked to sink at his feet when he entered. Nevertheless she
+determined to maintain in words and gesture, then and in the future, a
+certain gentle, melancholy grandeur of manner which would nip suspicion
+in the bud, and would correspond with the picture of her he had drawn in
+his verses. When she thought that that stupid, much-kissed head of hers
+should from now on be a "head divine," she grew thoroughly ill at ease
+from sheer sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>At half past seven the bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>She received him with a conventional smile, and the gentle, melancholy
+grandeur, which she succeeded in adopting perfectly, concealed her
+harassed spirits.</p>
+
+<p>His manner, she saw at the first glance, was also constrained. His eyes
+glided past her with a singularly empty expression.</p>
+
+<p>"He has divined everything," her soul cried.</p>
+
+<p>But she bore up nobly.</p>
+
+<p>"I must beg your pardon," she said, "for not having kept our
+appointment."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope your friend is feeling better," he said, while a disdainful
+smile of doubt played about his lips.</p>
+
+<p>She made all kinds of explanations, said whatever came into her head;
+and without looking at him, she knew he believed not a syllable.</p>
+
+<p>"I must beg <i>your</i> pardon," he rejoined after she had finished, with the
+same lurking disdain in his voice and smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I sent you some verses which I hope you will consider nothing more than
+what they really are, a mere harmless stylistic effort without sense or
+significance."</p>
+
+<p>"He's already withdrawing," her guilty conscience cried; and all the
+colder and worldlier was her reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit your pretty verses did astonish me at first. I couldn't
+conceive that I was a fitting subject to inspire them. But then I
+thought you probably meant nothing more than what you just now said, and
+I did not feel offended. If you wish we won't say more about it."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with great questioning eyes, and she rejoiced at having
+requited him so bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>Wishing to observe the rules of decorum she invited him to stay for
+supper, though absolutely nothing had been prepared for a guest.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I was to be permitted to take you out," he replied in a hard,
+disillusioned tone.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you wish."</p>
+
+<p>They descended the stairs in silence, and in silence paced along the
+canal, the same way they had walked three evenings before, pressed close
+against each other in drunken bliss. Then, too, they had not spoken;
+but, oh, how different had their silence been!</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done the last few days?" Lilly finally asked, to make
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing special. I tried to write an article for the <i>Münchener
+Kunstzeitschrift</i>, on which I'm a collaborator. My subject was the
+Sienna School outside of Sienna. But it didn't turn out very well. The
+editor won't be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly read reproach of herself in his words. Evidently he wanted to
+indicate that her entrance into his life was to blame.</p>
+
+<p>And when he asked to what restaurant she would like to go, she said, her
+wounded heart quivering:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm neither hungry nor thirsty, and people and light would hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to add something about "not wishing to be a burden" and
+similar things, but swallowed the words before they were spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish to avoid people, we might go to the Tiergarten."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly agreed. Had he said, "Come down into the water of the canal with
+me," she would have assented even more willingly.</p>
+
+<p>The hard park roads stretched before them in the light of the electric
+lamps like long galleries with garish walls between which one was forced
+to run the gauntlet. The pedestrians coming toward Lilly and Dr.
+Rennschmidt measured the tall couple with cold, intrusive curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"It's worse here than in the crowded streets," said Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Her aching, despondent heart fluttered with excitement</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to a side path leading into darkness; and without speaking
+they dipped into solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Above the towering masses of branches the cloudy sky, looking like a
+metal whose brilliance has worn off, reflected the invisible sea of city
+lights. Through the lattice work of the leafless bushes gleamed the
+lamps lining the more public ways; and on all sides the gongs of the
+electric trams, shooting hither and thither, sounded like fire alarums.</p>
+
+<p>But there in the interior of the park, quiet and darkness prevailed.
+Lilly felt she had sunk into a black sea of mournfulness.</p>
+
+<p>The silence between them became intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Dr. Rennschmidt stepped in front of Lilly and blocked the way.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she asked, startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Czepanek&mdash;Mrs. Czepanek&mdash;what I am going to say&mdash;what I am going
+to say"&mdash;his raised hands jerked back and forth before her face&mdash;"will
+either bring us together again&mdash;or&mdash;send us apart forever. I was
+cowardly before. I thought I could evade the truth. When I said I didn't
+mean what I wrote in my poem, I was lying. I felt exactly what I wrote.
+And a thousand times more strongly. But I oughtn't to have spoken. I
+know I frightened you. You were bewildered. You didn't know how to take
+me. You probably think me some enamoured adventurer who wants to exploit
+the trust you show. Dear, dear Mrs. Czepanek, I promise you I will never
+again annoy you with a display of my feelings. But don't withdraw your
+friendship from me. Please don't. Just imagine what would become of me
+if I were to lose you!"</p>
+
+<p>So <i>that's</i> what it was!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, God! If nothing else stood between them.</p>
+
+<p>She could not help herself&mdash;she had to lean against a tree and cry. Her
+tears soon soaked her veil, and she raised it and pressed her finger
+tips to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she heard his voice, hoarse with anxiety. "Did I
+wound you so deeply? Was what I said so very bad? I will atone for it.
+Just pardon me. You must pardon me."</p>
+
+<p>When she heard him beg her pardon so humbly for the immeasurable
+happiness he had bestowed upon her, she was seized with a frenzy, and
+throwing her grand manner to the winds and her shame, to boot, she flung
+her arms about his neck with a groan of abandon, pressed her body
+against his, and kissed his lips, and sucked and bit them.</p>
+
+<p>Under the impetus of this wild, unchaste kiss, he staggered and held
+himself erect on her, digging his fingers into the flesh of her upper
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>How good it felt, because it hurt so!</p>
+
+<p>"At last, at last!" her heart cried.</p>
+
+<p>Now he knew who she was and what she had to give him.</p>
+
+<p>When she pulled herself together, she saw he had sunk back with his head
+leaning against the same tree that had supported her. His hat had fallen
+to the ground. His eyes were closed. His face had the ashen hue of
+death.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments all was still. The only sound was the clanging of the
+tram bells.</p>
+
+<p>"My love, my love!" she whispered, stooping and then drawing herself
+upward on him. "Wake up, my love! wake up, and come!"</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes and stared at her with the look of a foolish slave.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," she exulted. "Come back, come home. I don't want to roam
+about any more&mdash;in the woods or restaurants. Come home! Come to me!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not respond. He seemed to have lost his mind completely.</p>
+
+<p>A dull sense of guilt awoke in her, but was instantly stifled by joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!"</p>
+
+<p>With both hands she drew him away from the spot that had become the
+cradle of her bliss&mdash;and his, too. Was it remarkable that happiness
+should benumb him and rob him of his senses? He upon whom Lilly
+Czepanek bestowed herself, Lilly Czepanek for whose favour hundreds had
+begged in vain, might well lose his senses. It by no means derogated
+from his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>While she drew him along the roads and streets, she let loose upon him
+her soul's tempest in a delirium of happy prattle.</p>
+
+<p>Hadn't he an inkling of what he was that he should have harboured such
+doubts? She had belonged to him from the very first instant. A miracle
+had taken place in her as well as in him. Never had she known what love
+was until the day when the squirrels chipped over their heads. The rest
+of her life no longer existed for her. <i>He</i> alone was there. He and his
+eyes. He and his mouth. He and his will. He and the great, glorious work
+which she would toil for like a slave; which she would enrich with her
+love, because from old pictures and poems he would gather nothing but
+the grey ashes of love. Genuine, young blissful love, <i>she</i> would teach
+him, she, Lilly Czepanek, who had waited for him ever since she could
+remember, who belonged to him from the beginning, from the beginning of
+time, you might say. He could see God had destined them for each other,
+because they both thought they had met before, whereas they had never
+met in life. At most in dreams. She had seen him in her dreams always,
+always. Exactly as in fairy tales.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is a fairy tale. Tell me, tell me, you whose first name I do
+not even know. But no matter. Tell me, it's not a mere fairy tale."</p>
+
+<p>But he said nothing. He walked along like a somnambulist. He followed
+her up the steps mechanically, and remained standing stiffly in the
+centre of the drawing-room, into which she had led him. When the lights
+were turned on, he looked about with a shy, searching glance, as if he
+had never seen the room, and could not recollect how he had come there.</p>
+
+<p>She clung to him, and said he should sit quite still and rest, and close
+those eyes of his. Then she helped him remove his overcoat, and pressed
+him into a seat and kissed him on both "those eyes" until his lids
+closed and he reclined there as if actually asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Now wait, beloved, until I come back."</p>
+
+<p>She ran joyously into the kitchen to order Adele to prepare supper
+hastily. Then she hurried into the bedroom, where she changed her
+rustling silk dress for a light blue tea-gown, turquoise-studded, in
+which, as Richard was wont to say gallantly, she was Venus herself. She
+arranged her hair more loosely and discarded her rings The only jewel
+she left was a gold bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>Adele, the sulky, had transformed the table as if by magic into a bower
+of flowers, and her face was wreathed in smiles; for at last there were
+human goings-on in this respectably indecent house. The plated
+silverware gleamed on the fresh damask, and the aroma of golden bananas
+came from the fruit basket.</p>
+
+<p>He might be content. Lilly was. Her dread had disappeared. She felt
+well-nigh victorious. But her happiness was too humble to be totally
+unqualified.</p>
+
+<p>Her one pride, greedy for recognition, was that she had so much, so much
+to give him.</p>
+
+<p>When she entered the drawing-room, she no longer found him reclining on
+the arm-chair. To her terror she saw he was standing in front of the
+secrétaire&mdash;absorbed in contemplation of Richard's picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if only I had taken it away before!" she thought Now it was too
+late.</p>
+
+<p>He let a confused, astonished look glide over the Venus robe, and
+fetching a deep breath, grasped both her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you make yourself so beautiful for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just to give you a little feeling of being at home here," she said,
+dropping her eyes. "Nothing more. But come. Let's go to supper. We
+haven't had anything to eat all evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Eat and drink now? Oh, very well&mdash;I'll just sit at table, if you want."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't care for anything either," she cried, clinging to him, and
+drawing her arm so tight about his neck that the pressure of his body
+fairly robbed her of her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Peter, the little ape, who had slept in his corner the whole time, awoke
+and whimpered jealously, and stretched his grey arms yearningly between
+the bars of his cage, as if wishing to be the third party in the
+alliance.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Rennschmidt heard the strange sound and started.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly smiled and calmed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Later I'll introduce you to all my little ones. My friends must be
+yours, too."</p>
+
+<p>He drew himself up to his full height.</p>
+
+<p>"How is that possible? As what would you introduce me?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly hastily parried.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't mean it that way. I merely meant&mdash;" She was at a loss what
+explanation to offer. Then she felt his trembling fingers clutch her
+upper arm. His eyes burned their way into hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her brain reeled.</p>
+
+<p>"Who am I? I am a woman&mdash;who loves you&mdash;who has never loved anyone
+before."</p>
+
+<p>He gratefully caressed her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Understand me," he said. "I am not trying to force myself into your
+confidence. But if the relation between two human beings is what ours
+has been for the past hour, they want to mean everything in the world to
+each other. I have never met a woman like you. I am utterly helpless.
+The few little experiences I have had don't count. In Rome a baker's
+daughter loved me. She ran away with a marquis. When I was a student I
+went through a few similar episodes. I never mingled much in society.
+And now all of a sudden I have you in my arms&mdash;the noblest, the most
+glorious thing I've ever beheld. A creature not of this world. I keep
+looking at you as you stand there in your blue peplum&mdash;why, it's as if
+an old marble statue by Lysippus or Praxiteles had come to life. And
+that is to be mine? The mere desiring of it is naked tragedy. We are
+both making straight for a precipice, and we don't even resist."</p>
+
+<p>"Why resist?" she cried, in bliss, throwing her head back, as if to toss
+from her brow streaming bacchantic locks. "We love each other. Nothing
+else concerns us."</p>
+
+<p>He sank into the chair next to her, and pressed his face into both
+hands, his body heaving as with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>She kneeled before him, and bent her head, and planted little kisses on
+his clenched hands.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he cried, jumping up. "I will not permit myself simply to drift.
+If <i>you</i> think as you do, you who are willing to sacrifice
+everything&mdash;very well! But I, who am the recipient, I must make
+everything clear to you, so that you know for whom you are making the
+sacrifice. I mustn't leave any possibilities open to mislead you. I'm
+nothing but a poor young fellow who lives by his uncle's bounty. I have
+no prospects. I can't build on my work. And the few articles I write
+don't count. I must first toil for my little place in the world. It may
+be ten years before I secure it. And I can't let you support me. Think
+what you will of me, but I must tell you: we cannot become husband and
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>At first she scarcely comprehended. It was impossible for her to realise
+that a man could be so naïve, so unworldly as to speak of marriage in
+Lilly Czepanek's drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>She burst into a strident laugh, the overflow of her scorn of her own
+worthless life.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think," she cried, jumping to her feet, "that I'm nothing but an
+adventuress who tries to rope men into marriage, one of those
+harpies"&mdash;Mrs. Jula's word occurred to her&mdash;"who pounce upon every
+passerby? For what sort of a sorry wretch do you take me?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked into her face with astonished, uncomprehending eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman who loves a man and wants to be the joy of his life is not a
+sorry wretch."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if that was what he meant!</p>
+
+<p>The time when in all innocence she had wanted to be Richard's wife
+recurred to her. How long ago was it? How low she must have sunk if this
+most natural conception of the relation between man and woman should
+have become strange to her!</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered, and was aware of having turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>If only he had noticed nothing amiss. She could stand much, but not
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Humbly, in dread of his searching eyes, she replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I merely wanted to let you know that you are free and will remain free
+from first to last. You can leave whenever you want to, and nothing will
+have been."</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean&mdash;I?"</p>
+
+<p>"As what will you remain behind if I go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take care of that," she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The contingency was very, very remote. Why split her head over it now?</p>
+
+<p>But he was not yet satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something peculiar about you. A whiff of mystery. A&mdash;a&mdash;how
+shall I say? The shadow of a wrong done you. You mingle much in society,
+you say. Yet I have the feeling that you are lonely and perhaps
+unprotected. Whenever I try to look into you, I feel as if rude hands
+had been laid on you. From now on I will stand by to protect and advise
+you. But I'm so inexperienced in worldly matters. It can easily come
+about that without divining it I may merely add to the mischief in your
+life. And I would not for the world&mdash;you are holy to me. So you must
+tell me now, to-night, whatever you may of what you have gone through
+and suffered. Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt evasion was no longer possible. The hour had struck of which
+she had lived in dread ever since she had met Dr. Rennschmidt, though it
+had seemed indefinitely remote.</p>
+
+<p>One of Mrs. Jula's sayings again flashed through her mind:</p>
+
+<p>"The road back into the community of virtue leads through lies."</p>
+
+<p>It had begun with lies; with lies it would go on.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the wish shot up within her to tell him the full truth.
+But that was madness, suicide. In fact, she need not lie. She need
+merely put a different face upon matters, the face they wore when hope
+still shone upon her life and she actually was what she now endeavoured
+to appear to be.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be darker," she said, extinguishing the chandelier's piercing
+white glare. The only light now came from the red-shaded standing lamp,
+which cast a flowery shimmer upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands in his, her head leaning against his shoulder, she began her
+whispered, faltered confession.</p>
+
+<p>She told of her sheltered, care-free childhood, in which music held
+sway, a benevolent spirit and a demon in one; of her father's flight and
+the poverty in which she and her mother were left.</p>
+
+<p>So far nothing to conceal or alter. The colonel also remained as he had
+been, except that she occasionally promoted him to the rank of general.
+It was not until Walter von Prell stepped on the stage the second time
+that it became necessary to mix in fresh colours. The mere
+acknowledgment that she had frivolously abandoned body and soul to a
+tattered and torn jovial ne'er-do-well would deprive her forever of her
+friend's esteem. So the sorry little good-for-nothing was quite
+naturally converted into a happy, yet ill-fated laughing hero who had
+been vanquished merely because all the dark powers combined against him.</p>
+
+<p>Once launched, she sailed serenely on. She represented the parting as
+having taken place amid a thousand vows and tears and bridal
+expectations. As for the duel, of which she had never learned the
+particulars, she exaggerated its horrors vastly, her lover emerging a
+total cripple, who left for America resolved not to enter her life again
+until he should be in a position to atone for his misdeed by marrying
+her. So for the meantime he placed her in the care of a simple, good
+young man, who was all nobility and self-sacrifice. For love of the
+vanished friend, this young man had taken Lilly's fate into his keeping
+four years before, and watched over her and led her into society. With
+rare disinterestedness he managed the little capital remaining from her
+married days, and always advised her in practical matters. He came every
+afternoon for a social cup of tea, and sometimes he escorted her when
+she went out in the evening. His circle had become hers, and everybody
+they knew honoured and respected the fine relationship existing between
+them, the basis of which was his noble loyalty to his friend.</p>
+
+<p>So Lilly Czepanek, with the force of conviction, recounted her life
+history. She almost believed in her own words. As a matter of fact, it
+was a fair picture of her life, such as Richard had once portrayed it,
+before she had begun to slip into the abyss the night of the carnival.</p>
+
+<p>Of Kellermann and Dr. Salmoni and the whole "crew," of course, she said
+nothing. But she alluded to her unfortunate art with tears&mdash;for the last
+time, she said&mdash;then it should never be mentioned again.</p>
+
+<p>She concluded. When, with a hesitating feeling of security, she looked
+up to him expecting to receive his absolution, she started at the change
+in his appearance. His face was livid, his eyes, fastened on the
+ceiling, glowed unnaturally, deep furrows of anguish had cut themselves
+into his cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her head.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up, and snatched Richard's picture from the secrétaire, and
+carried it to the light of the standing lamp.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly knew he was thinking of Walter, and timidly interjected:</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't he."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"His friend&mdash;the manufacturer."</p>
+
+<p>He cast the picture aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you a picture of <i>his</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes&mdash;but where was it? The large pastel was in the lumber room. The
+small one very likely was stowed away in some drawer.</p>
+
+<p>"I packed it away," she excused herself, "because I couldn't bear to
+have it in my sight all the time."</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell him why the sight of it annoyed her. She preferred him
+to assume the cause was her newly awakened love.</p>
+
+<p>How ridiculous, how pitiful it all was!</p>
+
+<p>She longed to sink at his feet and cry to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, forgive me&mdash;take me as I am, do not spurn me."</p>
+
+<p>Instead, she lied on, shamelessly, desperately, like an ordinary
+adventuress on the verge of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you do me the favour to hunt for the picture?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want to torture yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, I beg of you."</p>
+
+<p>Further resistance was out of the question. She fetched the key of the
+secretary from a basket, opened the drawers at random, rummaged among
+the papers without half looking, and actually found it. There it was.
+She had not seen it for years.</p>
+
+<p>The white-lashed eyes looked haughty and cunning.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie and deceive, lie and deceive," they seemed to say. "That's just
+what I used to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped to the lamp, and stared at the picture long. His lips
+twitched from time to time, the picture quivered jerkily in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly the way I stood in front of the rich orphan's photograph,"
+thought Lilly. But that was long ago.</p>
+
+<p>Then she heard him speak. His voice was hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you answer a question upon which much depends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask it, my love."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still count upon&mdash;upon this young man's return?"</p>
+
+<p>Whither did the question lead? Lilly felt she need merely say "no," and
+every obstacle was removed. But if she said no, all her falsehoods about
+Walter and his friend would have had no significance.</p>
+
+<p>So she had to choose a middle course.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I have my doubts," she managed to say, lingering over the
+words. "I am waiting for two now. My father seems to be gone&mdash;gone for
+good. And I don't hear from him either."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you consider yourself bound, just as you did then?"</p>
+
+<p>She felt the halter tightening about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Something in his tone seemed to bar escape. It left no nook to hide in.
+Her answer meant life or death.</p>
+
+<p>She held up her arms as if swearing an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I know you I don't care one way or the other. If you want me to
+be true to him, I'll wait for him&mdash;till Judgment Day. If you want me to
+throw him overboard, I'll throw him overboard."</p>
+
+<p>He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and stood there as he had in
+the park. She became alarmed again for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does he torture himself so?" she thought. Then it occurred to her
+for the first time that he took her and everything she had said
+seriously; that he, who himself practiced loyalty, assumed that loyalty
+was a life principle of hers, too.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if he knew!</p>
+
+<p>She was so ashamed she did not dare to speak or approach him.</p>
+
+<p>He drew himself up energetically, and his forehead glowed with the
+wrathful will, which from the first had intimidated her.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he said. "After everything you've told me, I know I acted on a
+false assumption. You are <i>not</i> neglected, the world has <i>not</i> done you
+wrong. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for, and you're
+looking forward to a future, no matter how uncertain it may now be. You
+would lose all that through me. The instant your friend were to suspect
+my existence, he would, of course, withdraw his support. And all the
+others who now constitute your world would go with him."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly wanted to burst out laughing, and give vent to her utter contempt
+for everything that had constituted her former life. But another thought
+instantly restrained her. Dr. Rennschmidt must continue to think that
+Richard should not suspect his existence. To defy her past and present
+was to bring about a catastrophe which would irremediably expose the
+wretchedness of her situation. She might be his only in dark secret
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>He continued:</p>
+
+<p>"What I have to offer in return is nothing. I have nothing but my
+work&mdash;you know. And even my work is still in the clouds. Why, I'm not
+even certain of myself. If I think of what I have just&mdash;" He turned his
+eyes aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if you don't love me," said Lilly, dejectedly.</p>
+
+<p>He threw himself in front of her, placing one knee on a vacant part of
+the seat of her chair, and putting his arms about her body.</p>
+
+<p>"Have mercy on me. You see how I'm suffering. Don't make it <i>harder</i> for
+me. Every day, every hour, I should say to myself: 'Over in America
+there's a man toiling and moiling for her. He doesn't write simply
+because he's ashamed to admit that he has accomplished nothing on
+account of his mangled body.' I can't conceive any other motive for his
+silence. A man doesn't forget a woman like you. In the meantime I sit
+here with you in secret, and hold you in my arms. I don't know&mdash;I&mdash;a
+person can debauch, he can commit adultery&mdash;so far as I'm concerned it
+wouldn't matter. But to rob a poor cripple of his all&mdash;I think the
+lowest scoundrel would draw the line at that. I don't know how I'll get
+over it&mdash;" He collapsed. His forehead hit against the arm of
+Lilly's chair, and dry sobs shook his body. "But&mdash;it would be
+better&mdash;immediately&mdash;on the spot&mdash;better than later&mdash;when it's too
+late&mdash;for both&mdash;of us."</p>
+
+<p>The blow had fallen. How cleverly she thought she had garbled the truth,
+and here she was caught in her own net of lies.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake," she screamed, "do you mean to say you will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Farewell," he said. "Think of me in peace. Thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"If I tell him the truth, he'll be all the more certain to go," she
+thought, looking about helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>His hands, stretched toward her, were waiting, his eyes hung on her
+thirstily, as if to drink in the picture forever.</p>
+
+<p>"I will plant myself at the door," she thought, "and throw myself on
+him, and stifle him with kisses."</p>
+
+<p>But the desire not to lose his respect made her small and timorous.</p>
+
+<p>"Not this instant," she implored, clasping his hands. "One hour&mdash;one
+parting hour&mdash;just one."</p>
+
+<p>He gently extricated his hands from her grasp, and turned to the door.</p>
+
+<p>Raised to her full height, Lilly stood in the centre of the room in her
+blue Venus robe and held out her hand to him. The wide sleeves fell
+away and revealed the mature womanly beauty of her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"If he sees me this way," she thought, "he will still be mine."</p>
+
+<p>But he did not turn about. He reeled. His forehead struck against the
+half-open door.</p>
+
+<p>All of a sudden he seemed to have been wiped out of existence, and with
+him the light of the world. A swarm of bees buzzed about her head, and
+in the darkness enveloping her, she sank through the floor, deeper,
+deeper, into the canal&mdash;a club dealt her a blow on her forehead&mdash;and all
+was over.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>At first it sounded like a chirping of birds, then like the murmur of a
+mighty throng in some wide sunny place; and then only two voices
+sounded, one a man's, the other a woman's. They kept up an eager,
+whispered conversation.</p>
+
+<p>The cook&mdash;Maggie&mdash;and the lackey with the mischievous smile. Of course,
+that's who they were.</p>
+
+<p>The colonel would enter the next instant and want her to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Something cool and damp dropped soothingly on her aching head. Just as
+then.</p>
+
+<p>"So I'll have to go through all that again," she thought in terror, and
+she began to cry and entreat:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, colonel, please let me go. I'm much too bad for you! Oh, <i>dear</i>
+colonel."</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, she's raving!" said the man. After all he wasn't the
+horrid lackey.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how deliciously at ease she lay in the spell of that voice, in which
+a home-like note quivered solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't go at any rate." The thought tranquillised her, and she
+settled herself more comfortably on the pillow they had placed under her
+neck on the floor. If she had known his first name, she would have
+spoken to him. Why, how disgraceful not to know his first name yet. So
+she merely raised her arms a little toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he was kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep real quiet," he said, "real, real quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up to him in
+blissful peace.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, yes, everything would be all right. Ways and means would be found
+for their remaining together&mdash;like two friends, like a brother and
+sister. They wouldn't part&mdash;no, no, they wouldn't part. Nobody need be
+tortured so terribly as that.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly shuddered and thought of the moment when the light about her had
+gone out, and she had sunk into the wet, slimy depths.</p>
+
+<p>Thus life would have been without him.</p>
+
+<p>But now they would wander toward the dawning sun hand in hand like
+brother and sister in innocent gaiety, liberated and purified.</p>
+
+<p>Inconceivable happiness!</p>
+
+<p>Strange that neither of them had hit upon the idea sooner.</p>
+
+<p>She groped for his arm and with a contented sigh nestled her cheek in
+his hollow hand.</p>
+
+<p>But Adele, who all the while had considerately been looking out of the
+window, thought the compress ought to be changed, because the wound on
+Lilly's forehead was still bleeding.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIVA" id="CHAPTER_XIVA"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Each spring in a man's life has its peculiar aspect and its peculiar
+history. Each spring finds him different, each stirs new depths and
+opens fresh, hidden wounds. One spring passes by like a dull, vapid
+game, because he himself just then happens to be dull and vapid. Another
+tortures him with a thousand fruitless admonitions, because he cannot
+pay off a penny of the debt he owes himself. A third finds him listless
+and sodden as a field which cannot recover from the winter stress. And
+again the spring-time chants deceptive hymns of liberation and
+redemption in his heart, as if <i>it</i> had the power to liberate and
+redeem.</p>
+
+<p>But most beautiful is that spring of which we are scarcely aware for all
+the spring joy within us; whose bourgeoning seems but a reflection of
+our spiritual bourgeoning, and which is but the accompaniment of the
+mighty growth that broadens our minds and souls and fairly bursts the
+bonds of our being.</p>
+
+<p>Such a spring broke upon Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Everything took on a new aspect. Never had the morning sun painted such
+crinkly, laughing grotesques on the walls. Never had rainy days
+enveloped the world in such languishing violet twilights. Never had
+people's faces been brightened by so much expectant festivity. Never had
+the din and bustle of the streets revealed so much joyous, purposeful
+activity.</p>
+
+<p>Why, all of a sudden Lilly also was overwhelmed with work.</p>
+
+<p>Every hour was filled with urgent occupations. If anyone in the last few
+years had dared to tell her that the day would come again when with
+burning cheeks and a heated brain she would indiscriminately cram names,
+dates, biographies, lists of great men's works, poetical quotations, and
+foreign terms, she would have laughed him to scorn.</p>
+
+<p>But it would never do to loaf now. She must be ready with a response on
+any occasion, just as she had been when he asked her about Giotto. All
+her eagerness for knowledge, which a feeling of spiritual isolation and
+aimless endeavour had dammed up within her for years, now gushed out.
+Her mind, insatiate as a fallow, unfertilised field, absorbed whatever
+was thrown upon it. She scarcely needed to put forth the least effort.
+If she merely imagined herself repeating it to him, it remained in her
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>She went at her studies with the utmost secrecy. Konrad&mdash;yes, his name
+was Konrad&mdash;must not suspect that her wisdom had just issued brand-new
+from the laboratory. She also kept her visits to the museums a secret.
+He was to suppose she had always been thoroughly familiar with the
+masters. In addition she had to practice many a piece of early music
+which he wished to hear for his work. And often she blessed her father's
+strict hand which had held her down on the piano stool throughout many a
+long night.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and Dr. Rennschmidt saw a great deal of each other&mdash;every other
+evening of course. He avoided coming afternoons, which, he knew,
+belonged to her betrothed's friend. But often he ran up to her in the
+middle of the day to bring her a book or some flowers and ask her for a
+bit of music. No matter how much she pressed him, he never remained for
+a meal. In fact, he seemed not to feel quite at ease in her apartment.
+He would walk up and down incessantly, pretty soon glance at the clock,
+and take leave. At first she felt hurt, then she asked him teasingly
+whether he thought he was in an enemy's country, and finally she adopted
+the policy of <i>laissez faire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, she did not yet thoroughly understand him. Each day laid bare new,
+unusual sides of his being.</p>
+
+<p>He was still very young. Not only in years. She had met many a cold,
+blasé old man of twenty-five. His youth was deep-seated. He thought
+passionately. Lilly had never seen such fervour expended on pure
+thinking. Ideas seemed to him like tangible beings with which he had to
+strive breast to breast, and which he drew to himself if they proved to
+be friendly to his intellectual attitude, or rejected if hostile.
+Similarly, great thinkers and creators of the past were either allies or
+enemies. He associated with them as with teachers and comrades, adoring
+or despising them, submitting to their reprimands, or turning them into
+laughing-stocks.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts and speech were in a constant state of flux with
+counter-currents and a whirl of contradictions. He was like a man
+forcibly cleaving a way, or giving merciless chase. He never remained
+indifferent or apathetic to a phenomenon, spiritual or physical.
+Everywhere he saw problems to be solved and vexed questions in regard to
+which he must take one side or the other. He either loved or hated. He
+scarcely knew a stage between.</p>
+
+<p>And Lilly followed him with all the ardour of a pupil and lover. She
+planted each idea of his in her being and let it take root or die as
+chance willed. No need to cherish it; she enjoyed sufficient wealth
+without it.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke little of his personal matters, not from distrust or reserve,
+but because he deemed them of small importance. Lilly had to extract
+jots of information by questioning.</p>
+
+<p>He was very enthusiastic about his parents, though their pictures seemed
+to have faded in his mind or lost form.</p>
+
+<p>His uncle had taken their place, the self-made man and globe-trotter who
+had made Dr. Rennschmidt his heir, and who even during his lifetime
+allowed him means for a modest, yet care-free existence.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly could not fathom the inner relationship of the two men. Sometimes,
+it seemed, Dr. Rennschmidt cherished a tender love for the old man. Then
+again he was skeptical, almost bitter in his judgment of him. Evidently
+a profound difference existed in their natures, though they struggled
+for compromise.</p>
+
+<p>He had few friends&mdash;chiefly old fellow-students&mdash;and he never paid
+purely social visits. As a result he could spend all his leisure hours
+with Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in the restaurants, generally the little Italian bodega, until
+the waiter turned out the lights over their heads, to their invariable
+surprise&mdash;they had just come.</p>
+
+<p>Or they bought their suppers for a few pennies at a delicatessen shop,
+and escaped the city dust in the Tiergarten, where they hunted up an
+empty bench somewhat removed from the public ways, yet not in too
+secluded a spot. It was not until love couples began to wander by in the
+dark like shades of the netherworld that they felt wholly concealed; and
+if others seated themselves on the same bench, they little objected,
+knowing well that love couples would never remain beside them long. They
+had much more urgent need of the night and solitude than Lilly and
+Konrad.</p>
+
+<p>While the light green leaves, still stemless, gradually melted into a
+dark, shadowy, jagged mass, and the sunset flames above merged into the
+sombre purple of night, and the nightingale sang for them sometimes only
+a few feet away, they would sit there shoulder to shoulder waiting for
+the stars to dot the twilight, each evening later and fewer in number.</p>
+
+<p>Their winged thoughts travelled far into the realms of music, painting,
+northern sagas and Italian landscapes. Questions of infinity arose,
+hesitating and halting, and were promptly disposed of with the sure,
+clear discernment of a happy, youthful latitudinarianism. Lilly was now
+accurately informed of the meaning of the universe and immortality and
+the soul and God.</p>
+
+<p>Often she felt as if she had been left alone to freeze in a vast, icy
+waste where there was no Father, no life after death, and certainly no
+St. Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>"What you believe, I suppose, is atheism, isn't it?" she asked
+timorously.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's what you want to call it," he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>So, from now on Lilly was an atheist, one of those who in the eyes of
+the Church were roasting in nethermost hell. But if excommunication did
+not drive <i>him</i> to despair, she, too, could suffer it. She would even
+endure a Fatherless condition.</p>
+
+<p>Her one regret was for St. Joseph.</p>
+
+<p>Although he had not entered her thoughts for many a day, none the less
+it was a pity never again to be able to run to him in sorrow or joy,
+never, at least, without having to feel ashamed of herself, and that
+exactly at a time when she needed him so urgently, when her experiences
+fairly overwhelmed her with their force and number.</p>
+
+<p>She felt a desire to be lulled and calmed, and the lofty art that Konrad
+spread before her eyes by no means soothed her; rather, it goaded her
+on, though, to be sure, to fresh delights.</p>
+
+<p>They went to what few concerts the late season still offered, and heard
+the Eroica and Brahms' Second Symphony and an unutterably exquisite
+production by Grieg.</p>
+
+<p>They would take their stand in the cheaper part of the house, where they
+both delighted to be, and listen with the backs of their hands touching
+as if by chance. A slight pressure conveyed the feelings awakened by
+some subtle charm or expressive bit.</p>
+
+<p>What wonderful hours those were!</p>
+
+<p>And what wonderful hours when she sat at Konrad's side in the pit (where
+none of the "crew" could see her). As she learned to know Shakespeare's
+characters belonging to every age and time and Wagner's luminous
+fairy-tale realism, she understood fully how infinitely poor her
+previous life had been.</p>
+
+<p>He took her to see the moderns also.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the plays Rosmersholm affected her most.</p>
+
+<p>She, Lilly, with her secret guilt, was Rebecca. He in his unsuspicious
+purity was Rosmer. His high-pitched spirituality had an increasingly
+strong influence on her, as Rosmer's on Rebecca. But if the filth of her
+existence should gradually roll from her upon him, would she not be his
+evil demon, his ruination?</p>
+
+<p>The thought was intolerable. She wept so bitterly during the performance
+as to attract general attention, and Konrad offered to take her out. She
+indignantly repudiated the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>On going home she staggered along the river side, still sobbing. He had
+chosen that way because it was darker and quieter, and he half carried
+her on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>On the Spreebrücke she stopped and stared down into the dark, living
+depths. He let her have her way, but when she began to climb up on the
+railing&mdash;to see what it was like&mdash;he forced her down from the precarious
+position.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the difference?" she thought. "When he finds it all out, I'll
+have to go down there after all&mdash;and alone."</p>
+
+<p>From that evening on the effort to keep him free of the slightest
+suspicion as long, as long as possible troubled her more than ever,
+occupied her thoughts every moment of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Her great ignorance caused her no shame&mdash;nevertheless she fought against
+it with all her might&mdash;but she lived in constant terror that the
+slovenly, cynical tone to which she had gradually habituated herself
+through long intercourse with the "crew," might crop out in her
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>The bit of carefully cherished rigour and good-breeding which she
+fetched out from among the remnants of her former spiritual state did
+her sluggish being good. And so she acquired some of that "grandeur"
+which she had demanded of herself at the beginning of her relations with
+Konrad. This time, however, it was not empty affectation, but an inner
+quality, a natural outcome of the finest and tenderest feelings, which
+she might still call her own.</p>
+
+<p>Much that had long dominated her thoughts became unintelligible to her,
+especially the tendency caught from her friends, to transfer everything
+entering the circle of her thoughts to the realm of the erotic.</p>
+
+<p>In astonishment she beheld world upon world opening up beyond the narrow
+whirlpool in which she had been carried around and around. Such a wealth
+of great and beautiful things to taste and enjoy was suddenly spread
+before her, that she did not find the time to feel ashamed of what had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>But when she recalled how she had once dared to kiss him, shame ran hot
+through her body. That moment of wild abandon, she feared, might ever
+remain a stain upon his image of her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was not the slightest indication that he did not think of her
+with the same respect as she of him. This mutual esteem always hung
+between them like a gauze veil, obscuring the beloved man's face as
+behind a mist of mingled happiness and anxiety, though at the same time
+removing the sting of self-reproach from Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>They were never more to talk of love. Love gave way to a sweet,
+fraternal, though somewhat constrained relationship. The word
+"friendship" was frequently on their lips. They praised its hallowing
+force with a most serious mien, as if they had not the faintest notion
+of what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult, however, for Lilly to endure Konrad's bodily
+proximity. The one caress he permitted himself was to lay his arm
+lightly on her shoulder when they sat side by side. Though Lilly then
+longed to press closer up to him she finally moved farther away, because
+the constriction of her breast mounted by degrees to veritable torture.</p>
+
+<p>She never ventured in the very slightest to think that some day he might
+become her lover. When unable to fall asleep, she pictured herself
+drowsing off with her head under his shoulder&mdash;that was bliss enough.</p>
+
+<p>Her fancies scarcely ever strayed into forbidden territory. The chastity
+of her maiden days, which the colonel's senile greed had rudely
+violated, once again laid its merciful veil about her tremulous soul. In
+fact it was all as in the long-forgotten days of her girlhood&mdash;the
+golden wealth of thoughts and sensations, the witching glamour about
+each little object, the delightful importance of the tiniest incidents,
+the hopeful disquiet hoping for she knew not what.</p>
+
+<p>If only there had been a single human being in whom to confide her joy
+and fears, her happiness would have been complete.</p>
+
+<p>The desire waxed so strong within her as to be nearly uncontrollable.
+She had found herself more than once on the brink of telling her secrets
+to Richard&mdash;a quick way of ending them.</p>
+
+<p>One day she decided to visit her former landlady and acquaint her with
+her great experience.</p>
+
+<p>The old friendship between Mrs. Laue and Lilly had never wholly died
+down. Though they saw little of each other, Lilly had kept herself alive
+in the old lady's memory by sending messages and little gifts.</p>
+
+<p>The tenant <i>pro tem.</i> of the "best room" opened the door for Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue, as always, was sitting at her long white work table tapping
+busily with her wet finger-tips now on a pressed flower, now on a gluey
+bit of paper. She did not suffer herself to be interrupted, not even
+when Lilly on taking a seat beside her pushed toward her the sweets she
+never failed to bring.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks, child," said Mrs. Laue. "Each bite more is one flower less.
+People like myself have to wait for a holiday before we can eat. We have
+nobody to provide for us and keep us like a princess. I'd like to be in
+your shoes just one day before I lie in my grave&mdash;go out walking early
+in the morning&mdash;with nothing to do but feed a couple of gold fish."</p>
+
+<p>"As if that were happiness," sighed Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to complain of your lot?" cried Mrs. Laue indignantly. "If
+I were in your place, I'd thank the Lord every hour of the day for
+having sent me such a friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that would satisfy all your hopes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what else do you want?" Mrs. Laue&mdash;ceaselessly tapping&mdash;rebuked
+her. "He can't marry you any more&mdash;that's out of the question. Besides
+marriage would be nasty after all you've gone through. But listen to me.
+Be careful! If you always behave yourself nicely, he will make you an
+allowance, and you'll have something to live on all your life."</p>
+
+<p>"So, I'm just to aim for an old age pension?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what else?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can conceive of many other objects in life."</p>
+
+<p>"What? Work? Try it. See what it's like after you've been nothing but
+emotions for years. Or take another lover? Then you'd be sure of a fine
+time. Let me tell you one thing, child; never for a single instant think
+of another man. If you were to do that, you'd deserve to paste flowers
+like me&mdash;sixteen hours a day&mdash;until you die."</p>
+
+<p>While incessantly pasting one flower after the other, she poured out a
+volume of well-intentioned admonitions.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly rose shivering.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be hoped for from that quarter. She looked about
+her with a sudden feeling of estrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never come back here again," she thought.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The next morning the uneasy desire to open up her heart and obtain
+counsel again awoke, even stronger and more tormenting than before. Her
+friend Jula occurred to Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, the clever, hot-blooded little woman had held herself aloof
+from the crew's jaunts. Her friends had not the least idea of what she
+was doing, and her red-head, when appealed to, became reticent. But
+Lilly felt sure Mrs. Jula would not withhold the bit of comprehending
+sympathy she needed.</p>
+
+<p>It took Lilly a long time to find her.</p>
+
+<p>The coquettish yellow silk nest her red-head had fixed up for her near
+the "Linden" was empty.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula had migrated to a suburb, the porter informed Lilly. She had
+thought the neighbourhood too dangerous; which made no sense, because
+the street was never empty, day or night.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly smiled. The porter gave her the address, and she drove out to Mrs.
+Jula.</p>
+
+<p>In a little bosky corner where the poets and philosophers dwell, Lilly
+found a very sober little house, brimful of books and manuscripts and
+busts of eminent men.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula seemed to have undergone a great change. She no longer wore
+her curly hair in a disorderly pompadour about her forehead, but
+smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears. This gave her a
+disquieting touch of virtuousness, although that way of wearing the hair
+was just then the height of fashion in the very world in which virtue
+for esthetic reasons has little value.</p>
+
+<p>Though she came to meet Lilly, as always, with outstretched arms, her
+cordiality seemed not wholly genuine; and though she beamed with delight
+at seeing her friend again, her expression was somewhat distraught, as
+if she were holding much in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"Without asking Lilly about herself or paying any attention to her
+appearance, Mrs. Jula burst into an account of her own affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be tremendously surprised, but I can't help it," she said. "I
+never kept my little scruples of conscience a secret from you&mdash;they were
+really superfluous&mdash;my sins had never been so dreadful&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm, hm," thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"So you shall be the first of our former circle&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Former?" thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;to learn of my return to a decent existence. Well, not to beat about
+the bush, I'm going to get married."</p>
+
+<p>"Your red-head?" asked Lilly, happy and sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not exactly." Mrs. Jula regarded her finger-tips with a
+condescending smile. "My red-head has given me his blessings, but that
+ends his rôle."</p>
+
+<p>"Then who is he?" asked Lilly, struggling to overcome her bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>Now Mrs. Jula hung back a bit after all.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it's a long story," she said hesitatingly. "To understand it
+thoroughly you'd have to know more of the circumstances of the past two
+years of my life. Did you ever happen to hear of an authoress by the
+name of Clarissa vom Winkle?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly recalled having seen the name in puritanic family sheets, which
+she had looked through in cafés and confectionery shops.</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen: that Clarissa vom Winkle, who won a very acceptable
+reputation for championing the cause of simple, bourgeois morality as
+against the pernicious new-fashioned ideas of love&mdash;that Clarissa vom
+Winkle am I."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was too strongly under the spell of her own fate properly to
+appreciate the humour of Mrs. Jula's avowal. Just a glimmering suspicion
+dawned upon her mind of the monstrous farce we human beings figure in at
+life's bidding.</p>
+
+<p>"Now on that account you're not to think me a convert or a bigot or
+something of the sort," Mrs. Jula continued with a certain little air of
+dignity, which became her as well as her quondam cordial cynicism.
+"There never was a special Day of Damascus in my life. I've always had,
+as it were, two souls in my breast; the one which&mdash;" she hesitated a
+moment&mdash;"well, which you know; and another which craves self-restraint
+and white damask and so on. That's the reason your unsuspicious loyalty
+always impressed me so, my dear. You probably recollect that I urged you
+to cling to your loyalty through thick and thin, because&mdash;you can't deny
+it&mdash;it's the crown of a woman's life. That's just what I said. Do you
+remember?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was unable to recall such sentiments, but she did recall many
+others scarcely harmonising with them. She began to feel quite uneasy.
+Her friend's new conception of life seemed ill adapted for a source of
+peace to her in the joyful stress that had led her to seek sympathy with
+Mrs. Jula.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to continue," said the little lady. "I was always able to sell my
+essays and novels quickly, especially if I took them to the editors
+myself, and I found I was on the road to accumulating a tidy capital. My
+red-head became little more than an ornament. That's the beautiful thing
+about virtue. For the person who understands it, it is much more
+lucrative than sin." She ran her little red tongue over her lips in her
+knowing way, but maintained a perfectly demure face. "And then it was in
+disposing of my works that I met my husband to be. You know&mdash;I'm at last
+divorced from that old horror up there. This one is the editor of a new
+magazine for women. It stands for quiet domesticity and already has very
+good advertisements. He's a man of great intellectual gifts, and very
+firm moral principles, which, I suppose you've noticed, have not
+remained without influence on me."</p>
+
+<p>She made a little double chin and folded her hands in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"And how did you manage to separate from&mdash;your old friend?" asked Lilly,
+from whose mind all these curious facts had almost driven her own
+concerns.</p>
+
+<p>"Separate? What are you thinking of?" rejoined Mrs. Jula, beaming again
+with sunny foolishness. "I wouldn't be as heartless as all that. Even if
+I did say his rôle had ended, you're not to take it so literally. What's
+the poor dyspeptic fellow to do if I refuse to set a place for him at my
+table now and then? Why do you look so surprised, Lilly? Something of
+the sort can always be managed. In the first place, I swore to my
+betrothed that my red-head had never been more to me than a brotherly
+friend. All of us women swear such things and don't even blush."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly nodded thoughtfully. That evening, had Konrad demanded it, she
+would have sworn an oath without a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"In the second place&mdash;I'm telling you this in confidence&mdash;he contributed
+a considerable sum toward establishing the magazine. So the two
+gentlemen are partners. I arranged matters that way intentionally,
+because it seemed to me the best guarantee of a continuance of
+all-around friendly relations. Don't make such large eyes, dearie. Life
+is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its nest. And if you
+think I'm afraid of disclosures, I shrug my shoulders. Tragedy is a
+matter of taste. <i>I</i> don't like it. So it doesn't exist for me. I always
+say to myself: you must wear a smile on your brow, but beneath the smile
+your brow must be of iron."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly experienced a sickish sensation.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's the price to pay for uprooting tragedy from one's life," she
+thought, "then I'd rather have unhappiness&mdash;I can swallow it&mdash;than all
+this happiness."</p>
+
+<p>She rose.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how high above her this woman towered in force of intellect
+and will, no matter how firmly she stood on the ground of virtuous life,
+she was no longer suited to be Lilly's friend.</p>
+
+<p>"I sincerely hope you will never be mistaken in your confidence," said
+Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula threw up her hand contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah," she said, "<i>those</i> men! A man who knows the world is a woman
+eater, and your 'pure' man is a simpleton. I can always get along with
+both classes."</p>
+
+<p>"There may be a third class," said Lilly, irritated, as if Konrad had
+been insulted.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly," rejoined Mrs. Jula, shrugging her shoulders. "I've never
+come across it." Then putting both hands on Lilly's waist: "Tell me,
+child, perfectly frankly: if you look at me this way and compare me with
+what I used to be, does it seem to you that I'm posing?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be quite candid," Lilly admitted, "it seemed to me so at first."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jula sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very hard to adapt your figure to a dress that wasn't made for
+you. Everybody has a certain moral ambition, the so-called non-moral
+person most of all. But there's one thing I'd love to know: what is
+really the more valuable in me, my former sinning or my present virtue."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy yet sly expression.</p>
+
+<p>This time Lilly did not respond. Beyond that complacent little
+scatterbrain her own happiness rose lofty and threatening as a
+storm-cloud.</p>
+
+<p>When out on the street the feeling of restless isolation took stronger
+hold of her than ever. Yet she was glad she had not spoken. She knew
+that if she had held up her beloved's picture to Mrs. Jula's sly
+understanding, it would have come back to her desecrated.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was actually not a soul to whom she could pour out her heart.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later in glancing over the paper, as was her daily habit, her
+eyes were caught by a sentence which suddenly sent a ray of light into
+her soul: "St. Joseph's Chapel&mdash;Müllerstrasse&mdash;evening services," and so
+on.</p>
+
+<p>Then her old, long-forgotten friend was still alive. He even possessed
+his own church here in cold, heretical Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>In all the years she had been in Berlin she had not entered a church.
+After having seated herself among the Protestants at Miss von
+Schwertfeger's advice, she had felt she was a renegade, and had not
+ventured to seek solace in religion.</p>
+
+<p>And now she was an atheist.</p>
+
+<p>But the name St. Joseph in the paper warmed her heart. She felt as one
+who has wandered long in foreign lands and suddenly among a throng of
+strangers beholds a dear face from home.</p>
+
+<p>Now she knew to whom to turn without fear of having to depart
+misunderstood and unheard. Even if the great scholars had done away with
+him a thousand times, he still existed for her stupid, surcharged heart,
+ready to receive the confession of her happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Müllerstrasse was somewhere on the extreme north side, "somewhere around
+Franz-Josephs-Land," her green grocer, to whom she had applied, informed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She went through a maze of streets, from one electric tram to
+another&mdash;past the Reichtags buildings, the Lessing theatre, and the
+Stettin station&mdash;along the endless chaussé. Beyond the Weddingplatz,
+which the Berlinese consider the end of the world, was where
+Müllerstrasse began.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had the slightest notion of where a St. Joseph's chapel was, not
+even dwellers in the immediate vicinity. Finally somebody remembered
+seeing "a Catholic something or other," and Lilly at last found the
+object of her search.</p>
+
+<p>A low frame structure which might have been taken for a barn, and some
+blossoming trees set between towering tenements.</p>
+
+<p>The side door was open. Pine wreaths said "Welcome." Lilly saw a simple
+white hall permeated with the sepulchral smell of incense, laurel, and
+freshly cut pine, and in the background a niche decorated to resemble
+the starry heavens. Beyond the wooden balustrade separating the
+pictureless shrine of the high altar from the hall, rose two glorious
+palms. The low rumble of an organ came from the choir. The organist had
+probably stayed after the funeral to dream a bit.</p>
+
+<p>In suspense Lilly's glance glided along the walls in search of her
+saint's abiding place. Was he smiling and holding up his finger here,
+too, with the same benevolent, threatening manner as the good old uncle
+in St. Anne's?</p>
+
+<p>There was no place for side altars. The space was completely filled with
+benches. But that large picture there in the garish frame, with a
+console-table beneath covered with dusty bouquets&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She saw it&mdash;and started in terror.</p>
+
+<p>Her saint, her dear, beloved saint, was simply ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>He had a sharp-nosed, wax-doll face with a golden yellow beard and eyes
+cast down in pious modesty, and he was smiling mawkishly. The infant
+Jesus clad in pink triumphed on his left arm, while his right arm gently
+clasped a spray of lilies.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's disgust turned into pity.</p>
+
+<p>How remote, how inconceivably remote, was that world in which one
+implored St. Josephs for signs of favour.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that her good, true monitor in St. Anne's had been just as
+comical?</p>
+
+<p>Perish the thought. He should not be, he must not be so absurd. There
+must be <i>one</i> place to which one's memory could travel homeward in hours
+of pleasant mourning.</p>
+
+<p>The organ was playing the prelude of a beautiful mass by Scarlatti,
+which Lilly well knew from of old. Gradually she began to feel at ease.</p>
+
+<p>She kneeled on the last bench, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine
+that instead of that blond caricature, her old friend was looking down
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas occurred to her, which she remembered
+from her Sunday school lessons: "God has granted other saints the power
+to help us in <i>certain</i> circumstances; to St. Joseph he has granted the
+power to help us whatever our need."</p>
+
+<p>Once he had been so powerful in her life.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke to him across the hundreds of miles and hundreds of years that
+separated her from the altar in St. Anne's&mdash;the last time on earth, she
+was fully aware. There was no longer place in her soul for such
+childishness. And just because it was her farewell, she told him without
+reserve of her great experience&mdash;how infinitely happy she now was&mdash;how
+everything that had lain dead within her blossomed forth with fresh
+life&mdash;and how the entire universe was one great symphony of joy.</p>
+
+<p>And she told him of the monstrous deception she was practising, and her
+fear of discovery&mdash;and the sweet, impatient tremour for which there
+could be no image or name.</p>
+
+<p>Then she told him she no longer believed in him in the least&mdash;she had
+become an "atheist."</p>
+
+<p>Then, reconciled, she laid the carnations she had brought along for the
+poor out-of-the-way saint among the dusty bouquets and left with
+lightened heart, smiling at the spring which smiled upon her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Beside this Lilly, whom the stormy wind of her new life bore aloft to
+the heavens far above all earthly hindrances, a second Lilly lived, who
+spent every other evening with her old friends, and was the marvel of
+her circle, because of her triumphant mood, her merry wit, the youthful
+liveliness of an awakening intellect.</p>
+
+<p>When Richard came for his afternoon tea, he met with daily surprises. In
+place of the dragging gloom, which had long coloured her days, he found
+sprightliness and activity, a creature of novelties never still an
+instant. Though now and then abashed at his inability to keep pace with
+her, he gladly accustomed himself to this side of her being, and praised
+the magical qualities of the hæmatogen which the physician had
+prescribed that spring instead of the usual iron.</p>
+
+<p>The same scene was enacted each evening that Richard wanted to take
+Lilly out. At first she pleaded a cold or said she was not in the mood
+for meeting people. But once she had consented and was in the swing, she
+played with her admirers as with puppies, and awed the ladies by telling
+them things to their faces. Sometimes, to be sure, she sat as formerly,
+absorbed in dreamy silence, though now, if anyone attempted to liven her
+up, she no longer blushed and suffered herself to be teased without an
+attempt at self-defence. She paid back every intruder with such prompt,
+haughty satire that the men soon found it wiser to leave her to herself.</p>
+
+<p>In all this time she drank herself into a state of exaltation only once,
+and that on the day on which&mdash;at last!&mdash;she decided to tell Richard of
+the existence of her new friend.</p>
+
+<p>She had wrestled with herself for two months. Sometime or other it had
+to be, she knew; for what if they were seen together! But since she
+could not decide in what form to clothe the avowal, she had deferred it
+from day to day.</p>
+
+<p>Chance helped her out of the dilemma. One day Richard, in order to
+obtain her judgment, brought along some sketches of vases which had been
+submitted to him for purchase. On leaving he forgot to take them along.
+Konrad happened to see them, and in a few rapid strokes drew the outline
+which corresponded to the original draught, and which the artist in
+developing the plan had failed to insert.</p>
+
+<p>The next day when Richard saw the work he looked at Lilly in
+astonishment. The corrections were splendid&mdash;who had made them?</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, still suffering from the intimidation induced by her bungled work
+on the transparencies, did not dare to tell him she herself had. So
+taking heart she said:</p>
+
+<p>"My teacher, who's giving me lessons in the history of art."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when, I'd like to know?" asked Richard, his eyes growing round
+and severe.</p>
+
+<p>In her great embarrassment she took to scolding as best&mdash;or as
+worst&mdash;she knew how.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I can stand such a dull, inane, idle existence? Do you
+think it's a crime for an unoccupied young woman to strive for a bit of
+culture? Don't you think I'd be a better friend if I could keep pace
+with you and other clever people than if I go to my ruin jabbering a lot
+of nonsense and dressing myself up for show and behaving like any silly
+thing?"</p>
+
+<p>The turn about "clever people" flattered him.</p>
+
+<p>"All very well and good," he replied more mildly, "but why didn't you
+tell me before?"</p>
+
+<p>She concocted a long story.</p>
+
+<p>About three months before she had read an advertisement in the
+<i>Lokalanzeiger</i> in which a young scholar offered his services to
+gentlemen and ladies possessed of a thirst for knowledge. She wrote to
+the scholar, he came, and the lessons began. Pupil and teacher had grown
+to be friends. Though their friendship, of course, was of a purely ideal
+nature, she dreaded awakening Richard's jealousy; so she had decided not
+to tell him until time should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the
+absolute purity of her endeavours.</p>
+
+<p>He wrinkled his forehead, and a cunning grin, inexplicable to Lilly,
+played about his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"So your friend's a young scholar?" he asked. His eyes twinkled, and he
+looked at her sidewise, his head inclined entirely to the left.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He's going to be <i>Privatdozent</i>, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's not quite certain, but he probably will."</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose he's highly intellectual and scintillating and superior?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her eyes heavenward.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never in my life met a man who&mdash;" She stopped in fright. It was
+scarcely the better part of wisdom to give reins to her enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm, hm," he said, as one who finds long harboured suspicions confirmed.
+His face was quite red, and he gnawed the ends of his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it!" cried Lilly. "You're jealous after all."</p>
+
+<p>She felt as if a bitter injustice were being done her.</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing more, and left lowering.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later a package from Messrs. Liebert &amp; Dehnicke was left at the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly opened it and found it contained a man's suit, which she
+recognised as one Richard had frequently worn the previous summer.</p>
+
+<p>A letter accompanied the package.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Dearest Lilly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>As I promised you that time, I shall always be ready to come to
+the assistance of your affinities with old clothes. To further
+their progress I shall also be glad to provide them with old
+boots.</p>
+
+<p>You see how jealous I am.</p>
+
+<p>Your Richard."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In the exuberance of her delight Lilly drank to excess that evening.
+Never&mdash;not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni&mdash;had she allowed her
+imitative faculties such full play. She was in a state of mad
+self-abandon.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion she danced on the tops of the tables set close together, a
+wild Salome dance, which had just then come into fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Between her clenched teeth she zimmed strange oriental melodies.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that she's mumbling?" the spectators asked.</p>
+
+<p>Later they put the question to her.</p>
+
+<p>But she had lost her senses. She was unconscious.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVA" id="CHAPTER_XVA"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the
+railroad station's sooty glass roof.</p>
+
+<p>Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great
+arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath
+them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.</p>
+
+<p>The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent
+Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an
+indispensable master of ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p>There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing
+societies, and an entire department store.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked
+along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from
+each other, so that nobody could be sure whether or not they belonged
+together. They made for one of the front coaches.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her
+grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness&mdash;a mute homage which she well
+knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since
+the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white&mdash;a linen
+crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a
+white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath
+it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white
+zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had
+arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the
+country until they wearied.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in opposite corners of the third-class compartment smiling
+slyly and saying not a word.</p>
+
+<p>They were riding into the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>"Follow me," he had said. "I'll give you a surprise. We will go on a
+voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal.
+Otherwise it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."</p>
+
+<p>The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour must have passed and the compartment had long been empty,
+when he nodded to her to get out.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we?"</p>
+
+<p>"What difference does it make where we are?"</p>
+
+<p>Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the
+station.</p>
+
+<p>They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine
+lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were
+locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display
+windows to proclaim the Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A
+turkey cock strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them&mdash;no
+more organ tones.</p>
+
+<p>The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening
+grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it.
+Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background
+black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.</p>
+
+<p>They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of
+silvery white dust chased ahead of them.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad knew and saw everything&mdash;how the falcon flapping its wings stood
+still in the air&mdash;how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump
+leapt away in droll haste&mdash;every minute there was something new.</p>
+
+<p>Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have
+been so different."</p>
+
+<p>In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them
+almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man's
+height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had
+first met.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not
+budge.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us,
+I shouldn't be a bit surprised."</p>
+
+<p>Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they
+lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on
+them through the sparse fir boughs.</p>
+
+<p>They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel's presence, when a sudden
+chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little
+fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them
+too frightened to stir.</p>
+
+<p>"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at
+them, they'll take good care not to speak to us."</p>
+
+<p>"We're enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in
+my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me
+so. Have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."</p>
+
+<p>"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every
+happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far
+from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old,
+Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble
+courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle
+and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing
+roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I
+would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious
+gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An
+iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there
+was nobody about to see the street Arab escapade&mdash;only a few peasant
+labourers in the olive plantations live there&mdash;I actually climbed over
+that gate one day."</p>
+
+<p>"Glorious!" cried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful,
+strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the
+sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg
+firs. And&mdash;think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so
+came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my
+ears, I fell asleep&mdash;a thing one had better not indulge in, because one
+may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I'm sure I should have,
+if some tourists hadn't come along and thrown sticks and stones at me.
+When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn't dream of climbing
+over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the
+sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a
+hearing&mdash;Who are you? Don't you know trespassing in the garden is
+forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn't send me to jail, because all
+the people tapped their heads and said: '<i>è matto</i>, he's crazy.'"</p>
+
+<p>"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the
+forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside
+the railing."</p>
+
+<p>"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly
+choked down her curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn't hurt if one practices standing
+outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you
+crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>What did he mean by that?</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met in shy understanding.</p>
+
+<p>That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name,
+quivered through her like a fit of fever.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking
+back at him.</p>
+
+<p>The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where
+birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.</p>
+
+<p>The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of
+a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly
+they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.</p>
+
+<p>"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the
+direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the
+right.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me
+in life."</p>
+
+<p>Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a
+position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But
+before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he
+could continue with his life-work.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be a very high position, isn't it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had
+the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of
+China, she would not have been a bit surprised.</p>
+
+<p>But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather tell you about it when it's all settled."</p>
+
+<p>She had to be content.</p>
+
+<p>Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the
+horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine
+silver thread.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that it?" asked Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up
+to now I've been very good and haven't asked a single question. But do
+at last tell what you have up your sleeve."</p>
+
+<p>"Afterwards, when we're there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn't
+like to make you jealous before the time's ripe."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if a woman <i>was</i> in the case!</p>
+
+<p>Another woman!</p>
+
+<p>She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt
+quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.</p>
+
+<p>The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its
+greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.</p>
+
+<p>Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an
+inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame
+houses half-way between a palace and a barn.</p>
+
+<p>But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and
+the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly's
+and Konrad's mood.</p>
+
+<p>To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right,
+beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy
+green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in
+the bushes and reeds.</p>
+
+<p>And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a
+park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns
+and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to
+stand that day.</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful and how mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst,
+the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of
+Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.</p>
+
+<p>But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things&mdash;too
+bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card
+with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of
+the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil,
+she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer
+treasures at their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a
+woman is she?"</p>
+
+<p>He burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"So you know there's a woman in the case?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else would make me jealous?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen
+anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if that was all.</p>
+
+<p>"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand
+in apology.</p>
+
+<p>While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that
+led up to their present pilgrimage.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art
+dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty
+sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes
+upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in
+an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two
+did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter,
+and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The
+German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In
+defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale,
+and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's
+park&mdash;he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined
+for no unworthy setting.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly,
+blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We
+have the right to enter it."</p>
+
+<p>But Konrad looked thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not so simple as all that. Remember&mdash;as what shall I introduce
+you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I
+pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned,
+outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a
+burden to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the
+world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of
+the entire place."</p>
+
+<p>Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.</p>
+
+<p>At this point&mdash;at last! the carp was served.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet
+high with never a break in it to peep through.</p>
+
+<p>But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end
+giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view
+some distance into the interior.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms
+forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes
+draped the open grassy places. In the background on a hillock about
+which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with
+Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.</p>
+
+<p>"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.</p>
+
+<p>So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage
+escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there&mdash;a Ceres, a
+satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a
+glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were
+seeking was nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road.
+An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led
+across.</p>
+
+<p>But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet
+gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.</p>
+
+<p>"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the way the gods went to Walhalla," she said.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some
+distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along
+the other side of the fence.</p>
+
+<p>The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a
+fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the
+roll of bowling balls.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly and her friend passed without giving heed to these things. Their
+wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment
+increased their longing.</p>
+
+<p>Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to
+which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and
+clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spiræas grew in
+rank profusion between.</p>
+
+<p>The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about
+himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the
+interior.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its
+vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work,
+was half sunk in blooming acacias.</p>
+
+<p>Here at last they could get a good view of the park.</p>
+
+<p>In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here
+they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably
+stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only
+architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace,
+where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the
+iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know
+what it's like."</p>
+
+<p>His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what
+"it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in
+the very same position.</p>
+
+<p>But where, where?</p>
+
+<p>Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the
+door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded
+staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.</p>
+
+<p>That, too, was a forbidden garden!</p>
+
+<p>Forbidden gardens everywhere!</p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to
+remain here."</p>
+
+<p>Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping
+as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their
+hearts' desire.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their
+aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them
+would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of
+gold over the universe.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Evening came.</p>
+
+<p>Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like
+torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its
+cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold.
+It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all
+earthly promises.</p>
+
+<p>The two could no longer bear it on land.</p>
+
+<p>Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing
+about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very
+little.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.</p>
+
+<p>Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow
+cut through a waving carpet of pollen.</p>
+
+<p>Among this year's tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey
+weather-beaten remnants of last year's growth. Dark bulrushes edged the
+shores, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.</p>
+
+<p>Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the massed park trees rising
+toward the heavens like purple walls.</p>
+
+<p>When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no use, it's out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage
+the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread
+her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>She lay crouched at Konrad's feet with her back to the seat in the
+stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a
+different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into
+the land of the virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>She would give music lessons&mdash;her knowledge sufficed for beginners&mdash;and
+with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently
+fitted her&mdash;or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she
+must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so
+long as he needed her friendship.</p>
+
+<p>Or&mdash;not to wound the sensibilities of others&mdash;she would leave Germany,
+earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her,
+return a new, purified being.</p>
+
+<p>Or&mdash;oh dear, "or!"</p>
+
+<p>To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs.
+Discovery and death&mdash;the one involved the other&mdash;would come soon enough.</p>
+
+<p>The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed
+down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have
+thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black
+stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of
+wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The foliage of the park slowly melted into a mass of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim
+with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the
+unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove
+suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park
+side. It seemed to continue inward without end.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then
+he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have flowed in somewhere&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is."</p>
+
+<p>"You think we shall after all&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>The thought was too bold for utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from
+one side to the other."</p>
+
+<p>In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell
+upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and
+pledges.</p>
+
+<p>The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows
+set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond
+stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"O Lord!" cried Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we'll be turned out
+after all."</p>
+
+<p>He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for
+the splash of a leaping fish.</p>
+
+<p>He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a
+mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there
+on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.</p>
+
+<p>They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the
+sound of clinking glasses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in
+the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.</p>
+
+<p>Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an unobstructed
+view of the castle&mdash;a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous
+simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not
+yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who
+had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight
+sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the
+intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.</p>
+
+<p>"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren't a mill-stone about his
+neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.</p>
+
+<p>The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the
+vision of a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Passing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay,
+where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more
+into silence and darkness.</p>
+
+<p>To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with
+old statues and ivy-draped urns&mdash;to the left a world buried in darkness.
+A line of lindens, hundreds of years old, bordered the stream and
+stifled every ray of light in its dark halls.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this was where the marble bust was hidden. Lilly peered into
+every recess, though furtively, so as to reserve the pleasure of
+discovery for him.</p>
+
+<p>They now approached the daintily arched bridge they had seen from afar
+in the daytime.</p>
+
+<p>It did not lead to Walhalla, but from a spiræa bush to a hemp bush, and
+beneath it slept a pair of swans, who awoke at the stroke of the oars
+and with outspread wings swam behind the boat begging for bread.</p>
+
+<p>"Swans! The one thing lacking!" Lilly rejoiced softly, and sought in
+vain for a crumb. She turned to look after the swans and her neck
+touched his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"May I stay this way?" she asked a little anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're comfortable," he answered. There was a yielding tone in his
+voice which ran warm through her body.</p>
+
+<p>She unpinned her hat, and laid it on the back seat. Now she was free to
+lean her head lightly against him. With sweet alarm she felt his hand
+quietly stroke her head.</p>
+
+<p>But he seemed taciturn and self-absorbed, as if a burden were weighing
+upon him which he was not strong enough to shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>And again she felt, as ofttimes, that a veil hung between them, a veil
+seldom lifted aside, which obscured the true features of his being, no
+matter how closely her love drew her to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if only he were gay!"</p>
+
+<p>The park came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>The red evening glow, no longer shadowed by a mass of foliage, shone
+upon them insistently. The magic spell threatened to be broken. The
+world took on its ordinary aspect.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, turn," she asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>He rowed back again into the blissful night.</p>
+
+<p>Now he had to strive against the current, and could not avoid the sound
+of splashing.</p>
+
+<p>"If only they don't catch us," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are too happy," rejoined Lilly, "they wouldn't do anything to
+a happy person."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems almost like an enchanted castle, but who can tell&mdash;it may be a
+delusion."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the most grievous wound may be hidden under powers, and many a man
+hides himself behind beauty because he has buried his powers."</p>
+
+<p>The doubt displeased Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"But they should be happy," she exclaimed softly. "Those who can spare so
+much as they have given us to-day have enough left for themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Illogical conclusion, darling," he replied. "You can enrich a beggar
+and still remain as poor as a church-mouse."</p>
+
+<p>"Are <i>we</i> beggars?" she asked, raising herself up to him tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, by God, we are <i>not</i> beggars," he replied drawing a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a time. Then it seemed to Lilly something warm and
+moist fell upon her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>For God's sake! He was crying! Crying with happiness. How had she
+deserved it&mdash;she, Lilly Czepanek&mdash;she&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>To hide her own tears she crouched down again. It was in overflowing
+measure&mdash;unendurable. She wanted to sob, cry aloud, kiss his hands. Yet
+she was forced to clench her fists and stuff her gloves between her
+teeth, to keep him from seeing what was going on within her. It was a
+God-send that as they slowly approached the castle again, the sound of a
+woman's singing reached them. Full ringing tones, which in the ascending
+notes struck her heart like a lash.</p>
+
+<p>What was she singing? Wasn't it from Tristan? Lilly had never heard the
+opera, but it could only be from Tristan.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Isolde's <i>Liebestod</i>," Konrad whispered in her ear.</p>
+
+<p>He turned the boat toward the shore in the deepest darkness. They must
+not lose a note.</p>
+
+<p>Up there on the terrace the laughing and talking had ceased. The
+nightingale alone, in the linden thicket, would not be silenced, and
+mingled its sweet ecstasy with the exultation in death of the woman who
+like no other creation of God or man teaches us that the desire not to
+be is the most exalted affirmation of to be.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, her whole body quivering, put her hand over her shoulder to grasp
+his. She had to hold on to him. Otherwise she felt she would sink into
+the void. She did not grow easier until she felt his warm fingers
+between hers.</p>
+
+<p>The song ended. The mighty arpeggios of the accompaniment died away.
+There was no applause. Each of the merry guests had realised his
+indebtedness to the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad pressed her hand and withdrew his, and took up the oars again.</p>
+
+<p>The forbidden garden began to disappear.</p>
+
+<p>The reddish dusk of night lay upon the meadows. Not sound far or near.
+Nevertheless the world seemed filled with the music of harps and ringing
+songs.</p>
+
+<p>"We haven't <i>seen</i> your marble woman," Lilly whispered, stroking his
+knees, "but I keep thinking that was her voice."</p>
+
+<p>"I, too," he burst out passionately. "And she wasn't singing for the
+good folk up there, but just for us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if only I could sing it like her," sighed Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Try."</p>
+
+<p>She remembered bits here and there, but was unable to gather them into a
+whole. Besides something else forced its way between, which now gushed
+up mightier than all else.</p>
+
+<p>With the Song of Songs of the greatest and richest her own poor Song of
+Songs mingled, undesired, uncalled.</p>
+
+<p>And she sang into the deep silence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thou feedest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For why should I appear like a vailed mourner&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It is&mdash;my&mdash;Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the
+moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly
+and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking he laid the oars down.</p>
+
+<p>"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."</p>
+
+<p>He cast a searching glance in all directions.</p>
+
+<p>The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake,
+upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in
+scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>Then he did as she had asked.</p>
+
+<p>They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with
+their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.</p>
+
+<p>And she told her tale.</p>
+
+<p>Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always
+emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years,
+though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious
+significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into
+chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul
+began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a
+sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil.
+It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had
+kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who
+would some day come to her.</p>
+
+<p>And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment
+had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into
+the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment
+to its creator and herself.</p>
+
+<p>In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what
+was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more
+than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than
+she had known of herself up to that hour.</p>
+
+<p>He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and
+hopeful still within her. The other&mdash;the lazy, the impure, that which
+had ruined her heart and life&mdash;no longer existed. It no longer concerned
+her.</p>
+
+<p>While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not
+dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken
+look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his
+feelings as it were in his clenched fists.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no
+name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run
+to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.</p>
+
+<p>Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she
+laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the
+bench.</p>
+
+<p>His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.</p>
+
+<p>So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all
+those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since
+the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.</p>
+
+<p>She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the
+verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For, lo, the winter is past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rain is over and gone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flowers appear on the earth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The time of the singing of birds is come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fig putteth forth her green figs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook
+his head, and nestled closer.</p>
+
+<p>Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in
+among the reeds, and night had completely descended.</p>
+
+<p>But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.</p>
+
+<p>There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart"
+and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And
+then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, my friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us go forth into the field,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But when it came to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us see if the vine have blossomed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether the young grape have opened,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she could scarcely go on.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whether the pomegranates have budded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There will I give my caresses unto thee.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.</p>
+
+<p>A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.</p>
+
+<p>"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."</p>
+
+<p>She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.</p>
+
+<p>A swift end to all bravery.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood
+there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Very timidly they rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the
+obsequious, smiling hostess.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIA" id="CHAPTER_XVIA"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It would be wide of the truth to aver that no happy star favoured
+Lilly's ripened love.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place Adele proved to be a circumspect ally, thoroughly
+accustomed to be uncommunicative and passionately devoted to the cause
+of Lilly's lover. In the second place Richard, who had gone to his
+mother in Harzburg that epoch-making Sunday, had remained away the
+greater part of a week instead of one day. And in the third place, upon
+visiting her on his return, he was so preoccupied with himself and his
+own affairs as not to notice in the least Lilly's guilty embarrassed
+reception of him.</p>
+
+<p>He affected a highly lofty mien and talked through his nose, as always
+when he pulled his soul together, as it were, and became vividly
+conscious of having once been a cavalry officer. He even wore his
+monocle again hanging down over his navy-blue silk waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>All of which taken in conjunction with the crafty expression with which
+he blinked his eyes and steadily looked past Lilly and dropped his head
+on his left shoulder, gave sufficient ground for the welcome assumption
+that he had delayed the visit to his mother and, instead,&mdash;like Lilly
+herself&mdash;had taken a side excursion <i>à deux</i> into the blossoming world
+of spring.</p>
+
+<p>The conjecture, however, proved to be false.</p>
+
+<p>Richard had been in Harzburg the whole time and intended to return the
+very next day for a longer stay of at least four weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" he exclaimed in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, overwhelmed by the veritable tempest of happiness that burst upon
+her, had reeled and sunk on the arm of a chair.</p>
+
+<p>She instantly collected her wits again and denied that she had been
+overcome. Nevertheless, he remained full of solicitude, kissed her on
+her neck again and again, and would not permit her to go to the trouble
+of pouring out the tea for him. A guilty conscience peeped from every
+pore of his being.</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately," he said, trying to return to his former lofty manner,
+"unfortunately there's no longer a chance of our taking a trip together.
+Anyhow&mdash;we've gotten too used to each other. Both of us will have to
+practise getting along without each other. It's highly desirable we
+should. We certainly should."</p>
+
+<p>His words sounded like familiar music coming from a great, great
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Confess," she said smiling. "What is it this time?"</p>
+
+<p>Out he came with it, stuttering and choking over his words.</p>
+
+<p>An American heiress&mdash;of German extraction&mdash;millions and millions&mdash;not
+millions of marks, but millions of dollars&mdash;very stylish and chic&mdash;a
+wonderful piece of luck&mdash;mama in a quiver to have it go through&mdash;her
+parents favourably disposed&mdash;she, too, evidently not disinclined. This
+time or never.</p>
+
+<p>"Congratulate you," said Lilly, giving him a friendly handshake.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with large, astonished, and somewhat reproachful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;what else?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you remain so cool? Doesn't the thought that your old friend is
+about to leave you move you in the least? I took you to be more loving,
+more sympathetic. I certainly did."</p>
+
+<p>"Please remember," said Lilly, "you reproach me the same way each time
+you make up your mind to marry because I don't want to be a hindrance to
+you. You always act as if <i>I</i> had dismissed you, and not you me."</p>
+
+<p>He burst into expostulations.</p>
+
+<p>"Dismiss&mdash;what language you use! You haven't the least idea of what's
+going on within me&mdash;how I struggle and wrestle with myself. Why, I
+haven't slept for nights thinking what will become of you. But you
+behave as if it didn't concern you in the least! Altogether
+you're&mdash;frivolous! You have no feelings&mdash;now you know it."</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke, pictures of her approaching freedom danced before her
+eyes&mdash;nights of unshackled, glowing love, days full of sweet, vague
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>What followed lay as far off as the end of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Smiling good-humouredly, she listened, and never even responded.</p>
+
+<p>"Though your future doesn't seem to worry <i>you</i>," he continued to
+upbraid her, "<i>I</i> must give it all the more consideration. I must
+provide for you, and mama quite agrees with me."</p>
+
+<p>The word "mama" tore her from her world of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Since the terrific encounter in Richard's office, it had scarcely ever
+passed their lips. They had employed a thousand circumlocutions and
+substitutes which they understood and which each appreciated in the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Now "mama" suddenly rang in her ears, the symbol of her disgraced
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried, "if she's in it, it's bound to be humiliating to me.
+I'll tell both of you one thing: take good care not to make a
+proposition to me about money, or support, or anything of the sort. I'd
+consider it an outrageous insult, for which you could <i>never</i> make
+amends."</p>
+
+<p>He ran up and down the room wringing his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking about again! Quite apart from the fact that I'd be
+eternally disgraced in the eyes of the world. Woman, don't you know
+you're ruined if I turn you adrift empty-handed? Don't you know where
+you'd go to? To the bars and brothels! Don't you know it?"</p>
+
+<p>In blissful absentmindedness Lilly looked past him and his gallant zeal.</p>
+
+<p>"There are other ways," she whispered half to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"What ways?" he cried, "Marriage, forsooth? What decent man would marry
+you after you've been my mistress for four years?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are other ways than that, too," she repeated still smiling.</p>
+
+<p>She saw a life full of fight and vigour, a tossing hither and thither
+through storm and stress, a jubilant triumph which led her into the
+community of those who were as proud and true as <i>he</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But all that would come later, much, much later. Why think of it now?</p>
+
+<p>Richard put his own construction upon her words. He fixed his eyes upon
+her suspiciously, and stopping in front of her, asked with a shudder:</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;are you going to do something foolish?"</p>
+
+<p>She burst out laughing. Probably he already saw her beautiful corpse
+taken from the water and stretched on the bier.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't do anything foolish. Certainly not for your sake. And even
+if I intended to, I'd have the good taste not to threaten you with it."</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath of relief, though by no means quite calmed.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate," he said, "I greatly dislike your poking here alone.
+You'll simply get the blues and feel irritated at me. I say, while I'm
+gone, wouldn't you like to take a little trip to a bath&mdash;Ahlbeck, or
+Schreiberbau, or some other place of the sort, where respectable people
+go?"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing on the surface but a faint twitch of her eyelids betrayed the
+laugh of scorn that shook her internally.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," she said, "I don't like to make up to people, and so I'd be
+all the more alone."</p>
+
+<p>He wrinkled his forehead lost in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;then&mdash;" He hesitated and chewed his words as people are wont to
+do when they dread their own bravery, "&mdash;then&mdash;it would be best if
+you&mdash;come and stay near&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Near&mdash;near what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't act that way. You know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, but I cannot believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"What's so awful about it? I could look after you now and then&mdash;or talk
+over matters&mdash;different things."</p>
+
+<p>"And show her to me so as to get my opinion and my blessing&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well and supposing it's so? The way we are to each other&mdash;the way we
+haven't done a thing for years without asking each other's advice,
+what's so monstrous about it?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a patronising pity arise within her. She stroked his hands
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Dear friend, I don't think I'd furnish the right sort of assistance to
+you in your courtship."</p>
+
+<p>Her superior tone increased his ill-humour.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious! 'Assistance,' 'courtship!' You talk as if you were
+on the stage. Altogether you're so puffed up&mdash;so puffed up! Of course
+you simply want to revenge yourself on me by making me angry. I must say
+it's not at all noble of you at such a time."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and stretched herself. How low it all was! How ridiculous!
+And how indifferent to her! After all did it concern her?</p>
+
+<p>To be alone&mdash;alone with him! There was nothing else in the world beside
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't want to?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, "No."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>He prepared to leave in anger, but lacked the strength.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. You seem to think I'm not in
+earnest this time."</p>
+
+<p>"By no means, Richard. I wish you all possible happiness. But really,
+with the best of intentions, I can be of no service to you in this
+affair."</p>
+
+<p>"Of service to me! Of service to me! Who's speaking of service to me?
+Mama was quite right. If I break off this time, there won't be anything
+else for me any more. So make it quite clear to yourself. In a few weeks
+all's over between us."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better," she came near saying. But she saw the tears in the
+corners of his eyes, and refrained from hurting him.</p>
+
+<p>Four years lived together lay behind them. He was too tightly tied to
+her apron strings. She felt she ought not to let him go without her
+advice and encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>So she spoke to him as to a child. She said his mother was right,
+praised his project, and counted up all the reasons why it absolutely
+had to be. In order to calm him as to her own attitude, she recalled how
+it had always been her ambition to let him feel his freedom and never
+stand in his way. She also assured him she would cherish friendly
+sentiments for him until the end of her days.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, on parting, they both wept.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIIA" id="CHAPTER_XVIIA"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Now the way was clear. Now she might consecrate the new life and rejoice
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>July came and scorched the deserted streets.</p>
+
+<p>The denizens of the aristocratic west side who remained in town with no
+employer to drive them dreamed away idle days behind drawn shades,
+hovering between the couch and the bathtub.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world
+endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when
+dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond
+the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the
+red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the
+street lamps.</p>
+
+<p>Then she strolled at Konrad's side in the blue twilight of the streets,
+always alert to escape the observation of acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>Staid middle-class families promenaded to the beer gardens, love-couples
+met at the appointed street corners; and among them surged the mass of
+those whom life has left solitary with shy passionate yearnings, and who
+hope to steal from smiling chance that for which they no longer dare
+implore sterner gods. Over the exhausted city hung a sultry haze of
+secret desire, in which formal restraint and genuine feeling flickered
+and went out, leaving no sign of ever having been.</p>
+
+<p>How remote those days when Lilly herself wandered about in the same
+fashion, hoping for the intervention of fate, yet lacking the courage
+to compel it. And shuddering at dangers she had escaped, she clung
+closer to Konrad's protecting arm.</p>
+
+<p>She and Konrad always managed to find a secluded nook where gypsy bands
+played their fiddles, or Tyrolese strummed their dulcimers, or the host
+himself, some musician come down in the world acted as orchestra leader.
+In the ivy-hung corners between laurel trees planted in green painted
+tubs they had little fear of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Their intercourse had undergone a change.</p>
+
+<p>There were still instructive discourses upon all sorts of subjects and
+Lilly intently hung upon Konrad's lips; but her holy ardour for
+knowledge had cooled down.</p>
+
+<p>That God does not exist, that Fra Lippo Lippi had been a
+good-for-nothing, that baroque art has it good points, and that a line
+gone crazy ought to be sent to the madhouse, even if it poses as
+ultra-modern, these and many more novel, interesting things Lilly had
+long known. But they no longer evoked discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in
+them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk
+to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning
+to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and
+jealous, and insist on leaving.</p>
+
+<p>She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her
+arm, on her heart.</p>
+
+<p>The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened
+suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the
+shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. The glow accorded
+with their mood.</p>
+
+<p>It was the greatest disaster for either of them to fall asleep, and thus
+shamefully curtail the time they spent together. So they agreed that the
+one who remained conscious longer should rouse the other.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was invariably the one to remain awake. Konrad was exhausted by
+his work, and in the morning he could not doze off again after a cup of
+tea in bed, or in the afternoon rest on the couch. And when he lay there
+next to her with twitching limbs, like a thoroughbred hunting dog, she
+felt much too sorry for him to keep her promise.</p>
+
+<p>She would sit up in bed, and never weary of gazing at him in the dim
+light of the red-shaded candle.</p>
+
+<p>There was always something in his face to study&mdash;the strong-willed fold
+between his brows, deeper than before and still somewhat intimidating;
+the muscles of his temples incessantly working; and the curling upper
+lip, the right end of which every now and then twitched as if he were
+smiling at her in his sleep. He had grown thin. His skin had lost its
+firmness, and on his cheeks lay shadows which darkened at his jaws.
+There was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He looked like a young
+Christ, created just to be adored.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes while staring at him, she thought:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to kill him now, run a hat pin through his heart or something
+of the sort, he would belong to me, to me alone, forever."</p>
+
+<p>Then she would hollow her hand and place it on the left side of his
+breast and fancy she held his heart and with his heart his love, which
+she need never more give up.</p>
+
+<p>Once while she bent over him, he awoke with a start.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Did I do anything to you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your expression is so strange, almost as if you were angry with me."</p>
+
+<p>She resolved not to stare at him any more. But she could not resist; she
+loved him too dearly.</p>
+
+<p>It was horrible when dread seized her that she might lose him. Many a
+night it attacked her with such awful force that she felt like screaming
+and raving and tearing her hair. But it would be wrong to rouse him. So
+she gently laid her head under his shoulder, one arm under his back, the
+other across his breast, and pressing close against him told herself she
+had grown into one with him.</p>
+
+<p>Then gradually she grew calmer and could find comfort in tears, or in
+picturing to herself how happy she would make him, unspeakably happy.
+She would envelop him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick as to
+prevent fate's rude blows from reaching him. She would be his muse,
+would wear an invisible aureole about her head, enkindle the desire
+within him for a thousand great deeds; she would give him the devoted
+care of a Sister of Mercy, would learn to cook and make her own dresses.
+No&mdash;rather attend scientific courses at the university, and study music.
+Oh, she would do many more things, that he should never weary of her.</p>
+
+<p>For all this, of course, she would first have to be free, with relations
+between her and Richard entirely broken off.</p>
+
+<p>She often thought of Richard also, but without a shadow of blame. She
+had long forgiven him for having led her to the brink of the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>"Each person acts according to the law of his own being," Konrad had
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, Richard had once been her saviour.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the outer world was concerned, the new life was to begin as
+soon as Richard announced his engagement. He had written that his suit
+was progressing, and by right her free life with Konrad ought already to
+have commenced, but Lilly did not feel equal to a crisis. She shuddered
+at all the lies she would continually have to dish up to Konrad, once a
+change took place in her household.</p>
+
+<p>She avoided facing the poverty that was bound to come. It was only at
+night when she had worked herself into a joyous ecstasy on the sleeping
+man's breast, and her future with him stretched before her in gold and
+purple, that privation seemed to her the very sum and substance of
+happiness and plenitude.</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock in the morning, when the street lamps went out one by
+one, and the grey of dawn came creeping over the ceiling, Lilly would
+have to awaken him.</p>
+
+<p>He must not meet any of the tenants of the house. She owed it to his and
+her own reputation.</p>
+
+<p>While dressing he groped about, drunk with sleep, among Lilly's ivory
+toilet articles, still resplendent with the seven-pointed coronet, and
+managed to get himself into shape for a stimulating cup of black coffee
+at the nearest Vienna café.</p>
+
+<p>For he felt that from Lilly's bed he must go to his desk with all
+possible speed.</p>
+
+<p>He could not be dissuaded from this madness.</p>
+
+<p>The passionate hours of the night demanded atonement; an idea to which
+he clung tenaciously, no matter that he spent the early morning hours in
+vain, wearisome brooding over his papers.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly, on the other hand, fell into a deep sleep, from which Adele
+roused her at about ten o'clock, when she brought in the breakfast tray,
+smiling contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly let Konrad have every other night for himself.</p>
+
+<p>She did not want to suck his lifeblood away. Even so he gave her
+sufficient cause for worry. His colour was bad, his eyes vacillated, his
+mood varied abruptly from violent gaiety to vacant-eyed self-absorption.</p>
+
+<p>All that would surely be different when once&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>To think of nothing, to plan nothing, to wish for nothing. Just to love
+him and know he was happy.</p>
+
+<p>She spent her days dreaming both pleasant and tremulous dreams. Her
+intense fervour for mental occupation had departed. Besides, all sorts
+of new and important things intervened to distract her; especially the
+need to please him, to hand him daily the draft that intoxicated him and
+kept him her own.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto she had taken the beauty of her body as a matter of course, and
+had paid as little regard to it as to a hidden and useless object. Now
+she felt she must constantly take thought of the ideal he treasured in
+his mind, must try to resemble it&mdash;she well knew that in reality she
+approached it a little only when drunken bliss exalted her above herself
+and the stale and unprofitable flats of her life.</p>
+
+<p>Thus arose an eager cult of her flesh, something she had always
+despised.</p>
+
+<p>She took care of her body like a woman in a harem, perfumed her baths,
+manicured her toe nails, lengthened her eyebrows, and powdered her arms
+and shoulders. Every day she discovered new blemishes, which discouraged
+her and for which she sought new remedies.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time she was ever haunted by the fear that through sheer
+attention to her toilet she would acquire the look of a beautiful
+prostitute. So she locked away her jewellery and dressed very simply.
+None but the connoisseur could discern how much artistic care had gone
+into the creation of this faultless simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>When she was alone what troubled her most was jealousy. Not that she
+suspected him of relations with another woman. He stood too high in her
+estimation for that. But she was jealous of everything he did. The
+thought of his desk fairly tortured her. Each hour he spent away from
+her seemed traitorous to her love, and she thought of his friends with a
+hostility of which she had never deemed herself capable.</p>
+
+<p>On the evenings she was left alone, she held watch over his room from
+the opposite side of the street, where she stood pressed in a doorway
+exactly as formerly in Alte Jakobstrasse.</p>
+
+<p>When his lamp was lighted she was satisfied, but when she saw him come
+or go at a late hour, she did not sleep the whole night.</p>
+
+<p>He lived a short distance from her in a third-storey room. It was long
+before he permitted her to call on him.</p>
+
+<p>In the room next to his, he explained, lay a sick woman who had to be
+kept from the slightest excitement. The sound of a strange voice might
+aggravate her condition.</p>
+
+<p>While telling this to Lilly he strangely avoided her eyes and she felt
+that a hundred chances to one he was keeping something from her. But
+when upon her insistence he admitted her to his room one afternoon she
+found nothing to confirm her suspicions. She merely had to speak very
+low; which she had known beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>His room was just an ordinary student's room. It had two windows, a high
+ceiling, cheap furniture, and no couch and no carpet. But valuable
+engravings adorned the walls, and the customary pier-glass was hidden
+behind an old copy of the Madonna di Foligno, who looked down in serene
+loftiness upon the poverty of northern philistinism. There were long low
+bookcases full of books; and more books, for which there was no room on
+the shelves were piled up high in the corners, protected against dust by
+pieces of crushed oil-cloth, such as pedlars use for wrapping about
+their wares.</p>
+
+<p>As was to be expected, the desk was the only article that displayed a
+certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures, it was Konrad's own property.
+With its noble carving and broad top, it stood in the centre of the
+room, solemn as an altar.</p>
+
+<p>Not one woman's picture to be seen on it. Lilly had not given him hers,
+and evidently others were not deemed worthy of the place of honour.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one photograph, that of an old gentleman, framed with
+glass, which stood back of the blotting pad and the ink well. A
+weather-beaten, epicurean face, with fine snow-white hair, and shrewd
+eyes beneath half-sunken lids, eyes peculiar to old connoisseurs of
+women.</p>
+
+<p>It was the picture of the uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and
+supported him.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a dull oppression, as if those eyes were looking her through
+and through, and needed but a glance to unveil the great secret that she
+concealed from her lover with a thousand subterfuges.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be careful never to meet him," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad took from a drawer his precious treasure, the preliminary work on
+his great history of human emotions, and showed Lilly the reams of paper
+closely covered with writing.</p>
+
+<p>This work was his real love, and she, Lilly Czepanek, was nothing but a
+dark, bloodless shadow, which greedily glided through his nights.</p>
+
+<p>"Put it back again," she said discontentedly, and turned away to take
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>But even his great work was not enough for Konrad. In addition, he
+drudged over a number of short articles. As his name become known in
+professional circles, he received an increasing number of orders, all of
+which he accepted and tried to fill.</p>
+
+<p>And one day Lilly found out what the important position was of which he
+had spoken three weeks before on that never-to-be-forgotten excursion.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't make up my mind until to-day," said Konrad. "But now I have
+actually decided to take the position. It is assistant editorship on a
+magazine. The editor-in-chief called on me himself, and wouldn't let go
+of me until I said yes. A fascinating fellow. In spite of his great
+intellectual ability, a man of childlike innocence. And so frank and
+friendly. You must get to know him immediately, if you don't already."</p>
+
+<p>"What is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Salmoni."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIIIA" id="CHAPTER_XVIIIA"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>No. It came about differently.</p>
+
+<p>Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an
+act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the
+great passion that had blessed her life.</p>
+
+<p>After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on
+the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them
+must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the
+house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had
+then.</p>
+
+<p>In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a
+lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked
+with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with
+a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their
+happiest hours were wont to begin.</p>
+
+<p>The following day light was thrown upon the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad came at twilight, paler than usual, his eyes shining unnaturally.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, darling," he said, "I spent the night thinking everything over,
+and now I know what I ought to do. We can't go on this way."</p>
+
+<p>She thought he meant that he must leave her. An icy numbness spread over
+her body. She looked at him quietly awaiting the death blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Since we belong to each other," he continued, "we have never spoken of
+your betrothed. That doesn't mean I didn't think of him. And you have
+been very reticent about his friend, Mr. Dehnicke. All I know is Mr.
+Dehnicke is now off on a trip and has left you, so to speak, without a
+guardian."</p>
+
+<p>She forced herself to smile. Why did he prolong the agony?</p>
+
+<p>"I must confess, in the midst of all my happiness, I have always felt
+that this exploiting of the situation was nothing more nor less than
+contemptible so far as I myself am concerned. But I am not the one to be
+considered. The question is: what will become of you? The thing I
+dreaded from the very first has come to pass: your friends have begun to
+notice us together. You can't ask one person not to tell another. That's
+degrading. So your friend will discover everything. He will call you to
+account, you will be too proud to deny the truth, and the end of the
+story will be that you will be left alone, utterly unprotected. Because
+the way things are now, <i>I</i> haven't even the right to protect you. The
+thought of it is sickening."</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up, ran his outspread fingers through his imaginary shock of
+hair, and tramped up and down.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt the blood begin to course through her veins again, and with
+it life and thought.</p>
+
+<p>The dear, noble, unsuspecting boy!</p>
+
+<p>She came near bursting into laughter. But she refrained herself and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You can be perfectly calm, Konni. Mr. Dehnicke won't find out, and
+even if he does, he won't believe it. Or if he believes it, he will take
+good care&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not continue. The great innocent eyes troubled her.</p>
+
+<p>"So you still think he will&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Konrad also faltered. He, too, was unable to utter the unspeakable.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly regarded the buttons on her skirt, and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"When is Mr. Dehnicke coming home again?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not certain. He's gone a-wooing," Lilly replied with a little
+feeling of triumph. She thought she was saying something which raised
+her above suspicion in the future&mdash;there was still a possibility of
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak to him."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly started. She could not believe her ears.</p>
+
+<p>It <i>could</i> not be. Either she must have lost her reason or Konrad.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid," he reassured her. "I know quite well what I owe your
+reputation. But I should like to find out at last what <i>he</i> thinks of
+your situation. There's a man in the United States whom you are pledged
+to, yet he doesn't let himself be heard from. He doesn't come for you.
+He doesn't write. Why doesn't he write? If he's ignorant of your
+whereabouts, he's perfectly aware that Mr. Dehnicke's business is known
+in Berlin. You can't be sure he's still alive. At first I tried to
+explain his silence in various ways. But now I say to myself, he's
+either dead or as good as dead. And are you to consider yourself bound?
+Should you make your entire social existence dependent upon a sort of
+guard of honour, which has nothing more to guard? I'd like to hold all
+this under Mr. Dehnicke's nose. He'll have to answer me. Don't you think
+he will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Konrad has less worldly knowledge than is permissible," thought Lilly,
+pityingly, and replied: "But I don't understand, Konni, what right you
+have to call a stranger to account."</p>
+
+<p>"That's my affair," he rejoined, tossing his head defiantly. "I must
+know if he will set you free. I won't brook his playing the slave-master
+over you."</p>
+
+<p>"And I won't brook your getting yourself into a false position," cried
+Lilly in reawakened alarm. She already heard blows and pistol shots. "I
+myself will speak to Mr. Dehnicke. I will free myself, I promise you.
+But you, if <i>you</i> go to him, what will he think of me? At best you will
+merely succeed in compromising me."</p>
+
+<p>He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed victoriously.</p>
+
+<p>"If a man loves you and wants you to be his wife, why should that
+compromise you?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was hot and murky when these words were spoken. The canary ran about
+on the sand of his cage chirping wearily, his wings drooping; the gold
+fish hung motionless behind their glass walls, and the naked monkey
+whined in its sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The slimy canal water reflected bluish black clouds; a storm hovered in
+the atmosphere, and this was the thunder-clap.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly's first sensation was one of surprise&mdash;not joyous surprise, indeed
+not. Then came an unspeakably mournful cry, which no mortal ear heard,
+though all the more painful in its muteness.</p>
+
+<p>"Too late&mdash;a lost chance&mdash;nothing to hope for&mdash;no more happiness on
+earth&mdash;too late!"</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back on the sofa and studied the ceiling attentively and
+thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>He was awaiting his answer.</p>
+
+<p>If she lowered her eyes, she would have to encounter his eyes, which ate
+into her soul. No salvation from those eyes, no salvation from that
+which must perforce come.</p>
+
+<p>And he was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Then she heard her own voice, very clear and very calm, as if Mrs. Jula
+were speaking in her place, that little artist of life with the iron
+brow.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, Konni, you and I had agreed never to marry."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you remind me of it?" he cried violently. "Did I know how
+things would turn out when I said it? Did I know who you are and what
+bliss and torture a goddess of a woman like you can bestow on a poor
+devil? Yes, torture. I must tell you everything to-day. I'm at my wit's
+end. There's a break in my life. Everything is torn asunder&mdash;my work, my
+thoughts, my belief in you. You want to be my good genius. Instead
+you're almost my evil genius. Don't be frightened. It's not your fault.
+I am not reproaching you&mdash;only myself, for being so weak. I want to
+work. I must work. I have assumed a number of <i>new</i> duties. I thought if
+duty came from the outside, I could force myself into the right path.
+The very reverse has happened. I'm growing stupid just from wrestling
+with myself. I must bring peace into our lives, else we're both lost.
+And I can't have peace unless you belong to me <i>altogether</i>, unless your
+bed is next to my bed, and the desk is in the next room, and you're
+always with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can move to you in the autumn," Lilly interjected timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, nothing of that sort any more. No self-reproaches, no
+secretiveness. Should I have it on my conscience that each additional
+day on which you sacrifice yourself, you're drawing nearer to ruin? And
+it's bound to ruin you. It will cling to you like dirt. And why should
+we create dirt out of what is most sacred to us? Or am I not good enough
+to be your life-companion? Do you think you will be too poor as my
+wife?"</p>
+
+<p>She repudiated the idea with a lively exclamation of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, and I don't need to know, how much you have. I am rich
+enough now. I get three hundred marks a month from my uncle; Dr. Salmoni
+pays me four hundred&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Oh, how she started at the name!</p>
+
+<p>"And I can easily earn another three hundred by writing articles&mdash;in all
+a thousand a month, a general's salary. You may be satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet," she cried, almost beside herself. "It isn't that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>He planted himself in front of her challengingly. Between his brows were
+those folds of wrath which cut her like a knife. She ducked her head.
+Never since the colonel's time had she experienced such fear of a human
+being.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what it is. Apparently you don't love me enough. You still
+cling to the man who forgot you long ago. You probably say to yourself:
+'The stupid boy is good enough for a passing love; he's good enough for
+whiling the time away. But if he shows any intentions of interfering
+with my life, I must get rid of him with all possible speed.' Am I not
+right? Tell me. Be brave! What harm can I do you? Just tell me that I'm
+nothing but a <i>pis aller</i>, the sort of man you wouldn't want as a
+husband. When I've made a name for myself, then you will be willing to
+consider marriage, too. Am I not right?&mdash;Well, then."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his hat to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Have pity on me, Konni," she implored. She had glided down from her
+seat to lay her head on his knees, and now she crouched between the sofa
+and Konrad's chair, and groped for support.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need <i>your</i> pity, you don't need <i>mine</i>," he cried. "Until
+to-day you've been the noblest thing on earth to me. But I won't suffer
+myself just to be expunged from your life. Tell me why you don't want to
+marry me&mdash;<i>one</i> plausible reason, and I'll never return to the subject
+again. I promise you."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me until to-morrow," she groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? For what? To-day is as good as to-morrow. I've come to the end of
+my tether. I can't spend another night of torture."</p>
+
+<p>"I will write to you."</p>
+
+<p>That surprised him.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you write?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whether I may or not. And the reasons and everything."</p>
+
+<p>"During the night I'll manage to find some way out," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"When will I get the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow morning by the first delivery."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I will wait until then. Good-by, Lilly."</p>
+
+<p>When he helped her back on the sofa, and held his hand out in farewell,
+and she saw his eyes fastened on her with their candid, magnanimous
+expression, which a lie had never clouded&mdash;unsuspicious still&mdash;she was
+suddenly convinced that evasion was no longer possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Truth! Nothing but the truth. Even if it lead to perdition, Konrad must
+now be told the truth." The thought flooded her soul like a warm,
+soothing stream.</p>
+
+<p>But she could not tell him the truth face to face. Nobody would have the
+strength of will for that.</p>
+
+<p>The reaction did not set in until she was left alone. The impulse for
+self-preservation asserted itself. If Mrs. Jula could do it, she could,
+too. Mrs. Jula had much worse things to conceal.</p>
+
+<p>Richard, of course, would say nothing; which was the main consideration.
+Now that he wished to go his own way, it was to his interest for her to
+vanish decorously from his life. The rest of the "crew" might tattle to
+their heart's content. Konrad was immune against their poison. The only
+dangerous person was Dr. Salmoni. But if she went to him soon and begged
+him, he, too, would maintain silence. He had sufficiently strong motives
+for hushing his disgraceful attempt upon her. Besides, Mrs. Jula had
+said: "You must wear a smile on your brow but beneath the smile your
+brow must be of iron."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Lilly revolved the situation in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>But in the midst of her brooding and planning she was seized with
+disgust of herself and her intentions, which tore the whole tissue of
+deceit into ragged bits.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it was sheer folly to think she would always be able to play the
+false part. If upon the mere mention of Dr. Salmoni's name she dreaded
+appearing on the street with Konrad, how could she go through a lifetime
+at his side haunted by that ever-present fear? What repulses and
+humiliations she would have to undergo whenever Konrad led her into the
+society in which as his wife she would belong&mdash;she, whom the papers had
+taken up and treated as a rising star in the fashionable demi-monde?
+And, worst of all, if Konrad should begin to suspect! How he would eat
+his heart away in shame and abhorrence, he, with his pride and delicate
+susceptibilities and that unworldly purity which alone accounted for the
+fact that no surmise as to her real life had ever touched his soul.</p>
+
+<p>What an awaking from a short, torturing dream!</p>
+
+<p>No, she could not do what Mrs. Jula had done.</p>
+
+<p>And she threw far from her the shameful thought with which the stress of
+the hour had stained her wrestling soul.</p>
+
+<p>An exultant craving for self-annihilation came over her, the desire to
+tear her breast open and throw her throbbing heart at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>So she sat down and wrote:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dear, sweet Konni:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something
+not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is
+a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly
+broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of
+marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me
+his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for
+years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from
+decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them
+form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your
+innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire,
+clamoured for respect.</p>
+
+<p>Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my
+kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>It was nearly eleven o'clock. Adele had gone to bed. It occurred to
+Lilly that she would have to go down to mail the letter herself.</p>
+
+<p>But the storm that had been impending the whole afternoon, was just then
+giving full vent to its fury. The rain was coming down in sheets, and
+gusts of wind blew through the open window across Lilly's desk.</p>
+
+<p>Once a shower of drops spattered the paper, at which she was staring
+with hot, dry eyes. It looked as if tears had fallen upon it while she
+was writing.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then she felt ashamed. The time for farce was ended. But when she
+started to rewrite the letter, she stopped short with a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>What did those monstrous self-accusations signify? Were they the truth?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps so in the mouth of a backbiting woman who needs facts about her
+friend in order to twist them into a crime, or in the mouth of one of
+those social hangmen who hold a halter in readiness for everybody's
+past.</p>
+
+<p>For herself, who knew how everything had come about, how from inner need
+and outer compulsion, from trustfulness and defencelessness, link after
+link of the chain had been forged which now clanked about her body, a
+burden of sin&mdash;for her there was another, a milder truth, which must win
+pardon and atonement for her in the eyes of every person who understood.</p>
+
+<p>She tore up the sheet, and began anew. She draughted a sketch, and
+polished it until it thoroughly satisfied her.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dearly beloved friend:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom
+you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until
+to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you,
+was at stake.</p>
+
+<p>And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am
+sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which
+sanctified my life.</p>
+
+<p>The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in
+man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right
+to go through life at your side.</p>
+
+<p>I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core
+of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a
+piece of my virtue.</p>
+
+<p>I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised
+to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a
+tool of base desires.</p>
+
+<p>Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left
+without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I
+sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a
+fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his
+adventure he went to perdition.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his
+care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for
+his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent
+upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while
+thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I
+was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at
+him, I was so slavishly in his power&mdash;until now.</p>
+
+<p>So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle
+out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but
+nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I
+seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still
+lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of
+discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew
+light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained
+sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.</p>
+
+<p>And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had
+taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had
+passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my
+desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity.
+These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them
+to activity.</p>
+
+<p>Even if I may not be your wife&mdash;your wife should be free of
+stain&mdash;I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a
+distance&mdash;wherever you tell me to go.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have
+been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a
+new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You
+have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear,
+tender, industrious hands.</p>
+
+<p>Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again.
+If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you
+as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me
+adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that
+belongs to you unto death.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>She read and reread the letter, and read herself into a state of
+enthusiasm over it.</p>
+
+<p>Now the truth wore quite a different aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the question arose in her mind:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Is</i> it the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>Had she not luxuriated in choice words? Had she not smuggled in
+high-flown emotions foreign to her nature? Phrases like "dull night in
+which my spirit was enveloped" and "tried desperately to struggle"
+belonged in sentimental novels. They were inapplicable to her life. She
+had suffered not so much from despair as from boredom and during that
+"dull night" she had enjoyed herself greatly on many an occasion.
+Richard, the good fellow to judge by her insinuations, was a rank
+despot, and she herself a sorry, subjugated victim, whereas in reality
+she had been able to do or leave undone whatever her caprice dictated.</p>
+
+<p>It <i>was</i> the truth, and yet it was not. Just as much and as little as in
+the first, dreadful letter. Each was correct enough in its way, and many
+another might have been written equally correct; but the truth, the
+genuine truth, which penetrated and illumined the whole, would appear in
+none. That truth she herself did not know, nor did anybody else. That
+truth vanished with the moment in which an event occurred, and no
+earthly power could summon it back. All that her words reflected were
+distorted images varying as her mood varied and as her pen travelled
+over the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to lie," she cried to herself. "I want to be true
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>So she tore up the second letter also.</p>
+
+<p>What now? Should she write a third letter?</p>
+
+<p>It was long past midnight. Her eyes burned. Her temples throbbed with
+over-excitement, and Konrad was to hear from her by the first mail in
+the morning. She had promised him.</p>
+
+<p>At this point the full force of what had happened suddenly struck her.
+She realised that in the last four hours she had been face to face with
+the danger of losing him at once and forever.</p>
+
+<p>She was beset with an anguish of fear that threatened to rob her of her
+senses. She cried his name aloud, ran about the apartment, reeled,
+knocked against the walls, and wanted to throw herself from the window.</p>
+
+<p>She must go to him forthwith. That was the one idea she was capable of
+grasping. She would have the porter open the front door; she would wake
+Konrad up, force her way into his room and stay with him that night and
+forever. No matter what the consequences! It was all the same. Only to
+rid herself of that dread which burned her body like a living flame.</p>
+
+<p>The storm had subsided, but the rain was falling in a steady downpour.
+Lilly scarcely took the time to put on a cloak.</p>
+
+<p>In low shoes, without hat or umbrella, she dashed out on the street and
+splashed through the puddles.</p>
+
+<p>Light was shining from the two third-storey windows.</p>
+
+<p>She clapped her hands and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Konni, Konni, Konni!"</p>
+
+<p>Again and again.</p>
+
+<p>But the windows were closed. He did not hear her.</p>
+
+<p>She saw his figure glide back and forth like a shadow, from one end of
+the room to the other, to and fro, to and fro, ceaselessly.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time the rain beat down on her, soaking through her clothes,
+while the cold wet of the pavement crawled up her legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Konni, Konni," she called louder.</p>
+
+<p>Passersby offered her their umbrellas; others taunted her, and cried,
+"Konni, Konni."</p>
+
+<p>At last the shadow halted. One of the windows went up.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly&mdash;you?" his voice called, hoarse with fright.</p>
+
+<p>"At last&mdash;do come, my sweet Konni," a tipsy man, who had persistently
+held his umbrella over her, answered in her place.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake!"</p>
+
+<p>The light disappeared from the windows, and a few moments later Konrad
+appeared in the doorway with the front-door key and his lamp in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>The tipsy gentleman said good-by, bowing and scraping.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly&mdash;what has happened? What are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>She pressed against the doorpost trembling. She was unable to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I am with him," was her one thought. "So all's well."</p>
+
+<p>He passed his hand over her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're dripping wet. You're in house slippers. For God's sake,
+Lilly!"</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to say something, but was ashamed to let him see how her
+teeth were chattering.</p>
+
+<p>"And I can't even take you to my room. You know why. But I must. If I
+were to let you go back home again in the state you're in, you might
+catch your death of cold. We will be very careful&mdash;just as we were that
+time. We can't speak above a whisper. The girl's not out of danger yet.
+Give me your hand. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>With half-closed eyes she let herself be led up the stairs. Her wet
+dress flapped against the balusters. She felt she would have to crouch
+down on one of the steps and lie there until the porter came to sweep
+the dust and dirt away. But each step only took her nearer to the fate
+awaiting her up there in the third storey.</p>
+
+<p>Then with bent head she crept along the corridor into his room, where
+the imprisoned sultriness of the summer day suffocated her.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad pressed her into his desk chair. He drew off the soggy velvet
+rags from her feet, and brought her dry stockings; and after peeling her
+wet dress from her body he wrapped her in his great coat and blankets.</p>
+
+<p>She sat there accepting his service without a will of her own. She
+wanted to taste the delicious sensation of his loving care of her until
+the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>She had not said a word.</p>
+
+<p>When she had attempted to thank him, he pointed to the door leading to
+the next room.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak very low," he said, his mouth close to her ear. "The poor thing,
+it seems, is having a good night for the first time."</p>
+
+<p>Languid pity awoke in Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>But she had to talk.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with her? Tell me," she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"My landlady swore me to silence. But you're mine now. You will keep the
+secret. Her daughter, her one child, ran away four months ago and gave
+birth to a baby. The mother went to fetch her back home. She's been
+hovering between life and death for six weeks. She's at last getting
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor thing," said Lilly. And then the consciousness of her own misery
+came upon her with redoubled force.</p>
+
+<p>"Konni, Konni," she moaned on his neck. "Now it's all over. I was
+willing to starve with you, go begging with you. But what's the use?
+When once you know everything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That can't be so very bad, darling."</p>
+
+<p>"About me. About my life&mdash;my past."</p>
+
+<p>With a little jerk he freed himself and sat down opposite her.</p>
+
+<p>The look of questioning and terrified presentiment that congealed his
+pale face, seeming to turn it into a mask, filled her with fright, such
+fright as she had never experienced, because it was not on her own
+behalf; she was afraid of converting her own pain into his pain.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to write it to you&mdash;just the way it was, but I couldn't. It
+turned out wrong while I wrote. So I came to you before morning. If you
+want, I will tell you now&mdash;everything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not continue. She turned her face aside and buried it on the
+desk.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you speak?"</p>
+
+<p>Konrad had quite forgotten the need for quiet, and both of them shrank
+at the sudden sound of his voice. "She's probably asleep," he said
+lowering his voice again. "Now tell me! What can it be?"</p>
+
+<p>He breathed heavily under the growing oppression of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>She began to speak. In a whisper, her upper body inclined toward him,
+she tried to tell him the things for which she had not been able to find
+words in her own home.</p>
+
+<p>The truth did not come out this time either. She felt it.</p>
+
+<p>Less, much less of it, than her letters would have given him. To
+distress him with every detail&mdash;never! No power in the world could have
+driven her to that.</p>
+
+<p>Her life became a long list of martyrdoms&mdash;a funeral procession draped
+in black&mdash;insults, humiliations, mortifications&mdash;an imprisonment without
+a ray of light or mercy&mdash;and all the time a constant struggle for
+deliverance&mdash;a noble withdrawal into herself&mdash;a dismal sacrifice for
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>She talked and talked.</p>
+
+<p>He listened, with wide-open eyes. But when she uttered the name she had
+no right to omit, "Dr. Salmoni," he started and shrank back.</p>
+
+<p>Both of them had completely forgotten the sick girl in the next room.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Lilly had to wipe tears away, sometimes she grew indignant;
+now she ventured to glide by difficult points, now she lingered over
+touching self-reproaches.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> the truth after all," she said to herself defiantly, yet in
+fear, as she drew near the end of her narrative.</p>
+
+<p>It was the truth in so far as it was a résumé of the good in her, the
+truth as it might take shape in his troubled mind, regardless of
+fact&mdash;and this truth, too, had its rights.</p>
+
+<p>Silence ensued.</p>
+
+<p>Her guilty look glided past him and rested on the photograph on the
+desk, which leered at her with its crafty, worldly eyes, as if to say:</p>
+
+<p>"My child, I know you much better than you do yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Something familiar and confidential lay in them, like a reflection of
+the merry world which a moment ago had seemed to her the abode of
+torture.</p>
+
+<p>She did not venture to remove her gaze from those omniscient eyes, which
+smilingly examined and disrobed her, and killed her last shy hope.</p>
+
+<p>The unbroken silence in the room became a burden.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Konrad and Lilly heard a low moan. It came from the next room,
+where the sick girl lay, who, because of her secret sin, had been
+wrestling with her poor life for weeks. The next instant the sound was
+partially stifled, as if she had stuck a handkerchief into her mouth.
+Then it broke out again all the more violently. Anxious words of comfort
+mingled with the groans. They came from the mother, who probably slept
+in the farther room, and had come in to find out the cause of her
+daughter's outburst of grief.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad's and Lilly's eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>"She heard everything," their look said.</p>
+
+<p>For a brief instant the stranger's unhappiness caused them to forget
+their own. The great flood of the world's suffering poured over them
+easing the sting of guilt and drowning their personal pain.</p>
+
+<p>The sobbing in the next room was muffled under pillows.</p>
+
+<p>"My own darling," the comforting voice implored, and each tone swelled
+with love. "Don't worry. It isn't so bad. We will take the little baby.
+Even if he doesn't marry you, what difference does it make? Think of it,
+we have the baby! And then it will smile at you and say mama. You see,
+it isn't so dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>The sobbing quieted down, and turned into a heavy breathing, the first
+earnest of peace.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," thought Lilly, "it must be good to have someone say: 'It's not so
+dreadful.'"</p>
+
+<p>Nobody would say that to her.</p>
+
+<p>A burning desire to be petted and comforted, like the young sinner next
+door, arose in her.</p>
+
+<p>"She has her mother," she groaned, bursting into tears, "but whom have
+I?"</p>
+
+<p>Konrad leaned over and took her hands from her face. His troubled eyes
+shone with such infinite loving kindness that they seemed not to be of
+this world.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What can you do for me?" she complained. "How can you bear me?"</p>
+
+<p>There were no sounds from the other room any more.</p>
+
+<p>Now the mother also knew that Konrad had a visitor at that late hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear again. "We mustn't
+talk much more. Besides, my head's in a whirl. But there's one thing I
+see clearly: how ridiculous everything called guilt is when two people
+love each other, and when one has suffered like you. You have always
+been a saint to me, and you shall&mdash;continue to be in the future."</p>
+
+<p>"Future," Lilly faltered, starting up anxiously, "what sort of a
+future?"</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his forehead, yellow and dank with sweat.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said. "All I know is I can't live without you."</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes. She wanted to dream longer.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, it cannot be what we wanted." She noticed the hesitating,
+dragging gait of his speech. "Everything, of course&mdash;will have to be
+different."</p>
+
+<p>"Your life must not be different&mdash;it ought not to be different."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't blink facts, darling. Of course, I don't know <i>where</i> we will
+live. But we'll manage to find some spot on the globe where nobody knows
+us."</p>
+
+<p>Now she understood.</p>
+
+<p>And forgetting herself and the sick girl and everything around she sank
+down at his feet with a cry and sobbed:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to&mdash;you mustn't. You're entirely too young. You don't
+know the world. You don't know what you're doing. I don't want the
+sacrifice. I don't want to ruin you. I love you too much for that."</p>
+
+<p>He bent her head back and stroked her hair from her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>If only his eyes had not shone with that suffering loving kindness.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappiness of a lifetime already glowed in them.</p>
+
+<p>"If the question of sacrifice enters," he said, "then <i>I</i> must ask a
+sacrifice of <i>you</i>. Will you make it for my sake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything, everything! Shall I die? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"I want only one thing of you. Come to me as you are. Don't bring a
+single possession of yours with you. Never return, not once, to your&mdash;to
+that apartment. From this moment on nothing of all that is to be. Will
+you promise me?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly battled against violent alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Not to return home! Never to see her dear drawing-room again; never to
+feed the little canary or Peter&mdash;never!</p>
+
+<p>An ugly feeling, that such a sacrifice was rank folly, came and went
+again, as if a daub of dirt had been flung upon her, and immediately
+been wiped away. Then she decided hastily, and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I promise."</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we will be perfectly quiet," he said. "The patient ought to sleep,
+and to-morrow morning I'll explain the matter to my landlady."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is to become of your great work?" Lilly asked, self-reproach
+rising up in her again.</p>
+
+<p>A melancholy smile passed over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? That will depend upon my uncle. If he gives his consent, we
+can live as we please. Everything will be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he doesn't?"</p>
+
+<p>Konrad's right hand, which had been gliding ceaselessly from her
+forehead to the nape of her neck, for an instant pressed her head
+painfully as if to fetch strength for the approaching life struggle from
+closer contact.</p>
+
+<p>"That will be all right, too," he said and smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>A little while later she lay at his side in the narrow bed, the edge of
+which cut her body. She put her head under his shoulder, and with both
+arms clasped his body, as always in her distress when she sought
+protection with him.</p>
+
+
+<p>But this time she slept, and he kept watch.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIXA" id="CHAPTER_XIXA"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue was not a little astonished when one day her former tenant,
+the <i>grande dame</i>, appeared at her door in an ill-fitting alpaca suit
+and a sailor hat, trimmed with a green band, begging for admittance.</p>
+
+<p>The young lady tenant of the year had just been married, and the best
+room was vacant.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, it came about that Mrs. Laue's red plush furniture once more cast
+a fiery glow upon Lilly's life.</p>
+
+<p>The photographs of famous mimes smirked upon her patronisingly. And
+while performing her morning toilet, she was admonished:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To keep your body clean, be sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have your conscience just as pure.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The way Konrad looked out for her was touching. He instantly drew all
+his money from the bank, five hundred marks, and himself went to buy an
+outfit for her, since she could not appear on the street in the garments
+she had worn when she had come to him.</p>
+
+<p>He had let the salesladies persuade him into buying the absurdest
+things. Lilly would have split her sides laughing over them, if they had
+not represented a goodly portion of his money.</p>
+
+<p>The shoddy dress struck her as a temporary masquerade; and nothing in
+the world would have induced her to wear it outside the house.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue shook her head dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"When you moved away from here four years ago, you had the finest gowns
+and brooches and bracelets and all sorts of things; and now you come
+back in rags. It seems to me you're on the wrong road, Lilly dear."</p>
+
+<p>Konrad found as little favour in Mrs. Laue's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He's too young for you, and not stylish enough. Maybe he has ideal
+sentiments&mdash;if he hadn't he would snap his fingers at you. But I tell
+you, ideal sentiments always go hand in hand with trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly thought the old woman's chatter abominable. But for lack of
+something better to do during the daytime&mdash;Konrad was busy and could not
+come until evening&mdash;she again took to pasting flowers in Mrs. Laue's
+company. Occasionally it seemed to her she had never gone away from her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had written to Adele the very first day, without, of course,
+mentioning her address. She told her not to be troubled by her absence,
+and to attend to the apartment as usual until Mr. Dehnicke's return.</p>
+
+<p>It was more difficult to pen her farewell to her old friend. She said
+nothing of Konrad. For the present her engagement was to be kept a
+secret. She gave as the sole cause for her flight her irresistible
+desire at last to live a different life. She also referred to her wish
+not to stand in the way of his future, and wound up with cordial words,
+which robbed separation of its bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>When she read the letter over, she felt a genuine pang, at which she was
+a bit ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>The days passed.</p>
+
+<p>The new life that had been the dream of her dreams for years had begun,
+freighted with boundless confidence, such as she had not ventured to
+hope for in her wildest fancyings.</p>
+
+<p>With her sins washed away, redeemed, reborn, she stepped back into
+virtuous society at the side of the beloved man, whom only a few days
+before, it would have been arrogance, sacrilege to wish to possess.</p>
+
+<p>Who would have believed it?</p>
+
+<p>And yet Lilly was unable to attain to perfect enjoyment of her
+unspeakable happiness.</p>
+
+<p>No matter how often she told herself it was nothing but a transition
+period, soon to pass, the misery of her old quarters, the poor-peoples'
+odour, the spiritual mustiness that pervaded the place, bad food, the
+lack of suitable clothes, money and service, all this worked upon her
+sufficiently to delude her into the belief that instead of rising to new
+honours, she was suddenly sinking from splendour and brilliance to a
+dull, dead level.</p>
+
+<p>No matter that she found fault with herself for this ungrateful frame of
+mind, the fact was, the feeling was there, and she could not dismiss it.</p>
+
+<p>And how account for it that five years before when she had descended
+from the genuine heights of life, delicately nurtured, a spoiled
+darling, accustomed to luxury and attention, such as is granted to few
+persons in the world, she had scarcely suffered from the wretchedness of
+these surroundings? In fact, though utterly without prospects, she had
+felt tolerably secure. But now that the idle comfort of a vapid
+existence fortunately lay behind her, and her beloved walked by her side
+ready to throw open the gates to a happiness she had never divined, she
+was unable to breathe among the red plush chairs. Trifles annoyed her,
+and she hankered for a bathroom and a hairdresser.</p>
+
+<p>Something must have departed from her during those years. She thought
+and thought, but failed to discover what it was.</p>
+
+<p>Added to all these troubles was her worry over Konrad's condition.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever her soul conjured up his image, her heart throbbed with mingled
+sensations&mdash;secret pangs of conscience, longings for atonement,
+reproaches, not to be stilled, of herself and&mdash;why conceal it?&mdash;of
+Konrad also.</p>
+
+<p>Her yearning for him no longer had a quality of joyousness; and yet, she
+was ever expectant of a letter from him by the pneumatic tube.</p>
+
+<p>If he wrote, he said too little; and if he sent no message at all she
+felt angry, though she well knew he had not a second to spare for her
+during the day, and was drudging as never before in his life.</p>
+
+<p>He would come at last between eight and nine in the evening; and then
+loaded with papers and books. He had manuscripts to read, proofs to look
+over, and letters to answer. He scarcely took time to eat, and while he
+snatched a few bites, troubled recollections of things he had forgotten
+during the day kept flashing up in his harassed brain.</p>
+
+<p>There was no thought of amorous nights. As a rule Konrad fell asleep in
+the midst of work.</p>
+
+<p>As he reclined there in the corner of the sofa, Lilly could appreciate
+how tired and worn he was. He no longer cared for his person. His
+clothes hung on him impressed, and in place of the velvety sheen on his
+cheeks, which had been her delight, she saw dark boils and coarse
+stubble.</p>
+
+<p>She would have given a great deal to learn what he thought of her in the
+depths of his soul. But she could extract nothing from him. He remained
+mute, with glowing eyes, and lips tightly compressed.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly she had no right to doubt him. She knew that he spent every
+spare minute trying to arrange for their life in the future.</p>
+
+<p>In Buenos Ayres the position of a high school teacher of German was
+vacant; the same in Caracas; and he could even become a university
+professor, though of course on the other side of the Atlantic. All he
+needed to do was present a few letters of recommendation from well-known
+professors.</p>
+
+<p>Such efforts, however, were necessary only in case his uncle refused his
+consent to Konrad's marriage with Lilly, and dropped his disobedient
+heir.</p>
+
+<p>If he said yes, if he furnished the means for their household, they
+could live aloof from the world wherever they wished, wherever
+conditions were best adapted for the precious work.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad had immediately written to his uncle about his engagement, and
+told of Lilly's past in the most touching words. He had not concealed
+the stains on her life, but he brought out strongly her fine qualities,
+the virginity of her soul, her nobility, her rich intellectual
+endowments, the number of her ideal interests.</p>
+
+<p>After he had sent off the letter, he read to Lilly a few passages from
+the draught of it. It was a bold document of revolutionary ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that <i>I</i> and you, too, are raised above the narrow conventions
+of philistinism, above the merciless judgments of social court-martials,
+above a Pharisaism which constitutes itself the watchdog of morality,
+and which with its code of formal, pedantic family relationships knocks
+to the ground all aspirations for free, high-minded conduct. You have
+lived in many parts of the world, and you have learned to know how
+mutable moral laws are everywhere, how hollow the pretence of regarding
+each as the sole God-ordained dogma, you know the sly, hypocritical
+paths and by-ways by which one manages to escape their tyranny, and you
+know that in the province of ethics there is only one thing which
+commands respect and admiration: the will to <i>kallokagathia</i>, to that
+form of life in which the noblemen of all times combined the beautiful
+with the good. Yes, beautiful and good. That is what Lilly is, her
+aspirations, and sufferings."</p>
+
+<p>How glorious!</p>
+
+<p>Who could be dull enough to resist such words?</p>
+
+<p>That is what Lilly said to comfort Konrad when uncertainty as to the
+immediate future weighed upon him heavily.</p>
+
+<p>Five days passed before the answer came upon which depended the weal or
+woe of two human beings.</p>
+
+<p>In reading it, Lilly saw the crafty eyes of the photograph turned upon
+her as if the old man stood there in person.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"My dear boy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I don't understand anything about <i>kallokagathia</i> or similar
+phrases. It's nearly half a century ago, since I ran away from
+school. But I flatter myself that I can measure things pretty
+accurately with my eyes, and size people up by their faces,
+whether striking a bargain or on the Yoshiwara, whether on the
+various exchanges or at baccarat. Which did not keep me from
+being fleeced, or my life from being a series of stupidities,
+especially in regard to women. Once I wanted, whether or no, to
+bring along a young Circassian, because her eyebrows met
+prettily; and once I wanted to marry a little Musme because she
+massaged my legs so well, etc. I won't say anything of my
+various attempts to save souls, because everybody goes through
+that.</p>
+
+<p>However, the god of old rogues and bachelors&mdash;perhaps with your
+classical knowledge you can tell me his name&mdash;mercifully kept
+any of my plans from maturing.</p>
+
+<p>But your case seems to be essentially different. If it's really
+as you say, if your betrothed is really such a paragon of
+virtues&mdash;the world is full of surprises&mdash;and, chief of all, if
+she does not pose as a repentant Magdalene and bank upon your
+pity, it will be a pleasure to me to tweak Mr. Respectability's
+nose and give you my cordial blessing.</p>
+
+<p>But if your intentions bear a certain family resemblance to my
+own in the past, then pardon me if I refuse to shoulder the
+responsibility for what you are pleased to call your "future,"
+even with this in view, and if I feel compelled to beg you
+kindly to break off your connections with me.</p>
+
+<p>In order to settle the matter to the best of my ability, I will
+be in Berlin day after to-morrow; and I herewith ask you and
+your betrothed to keep the evening free for your old uncle. As
+I do not know where you metropolitans dine and drink, I will
+have to let you know the place of our meeting after I reach
+Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Until then,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yours faithfully,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uncle Rennschmidt."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>For the first time in that gloomy period Lilly saw Konrad's face relax
+with a smile of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's his attitude, then there's no danger," he said. "He will have
+to drop his distrust at the very first glance. Who in the world can
+withstand you? You just have to be a little pleasant to him, and he'll
+be your adorer."</p>
+
+<p>But Lilly had her private opinion.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, if she had her former wardrobe to choose from, perhaps she might
+be sure of presenting the appearance she should to his uncle. But in
+either one of her two ridiculous shop-girl dresses, which she had to pin
+painstakingly before she could wear them, without jewellery, or the
+thousand little appurtenances of a fine toilet, from where, in such
+circumstances, was she to summon the self-confidence that would force
+the shrewd old woman connoisseur to capitulate?</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I'll have to have some of your money for getting an evening
+costume," she said hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>He acquiesced with pleasure. She was to have whatever she still needed,
+and a hat with plumes and a lace mantilla, just like the one she had
+had.</p>
+
+<p>All this for two hundred and sixty marks.</p>
+
+<p>This, the entire sum he had left, was what he handed over to her for her
+new purchases.</p>
+
+<p>The dear boy, what sort of an idea did he have of fashionable dressing?</p>
+
+<p>After he left she carefully considered ways and means.</p>
+
+<p>While she wore herself out devising methods of patching up some sort of
+costume, the most glorious dresses hung by the dozens in her old
+closets, dresses which Konrad had not seen, because he had never gone to
+any festive gathering with her. The lace mantilla which had cost a small
+fortune was also there, and goodness knows what else!</p>
+
+<p>But with all her might she cast the temptation from her. She had given
+him her word of honour.</p>
+
+<p>She might deceive everybody else in the world, but not Konrad.</p>
+
+<p>So she decided to go on a shopping expedition the next morning and see
+whether she could not ferret out a good garment at Gerson's or
+Wertheim's in the reduced stock.</p>
+
+<p>But she was known in the shops, and the salespeople had had the
+experience that despite her economy she always bought nothing but the
+very best. How they would stare if she appeared at the counter in her
+tawdry trash.</p>
+
+<p>No, with the best intentions she could not place herself in so
+distressing a situation.</p>
+
+<p>She pondered a long time, but her thoughts kept returning to those
+wardrobes where her exquisite treasures reposed, and silently offered a
+wide choice.</p>
+
+<p>But nowhere a little back door to slip through; nowhere a pretext for
+lessening the gravity of the offence.</p>
+
+<p>Despite all these vexations, the night passed in caressing dreams,
+lighted by newly arisen hope.</p>
+
+<p>And as always when Lilly's frame of mind in sleep was healthy, she felt
+she was being peacefully rocked to the rhythm of familiar melodies. She
+recognised the "Moonlight Sonata," and Grieg's "Ung Birken," and the
+motifs of the Rhine Daughters, and mingling with them all the Song of
+Songs.</p>
+
+<p>As she was coming out of her sleep in the morning, she still heard:
+"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly with an exclamation of fright she sat up in bed.</p>
+
+<p>The Song of Songs&mdash;the score&mdash;her treasure&mdash;her legacy&mdash;where was it? In
+the drawing-room secrétaire&mdash;buried, forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Not to have thought of it once!</p>
+
+<p>Now there was no possibility of abiding by her promise. If she had kept
+her wits about her that momentous night, she would never have given it.</p>
+
+<p>She had been at a loss for a pretext, and here she had a justification.</p>
+
+<p>She did not experience the slightest pangs of conscience. It was a
+sacred cause that she was upholding.</p>
+
+<p>By eight o'clock she was already on her way to her former home.</p>
+
+<p>The sunny haze of the red August morning floated up to the
+violet-coloured heavens; sooty drops fell from the yellowing trees, and
+the wires of the electric trams sang their stormy song.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly joined the group of people at the nearest stopping place, which
+from minute to minute waxed and dwindled. While waiting for a car to
+convey her to the distant west side, she looked about in all directions
+to see whether by chance Konrad was coming down the street.</p>
+
+<p>In the car she sat with a newspaper held close to her face, and on the
+short path along the canal she slipped from tree to tree like a wild
+animal seeking cover.</p>
+
+<p>At last she reached her house.</p>
+
+<p>The porter, who was sweeping the front, greeted her with a shout of
+surprise. The green-grocer smiled a mischievous greeting up to her from
+his cellar door, and his two urchins, in whose mind Lilly was connected
+with sweets, hung to her skirt with happy little noises.</p>
+
+<p>All this instantly produced a sensation of returning home.</p>
+
+<p>Adele was still asleep. Why should she not be? She had nothing to do.</p>
+
+<p>When she opened the door, she showed the greatest delight. She even wept
+great tears, and Lilly suddenly realised what she was losing in her.</p>
+
+<p>Everything shone spick and span in the morning sunlight. Even the
+flowers had been kept watered.</p>
+
+<p>The canary beat his wings by way of greeting, and Peter wanted to break
+the bars of his cage to reach Lilly's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know to whom or to what to turn first from sheer love, nor
+what question to ask first.</p>
+
+<p>Three letters and two telegrams lay on the card tray.</p>
+
+<p>The letters were in Richard's writing. The telegrams were directed to
+Adele and urgently inquired for Lilly's address.</p>
+
+<p>But after sending these missives, Mr. Dehnicke, Adele informed her, had
+given up his affairs in Harzburg and returned to Berlin. He had inserted
+advertisements for her in the papers, and came every day at the usual
+hour to find out if they had met with success. Then he sat on his
+customary seat, very quiet, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes until
+the time for returning to his office.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell him about Dr. Rennschmidt?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of me, Mrs. Czepanek? Do you suppose I don't know how
+to look out for my mistress's honour? But the best thing would be if you
+were to come back and behave as if nothing had happened. That's what all
+my ladies used to do."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly asked her to fetch from the basement the smaller of the two
+leather trunks, explaining that she wished to take a few of her old
+possessions with her.</p>
+
+<p>After Adele had swung herself out of the room sulking, Lilly gathered up
+Konrad's letters from the secret drawer in which she had hidden them,
+and then ran hastily to her large wardrobe, from which she pulled out
+all her dresses and threw them on the bed in order to select whatever
+might be of use to her.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Song of Songs occurred to her.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the secrétaire.</p>
+
+<p>The score, which had dreamed away its aimless existence for years in
+the back part of the lowest drawer, had acquired a strange aspect.</p>
+
+<p>The rubber band about it was sticky, and fell to bits when Lilly wanted
+to undo the roll.</p>
+
+<p>The sheets glided from her hand and flew over the carpet one by one.</p>
+
+<p>There they all lay&mdash;the arias and recitatives, the duos and orchestral
+interludes&mdash;mingled and confused, and on top the turtle dove solo for
+the clarionet, which she had sung with her mother while still a lisping
+babe.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the scattered leaves in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>They had turned yellow and mouldy. Many of them were plastered with
+blood, her own blood, which had squirted from the knife wound her mother
+had inflicted, and covered large spots with black and reddish brown
+stains. Some of the stains had been eaten into holes, the work of the
+mice at Lischnitz.</p>
+
+<p>So there it was&mdash;her Song of Songs.</p>
+
+<p>Nevermore any hope. No rock of salvation for the future&mdash;no faithful
+Eckhardt in life's stress, and no guide to golden heights! A mere
+weather-beaten remnant, worn, though unused, honourable ballast which
+one drags along for unknown reasons&mdash;a light extinguished, a piece of
+wisdom without sense.</p>
+
+<p>Shrugging her shoulders, she kneeled on the floor, and gathered up the
+thin rolls hastily, without regard for their order.</p>
+
+<p>"I can arrange them some other time," she thought, though a faint doubt
+arose within her whether she ever would.</p>
+
+<p>Adele came with the trunk. It had taken her an extraordinary length of
+time. She replied to Lilly's questions in a confused way, and glanced at
+the clock furtively.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the trunk lid, and Lilly threw the score on the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>The empty open trunk was like a mouth gaping for fodder. The clothes lay
+spread on the bed. Her shoes stood next to the washstand. Hats, veils,
+blouses, lace mantillas, silk petticoats&mdash;all waited and seemed to cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Take me along."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Lilly closed her eyes and groaned, remembering the
+sacrifice, the only one, he demanded of her.</p>
+
+<p>But it had to be.</p>
+
+<p>Both his and her future depended on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Laue will hide them for me, and she can keep them afterwards," she
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>She made her decision. Blindly she gathered up whatever her hands fell
+upon&mdash;in addition to her dresses the ivory toilet articles with the
+seven pointed coronet, the triple hand mirror, the powder box, the
+receipt for her furs in the storage house, and numberless little <i>objets
+de luxe</i>.</p>
+
+<p>She did not forget her jewellery either.</p>
+
+<p>"In case <i>he</i> needs some money," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>She sent Adele to order a cab. This time again it was an eternity before
+she returned.</p>
+
+<p>The porter helped carry the trunk down, and two hat boxes dangled in
+Adele's free hand.</p>
+
+<p>One more caress of the canary's greyish green wings, one more kiss on
+the monkey's velvety snout, then the door closed behind her forever.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you leave an address?"</p>
+
+<p>What a secretive air Adele wore!</p>
+
+<p>"I will write to you, Adele, and sometime, I hope, you will come to me
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Adele did not respond, but looked down the street expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later Lilly, glancing from the hansom window as she was being
+driven along the canal, saw a taxicab whizz past from the opposite
+direction. In that second she recognised Richard seated inside.</p>
+
+<p>Red as a lobster, his head inclined to one side, he stared ahead of him
+with wild, searching eyes at the house she had just left.</p>
+
+<p>She hastily told the coachman to turn down a side street. She must not
+meet Richard until her fate had been decided before the world.</p>
+
+<p>But in a few moments, her heart throbbing, she heard behind her the
+rattle and clatter that had just died down in the distance. It grew
+louder and louder.</p>
+
+<p>The yellow wall of the taxicab shot by, turned about suddenly, and
+stopped. A man's voice called to Lilly's driver, and her cab was also
+brought to a stop.</p>
+
+<p>Richard was standing close to her, holding the open door in his
+trembling hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice shrilled in a feminine falsetto. His Adam's apple rose and
+fell convulsively over his high collar.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt quite calm, quite equal to the situation.</p>
+
+<p>He who had so long been her lord and master now seemed like a poor,
+helpless shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, Richard, let me ride on," she said. "I took leave of you
+in my letter. I just came to fetch a few of my things, and now all's
+over between us. Why should we go on tormenting each other?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come back!" he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come back, I say! You know where your home is. I won't let you stray
+about in the world any more. Heaven knows what may happen to you.
+Driver, turn back."</p>
+
+<p>The coachman turned his russet face inquiringly to the lady in the
+hansom.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Richard. I have the sole say as to this cab&mdash;and as
+to my future life, too. Just as you have had over your own."</p>
+
+<p>"Stuff and nonsense! I suppose you're alluding to the American heiress.
+She can go to the devil for all I care. That's the way I've felt for
+some time. But you&mdash;<i>must&mdash;come&mdash;back. You&mdash;must&mdash;come&mdash;back.
+You&mdash;must&mdash;you&mdash;must</i>."</p>
+
+<p>He grasped the hem of her skirt with both hands, as if to drag her from
+the carriage by her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg you to come back&mdash;I can't sleep&mdash;I can't work&mdash;I'm so used to
+you. If I had married, I should have come to you directly after the
+wedding. Our relationship wouldn't have changed an iota. And everything
+in your apartment is just as you left it. You saw it. Adele says Peter
+won't eat, and Adele herself is worried. She says she simply can't do
+without you. I'll give you a life-long annuity of twenty&mdash;by God! thirty
+thousand marks a year. What's the difference? Mother hasn't anything
+against it. She sees how I take it. She knows I won't ever marry after
+all. She'll never do anything to you again. You can come to the office,
+too. You can use our carriage instead of the hired one. I'll have a
+telephone put up between your apartment and the stable. And if you want
+I'll buy an automobile a thousand times finer than this one."</p>
+
+<p>That was the highest trump. No one could outbid an automobile. So he
+stopped to see the effect. Kneeling on the steps he leaned far into the
+hansom and stared into her face.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly realised she could not free herself from him, unless he learned
+the truth.</p>
+
+<p>She felt very sorry for him, but it had to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Richard! What you offer doesn't count with me anymore. Because
+I love another man&mdash;who wants to give me much more than you."</p>
+
+<p>"What! I'd like to know what sort of a young Vanderbilt he is!" he cried
+in jealous scorn. "Why, I never knew <i>that</i> side of your nature."</p>
+
+<p>"He's not a young Vanderbilt, Richard. On the contrary, he's so poor he
+doesn't know where he'll get his bread from day to day. But I am engaged
+to him, and as his affianced I will have to ask you to stand out of my
+way."</p>
+
+<p>His mouth gaped. His eyes grew large and round. He reeled back against
+the hindwheels of the taxicab.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!" Lilly cried to the coachman.</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back in her seat, drawing a deep breath of relief, though
+with a faint consciousness of guilt, as if she had rid herself of her
+old lover too lightly.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the ride she heard back of her the chug-chug of a slow-moving
+automobile; and when she descended from her hansom, Richard descended
+from the taxicab, at a slight distance, though near enough for Lilly to
+catch the look in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was the look of a whipped dog.</p>
+
+<p>As if someone were pursuing her, she ran up the four flights without
+concerning herself about the trunk. But a little while later the driver
+came panting up the stairs with it, apparently of his own accord.</p>
+
+<p>When she held out the money to him, he refused it.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman downstairs, he said, had already paid for everything.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXA" id="CHAPTER_XXA"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was the evening of the following day.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage that was taking Lilly to the dreaded meeting stopped in
+front of the renowned Linden restaurant which has been the resort of
+elegant folk for years.</p>
+
+<p>Although it was some time since Lilly had been there, she knew every
+stone of it.</p>
+
+<p>She knew Albert, too, the tall, dignified porter, who stood in the
+doorway, and put his hand to his braided cap. It was he who had acted as
+the go-between for her and the handsome hussar of the guards.</p>
+
+<p>With downcast eyes, pressing close to Konrad, she passed by him, hoping
+he no longer remembered her.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Lilly, uncle."</p>
+
+<p>An old bow-legged gentleman, slightly under medium size in an
+ill-fitting jacket and crumpled collar, came shambling out of a back
+room, and held out a broad, fleshy hand, the brown skin of which played
+loosely over his bones like a large glove.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly threw a timid glance of scrutiny at the all-powerful person, whom
+she had pictured to herself as a commanding yet complaisant thunderer.
+In reality he was a tottering, rotund, somewhat common-looking gnome.</p>
+
+<p>When she told herself that her conduct now and during the next hour
+would decide Konrad's and her own future, the old miserable timidity,
+which had not troubled her for some time past, began to paralyse her
+muscles and turned her into a doll, which smiled inanely and could not
+tell its own name.</p>
+
+<p>But the old uncle also seemed to have lost his power of speech.</p>
+
+<p>He looked her up and down repeatedly and well-nigh forgot to invite her
+to enter the back room.</p>
+
+<p>As with everything else about the place Lilly was familiar with this
+back room, its pressed leather walls, its red silk hangings, and the
+blue oriental rugs over the high-armed sofa.</p>
+
+<p>In the period when Richard was still possessed of the ambition to belong
+to the aristocracy of high livers, she had spent many a mad hour there
+late at night with him and his chance friends.</p>
+
+<p>An immaculate waiter helped her off with her brocade jacket and lace
+mantilla, and looked at her the while as if to say:</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to know you."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, that was a moment of agony.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle, who had not ceased furtively to cast awed yet sullen glances
+at Lilly, pulled himself together and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's have a cosy time together, children. Nice and pleasant,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly inclined her head.</p>
+
+<p>Her gesture was stiff enough apparently to increase the bow-legged old
+gentleman's respect. He seemed to be at a loss, and tramped about the
+room, played with the gold knobs which hung as a charm from his watch
+pocket, and two or three times nodded his solemn appreciation to Konrad.</p>
+
+<p>They seated themselves at the gleaming white table, resplendent with
+flowers and cut glass.</p>
+
+<p>About the bronze lamp&mdash;Lilly remembered it with its claws and slim lily
+design&mdash;hung a veil of violet orchids, which had surely cost an enormous
+sum.</p>
+
+<p>He knew how to live, the old untidy rogue. One had to admit that.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw her reflection in the mirror opposite her seat. It was
+reassuringly aristocratic.</p>
+
+<p>She had chosen a pleated dress of black Liberty silk with a waist of
+Chantilly lace, which despite its costliness lay in simple lines of
+grace about her breast and arms.</p>
+
+<p>Unsuspecting spirits might believe that a similar costume was to be had
+everywhere from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, from Cape Town to
+Christiania for two hundred marks.</p>
+
+<p>She had wisely refrained from wearing any jewellery, except the thin
+gold chain which she was wont to wear next to her skin. It encircled her
+high collar in maidenly modesty.</p>
+
+<p>She looked like a young noblewoman who has been held in strict
+seclusion, and who is taking her first look into the great world with
+shy, inquiring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His uncle had assigned the seat on her right side to Konrad, and kept
+the place nearest the door for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The instant he took his seat at table he began to feel somewhat in his
+element.</p>
+
+<p>He uttered hoarse ejaculations and gave orders and was dissatisfied with
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, boy," he said to the waiter, who was placing the
+<i>hors-d'&oelig;uvres</i> on the table, "do you call that the right kind of a
+carafe for port wine? Don't you know that if port wine doesn't sparkle
+in the carafe, it takes away your thirst?"</p>
+
+<p>The waiter, intimidated by his snarling, wanted to go off in search of
+another carafe, but Mr. Rennschmidt declared he could not wait, he
+needed a "starter."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still a little constrained," he said apologetically. "I'm not
+accustomed to associating with such beautiful and ungracious ladies."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a prick at her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She met a reproachful look from her lover, which seemed to say:</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't be so dumb. You must be agreeable to him."</p>
+
+<p>In the same mute language Lilly humbly implored his forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. You speak for me."</p>
+
+<p>In his anxiety Konrad began to converse as if he had been paid for
+entertaining them. He described the collection of antiques in his
+uncle's castle on the Rhine, touched upon the competition of the
+Americans, and, passing on to the subject of art in Italy, discussed the
+harmful effects of the Lex Pacca, and goodness knows what else.</p>
+
+<p>It was a highly illuminating little discourse, which his uncle seemed to
+follow with moderate interest, while squinting at Lilly and smacking his
+lips from time to time over a piece of canned tunny. Then Mr.
+Rennschmidt said:</p>
+
+<p>"All very true and edifying, my son. But couldn't you also impart some
+valuable information as to the state of the whiskey in this place?"</p>
+
+<p>Konrad jumped up to pull the bell rope, but his uncle restrained him.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop&mdash;stop&mdash;stop. This is my affair.... Here's the port for you....
+After all a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, even if she belongs to
+others. Here's to you, beautiful woman."</p>
+
+<p>That sounded like mockery. Did he wish to make sport of her before
+repulsing her?</p>
+
+<p>"In fact," he continued, addressing Lilly, "permit me to congratulate
+you. You've already worked a perceptible change in him. I see he already
+dances beautifully to your tune, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Whether or no, she had to say something in reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't play tunes, and he doesn't dance," she said, making a mighty
+effort to pull herself together. "We're not free enough for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Aha, there's one straight from the shoulder for me," he laughed, but
+his laugh sounded resentful.</p>
+
+<p>"Lilly didn't mean any harm," Konrad interjected, coming to her rescue.
+"And really, we are not having an easy time of it. If Lilly hadn't
+helped me every day with her sweet comprehension, I don't think my
+strength would have held out."</p>
+
+<p>"All very well and good&mdash;or&mdash;or, or all very deplorable. But your old
+uncle hasn't gotten even a look from her&mdash;as advance payment on our
+future relationship."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if that's all," thought Lilly.</p>
+
+<p>And raising her glass to touch his, she tried to thank him for his
+having come around with a little coquettish shamefaced smile.</p>
+
+<p>It filled him with evident satisfaction. He twisted his pointed beard
+and ogled her confidentially with his leering eyes as if to extract from
+her a sign of secret understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank goodness! Maybe he's not so dreadful after all," she thought. She
+drew a breath of relief as she felt the chains of her embarrassment
+loosening a bit.</p>
+
+<p>When the waiter returned, a grave discussion arose between him and Mr.
+Rennschmidt as to the brands of whiskey the hotel had to offer. It was a
+long parley and debate, ending in a call for the hotel-keeper himself,
+who went down into the cellar to hunt up a bottle he thought he must
+have somewhere with the label of a certain famous house and the date of
+a certain famous year.</p>
+
+<p>At length Mr. Rennschmidt was ready again to bestow his attention upon
+his beautiful niece to be.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a sort of barnswallow. I built my nest of mud and such stuff. I
+traded in guano, train-oil, Australian blennies, pitch, and other more
+or less unclean things. So you can't blame me for wishing to recuperate
+by devoting myself to appetizing objects, such as you, my ungracious
+lady. All I wish is a little attention in return."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear," thought Lilly. "I'll be impertinent for once." So she said:
+"Mr. Rennschmidt, you know I'm sitting here like a poor, trembling
+student going up for the examinations. I beg of you"&mdash;she raised her
+clasped hands&mdash;"don't play with me like a cat with a mouse."</p>
+
+<p>She had struck the right note.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she opening her mouth at last?" he cried beaming. "And she has a
+wonderful little snout, Konrad, one of those mice snouts with long
+teeth, in which the upper lip says to the lower lip, 'If you don't come
+and kiss, I'll run away.' Isn't it so, Konrad, you stupid fellow, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Lilly had to laugh heartily, and the <i>entente cordiale</i> was finally
+concluded.</p>
+
+<p>And for a moment Konrad's dear tired face brightened with a smile of
+reassurance which expanded her heart as with a heaven-sent reward. She
+loved him so dearly she could have thrown herself at his uncle's feet
+for his sake. With a rising sense of triumph she thought:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> he shall see how agreeable I can be to that old horror."</p>
+
+<p>And indeed to make herself agreeable proved to be not so very excessive
+a task. When she looked at the old man with his round, crumpled roguish
+face, his darting, sly little grey eyes, and the fine, wavy, snow-white
+diplomat's wig&mdash;it actually was a wig, sharply defined on his forehead
+and brushed forward into locks over his ears&mdash;she felt more and more
+strongly that he was an old acquaintance with whom she had many a time
+played pranks and to whom the recollection of those pranks secretly
+bound her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, surely, she had never met him before.</p>
+
+<p>Despite his proletarian exterior his assured manner breathed an air of
+gentlemanliness. And the way he constructed the menu was really
+wonderful. The sixty-eight-year-old Steinbergerkabinett, which looked
+like amber-coloured oil when he poured it into the Rhine wine glasses,
+suited the blue trout as perfectly as if it were its native element. And
+the next course, the sweetbread patties <i>à la Montgelas</i>, was worthy of
+what had gone before. Neither Richard nor any member of the crew was so
+skilled in the epicurean art as he.</p>
+
+<p>If only he had not kept tossing off one glass of whiskey after the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"My brain has been dulled by long money-making, like a nail hammered on
+cast-iron," he said in self-justification. "I must whet it every now and
+then, or else it'll get as dull as the edge of a tombstone."</p>
+
+<p>When the Roman punch was served, a brief but hot discussion arose as to
+the merits of certain American drinks from which Lilly, with her
+knowledge of the whole range of beverages, came out with flying colours.
+She even knew accurately the ingredients of Mr. Rennschmidt's favourite
+mixture, the "South Sea bowl," a fiery concoction of sherry, cognac,
+angostura bitters, the yolks of eggs, and Château d'Yquem&mdash;in case of
+emergency Moselle might be used. She ventured to ask, might she not
+prepare the rare mixture for him after dinner; she could do it so
+expertly that he would have to admit he had not drunk anything more
+delicious between Singapore and Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad, who had evidently never suspected her talents in this line,
+listened to her with an astonishment which filled her with pride.</p>
+
+<p>She sent him one furtive look after another, which asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you satisfied? Am I pleasant enough to him?"</p>
+
+<p>But he failed somehow to respond. He remained silent and abstracted, and
+sometimes he seemed to be remote from the company.</p>
+
+<p>"Dream on," she thought blissfully. "<i>I</i> will look out for our
+happiness."</p>
+
+<p>The friendship between her and the old man waxed apace.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the wild duck came and with it the glowing Burgundy, which
+slipped down their throats like caressing flames, she had already been
+calling him uncle.</p>
+
+<p>And he for his part, repeatedly declared that he was "totally wrapped up
+in his dear, dear little Lilly."</p>
+
+<p>So this was the test, the cruel test, from which she had thought there
+was no concealment, no escape, the test that would bare her, dissect
+her, and turn her soul inside out.</p>
+
+<p>She could scarcely contain herself when she thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, yes. There sat that awful danger, whose moneybags held victory or
+defeat&mdash;a little monster grown tame, who stroked her fingers with his
+horrid wrinkled hands, and fawned on her for a crumb of her favour.</p>
+
+<p>He was really amusing, especially when he told jokes.</p>
+
+<p>What a lot of gossip from the colonies!</p>
+
+<p>She had not heard so many anecdotes in a whole year.</p>
+
+<p>For example there was the story of the German governor, Mr. Von So and
+So&mdash;she had met him once at Uhl's. He went to his post with his suite,
+consisting of his secretary, his valet, and his cook. Six months
+afterwards the cook went to him and said: "Governor, it's so and so
+far." He gave her two thousand marks and said: "But be sure and hold
+your tongue." Then she went to the secretary and said: "Mr. Müller, it's
+so and so far." He gave her three hundred marks and said: "But be sure
+and hold your tongue." Then she went to the valet and said: "John, it's
+so and so far. We can get married." Three months afterward the valet
+went to the governor and said: "Your Excellency, that woman did us all.
+The brat's a nigger."</p>
+
+<p>And many another story he told of like nature.</p>
+
+<p>She had to hold her sides with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh, Konrad, darling, laugh."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, but his eyes remained serious, and his forehead tense.</p>
+
+<p>When the champagne was brought they drank "fellowship."</p>
+
+<p>It was horrible to kiss those thick, greedy old lips, but their future
+happiness demanded it.</p>
+
+<p>Konrad, too, was to get a kiss. But he refused it. Worse still, he
+wanted to prohibit her drinking.</p>
+
+<p>"She isn't careful enough," he muttered. "Please, uncle, don't give her
+so much. We have never drunk so much."</p>
+
+<p>But they both laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's always been a country yokel," the old man teased, "and has never
+known what's good. It's too bad for you to throw yourself away on him,
+Lilly dear. You ought to take a man like me. Not a booby in corduroy.
+He's a regular funeral torch."</p>
+
+<p>But on this subject Lilly brooked no teasing.</p>
+
+<p>"You let my little Konni alone, you old fright. You'd better tell your
+old chestnuts. Come along! Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>No, she would not permit a word against her sweet little Konni.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle fell to telling his stories again.</p>
+
+<p>Now they were anecdotes in pigeon-English, that lingo which the Chinese
+and other interesting personages in the Far East use as a means of
+communication with the white sahibs. "Tom and Paddy in the Tea House,"
+"The Virtuous Miss Laura in Macao," "The Guide and the Bayadere," each
+received a good box on the ear.</p>
+
+<p>"But Konni ought not to hear any more of this, uncle. I don't want my
+Konni to be spoiled for me."</p>
+
+<p>So she put her left ear close to the old gentleman's lips, and made a
+"whispering cave" with him, as was the wont of members of the "crew"
+when they flirted too outrageously or misbehaved in other ways.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone who had thought she was tongue-tied or unable to repay like with
+like would have been sadly mistaken. The general's club jokes suffered
+from no lack of juiciness, and what she had learned from the "crew" was
+certainly of no mean parentage.</p>
+
+<p>It was worth while to exert an extra effort for so appreciative an
+audience as "uncle." But Konrad, the innocent, had to submit to having
+his ears stuffed with the cotton batting upon which the calville apples
+had been served.</p>
+
+<p>After the coffee the old man demanded that Lilly make good her promise
+and prepare the South Sea bowl. He was sure her assertion had been a
+mere idle boast.</p>
+
+<p>No need to taunt her a second time.</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of bottles were called into requisition, besides the sherry
+and the angostura, an old sweet Yquem. It was really a pity to put it
+to such uses, so Mr. Rennschmidt suggested taking a glass or two on the
+side.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure the eggs broke at the wrong place and spilled over her gown
+and the carpet. But that made no difference; it only added to the
+pleasure. At any rate, the dear old uncle was paying for everything.</p>
+
+<p>To compensate, the flame of the alcohol lamp leapt in the air all the
+more wildly&mdash;up to the orchids&mdash;up to the sky&mdash;it would have delighted
+her to drink in the tongues of fire the way witches do.</p>
+
+<p>"Your luck, Konni&mdash;<i>our</i> luck, Konni!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't drink," she heard his voice. It was harsher than usual, and
+strange in its severity.</p>
+
+<p>"Country yokel," she laughed, thrusting out her tongue at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't drink," the voice admonished a second time. "You are not used to
+drinking."</p>
+
+<p>She not used to drinking? How dared he say such a thing? That was
+questioning her honour. Yes, it was questioning her honour.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know what I'm used to?... I'm used to quite different
+things. I've sat on this very seat I'm sitting in more than once&mdash;more
+than ten times&mdash;and have drunk much, much more."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear heart, think of what you're saying. It isn't true."</p>
+
+<p>His voice once more sounded soft and gentle, as if he were reproving a
+naughty child.</p>
+
+<p>Such a shame. It was enough to make one cry.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say it is not true? Do you think I'm a liar? Do you think
+I'm not familiar with such fashionable places as this? Pshaw! Shall I
+prove it to you? Very well. I can. I believe you'll find my name on the
+base of this lamp&mdash;Lilly Czepanek&mdash;Lilly Czepanek. Just look for it,
+look for it!"</p>
+
+<p>He started to his feet and fixed his eyes upon the mirror-like surface
+defaced by a jumble of characters scratched on it.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not find the L. C. for which he was looking. She had to
+come to his assistance. Not here.&mdash;Not there. The letters swam before
+her eyes. She had to try to catch them like the gold fish in her
+aquarium.</p>
+
+<p>Aha! There it was. There it was! L. v. M., with the coronet above. For
+at that time she had still dared to use the prohibited name for an
+occasional adornment.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you see I was right, Konni. Now you will let me drink, won't you.
+Here's to you, you sweet little yokel."</p>
+
+<p>He was so struck by this proof that he sank back in his chair and said
+not a word.</p>
+
+<p>But the uncle and she continued to drink and laugh at him.</p>
+
+<p>When she threw a look into the mirror, she saw as through a billowy haze
+a red swollen face with rumpled hair under a hat tilted back on the head
+and two deep flabby furrows running from her mouth to her chin.</p>
+
+<p>This caused her some disquiet. But she had no time to heed her feeling
+because that unspeakable old uncle had a new joke on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Lilly dear, the Chinese way of singing the Lorelei?"</p>
+
+<p>Before she had even heard a syllable she burst out into a wild laugh.</p>
+
+<p>He put one of his bowed legs over the other, pretending it was
+a Chinese banjo, and played a prelude on the sole of his foot:
+"Tink-a-tink-a-tink." Then he began in a nasal, croaking, gurgling
+voice, drawing out his l's endlessly:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my belong too much sorry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And can me no savy, what kind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have got one olo piccy story<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No won't she go outside my mind.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When he came to the second verse,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dat night belang dark and colo,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he tore his wig from his head to heighten the effect; and he now
+actually looked the very image of an old, nodding "Chinee," with his
+shiny pate and his bright slanting slits of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fascinating, an overpowering spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Never in her life, not even on the professional stage, had she seen a
+clown's performance so provocative of side-splitting laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She would have died of envy had she not been Lilly Czepanek, the famous
+impersonator, who when the spirit moved her, needed but to open her
+mouth to evoke a storm of applause.</p>
+
+<p>Her matchless repertoire had lain fallow too long. But the beautiful
+Otéro had not yet grown old, Tortajada still set your senses a-whirl
+with her dancing, and Matchiche had just come into fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly merely had to shove her hat a little further back on her head and
+lift her black dress&mdash;even a Saharet would have had no cause to be
+ashamed of the silk petticoat she had brought in her trunk&mdash;and then off
+she could go.</p>
+
+<p>And off she went.</p>
+
+<p>Like a whirlwind over the carpet slippery with the yolks of eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Heigh-ho&mdash;olé&mdash;olé.</p>
+
+<p>"You must shout olé and clap your hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Olé&mdash;é&mdash;é!"</p>
+
+<p>The uncle bawled. The floor rocked to and fro in long waves. The lamps
+and the mirror danced along. All hell seemed to be let loose.</p>
+
+<p>"Do shout, Konni,&mdash;olé&mdash;don't be so downcast. Olé."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle, you have this on <i>your</i> conscience!"</p>
+
+<p>What did he mean by that?</p>
+
+<p>Why did he burst into sobs?</p>
+
+<p>Why was he standing there white as chalk?</p>
+
+<p>"Olé&mdash;Olé&mdash;é&mdash;é&mdash;é."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIA" id="CHAPTER_XXIA"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was nearly noon when Lilly woke in a glow of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle won over&mdash;the last obstacle removed&mdash;the future lying before
+her, a land of blossoms and golden fruits.</p>
+
+<p>What a farce and a lark the dreaded examination had been! What a
+jumping-jack, what a buffoon he was, that keen, penetrating man of the
+world, who had probably ground women's destinies as he would munch betel
+nuts.</p>
+
+<p>When she tried to review the events of the evening before, and arrange
+them in sequence, it came to her with a slight sense of oppression that
+at the end everything had resolved itself into a fog, shot with light
+and echoing with song and laughter, just as had happened yonder&mdash;in that
+other life, when she had romped wildly with Richard and the "crew."</p>
+
+<p>She could not puzzle out how she had mounted the steps and reached her
+room.</p>
+
+<p>As the fog lifted a little, she saw peering out of it a pale, set face,
+with an expression of pained surprise; she heard an outcry that sounded
+like a sob or a groan, and saw herself sobbing next to someone who was
+kneeling, who pushed her away with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Had that happened?</p>
+
+<p>Had she dreamt it?</p>
+
+<p>Why, she had sung and danced so beautifully, she had disclosed her
+greatest talents. Could they by any possibility have displeased him? Had
+she gone too far in her self-abandonment?</p>
+
+<p>Her anxiety waxed.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped out of bed and dressed herself, possessed by one thought: "To
+go to him!"</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the door-bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>It was, it must be he!</p>
+
+<p>But when she hurried to the door to throw herself into his arms with a
+cry of relief, she found, not him, but his uncle, who stood twirling his
+hat in his horrid fingers like a petitioner, and looked up at her with
+an oily, wry smile, most obnoxious to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the examination to begin again?" The question rose in her mind. "Or
+is it just going to begin?"</p>
+
+<p>Her welcome died on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking she let him in. She experienced a sickish sensation of
+vacancy and incorporeality, as if she might melt through the wall into
+her room.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman did not wait for her to open the door to the "best
+room," but opened it himself, and walked in, as if he were an old
+acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Konrad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Konrad?" With his little finger he scratched the silk band of his wig.
+"Oh, thereby hangs a tale." He drew out his watch with the clinking gold
+chain, and studied the dial. "It is just ten minutes after twelve. I
+suppose by now he's on his way to the station. Yes, he must be."</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;he&mdash;going&mdash;away?" she asked, her breath beginning to fail.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, he's going to take a trip. Yes, last night&mdash;hm&mdash;last night we
+talked it over. So now he's going to take a little trip."</p>
+
+<p>"That's absurd," she thought. "How can he go away without me?" But she
+checked herself, and entering into the game, asked with apparent
+nonchalance, "Where's he off to so suddenly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just a little trip. Not worth talking about. A favourable opening
+presented itself. There happened to be a double cabin vacant on the
+steamer leaving from&mdash;thingumbob&mdash;well, never mind from where&mdash;outside
+cabin, you know&mdash;on the promenade deck&mdash;the best situation, you
+know&mdash;the water doesn't splash in and there's plenty of air&mdash;and air's
+what you always want, especially during those four days on the Red Sea."</p>
+
+<p>Then it was true. Her suspicions on awakening were being verified more
+swiftly than she had thought they would be. It was only the beginning of
+the test of her character and intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"What do people do in the Red Sea, uncle?" she asked with her most
+innocent smile.</p>
+
+<p>"What do people do in the Red Sea, child? Four thousand years ago the
+ancient Hebrews probably asked the same question. And everybody still
+asks it when he melts into perspiration there. But that's the only way
+of going to India. And I want to go back to India once again. I'm tired
+of trotting about on red brick pavements. So I persuaded him to come
+along for a little while&mdash;you know he's overworked; you'll admit that. I
+think it's the best thing to do in such cases, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt a lump in her throat, as if all the gold knobs on his watch
+chain were choking her.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather a poor joke," she thought, "but goodness knows what he means by
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Whether she would or no, she had to keep up the game.</p>
+
+<p>"Konrad ought to have been polite enough to come and say good-by," she
+replied, pouting a bit, as if he were about to start off on a trip to
+Dresden or Potsdam.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he wanted to, child; of course he did. But I said to him: 'You
+see, my boy,' I said, 'it always means such dreadful excitement. It's
+enough to give you an apoplectic stroke.' He agreed, and asked me to
+arrange matters with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, let us arrange matters," she answered with the condescending
+smile that the farce, whatever its nature, merited.</p>
+
+<p>"He is probably down below in a cab waiting for a signal," she thought.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman put his stylish Panama beside him on the floor, leaned
+his short body back against Mrs. Laue's plush upholstery, and tried to
+assume an expression of sympathy and grief.</p>
+
+<p>The old clown!</p>
+
+<p>"If it were my affair, little one," he began, "I frankly confess I've
+gone crazy over you. Wrapped up, as I said yesterday. I know women from
+one end of the world to the other, and it is as clear as cocoanut oil to
+me: you're first rate stuff. You're fine as silk. But there are people
+who take themselves seriously and have great illusions, don't you know?
+People utterly without an idea that a human being is a human being,
+people who think they're something extra, and want life to dish up extra
+tit-bits to them. Oh, those people, I tell you, those people! That's the
+way the great disappointments come about&mdash;and reproaches&mdash;and
+despair&mdash;and tearing out your hair. He came near giving me a thrashing
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom are you talking about?" Lilly asked, growing more and more
+fearful.</p>
+
+<p>"As if I had led you into overshooting the mark! No, indeed. Nothing of
+the sort. I don't do such things. I don't set man-traps. And I told him
+so ten times over. But the misfortune is, we understood each other too
+well. We both belong to the same business. We're like two old
+shipmates."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by 'we both'? You and I?" Lilly asked with frigid
+astonishment in her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you and I, my child. Don't fall overboard. You and I. To be sure,
+you're a splendid beauty of twenty-five and I'm an old fool of sixty.
+But you and I have gone through the same mill. What need to explain to
+you at length? Have you ever searched for diamonds? I don't mean at a
+jeweller's&mdash;that you probably have. Well, a diamond lies in hard rock,
+in funnels, in so-called blue ground. If you come upon a blue ground
+funnel, you can imagine what it's like. There you squat. I went digging
+for diamonds once&mdash;with twenty men&mdash;day and night&mdash;for weeks and weeks.
+The blue ground was there, oh, indeed, it was, but the diamonds had been
+washed away. Do you see what I'm driving at? The fine ground is still in
+both of us, but what actually makes it fine, the devil has already
+extracted."</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you saying all this to me?" Lilly asked. Tears were rising to
+her eyes from sheer perplexity, because what he said could not possibly
+have anything to do with the great test.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, little girl. There are people who think there's no going
+back on their word. They have to swallow whatever they once put into
+their mouths. They won't spit it out even if it is a strychnine pill.
+Now <i>I</i>, on the other hand, think that nobody need consciously plunge
+into misfortune. Neither you nor he. And since it's best to wash the
+wool directly on the sheep's body, I came to you to make a little
+proposition. You see, here's a check book You're familiar with check
+books, I'm sure. On the right side are printed ciphers from five hundred
+up to&mdash;you can see for yourself. All the ciphers that make the amount
+higher than the sum written on the check, are cut off to keep little
+swindlers from cheating a man out of a hundred thousand marks with one
+stroke of the pen. Now look. This check is dated and signed. All that's
+missing is the sum, because I should never permit myself to offer you a
+certain amount. I leave it to you to specify what you think you need for
+a decent living in the future."</p>
+
+<p>He tore a check from the book and laid it on the table in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank heaven," thought Lilly, "all my tremours were needless."</p>
+
+<p>It was a clumsy trap. Even a blind man must see that his procedure was
+nothing more than a test of her disinterestedness.</p>
+
+<p>So, instead of throwing the old man out of doors&mdash;which she should have
+and would have done, had he proffered the check in all seriousness&mdash;she
+smiled and took the check from the table, and methodically tore it into
+bits, and with the middle finger of her right hand flicked one little
+pile of them after the other into his face.</p>
+
+<p>He jerked about uneasily in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me," he said, "permit me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means&mdash;I will <i>not</i> permit such vile jokes, uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are rejecting a fortune, child. Consider&mdash;we've torn you from
+your moorings. We've thrown you, as it were, on the street. Upon us
+rests the responsibility of seeing to it that you are not driven to
+ruin. And if you think that by accepting the check you are lowering
+yourself in Konrad's eyes, I can swear to you he doesn't know a thing
+about it. And he never will, I'll swear to that also."</p>
+
+<p>She merely smiled.</p>
+
+<p>His little blinking eyes turned bright and staring. Suddenly there was a
+cold threat in their look.</p>
+
+<p>"Or&mdash;perhaps you intend to hold the boy to his promise and mean to twist
+his pledge into a halter about his neck? Is that the sort you are&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not that sort."</p>
+
+<p>Her smile flitted past him and went to meet her beloved, who must soon,
+very soon, come storming up the stairs. Surely he could not endure
+waiting down there in the cab so long.</p>
+
+<p>"His word is in his own keeping. He never gave me a pledge. Even if he
+wanted to, I should never have accepted it. And even if what you said is
+true, he could go on his trip quite calmly&mdash;and return quite calmly. I
+would never attempt to meet him or reach him by letter, or remind him of
+what he is to me and will continue to be as long as I live. But I know
+it is <i>not</i> true. He loves me, and I love him. And take care, uncle, not
+to play such low tricks with his future wife as to offer blank checks
+and the like. If I were to tell him about it, you'd all of a sudden find
+you're a lonely old man who can leave his money to a cat and dog
+asylum."</p>
+
+<p>Now he must see what a blunder he had committed. His mistake annoyed him
+so that he jumped from his seat with a muttered "Pshaw!" and tramped
+about the room playing with his watch charm, and murmuring two or three
+times something like "a hangman's job."</p>
+
+<p>But she probably misunderstood him.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he seemed to have reached a decision.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped close to her, laid his disgusting hands on her shoulders, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, my dear, sweet little girl. We can't part without arriving at a
+conclusion. If I weren't such a cursed mangy old pariah-dog, and if over
+and above this, I didn't have to be considerate of the boy's feelings,
+the matter would be perfectly simple. I should say: 'Little one, if you
+want to, come let's go to the nearest magistrate. But hurry, I haven't
+much time to lose.' Don't stare at me so. Yes, that's what I mean&mdash;with
+<i>me</i>&mdash;with me. You wouldn't need to regret it either. As for Konrad, see
+here, you must really say so to yourself&mdash;it won't do&mdash;we shouldn't hit
+it off&mdash;it would be harnessing before and aft. Because he is a rising
+man. He wants to climb to the top. He is still blessed with faith and
+you no longer possess it. Too early in life you tumbled into the great
+meat-chopping machine, which finally converts us all into complacent
+wormy mush. You yourself wouldn't feel happy. You wouldn't be able to
+keep pace. You would lie on him a lifeless cargo, and be conscious of
+it, too. I'm not laying so much stress on last night's eye-opener. It's
+not the appearance of a coast line that counts. It doesn't matter
+whether it's covered with palms or sand. The important thing is the
+interior. And in the interior I see steppes&mdash;scorched&mdash;waste-land&mdash;no
+birds flying across it&mdash;a desert where confidence will not strike root.
+Crawl into whatever shelter life offers you, little one. Cling to those
+who brought you to the pass you are in. But let the boy go. He's not
+meant for you. Be frank, didn't you say so to yourself long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>So that's what it was!</p>
+
+<p>No test&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The end. The end.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly stared into space. She seemed to hear a tread dying away&mdash;a step
+lower, another step, another step, and another&mdash;growing fainter&mdash;ever
+fainter&mdash;as when Konrad had slipped away from her at dawn.</p>
+
+<p>But this time they would never return!</p>
+
+<p>She felt a slight gnawing disenchantment creep about her heart&mdash;nothing
+more. The worst would come later, she knew from of old.</p>
+
+<p>Then she saw herself dancing and yodeling and telling hoggish jokes with
+her hat tilted to one side and her petticoats raised to her knees&mdash;a
+drunken wench.</p>
+
+<p>She of the "lofty spirit" and "head divine,"&mdash;a drunken wench, not a
+whit better.</p>
+
+<p>Now she knew why he had stood there white as chalk, why that sob of
+distress had burst from his lips.</p>
+
+<p>And the feeling that poured over her in that second like a stream of
+boiling water was compounded as much of pity for Konrad as of shame of
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"How does he bear it?" she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"You can imagine how," he replied, "but I think I can pull him through
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle&mdash;I didn't <i>mean</i> to!" she cried with a great sob.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, child, I know. He told me everything."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant wounded pride flared up within her. She stopped, picked
+up a few of the scattered bits of paper, and held them out to him in the
+hollow of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"And you dared to offer me this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what was I to do, child? And what <i>will</i> I do with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bah!"</p>
+
+<p>She struck at him with both hands; but the next instant threw her arms
+about his neck, and wept on his shoulder. That was the place perhaps on
+which Konrad's tearful face had also rested the night before.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rennschmidt began to speak again. He made various proposals for her
+future. He would help her begin a new life, would give her the means for
+cultivating her great talent for the stage.</p>
+
+<p>But she shook her head at each of his suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>"Too late, uncle. Waste-land, you yourself said, where confidence will
+not strike root. I might aspire to music-hall fame. But to be quite
+frank, that wouldn't pay me."</p>
+
+<p>"The damned curs!" he hissed.</p>
+
+<p>"What curs?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know."</p>
+
+<p>She reflected as to whom he could possibly mean.</p>
+
+<p>"There was really only one," she observed. "Oh, yes, and another&mdash;and
+then one more. And later there were two besides, but they don't count."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that's quite enough, little girl."</p>
+
+<p>He stroked her cheeks, smiling kindly, and she did not find his fingers
+so disgusting.</p>
+
+<p>She even had to smile in response, though she fell directly to crying
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rennschmidt prepared to take leave. She clung to his shoulder; she
+did not want to let him go. He was the last bridge that joined her
+departing vessel with the land of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"What message shall I take to him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up. Her eyes widened. She wanted to pour out all her
+grief. Her squandered love sought for words which would carry it to him
+purged and sanctified.</p>
+
+<p>But she found none.</p>
+
+<p>She looked about the room as if help must come from some quarter. The
+pictures of the ancient actors smiled upon her. Those who had once been
+so eloquent had become dumb, dumb as her own soul. The framed lamp shade
+greeted her as if the future she had to pass at Mrs. Laue's side was
+greeting her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to say," she faltered. Then something occurred to her
+after all. "Please ask him&mdash;please ask him&mdash;why he himself didn't come
+to say good-by. I know him. He is not a coward."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rennschmidt made his queerest face.</p>
+
+<p>"Since you're so remarkably sensible, child, I'll tell you. Of <i>course</i>
+he wanted to come and say good-by. I even told him I'd try to drag you
+to the station."</p>
+
+<p>Without an instant's reflection she made a dash for her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>He had laid his hand on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>The little fat figure grew taller.</p>
+
+<p>"You will <i>not</i> go."</p>
+
+<p>"What! Konni is waiting for me&mdash;Konni wants to speak to me&mdash;and I am
+<i>not</i> to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;<i>will&mdash;not&mdash;go</i>, I tell you. If you're the brave girl I took you
+to be, you will not nullify the sacrifice you're making. You can reckon
+upon it, if he sees you again, you'll both remain hanging on each
+other."</p>
+
+<p>Her hat slipped from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;tell him&mdash;I'll love him&mdash;forever&mdash;forever&mdash;he'll be my last
+thought on earth&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;I don't know what else to say."</p>
+
+<p>He left the room without a word.</p>
+
+<p>Then she collapsed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIIA" id="CHAPTER_XXIIA"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had
+occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life,
+disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being
+had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground
+helplessly with dimmed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling
+in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour
+greeted all who entered its realm.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been
+expelled from Lischnitz; she did not sink into a state of apathetic
+brooding, nor wrestle desperately with fate.</p>
+
+<p>All she felt was a dim void stretching endlessly before her, broken now
+and again by a sharp outcry like that of an animal bereft of its mate; a
+sense of faint-hearted acquiescence, a consciousness of inevitable
+imprisonment, of a fearful descent into dark depths, of a dismal death,
+lacking strength and dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Between the present and the future, the sort of future that beckoned to
+her from every street, rose the railing of the bridge she had tried to
+climb after seeing "Rosmersholm." And when she stared into space with
+tearless eyes, she saw far below the black, purple-patched water rolling
+idly along, and heard the iron rail clink under her sole.</p>
+
+<p>This clinking became stronger, and turned into an accompaniment of
+everything that came and went during the uneventful days.</p>
+
+<p>It drilled her brain, hammered at her temples, and tingled in every pore
+of her body.</p>
+
+<p>There was a text to the miserable melody.</p>
+
+<p>The text was: "To die!"</p>
+
+<p>Well, then, to die!</p>
+
+<p>What could be simpler? And what more compelling?</p>
+
+<p>But not to-day. To-morrow perchance, or day after to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Something might still happen. A letter might arrive, or even he himself.
+Or if neither of these contingencies came to pass&mdash;who could tell what
+miracle fate held in readiness for the morrow?</p>
+
+<p>To let hour after hour of one additional day pass in the same melancholy
+monotony.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, a week after Konrad's sudden departure, it happened that
+Mrs. Laue entered the best room at an unusual time with an emphatic
+manner, and said: "Now, Lilly dear, you cannot go on the same way. If
+you were to cry, I shouldn't say anything. But <i>this</i> way you'll never
+come back to reason. There's only one sane and natural thing for you to
+do, return to your Mr. Dehnicke. If he had an inkling of how things are
+with you, he would have come to fetch you long ago. So you'll either sit
+right down and write him a nice letter, or to-morrow morning I'll give
+up my work and go to see him in his office. I'll get my expenses back."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly felt violently impelled to drive the old woman out of the room,
+but she had grown too discouraged to do more than turn away in impotent
+repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't much time, I must say," continued Mrs. Laue. "I have to
+complete the dozen before going to bed. But you can make up your mind
+to one thing: if he's not here by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, he'll
+come at twelve at the very latest, because by that time I myself will
+have gone for him."</p>
+
+<p>Lilly laughed sadly in scorn. So that was the way the miracle looked
+which fate held in readiness for the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Should she submit all over again to a man's puny supremacy? Crawl back
+into the cowardly comfort of perfumed imprisonment? Vegetate among inane
+festivities, in a sort of doze, or walk the streets when driven by
+disgust and boredom?</p>
+
+<p>She would not have the force to resist the next day when he came. She
+knew it well. Richard needed merely to look at her once with that
+whipped-dog expression which was entirely new to her in him. The very
+thought of it filled her with humiliating softness. Something was
+already stirring within her that would compel her to throw her arms
+about his neck and cry on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>It was really not worth while to bide the morrow for so pitiful a
+reward.</p>
+
+<p>So&mdash;she would die&mdash;that very day!</p>
+
+<p>That very day.</p>
+
+<p>It came to her like a cup of intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>With clasped hands she ran about the room weeping, rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>She would be a heroine like Isolde, a martyr to her love.</p>
+
+<p>And the railing of the bridge was waiting. How it would quiver and hum
+when she climbed on it.</p>
+
+<p>Then the buzzing in her head grew louder. The air was filled with a
+medley of tones. The walls re-echoed with the refrain&mdash;the noise on the
+streets, the mighty roar of the city&mdash;everything sang:</p>
+
+<p>"Die&mdash;die&mdash;die."</p>
+
+<p>She tore off her gown and dressed to go out.</p>
+
+<p>At first she thought of wearing one of her two ill-fitting dresses,
+because they had come from Konrad, but she could not prevail upon
+herself to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"Die in beauty," Hedda Gabler had said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if only I had his picture," thought Lilly, "so that I could take
+one last look at his eyes."</p>
+
+<p>But all she had from him were his letters and a few poems. They were to
+accompany her on her last walk.</p>
+
+<p>They were lying at the bottom of the leather trunk which was still
+hidden in Mrs. Laue's hole of a room, although the need for concealment
+was past.</p>
+
+<p>When she rummaged for the little packages among the contents of the
+trunk she came by chance upon the old score of the Song of Songs.</p>
+
+<p>She tenderly regarded the yellow stained roll.</p>
+
+<p>She was no longer angry with her Song of Songs or scorned it, as she had
+on that unfortunate morning when she had gone to her former home to
+break her promise to Konrad.</p>
+
+<p>Once again it became a dear, valuable possession, though neither a
+monitor, nor worker of miracles, nor a sanctuary. It still was an old
+remnant, but one to be kissed and petted and cried over, because a part
+of her own life clung to it.</p>
+
+<p>And some of her blood also.</p>
+
+<p>There were the dark stains.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of her going forth they had fallen upon it and on the day of
+her coming home, the deep waters would wash them away.</p>
+
+<p>Then her mind glided past the score back into the hazy past.</p>
+
+<p>Mists seemed to be lifting and curtains to be drawn aside, and her way
+seemed to lie behind her like a sharply defined band.</p>
+
+<p>She had been weak. And stupid. And had never considered her own
+interests. Every man that had entered her life had done with her what he
+would. She had never closed the doors of her soul, never shown her
+teeth, never given free play to the power of her beauty; but had always
+been ready to serve others, to love them, and make the best of
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>As thanks she had been persecuted and beaten and dragged in the mud her
+life long. Even the one man who had esteemed her had gone away without
+saying good-by.</p>
+
+<p>"But," she thought, "I have never hated a single one of them, and I have
+always had the right to regard myself as above the common, however I
+have suffered. However I have sinned. And the end was a heaven-sent
+gift."</p>
+
+<p>Did it not seem as if this Song of Songs, which lay there debased,
+stained, decayed, like her own life, had in truth hovered over her,
+blessing her and granting her absolution from her sins, just as in her
+early dreams and just as in her rhapsodies to Konrad during that hour of
+blissful self-surrender?</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."</p>
+
+<p>She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.</p>
+
+<p>Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several
+times again&mdash;but she did not understand what she was reading.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was nearly twelve o'clock when she softly closed the tall door behind
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Laue was still asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without
+being seen.</p>
+
+<p>Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at
+midnight.</p>
+
+<p>The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light&mdash;the trolley
+poles sparking and flashing between&mdash;silent, shadowy figures&mdash;it was all
+as if she were looking upon it for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>An oppressive fear beset her.</p>
+
+<p>Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon
+which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she
+would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on,
+irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.</p>
+
+<p>At the approach of each passerby she was impelled to hide herself, in
+the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.</p>
+
+<p>So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where
+withering linden trees scattered rain drops.</p>
+
+<p>Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind
+dark garden walls, past barns and factories.</p>
+
+<p>And her heels kept rapping: "Tap&mdash;tap&mdash;tap," as if she were wearing a
+pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.</p>
+
+<p>She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.</p>
+
+<p>But she cast the temptation from her.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were done, 'twere well it were done quickly," she had read
+somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Forward with clenched teeth!</p>
+
+<p>The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the
+invisible waters.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression
+at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the grassy slope.</p>
+
+<p>But she recoiled with a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>It had to be the bridge on the northwest side&mdash;fate had willed it so.</p>
+
+<p>It was still a great distance off, about an hour's walk.</p>
+
+<p>She came to livelier streets.</p>
+
+<p>The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent
+their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.</p>
+
+<p>On, on she must go!</p>
+
+<p>From the open doors of a basement café was wafted a hot garlic-laden
+vapour.</p>
+
+<p>What smelled like that?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a
+farewell dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing
+stream over the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered
+the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am
+lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the
+lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,&mdash;and it is all in
+the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen's dose of medicine
+has happily worked."</p>
+
+<p>The city noises swelled and called her back to life.</p>
+
+<p>She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin's unwearying
+night life.</p>
+
+<p>She passed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Strasse unrolled before her, a
+stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist
+enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by
+a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafés and cabarets
+glimmering red.</p>
+
+<p>The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She moved them without
+realising that she was moving them.</p>
+
+<p>She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole
+body like the vibrations of a mill.</p>
+
+<p>On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.</p>
+
+<p>Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their
+laughing quarry.</p>
+
+<p>The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped
+along.</p>
+
+<p>"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought
+Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with
+questions of honour and death."</p>
+
+<p>Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in
+whose shelter a person may die as he will.</p>
+
+<p>And her heels kept beating: "Tap&mdash;tap&mdash;tap." She could hear them even in
+all that noise.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I go to some café?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one
+were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."</p>
+
+<p>Lights&mdash;mirrors&mdash;upholstery&mdash;curling blue cigarette smoke&mdash;a tingling in
+her parched throat.</p>
+
+<p>Once&mdash;once again! Not a quarter of an hour&mdash;a <i>whole</i> hour&mdash;and still
+longer if she wished it&mdash;a poor bit of life which would do nobody any
+harm.</p>
+
+<p>But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not
+want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.</p>
+
+<p>So on&mdash;on.</p>
+
+<p>The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind&mdash;the dagger-like
+lights no longer pricked her.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.</p>
+
+<p>She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to
+the northwest side.</p>
+
+<p>The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The
+pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The
+dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything
+about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom
+glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.</p>
+
+<p>Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.</p>
+
+<p>She passed a florist's shop, where the blinds of the show window had not
+been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the
+prickly foliage of laurels and cypresses.</p>
+
+<p>What had gleamed like that?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase
+of the house of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke.</p>
+
+<p>Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in
+triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.</p>
+
+<p>She reached a bridge.</p>
+
+<p>She crossed it quickly.</p>
+
+<p>That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three
+kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity.
+One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to
+ruin."</p>
+
+<p>Who had that been?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured
+to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had
+helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>He had spoken of blue olive vapours&mdash;the sea blackened by the breath of
+the sirocco&mdash;and shining meadows of asphodel.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of meadows could they be&mdash;meadows of asphodel?"</p>
+
+<p>How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.</p>
+
+<p>But her heels said: "Tap&mdash;tap&mdash;tap," and the railing of the bridge
+called to her.</p>
+
+<p>A man spoke to her. Wouldn't she&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>She shook him off like a worm.</p>
+
+<p>She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.</p>
+
+<p>By whom?</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and
+tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:</p>
+
+<p>"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous
+rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my
+promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an
+account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had
+not made superfluous confessions&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>What then?</p>
+
+<p>"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and
+forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>She walked on reeling.</p>
+
+<p>More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a grass
+plot with a hedge about it.</p>
+
+<p>What sort of meadows could they be&mdash;meadows of asphodel?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stood at the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide,
+silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled
+into tiny sparks.</p>
+
+<p>A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the
+illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed
+by the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Half-past one o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.</p>
+
+<p>She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by
+horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet&mdash;I will," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to go on&mdash;straight ahead&mdash;on the bridge, where the rail
+awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.</p>
+
+<p>The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary
+bank wavering.</p>
+
+<p>She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it
+into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger
+than she.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on&mdash;on&mdash;whether
+she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail
+awaiting her.</p>
+
+<p>Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.</p>
+
+<p>All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even
+the lamps were reflected in it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Now, one leap&mdash;and the thing was done.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll do it, I'll do it," a voice within her called.</p>
+
+<p>But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to
+her as she climbed over.</p>
+
+<p>She threw it&mdash;a bit of white flitted by&mdash;a splash below&mdash;sharp and
+distinct, which made her tingle all over like a slap in the face.</p>
+
+<p>When she heard the sound, she knew she would never do it.</p>
+
+<p>No! Lilly Czepanek was not a heroine; she was not martyr to her love;
+she was no Isolde, who finds the strongest affirmation of herself in the
+desire not to be.</p>
+
+<p>She was nothing but a poor thing who had been crushed and exploited, and
+would drag along through life as best she could.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time she began to array all the possibilities of a
+livelihood remaining open to her.</p>
+
+<p>She would <i>not</i> return to the old life of dissipation. That was certain.
+No matter how much Richard's whipped-dog look might plead and beg.</p>
+
+<p>Anything else would do.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, she had been completely robbed of her desire to work, and it
+seemed very doubtful whether it would ever come back to her again.</p>
+
+<p>But after all: something would present itself which would enable her to
+live in peace and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Millions of human beings ask for nothing better and call it "happiness!"</p>
+
+<p>She sent one more searching look at the lazy waters, in which the Song
+of Songs had just disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned and went back.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the spring of the next year the business world of Berlin was
+surprised to read in the papers that Mr. Richard Dehnicke, senior member
+of the old, well-known firm of Liebert &amp; Dehnicke, manufacturers of art
+bronzes, had married the much-talked-of beauty, Lilly Czepanek, and had
+gone to Italy to live there temporarily.</p>
+
+<p>Those who knew her were not surprised.</p>
+
+<p>She had always been a dangerous woman, they said.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Song of Songs
+
+Author: Hermann Sudermann
+
+Translator: Thomas Seltzer
+
+Release Date: December 30, 2010 [EBook #34791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF SONGS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE SONG OF SONGS
+
+                            (DAS HOHE LIED)
+
+                          BY HERMANN SUDERMANN
+
+
+    TRANSLATED BY
+    THOMAS SELTZER
+
+    NEW YORK
+    THE VIKING PRESS
+    MCMXXVI
+
+    Copyright, 1909, by
+    J. G. COTTA'SCHE BUCHHANDLUNG NACHFOLGER, Stuttgart
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    Published in Germany, November 21, 1908
+
+    Privilege of copyright in the United States reserved
+    under the act approved March 3, 1905,
+    by J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger
+
+    Published November 20, 1909
+    Second printing, January, 1910
+    Third printing, February, 1910
+    Fourth printing, April, 1910
+    Fifth printing, September, 1910
+    Sixth printing, September, 1911
+    Seventh printing, March, 1913
+    Eighth printing, December, 1913
+    Ninth printing, January, 1915
+    Tenth printing, June, 1916
+    Eleventh printing, 1919
+    Twelfth printing, April, 1921
+    Thirteenth printing, September, 1923
+    Fourteenth printing, December, 1926
+
+
+
+
+THE SONG OF SONGS
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Lilly was fourteen years old when her father, Kilian Czepanek, the
+music-master, suddenly disappeared.
+
+It happened in this way. He had been giving piano lessons the whole day,
+in the interim swearing and drinking Moselle and Selters, for it was
+intensely hot. Occasionally he had slipped into the dining-room to take
+a cognac or arrange his Windsor necktie. He had pulled Lilly's brown
+curls as she sat labouring over her French vocabulary, and had
+disappeared again into the best room, where the girl pupils changed from
+hour to hour, and only the dissonances and the curses remained.
+
+When the last victim had stumbled through her lesson and closed the hall
+door behind her, Czepanek failed to reappear in his usual bad temper and
+with his usual appetite. He remained in the front room, where this day
+he neither whistled nor whined nor played out his rage on the keyboard,
+as he sometimes did after a day's labour. In fact, he gave scarcely a
+sign of life. Now and then a deep sigh--that was all.
+
+Lilly, who took warm interest in everything her handsome father did or
+did not do, let her French textbook slip from her lap, and stole up to
+the keyhole.
+
+Through it she saw him standing before the large pier-glass, absorbed in
+a close study of himself. From time to time he raised his left hand and
+pressed it as if in despair against his soft, silky, dark artist's
+curls, which Lilly's mother devotedly fostered every day with bay-rum
+and French oils.
+
+He and his reflection gazed at each other's moist red face with wild,
+eager eyes, and Lilly's heart expanded in love of her adored papa.
+
+To Lilly his standing before the mirror was a familiar sight. It was his
+manner of squaring accounts for his lost life and wasted love, his
+manner of charming back the great world, in which duchesses and prima
+donnas yearningly cherished the memory of their vanished idol.
+
+He stood there like an elderly god of love, with small alcoholic puffs
+under his eyes, and a tendency toward a paunch.
+
+Both mama and Lilly cared for him with unremitting zeal. They regarded
+him as a sort of bird of paradise, who by a lucky chance had been caught
+between the walls of a room, and who required the greatest effort, the
+utmost circumspection, to keep him safe in the cage.
+
+By right, Lilly should long ago have been sitting at the piano, for in
+the house of Czepanek a quiet keyboard was a waste of time and a sin
+before the Lord. She had to practice four or five hours every day. Often
+when her father was seized by the holy spirit of creativeness and forgot
+the time set aside for her practicing, she did not begin until nearly
+midnight. Then she sat at the piano frozen, with heavy eyes, striking
+out in all directions until the small hours of the morning. Sometimes
+her mother found her the next day lying with her arms crossed on the
+keyboard in that profound child's sleep from which there is almost no
+rousing.
+
+Thus it happened that she cared little for the artistic future for which
+her father's ambition had destined her. She preferred to dally with
+some old forbidden book, and often drove her father to despair by a
+false pretence at cleverness in playing at first sight. But to-day she
+had the Sonata Pathetique to do, and there is no trifling with that, as
+any babe in arms knows.
+
+So she was just about to interrupt her father as he stood there plunged
+in dreamy self-observation, when she heard a click at the door from the
+kitchen. She bounded away from the keyhole with one great leap of her
+long legs, and the next instant her mother entered, carrying the supper
+dishes.
+
+The mother's prematurely faded cheeks were now glowing from the heat of
+the kitchen fire. She held her lean figure erect, taut as a whip cord,
+which seemed to be tied in a knot at the abdomen by a protrusion, the
+result of abortive child-bearing. Dull marital sorrow had long ago
+transformed her eyes, once beautiful, into two lustreless slits. But at
+this moment they were beaming with pride and expectation.
+
+For to-day Mrs. Czepanek hoped to satisfy her lord and his palate.
+
+At the clatter of the plates on the table, the door to the parlour
+opened, and papa's dark curly head, about which the evening sunlight
+cast a halo, appeared in the bright opening.
+
+"The deuce, supper already?" he said, and his eyes wandered with a
+peculiar, confused gaze.
+
+"In ten minutes," the mother replied, joy at the surprise in store for
+him playing about her parched, chapped lips like secret bliss.
+
+He entered the room, took a few deep breaths, and said with the air of a
+man to whom speech comes hard:
+
+"I've just noticed that one of the straps of my hand-bag is torn."
+
+"Why, do you want it?" asked his wife.
+
+"One's hand-bag must always be kept in readiness," he answered, his eyes
+continuing to rove about the room. "Suppose I were suddenly to be called
+to act as substitute somewhere. I must have my bag ready."
+
+As a matter of fact, he had been called upon the previous winter to take
+the place of a Berlin virtuoso, who had undertaken to "do" the towns in
+eastern Germany and whose train had been snow-bound near Bromberg. The
+committee telegraphed to papa requesting him to play in his stead. But
+now, in midsummer, when the concert season was dead, such an emergency
+was scarcely within the realm of the possible.
+
+"I'll tell Minna to take it to the saddler's right after supper," said
+mama, who took good care not to contradict her choleric husband.
+
+He nodded meditatively and walked into his bedroom, while the mother ran
+to the kitchen to do the final honours in her own person to the titbit
+she had prepared for him.
+
+A few minutes later he returned with the bag in his hand. It looked
+rather bulgy. He stopped before the linen chest.
+
+"Lilly, dear," he said, "I wonder whether the score would go into the
+grip crosswise? In case I am called to a concert, you know--"
+
+The score of the Song of Songs was kept in the linen chest, so that,
+should fire break out during papa's absence, anyone in the family might
+easily get at this greatest of treasures.
+
+Lilly looked for the keys, but could not find them.
+
+"I'll go ask mama," she said.
+
+"No, no," he cried hastily, and a shiver went through his body, such as
+Lilly had often noticed when mother was mentioned to him. "I'll first
+take this old thing to the saddler."
+
+Lilly was shocked at the idea that her celebrated father should himself
+go to the saddler's dingy workshop.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, and reached out for the handle of the bag. She would
+take it to the saddler herself.
+
+But he warded her off.
+
+"You're too grown up now for such things, my girl," he said, and his
+eyes lighted up as they scanned her tall, virginal body, her hips and
+bosom, already beginning to show delicate curves. "Why, you're almost a
+_signora_."
+
+He patted her cheeks and pulled a little at the lock of the linen chest,
+gnawing his lips the while in intense bitterness. Then suddenly he shook
+himself, and with a shy, contemptuous look toward the kitchen--Lilly
+knew that look, too--went quickly out of the room.
+
+He went and never came back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night following that red summer evening remained graven in Lilly's
+memory hour by hour.
+
+Her mother sat on the window-sill in her nightgown, and her fervid,
+anxious eyes kept glancing up and down the street. Whenever she heard
+steps at a distance knocking on the pavement, she would start and cry:
+
+"There he is."
+
+Lilly felt there was no need to bother about the Pathetique to-day. A
+dull oppression in her left breast determined her to turn to St. Joseph,
+to whom she had stood in tender relations since her confirmation. She
+had already passed many a dreamy, idle hour before his altar at St.
+Anne's--right front, second chapel--and secretly sent up many an
+abstract sigh to the dear, good face with the beautiful beard. But
+to-night he failed her utterly. She could get no consolation from him,
+and vexed and disillusioned, she dismissed him.
+
+At twelve o'clock the last vehicle passed the house.
+
+At one the pedestrians, too, grew less frequent.
+
+At half-past two a dusty wind arose, smelling of sand and threatening to
+blow out the lamp.
+
+Between two and three only the night watchman was heard shuffling along
+the narrow, echoing street.
+
+At three the early delivery wagons began to rattle, and it grew light.
+
+Between three and four Lilly prepared a boiling hot cup of coffee for
+her mother, and ate up all the cold supper. Long waiting and crying had
+made her ravenously hungry.
+
+Between four and five a band of young night revellers passed by,
+throwing kisses to her mother, and when their importunities forced her
+to withdraw from the window they serenaded her. Fine, pure voices, Lilly
+had to admit despite her grief; rendition good and precise, without that
+pedantic stop-like effect which papa so detested in the singing
+societies. Perhaps they were even pupils of his who did not know his
+residence.
+
+Scarcely were they gone when the mother was again at her post.
+
+Lilly struggled against sleep.
+
+She saw as through a veil the thin blond hair waving over her mother's
+forehead in the morning breeze, saw the pointed nose, red with weeping,
+turn now to the right, now to the left, according to the direction from
+which a sound came; saw the nightgown fluttering like a white flag, and
+the lean legs incessantly rubbing against each other in nervous
+agitation. Then she had to retell, perhaps for the hundredth time, the
+story of the hand-bag and the linen chest, but her eyes closed.
+
+And then suddenly she started up with a cry; her mother had dropped back
+in a swoon, and lay supine on the floor like a log of wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+So Kilian Czepanek never came back.
+
+Good friends were not wanting, of course, who had for years foreseen the
+event. In fact, they failed to understand how he could have endured it
+so long--he, the man of genius, of God-given fancy, with the hall-mark
+of creative restlessness on his thunder-headed brow. Others called him a
+good-for-nothing, a dirty scoundrel, who ran after innocent girls and
+enticed young men to gamble. They declared Mrs. Czepanek lucky to be rid
+of him, and charged Lilly to erase her unworthy father from her memory.
+
+Most unpleasant of all, however, were those who said nothing, but
+presented bills. Mrs. Czepanek sold or pawned all the articles of luxury
+left her from the middle-class comfort of her youth, or from her
+husband's liberal moods. But these soon gave out. Furniture, dress and
+linen not absolutely indispensable followed; then at last the creditors
+were stilled.
+
+The singing society, to the leadership of which Kilian Czepanek had been
+called fifteen years before, and which, during that period, had carried
+off no less than six prizes, expressed its satisfaction with the
+accomplishments of its conductor by holding the position open for half a
+year and paying the salary in full to his wife.
+
+But this period of grace also came to an end. Now began the bitter
+begging pilgrimages to the eminent citizens and officials of the city,
+the sorry pulling of bells, the anxious scraping of shoes before
+strangers' doors, the half-hour waitings in dark corridors, the abashed
+sitting down on the narrow edges of chairs, the sighs, the stammering,
+the wiping of eyes, which, however honestly meant, came to have somewhat
+the appearance of professional hypocrisy. The more it was calculated to
+produce an impression the more it failed of its purpose.
+
+Now came the chase for work in shop and factory, in all places where
+bed-linen and shirts and nightgowns are made, where cheap lace is added
+to cheap underwear, where white goods is vitalised with hems and yokes
+and bindings and strings. Now came the whizz of the sewing machine the
+whole day and the whole night. Now came pricked fingers, inflamed eyes,
+swollen knees, vinegar compresses about feverish temples, a simmering
+tea-kettle at four o'clock in the morning, watery coffee heated three
+times over, with bread and butter instead of the midday roast and the
+evening eggs. In short, now came poverty.
+
+And strange to say, the more remote the day on which Kilian Czepanek had
+disappeared, the more confidently his abandoned wife looked forward to
+his return. The first half year had passed; another conductor appeared
+and challenged comparison. For a couple of weeks the papers contented
+themselves with mortifying him by flattering allusions to the former
+leader. But this also passed. And now followed the great silence of the
+grave. At most, Czepanek's picture remained alive only in a few
+bar-rooms and a few girls' hearts.
+
+Mrs. Czepanek, however, who had so long compressed her lips in smothered
+shame when the conversation turned upon her husband, began to speak of
+his coming back as of an established fact definitely prearranged. More
+than that, she who in the course of fifteen years had gradually lost her
+youth, her beauty, her ready wit and laughter, everything she had
+brought as a marriage dowry to her husband, sinking it, for no reason
+at all, in a grey pool of self-reproach and anxiety; she who for many
+years had not tried a coloured ribbon on her sunken breast, who had not
+troubled to arrange a lock of hair on her forehead, which kept growing
+higher and higher--this woman became vain again. Each time she received
+her meagre pay she made haste to invest part of it in powder and beauty
+creams. In moments of exhaustion, when she could no longer stand on her
+feet, she quickly whipped a red stick from her pocket and passed it over
+her thin lips. And about eight o'clock every morning she bustled between
+the kitchen fire and the sewing machine with a freshly burned wreath of
+curls.
+
+In this way she prepared herself for his return. She would receive her
+repentant husband in her outstretched arms, bedecked and radiant as a
+bride.
+
+For he was bound to return; that was certain. Where else would he find a
+comprehending smile like hers, where else the secret soul-harmony which
+consoles by silence and compels happiness by prayer, which, with the
+dropping of the rosary beads, secretly insinuates dreamy stipulations
+with Providence, and dissolves the whole universe into one great minor
+harmony of yearning? Where else was there a human being who served as
+she did, without malice and without regret, with body and with soul, who
+allowed herself to be taken or rejected according to impulse or desire?
+
+Thus she had once welcomed him, a young, blond, laughing, unsuspecting
+thing. She had given herself to him without stint and without
+questioning; just because he desired it. And she had scarcely felt it as
+her right and his atonement, when he led her to the altar at the command
+of her father, an honest subordinate in a court of justice. In fact,
+Czepanek had been forced into marriage by half the city, which
+otherwise would have ostracised the seducer and ousted him from his soft
+berth.
+
+Happier she could not be, that she knew. Of the nameless misfortune
+bound to come she had not the least presentiment; and when it came she
+took it without complaint; she loved him so very much, she regarded it
+as the natural indemnity for the unnatural gift of having possessed him.
+
+Yet he would come back in spite of all. Whether he wished to or not, he
+would come. She had in her possession a pledge which chained him to her
+for all time, and which, sooner or later, must force him to cross her
+threshold.
+
+It was not Lilly. True, he loved his child, loved her with a tenderness
+strangely compounded of pleasure in a toy for idle hours, and of
+aesthetic delight in her inner and outer loveliness. But for a real
+father's love, she knew, there was no room in his gypsy heart. Even in
+hours when he would feel himself most alone and abandoned, the thought
+would never occur to him to seek solace and comfort with a child of his.
+
+But the wife had something else in her keeping which gave her a far
+stronger hold upon him--a roll of music; that was all. He might easily
+have put it in the bag with which he had departed on his great journey.
+In fact, he had attempted to. But so great at the decisive moment was
+his desire to escape that he did not dare to face his suspicious wife.
+
+This roll of music contained everything that had linked his past with
+his future during the fifteen years of his Philistine life, everything
+remaining from the titanic storm and stress of his youth, from the giddy
+hopes and ambitions of the days when he starved.
+
+This roll of music--it was slender enough--contained the work of his
+life; it contained the Song of Songs.
+
+Since Lilly could think, nothing in the world had been spoken of with
+such respect, with such tender and reverent awe, as this work, of which,
+with the exception of the two women, no one knew a note.
+
+It was something that had never yet been, something unheard of, a new
+world of sound, the beginning of a musical development, of which the end
+was lost in the twilight of mystic anticipation.
+
+The opera had reached its culmination in Wagner, the road from which
+pointed straight down into the abyss; symphonic composition no longer
+answered modern requirements for sense music; the song had been split up
+by the newest school into a series of small subtle effects. The art of
+the future belonged to the oratorio, but not that constrained wooden
+production hitherto suffered to pass by the name from a false belief
+that we have to make concessions to a misunderstood ecclesiasticism,
+but--and here it was that the new world of sound, the Song of Songs,
+began.
+
+The score had been completed years ago. To entrust it to the heavy
+execution of the musicians of Czepanek's provincial town would have been
+desecration. So it lay there and lay there, and interwove the day with a
+mild, mysterious light, which no one saw, yet every one felt. It shot
+rays of light into the distant future, and so filled a child's
+palpitating heart with anticipation, prayer and love that that heart
+would rather have stood still than exist without this fountain of the
+good and the noble, from which the acting forces of life daily drew
+their sustenance.
+
+For Lilly the roll of music lying in the upper drawer of the linen
+chest, held together by two rubber bands, was a kind of household
+divinity, which gave purity and sanctity to the home. She had imbibed
+reverence for the sheets of paper, scrawled over with curly-headed
+runes, since the dawn of her recollections, and their music was
+familiar to her from her early childhood.
+
+Papa, it is true, did not like to have the themes of his creation
+bandied about in everyday life. "Why don't you sing 'O du lieber
+Augustin' or 'Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan?'" he used to say when
+he caught one of them dreamily humming his arias. "They are plenty good
+enough for you."
+
+Later his warnings grew unnecessary. Mama gradually forgot everything
+sounding like a song, and Lilly withdrew more and more into herself.
+
+She had arranged a sort of mass from the Song of Songs, which she
+celebrated before the mirror when she knew she was alone in the house.
+She draped a sheet about her waist like a skirt, hung window-curtains
+over her shoulders, wound old lace about her neck, and wove spangles
+taken from shoes into her hair. Singing, weeping, and uttering shouts of
+joy, with genuflections, magic dances and airy embraces, she lived
+through Sulamith's bridal yearning and ecstasy as awakened to life again
+in papa's Song of Songs after a slumber of twenty-five hundred years.
+
+The manuscript of this song became the anchor to which the hopes of
+Kilian Czepanek's family were henceforth fastened. It was conceivable
+that he, a vagabond, cast out by his own parents when a child, might
+abandon wife and daughter to want and pining--but to believe that he
+would desert the work of his lifetime, the sword wherewith he was to
+fight his way back into the great world, was sheer folly.
+
+And while the sewing-machine whizzed and whirred day and night in the
+attic to which Mrs. Czepanek and her daughter had removed, while the
+body of the forsaken woman dried up entirely and grew ever more
+deformed, and the layer of paint with which she kept herself young
+rested upon cheekbones sharpening from week to week, there lay in the
+upper drawer of the linen chest (the chest had been saved from
+bankruptcy) an earnest of future reunion, working miracles by its
+proximity, the Song of Songs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Lilly was now a tall young woman with a well-developed figure for her
+age, who carried her school-bag through the streets with the air of a
+princess.
+
+Her plaid dress of mixed wool was always wrinkled by rain, and despite
+the let-out tucks was ever too short. Her rainy-day boots went to the
+cobbler time and again, and between the wavy ends of her cotton gloves
+and the hems of her sleeves laboriously stretched to meet them, gleamed
+a strip of red, slender arm.
+
+But whoever saw her come down the street with the easy swing of her
+beautifully curved hips, with the careless, rhythmic tread of exuberant
+youth and strength, with the mobile head, too small for her tall body,
+set on a long neck, with the two mouse teeth that looked out eagerly
+from behind an upper lip somewhat too short, and with the two famous
+"Lilly eyes"--he who saw her did not think of the shabbiness of her
+dress, did not suspect that this delicately shaped, broad breast was
+bent for hours and hours over sewing, that this whole glorious, youthful
+organism, whose sap, as it chased through her veins, manifested itself
+in causeless blushings and passionate palings, was grandly maintained
+and preserved on boiled potatoes, bread spread with clarified fat, and
+bad sausage.
+
+The high school students followed her all afire, and for a long time the
+poems composed in her praise in the first year class were to be counted
+by the dozen.
+
+It cannot be said that she remained indifferent to their homage. When a
+troop of them came toward her on the street she felt as if a rosy veil
+were descending over her eyes from shame and dread; and when the young
+men passed by, doffing their caps--they had met her at the
+skating-rink--she was overcome by giddiness, or a sinking sensation, so
+suddenly did the blood mount to her head. The aftertaste of the meetings
+was delicious. For hours she recalled the picture of the young man who
+had greeted her most respectfully, or the one who had blushed like
+herself. That was the one she loved--until at the next encounter he was
+replaced by another.
+
+Despite her adorers she was subjected to less teasing by her schoolmates
+than is usual in such cases. The contented defencelessness of her manner
+disarmed all enmity. If they hid her school-bag she merely entreated,
+"Please give it back to me." If they stuck her up on the stove, she
+remained there laughing, and if they wanted to copy her English
+exercise, she gave them the solution to an arithmetic problem besides.
+
+The only discord in her relations with them arose from the jealousy that
+set her bosom friends by the ears. In this she was not quite blameless,
+as she changed her friendships with startling rapidity, feeling in duty
+bound to respond to all overtures of intimacy. Consequently her
+affections could not be fastened on a single companion for long, and she
+herself was amazed when she saw one sentiment pushed aside by the next
+attack.
+
+The teachers, too, had kindly feelings for her. The words, "Lilly, you
+are dreaming," which sometimes came from the platform, sounded more like
+a caress than a reproach. As head of the newcomers in the 1 B class she
+sat for a time at the end of the sixth row, and more than one hand gave
+her hair a paternal stroke in passing.
+
+Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such
+eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes _could_ not exist. "Cat
+eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them.
+Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her
+lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and
+nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.
+
+When fifteen and a half years old Lilly passed from the first-year class
+into the Selecta, the class for advanced pupils, for it had been decided
+that she was to earn her living as a governess.
+
+With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of
+study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. Nobody was
+addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper balls ceased, and no
+one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like
+"sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by
+repetition; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.
+
+For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy--she was
+neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such
+trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription,
+"Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course,
+not to be counted.
+
+But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple
+pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and
+yearning for the far-off, of a pupil's adoration for her teacher, and of
+a desire to save.
+
+He was assistant instructor in science in the girls' high school, and
+taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils'
+knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher's back in revenge.
+He gave no instruction whatever in the higher classes, but delivered
+lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.
+
+"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy
+through a maiden's soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering
+young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds
+the subject!
+
+His first name was Arpad.
+
+But there the romance ended. What remained was a poor consumptive, who
+had painfully earned his way through the university by private tutoring,
+only to fall a victim to the grave just when he had hoped to reap the
+scant fruit of the sufferings of his youth. His superiors helped him to
+the extent of their ability. They assigned him the easiest classes, and
+as soon as they noticed the fever stains burning on his cheeks, they
+obtained a substitute in his place and sent him home. But they succeeded
+in securing only a short respite, during which the dying man became a
+burden to the teaching staff. Feeling this himself he put forth suicidal
+energy to disarm whatever criticism might be made against his ability to
+work. He eagerly assumed all possible duties in his line, and what the
+most industrious and ambitious man found too difficult he, who stood
+with one foot in the grave, with no career ahead of him, gladly took
+upon his shoulders.
+
+The day the principal introduced him to the Selecta remained fixed in
+Lilly's memory. It was between three and four o'clock, the last hour,
+when the almighty principal's portly belly unexpectedly appeared in the
+doorway. He entered followed by the slender, good-looking young man with
+a slight stoop, who stood at Miss Hennig's right side during morning
+services in the main hall and dog-eared the pages of his hymn-book while
+the anthem was being sung. He wore a tight grey coat, which emphasised
+his slimness, and his shining modish silk vest cast a false glitter of
+the world of society over him. He made two or three abrupt bows to the
+class, like a lieutenant, and looked very shy and embarrassed.
+
+"Dr. Maelzer," said the principal, presenting him. "He will introduce you
+to the art of the Renaissance. I should like you, young ladies, to
+listen most attentively, for although the subject is not obligatory, and
+you will not have to pass an examination in it, it is of great
+importance for general education, and I shall have occasion to test your
+progress in the literature class when we take up, for example, Lessing,
+Goethe, or Winckelmann."
+
+With these words he strutted out of the room.
+
+The young pedagogue twirled his little blond moustache, which fell in
+two thin scraggly tufts over the corners of his mouth. A smile both
+bashful and sarcastic flitted across his face. He looked around
+irresolutely for the chair, hesitating, apparently, whether to sit down
+or remain standing.
+
+Meta Jachmann, with her usual inclination to be silly, began to giggle,
+and soon half the class had followed suit. A hot red spread over the
+teacher's wan face.
+
+"Laugh, ladies, laugh," he said with a voice which despite its weakness
+shook his narrow chest. "Persons in your position may well laugh; for a
+life full of activity and vigour lies ahead of you. I may rejoice, too,
+for I am permitted to speak to you as soul to soul; which is a piece of
+good fortune that rarely falls to the lot of a novice in the teaching
+profession. You will find that out from your own experience soon
+enough."
+
+The class grew still as a mouse. From that moment on he had the girls in
+his grip.
+
+"But that's not the whole of my good fortune," he continued. "The theme
+which the authorities of this institution have entrusted to my slender
+ability--whether from magnanimity toward me, or lack of respect for the
+subject, I cannot say--is the highest theme which human tradition knows.
+Every personal expression in history, however defiant, revolutionary, or
+alien the voice of the chosen one that uttered it, later exegesis used
+as moral fodder with which to satiate the masses. The only personages
+with whom this did not succeed were the men of the Renaissance. The nine
+times wise branded Plato as a shield bearer of Christianity, Horace as a
+pedant, Augustine as a church saint, Jesus as the Son of God. But no one
+has ever undertaken to make of Michael Angelo, of Alexander Borgia, of
+Machiavelli, anything but an ego, an ego which faces surrounding
+conditions and the world either as creator or destroyer, relying on the
+fulness of his own power."
+
+The young souls sat up and listened. Never had anyone spoken to them in
+such a tone. They felt he was talking his life away, but in the very
+moment they realised this, they drew a chain of freemasonry about him
+with which they shielded him.
+
+He continued. With bold rapid strokes, which wrung new life from the
+dead, he pictured to them the time and the men. The accumulation of many
+years of repression now burst from him in passionate utterance.
+
+His auditors suspected that here was more than a school lesson, more,
+even, than the harvest of scholarship. They divined that they were
+listening to a confession of faith; and they attached themselves to him
+with all the rapturous abandon of a woman and pupil, most rapturous when
+they did not understand.
+
+Lilly being one of the younger girls sat nearest to the instructor. She
+had a vague feeling, as of a flood of new, ineffably beautiful melodies
+being poured over her. Since everything in her life and imagination had
+hitherto centred about music, she had first to translate pictures and
+thoughts into the world of sound, before her perceptions could grasp
+them.
+
+She turned pale, and sat there squeezing her handkerchief in her left
+hand. Her eyes staring at him clouded over with moisture in the joy of
+surmise. She saw his breast working, saw the drops of perspiration on
+his forehead, saw the flames burning on his cheeks; she wanted to weep,
+to laugh, she wanted to cry: "Stop!" But she might not. So she sat
+motionless, and listened to the poor suppressed voice proclaiming the
+evangel of that old time which is still new. She listened also to
+another voice which cried jubilantly deep down in her heart: "Let there
+be----!"
+
+"But how does the world look," he continued, "in which that high-keyed
+life developed? Like Moses, I have viewed it only from the mountain. I
+have loitered a little in its outer courts, but I have seen enough for
+me to know that my soul will never cease to desire it while breath
+remains in my body. There between cypresses and evergreen oaks, temples
+and palaces sprang up in white glory from the soil, seeming like a part
+of it. What is clay here is marble there; what is routine here is free
+creative energy there; our feeble imitation there is spontaneous growth.
+Here laborious, grafted culture, there the grace of a happy nature; here
+poverty-stricken pursuit of the useful, there voluptuous passion for the
+beautiful; here sober, subtly reasoning Protestantism, there glad,
+naive, Catholic paganism."
+
+This came to Lilly like a blow on the head. She had been raised by
+Catholic parents in a Protestant country. Though there had been little
+place for piety in her home, a great deal of religious enthusiasm dwelt
+in her soul, fostered by an imaginative faculty and a compelling
+emotionalism. To hear her Catholicism praised did her heart good, but
+why it should be linked, almost as a matter of course, with the wicked
+heathens, whom she had been taught to despise and deplore, was a riddle
+to her. Her mind was a whirl of anxious thoughts and queries. She was
+unable to follow the speaker any longer, and lost the thread of his
+discourse, until after a while she heard him, in soft caressing words,
+give a picture of the southern country.
+
+She saw the golden-blue summer sky rising over the isles of the blessed,
+she saw the sun's bloody disk dip into the sea blackened by the breath
+of the sirocco, saw the shepherd with his flute of Pan pasturing his
+long-haired goats on the shining meadows of asphodel, saw the evergreen
+forest clambering up the slopes of the Apennines to their snow-clad
+peaks. She breathed in the fragrance of the laurels and strawberries and
+inhaled the olive vapours, which, at the sounding of the Angelus,
+ascended heavenward in blue pillars, like the offerings of a prayer.
+
+When she glanced up again, she almost started back in fright. A
+consuming, tortured look of yearning shot from his eyes as they stared
+with clairvoyant gaze, past them all, into emptiness.
+
+The bell rang, the hour was over. He looked around like a somnambulist
+roused from sleep, snatched up his hat, and rushed from the room. Sacred
+silence remained. After a while the tension was broken by a whisper here
+and there and by a shy fumbling for school-bags.
+
+Lilly spoke to no one, and managed to make her escape into the street
+alone. Humming and weeping softly she walked home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning there was profound excitement in the Selecta. The waves
+set in motion by the great event of the day before continued to
+vibrate.
+
+Anna Marholz, the daughter of a physician, who was a member of the Board
+of Health, brought some facts about the young instructor's life. It was
+absolutely necessary, she reported, for Dr. Maelzer to go to the south.
+If he remained at home, he would probably not survive the winter.
+
+Lilly's heart stood still. The others considered ways and means of
+helping him. Since he lacked the money and since the city would not
+assume the cost of so long a leave of absence, especially as his
+position was not yet assured, the means for saving him would have to be
+obtained privately.
+
+"Let's form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded
+enthusiastically.
+
+"Thank God," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been
+prolonged by forty or fifty years.
+
+At the ten o'clock recess they lost no time in getting together for
+urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the
+inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of
+secretary.
+
+A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein's confectionery
+shop--they did not venture into Frangipani's, the resort of military
+officers and city officials--in the course of which fifteen young ladies
+consumed fifteen small meringues glaces and fifteen cups of chocolate,
+business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various
+promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested
+that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with assigned roles be given
+in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to
+take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for
+this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever
+found his way into girls' hearts.
+
+Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys' high school quartette,
+proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the
+Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.
+
+Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme
+for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens.
+This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that
+one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three
+projects into execution.
+
+Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went
+pit-a-pat, "For him!"
+
+The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so
+also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues
+glaces and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but
+enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Maelzer's
+subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in
+substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense
+sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with
+serious obstacles.
+
+The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at
+the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission
+to cooeperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department
+was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared
+apply for it.
+
+Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating
+in a confectioner's bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly's
+share. Lilly well knew the way to the pawnbroker's, and she did not have
+to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she
+wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was
+all for his sake.
+
+Autumn came, and Dr. Maelzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each
+time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it
+furtively.
+
+One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art
+would be discontinued until further notice.
+
+Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.
+
+Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.
+
+"He's dying, he's dying!" was the cry in her soul.
+
+After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in
+one of her father's books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in
+his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain.
+But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours,
+despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the
+damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for
+having robbed her toiling mother of her help.
+
+The adventure was repeated the following evenings, and anxiety waxed in
+Lilly's soul. She pictured him lying there gasping for breath, with no
+woman's hand to wipe the death sweat from his brow.
+
+On Saturday her solicitude drove her from her work-table early in the
+afternoon. To patrol his house in broad daylight was impossible, but she
+ventured to pass it once, and lacked the courage to return. Then she was
+seized by a heroic resolve. She went to the florist's shop, and
+sacrificing the two marks eighty left over from the transaction of the
+little cross, she walked back to his house with a brownish yellow
+bouquet of drooping autumn roses.
+
+Without stopping to think she ran up the steps, and rang at the door of
+the second story, where she had seen the green lamp.
+
+An old woman in a soiled blue apron and mumbling her lips opened the
+door. Lilly stammered Dr. Maelzer's name.
+
+"In the rear," said the woman, and shut the door.
+
+Then the little green lamp did not burn for him. An old woman lived
+there, who wore a dirty apron and whose lips kept mumbling. For a week
+she had been worshipping a false idol. Disappointed, she was about to
+steal down the stairs, when her eye caught his name among four
+door-plates. Her heart leapt, and before she knew it, she had knocked.
+
+A brief interval elapsed before his head appeared behind the door, which
+he held only partly open. The lapels of his grey coat were raised to
+cover his neck, which apparently was collarless. His hair was in wild
+disorder, and the ends of his moustache were more matted than ever. And
+how his eyes glared as they seemed to demand in embarrassment, "What do
+you want?"
+
+"Miss--Miss--Miss--" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but
+failed to recall her name.
+
+Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained
+rooted to the spot as if paralysed.
+
+"You have been sent here by your class, I presume," he said.
+
+"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.
+
+"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come
+in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious
+consequences for both of us. But as a delegate--" he reflected a
+moment--"come in, please."
+
+Lilly had imagined him living in high, spacious apartments, surrounded
+by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay
+she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open
+card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly
+unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.
+
+"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.
+
+At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling
+less embarrassed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought
+them nearer to each other.
+
+"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"
+
+Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.
+
+"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.
+
+He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against
+his face.
+
+"They don't smell," he said, "they are the last--but my first. So you
+can imagine how precious they are to me."
+
+Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.
+
+"Are you still in pain, Dr. Maelzer?" she managed to ask.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Pain? No. I don't suffer from pain. A little fever now and then--but
+the fever's pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon
+away over everything--over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too;
+and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so
+beautiful--that is to say--I beg your pardon--"
+
+His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the
+pupil.
+
+In the midst of his embarrassment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to
+drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in
+two blue hollows.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoarser than
+usual.
+
+"Lilly, Lilly Czepanek."
+
+The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a
+short time.
+
+"You intend to become a teacher?"
+
+"Yes, Dr. Maelzer."
+
+"Do you know what? Get yourself exiled to Russia and throw bombs. Go to
+a pest-house and wash sores. Marry a drunkard, who will beat you and
+sell your bed from under your body. _Don't_ become a teacher--not
+_you_."
+
+"Why not just I?"
+
+"I will tell you why. A flat-breasted person with watery eyes and
+falling hair who can only see one side of a subject--such a creature
+should be a teacher. Somebody without the blood and nerve to live his
+own life can teach others to live--he's good enough for that. But he
+whose blood flows through his body like fluid fire, whose yearning
+spurts from his eyes, to whom the problems of life exist for seeing and
+knowing, not for paltry criticism, he who--but I mustn't talk to you
+about that, though I should very much like to."
+
+"Please do, please," Lilly implored.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+"And already a woman." His eyes scanned her in pained admiration. "Look
+at me," he continued. "I, too, was once a human being--you wouldn't
+believe it--I, too, once stretched two sturdy arms longingly to heaven;
+I, too, once looked with desire into a girl's eyes, though not into such
+as yours. Let me prattle. A dying man can do no harm."
+
+"But you shall not die," she cried, jumping from her seat.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Sit down, child, and don't excite yourself about me. It doesn't pay. A
+friend of mine once broke the back-bone of a cat that had gone mad. He
+did it with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn't run away, she
+couldn't howl, she couldn't do anything but just remain on all fours and
+cough and choke and cough and choke--until the second blow came. That's
+the way it is with me. There's nothing to be done. Go away, child, I've
+already made my peace, but when I look at you my heart grows heavy
+again."
+
+Lilly turned her face away to hide her tears.
+
+"Must I?" she asked.
+
+"Must?" He laughed again. "I shall feed on every minute of your presence
+as a hungry man feeds on the crumbs he digs out of his pockets. You sat
+on the left end of the first bench. I remember. I said to myself, 'What
+a pair of improbable eyes! Such eyes the magic dogs of Andersen's tales
+must have, eyes to which you would like to say, Please don't make such
+big eyes. And from being thought big, they grow still bigger and
+bigger.'"
+
+Now Lilly laughed.
+
+"You see," he said, "I have made you merry again. You must not carry
+away too deathlike a picture from here. Our lessons were beautiful,
+weren't they?"
+
+Lilly answered with a sigh.
+
+"When I spoke of Italy, you gasped a couple of times from sheer longing.
+I thought to myself: 'She's gasping just like yourself, yet she doesn't
+need it.'"
+
+"Would you like to go there very, very much?" Lilly ventured to ask.
+
+"Ask a man on fire whether he would like to take a cold plunge."
+
+"And it's the only thing that would save your life?"
+
+He looked her up and down a moment with a black, morose gaze.
+
+"Why are you questioning me? What do you want to find out? Tell the
+young ladies of your class that I'm very grateful to them, tell them I'm
+touched by their sympathy, I--"
+
+An attack of coughing choked him. Lilly jumped up and looked about for
+help. She instinctively seized a glass from the folding-table, which was
+half filled with a pale liquid, and held it to his mouth. He groped for
+it eagerly. After drinking he fell back exhausted, and looked at her
+gratefully, tenderly. She returned his look with a feeble smile,
+thinking only one thought:
+
+"What happiness to be here!"
+
+It was so quiet in the dark, overheated room that she could hear the
+ticking of his watch, which hung on the wall not far away. He wanted to
+sit up and speak, but he seemed not to have recovered sufficient
+strength. Lilly gave him an imploring look of warning. He smiled and
+leaned back again. So they sat in silence.
+
+"What happiness!" thought Lilly. "What great, great happiness!"
+
+Then he stretched out his hands to her wearily. She took them in an
+eager grasp of both her own. They felt hot and clammy, and his pulse
+beat down to his finger-tips. It went twice as fast as hers, for she
+could feel hers, too.
+
+"Listen, child, sweet," he whispered. "I want to give you a piece of
+good advice to carry away with you. You have too much love in you. All
+three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from
+pity. One of them everybody must have if he's not to be a fossil. Two
+are dangerous. All three lead to ruin. Be on guard against your own
+love. Don't squander it. That's my advice, the advice of one on whom you
+cannot squander it, for I can use it--God knows how well I can use it!"
+
+"Have you nobody to stay with you?" she asked, dreading to hear that
+some other woman had the right to nurse him.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"May I come again?"
+
+He started, struck by the ardour with which she asked the question.
+
+"If the class sends you again, of course."
+
+Lilly cast aside all reserve.
+
+"That was a lie," she stammered. "Not a soul knows I came here."
+
+He sprang to his feet, almost like a man in good health. His face
+lengthened, his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out his hands,
+which were trembling violently, as if to ward her off.
+
+"Go," he whispered. "Go!"
+
+Lilly did not stir.
+
+"If you don't go," he went on, excitement almost stifling his words,
+"you will ruin your future. Young ladies do not visit unmarried men who
+live the way I do--even if the man is their teacher and sick as I am.
+Tell no one that you have been here, no friend, not a single human
+being. Your livelihood depends upon your reputation. I cannot steal your
+bread. _Please go._"
+
+"May I never come again?" Her eyes pled with him.
+
+"No!!" he shouted in a voice like riven iron.
+
+Lilly felt herself being shoved through the doorway. The key was turned
+in the lock behind her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She disobeyed his injunction that very hour. She ran to Rosalie Katz,
+her friend _du jour_, to confess everything and relieve her feelings in
+tears. The little brown Jewess had a soft heart and was also head over
+heels in love with her teacher, and so the girls wept together.
+
+But they had forgotten to lock the door, and thus it happened that Mr.
+Katz, whose wealth and social position found pictorial expression in a
+round paunch, and whose waistcoat buttons consequently were always
+coming loose, entered his daughter's room to have one sewed on.
+
+When he discovered the girls in tearful embrace, he discreetly retired.
+But the instant Lilly had left the house, he extracted all the completer
+a confession from his daughter. He learned the story of the sick
+teacher, the abortive committee meetings, and the futile meringues
+glaces.
+
+"Well, we can fix that," he said with a smirk, twirling the very thin
+watch chain--heavy watch chains were worn only by those among the grain
+merchants who had remained below on the social scale--which branched out
+to the right and to the left from the third buttonhole of his waistcoat.
+
+A week later Dr. Maelzer received a registered letter from two strangers
+informing him that means had been found to enable him to make a lengthy
+sojourn in the south. All he needed to do was obtain leave of absence
+and draw the first payment at the office of Goldbaum, Katz & Co.
+
+He departed on a cold, crisp October evening. The faculty accompanied
+him to the station. Lilly and Rosalie, who had learned the time of his
+leaving at papa Katz's office, also were present, but they kept
+themselves in the background.
+
+He glided past them muffled in a thick scarf, his fiery eyes turned upon
+the distance.
+
+When the train left, the two girls flung themselves into each other's
+arms and wept for love and pride.
+
+On their way home Rosalie invited her friend to have an eclair with
+her, for it had grown too cold for meringues glaces.
+
+Half an hour later they were sitting in the confectionery shop smiling
+at each other and looking at the pictures in the illustrated papers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+With the advent of spring a new and gayer existence began for Mrs.
+Czepanek.
+
+He was soon coming, that was certain. But even if the time was short,
+why spend it over that disgusting sewing? There was a less wearing way
+of making a living.
+
+The thing was simple enough--rent an apartment of nine rooms, buy the
+furniture on credit, and have a plate hung on the outside of the house
+inscribed: "Board and Lodging for Students." As for the rest, well, a
+way would be found.
+
+This little set of thoughts took exclusive possession of Mrs. Czepanek's
+poor brain, riddled like a sieve by the incessant whirr of the
+sewing-machine.
+
+Though such a careless existence appealed to Lilly's fancy, she
+harboured some small doubts. In the first place the clamouring,
+threatening duns that had besieged their home after papa's departure
+were still fresh in her shuddering memory. Then she did not see quite
+clearly where so many students, enough to fill a nine-room apartment,
+were suddenly to come from after the beginning of the summer semester,
+since all had secured quarters already.
+
+But her mother would listen to no objections.
+
+"I will go to the directors, I will go to the mayor, I will--" and the
+attic room resounded with the new triumphant, "I will--"
+
+Now began a series of mysterious expeditions. Frequently, when Lilly
+returned from school, she could tell at the bottom of the stairs that
+the machine, whose industrious clatter had greeted her for years, was at
+a standstill, and she would find the key to the room under the door-mat.
+
+As the time drew near for the great event, the mother became more
+taciturn. A crafty smile lay on her face, which, but for an admixture of
+scorn, was like the smile parents wear before Christmas. She painted her
+cheeks more carefully than ever, and the jar of rouge, which previously
+she had kept locked away from Lilly, reposed unabashed on the top of the
+chest.
+
+But money grew rapidly scarcer. Lilly had to give up every minute she
+could spare from school work to make up for her mother's remissness,
+while Mrs. Czepanek went about calculating and speculating. She put her
+foot to the treadle only on rare occasions, when Lilly pled with her
+urgently. The delivery of finished articles became more and more
+irregular, and the two women were in danger of losing their entire means
+of subsistence.
+
+Lilly's vast hoard of youthful strength threatened to give out. Yet this
+did not cause her overmuch concern.
+
+"Something'll turn up," she thought.
+
+If only she could have gotten one good night's rest, instead of lying
+dressed on the edge of the bed from two to six in the morning, she would
+not have grudged her mother her youthful intoxication born of young
+hopes.
+
+Lilly sat in school with tired, reddened eyes, a filmy veil between her
+and the world, between her and the thoughts she was expected to think.
+Her teachers began to find fault with her.
+
+It was high time for the new life to begin.
+
+It began on a hot, drab July day.
+
+On returning from school Lilly saw two waggons standing outside the door
+loaded with furniture smelling of fresh varnish. Even before she set
+foot on the lowest step she could hear her mother's shrill voice
+apparently raised in altercation with strangers.
+
+Lilly ran upstairs, her heart beating fast. Two drivers wearing black
+leather aprons were standing there, one with a bill in his hand
+demanding money. A look of amusement was on their red faces. Mrs.
+Czepanek was tripping to and fro, running her fingers through her
+freshly-curled hair and screaming all sorts of things about rascality
+and broken promises and grinding down the poor. Whereupon the men
+laughed, and said they'd like to get back home that day.
+
+This set Mrs. Czepanek off completely. She tried to snatch the bill from
+the man's hand. He refused to give it up, and she set to pummelling him
+with her fists.
+
+Lilly sprang between them, caught hold of her mother, who fought
+desperately, and called to the men to leave, telling them everything
+would be arranged. So the men took themselves off.
+
+Her mother's wrath now descended upon Lilly.
+
+"If you hadn't come," she screamed, "I would have gotten hold of the
+receipt, and everything would have been all right. Now I have to go
+there to-morrow again, while if you hadn't mixed in, the furniture could
+have been unpacked in the new apartment this very day."
+
+"What new apartment?"
+
+Mrs. Czepanek laughed. How could Lilly be so stupid? Did she think her
+mother had been going about idle all that time?
+
+Then everything was revealed. The nine-room apartment had already been
+rented, and all they needed to do was move in. Even the plate had
+already been made. When hung it would act like magic. So much for the
+outside. But hadn't she self-sacrificingly strained every nerve on the
+inside equipment, too? She wasn't going to describe the furniture, for
+it might make her angry again, but--
+
+She had bought curtains for twelve windows--the pattern a Chinese lady
+and a palm leaf. And six rugs, good ones, because students usually have
+a pretty heavy tramp, and cheap stuff would wear out like chiffon. Big
+English wash basins with gold flowers, the pattern exactly matching the
+pattern of the ten stands. Unfortunately the dishes were not ready for
+delivery because it always took three or four weeks to have the monogram
+burnt in. But they would have to have something to eat from, so for the
+meantime she had bought a cheaper set--for eighteen people--everything
+thoroughly refined and respectable. She had been very clever and very
+careful in the entire matter.
+
+While engaged in this description, Mrs. Czepanek walked about the
+centre-table with long shambling steps. Her small eyes, with the traces
+of many sleepless hours upon them, glistened and gleamed, and beneath
+the false glowed the genuine red on her haggard cheeks.
+
+Lilly, who was beginning to be a bit uneasy, ventured to inquire
+concerning the payments. Her mother simply laughed at her.
+
+"You are either a lady and impress the tradespeople, or you are not a
+lady. I think that I, the wife of Kilian Czepanek, conductor of the
+singing society, am thoroughly entitled to be treated with respect."
+
+"Are the things at the apartment?"
+
+Mrs. Czepanek laughed again.
+
+"What should I do with them before the apartment is in order? Apartments
+have to be freshly painted and papered." Then with the graceful gesture
+which only the ability to pay bestows upon a person, she added: "I was
+especially careful in selecting the wall-paper to get artistic
+patterns."
+
+Lilly had a sickish feeling. It was like being in doubt as to whether or
+not your schoolmates were teasing you.
+
+Added to all the other annoyances nothing had been gotten for dinner.
+
+Lilly set the coffee on to boil and put the afternoon rolls on the
+table. Well, then, they would simply skip a meal again. The two
+Czepaneks had grown nimble in that sort of skipping.
+
+The mother hastily gulped down the hot drink. No time must be lost, she
+said, they would have to get at the packing.
+
+At this point she was seized by another attack of fury.
+
+"Hadn't you held my hands, you good-for-nothing, you," she screamed, "we
+should have had that lovely furniture in its place by to-morrow morning.
+As it is, we shall have to move in with all this trash. What _will_ the
+people say when they see it?"
+
+She tore at her artificial curls and despairingly brandished the
+bread-knife, with which she was slicing her roll.
+
+Then she turned up the sleeves of her blouse, and said the packing
+should begin.
+
+She emptied the wardrobe and piled the clothes over the bottom of the
+bed. The underwear and linen, the contents of their linen chest, she
+sent flying over the floor.
+
+The sinews of her withered arms jerked, the sweat trickled down her
+forehead.
+
+Lilly, watching the aimless pother with an oppressed feeling at her
+heart, noticed the score of the Song of Songs, the home's greatest
+treasure, lying on the floor, heedlessly thrown there by her mother
+along with nightgowns and bed-clothes.
+
+She stooped to pick it up.
+
+"What are you after with the Song of Songs?" screamed the mother. She
+had been kneeling, and now jumped to her feet.
+
+"Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was just going to put it on the
+table."
+
+"You lie," the mother screeched, "you low-down thing. You want to steal
+it, the way you stole the receipt. I'll spoil your little game for you."
+
+Lilly suddenly saw a gleaming something pass before her eyes, and felt a
+pain at her throat, felt something warm spread soothingly down to her
+left breast.
+
+Not until her mother prepared for a second thrust did Lilly realise it
+was the bread-knife she was holding in her hand. She uttered a piercing
+scream, and grasped her mother's wrist.
+
+But the mother had developed giant strength, and Lilly would probably
+have succumbed in the struggle that ensued, had not the noise they made
+drawn the neighbours to the spot.
+
+Mrs. Czepanek was caught from behind, and bound with handkerchiefs. She
+held the bread-knife in a tight clutch, which the strongest man could
+not relax, and did not drop it until an opiate had been administered by
+the physician who had hurried to the scene.
+
+Lilly's wound was dressed, and she was taken to the hospital, where she
+remained temporarily, because they did not know what else to do with
+her. While at the hospital she learned that her mother had been placed
+in the district insane asylum, and in all likelihood would never come
+out of it again.
+
+Lilly was left alone in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Well, young lady," said Mr. Pieper, the prominent lawyer, "I have been
+appointed your guardian. I accepted the office because I thought it my
+duty--the papers in Lemke _vs._ Militzky," he interrupted himself to
+call to his managing clerk, who had just then entered. "What was I going
+to say? Oh, yes. Because I thought it my duty, despite my being an
+extremely busy man--to assist widows and orphans to the best of my
+feeble ability."
+
+He passed his exquisitely cherished left hand over his shining bald pate
+and straw-coloured beard, beneath which a worldly mouth half concealed
+an epicurean smile.
+
+"My wards all make their way in the world," he continued. "It's my pride
+to have them succeed. The way they do it--well, that's my affair, a
+business secret, so to say. I am convinced, my child, that you, too,
+will get along. If I didn't think so, I should not be so interested in
+you probably. The first thing is to get the young ladies the right
+positions. The homely ones give most trouble, unless they happen to
+possess a certain measure of self-abnegation. It pays them to assume the
+so-called Christian virtues. But of course you don't belong in that
+category--you probably know it yourself--I tell you merely that you may
+learn with time to make demands. I must explain--the main art in life is
+to determine the boundary line between demands justifiable and demands
+unjustifiable. That is, you must have a feeling for exactly how far your
+powers will reach in each circumstance as it arises. A girl like you--"
+
+The managing clerk, a tall, bony fellow, suddenly appeared at the
+lawyer's side shoving a bundle of documents at him.
+
+"At four o'clock the Labischin divorce case. At quarter past five
+Reimann--Reimann _vs._ Fassbender--get everything ready, and have
+someone here to accompany this young lady--the papers will tell you
+where. That will do."
+
+The managing clerk vanished.
+
+"Well," Lilly's guardian resumed, "the time I have to spare for you is
+nearly gone. You cannot continue with your schooling, that's plain.
+There's no money for it. But even if you had the means, I'm not certain
+whether in view of your future--however, a governess may make a
+brilliant match--it sometimes occurs, chiefly, to be sure, in English
+novels--but there's the danger, too, that you might--excuse me for the
+word--on the spur of the moment I can't think of another--besides, it's
+the right one--that you might be seduced. What I'd rather see you than
+anything else is the lady in a large photographic establishment who
+receives customers. But it seems to me you haven't enough
+self-confidence as yet for that. One must make a deep impression at
+first sight, because people who leave an order have to have some
+inducement for coming back to call for their pictures. I've selected
+something else for you, for the purpose more of giving you a short
+period of trial than of providing you with a permanent position.
+It's in a circulating library. It will give you plenty of
+opportunity--discreetly, you know--not to hide your light under a
+bushel. The remuneration, I need scarcely say, will be moderate--free
+board and lodging and twenty marks a month. You will have a chance to
+let your fancy--I suppose you're not yet _blase_--let your fancy roam at
+will in the fields of general literature. There you are, young lady!
+Mercy on us! Why are you crying?"
+
+Lilly quickly dried the tears from her eyes and cheeks.
+
+"I've just come from the hospital," was the only excuse she could find.
+"I'm still a little--I beg your pardon."
+
+The prominent lawyer shook his head. His bald spot looked as petted and
+pampered as a lovely woman's cheeks.
+
+"You must get out of the habit of crying, too, if you want to make your
+way in the world. Tears are not in place until you are 'settled.' Oh,
+yes, something else--the things your poor mother owned must be sold. The
+proceeds will serve as a small capital. I lay stress on having such a
+sum, no matter how insignificant. Now you will go back to your home with
+my man--the key was deposited at my office--and select what you think
+you absolutely need or"--he smiled a little--"what filial devotion leads
+you to prize. Good-by, my dear. In six months come to me again."
+
+Lilly felt a cool, soft hand, which seemed incapable of bestowing a
+pressure, lie in her own for an instant; then she found herself
+staggering down the dark steps behind a clerk who had been waiting for
+her outside the door with the key to her home.
+
+She wanted to speak to him, ask him questions, beg him for something.
+But for what? She herself knew not.
+
+When the clerk opened up the musty room, where the twilight was broken
+by shafts of light, as in a tomb, the tomb of her life, the tomb of her
+youth, Lilly felt that now everything was over and all left her was to
+fall asleep here and die.
+
+The clerk threw the shutters back and raised the windows.
+
+The clothes were still lying on the bed, the underwear and bed-linen on
+the floor, and close by were two brown stains, the blood that had
+flowed from her wound. The knife, too, was still there.
+
+Lilly restrained her desire to cry, shamed by the presence of the clerk,
+who stood there stupidly, whistling, with his lower lip thrust out.
+
+Lilly threw her clothes into the basket-trunk which her mother had
+intended to use in moving to the nine-room apartment, added a few pieces
+of underwear and some books chosen at random, and then looked around for
+mementos. Her brain was befogged. She saw everything and recognised
+nothing. But there on the table, there, bound with rubber bands, soaked
+in her blood, untouched because no one knew its value, lay the Song of
+Songs.
+
+Lilly snatched it up, shut down the trunk lid, and with the score under
+her arm, stepped out into the new life, hungry for experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Mrs. Asmussen's two daughters had run away from home again. The whole
+neighbourhood knew it. Lilly had scarcely set foot in the dusky room
+smelling of dust and leather, where soiled volumes on pine shelves
+reached to the ceiling, when she, too, became acquainted with the fact.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen was a dignified dame, whom nature had endowed with
+gracious rotundity. She received Lilly at the entrance to her
+circulating library, and amid kisses and tears declared that even before
+seeing Lilly she had conceived a love for her such as she would cherish
+for a child of her own; and now that she had met her face to face she
+was completely bewitched.
+
+"And people speak of the cold world," thought Lilly, whom this sort of
+reception pleased very well.
+
+"What did I say--a child of my _own_? Nonsense! I love you more, much
+more, ever and ever and ever so much more. Daughters are venomous
+serpents, on whom love is wasted. They are parasites to be torn from
+one's breast--torn--"
+
+She stopped because the stupid clerk, who had accompanied Lilly in a
+cab, was shoving her trunk over the threshold. After he left Mrs.
+Asmussen continued:
+
+"Do you think I loved my daughters, or didn't love them? Did I, or did I
+not, say to them every day: 'Your father's a blackguard, a cur, and may
+the devil take him'? How do you think they rewarded me? One morning I
+get up and find they're gone--mind you, absolutely gone--beds empty--and
+a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You beat us too much, and
+we're sick and tired of that eternal mush.' Look at me, my dear. Am I
+not goodness itself? Do I look as if I could beat _any_body, much less
+my own daughters? And do you suppose this is the first time they did it,
+the first time they overwhelmed me with shame and disgrace in the eyes
+of the whole world? What would you say if I were to tell you it's the
+_third_ time--twice before I pardoned them and took them to my bosom. I
+found them lying outside my door in tears and rags. Yes, yes, that's the
+way it was, that's the way it is, the way it is. But if they dare to
+return _again_, here's a broom, here, look, behind the door--I put it
+there the instant I found out they had gone, and there it will remain
+until I take hold of it and beat them out, beat them out through the
+door to the street, this way, this way, this way--"
+
+With a gesture of ineffable disgust Mrs. Asmussen swept an invisible
+something through the hall, and let it lie outside, giving it a look of
+unspeakable contempt.
+
+"The poor, poor woman," thought Lilly. "How she must have suffered!" And
+she registered a silent vow to do her utmost to replace the faithless
+children in the abandoned mother's heart.
+
+At this point a young man entered, a customer, who wanted to exchange a
+book. He asked for one of Zola's works, and looked at Lilly
+triumphantly, as if to say, "You see, that's the kind I am!"
+
+Mrs. Asmussen went to fetch the book, shaking her head softly in
+deprecation. The customer took it hastily without paying the least
+attention to the look of warning with which she handed it to him.
+
+"Look, my dear," she said after he left, "that's the way youth goes to
+its ruin, and I myself am condemned to point the way."
+
+"How?" queried Lilly, who had been listening with the keenest interest.
+
+"Do you know what's inside an apothecary's shop?"
+
+Lilly said she had often been in an apothecary's shop, but could not
+itemise the contents.
+
+Her mistress continued:
+
+"One closet is marked 'Poisons.' It contains the most awful poisons
+mankind knows. That's why it's always locked and only the owner and his
+assistant may have the key to it. Now look about you. Half of what you
+see here is poison, too. Everything written these days vitiates the soul
+and lures it to its destruction. Yet I must keep the wicked books, and
+though my heart bleeds I must hand them over to any and everybody who
+asks for them. Oh, I need but to think of my undutiful daughters. No use
+my telling them not to--they read at any rate. They read and read the
+whole night long, and when they were crammed full of impudence and
+corruption, they didn't like the food I prepared for them, and all they
+wanted to do was to go out walking. On top of it all they went sneaking
+off to their father, that miserable cur, that common cheat, that
+pock-marked scum of the earth. Child, I warn you against that man.
+Should you ever meet him, lift your skirts and spit, the way I'm
+spitting now."
+
+Lilly shuddered at the man's frightful vileness, but took some courage
+in the thought that she had found her natural protector in this
+excellent woman.
+
+An hour later they went to supper, which consisted of mush and
+sandwiches, with nothing but clarified fat between. Lilly, whose palate
+had not been pampered, was easily persuaded that nobody in the world
+knew how to prepare such dainty mush, and that the emperor himself was
+seldom served with more delicious sandwiches. Had a little ham been
+added to the repast, such as she had gotten for supper every evening at
+the hospital, the acme of earthly enjoyments in her opinion would have
+been attained.
+
+Going to bed provided her with another pleasure. The books of the
+circulating library were kept in a large room with three windows,
+divided into four compartments by two bookcases running from the
+windowed wall deep into the room and by a counter opposite the door
+leading into the hall. A passageway along the wall dividing the library
+from the inner room was the only means of getting from one compartment
+to another.
+
+When bedtime came Mrs. Asmussen had Lilly carry to the compartment
+farthest from the hall door two bench-like pieces of furniture and mount
+a spring-mattress on them. This completely blocked the space crosswise,
+so that, to get into bed, Lilly had to jump over the bottom rail of the
+benches. She thought it great sport.
+
+Wedged in between perpendicular bookcases, the window-sill at her head,
+a chair holding her impedimenta at her feet, the Song of Songs clasped
+in her arms, Lilly fell asleep.
+
+The next morning her apprenticeship began.
+
+Lilly was instructed as to the system according to which the thousands
+of volumes were ranged on the shelves. As she knew her A B C's, she
+would have been able to fetch any book from its place at the end of five
+minutes if only Mrs. Asmussen had followed her own scheme and not
+produced utter confusion by disposing the books arbitrarily.
+
+Still harder a task was finding records in the large ledger. Here, too,
+the plan was supposed to be alphabetic; but some customers filled the
+space allotted to them more rapidly than others, and when there was no
+more room Mrs. Asmussen had simply turned to the next blank page
+regardless of alphabetic succession. The result was such a jumble that
+finally neither Mrs. Asmussen nor her decamped daughters knew where to
+look for what they wanted.
+
+Inspired by holy zeal Lilly began the great task of getting order out of
+chaos. This constituted her entire life.
+
+The very day after her arrival Mrs. Asmussen provided her with some
+singular experiences.
+
+During the working hours the worthy dame had for the most part kept out
+of sight. When Lilly went in for supper she found her mistress dreamily
+inclined over a steaming cup of tea in a room pervaded by a pleasant
+aroma of lemon and rum.
+
+"I suffer very much from a catarrhal affection of the mucous lining of
+my nose," explained Mrs. Asmussen, blinking at Lilly with somewhat
+watery grey eyes. "So I must take some medicine which one of the most
+eminent physicians in the city prescribed for me."
+
+Lilly stirred her mush while Mrs. Asmussen sipped tea, every now and
+then giving vent to a distressed sigh.
+
+"Have I told you about my daughters?"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Lilly, respectfully.
+
+In the morning, too, Mrs. Asmussen had spoken of scarcely anything but
+those miserable creatures and the contemptible wretch they called
+father.
+
+"I don't think it's possible for you to get even a remote conception of
+the charm of those two girls. They are my own flesh and blood, and
+modesty should forbid me to speak of them this way. However, from a
+purely objective point of view, I may say that never, never in the wide
+world have I ever seen, even from afar, two young ladies endowed with
+such striking qualities of mind and character. Such tender filial
+devotion, such self-sacrificing industry, such touching modesty, so much
+genuine feeling in all the small relations of life, such quiet strength
+in the judgment of great questions, have never before, I warrant, been
+united in two such youthful souls. Let them be an example to you, my
+child. You are far removed, far, far removed from those models of
+maidenhood."
+
+In her astonishment and shame Lilly dropped her spoon. The old lady went
+on:
+
+"It was with a bleeding heart that I had to part from them. As for them,
+they cried day and night before leaving me. But what was to be done?
+They had to go to their father. Have I ever told you about my splendid
+husband? An untoward destiny has separated us, but his love, I know,
+clings to me, and I will love him all the days of my life. Oh, what a
+man he was! My child, pray to the Lord that he may make you worthy to
+become the wife of such a man. Alas, I was not worthy, no, not I!"
+
+Two tears of infinite contrition ran down her cheeks.
+
+She related a good deal more on this second evening concerning the
+virtues of her two daughters, her husband's nobility of character, and
+her own unworthiness.
+
+After she had taken several more doses of the medicine prescribed by one
+of the most eminent physicians of the city, she finally wept herself to
+sleep.
+
+The next morning she began the day's work by bursting into a rage
+because Lilly had used the broom, which was to remain undisturbed behind
+the door, for sweeping the library.
+
+"This broom is here for only one purpose--to beat those two monsters
+when they come to my door. And if you, wretched creature, take hold of
+it once again, you will be the first to make its acquaintance."
+
+Lilly now began to divine that the strange world was not so roseate as
+her eagerness for experience had led her to picture it.
+
+But worse was to come.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who seemed to be greatly concerned for the salvation of
+Lilly's soul and the purity of her virgin fancy, immediately forbade her
+to read any of the books in the library.
+
+"Experience with my daughters," she said, "taught me where such
+misconduct leads. And I will see to it that you are spared a similar
+fate."
+
+So long as the work of ordering the books and the ledger continued, the
+temptation to disobey this mandate did not arise very frequently. But
+when fall came, when despite increase of custom, unoccupied hours grew
+more frequent, and the lamp hanging over the counter shone invitingly,
+when Mrs. Asmussen from day to day succumbed earlier to the effects of
+the medicine prescribed by one of the most eminent physicians in the
+city, and fell into an untroubled dream existence, curiosity and
+loneliness drove Lilly irresistibly on to commit the sinful deed.
+
+The final impulse was given by a girl of about her own age, who had come
+one rainy October evening to exchange the first volume of a novel for
+the second. But the second had been loaned already, and the girl
+actually cried in disappointment. She couldn't bear waiting, she said.
+She _had_ to know how the story ended. She would _die_ if she didn't.
+
+Lilly good-humouredly advised her to go to one of the other circulating
+libraries, which were said to be larger and more aristocratic. She even
+returned the three marks deposit for use at the other place. Happy in
+reawakened hopes the novel-reader left.
+
+Lilly examined the torn and soiled volume on all sides and took a
+cautious peep between the covers.
+
+"_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag," was on the title page. She
+recalled that even the girls of the first year high school had gone into
+raptures over the book. But the seamstress's daughter had had no time
+for reading novels.
+
+Lilly glanced timidly at the first page, then slipped to the glass door
+and listened for a while to Mrs. Asmussen's peaceful breathing--now,
+with sails spread, she launched forth on the high seas of romance.
+
+When she finished the volume at four o'clock in the morning she could
+have torn her hair in sheer desperation at having so lightly put the
+sequel into the hands of some stranger, who might not bring it back. She
+mapped out ways and means of unearthing his name and address and
+slipping to him secretly in order to hasten the return of the book. Then
+she fell asleep.
+
+She spent hours going over the ledger time and again to find the name.
+In vain! The entries were made by numbers, not by titles, and each time
+she skipped the number of _Soll und Haben_.
+
+So, like a toper who seeks intoxication in a new drink, she greedily
+devoured another book.
+
+From now on Lilly's life was one great orgy, and bore all the marks of
+such an existence--blurred eyes, aching limbs, huge bills for midnight
+oil, and spying and lying every few minutes to allay Mrs. Asmussen's
+suspicions.
+
+One winter morning the dreadful crime came to light.
+
+The fire in the library stove would die out about midnight and Lilly's
+feet would then grow cold. So she got into the habit of reading in bed,
+with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, set on the
+broad window-sill directly back of her head. She indulged in the luxury
+even though reduced to the bitter necessity of getting out of bed later
+to replace both the lamp and the book, for nowadays Mrs. Asmussen was
+frequently at her post earlier in the morning than Lilly. But Lilly, for
+the sake of the few extra hours thus gained, would not have been
+deterred from allowing herself this great joy, even if it had involved
+going out on the icy street in her nightgown.
+
+But once she started up from sleep in terror to find Mrs. Asmussen
+standing at the bottom of the bed all dressed. A black strap lay across
+her white shirt, and the lamp, which she had gotten up at one o'clock to
+refill, was still burning behind her.
+
+Never having been beaten in her life, she refused at first to take it
+seriously when Mrs. Asmussen, despite her corpulence, suddenly jumped
+over the bottom of the bed and squatted on the covers like a great
+turkey and began to strike her over the ears with the black strap.
+
+Bad times set in.
+
+Of what avail that Lilly felt genuinely repentant and swore to herself
+to reform. She was so steeped in the new passion, so absorbed by that
+lovelier existence, where people experienced and loved, suffered and
+enjoyed, where there were no pert servant girls who came to exchange
+books, no wet umbrellas, no second volumes loaned out, no ledger numbers
+not to be found, no mush, and no blows, that she could not have returned
+to her former self had she had the self-renunciatory ability of a martyr
+and saint.
+
+To such an extent was she dominated by her fancy that what was her
+actual existence, moving on from day to day in monotonous prison-like
+loneliness, seemed to her a dream, an oppressive death stupour,
+painless, but also pleasureless. Her being did not expand in real life
+until the sticky pages of a novel began to rustle in her hand.
+
+Intimidated and unresisting as she was, she did not find the courage to
+justify what was holiest to her even in her own eyes. She felt it to be
+a sin on which her hungry soul fed as on manna.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen had bethought herself of a diabolic way of still further
+humiliating Lilly. Like many a believing Protestant, she regarded
+religion solely as a scourge. Hitherto she had not shown the least
+solicitude concerning Lilly's piety, but now she began each meal with a
+long prayer of repentance, and while the steam curled invitingly from
+the soup tureen, she would beseech God with sighs and tears to raise
+Lilly from the depths to which she had sunk.
+
+And woe to Lilly if caught backsliding!
+
+That first chastisement was not the last. Every pretext was seized for
+beating and cuffing her. Storms of abuse showered down on her
+unprotected head. She did not dare breathe until the medicine prescribed
+by the eminent physician began to have its soothing effect.
+
+Then she would pounce on the first book she came across, and amid the
+forging of signatures and broken marriage vows, amid death by poisoning
+and the mad acts of love, she would suffer and triumph, triumph and die,
+blissful in her sufferings, intoxicated to the very end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was on a March afternoon, when the sun was shining with young
+impertinence and the heat was untimely.
+
+The black slabs of snow at the edge of the pavement had melted into
+gleaming puddles, and a sparkling shower fell from the icicles clinging
+to the roofs. Over to the south-west the red evening glow lay spread on
+the house fronts like gay rugs separated by an oblique line from the
+shadow of the walls on the near side. The window-panes glowed as if they
+were suns radiating their own light, and the sparrows chased one another
+along the dripping eaves.
+
+But best of all in this sorry spring of city streets was the rare spicy
+smell of thawing. Even the vapours rising from the gutters, now running
+again, gave an inkling of greening meadows and bursting boughs.
+
+Lilly, who had gone out on hardly more than three occasions the whole
+winter, sat behind the counter and looked through the window longingly.
+
+Everywhere she saw that windows and doors had been opened wide,
+everywhere breasts hungering for air greedily drew in the breath of
+coming spring. So she, too, opened the casement wide and gave the door
+to the hall a push, which sent it flying back and knocked down the
+broom, standing at its post, as always.
+
+Through the open doorway she could see into the parlour of the tenant
+who lived on the other side of the hall and who, likewise, had flung
+back his door for spring to enter.
+
+She saw a cherry-red sofa with embroidered antimacassars symmetrically
+plastered on its old-fashioned scroll arms. She saw framed wreaths of
+dried flowers with inscriptions hanging on the walls; she saw an
+artillery officer's helmet and two swords with sword-knots crossed
+beneath. She saw China lions serving as cigar holders, ladies in dancing
+attitudes holding tallow candles, photographs of family groups with
+peacock feathers stuck behind, a spherical aquarium containing gold
+fish, and a spotted goat skin. Amid all these comfortable-looking
+knick-knacks she saw a young man walking up and down with a book in his
+hand murmuring studiously. He would appear and reappear in the field of
+vision allowed by the hall door.
+
+This young man awakened Lilly's sympathy at the very first glance.
+
+He wore his waving light hair brushed from his forehead in free and easy
+fashion, and carried his head boldly erect. His brown and lilac necktie
+seemed to her aristocratic perfection.
+
+She passed in review all her favourite heroes to see which of them he
+most resembled. After some wavering she finally decided he came nearest
+to Herr von Fink, the rogue in _Soll und Haben_.
+
+Since the young man did not notice her, she could study him at leisure.
+Each time he appeared she felt a warm wave pour over her body, and when
+he remained away too long by the fraction of a second, she experienced a
+sensation of nausea, as if some one were trying to cheat her of a dear
+possession.
+
+This continued until once he looked up from his book, became aware of
+the open door to the circulating library with the young lady on the
+other side observing him, started in dismay, and quickly stepped back to
+the invisible part of the room.
+
+The next time he came into view he had assumed a conscious and studied
+manner. He looked at his book a little too closely and moved his lips
+one degree too zealously, while a severe frown clouded his countenance.
+
+Lilly, too, had found it necessary somewhat to improve the picture she
+presented. She smoothed her hair, which she wore parted Madonna fashion,
+and let her arm droop over the side of the chair in idle dreaminess.
+
+Some maids, who had come to exchange books for their mistresses, put an
+end to this dual posing. On leaving they closed the door and Lilly did
+not venture to open it again.
+
+But that night she carried the vision of the new hero into her dreams.
+
+It was too late in the day to speak to Mrs. Asmussen, who was now in the
+habit of preparing her medicine some time before the evening meal. The
+next morning, however, she seemed to be in a gracious humour, and Lilly
+felt emboldened to make a few inquiries concerning the neighbours, of
+whom she knew practically nothing.
+
+"What are the neighbours to you, Miss Inquisitive?"
+
+Such was the tone of intercourse that had developed from the first state
+of enchantment.
+
+Lilly took heart, and concocted a story of a steady customer who had
+asked about the neighbours the day before, and Lilly had not been able
+to give any information.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who cherished boundless respect for the customers'
+wishes, forthwith became communicative.
+
+They were two very good people, but of low station, with whom she, Mrs.
+Asmussen, a woman of greater aristocracy both of mind and heart, could
+not, of course, associate. The man, a sergeant out of service, was clerk
+in some office, and the woman sewed neckwear for a living.
+
+Lilly blushed. She recalled the brown and lilac tie, the sheen of which
+had been dazzling her eyes since the day before.
+
+An idea might be obtained of the vulgar existence those plebeians led,
+Mrs. Asmussen continued, if one knew they considered potato soup with
+sliced sausage in it a festal delicacy, whereas anyone with refined
+tastes would shudder at the mere thought.
+
+Lilly, who, like the good-for-nothing daughters, had long lost her joy
+in the daily mush, could not quite sympathise with this statement. On
+the contrary, she felt her mouth watering, and in order to change the
+subject quickly she timidly inquired whether anyone else was living next
+door.
+
+"Not that I know of," replied Mrs. Asmussen. "But there's a son. He goes
+to high school. I don't know why such people have their sons study."
+
+"I know," thought Lilly. "Because he's one of the elect, because genius
+shines in his eyes, because destiny has marked him to be a ruler on
+earth."
+
+That afternoon she kept the door open. But it had turned bitter cold,
+and the idea of friendly reciprocation occurred to nobody next door.
+
+After an hour spent in studying the oval door plate on which was
+inscribed:
+
+      L. Redlich
+    Please ring hard,
+
+she found herself under the necessity of closing the door, because her
+legs were depending from her body like icicles and she had the
+humiliating consciousness of being scorned.
+
+Henceforth she kept on the watch for one o'clock, when the students
+living in the house returned from school. Holding her forehead pressed
+against the window-pane, she could recognise at an inconceivable
+distance the blue and white rimmed caps worn by high school students.
+
+When he came up the steps leading to the porch in front of the house,
+she slipped behind the curtain, and in a joyous tremour caught the
+shamed, sidelong glance he sent her. If he looked straight ahead she was
+unhappy and afraid she had hurt his feelings.
+
+Other blue and white rimmed caps besides his entered the house. They
+belonged to friends who came to cram with him.
+
+Lilly loved them all. She felt she was a secret member of the union of
+these young souls who were going to storm the world, and when they
+seated themselves in the room she took her invisible place in the
+circle.
+
+Some of them Lilly recognised, not by their features, because they
+passed her too quickly for that, but by their caps, which she
+distinguished accurately. There was the "sad one," the "washed-out one,"
+the "stylish one" and the "wireless one." She could also recognise their
+walk and the manner in which they rang the bell at the opposite door.
+Even if occupied with customers, she could tell, without having looked
+through the window, exactly how many and which of the friends were
+working with young Redlich, and she would revolve in her mind why this
+or that one had not come that day.
+
+Spring advanced. The inmates of the house began occasionally to sit on
+the front porch, where there were benches on either side of the door.
+
+Before leaving, the young gentlemen would remain there a while chatting,
+and now and then He would lean over the railing in the twilight,
+dreaming, no doubt, of future conquests.
+
+With fluttering heart Lilly would stand behind a bookcase where she had
+cunningly contrived an observatory for herself by removing a number of
+books, and from there read the world-stirring thoughts that lay on the
+bold soaring forehead.
+
+The benches on the right side of the porch, in front of the windows of
+the circulating library, generally remained unoccupied, because Mrs.
+Asmussen, to whom this side belonged, preferred not to desert her
+evening medicine, and Lilly lacked courage to ask for permission to sit
+there by herself.
+
+But one evening in May, when dark blue clouds hung in the heavens shot
+with red, enticing rather than threatening, when the streets were so
+quiet that Lilly could hear the distant plashing of the fountain in the
+market-place, when the only stir was created by swallows darting hither
+and thither, she could no longer stand the library's pasty, leathery
+smell, and fetching her embroidery--more for show than from eagerness to
+sew--she went out to sit on the porch.
+
+She knew he had gone out and was not in the habit of remaining away
+after ten o'clock.
+
+So he would be bound to pass her at all events.
+
+Half an hour went by, another half hour, then a quarter of an hour.
+Finally she saw a blue and white cap come swinging down the street in
+the last glow of evening.
+
+Her first thought was to run into the library with all possible speed.
+But she was ashamed of the idea, and remained seated.
+
+He came, he saw her, he raised his cap and went in.
+
+She thought gleefully:
+
+"Well, he bowed at last."
+
+At the end of scarcely ten minutes he reappeared on the scene, seated
+himself on the bench belonging to _his_ side of the house, toyed with
+pebbles, whistled softly, and acted altogether as if he did not see
+her.
+
+Lilly sat in her corner with her face turned aside, rolling and
+unrolling her embroidery, and every now and then fetching a little sigh,
+not to show her love--oh, certainly not!--but because her breath came
+short.
+
+About half an hour passed in this fashion and Lilly was beginning to
+lose all hope of a rapprochement, when all of a sudden he said, half
+raising his cap:
+
+"The front door, I believe, is soon going to be closed, Miss."
+
+"Impossible!" she cried, feigning lively astonishment. But if she were
+to act on the suggestion implied in his words her chance of at last
+becoming acquainted with him would certainly be lost, and she added in a
+tone lighter than accorded with her mood: "But it doesn't matter. The
+window is open."
+
+He uttered,
+
+"H'm, h'm."
+
+Whether in agreement or blame she could not determine, and the
+conversation would have come to a standstill without fail had not Lilly
+made an effort to keep the ball rolling.
+
+"We are neighbours, aren't we?" she asked.
+
+He jumped from his seat and with a sweep of his cap describing a
+semicircle between his head and his trousers' pocket, he said:
+
+"Permit me to introduce myself. Fritz Redlich, senior in the high
+school."
+
+Lilly once more experienced the reverential thrill that used to pass
+through her soul when she was in the Selecta and the last year class of
+the boys' high school was mentioned. The fact was suddenly borne in upon
+her that now she was nothing better than a shop girl, and she grew hot
+with shame at the thought.
+
+But she would not have it that her glorious past was to have been lived
+in vain.
+
+"I was in the Selecta. I left last autumn," she said, "and I got to know
+some of you then."
+
+"Whom?" he asked eagerly.
+
+Lilly mentioned the names of two young men who had fluttered about her
+at the skating-rink, and asked whether he knew them.
+
+"Certainly not," he answered with scorn, which did not seem wholly
+sincere. "They loaf too much for fellows like us, and they're going to
+join a students' corps. We don't do that sort of thing."
+
+Silence ensued.
+
+It had now grown so dark that Lilly could see only the outline of his
+figure as he idly leaned against the corner post of the balustrade.
+
+Fine drops of rain fell and lay in her hair. She could have remained
+there forever with the dark youthful form before her searching eyes and
+spring's blessing lying cool on her head.
+
+"You are engaged here in the circulating library?" he asked.
+
+Lilly said "Yes," and was grateful to him for the elegant word
+"engaged," which seemed somewhat to improve her position.
+
+"And you are preparing for the examinations?" she inquired in turn.
+
+"In autumn--if everything goes well," he answered with a sigh.
+
+"Then you are going out into the wide, wide world," she said with the
+rapt expression that girls adopt in compositions. "Going out to fight
+your way through life. Oh, how I envy you!"
+
+"Why?" he asked in wonder. "Aren't you fighting your way through life
+already?"
+
+Lilly burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, if I were you," she cried, "what wouldn't I do--oh!"
+
+She exulted in her sensations. She felt her limbs stretching. She knew a
+gleam of triumph was flashing in her eyes, a gleam which could not
+triumph simply because it dissipated itself unseen in the dark.
+
+It was impossible for her, from sheer joy, to remain where she was. She
+would have gone mad had she been compelled to stay there, formulating
+stiff words, while everything in her cried out:
+
+"I love you."
+
+She bade him a hasty good-night and ran into the library, bolting the
+door behind her. She ran up and down the narrow aisles between the
+cases, laughing and sighing, raising her arms aloft like a priestess at
+prayer, and knocking her elbows painfully against the shelves.
+
+A yearning for symphonies, for great sustained major chords, welled up
+within her. She wanted to sing the Walhalla motif, but the Walhalla
+motif cannot be sung.
+
+Suddenly an aria flitted through her mind, one of those songs which had
+palpitated through her childhood, without conveying any meaning to her,
+but which, for that very reason, had been the more purely consecrated.
+
+    I sought him whom my soul loved,
+    I sought him, but I found him not.
+    I called him,
+    But he gave me no answer.
+    The watchman that went about the city found me.
+    They smote me, they wounded me.
+    The keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
+
+She sang in a soft, uncertain voice, loud enough, however, to be heard
+through the window. But when she peeped from her observatory to convince
+herself that he was listening, she no longer saw him standing there.
+
+She sang louder and leaned out. She tore open her tight-fitting dress to
+expose her bare breast to the rain drops.
+
+Then all of a sudden she was overcome by a feeling of wretchedness; why,
+she did not know, but so strong it was she thought she would die of it.
+She felt how the cruel watchers seized her; she felt the smart of the
+wound which rude hands caused her; she felt how the veil was being torn
+away which concealed from the eyes of the world the holy nakedness of
+her body. In shameless nudity, yet weeping drops of blood for bitter
+shame, she tottered through the streets, and sought and sought, yet _he_
+was farther off than ever.
+
+She sank on her knees at the window-sill, and pressing her face on its
+edge, wept bitterly in sweet dark sympathy with that image of herself
+straying through Jerusalem's nocturnal streets.
+
+Yet all this was sheer happiness!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+And the happiness endured.
+
+It nestled in the dusty corners, it perched on the bookshelves, it span
+golden cobwebs from beam to beam, it rode on every ray of light
+reflected from the windows opposite on the leather backs of the books.
+
+Wherever she went, Lilly was accompanied by a humming medley of
+quivering tones, half motifs and snatches of melodies, strains from an
+aeolian harp, the chirping of a cricket-on-the-hearth, the singing of a
+boiling kettle, and the soft twittering of birds.
+
+Awake or asleep, she always heard it.
+
+Now and then a few measures of the Song of Songs joined in exultingly.
+
+Outwardly everything went along in the old ruts. Mrs. Asmussen was
+sometimes sober, sometimes full of sweet drugs. Husband and daughters
+rose and sank, sank and rose, through the entire gamut of ethical
+appraisement, plunged one moment into the deepest pit of depravity,
+exalted the next to the shining heights of apotheosis. One day a volume
+of Gerstaecker was missing, another day a Balduin Moellhausen seemed to
+have been sucked into the swamps of the Orinoco.
+
+Sometimes a puff of wind blowing through the window carried a little
+cloud of yellow powder to the edges of the shelves, from which it was
+wiped off like ordinary dust. Yet it conveyed a greeting from swaying
+boughs in bloom, which was all this spring brought to Lilly, except for
+a loads of lilacs carted past the library on their way to market.
+
+The young hero from the other side of the house had not approached her
+again.
+
+She trembled whenever she heard him go down the steps, and twice a day
+with beating heart she received his shy greeting--that was all.
+
+And he was not to be seen on the porch again. The digging and cramming
+with the other young men lasted until late at night, and it was often
+two o'clock before she heard their departing tread.
+
+Not until then would she throw herself in bed, where she lay staring
+into the dusk of the summer night, her spirit roving over the world to
+find _the_ throne worthy to serve as her hero's goal. She saw him a
+general winning epoch-making battles in the open country, she saw him a
+poet walking up the steps of the capitol to receive the laurel wreath,
+she saw him an inventor soaring through the ether in the airship he
+himself had perfected, she saw him the founder of a new religion--but
+here she came to a terrified halt, for in her heart she had remained a
+good Catholic.
+
+Under the oppression of bodily and spiritual castigation she had not
+dared seek refuge in religion. Quickly enough the courage had gone from
+her to ask Mrs. Asmussen for permission to visit St. Anne's early every
+morning, and soon she had completely forgotten that such a thing as a
+confession or a mass ever took place.
+
+Now, however, in the exuberance of her feelings, feelings such as she
+had never before suspected, her longing for spiritual disburdenment grew
+so strong that she decided to acknowledge her Catholicism to Mrs.
+Asmussen and beg for the privilege to pray in that quiet corner where
+St. Joseph, who had always been good to her, stood behind six
+gold-encircled candles and smilingly shook his finger.
+
+In Lilly's avowal Mrs. Asmussen found an explanation of all her vices;
+her sneakiness, her hypocrisy, her laziness, her lack of a sense of
+order. Mrs. Asmussen, therefore, concluded her daily prayer with the
+wish for immediate and complete conversion.
+
+Nevertheless she did not refuse Lilly two excursions a week to early
+mass, which was all Lilly had dared hope for.
+
+The meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph was touching.
+
+Really, going back to him was like going back home. The cherubs that
+fluttered in the gay glass case behind him greeted her with a knowing,
+confidential look, like brothers and sisters who have been let into the
+secret that the punishment after all is not going to be so very severe.
+The golden-yellow carpet extended a hospitable invitation to kneel, and
+the flowers on the Holy Virgin's altar close by perfumed the air.
+
+The saint at first seemed a little hurt because she had not visited him
+for so long. But after she had made her moan--telling of her loneliness,
+the daily mush and the blows--he softened and forgave her.
+
+Since her last visit he had received three new silver hearts, which shot
+out rays of light the length of a finger. She felt like dedicating one
+to him, too, but on what grounds she did not know, since the miracle to
+be worked in her was yet to be accomplished.
+
+"Perhaps it's only jealousy in me, or a desire to show off," she
+thought, for it was painful to her that others should stand in closer
+relations to her saint than she. "After all," she comforted herself,
+"how can I expect anything else when I neglected him so long?"
+
+After confessing everything--except, of course, her love story--he had
+become too much of a stranger for _that_--she hastened away. The clocks
+were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his
+way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose
+nor significance.
+
+She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street.
+
+He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath,
+remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a
+great danger.
+
+From now on there were two such encounters a week.
+
+Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and
+enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the
+faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the
+tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when--blushing
+a bit--he raised his cap to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when
+one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating
+library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell.
+She opened the door--there _he_ stood.
+
+"Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion.
+
+Did she happen to have Rueckert's poems in her library?
+
+Lilly knew for certain she did _not_ have them, but if she admitted
+forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for
+entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't
+he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the
+customers' chair placed close to the door.
+
+Lilly spent some time searching, because she was afraid the inevitable
+"no" would send him off with a curt "thank you," and she ran up and
+down the aisles between the shelves aimlessly, reiterating:
+
+"I'm sure I saw the poems just a little while ago."
+
+Then, in order to think the matter over more quietly, she seated herself
+opposite him with the counter between. But he encouraged her to renew
+the search.
+
+"If you saw them only a short time ago, then they are bound to be here."
+
+When finally convinced that Rueckert's poems were not in the library, he
+fetched a deep sigh and murmured something like, "What shall I do?" and
+disappeared.
+
+Lilly, completely dazed, stared at the doorway, which a moment before
+had framed his figure.
+
+She wanted to cry out and plead, "Stay here! Come back!" But she heard
+the door on the other side of the hall fall shut, and everything was
+over.
+
+She crouched at the window-sill indulging in speculations of what
+_might_ have taken place if he had happened to remain.
+
+Her heart throbbed violently.
+
+About quarter of an hour later the bell rang again.
+
+She jumped up. Supposing it was he?
+
+It was he.
+
+He begged pardon; he had forgotten his umbrella.
+
+"This time you don't slip away!" something within her cried.
+
+He caught up his soaking umbrella, which she had failed to notice
+despite the shining puddle which was crawling along the crack between
+two floor boards, and was about to escape again, when Lilly essayed:
+
+"For what do you need Rueckert's poems?"
+
+He began to complain:
+
+"Life is made so hard for us, you have no idea how hard."
+
+He went on to tell about the speeches they had to deliver offhand on a
+subject sprung on them without warning, regardless of whether or not the
+students had prepared the theme. But this time they had gotten wind of
+the surprise in store--the next day in literature class they would be
+required to give a comprehensive view of Rueckert. That was why he would
+have to glance over the poems once again to find out exactly who had
+been buried in the three graves at Ottensen.
+
+Lilly thrilled with joy.
+
+_She_ could help him--she, the low-flying sparrow, could help _him_, the
+soaring heaven-dweller.
+
+She timorously related the story of the poor, defeated count of
+Brunswick and Klopstock, the pious bard of "The Messiah." The only thing
+she had forgotten was who the twelve hundred exiles were who lay in the
+first of the graves.
+
+He seemed unwilling to believe in this unexpected good fortune. Was she
+sure of what she said? That about Klopstock was correct; he knew it from
+the tables of his history of literature. But the rest of it? Oppressed
+by grave doubts he shook his triumphant mane.
+
+Lilly eagerly allayed his fears. To be sure, it was more than a year
+since she had heard of those lovely things, but she had a good memory,
+and would certainly not misinform him lightly.
+
+At last he seemed relieved. He drew a deep breath, and observed, with
+his mind bent more upon general matters:
+
+"Yes, it's very hard, very, very hard."
+
+Once embarked on the current of open talk, he went on to offer his views
+concerning the other difficulties of human life. Mathematics was all
+right; in fact, he had done very well in analytic geometry. But history
+and the languages, and above all, German composition! A fellow was
+sometimes driven to despair by the wretched state of things in this
+world.
+
+In this Lilly fully concurred. She, too, had little cause to be
+satisfied with the course of mundane events, and she gave eloquent and
+passionate expression to her sentiments.
+
+"As for you," she concluded, "what tortures your spirit must undergo
+when it feels itself hampered in its flight by the humiliating demands
+of the schoolroom!"
+
+He looked at her in some wonderment and remarked:
+
+"Yes, indeed, it's hard, very hard."
+
+"I in your place," Lilly went on, "would not care a fig inside myself
+for all that vapid stuff. I would just do what is necessary in an
+offhand way, and then in complete spiritual freedom climb to the height
+where the great poets and philosophers dwell."
+
+"Yes, but the examinations!" he exclaimed, utterly horrified.
+
+"Oh, those stupid examinations!" she rejoined. "What difference does it
+make whether or not you pass?"
+
+Here he became eager.
+
+"You don't understand at all, not at all. Examinations are in a sense
+the avenue leading to every good position in life, no matter whether you
+enter the university or study architecture, or merely try for a good
+place in the postal service. But that, of course, I wouldn't do."
+
+"A man like you!" she interrupted.
+
+He smiled faintly, feeling stroked the right way.
+
+"I don't want to storm the heavens exactly," he said, "but I have my
+ambitions. What would a fellow be if he had no ambitions?"
+
+"That is so, isn't it?" Lilly cried, looking up to him with a grateful
+gleam in her eyes. The feeling that she had never experienced such an
+hour of joy took complete hold of her.
+
+When he arose to go--it had grown quite dark--she felt actual physical
+pain, as if a piece of her body were being torn from her.
+
+He had almost closed the door when he turned and said as one who wishes
+to be sure where he treads:
+
+"If it's not troubling you too much, do hunt for the poems once more.
+Perhaps you will find them."
+
+Turning back a second time:
+
+"You might lay the book under the door-mat if you find it."
+
+Lilly hastily lighted the lamp and obediently started on the search.
+After a time the futility of doing so occurred to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He spent the summer vacation in the country with a companion in misery,
+with whom he crammed for the examinations. The written tests were to be
+given immediately after the opening of school, and the oral tests about
+the middle of September.
+
+The young hero looked pale and exhausted, and reddish-brown stubble lay
+in the hollows of his cheeks like blotches of blood.
+
+Lilly was unable to witness such wretchedness in silence, and one
+morning, when, returning from mass, she met him alone in the deserted
+street, she ventured to stop and speak to him.
+
+"You must spare yourself, Mr. Redlich," she broke out anxiously. "You
+must keep well for the sake of your parents and those who love you."
+
+He seemed more embarrassed than pleased, and before finding a reply, he
+cast rapid sidelong glances in all directions.
+
+"Thank you," he stammered. "But later, if you please, later."
+
+He dashed past, scarcely daring to raise his cap.
+
+Lilly realised she had committed an indiscretion. The houses began to
+dance before her eyes, she chewed her handkerchief, and feared the
+passersby might laugh and jeer at her. When ensconced in her corner
+behind the entry book, she no longer doubted that she had lost him
+forever.
+
+She had!
+
+He came and went without greeting her--he came at suppertime and
+left--she heard his steps all the way down the street.
+
+Over and done for! Over and done for!
+
+But lo and behold! At dusk a knock was heard on the door. No, not
+exactly a knock, rather a scratching at the door, the way a dog with a
+guilty conscience scratches when he wants to be let in.
+
+There he stood. Not with the embarrassed yet business-like manner with
+which he had entered that Sunday evening when the graves of Ottensen had
+justified his coming. No, this time his heart throbbed anxiously. He was
+like a thief who lacks skill in the art of thieving.
+
+"Is Mrs. Asmussen here?" he whispered.
+
+"Mrs. Asmussen doesn't come in here at this time," she whispered back,
+with a deep sigh of joy.
+
+"Then may--I come in--for a moment?"
+
+She stepped aside, and let him enter, thinking:
+
+"How can a person endure so much joy without dying of it?"
+
+He stammered something about "begging her pardon" and "not answering
+her."
+
+She responded with something about "having reproached herself" and
+"having meant it well."
+
+Then they sat down opposite each other with the counter between, and did
+not know what to say next.
+
+He was the first to discover the way into the region of the permissible.
+
+"A fellow sometimes likes to exchange thoughts with a congenial young
+lady," he said with an emphatic air of importance. "But he seldom finds
+the time--or the opportunity."
+
+"Oh, as for the opportunity," thought Lilly.
+
+Since she had manifested such kindly interest in him, and since an
+exchange of views would certainly be edifying to him, especially because
+of the growing emancipation of women--which--
+
+He had steered into a tight place, but his sense of dignity did not
+forsake him. He looked at Lilly somewhat challengingly, as if to say,
+"You see how able I am to cope with this difficult situation."
+
+Lilly had not caught the drift of his talk. From the moment she
+recovered her power of thinking, she was dominated by one feeling: help
+him, save him, so that he doesn't work himself to death.
+
+"Once we girls had a teacher," she began, "who delivered glorious
+never-to-be-forgotten lectures in class. He worked too hard, like you,
+and by this time he must certainly have died of consumption. The same
+will happen to you, if you don't take care and go more slowly."
+
+He nodded dejectedly.
+
+"Yes, life's hard, very hard."
+
+"You must get enough sleep, and go walking. Walking a great deal is the
+very best."
+
+"Do _you_ go walking?"
+
+Lilly taken aback considered a moment. Since she had been in that hole
+among the books, she had not seen a field of snow or a green tree.
+
+"Oh, I!" she threw out, shrugging her shoulders. "What have I got to do
+with it?" Then, inwardly rejoicing at her own boldness, she added: "How
+would it be if we were to take a walk together?"
+
+Now it was his turn to be taken aback.
+
+"There are such a lot of obstacles," he observed, thoughtfully shaking
+his mane. "The thing would be misinterpreted. There are considerations,
+especially so far as you are concerned--certainly, especially for you."
+
+Lilly had read of young cavaliers whose solicitude for their lady's good
+name exceeded their very passion for her, and she looked up at him in
+gratitude and admiration.
+
+"Don't bother about me! I'll manage. I'll just shirk early mass."
+
+Though she felt a tiny prick at her heart because of her blasphemous
+words, she knew that for the sake of such a walk she would betray God,
+betray St. Joseph himself, without the least hesitation.
+
+"But I've got to get through with the examinations first," he explained.
+
+The matter was settled and the plan sealed with mutual promises.
+Accompanied by Lilly's good wishes and warnings, he took leave, but not
+before carefully scanning street, porch, and hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From now on Lilly's life was one glow of hope and dreamy anticipation.
+She would lie awake half the night, picturing to herself how she would
+wander over the golden meadows with him in the light of dawn, her hand
+pressed against her throbbing heart, her arm now and then slightly
+grazing his elbow. Each time she thought of this she felt a little
+shock, which quivered down to the very tips of her toes.
+
+She read nothing but hot, passionate books, in which there was much of
+"intoxication," "transport," and the "giddiness of endless kisses." But
+she did not dream of kisses in connection with herself. Whenever she
+found herself drifting in that direction, she checked herself in
+dismay--so exalted was he above every earthly desire.
+
+Now she knew what reasons justified her in promising St. Joseph a silver
+heart.
+
+One Sunday morning she told St. Joseph the whole story--about Fritz
+Redlich's examinations, his high ideals, and her solicitude for him. The
+only thing she refrained from mentioning was the walk they had planned;
+which she had to omit on account of the shirked mass.
+
+She had saved about sixty marks, which she carried in a leather pocket
+next to her body. The silver heart would cost twelve marks at the very
+most. Plenty of money remained for buying a gift for her friend. She
+wavered long between a gold-embroidered college portfolio and
+gold-embroidered slippers, and finally decided on a revolver in a case,
+naturally assuming that in the wild struggle for existence he would be
+exposed to many dangers, from which only reckless daring and instant
+decision could rescue him. A revolver and case cost twenty-five marks,
+gold thread for embroidering the monogram, five marks. Thus everything
+was arranged in the best possible manner.
+
+When she saw him step on the porch the morning of examination day, white
+as the glove with which he waved farewell to his parents--he seemed to
+have forgotten her--she felt as if she should have to run after him and
+press the weapon of deliverance into his hand without further delay. But
+she reflected that in all likelihood the examiners would not show
+themselves susceptible to that sort of eloquence.
+
+At the last moment, as he stepped from the porch to the pavement, a
+timid glance of his fell upon her, and she was happy.
+
+At one o'clock there was some stir on the street.
+
+They were bringing him home. He looked weary and completely crushed, but
+the others whooped and huzzaed.
+
+The old sergeant out of service ran to meet him in torn slippers, and
+violently wiped his green-grey bristly beard on his son's face. From the
+kitchen came the spicy smell of cooking sausages.
+
+Lilly ran rejoicing up and down the aisles of the library, and thought
+with a sort of superior satisfaction:
+
+"St. Joseph's fine! _Isn't_ he fine!"
+
+The very next morning she ordered the silver heart, and blushingly asked
+to have a monogram of L. C. and F. R. engraved on it.
+
+When she returned she found an envelope addressed to her among the order
+slips in the letter-box. Inside was a soiled menu card from a
+restaurant, on which was written: "Sunday 5 a.m. on the porch."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first grey of dawn entered the library through the lunettes in the
+shutters.
+
+Lilly sprang out of bed and threw the windows open.
+
+The street resembled a great bowl of milk, so heavily the white mist of
+early autumn weighed upon the ground. The cold damp drizzle did her hot
+limbs good. She spread her arms and washed herself in the icy air as in
+a bath.
+
+Her light summer dress, which she herself had washed and ironed the
+evening before, hung like a bluish drift on the white wall. She
+smartened herself as never before. This festal day should find her
+worthily adorned.
+
+With the paltry remnants of her savings she had bought a large yellow
+shepherdess hat tying under the chin, so doing away with the need for a
+collar. And openwork silk gloves suddenly came to light, having been
+discovered at the bottom of the trunk, where they had long lain
+forgotten.
+
+She would carry the heavy revolver in her work-bag. Before slipping it
+in, she kissed it several times, and said:
+
+"Watch over him faithfully, destroy his enemies, and lead him on to
+victory."
+
+It was a genuine consecration of arms.
+
+At five o'clock sharp the door opposite creaked on its hinges. She
+glided into the hall. On the porch they shook hands.
+
+His eyes were bleared, yet he looked rather enterprising. There was even
+something of the beau in his get-up. He wore his hat tilted a bit to one
+side, and in his left hand swung a light bamboo cane tipped by the head
+of a sea gull in silver.
+
+Lilly stammered congratulations.
+
+He thanked somewhat condescendingly, as if so insignificant a matter
+were not worth all that to-do.
+
+"We loaf about dreadfully now," he went on. "I can't say I get a great
+deal of sport out of it, but a fellow has to know something of the
+follies of human life, too."
+
+When they passed St. Anne's, a thought suddenly flashed into Lilly's
+mind, which filled her with bliss. If they were to go into the church
+for a moment, the sin of silence would be removed from her soul, and St.
+Joseph could even bestow his blessing on the day.
+
+Timidly she gave voice to her wish--and found herself in a pretty mess.
+
+"I am a free-thinker," he said, "I would never go counter to my
+convictions. Nevertheless, it is an enlightened man's duty to be
+tolerant, and if you want to go in, I will wait outside."
+
+No, she no longer wanted to, and she was terribly ashamed. Of course, he
+could not know what close connection existed between St. Joseph and his
+good fortune. Otherwise he would not have been so ungrateful.
+
+They walked in silence through the deserted streets of the suburbs. The
+fog lifted a little. Lilly chilled through and through shivered at each
+step. Perhaps excitement was the cause. On the whole, however, she felt
+much calmer than she had expected to. Everything was so altogether,
+altogether different. A little disenchantment had occurred, she did not
+know how.
+
+She cast a yearning gaze down the street, at the end of which dark trees
+showed their heads.
+
+"When once we are out there!" she thought, and clenched her teeth to
+keep them from chattering.
+
+The silence began to paralyse her thoughts. She would gladly have
+started a conversation, had she been able to think of a suitable
+beginning.
+
+A baker's boy was walking ahead of them whistling.
+
+"When we worked all night," said Fritz Redlich suddenly, "we always
+bought warm rolls. We might get some now."
+
+Lilly became joyous again.
+
+To be sure, had he said "we might steal some," she would have liked it
+better.
+
+The baker's boy was not permitted to sell his rolls--just the right
+number for delivery had been doled out to him--but on the opposite side
+was an open shop.
+
+When Lilly saw her hero reappear with a large bag in his hand, she had a
+pleasant sensation, as if they were beginning housekeeping together.
+
+They now walked along gardens under a veritable shower of dew falling
+from the trees. Lilly shrugged her shoulders, and did not know what to
+do she felt so cold.
+
+At last they were out in the open country.
+
+Mats of silver-grey cobwebs, each weighted down with a burden of dew,
+were spread over the fields of high stubble. Yellow ridges of hills
+bounded the semicircle of the landscape, and in the distance rose the
+walls of the woods.
+
+Lilly stretched her arms like a swimmer, and drew in through her open
+mouth five or six deep breaths.
+
+"Aren't you feeling well?"
+
+Lilly laughed.
+
+"I must make up for all I've lost," she said. "I haven't _breathed_ for
+a whole year."
+
+Feeling frozen still she began to run. He tried to keep pace, but soon
+fell behind, and panted after her, hopping rather than running.
+
+When they reached the top of the first hill, the sun began to rise over
+the plain. The brushwood seemed to be on fire, and the cobwebs shone
+like silver. Each dew-drop became a glittering spark, a flame ran along
+each thread.
+
+Lilly, warmed and excited from running, pressed her hands to her heaving
+breast, and stared into the sea of red with drunken eyes.
+
+"Oh, look, look," she stammered, giving his face a questioning,
+searching glance.
+
+She half expected him to recite odes, sing hymns, and play the harp.
+
+He stood there trying to get his breath, to all appearances occupied
+exclusively with himself.
+
+"Do recite something, Mr. Redlich," she begged. "A poem by Klopstock, or
+something else." She had not gotten up to Goethe in school.
+
+He gave a short laugh, and replied:
+
+"Catch me! Now that examinations are over German literature may go to
+the dogs for all I care."
+
+Lilly felt ashamed and said nothing more, fearing the expression of
+such crude desires must make her culture appear half baked. When she
+looked up again, the glow was gone. The fields still sent up
+yellowish-red vapours to meet the climbing sun, whose effulgence hung
+coldly, almost indifferently, over the earth begging for light.
+
+They walked on toward the woods.
+
+He swung the paper bag. From either side of the road she gathered
+blackberries, which depended like bunches of glistening black beads from
+bushes overlaid with a film of cobwebs.
+
+Some distance on, at the edge of the woods, they came upon a bench.
+Without discussing it, they simply made for the seat. It was the place
+they needed.
+
+Lilly felt a little oppression at her heart. Here she was finally to
+receive the revelations for which her soul languished; here she was to
+look into the heaven-gazing eyes of the young genius.
+
+He opened the bag, and she laid her handkerchief filled with the
+blackberries alongside.
+
+The work-bag containing the heavy revolver was deposited for the time
+being between the rounds of the bench. Lilly hollowed out the rolls, and
+filled them with blackberries, and the two breakfasted together very
+cosily.
+
+The golden shimmer of early autumn poured its enchantment over them.
+Lilly's brain grew heavy with longing and happiness. She could have sunk
+to the ground, and laid her forehead against his knees merely for
+support, because approaching fulfillment was more than she could bear.
+
+He had removed his cap. A curly lock fell over his forehead down to his
+eyebrows, giving his face a sombre expression, as if he were challenging
+the whole world. This "genius lock" was the fashion among the boys of
+the last year high school and was especially cherished by those who did
+not aspire to the stylishness of belonging to a students' corps.
+
+His gaze rested on the church towers of the old city, which resembled
+awkward, faithful, sleepy watchmen looking down on the wide-spreading
+clusters of house tops.
+
+"Will you tell me what you are thinking about?" asked Lilly, bashfully
+admiring. The great moment--at last it had come.
+
+He gave a short and somewhat mocking laugh.
+
+"I am calculating how many ministers get their living in a nest like
+that, and how comfortable it is for a fellow if he just studies
+theology."
+
+"Why don't you? Learning flows in on one from all sides."
+
+"You don't understand," he reproved her gently. "Learning is not the
+chief thing. Conviction is. One must do everything for the sake of one's
+conviction, suffer want, suffer all sorts of privations. The city has
+six scholarships to bestow upon theological students, but I would rather
+chop my hand off than accept one. A man must take up the fight for his
+convictions, and that's what I'm going to do--day after to-morrow."
+
+His small, short-sighted eyes sparkled. He stroked the genius lock from
+his forehead with a trembling hand.
+
+Now she had him where she wanted him. Perhaps this was the very instant
+in which to hand him the revolver. But out of respect for the greatness
+of his mood, she deferred the matter for a while.
+
+Taking a firmer hold of the bag in which the revolver was lying, she
+went into raptures as once before on the porch.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Redlich, what is finer than such a fight? To dive into the
+waves of life! To spite the dark powers who control our destiny, and
+wrest our fortune from them, to come out of the struggle each time with
+greater strength, a more iron will. Can you conceive of anything more
+up-lifting?"
+
+But this time, too, her adjuration failed to awaken an echo.
+
+"Good heavens," he said, "on close inspection what after all is this
+much-vaunted fight? Everybody walks over you, in winter you lie in a
+cold bed, and all year round you have nothing to eat. Of course, I'm
+going to go into it, of course I am, but it's hard, yes, indeed, it's
+hard! If I had a scholarship I should feel much better."
+
+"So that's all the joy you have in facing the world?"
+
+"My dear young lady," he rejoined, "a fellow who starts out with nothing
+but a satchel of darned wash and a hundred-mark bill--where's he to get
+much joy from?"
+
+"He's the very one!" Lilly exclaimed, eager to cast a ray of her own
+confidence into his heart. "When somebody is like you, with the mark of
+greatness on his face, then the world lies at his feet."
+
+She described a semicircle with her right hand, taking in the entire
+plain, its green bushes and silvery streams and the city with its wreath
+of swelling gardens lying embedded in the fields like a lark's nest in a
+meadow. Lilly felt as if she were showing him a small copy of his future
+realm.
+
+He nodded several times in the dejected consciousness of knowing better
+than she what the world is like.
+
+"Dear me, it's hard," he observed, "very, very hard."
+
+She wanted whether or no to convince him of his own ability to conquer,
+and growing warmer and warmer continued with her peroration.
+
+"If only I could express what I know and feel. If only I could give you
+some of my own assurance. Look at me, poor thing that I am. I have no
+father or mother, and no friends. If at least I could have stayed at
+school and graduated. But here I am, without a vocation, without money,
+without clothes for the winter--not even a decent pair of shoes." She
+stuck out the worn tips of her old boots, which until now she had kept
+carefully hidden. "I don't get as much to eat as I need either; and if I
+come home too late to-day, I shall be whipped. Yet I know that happiness
+is lying in wait for me. It is here already--in every breeze that blows
+my way, in every sunbeam that smiles at me--the whole world is
+happiness--the whole world is music--everything's a Song of
+Songs--everything's a Song of Songs!"
+
+She turned from him with an impetuous movement, to keep him from seeing
+how she was quivering all over.
+
+Down in the city the chimes began to ring. St. Mary, once the cathedral,
+now the chief Protestant church, came first with its three resounding
+clangs. St. George uttered a clear third E-G--on high festivals it added
+a paternal, rumbling C. More bells followed. St. Anne's thin tinkling
+joined in--modest, yet to be distinguished the instant it began. There
+was a secret whispering and calling in it: "We know each other, we love
+each other, and St. Joseph says 'Good morning.'"
+
+Lilly's friend seemed to have used the period of her silence in order to
+win back his spiritual balance. With the little air of didactic dignity
+that he liked to assume when he felt he had the advantage in a
+situation, he began:
+
+"I am almost inclined to think we don't quite understand each other. I
+was at great pains to make a careful study of the problems of life, and
+so I see somewhat deeper into things than you. I'm up to snuff about the
+so-called illusions of youth. I know what men are worth, and I should
+advise you to be a little more cautious about what you do."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, astounded.
+
+He gave her a sidewise smile with an air of mingled superiority and
+uncertainty.
+
+"Well, beauty carries certain dangers in its train."
+
+"Nonsense, beauty!" Lilly cried, glowing all over. "Who thinks of such
+silliness?"
+
+"The person upon whom nature has bestowed such a gift," he went on, "has
+many reasons for being on her guard. For instance, it's a piece of good
+luck for you that you chanced upon so strict and correct a young man as
+I am. Another man with a more frivolous nature than mine would have made
+an entirely different use of an excursion like this. You may be sure of
+that."
+
+Lilly stared at him. She was carried away by a whirl of obscure and
+disagreeable thoughts. What did he want of her? Was he reproaching her?
+Did he scorn her because of her most sacred feelings?
+
+"Oh, dear," she said, utterly discomposed. "I wish we were at home."
+
+"Understand me," he began again. "I am by no means a Pharisee. I have a
+thorough comprehension of the weaknesses of human nature. I am only
+offering you a bit of advice in all modesty, and some day you will thank
+me for it. It is not for nothing that a fellow has his principles.
+Should we ever meet again later in life, you will, I hope, not have to
+be ashamed of the friend of your youth."
+
+"If it's a question of shame," something within Lilly cried, "then I
+ought to feel ashamed now, and of myself."
+
+Forward, undignified, ill-bred--that was what she held herself to be for
+having begged him to take this morning walk.
+
+Yet there had been nothing evil in the thing! Where had the evil
+suddenly come from?
+
+The chimes were still making music, the sun was still weaving its net of
+gold about her. She saw nothing, she heard nothing, so very ashamed she
+was. She wanted to run away, but did not dare even to stir.
+
+As for him he no longer looked as if he needed comforting. His manner
+expressed the quiet satisfaction a man feels with a piece of work just
+completed.
+
+A blackberry had remained sticking in a crevice in the seat of the
+bench.
+
+"One mustn't get spots on one's clothes," he admonished, and stuck the
+berry in his mouth, slowly crunching the seeds between his teeth.
+
+Lilly pulled herself together, and caught up her work-bag.
+
+"What are you carrying there?" he asked. "It looks so heavy."
+
+Lilly in terror clutched the bag tight.
+
+"Only the house key," she stammered.
+
+Then they went home.
+
+"If only I could change his mind," she thought, "so that he would have a
+favorable opinion of me again."
+
+Nothing better occurred to her than to stoop at the wayside and pluck
+the finest field flowers she could reach to offer to him as a farewell
+gift instead of that other gift, the mere thought of which made her feel
+like a goose.
+
+She handed him the bouquet keeping her eyes turned aside. He thanked her
+with a pretty bow, and twirled the bamboo cane with the silver
+handle--an heirloom of which he had just come into possession. He swung
+it boldly about his head, the way future corps students do before making
+a high carte.
+
+Lilly in her dejection and humiliation was unable to say a word.
+
+"Doesn't an inner voice," he asked, "tell you we shall meet some time
+again?"
+
+She turned her face away. She had all to do to force back the tears
+welling up in her eyes.
+
+"Then I hope you will receive proof of what unremitting effort and
+unshakable fidelity to one's convictions can accomplish even with small
+means."
+
+His voice now sounded full and vibrant with self-satisfied energy. While
+making her small and timorous he seemed to have sucked up some of her
+joyous mood.
+
+When they drew near the Altmarkt, however, he became greatly disquieted
+again, and kept spying about on all sides. Finally he remarked that the
+streets were getting pretty lively, and it would be better perhaps if
+they were to part company and go back by different ways.
+
+A few days later he left home, and the house was perfumed with the
+garlic of the sausage that Mrs. Redlich sliced into his soup as a
+farewell offering.
+
+Lilly stood behind the window curtain with burning eyes, and thought in
+her sorrow:
+
+"Oh, I wish I had never seen him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+One grey October morning, which hid the threat of approaching winter
+behind a mask of moist, warm mist as behind a hypocritical smile, the
+wonderful happened: Mrs. Asmussen's runaway daughters came back again.
+
+Without casting a shadow before them, there they were all of a sudden,
+shoving several bulging hand-bags into the library, measuring Lilly with
+an astonished look of gracious frigidity, and ordering her to pay for
+the cab--they had no change.
+
+Lilly felt the throbbing of her heart up to her neck. The moment the two
+grand, voluptuous figures appeared on the scene and, though looking a
+bit weather beaten and washed out, swept victoriously into possession of
+the territory, she knew they were Mrs. Asmussen's daughters.
+
+She cast one anxious look at the pretty, pug-nosed faces, where two
+pairs of bright grey eyes challenged the door of the rear room, and
+another anxious look at the broom of welcome, whose hour had come. Then
+she hurried off to avoid the terrors bound to follow upon the opening of
+the middle door.
+
+In the cab she found two withered bouquets of gladioli, a Scotch plaid
+rolled in a shawl strap, from which two umbrella handles--large blue
+glass knobs, the size of a man's fist--were sticking out, some cushions
+trimmed with diagonal bars, and a whisky flask. There was also a tin box
+of lemon drops sans lid, and a disjointed paper hat-box, between whose
+cracks a comb and a piece of buttered bread were striving in unison to
+find their way into freedom.
+
+Lilly gathered up the effects, and stopped in the hall, listening in
+terror. She expected to hear the screams of the maltreated girls. But
+all was serene, and when she entered she saw mother and daughters
+hugging and kissing.
+
+Since there was no time left before the midday meal to buy a roast in
+honor of the festive occasion, dinner consisted of cabbage as usual,
+with the addition of a mountain of cakes from the confectioner's, to
+which the girls helped themselves before the meal in order to lay some
+aside for days of less plenty.
+
+This was the first evidence of their housekeeperly thrift.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen beamed with motherly joy and tenderness.
+
+"Well," she said, "did I exaggerate when I told you about these glorious
+creatures? Too bad I had to do without them for so long. But I am modest
+in my demands, and I am glad enough to get what I do. I know their
+hearts draw them now to their father, now to their mother, because they
+cannot make up their minds to deprive either of us permanently of the
+gift of their pure filial love."
+
+She was sitting between the girls, and she pressed a hand of each. All
+three looked into one another's eyes devotedly.
+
+The absent pater familias was remembered touchingly. Their gay, talented
+father, the girls said, intended to give up his large business, to
+assume the management of extensive farms in the south of Russia at the
+urgent invitation of influential patrons.
+
+Later, in Mrs. Asmussen's gloomier hours, it transpired that that
+"pock-marked scoundrel" had had to scurry off because of some
+questionable notes, and hide in Odessa until the atmosphere in the north
+cleared.
+
+To Lilly's unpracticed eye the girls were as like as two
+sparrows--saucy, greedy, inconstant, and amorous. It was only after a
+time that she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the older, who
+possessed some beauty of a coarse kind, had the ways of a clutching,
+grasping barmaid, and was the sharper of the two, usually dragging her
+sister Mi in tow, whose chief characteristic was a sort of flabby
+drollness.
+
+In their treatment of Lilly they observed for the time being the pacific
+attitude of suspicion willing to bide its time. Hints were not omitted
+to inform a certain person that they would soon learn what position to
+take and whether there was to be peace or war.
+
+When they were finally convinced that Lilly was shy and harmless, the
+waves of their tender confidences met over her head.
+
+It now became the regular thing for all three of them to sit on the edge
+of the bed until late at night with their corsets open and their knees
+drawn up to their chins, talking, talking, talking, while they sucked
+candies bought on the sly, or dressed one another's hair. Beautiful
+souls poured forth confessions. Whispered confidences about love
+adventures and man-baiting flowed on steadily, flooding Lilly's pure
+fancy with a turbid stream of sexual mysteries.
+
+What the Asmussen girls liked above all was to have their bodies
+admired.
+
+"When I turn this way, isn't the set of my shoulders classic?"
+
+"Haven't I a marble bosom?"
+
+"If I weren't so bashful, I'd take off my shirt and show you my hips.
+They are like a goddess's."
+
+They made less frequent appeals for criticism of their features.
+
+"We've gotten so many compliments about our good looks that we can't
+have any doubts on that score."
+
+Nevertheless when cold weather set in, and necessitated the wearing of
+woolen scarfs over their heads, they did not scorn to discuss the truly
+Greek way their hair had of growing low on their foreheads, or the
+seductive curves of their mouths.
+
+They could also be severely self-critical.
+
+"Our eyes are not beautiful, we know. Yours, for instance, are much
+lovelier. But whether _you_ cast sheep's eyes at anybody or not, it's
+all the same. Now, if _we_ just chuck a little sidelong glance--you'd
+think no one could possibly notice it--why, in a jiffy they're after us
+like mad."
+
+Their iridescent, cattish eyes would twinkle with the pleasant sense of
+unbounded power and triumph over the weakness of that strong animal man.
+
+The advice they dispensed liberally to Lilly might be summed up in one
+sentence: "Do what you please, but don't surrender yourself."
+
+They laid no restraint upon themselves in retailing spicy stories, which
+set Lilly's pulse to bounding, and in which they proved their absolute
+seriousness in the observance of this motto.
+
+They manifested a strong sensual craving. One of them once remarked:
+
+"My highest ideal is to be queen of the bees, but to have no children."
+
+The other, who seemed inclined to ethical speculations, rejoined
+vivaciously:
+
+"My highest ideal is to be a nun and horribly immoral."
+
+She pursued the theme, entering into all details after the manner of the
+Renaissance narrators, while Lilly's pious soul trembled and shuddered.
+
+Their libertinism of thought notwithstanding, all their hopes and dreams
+centered about marriage.
+
+To marry, as quickly as possible and as advantageously as possible, was
+salvation, career, a specific for all ills, earthly bliss, and eternal
+happiness.
+
+"That is, he must be _old_, he must be _rich_, and he must be _stupid_."
+
+This trinity embodied all their demands of fate. As others invest their
+husbands-to-be with supernatural virtues, these girls revelled in
+picturing their future spouses' infirmities and in recounting the tricks
+they meant to play upon them by virtue of their bodily and spiritual
+superiority.
+
+They were not always agreed as to the ways and means of obtaining this
+precious possession so absolutely indispensable to life. A favorite
+subject of debate between them was: "Is it expedient, or is it not
+expedient, to compromise oneself with the man of one's choice?"
+
+Lona, whose daring in hatching difficult schemes of action knew no
+bounds, upheld the positive side. Mi, who wished to be sure where she
+trod, inclined to the negative.
+
+"If you knew those male milksops half as well as I do," Lona scolded,
+"you'd realize that the best way to catch them is through fear. Make
+them sin, and twist their sin about their necks like a halter. That's
+the only way to be sure of them."
+
+"It's very odd," Mi returned with inexorable logic, "that you haven't
+practised what you preach, because if you had, you'd long ago--"
+
+Discretion bade her break off. Her sister's fingers, crooked ready to
+scratch, boded no good.
+
+Only a week after their arrival a love tilt took place between them, in
+which hair puffs and petticoat strings flew about, and from which Mi
+emerged with a laceration which Lilly had to treat with vinegar
+compresses the rest of the night.
+
+The cause of their contention was a "swell" who had followed them on
+their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi, had been discouraged
+from coming closer because her sister had not responded sufficiently to
+his advances.
+
+Lona asserted the principle that one must have nothing at all to do with
+so-called "swells," while Mi was of the opinion that he would have been
+good enough for a husband at any rate.
+
+Strolling through the streets and permitting themselves to be accosted
+soon became their chief and daily occupation. Lilly, who had credited,
+and been greatly disturbed by, the threats they first made that they
+would assume the management of the business, soon realized she had
+nothing to apprehend in this regard.
+
+They slept until nine, and took two hours for dressing. Then they went
+out for their morning walk to make the necessary estimates of the
+gentlemen of the garrison, who at that hour of the day promenaded in
+groups near the main guard.
+
+If the first half of the day was dedicated to the military, the second
+half was devoted chiefly to ordinary citizens.
+
+It goes without saying that afternoon coffee was taken nowhere else than
+at Frangipani's confectionery shop, where a few lieutenants and a number
+of city officials and young lawyers gathered to play chess or skat; and
+where, too, many a more dashing high school teacher came to display his
+kinship with the proper world of fashion.
+
+After this hour, spiced by all sorts of sweets, followed the promenade
+at twilight, which proved highly advantageous for establishing possible
+connections, and provided the subjects needed for discussion at home.
+
+It would not be stating the full truth to say that Mrs. Asmussen brought
+a loving sympathy to bear in her judgment of this kind of life.
+Certainly not. The mutual adulation of the first few days had given
+place to a period of sultriness, when cutting remarks flashed in the
+murky atmosphere like streaks of lightning. Then a season of protracted
+storm set in, and mishaps occurred in swift succession, gradually
+becoming so purely a matter of course that even Lilly, who at first had
+wept and screamed along with the other three, began to consider this the
+normal condition of the Asmussen household. Abusive epithets of
+unsuspected vigor flew hither and thither, and the place resounded with
+cuffings. Even the broom, which in the beginning had not been given a
+thought, was now drawn into its strictly limited field of activity.
+
+Peace did not come until evening, when Mrs. Asmussen's medicine asserted
+its rights. The two girls might have taken advantage of her oblivion to
+give free play to their desires, had not their highly developed sense of
+propriety strictly forbidden going out at night.
+
+"Persons meeting us would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then
+no wedding bells for us."
+
+One would scarcely believe with what a number of conventions the young
+ladies circumscribed their apparently unrestrained existence.
+
+You may let yourself be kissed as much as you like, but on no account
+kiss back.
+
+You may let a gentleman call you by your first name in conversation, but
+if he does so in a letter it is an insult.
+
+You may let a gentleman treat you to coffee and cake, but not to bread
+and butter.
+
+You may let a strange man tread on your foot, but if he attempts to
+press your hand under the table you must get up.
+
+And so on.
+
+Lilly had absolutely no comprehension for this set of thoughts and
+desires. Hitherto man as a male had been a piece of life non-existent in
+bodily form, which came to her notice on occasions, but glided by like a
+stranger without holding her attention. She had solely loved the man of
+her dreams, the man of her novels, the man of her own creation. The
+thing that stared at her on the street, the thing that came to exchange
+books and found all sorts of little pretexts for entering into
+conversation with her, the thing that officiously held aside the wadded
+curtain of the church door as she entered, or played the amiable over a
+shop counter, this thing was a strange, annoying fact; it was stupid and
+brazen, a matter of unspeakable indifference, to think of which would be
+a waste of time and a degradation.
+
+A girl's entire life, she now learned, was here simply for the sake of
+that gross and disgusting race; and a girl could concern herself about
+them from the moment she rose to the moment she fell asleep, without
+cherishing the thought of the one for whom she had been created as for
+work and faith and God.
+
+Though Lilly knew she was infinitely above being influenced by the two
+girls' advice and example, she felt, in spite of herself, a small desire
+arising within her to find out what the nature of those creatures might
+be about whom such a fuss was made, whose approval brought pleasure,
+whose coldness meant annihilation.
+
+She was beset by a tormenting fear of that dreadful, seething world
+outside there, of the dirt that was carried to her door every day anew,
+and of the disquieting curiosity with which she picked it up to examine
+it. For whether or no, her thoughts _would_ return to the gay pictures,
+painted in colors of poison, which the two sisters, growing ever more
+demoralized, unrolled before her eyes evening after evening.
+
+It was a piece of good fortune that the hot friendship both at first
+bestowed upon her cooled off somewhat after a month or so.
+
+The cause was the enigmatic shortage in the cash box, which occurred
+time and again, and came to be a permanent phenomenon. Lilly would spend
+hours calculating feverishly, entering and counting every cent, until
+finally there was no other conclusion to be reached than that some one
+had used the few moments of her absence to dip into the drawer where the
+box was kept.
+
+In order to save herself--in case of discovery she would be accused of
+the theft--she once carried the key of the drawer away with her as if
+unintentionally, and did so repeatedly, until the girls' manner, which
+had grown increasingly estranged and scornful, assured her that she was
+on the right tack.
+
+On one occasion they gave vent to their wrath and disillusionment.
+
+Did _she_, stray dog that she was, think she was mistress of the place?
+If need be, books and keys would be taken from her by force.
+
+In mortal fright Lilly ran to the mother and threatened to leave that
+instant unless she was allowed to control affairs as before.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen, who knew her scapegrace offspring through and through,
+took sides with Lilly, and the storm seemed to have blown over.
+
+The girls took to entreaty and in reawakened intimacy gave Lilly new and
+comprehensive views into the depths of their soul life.
+
+Did she think they cared a row of pins for the miserable little
+meringues they ate at Frangipani's? Not a bit of it. They were clever
+enough to know how to provide for the future. At any rate they couldn't
+stay with that old guzzler forever, especially since the place had
+turned out to be absolutely unproductive in regard to good matches. So
+for a long time they had been saving money industriously for another
+flight. It was no exaggeration to say they were starving themselves
+miserably. Lilly with her paltry desires could have no idea how many
+temptations they withstood when they sat at a table in the confectionery
+shop at suppertime, and had to look upon all sorts of glorious goodies
+without tasting them.
+
+Lilly remained unmoved by their persuasive wiles. Their manner cooled
+off again, and they began to pass her by, tacitly showing their sense of
+injury.
+
+Soon events occurred that fanned their enmity into a lively fire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It was dusk of a wet November day. The spouts were streaming and an
+endless chain of grey drops glided down the iron rods of the porch
+railing and fell precipitously into the pool gleaming on the pavement
+below.
+
+A miserable sort of sport to watch the game! But what better diversion
+had the day to offer?
+
+Suddenly the front door opened, the library bell rang sharply, and in
+came a nimble little fellow, capering and stamping, and exhaling an
+aroma of Russia leather and Parma violets. His coat collar was turned up
+and his hat pulled far down. His close-cut blond hair shone like
+yellowish-white velvet.
+
+He measured Lilly from between lids masterfully narrowed to a slit with
+a cursory and apparently disillusioned glance, threw out a strident
+"good evening," and examined the back part of the room, as if expecting
+some one to emerge from behind the bookcases and give him a special
+greeting.
+
+Lilly asked what she could do for him.
+
+"Oh, you are the young lady in charge of the circulating library?" he
+asked. The existence of such a young lady seemed to transport him into a
+kind of careless gaiety.
+
+Lilly said she was.
+
+"Splendid!" he replied. "Just splendid!" And a thousand little merry
+devils danced in his blinking, white-lashed eyes.
+
+Lilly asked what book he wished.
+
+"Be it known to you, most honored and erudite miss, I am not exactly
+familiar with German literature and the allied sciences, but ever since
+yesterday I have been possessed of a fabulous and downright sophomoric
+zeal for culture. If you would help me with your valuable--"
+
+He came to a sudden halt, stuck a monocle in his eye, looked her up and
+down, first on the right side, then on the left, the way an intending
+purchaser scrutinises a long-legged horse, murmured something like "the
+devil," and asked to have the light turned on immediately.
+
+Since it had actually grown so dark that the numbers on the backs of the
+books were illegible, Lilly saw no reason for refusing his request.
+
+When she reached up in all her glory to raise the chimney from the
+hanging lamp, he uttered a second and more audible "the devil." And when
+she stood there before him, the light shining on her sidewise, with an
+uneasy, questioning look in her improbable eyes--those long-concealed
+"Lilly eyes"--he sank back on the customers' seat to show how utterly
+nonplussed he was, and folded his hands and implored her forgiveness.
+
+Lilly felt a hot sense of insult rising in her. So low was she esteemed
+in her position that an aristocratic young man--the first who had
+strayed in to her in the course of one and a half years--did not deem it
+necessary to show her the most ordinary courtesy.
+
+"If you do not wish to borrow a book, sir," she said, giving him a
+superior look, "please leave the place."
+
+"What--what did you say?" he rejoined, outraged. "I borrow a book? _One_
+book? One beggarly book? For every five minutes I am permitted to stay
+here I will take out a whole shelf of books, for all I care, a whole
+case of books--but with the proviso that I may return them to-morrow. I
+will immediately contract with the best express company in town to keep
+hauling the cases away and back again. But one moment--one moment. It
+seems to me I once heard that for every book taken from a circulating
+library you have to leave three marks deposit. Isn't that so?"
+
+Lilly stared at him in blank astonishment and said it was so.
+
+"Well, since I haven't such an amount of money in my possession just
+now, I must ask you to keep _me_ here as a deposit. So, in a measure, I
+yield myself up to you for imprisonment. Very vexatious for both
+parties, I'm sure. But what else is to be done in the circumstances?"
+
+In spite of herself Lilly had to laugh.
+
+"Oh, she's reconciled!" he cried triumphantly. "Her majesty is
+reconciled. And now let us speak to each other as decorous friends.
+Observe me well. Do I look as if I read books? To be sure I have my
+favourites, Schlicht, Roda-Roda and Winterfeld, and others who purport
+to know the humour of soldiering life. But if I come here, it's not to
+get books. The thing goes deeper than that. I hope I may confide in
+you."
+
+"If you think it necessary," stammered Lilly, whose eyes were fascinated
+by a gleaming chain peeping from under the sleeve of his tan overcoat.
+She did not know men ever wore gold bracelets.
+
+"Evenings I like to get into mufti--the rest of the time, you know, I
+wear uniform--but not for long any more--in a few weeks I depart this
+life, because--do you know what debts are? No? Then rejoice. Debts are
+the sour sediment in the lemonade of human existence, and the lemonade
+at that is none too sweet. But what was I going to say? Oh,
+yes--evenings I like to play Harun-al-Rashid and strive to win the favor
+of the populace by honouring the populace's more commendable daughters
+with a little conversation. Understand? So, in remoter districts, where
+high are the hedges and silent the new villas--so yesterday I--behind
+two young ladies--laughing over their shoulders and swinging their
+skirts, exactly the way well-bred girls are wont to do--"
+
+"I beg your pardon, but I should like this talk to end," said Lilly, red
+with shame.
+
+"Not at all," he said; "I knew at once you are a perfect lady, and have
+nothing to do with such ticklish matters. I am merely confessing in
+order to secure a little absolution from your purity."
+
+This turn did Lilly's soul good, and she did not oppose him further.
+
+"So the two young ladies were walking in front of me arm in arm. The
+moment I reached-them I slipped in between like a slice of sausage in a
+sandwich. They weren't a bit offish. They told me they owned a large
+circulating library and intended shortly to open an art shop in Berlin,
+and so on. But they didn't mention their address, and since--I admit it
+with shame--until a few moments ago I thought they had some good points,
+I am simply making the rounds of all the libraries in the directory.
+Besides the well-known bookstores there are only three. I investigated
+the other two, and now that I know the third, the art shop
+proprietresses may go to the devil for all I care."
+
+A feeling of scorn and mischievous delight arose in Lilly. She gave a
+short laugh, but took good care not to disclose the existence of the
+Asmussen girls.
+
+To prove to her that in the presence of her majesty all desire for an
+adventure ended, he presented himself formally: "Von Prell, future
+ex-lieutenant."
+
+Observing her questioning look he continued:
+
+"As I delicately indicated, my days in the regiment are numbered."
+
+Lilly timidly inquired whether an officer's life no longer pleased him.
+
+"Until now I knew of no sort of life that would _not_ have pleased me."
+Wanton spirits shot little gleams from his small grey eyes. "But the
+paternal riches have taken wing, and my wages as army serf will just
+about buy radishes, and even radishes get expensive around Christmas
+time. So the best thing for me to do is to buy an old herring keg and
+let myself be salted and packed. If you should happen to know of one to
+be had cheap, I give the best prices."
+
+Lilly frankly laughed a joyous laugh. He joined in, holding his hands to
+his hips and emitting a thin, falsetto tehee, which, though scarcely
+audible, shook his slim, sinewy body as with a storm of merriment.
+
+They now sat opposite each other like two good friends, with the counter
+between. Lilly wished the hour would never end.
+
+A maid entered to exchange a volume of Flygare-Carlen for her mistress.
+He unassumingly disposed himself for a stay, examined the backs of
+several books, and acted altogether as if he were at home. When the maid
+left he pulled the door open obsequiously and bowed and scraped as she
+passed through.
+
+Lilly grew more and more hilarious and restrained her laughter with
+difficulty.
+
+"Before the next customer comes you must go," she said, "else they'll
+begin to think something."
+
+"Why?" he asked. "The customers change."
+
+But Lilly insisted, whereupon he took to pleading.
+
+"Listen," he said. "I am known as a man utterly devoid of moral fibre.
+Do _you_ be my stay in this mundane existence--at least until the door
+opens again. While I'm sitting here I can commit no follies, and that
+must convey some consolation to your charitable heart."
+
+It was agreed, therefore, that he might keep his place until the next
+time the bell rang. He leaned back in his chair comfortably and scanned
+Lilly with the tender emotions of unlimited ownership.
+
+"All earthly ills flow from garrulousness," he began. "If Columbus had
+just kept the discovery of America to himself nobody would have made it
+disagreeable for him. I will be wilier. I will consider my discovery as
+a family secret between you and me. What a feast for the fellows! Let
+them keep to the moths that fly at twilight, like the two prospective
+art-shop proprietresses, to whom I owe the good fortune of your
+acquaintance."
+
+Lilly had completely forgotten the sisters. It was about time for them
+to be coming home. Suppose they were suddenly to open the door!
+
+The bell rang. No, it wasn't they. It was a spinster, who daily devoured
+several volumes of love affairs, and came every evening for fresh
+fodder.
+
+The blithe lieutenant, remembering the compact, shot up out of his
+chair. His demeanour stiffened into business-like coolness.
+
+"If you please," he twanged, "will you kindly let me have the latest
+work by--by--" Evidently no German author occurred to him. After racking
+his brain the delivering name came, "by Gerstaecker."
+
+Lilly brought him the "latest work," which bore the date 1849. He
+deposited the requisite three marks, and took leave with too sweeping a
+bow, while the little imps frolicked between his silver-white lids.
+
+Soon after the sisters came home, cast a suspicious look at Lilly's
+flaming cheeks, and passed by without greeting her.
+
+The next day went after the fashion of every other, but something
+troubled Lilly, something like Christmas expectations, a premonitory
+restlessness, which pressed on to a new life.
+
+And behold! At the same time as the day before the door opened, and in
+stepped two elegant young men, who emitted a strident "good evening."
+Their manner was both a bit assured and a bit abashed as they asked for
+"an interesting book," while measuring Lilly with the stare of a
+connoisseur.
+
+She felt her limbs grow heavy and rigid, as always when conscious of
+being observed and admired. But she maintained her dignity, and when the
+young gentlemen after selecting their trash (which they scarcely glanced
+at) wanted to start up a bantering conversation, she tossed her head and
+withdrew behind the bookcase L to N, which sheltered her when she sat at
+the window-sill making her entries and calculations.
+
+The gentlemen took whispered counsel with each other, said a low
+"good-by," and beat a retreat.
+
+So her jolly friend had betrayed her after all!
+
+From now on Mrs. Asmussen's poor little hole of a library swarmed with
+slim young men of fashion, who were driven by an insatiable desire for
+reading to exchange one musty old volume for another.
+
+Only a few dared come in uniform, but they did not withhold their names,
+and the last page of the customers' book looked as if extracted from an
+Almanac de Gotha.
+
+Some wrapped themselves in a coat of business-like correctness, others
+came with careless assurance of victory. One man began to make love on
+the spot, and another even had the audacity to bandy gross language over
+the counter. The naivest one condescendingly inquired when within the
+next few days he might expect a visit from her.
+
+Lilly soon came to see that these attentions neither honoured nor gave
+hurt. She chatted freely with those who were courteous, refrained from
+replying to those who were impertinent, and the instant a conversation
+threatened to become lengthy she disappeared behind case L to N.
+
+Within a few days the sisters had discovered the aristocratic visitors.
+
+Their rage knew no bounds. Decency was thrown to the winds. Lilly was
+not spared a single insult, a single abuse. Vile epithets such as she
+had never heard poured over her in a dirty stream. The girls demanded
+that she cede her place at the counter to them. She refused point blank,
+whereupon they took to maltreating her.
+
+On occasions of greatest need Mrs. Asmussen came to her assistance. The
+broom rained blows on the white nightgowns of the jealous furies, and
+drove them into the back room, where the battle was drowned in rivers of
+tears.
+
+Hostilities continued. In case business exigencies necessitated some
+self-restraint during the day while customers were present, feelings
+were given all the freer play in the morning and evening.
+
+Lilly's life became a veritable hell.
+
+A crust of hate and bitterness laid itself over her soul. Partly in
+fright, partly in satisfaction she felt herself growing harder and
+sharper. It was only at night that she melted, when she buried her
+burning head in the pillows and gave vent to her misery in silent
+weeping.
+
+The merry friend with the white lashes, who had caused the entire
+catastrophe, did not put in appearance for about two weeks. He came in
+dragging his legs a little, and his eyes were swollen and bleared.
+
+"This flower," he said, undoing the tissue paper of the package in his
+hand, "is the picotee, which keeps fresh five or six days longer than
+any parting pangs."
+
+At the sight of him Lilly felt a little comforting joy light up within
+her. She took the bouquet as a matter of course, and reproached him for
+not having kept his mouth shut.
+
+"I told you," he replied imperturbably, "that I am a man utterly devoid
+of moral fibre."
+
+Then he informed her that the regiment had given him a farewell dinner
+for good and all, and now there was nothing more urgent for him to do
+than secure passage for somewhere--if he only knew where.
+
+"But we won't scratch our heads about _that_," he continued. "Brilliant
+people such as you and I have brilliant careers. The path of my life
+leads by still waters of cool champagne, and is paved with little meat
+patties. That's kismet. No use struggling against it. Even if it finally
+leads to a sugar-cane plantation in Louisiana, it's all the same to me.
+One always comes across something new, and that's the main thing. For
+the present the old man, who's taken a tremendous liking to me, wants me
+to run about his estate as Fritz Triddelfitz."
+
+He laughed his high-pitched, almost inaudible laugh, which shook him
+like a storm.
+
+Lilly wanted to know who the "old man" was.
+
+That a person should have to ask this seemed inconceivable to him.
+
+"Have you the least idea of life, if you don't know who the old man is?
+The old man is the cat-o'-nine-tails. The old man decides what is good
+and what is bad on earth. The old man breaks one man's neck and pays
+another man's debts. He is the punch bowl of all our virtues and all our
+sins. Withal the old man is eternally young. The old man sees you and
+says to you: 'Come here, little girl. I'm a grey old horror, but I wish
+to have you.' Then you have just enough courage left to ask 'When do you
+want me, high and mighty lord?' You see, child, that's the old man.
+They hist him on to you long ago, and if ever he should find his way to
+you, then may the Lord have mercy on you! Then all's over and done for
+with my poor young queen."
+
+"But I don't know yet who the old man is," said Lilly, whom this
+enigmatic alarum was beginning to make a little uncomfortable.
+
+"Then don't ask," he replied, and held out his freckled hand in good-by.
+"It's a pity for us two," he added, smiling at her tenderly and
+compassionately from between his blinking lids. "We could so cosily have
+enriched history with another famous pair of lovers." Leaning far over
+the counter, "Since I am a man utterly devoid of moral fibre, I should
+like to bestow one kiss upon you before I go."
+
+Lilly laughingly held her mouth up.
+
+He kissed her and walked to the door stiffly.
+
+"I can scarcely crawl, I'm so knocked up by my bout," he said, and with
+that was outside the door.
+
+After this visit Lilly was seized with the same disquieting sense as
+after his first visit. It seemed to her she was being flicked in sport
+with tickling switches. But this time, joined to the other feeling, was
+a certain anxiety which set her nerves a-tingle with a tormenting yet
+soothing sensation, as if she were waiting outside a locked door of
+gold, behind which an unknown fate was crouching ready to pounce on
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Outside on the street the hilt of a sword and the buttons of a uniform
+glittered in the noon sunlight of a December day.
+
+"A new one," thought Lilly. The stiff, thickset figure of the man who
+clanked up the steps of the porch was unfamiliar to her.
+
+A masterful stamping outside the door. The bell rang more sharply than
+usual.
+
+No, she did not know him. He was not a frivolous lieutenant, nor yet one
+of the maturer ones, who played the dignified and watched with an
+expectant smile for the first shy glance in order to extract from it
+whatever they dared.
+
+She saw eyes piercing sharp as a falcon's with a close ring of mobile
+crows' feet about them; she saw a severe high-bridged aquiline nose, and
+gaunt cheek bones on which lay a well-defined spot of red finely chased
+with purple veins. Under a short, bushy moustache she saw thin,
+compressed lips, the corners of which turned up in a smile of mocking
+benevolence. She saw a receding chin, polished to a shine by the shave,
+and disappearing in two limp folds near the high collar.
+
+She saw all this as in a dream. Her heart began to throb so violently
+that she had to lean against the bookcase.
+
+"Why, this is what I was afraid of," a voice within her spoke. "This is
+the old man."
+
+He raised his hand carelessly to his cap, but did not think of removing
+it.
+
+"Colonel von Mertzbach," he said in a voice whose rough intonations
+spread a whole world of authoritative power before her. "I should like
+to speak to you a few minutes. I have reasons for wishing to know you."
+
+Lilly felt she was to be subjected to a humiliating examination, which
+she was by no means in duty bound to suffer. But never in her life had
+she seemed so defenceless as at that moment. She felt as if she were
+standing in the presence of a judge who had the right to pardon or
+condemn entirely at his own discretion.
+
+Her lips trembled as she stammered something meant to express consent.
+
+"You seem to be an extremely dangerous young woman," he said. "Why,
+you've fairly crazed my men, especially the younger ones--there's no
+managing them."
+
+"I don't understand," replied Lilly, summoning all her courage.
+
+He uttered "h'm," stuck a monocle in his eye, and looked her up and
+down, or rather looked down to the point where the top of the counter
+cut her figure off. Then he uttered another "h'm," and observed:
+
+"It's very easy to play the innocent in cases like this. However that
+may be, I can thoroughly comprehend my young men. Probably I myself
+should not have behaved differently. But it seems that despite your
+youth and--inexperience, you possess a very respectable amount of
+feminine cunning, otherwise you would not have succeeded, in spite of
+your irreproachably reserved manner--or, perhaps, just _because_ of your
+manner--you would not have succeeded, I say, in bringing the young men
+here on repeated visits--they are somewhat fastidious."
+
+Lilly felt the tears rising. It would have been easy to repudiate the
+insults he offered her; but from where derive the strength to oppose a
+word in defence to this man whose eyes disrobed her and drilled her
+through and through, whose smile held her in a wire net?
+
+So she sat down and cried.
+
+He, in his turn, rose from his seat and stepped close to the counter.
+
+"How deeply your sense of honour has been wounded I cannot say offhand.
+At any rate, it is not my intention to make you cry. On the contrary, I
+should like you to give me with the utmost composure possible a little
+information which will enlighten me and which may be of some importance
+for your future."
+
+Lilly was conscious of only one thought: "You must pull yourself
+together because he wants you to."
+
+She wiped her eyes and looked at him obediently, sniffling a little, as
+when she had been scolded in her childhood.
+
+He asked her name, where she had been born, where her parents were, what
+school she had attended, and what she was doing in the library. At the
+mention of her guardian's name an ironic smile passed over his face.
+
+"I know the gentleman's views," he said. "So, in short, you have been
+left absolutely alone in the world?"
+
+Lilly assented.
+
+"And it would not be disagreeable to you to have some mainstay--to know
+someone to whom you could turn in moments of need?"
+
+"Where is a person like that to come from?"
+
+"Let me think it over at leisure," he said, wrinkling his forehead. "In
+any case, you cannot remain in this hole. Do they treat you well here at
+least?"
+
+"Oh, tolerably," said Lilly, and added between laughter and tears,
+"Only--the food is bad and sometimes I get--" she was going to say
+"beaten," but was ashamed to, and substituted "punished," which was a
+perversion of the truth.
+
+The colonel burst into a laugh that sounded like the crack of a whip.
+
+"Very commendable in you to take the matter humorously," he said, and
+rose to go. "Well, I know what I wanted to know. My men may continue to
+come to you--in uniform, in civilian's clothes, whichever way they want.
+They will find no more irreproachable company among the young ladies of
+this town. Should they ever forget their manners, just drop me a line.
+But I am sure they won't. Good afternoon, Miss Czepanek."
+
+Lilly watched him walk across the porch with the jerky, springy strut of
+an old cavalry man. The wintry sun seemed to be shining for the sole
+purpose of casting a dancing radiance about his figure.
+
+When he reached the pavement he turned to her window and lifted his cap
+slightly but respectfully. The eyes behind the lowering brows pierced
+hers, searching, almost threatening. Then he passed out of sight.
+
+Lilly's soul was assailed by a tumult of questions:
+
+"What was it? What was expected of her? Why wasn't she let alone?"
+
+She wanted to cry, wanted to pour out complaints and feel herself
+pitied. But her trouble had a certain festal tinge, a certain
+shadowyness and unreality. She bedizened herself with it as with a new
+hope, and what he had said about some one to whom she could turn in
+moments of need re-echoed in her soul like a soothing, easing melody.
+Didn't it seem almost as if he himself wished to be the mainstay so
+sorely lacking in her floundering young life?
+
+Perhaps he would get Mr. Pieper, who did not concern himself about her
+at any rate, to give up his guardianship over Lilly. Or, perhaps the
+colonel might even adopt her, or something like that. There was no
+knowing.
+
+If only there had not been those dagger eyes, that amused laugh, and
+that evil, evil look at the end, and above all her friend's warning: "If
+ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on
+you!"
+
+However, for all that, what could possibly happen to her behind the
+counter? Nobody had ever dared to raise the drop leaf and pass through.
+And surely she was safe behind the bookcase L to N, where she could not
+even be seen.
+
+The colonel's visit seemed to have acted like a cold douche on his men,
+despite--or, perhaps, on account of--the guarantee he had given for
+their good behaviour. Not one of them came to visit her again.
+
+"Is that a sign of the protection he is to favour me with?" Lilly
+wondered.
+
+Something was missing, she did not know what.
+
+A week passed, and one day the younger sister, who held watch every
+morning for possible billets-doux, threw an envelope at Lilly's feet,
+saying:
+
+"Something else again, with a coronet on it, you flirt, you!"
+
+"Flirt" was one of the milder titles of honour that the sisters lavished
+upon her.
+
+Lilly opened the letter and read:
+
+     "My dear Miss Czepanek:--
+
+     Remembering the interview that took place between us recently,
+     I take the liberty of making a proposition to you. The position
+     of private secretary and reader with me is open. Would you be
+     inclined to accept it? Since I am an unmarried man, it would be
+     in better form for you not to live in my house, but I pledge
+     myself to provide for your maintenance in a suitable and
+     respectable family. Your guardian, whom I took the opportunity
+     to consult in the matter, has given his consent to the plan.
+
+     --Respectfully yours,
+     Freiherr von Mertzbach,
+     Colonel and Commander of the----Regiment of Ulans."
+
+So here it was--her fate!
+
+It was there, on the other side of the gleaming snowy street, beckoning
+and calling to her:
+
+"Come out of your hole. I will show you life. I will show you something
+new."
+
+But then she pictured herself sitting at the colonel's great desk
+writing at his dictation. She saw his eyes drilling her, searching her
+soul, and threatening, always threatening. The pen would fall from her
+fingers, she would have to jump up and run away, but she would not be
+able to; the eyes would hold her in a spell.
+
+So Lilly sat down and wrote a very correct letter declining his
+proposition. She fully appreciated, she said, the honour he did her, but
+she felt she was not qualified to assume so difficult a position, and
+she thought that even if she was not so well off she did better by
+remaining in her modest situation, since she could fulfil the duties it
+involved. "Very gratefully yours, Lilly Czepanek."
+
+Done! Peace at last restored--as much peace as the bad sisters
+permitted.
+
+Christmas was drawing near. It cannot be stated with accuracy that the
+preparations in the Asmussen household produced an atmosphere of mirth.
+
+For weeks Mrs. Asmussen had been sighing over the bad times and the
+nuisance of having to give everybody in the world a gift. The sisters
+discussed as frequently and as loudly as possible the question whether
+it was necessary for refined and aristocratic young ladies to share a
+Christmas tree with low and vulgar hussies. There was no indication
+whatsoever of those gladsome mysteries that at this time brighten the
+saddest of human habitations.
+
+Lilly knitted a brown sweater for her mother, bought her two picture
+puzzles, a box of sweets, and a wooden vase for flowers--objects of
+china, being breakable, were not desired--and sent them to the asylum.
+
+At this time her thoughts frequently wandered from her mother to her
+father, who had now been gone four and a half years, and in that time
+had given no sign of his existence.
+
+In the forlorn condition she was in, her confidence in his return waxed
+strong. Christmas eve, about six or seven, he would suddenly enter, snow
+covering his havelock, and draw her into his embrace with that
+demonstrative ardour peculiar to him. She almost breathed in the
+fragrance always streaming from his anointed locks. That was one way.
+Another was, a servant would bring a little package as a preliminary
+greeting. Inside would be costly material for a dress. A hat would come,
+too. She needed it badly.
+
+After the others had gone to sleep she would fetch from the bottom of
+her trunk the score of the Song of Songs and softly hum the more
+beautiful arias.
+
+There were some passages which always made her cry. Oh, she cried a
+great deal these nights. Yet at this very period a tiny, hesitating
+sense of happiness found its way into her being.
+
+It was a lovely, dreamy feeling of being lifted up, of growing wings, of
+astonished listening to inner voices, which sounded sweet and familiar
+as words from a mother's lips, yet strange, like a gospel from the mouth
+of one who was still to come.
+
+Now and then she found herself kneeling in her nightgown, but not
+praying, merely dreaming, with arms outspread and rapturous eyes raised
+to the lamp, as if the salvation she was awaiting would approach from
+somewhere up there.
+
+Thus, after all, she celebrated Christmas in the quiet of her soul.
+
+Christmas eve was at hand.
+
+At the eleventh hour a few gifts were scraped together. The sisters ran
+about like wild animals making their preparations. They even bestowed a
+few kindly words on Lilly, who showed her gratitude by winking when the
+older sister had to look for something near the cash box. Lilly knew
+there was not much inside, and should anything be missing later she
+would replace it from her own funds.
+
+A few minutes before suppertime she was summoned to the back room, where
+the Christmas tree was already lit. The company was embarrassed.
+
+The sisters held out their hands. Mrs. Asmussen, who was already sitting
+over her medicine glass, delivered a few dignified words about the
+significance of Christmas in general and her misfortune in particular in
+having to forego the company of so splendid a husband on such an
+occasion.
+
+Then everybody asked everybody else's pardon because the presents were
+not more munificent. First of all, there had been a "must," which ought
+not to exist for refined souls, and which at first caused great chagrin.
+Then all of a sudden time had grown short. Besides, the apron with the
+red edge was very decent--they themselves had long been wanting one like
+it--and the pen-wiper was not to be despised, either. Above all,
+business had been bad.
+
+"I am ashamed to say, I have nothing at all to give," Lilly answered.
+But what she was most ashamed of was that she now felt kindly disposed
+toward the sisters.
+
+"I haven't a bit of character," she thought, as she bit into the
+marchpane which the older, the wickeder one, offered her.
+
+The library bell rang. A lackey loaded with parcels stumbled in and
+asked:
+
+"Does Miss Czepanek live here?"
+
+Lilly's heart leapt.
+
+"From papa--actually from papa!" she rejoiced.
+
+For a few moments she scarcely dared touch the packages. She ran about
+the room helplessly passing her hands over her hair. She did not venture
+to undo the cords until urged on by the sisters. They stood next to her,
+staring with great, greedy eyes.
+
+The things those boxes contained! A light cloth dress trimmed with lace,
+a delicate foulard dress, a pink silk petticoat, black patent leather
+and tan shoes, six pairs of glace and undressed kid gloves, some of them
+elbow length, three kinds of collars, a fichu of Valenciennes lace to
+wear with empire gowns, books, writing paper, conserved fruit, and more
+things, and still more, many more--the boxes seemed bottomless. Even the
+hat she had hankered for was there, a simple shepherdess shape of light
+grey felt, which shape had always been most becoming to the grand style
+of her features. It was trimmed with light brown ribbons and
+silver-tipped pompons.
+
+A veritable trousseau!
+
+The sisters began to pull long faces. Lilly, too, soon ceased to
+rejoice. She was full of apprehension. All she wanted now was to find a
+letter, a card, some token of the sender's personality, which surely
+accompanied the gifts. She groped for it nervously. Though she had long
+given up all thought of her father and his return, an instinct of
+self-preservation impelled her to pretend in the sisters' presence that
+it was he, and only he, who had poured this flood of treasures over her.
+
+At last--underneath the gloves--she found an envelope and ran off to the
+library with it.
+
+There beneath the hanging lamp she drew out a visiting card and paled
+with fright as she read:
+
+"Freiherr von Mertzbach, Colonel and Commander of the----Regiment of
+Ulans," followed by a few lines in the heavy, bold strokes with which
+she was acquainted: "from the depths of his own loneliness wishes his
+lonely little friend an hour of Christmas joy."
+
+She returned to the back room, where the sisters, green with envy,
+received her with a chilly smile, while Mrs. Asmussen, nodding over the
+steaming glass, dropped fragments of mysterious words.
+
+"The things actually do come from papa," said Lilly, amazed at the
+strange, stifled sound of her own voice.
+
+The sisters gave a short laugh, and silently began to put the gifts back
+into the boxes.
+
+Lilly was holding a little porcelain bon-bon dish filled with fragrant,
+odd-looking confections. She glanced hesitatingly from one sister to the
+other without daring to offer them the sweets for fear of being repulsed
+with some abusive word or other. She set the lid--a little rose-wreathed
+Cupid--back on the delicately cut rim, let the dish sink down among the
+other gifts in one of the boxes, crawled to the corner where she slept,
+and cried bitterly.
+
+The sisters whispered together a long time. They built a pyramid of the
+boxes on the counter and passed by it at a respectful distance.
+
+The next morning Lilly summoned a porter from the street and returned
+everything to the donor without a word of explanation.
+
+Then she went to the sisters and said:
+
+"I didn't tell you the truth yesterday. The gifts did _not_ come from
+papa. So I returned them."
+
+The sisters, who had come toward her with a sweet-sour air of
+attentiveness, made no effort to conceal their disillusionment.
+
+"Well, I didn't take her for such a muff!" said the younger.
+
+"She's not," said the older sarcastically, who, true to her nature,
+scented an _arriere pensee_. "On the contrary she's particularly
+calculating--wants to drive her adorer still madder. I hope she doesn't
+get stuck at her own game. Even the blindest mortal soon comes to know
+the difference between false and _genuine_ worth."
+
+Therewith, in order to furnish on the spot an example of the genuine
+quality, she drew her petticoat tight about her legs with her left hand
+and with her right hand gathered her matinee close under her bosom, and
+sent Lilly a smile of utter contempt from over her shoulder, such a
+smile as only lofty souls can summon on occasion.
+
+Nevertheless, Lilly noticed that from now on she was treated with a
+certain heedfulness, from which she deduced that something was still
+expected of her.
+
+During the next few days nothing of importance occurred, though the day
+after Christmas a few of the young gentlemen had put in appearance
+again. Their manner was jerky as they exchanged their books, they outdid
+themselves in politeness and they showed no disposition to make
+themselves at home on chair or counter.
+
+Then--the day before New Year--Lilly received this letter:
+
+     "Dear Miss Czepanek:--
+
+     You shamefully mistook the motives that led me to send you
+     those Christmas gifts. I feel I must justify myself and bring
+     about a perfect understanding between us. I have plans
+     concerning you which I should like to set before you
+     personally, but my position forbids my visiting you repeatedly,
+     and I would ask you, if your future is dear to you, to come to
+     my house to-morrow evening. I shall expect you some time before
+     eight. I give you my word of honour for your safe return.
+     Yours,
+
+     Mertzbach."
+
+To go or not to go.
+
+That night Lilly did not sleep a wink.
+
+If only the feeling of dread had not obsessed her, dread which robbed
+her of breath and the power to defend herself. If the mere thought of
+him brought it on, what would become of her should she stand before him
+face to face?
+
+She finally decided not to go, while she knew for a certainty she _was_
+going.
+
+She lived through the day as in a dull dream.
+
+In the afternoon she obtained permission from Mrs. Asmussen to attend
+New Year's eve service. The sisters, who spied upon her every movement,
+exchanged significant looks, but seemed too preoccupied with their own
+affairs to give hers their usual sweet attention.
+
+Lilly donned the old felt hat which many a storm had buffeted and many a
+shower discoloured. Her winter coat made her look narrow shouldered, and
+tug as she would, the sleeves refused to reach her wrists.
+
+If she had had her wits about her she would have been much too ashamed
+to show herself before so aristocratic a gentleman in that garb. But she
+was driven to her acts by something outside herself, not by her own
+volition. Strange, mysterious powers seemed to be pushing her, invisible
+hands to be helping her dress, smoothing her hair lower on her forehead,
+raising the arch of her brows, and opening the buttons at her throat to
+give her constricted chest the freedom of its young fullness. They
+rubbed her cheeks, pale from lack of sleep, until they glowed with a
+triumphant red.
+
+When she reached the street and the frosty breath of the winter evening
+stroked her gently, she felt she was waking up at last.
+
+"Where are you going?" a voice within her asked.
+
+"Perhaps to St. Joseph," she answered evasively.
+
+But she did not go to St. Joseph. She made a wide detour about St.
+Anne's, crossed the Altmarkt diagonally, saw the sisters sitting at
+Frangipani's in the company of two admirers, with difficulty avoided the
+assiduities of a gallant, and suddenly found herself in front of the
+latticed gateway behind which, four flights up, the sewing machine had
+rattled and clattered the last remnant of reason out of her poor, ruined
+mother's head.
+
+Light was shining from the two dormer windows up there where Lilly had
+once lived.
+
+Some one else was probably sitting there now, sewing shirts and drawers
+and nightgowns, day and night, night and day. Lilly, too, would be
+sitting there some day, bitterly ruing her lost youth as one regrets an
+act of criminal folly.
+
+"If your future is dear to you," he had written.
+
+She faced about abruptly, and ran--ran--ran--without coming to a stop
+until she reached the lighted house, in front of which a sentinel was
+pacing and freezing as he kept guard over the highest dignitary in the
+city.
+
+"Where are you going?" the voice within her asked again.
+
+To avoid answering, she rushed up the wide carpeted stairway and came
+upon a lackey in silver-striped knickerbockers, who without question
+quietly relieved her of her umbrella, while the shadow of a mischievous
+smile flickered across his pudding face.
+
+High white doors were held open for her, red-shaded lamps shone like
+great flowers, beautiful bare-shouldered women with tiaras in their hair
+smiled down on her from oval gilt frames.
+
+It was so silent and warm in the spacious rooms you could lie down on
+the soft carpet and go to sleep. If only there had not been that feeling
+of dread which was tightening about her throat and brow like a net drawn
+closer and closer.
+
+Another door flew open. Beyond was green twilight, as in a thick forest,
+and from out of the twilight _his_ figure came toward her, broad,
+resplendent, clanking. She felt her hand being taken, felt herself being
+led into the green dusk. Bookcases towered before her like black walls.
+From somewhere came the threatening glitter of swords, helmets and
+armour.
+
+She did not dare look at him. Even after she had been seated in a tall,
+dark arm-chair, whose top hung over her head like a canopy, she had not
+given him a single glance.
+
+She heard his voice, whose resounding roughness seemed to have been
+muffled to vibrating organ tones.
+
+It was all unearthly, all that she perceived and felt. It was not
+heaven, it was not hell. It was a region of anxiety and dreams, where
+souls hovered between deprivation and fulfillment in a state of
+lethargy.
+
+At last she understood his words. There was nothing unearthly about
+them. They dealt most rationally with the Christmas gifts, the return of
+which he did not consider final. They were securely stowed away biding
+the time when their mistress would graciously deign to receive them.
+
+Lilly with a frozen smile on her lips merely shook her head. She could
+not summon the courage to voice a refusal.
+
+"And now you will ask me, my dear," he began anew, "what impels me, a
+man advancing in years, to hang on to your skirts like a pertinacious
+lover."
+
+At the words, "advancing in years," she looked up instinctively.
+
+There he sat, too sharply illuminated by the light of the green
+student's lamp. The orders on his breast gave out a subdued, golden
+lustre. The silver tassels of his epaulets quivered and glittered like
+little snakes. There was a shimmer upon and around him like the halo
+about a saint in gold and brocade.
+
+Confused and abashed by all this glory Lilly quickly sank her gaze
+again.
+
+"I went to you that time," he continued, "because a dispute had broken
+out among some of my younger men, of which you were the subject. The
+matter promised to take a dangerous turn and it had to be adjusted. I
+expected to find a pert, coquettish little shop girl, and I found--well,
+I found--_you_. Now you will ask what I mean by 'you,' because you
+yourself cannot possibly be aware of your good points, or, rather, your
+potentialities--everything in you is still in process of becoming. I am
+what they call a connoisseur in women, my child, and behind that which
+you are to-day, I see that which you will be some future day, _if_--this
+'if' is the main thing--if the opportunity is afforded you for proper
+development. You might go to ruin among your old books. In case you have
+the courage to entrust your fate to my hands, I should like to assume
+the care of directing your life into fitting channels."
+
+That sounded composed and paternal.
+
+Lilly felt herself breathing easier, experienced a little relaxing
+hopefulness. She ventured to raise her look once more, and beyond the
+gold and silver dazzle she saw a pair of brilliant glassy eyes, which
+had lost their sharpness and were fairly forcing themselves on her with
+a mighty, greedy questioning. The shuddering and stiffening came upon
+her anew. She sat there motionless with paralysed will, while she
+thought:
+
+"Of what avail? He will do whatever he wants with me at any rate."
+
+He went on.
+
+"I own a beautiful old estate, Lischnitz, in West Prussia, near the
+Vistula, to which my duties prevent me from going frequently. My
+household there is managed by a middle-aged aristocratic lady, Miss von
+Schwertfeger--but her name's immaterial. If you were to go there she
+would receive you with open arms, I promise you that, and you would have
+an opportunity to develop under the most favourable conditions into the
+woman I already foresee in you. Your problems for the time being would
+be solved, and I should benefit by finding my home, when I visit it,
+lighted by a ray of youth and beauty."
+
+He had risen and in his eagerness to persuade began to pace about her
+with short see-sawing steps. Each time he moved there was a clinking and
+jingling like delicate dance music played on small bells. Finally all
+she heard was this metallic ringing, and she no longer understood what
+he said.
+
+She pressed against the back of her chair with an indistinct feeling
+that he was tying her with cords, packing her up, and carrying her off
+to some spot where no rescuer could hear her cries of distress. She knew
+she would not offer the least resistance, so completely was she in his
+power.
+
+"Look at me," he said.
+
+She wanted to obey, certainly--oh, she was so obedient! But she could
+not.
+
+He put a finger under her chin and shoved her head back. She kept her
+eyes almost closed and saw nothing except the red border of his military
+coat.
+
+Suddenly she felt herself sinking. The red border mounted to the
+ceiling, bees buzzed about her ears--then nothing.
+
+When she came to, something cold and wet was lying on her breast, and a
+woman's clothes smelling of smoke grazed her cheek.
+
+The green twilight was still there.
+
+A breastplate was hanging in front of her. It looked like a brightly
+scoured kettle.
+
+She did not dare move, she felt so comfortable and easy.
+
+A rough, bony hand kept chafing her forehead and a kindly voice repeated
+two or three times in succession:
+
+"Poor little thing! Poor little thing! So young!"
+
+After a time Lilly could not help giving a sign of consciousness, and
+the instant she stirred a sure arm came to the support of her head, and
+the kindly voice asked, was she feeling better and did she want
+anything?
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"Not so easily done," said the voice, "because he gave orders that he
+wanted to speak to you again. But if you'll take a good piece of advice,
+say 'much obliged,' and 'good-by,' and be off as quickly as you can.
+This is no sort of place for a poor young girl like you."
+
+Lilly sat up, and pulled down her waist.
+
+The cook was standing beside her--a brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face.
+Stroking Lilly's shoulder she asked if she should bring her something to
+strengthen her heart, a cordial beaten up with the white of an egg, or
+something else.
+
+"I want to go home."
+
+"You shall, pretty soon, my dear. But I must call him in first."
+
+She hustled out of the room.
+
+Lilly reached for her hat, on which she must have been lying, because it
+was completely crushed and misshapen.
+
+"Now I must certainly get a new one," she thought, and tried to reckon
+how much she could spare for it.
+
+The door opened. He entered, followed by the cook.
+
+Lilly was no longer afraid. Everything seemed far, far away. Even he.
+Nothing seemed to concern her any more.
+
+"I think she's fit to be taken to the cab already," said the cook.
+
+"You are no longer needed here," he said imperiously.
+
+The cook ventured to stammer another suggestion.
+
+"Get out!" he thundered.
+
+With that she was outside the door.
+
+Lilly experienced merely a lazy sensation of being startled.
+
+"Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what he means to do with me now," she
+thought.
+
+But her interest in her own fate was not great.
+
+He walked up and down with a heavy tread. The silver spurs on his heels
+jingled.
+
+"We'll have some light," he said. "The subject we're now to discuss
+requires clearness."
+
+He summoned the lackey who had smiled the furtive, cunning smile. The
+lackey lit the gas jets of the chandelier, and on leaving the room gave
+Lilly a glance of wildly eager curiosity, this time without a smile.
+
+Lilly still sat on the couch on which she had come back to
+consciousness, twirling her old hat without a thought in her brain.
+
+In the full light of the chandelier she saw the colonel in all his
+resplendence still pacing silently up and down.
+
+Lilly could look him in the face without a flutter.
+
+"It's all the same to me what he does," she thought. "I cannot defend
+myself at any rate."
+
+He moved a chair in front of her, and sat down--so close that his knees
+almost touched her.
+
+"Now listen to me, my child," he said. His words rang out steely and
+choppy as words of command at a drill. "While you were lying here in a
+faint, I thought about you in the other room, and came to a
+decision--but more of that later. You have long noticed, I suppose, that
+my feeling for you is not paternal. The older I grow the less I
+comprehend so-called fatherliness. To be brief--I am seized by a passion
+for you which--rather upsets me. If I were ten years older than I am--I
+am fifty-four--I should say: 'That's senile.' Do you know what I mean?"
+
+Lilly shook her head.
+
+She saw his face next to hers so distinctly that, had she never looked
+upon it again, she would have remembered it to the end of her days.
+
+His eyes embedded in red puffs, burned and bored again in the way that
+had frightened her so at first. His hair lay in bristling strands of
+grey at his temples and over his ears, but his moustache was black as
+coal, and shadowed his dark teeth like a spot of ink with a white line
+down the centre. From his mouth started the two limp folds which passed
+his shiny chin and disappeared in the collar of his military coat.
+
+"How strange," thought Lilly, "that I must be the mistress of that bad
+old man."
+
+But he wanted it so, and there was nothing else to do.
+
+"If you were to make inquiries concerning me," he continued, "they'd
+tell you that despite my age, I know how to subdue women--probably
+because I never respected them any too highly. But this time--how shall
+I say?--the affair is in a manner peculiar. I need not conceal it--I
+cannot sleep. I haven't slept for many nights; which has never happened
+to me before. Such a state of matters may not continue, and I pledged
+myself to make an end of the absurdity in some way or other at the death
+of the old year." He looked at the clock. "I have half an hour still.
+I'm expected at a function. In short: it's true, I wanted to seduce you.
+That is, for a man of my years, who hasn't anything seductive about him
+any more, seduce is not the right word. At any rate not here; I'd given
+my word of honour in my letter. But you _were_ in my power--you need not
+doubt that an instant."
+
+"I don't," thought Lilly, who was listening to all he said with as
+little concern as if she were reading it in a thrilling romance. The old
+fear had not returned. She was still waiting with lazy curiosity for
+what was to follow.
+
+"If you had showed fight, you would have been defeated all the more
+certainly. I am somewhat of an adept in such things. But your fainting
+spell occurred, and gave me an insight into your soul. I had to admit I
+should never have taken joy in my conquest. You're fine stuff, and I
+have no use for someone who would pine. Tearful mistresses have always
+been a horror to me. I love my comfort. I have had experiences I should
+not like to repeat. So, while you were lying here with my cook to take
+care of you, I determined I was on the wrong course."
+
+Lilly had a warm sensation of happiness, as if some great act of
+kindness were being shown her.
+
+"How noble, how glorious of him," she thought, "to let poor stupid me
+alone."
+
+She cast a furtive glance at his hands hanging between his knees. They
+were yellow and long and bony. Had she not been ashamed to, she would
+have leaned over and kissed them, to show her gratitude.
+
+The next moment she felt almost sorry that so noble a man should have
+nothing to do with her any more.
+
+"I took further counsel with myself," he continued, and his voice was
+still steelier, as if tempered in the fire of his resolve. "The idea was
+not a new one. It had occurred to me frequently. At first it seemed
+ridiculous, then it came to be a last resort, from which I would not cut
+myself off, in case circumstances warranted--I am taking that way now.
+Why shouldn't I? I'm not very ambitious. I'm too well acquainted with
+the vile machinery of the government. It doesn't pay to oil it any
+longer than need be with one's sweat and blood. So the idea of quitting
+doesn't frighten me--of course I shall have to leave service. Perhaps I
+should at any rate. There are days when I can scarcely keep the saddle
+because of that cursed rheumatism in my hips."
+
+"Why is he telling me all this?" thought Lilly, not a little flattered
+that so great and aristocratic a man should discuss such weighty matters
+with her.
+
+"What exercises me more is that a whole generation stands ready to
+revenge itself for the robbery perpetrated upon it. To be sure, a strong
+hand would do some good. We should have to dare something--why not our
+side as well as the other? Well, what do you say, child?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She was ashamed that she was so stupid as not to
+have extracted a single idea from all he said. His words sounded like
+Hottentotese.
+
+"Well, will you--yes or no?"
+
+"I don't know--I don't understand what you mean," she stammered.
+
+"Good Lord! I've been asking you all this time whether you'll be my
+wife," said the colonel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The great moment of her hopes had arrived.
+
+"Is this you, Lilly Czepanek, to whom such things happen? Or, is it
+someone else, with whom you changed places, some character in one of
+your brown-backed books, who will cease to live the instant you close
+it?"
+
+He had not insisted on an answer that New Year's Eve. When she had
+fallen back in a tremble, incapable of uttering a syllable, incapable of
+thinking, he had taken her hands in his, and with the smile of a
+gift-giving god had begun to talk to her in a softer, gentler tone than
+she had thought possible in him. He told her to think the matter over;
+she might take three days, no, a week; he would have patience. But she
+must promise not to say a word about it to anybody.
+
+She promised willingly, though she could not look him in the face, she
+was so horribly ashamed.
+
+Then she had run home, and cried and cried without knowing whether from
+bliss or misery. When the sisters came creeping in at four o'clock in
+the morning--they had let down the bars of their propriety on New Year's
+Eve--she was still crying.
+
+On rising, she came to the conclusion he could not possibly have been
+serious and he would take the first opportunity to recant--perhaps that
+very day.
+
+She would not complain if he did. On the contrary she would breathe
+freer, and thank God for having rid her of the presence of a phantom.
+
+At ten o'clock the bell rang.
+
+A box of roses was delivered, the size and cost of which aroused the
+disapproving amazement of the sisters, who knew to a penny the price of
+roses at that season, and reckoned a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages
+for several months.
+
+"I cannot for the life of me see," said the older, "why you don't yield
+to such a magnificent admirer. With us, of course, it's different. We
+belong to society, and we cannot give ourselves up. But you, nothing
+more than a shop girl, with no family to have to consider! Besides,
+there's no doubt but that shame has its charms. I in your place would
+make a venture--"
+
+The younger and more sentimental sister opposed the older one's advice.
+
+"The first time it should be from pure love," she said. "You owe it to
+your own soul, even if you are only a shop girl."
+
+Without coming to an agreement upon this debatable point, they went off
+to witness the change of guards, which Colonel von Mertzbach, they said,
+contemplated directing in his own person on New Year's day, and the
+Colonel, reputed to be a very handsome man pursued by all the
+marriageable girls in society, was someone they wanted to see.
+
+Lilly patted and kissed the roses of the upper stratum, and would have
+done the same to all in the box, had there not been so many.
+
+Then she took heart, locked the door, and went to St. Anne's to pay St.
+Joseph a visit.
+
+She nearly met the officers hastening to the main guard face to face,
+but managed in the nick of time to escape down a side street.
+
+High mass had just concluded and had left an odor of incense and poor
+people between the arched aisles. A few persons were still praying at
+the side altars.
+
+Lilly kneeled before her saint, leaned her head against the
+velvet-covered rail, and tried to lay bare her torn heart in order to
+obtain counsel and help.
+
+"May I? Shall I? Can I?"
+
+Oh, she longed to. Such a piece of fortune would never come her way
+again, never, never. To be rich, a baroness, to have all the splendours
+of the universe laid at her feet. Where outside of fairytales do such
+marvels occur?
+
+If only there hadn't been one thing about him. But what that one thing
+was she could not determine.
+
+It wasn't his eyes, no matter how dagger-like they looked. It wasn't the
+bristly hair on his temples either, nor the grating voice of command.
+
+Now she knew! It was the two dewlaps that fell from chin to throat. Yes,
+that's what it was. No use trying to dissemble with herself and pretend
+she did not see them. She shuddered at the mere thought of them.
+
+None the less, the sisters had called him a _handsome_ man, and rich,
+aristocratic women ran after him. It would be sheer folly to refuse.
+
+And wasn't he the noblest, the best, the most exalted of men? Wasn't he
+like God Himself?
+
+She imagined herself living and breathing for him. She would sit at his
+feet and learn. She would flutter about him like a gay bird. No, she
+could not imagine a person being gay in his presence. But a person could
+be poetic. You could languish away into unknown remotenesses, gaze at
+the evening clouds, present a noble, pale picture, up to which strange
+young men would look with consuming passion, and be honoured by not a
+glance in return--she could do this, because her life would be dedicated
+to the one who was to be her protector, friend, and father, who would
+elevate her to heights from which otherwise a ray would never have
+fallen upon her.
+
+"I will, I will!" life within her cried. "Dear St. Joseph, I will!"
+
+St. Joseph raised a threatening finger.
+
+But St. Joseph always raised a threatening finger. He couldn't help
+himself. That was the way the sculptor had made him. The sight of that
+finger, however, was vexatious and not calculated to help a poor human
+being out of a dilemma.
+
+The next day she received a letter from Mr. Pieper, asking her to call
+at his office on a matter of great importance.
+
+Hot and cold waves shivered up and down her back.
+
+"He knows," she said to herself.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen was greatly displeased when Lilly asked for permission to
+go out.
+
+"You get flowers and expensive gifts, and you want to leave the library
+every day. I very much fear me I shall have to offer up a daily prayer
+for you again."
+
+But Lilly showed her the guardian's letter, and she yielded.
+
+Lilly had not seen her guardian since the day, a year and a half before,
+when she had left the hospital tottering from weakness. Timidity had
+prevented her from availing herself of his invitation to visit him
+again. Besides, there had been no occasion to. Nobody had inquired for
+her. From time to time a tall, dry man, whom she recognised as Mr.
+Pieper's managing clerk, had called on Mrs. Asmussen and held a short
+conversation with her. This was the one sign that the man to whose
+protection Lilly had been consigned thought of her.
+
+"Mr. Pieper says, will you please walk in," said the clerk.
+
+The prominent lawyer, as on the previous occasion, was sitting behind
+his desk. When Lilly entered, he raised his head, and inspected her a
+few moments in silence. Then he smiled and rubbed his shining pate, and
+said in a long drawl:
+
+"U--m--m! So--o--o!"
+
+His eyes glided over her body as over a piece of goods for sale.
+
+Lilly, whose respect for the man rendered her breathless, made a gesture
+which was half bow, half courtesy, and pulled at the short sleeves of
+her overcoat.
+
+"Now I understand," continued Mr. Pieper. "You have developed in a way,
+my child, which in a measure excuses all sorts of masculine absurdities,
+even if it does not justify them--the masculine intellect is here to
+suppress all ebullitions. I forgot my manners--good morning, Miss
+Czepanek."
+
+He rose and held out his cold, spongy hand, which under pressure felt as
+limp as if it were boneless.
+
+"Oh, do please show me your gloves," he said.
+
+Lilly started like a guilty thing, drew her elbows back, blushed and
+stammered:
+
+"I was just going to buy a new pair."
+
+"Don't!" he rejoined, smacking his lips with gusto. "Grey rags like
+these arouse emotion. Your cloak arouses emotion, too. Your clothes make
+a piquant contrast to your general appearance. Lovers of such naive,
+sentimental things are easily moved by them to lyric outbursts, even if
+lyricism is not their forte."
+
+He laid his arm in hers with a confidential manner, and led her to a
+heavily upholstered settee.
+
+"Be seated in this chair of torture," he said, "though to-day we're not
+going to extract even a tooth. Taking everything into consideration,
+you have done well for yourself. I am content with you, my child."
+
+He stroked his straw-coloured beard complacently, and grinned like a
+trickster after the performance of a particularly artful dodge. "When do
+you think the wedding will take place?"
+
+"Why, there has not been--an engagement--yet," stammered Lilly.
+
+"Well, there won't be what is called a real engagement--sending out
+notices and receiving visits, and so on. As little stir as possible,
+Miss Czepanek, as little stir as possible. That's my advice. In the
+delicate situation in which we find ourselves, contrary influences are
+always to be feared."
+
+"I haven't said 'yes' yet," Lilly ventured to interject.
+
+This amused him immensely.
+
+"Who'd have thought it! A mock refusal! Who'd have thought it! I didn't
+take you for so good a business woman, Miss Czepanek."
+
+"I am at a loss as to your meaning," said Lilly, who without fully
+realising why, was growing hot with indignation.
+
+He put one hand to his hip, and continued to be amused.
+
+"Well, well, that's all very fine and practical. But you can't carry
+such jokes too far. Let _me_ arrange matters. I have some knowledge of
+these affairs, though, I admit, so important a case has never come to me
+before. I will endeavour to hasten the wedding as much as possible--for
+the reasons I have already mentioned. I will also ask for all possible
+secrecy, at least until his resignation has been accepted. Then nothing
+need stand in the way of securing the banns, since getting an adequate
+trousseau need concern us in only a lesser degree. As for your conduct,
+my dear child, I advise you for the present to remain as undecided, as
+maidenly, as fresh as possible. The only change I suggest is to use
+better soap. Everything else may continue to be just as it is. Perhaps
+you will have to be placed with another family. In that case it will be
+necessary, of course, to get an outfit, for which the sum realised from
+the sale of your mother's effects, amounting to--one moment, please." He
+opened a large account book lying on a rack next to his desk, "amounting
+to--A, B, C, Czepanek--amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks and
+seventy-five pfennig, will come in very handy. AEsthetic enjoyment of the
+circumstances leads me to place my own purse also at your disposal.
+Well, so much for the time preceding the wedding! As to the incomparably
+more important time following, I should not like you to leave my office
+before I had given you a few delicate hints, although _unfortunately_, I
+must deny myself the pleasure of--"
+
+He paused a moment, and rubbed his hands, while an epicurean, satyr's
+smile widened his broad face.
+
+"The pleasure of taking a mother's place and giving you the advice with
+which a mother usually sends off a bride."
+
+This time Lilly understood him, and her hot shame seemed to spread a red
+mist before her eyes.
+
+"You may trust me implicitly in such matters as a will, life insurance,
+and alimony in case of divorce, provided, of course, you are the
+innocent party--or even, in a sense, a bit guilty. You were not placed
+in my keeping for nothing. However, there is _one_ circumstance--which
+circumstance has to be taken most frequently into consideration in
+marriages like yours--_one_ circumstance in which my professional skill,
+I am sorry to say, cannot provide you with adequate security. As to
+that, you must keep your eyes wide open for yourself. We human beings
+have been put in this world, my child, to do what gives us pleasure.
+Whoever says the reverse steals the sun from your heaven. But I warn you
+of three things: first, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand
+no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous
+confessions. You cannot fully comprehend this yet--"
+
+As a matter of fact Lilly comprehended not a single word.
+
+"But when the occasion arises, think of what I've said. The recollection
+may prove useful. And--here's something very important--do you love
+jewels?"
+
+"I cannot say I have ever seen any."
+
+"Well, in the jeweler's window at the Altmarkt?"
+
+"We were always forbidden to stand in front of shop windows."
+
+Mr. Pieper laughed his vilest laugh.
+
+"I advise you when you are out walking with your husband to stand in
+front of _every_ shop window. Such little attentions may seldom be
+reclaimed. Pay special regard to pearls. In that way you will lay by a
+little reserve which will stand you in mighty good stead in your hour of
+need--and your hour of need will come, you may be sure it will."
+
+Lilly nodded her head and thought:
+
+"I will never, never, do that."
+
+Mr. Pieper stroked his shining bald spot several times with his plump,
+white hand, and continued:
+
+"Well, what else have I to say to you? I have a good deal more advice to
+give, but I fear not being understood. Just one thing, for the first few
+months. Marriage, no matter what sort of marriage, causes a peculiar
+derangement of the nervous system in natures like yours. Should you feel
+an inclination to cry, take a bromide. In general, take plenty of
+bromides--whether in case of great love, or--hm--great aversion. At
+certain times pull a cap over your head, so that you see nothing, hear
+nothing, and feel nothing, and, as it were, shunt yourself off from what
+goes on around you, yourself, your volition, and your feelings. The
+close atmosphere of the chamber which will at first envelope you will
+gradually evaporate--in this case probably at the end of a few months.
+Then you will breathe fresh air again, and instead of a tester, you will
+once more see the heaven of your maiden days. But, whatever happens, it
+is dangerous when one's nerves are overstimulated, to direct one's fancy
+too much upon the immediate environment and seek the necessary
+compensation that very instant. Turn from what is near, and dream about
+the remote blue mountains. Let your happiness ever dwell at a safe
+distance. You are young. It will draw closer. Give it time to become
+full fledged. I assume you haven't understood a word."
+
+"Oh, yes I have," stammered Lilly, who wished not to be considered
+stupid, though he was right--his words fell upon her like hailstones, of
+which she was able to gather only a few here and there. Nevertheless,
+she had understood the last part, that about dreaming of the remote blue
+mountains. It did her heart good, and she would take his advice.
+
+"However that may be," Mr. Pieper continued, "some sentence or other
+will occur to you on occasion. One point more, the most delicate of all,
+because it is, so to speak, the most spiritual. If what is about you
+gives no sound or response, if it does not echo to your call, you must
+not grieve, nor attempt to alter it. Cracked bells should not be rung.
+Rather make your own music. If I am not mistaken, you have a whole
+orchestra at your disposal."
+
+"I have the Song of Songs," thought Lilly, triumphantly.
+
+"You cannot imagine, my child, how important it is, when one lives in
+such close contact with another human being, not to lose one's touch
+with oneself. Keep a corner reserved for your own thoughts--they will
+amuse you greatly. He who likes to eat fresh eggs must raise his own
+chickens. Don't forget that. But keep your corner to yourself. Offer no
+superfluous resistance. No obstinacy. From the very start you must
+provide the course of your life with a double track, so that you can
+ride in either direction, as need be. I shouldn't wonder if under such
+conditions it wouldn't turn out to be quite a happy marriage, entirely
+apart from the external advantages--so long as they last--these are
+matters of adaptation and good luck which our will cannot control in
+advance. I will send you the marriage contract sealed. Until your coming
+of age--in about two years, I believe--I am at your disposal. If after a
+time you see that the milk in your cup has turned permanently sour,
+break the seal. A thorough lawyer can read all sorts of surprises out of
+the contract, which laymen do not immediately realise. But, as I said,
+in _one_ case he cannot. Beware of that one case. It is called _in
+flagranti_. Some time cautiously inquire into its meaning. There you
+are! Now, may I give the colonel your consent?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the
+window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far
+into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void
+purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with
+yellow.
+
+How beautiful and strange it was!
+
+Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet
+cushion.
+
+It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and
+forth in her brain.
+
+A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it
+asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a
+myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war
+office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful
+Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked
+like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you
+wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay
+gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay
+gentlemen, the colonel.
+
+"The colonel's wife--the colonel's wife," throbbed the wheels.
+
+But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the
+gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:
+
+"La--dy Mertzbach--La--dy Mertzbach."
+
+Keeping time. Keeping time.
+
+The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and
+tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-glass
+a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had
+to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave
+way.
+
+Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every
+day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy,
+she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to
+ask his forgiveness later.
+
+There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.
+
+That was the only embarrassing thing. If she weren't such a
+chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a
+change.
+
+But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread
+had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear
+he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.
+
+There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn't speak to
+anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular
+cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body,
+giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were
+endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had
+donned civilian's clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.
+
+From time to time he leaned forward and asked:
+
+"Are you comfortable, little girl?"
+
+Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest
+of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft
+kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and
+then peeping from under her travelling gown.
+
+What a crowd there had been at the station!
+
+No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort.
+To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater.
+They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried
+to be inconspicuous.
+
+When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or
+three muffled cries of admiration. And God knows, they did not issue
+from friendly lips.
+
+It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.
+
+At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in
+through the window.
+
+She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and
+weeping like rain spouts.
+
+So great was Lilly's fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the
+evil poison in these girls was transmuted into pained participation in
+another's joy!
+
+And there he sat, the creator of it all.
+
+Overcome by a sense of well-being and gratitude, she knelt on the
+carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and
+looked up to him worshipfully.
+
+He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his
+left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from
+under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded--with a smile that seemed to
+say:
+
+"My hour will come in due time."
+
+It was there sooner than she had suspected.
+
+"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."
+
+"Where?" she asked, frightened.
+
+"At the station--you know--from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."
+
+"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had
+always spoken of going to Dresden.
+
+"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."
+
+In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their
+bags and trunks.
+
+The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and
+white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped
+into a circle of light.
+
+The train glided off.
+
+They stood there, and nobody concerned himself for them.
+
+The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at
+drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.
+
+His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body
+quivered, as if she were at fault.
+
+Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar
+from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a
+lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
+
+A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly
+intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
+
+The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw
+confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with
+a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were
+still seething within him.
+
+"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't
+know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you."
+A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open
+the coach door, and run away into the night?"
+
+She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped,
+would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she
+managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next
+morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen
+perhaps.
+
+At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont
+to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she
+returned his pressure.
+
+Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by
+the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and
+Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the
+fleeting thought beset her again:
+
+"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run
+away and never come back?"
+
+She was already walking up the steps on his arm.
+
+They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered
+carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.
+
+In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards,
+smoothly covered with a white counterpane.
+
+She looked about in vain for another bed.
+
+"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.
+
+The colonel--when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel
+still--behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit,
+fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.
+
+She remained leaning against the wall.
+
+"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out
+of the window."
+
+"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so,
+I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."
+
+A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure
+of his possession.
+
+He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and
+looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested
+herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.
+
+A knock at the door.
+
+A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated
+bottle.
+
+"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish
+feeling.
+
+"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It
+gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for
+her in the trunk."
+
+She clinked glasses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely
+moistened her lips with the wine.
+
+He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:
+
+"I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening."
+
+Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh,
+and observed:
+
+"All the better, all the better!"
+
+He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her
+uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.
+
+"You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown."
+
+She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before,
+lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous,
+lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before
+the wedding.
+
+She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape
+from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every
+movement.
+
+Hesitating, faint-hearted she stood there, her fingers hanging to her
+collar, which she did not venture to unfasten.
+
+Growing impatient he jumped up.
+
+He was about to seize her, but the look she gave him was so full of
+despair that a knightly impulse bade him desist.
+
+To account for his action he picked up a roll of paper that had dropped
+from the trunk while she had been rummaging for the nightgown.
+
+Lilly saw something white gleam between his dark fingers.
+
+"The Song of Songs!" occurred to her.
+
+With a cry she jumped on him and tried to snatch away the roll. But his
+hand held it as in a vice.
+
+He defended himself with ease, laughing all the time.
+
+The thought that the secret of her life had strayed into alien hands,
+deprived her of her senses. She cried, she screamed, she beat him with
+her fists.
+
+The matter began to look suspicious. A doubt as to the virginity of her
+soul, yea, even of her body, began to assail him.
+
+"One moment, little girl," he said. "There are no nooks or crannies for
+hiding in now. Either you'll kindly let me see what this is without
+further delay, or I'll take you between my knees and hold you so fast
+you won't be able to move a muscle."
+
+Lilly took to pleading.
+
+"Colonel, dear, _dear_ colonel! A few sheets of music, and some songs,
+that's all, I swear to you, _dear_ colonel."
+
+The droll innocence of her plea stirred his emotions; that humble,
+unconscious "colonel" set him laughing again. Besides, the daughter of a
+musician, as he knew her to be, might be expected to have ambitions.
+
+"You yourself probably compose?" he asked.
+
+"No--no--no--it's not that," she moaned. "But don't look in--give it
+back to me--if you don't, I'll jump out of the window. I will, by God
+and all the saints!"
+
+She pleased him so well with her eyes stretched in deadly terror, with
+her hair loosened by the struggle, with the expression of a tragic muse
+on the sweet, delicately cut child's face, that he wanted to enjoy the
+rare sight a little longer.
+
+Accordingly, he assumed a black expression, and pretended to be what a
+few moments ago he had actually been.
+
+She fell on her knees, and clasping his legs, stammered and whispered,
+almost choked with shame and distress:
+
+"If you give it back to me, you can do with me whatever you want. I will
+do whatever you want. I won't resist any more."
+
+The bargain, it struck him, was to his advantage.
+
+"Shake hands on it?" he asked.
+
+"Shake hands," she replied. "And never ask questions--yes?"
+
+"If you swear to me by your St. Joseph it's nothing but music."
+
+"And the libretto, I swear."
+
+He handed her the roll, and she gave herself up to him--sold herself to
+the man who already possessed her for the Song of Songs, of which he had
+robbed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rays of early morning shining on her eyes through curtains striped
+with yellow awoke her. She was resting comfortably pressed against
+something warm. She had slept deliciously.
+
+What had happened to her came back to her slowly.
+
+She leaned over and wanted to kiss him.
+
+He was lying with his head thrown back, his mouth open. The light from
+the windows was playing on his shiny, furrowed chin. Little veins
+crisscrossed his gaunt cheeks like streams on a map. The inky moustache
+glistened with pomade. His eyelids were folded over so often that Lilly
+thought if they were stretched to their length they would reach to the
+tip of his nose.
+
+"He doesn't look bad," she said to herself, but the idea of kissing him
+passed out of her mind.
+
+She got up without making a sound, and all the time she dressed he did
+not stir. The old cavalry man was blessed with sound sleep.
+
+She wrote on a sheet of hotel paper, "have gone to church," laid the
+sheet between his fingers, and slipped out, down the steps and past the
+porter, who was so astonished he forgot to pull off his cap.
+
+The streets of the little town were dreaming in the quiet of the winter
+morning. Hillocks of snow swept from the middle of the street were
+heaped in rows along the gutters. A black swarm of crows squatted in a
+circle about the frozen fountain in the market-place. The faint sound of
+sleigh bells penetrated the grey air.
+
+Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the
+sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks
+sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to
+others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one
+spring, goggled after her.
+
+Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing
+gloves--but no overcoats--came tramping along the middle of the street,
+puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals.
+All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of
+command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one
+another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders.
+
+She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which
+towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure
+with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks.
+
+The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously
+gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere
+to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who,
+however, did not have much to say to her.
+
+An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if
+she had broken something, she did not know what.
+
+She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed
+of herself.
+
+Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her
+fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy.
+
+Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to
+close her eyes and clench her teeth--she was ashamed of the shiver, too.
+
+Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was
+pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out
+of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set
+with pearls and precious gems.
+
+"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have _something_. Then I
+could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St.
+Joseph--and the swords in _my_ heart would be sumptuous to behold."
+
+As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at
+the wedding.
+
+She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had
+stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot,
+surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint--how she had been
+borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon
+the fair and blessed distance.
+
+None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.
+
+"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and
+shrugged her shoulders.
+
+Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return,
+that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted,
+distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.
+
+"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
+
+At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.
+
+She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She
+prayed to be able to love him--with as much passion as she had drops of
+blood--with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much
+delight as there was laughter in her heart.
+
+And behold! Her prayer was heard!
+
+With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and
+returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and
+trust--as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he
+happened to wish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The colonel wishing, on account of his mesalliance, to avoid his many
+military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went
+directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.
+
+He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost
+to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple.
+Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath--that was all they needed. Close
+companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring
+about inward intimacy.
+
+The colonel had good cause, indeed, to be satisfied with his honeymoon!
+
+He, who in the course of his many amours had probably dandled hundreds
+of girls on his knees, who thought he knew women through and through,
+the tart and the sweet, the chaste and the coquette, the sensitive and
+the bold, the genuine and the flashy, those who confined their coy
+caresses to a man's hand and lower arm, and those who hung on men's lips
+biting and sucking them in a wild frenzy, he, the old voluptuary, to
+whom nothing feminine ought to have been strange, stood astounded,
+incredulous before this lovely marvel.
+
+So much abandon and so much pride, so much tenderness and so much fire,
+so much ready comprehension and so much artless childishness, all
+mingled in one dreamy, laughing Madonna head, had never before presented
+itself to him, for all the fine art he had exercised in his roue's
+career.
+
+What touched him most and completely puzzled him was the modesty of her
+desires, the fact that she made no demands of any sort.
+
+When they took dinner _a la carte_ he might be sure her eye would travel
+to the cheapest orders for herself; and the expression with which she
+would sometimes prefer a request to be allowed to drink orangeade, was
+as hesitating and shamefaced as if she were making a love avowal.
+
+One day, on returning from the Grosser Garten by way of side streets,
+Lilly stood still in front of a poverty-stricken little provision shop.
+As a rule nothing could induce her to look into shop windows, and the
+colonel, curious as to her interest in the place, extracted from her the
+confession that she loved sunflower seeds--and would he be very angry if
+she asked him to buy some?
+
+The more he overwhelmed her with gifts, the less she seemed to realise
+that money was being spent for her sake.
+
+The long dearth she had suffered prevented her from appreciating the
+value of money, and whatever he put into her purse she handed out again
+without hesitation to the first beggar she met on the street. Then again
+it smote her conscience when he gave a flower girl two marks for a rose.
+
+Once, upon her doing one of these incredible things, which usually sent
+the colonel into epicurean transports, he was seized with sudden
+distrust.
+
+"I say, little girl," he said, "are you an actress?"
+
+Lilly did not even understand him. She looked at him with the great, sad
+eyes of innocence she always made on such occasions, and said:
+
+"What are you thinking of! Since papa left I haven't even _seen_ an
+actress. I haven't been inside a theatre once."
+
+That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the
+tickets in her hand wild with joy.
+
+But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress.
+Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and
+shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the
+magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in
+awe about the gleaming gala robes as circumspectly as about a thicket of
+nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no
+real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to
+introduce Lilly to society.
+
+When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely
+fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her
+delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the
+fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat--taller,
+lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever--the old robber
+was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the
+magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the
+tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked
+down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.
+
+The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the banal delight of
+shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old
+bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave
+himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a
+time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.
+
+The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her
+alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together
+aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the
+lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and
+questioning and pointing of opera glasses began anew.
+
+Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started
+back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she
+now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel
+pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object
+of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the
+woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone
+else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.
+
+She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into
+darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the
+land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.
+
+After this, two Lillies sat in her seat--the one in blissful
+self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike
+fancy through heavens and hells; the other making precise gestures like
+a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred;
+at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation
+creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.
+
+The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the
+colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as
+usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a
+gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were
+spreading their peacock feathers.
+
+The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried
+away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness.
+Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she
+ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.
+
+Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress--white shirt front
+and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot
+persistence, as if she were a strange animal.
+
+She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which
+spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob
+of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down
+her body.
+
+Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very
+act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the
+miscreant vanished.
+
+The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.
+
+He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.
+
+When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand
+again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.
+
+Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome
+asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its
+traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room--off
+with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!
+
+He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with
+greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate
+his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen
+youth.
+
+Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done.
+In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last
+veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again--she
+danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for
+help, as a Maenad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her
+fingers--as anything he wished.
+
+This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her
+blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of
+repulsion--a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while
+secretly hankering for something else--for the sobbing of violins and
+the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the
+deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.
+
+When he had had his fill of the spectacle--and this came soon because of
+his years--he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver
+thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their
+stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a
+while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and pricked like needles,
+she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then,
+while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette
+in bed, and laughingly retailed smutty jokes; which he called, "singing
+his baby to sleep."
+
+Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common
+dining room. He wanted to re-experience the prickly delight of seeing
+his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his
+property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and
+envied him the possession of it.
+
+As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken
+sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she
+might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young
+eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins
+and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed
+distances to which the way had been barred--she did not know by
+what--since the hour her great happiness had come to her.
+
+Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the
+glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her
+lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary
+as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the
+white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue
+spirals.
+
+Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the
+street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.
+
+It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her
+in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as
+with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.
+
+She felt as if she would have to hurry after the passerby and ask:
+
+"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"
+
+She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.
+
+For only the fraction of a second!
+
+But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about
+again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.
+
+And he nodded several times as if to say:
+
+"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"
+
+He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.
+
+That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.
+
+To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent
+watch for him; but a host of others took his place.
+
+Passersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through
+whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at
+a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered
+while waiting for him to draw near:
+
+"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"
+
+If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet
+was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which
+said to her:
+
+"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are
+walking."
+
+And each occurrence saddened her.
+
+It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no
+attention to her.
+
+"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder
+why he scorns me."
+
+In the dining room, on the Bruehlsche Terrasse, and at other elegant
+places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her
+bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change.
+She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of
+her eyes, and she looked without embarrassment directly into the faces
+of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a
+falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this
+she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.
+
+She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the
+man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve--just
+as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would
+do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was
+starving, starving, starving--as she had never starved in her life.
+
+The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her,
+though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose
+glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the
+look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was
+stabbed with a dart from his eyes.
+
+It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and
+even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows.
+This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and
+begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and,
+as a rule, wind up with:
+
+"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."
+
+Despite his uncomfortable experiences he could not get himself to live
+alone again with his young wife. Habituated from youth up to motley
+associations, he required noise and light and laughter. But his
+suspicions waxed, and finally fastened upon Lilly, too.
+
+He forbade the matinal visit to church, to which she clung so ardently.
+
+What she had done, following a mere impulse, after the first awaking at
+his side, had by and by become a custom; and while he slept his profound
+sleep she dressed without making a sound and slipped out into the
+freshness of early morning.
+
+Going to church served as a pretext.
+
+Generally all she did was dip her fingers in the holy water and make her
+three genuflections. Sometimes she even contented herself, untroubled by
+scruples, with merely passing the church.
+
+For here was an hour of golden liberty, the only one throughout the day.
+
+First she hastened to the Augustus bridge to offer her breast to the
+winds always blowing there and watch the waters course by far below.
+Then she walked along the banks of the river, usually at a wild pace, in
+order to gather in as large a harvest of pictures and incidents as
+possible before creeping back to her husband's home.
+
+Everything the hour brought was pregnant with significance.
+
+The early morning mist lying red on the hills and descending to the
+river in golden ribbons; the chorus of the bells in the Altstadt; the
+first timid bursting of the boughs already russet with sap; the joggling
+carts on their way to market; the hissing and sparking of the swaying
+wires when the trolley-pole of an electric tram swept along underneath
+them--all this was joy, it was life.
+
+Since she was not threatened with a gift in consequence she ventured
+also to look into shop-windows, and greedily, in amazement, devoured
+every morsel of art.
+
+An end to all this from now on!
+
+The gates suddenly swung shut through which she had escaped for a single
+hour her perfumed life-prison overheated by desire and indolence.
+
+But she was so soft and pliant that she yielded without a murmur even in
+her innermost being.
+
+It was his wish--that was sufficient.
+
+Such a quantity of love lay fallow in her soul and cried for activity
+that in this time of inner conflicts she proffered him a double measure
+of tenderness. She had to, whether she wished to or not, whether her
+thoughts dwelled with him or glided off on the viewless path of dreams.
+
+She was his slave, his plaything, his audience; she dressed him, admired
+his good looks, rubbed his hips with ointment, adjusted the hare's skin
+about his loins to protect him against his gout; brought him his sodium
+carbonate when he had eaten too much; massaged his grizzled head with
+hair tonic, the pungent perfume of which nauseated her, and stood by to
+help and advise when he trimmed his moustache.
+
+She did it all with eager devotion and ingenuous confidence, as if in
+ministering to her husband she had found the end and aim of her
+existence.
+
+Nevertheless he lost his supernatural, god-like qualities in her eyes,
+became nothing more to her than a man, knightly to be sure, but
+whimsical and vain; for all his mental force intellectually indolent;
+for all his sensitiveness utterly brutal, and for all his thirst for
+love an oldish man, whose powers had long been enervated.
+
+Not that she ever put it in this way to herself.
+
+Had she seen his characteristics so clearly she might have come to hate
+and scorn him; for she was too immature to know that the witch's
+cauldron of worldly life brews the same out of most men's souls,
+provided the great feelings grow grey along with a man's hair, and he
+has erected no altar for himself at which he may seek refuge while
+sacrificing to it.
+
+But the picture her fancy had made of him shifted and changed colours
+from day to day, taking on now one aspect, now the reverse, until a
+little pity mingled with her terrified respect, and her childlike
+relation to him was tinged by a certain motherliness, which would have
+been ridiculous had it not had its roots in the unfailing warmness of
+her heart, which transmuted another's weakness into cause for her
+solicitude.
+
+Oh, if only she had not had to starve so!
+
+Starve, when sitting at a festive board each day decked anew with choice
+viands.
+
+Every morning Lilly eagerly read the theatrical and musical
+announcements posted in the hotel lobby, only to be drawn away swiftly
+by the colonel, who in his little garrison town had lost all interest in
+the arts. For lack of exercise his organs for perceiving and enjoying
+had lost their functions, and he shrank back petulantly from the
+intellectual work she expected of him.
+
+Everything in which he took pleasure, the exaggerated gaiety of the
+music halls, the display of physical strength and agility, the loud
+colours, soon became an abomination to Lilly after her first curiosity
+had been stilled.
+
+Wild horses, the colonel said, could not drag him to Shakespeare or
+Wagner again, then certainly not to a concert, the object of Lilly's
+profoundest cravings.
+
+One day she saw an announcement of the Fifth Symphony, which was bound
+to her childhood days by a thousand ties. She maintained silence, as was
+proper; but when she reached their room she threw herself on the bed and
+cried bitterly. He questioned; she confessed. With a bored laugh he made
+the sacrifice and took her to the concert.
+
+She had not been at a concert since her father's last performance.
+
+When she entered she trembled, and suppressing her tears, drew the air
+in through her nose.
+
+"You snuffle like a horse when he smells oats," joked the colonel.
+
+"Don't you notice there's the same atmosphere at all concerts?" she
+asked in a joyous tremour. "Our concert hall at home smelt just like
+this."
+
+But he had not noticed the similarity of smell, and he did not recall
+the Fifth Symphony.
+
+"Such matters--" he began.
+
+She was indifferent to all that preceded the symphony. She wanted to
+hear nothing but that trumpet call of fate which had once filled her,
+when just blossoming into womanhood, with a shudder of foreboding.
+
+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.
+
+Her husband amusedly hummed:
+
+"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.
+
+But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her
+own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of
+the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her
+with the flame burning in his own heart.
+
+Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the
+weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his
+presence.
+
+Suddenly he asked:
+
+"How would it be--would you like to go there?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.
+
+He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one
+place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might
+just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run
+down to Verona or Milan.
+
+She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet--it
+_was_ too much bliss.
+
+Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to
+anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the
+trip.
+
+First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk
+jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a
+dozen other hindrances.
+
+The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace
+with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to
+hasten their departure.
+
+The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a
+pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid
+pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.
+
+To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon
+race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's
+threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.
+
+Lilly saw her husband fall for the first time into a lasting mood of
+thoughtfulness. He paced up and down the room, repeatedly muttering:
+
+"I'll have to box his ears," or "I'll have to look for a second."
+
+The next day, when the colonel observed the importunate person trotting
+about ten feet behind them, he veered about suddenly and accosted him.
+
+The blond Titan looked him up and down without so much as removing the
+short pipe from his mouth.
+
+"I may look at anyone I want to, and I may go anywhere I want to," he
+declared.
+
+With that he slightly shoved up the sleeves of his overcoat and struck a
+boxing attitude, which, foreboding a street row, stifled all desire for
+a knightly mode of chastisement.
+
+The colonel in a final attempt to settle the matter in an honourable
+fashion handed the stranger his visiting card, which was received with a
+friendly "Thank you, sir." And the colonel's opponent stuck the card in
+his pocket evidently without the least inkling of the ominous import of
+the formality. Passersby began to gather and there was nothing left for
+the colonel to do but turn his back.
+
+The upshot of the rencontre was that the Englishman now assumed the
+right to honour Lilly and her husband with a greeting, and the colonel,
+who tried to drown the consciousness of having made himself ridiculous
+in a torrent of oaths, decided to leave Dresden immediately. This was
+about the middle of April.
+
+In Munich, where they stopped off a few days to render homage to the
+Hofbraeuhaus, nothing especial occurred.
+
+But the colonel had grown nervous. He cast challenging, pugnacious looks
+at the most harmless admirers and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's
+head. "It seems," he would say, "everybody can tell at a glance that you
+are no lady; otherwise you would not be the object of such a number of
+indelicate attentions."
+
+At any other time Lilly would have grieved bitterly. Now she listened to
+him with an absent smile on her lips. Her soul no longer dwelt on German
+soil. She was breathing the air of the beloved country on whose
+threshold, she thought, she was already standing.
+
+One night's ride still, a short day in Bozen, and then the gates would
+open.
+
+Now nothing could intervene.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in a section of the express that leaves Munich late in the
+evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the dusk of early morning. Lilly
+and her husband sat in the seats by the window. The seat next to the
+corridor had been taken by a young man, who on assuming it had saluted
+the other occupants with a smile, and then paying no further attention
+to them had become engrossed in a book written, apparently, in Italian.
+
+So he was an Italian, a messenger from Paradise, who had come to bid
+them welcome. That was enough to ensure Lilly's interest.
+
+She regarded him from under lids to all appearances closed in sleep.
+
+He had a clear-cut, high-spirited face of a peculiar, milky yellow tint,
+without lines or shadows, as smooth as if enameled. A small, dark
+moustache, somewhat crispy, and the hair on the temples cropped so close
+that the skin shone beneath.
+
+Lilly wanted to see his eyes, too, but he kept them obstinately bent on
+his book, though he seemed merely to be skimming through it.
+
+What she admired most was the peculiar roundness and softness of his
+movements. You might suppose a woman was clothed in that black and white
+checked suit, which attracted her by its unusually aristocratic
+appearance. The silk shirt was violet and dark red, and a green necktie
+was tied carelessly about the soft collar.
+
+All these colours, strange as they looked, went so well together and
+seemed to have been selected with so much care and refinement of taste,
+that Lilly grew quite uncomfortable. She almost felt the young stranger
+was trying to force himself upon her by his manner and bearing and
+dress, and above all by his ostensible disregard of her.
+
+It was ridiculous; she was afraid of him.
+
+When the customs officers entered the compartment at the Austrian
+frontier he uttered a few strange-sounding words, which the officers
+understood, for they turned away from him with deep bows.
+
+At that moment he raised his eyes and let them rove about the
+compartment; and while the colonel was opening his bag they rested for
+an instant, as if by chance, upon Lilly.
+
+What singular eyes he had!
+
+They sent out sharp rays like black diamonds, yet they gave a caress, a
+wicked, sure caress, which asked impatient questions, questions that
+made one blush.
+
+The next instant nothing had happened. He was bending over his book as
+before and seemed not to notice her.
+
+But her husband scrutinised her with watchful cunning, as if he had
+found a something in her face for which he had long been searching
+there.
+
+When the train started again the colonel disposed himself to sleep. For
+the sake of greater comfort he chose the unoccupied seat next to the
+corridor. The stranger in order not to be opposite him instinctively
+moved nearer to the centre, by this greatly diminishing the distance
+between Lilly and himself. A little more and he would have been sitting
+directly face to face with her.
+
+If she had harboured an _arriere pensee_, she would have bestowed more
+attention upon her husband's sleep. But all her senses were engaged in
+the desire to avoid the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a
+thousand needles.
+
+She pressed close into her corner, and spasmodically stared out of the
+window, where the illuminated interior of the coach was reproduced on
+the black background as in a dark mirror.
+
+Thus she could observe the stranger quietly, without his catching her in
+an occasional raising of her lids.
+
+The light of the ceiling lamp sharply lit up his smooth, soft cheeks,
+whose even sheen merged into bluish darkness at the temple, a cheek
+formed for pressure and petting. To let your hand stray over it gently
+must be a great delight.
+
+And what long, dark lashes he had, longer than her own. Their shadow
+formed dark semicircles reaching to the finely cut nostrils.
+
+Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her.
+
+There it was again, that black-diamond, caressing gleam, cold, yet how
+seductive!
+
+She started in fright, and grew still more frightened at the thought
+that he might have noticed her fear.
+
+He smiled a very, very faint smile and continued to read.
+
+Her fancy wove more and more anxious, flattering thoughts about him,
+thoughts tantamount to a crime, which weighed upon her like a nightmare
+of which she could not rid herself.
+
+Suddenly--an icy stream poured over her heart--she felt a soft, tender
+pressure on her left foot, which she must have moved nearer to the
+centre quite involuntarily, for only a short time before it had been
+close against her right foot, and her right foot touched the outer wall
+of the compartment.
+
+What should she do?
+
+A rebuking "I beg pardon!" an angry flaring up, would have roused the
+colonel and given occasion again for suspicion, perhaps even for an
+encounter. So she slowly withdrew her foot, using the utmost caution,
+and pressed it against the wall to prove to herself she had rescued it.
+
+But those few moments of hesitation, she knew it well, had made her
+_particeps criminis_, and this consciousness tormented her as the
+thought tantamount to a crime, which she had permitted to obsess her
+before.
+
+Dishonoured, besmirched, she seemed to herself, a prey to each and any
+man that waylaid her path.
+
+Why find fault with him? The thing he had impudently desired, was it not
+the fulfillment of her own impure wishes?
+
+This notion fairly stifled her. She wanted to jump up, cry aloud, and
+beg for forgiveness. The stranger continued to read quietly, as if
+nothing had occurred.
+
+When Lilly started out of a state of wakeful torpor a grey day was
+peering in through the window. She saw a foaming torrent tumbling into
+depths below, and beyond gigantic green masses towering into the
+heavens. It was a picture she had seen only in her dreams, convincing in
+its greatness, dwarfing all else with its might.
+
+What she had experienced before falling asleep was now a grotesque dream
+and had lost its vital essence.
+
+She looked about the compartment cautiously.
+
+The stranger was lying stretched out in repulsive sleep. His cheeks
+swelled and sank as he puffed heavily. He looked sallow and effeminate,
+and disgusted her.
+
+She turned more to the side and suddenly saw her husband's wide-open
+eyes resting upon her with a rigid, chastising look. She started as if
+caught in guilt.
+
+"Are you awake already?" she asked with a constrained smile.
+
+"I didn't sleep a wink all night," he replied.
+
+Something in the tone of his voice set her a-tremble. It was both a
+rebuke and a sentence.
+
+And how he looked at her!
+
+They rode on without speaking. Lilly utterly disregarded the stranger.
+
+At the hotel in Bozen the colonel entered Lilly's room and said:
+
+"My dear child, I have something to say to you. I am tired of the
+annoyances to which we are subjected day after day. To what extent your
+appearance and conduct are to blame, or to what extent my age is the
+cause, I will not discuss. However that may be, I do not reproach you
+with gross infringement of the laws of duty or good taste. And I may not
+demand a _grande dame's_ matter-of-course reserve of one who two or
+three weeks ago was serving behind a counter. To teach you propriety
+requires time, and it is a matter that I may leave entirely without
+qualms of any sort to Miss von Schwertfeger. We will take the noon train
+back to Germany and we will reach Lischnitz day after to-morrow in the
+evening, perhaps earlier in the day."
+
+Lilly did not even grieve, she felt so humiliated and bruised.
+
+And the land of her dreams sank below the horizon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+They reached Lischnitz late Saturday night. Since the colonel had
+prohibited a formal reception, all Lilly could see of the castle and
+outbuildings were black shadowy masses, which the veiled moon painted
+light on the edges.
+
+A couple of servant maids stood on the steps holding lanterns, and a
+very slim lady with a wasp-like waist and a halo of red hair streaked
+with white put a pair of long, extremely thin arms about Lilly's neck,
+and in a melancholy, cracked voice spoke motherly words of welcome,
+which, though intended to bring about a speedy friendship between them,
+intimidated Lilly and inspired her with dread.
+
+Overcome with weariness, Lilly sank into a swelling white bed, with
+gleaming brass rods draped in light blue ribbons, the bows of which
+perched there like great exotic butterflies.
+
+It was these butterflies which the next morning carried her from a doze
+into full wakefulness, into the new existence.
+
+From the ceiling hung a gilded lamp with opaline shades and blue silk
+covers over the shades. A white-enamelled wainscoting about four or five
+feet high ran about the entire room, and the walls between the
+wainscoting and the ceiling were panelled in silk of the same light blue
+as the counterpane and scarfs set in frames of white enamel.
+
+All this was revealed by a beam of light, which came in through the
+narrow space between the curtains and threw a shining bridge across the
+Persian carpet of a yellowish colour intertwined with blue.
+
+Joyfully Lilly sprang out of bed and trod on the carpet, which seemed to
+ripple in waves, so soft and long was its nap.
+
+Nothing of the colonel was to be seen or heard.
+
+Long before, he had told Lilly his bedroom would be apart from hers.
+"But it cannot be far off," she thought; "it must be on the other side
+of that shining white carved door."
+
+Opening it softly she peeped into the next room.
+
+The window curtains had scarcely been drawn aside. The bed, a huge piece
+of dark mahogany, was empty, though the crushed sheets and pillows
+testified to its having been occupied. There were engravings of racers
+on the wall, tall boots, whips, pistols, some uniforms, and on the round
+side-table a rack for pipes, and next to the bed the tube of gout
+ointment. So, the evening before, though it was her sacred duty to
+massage him, he had treacherously done it himself.
+
+She felt hurt, and then a little shudder ran through her. It was all so
+strange and hard, as if mysterious threats were lurking somewhere.
+
+She hastily shut the door and retreated into her sky-blue silk realm.
+
+Her room had two other doors, one of which opened on the corridor. This
+was the one through which Miss von Schwertfeger had led her in the night
+before.
+
+Lilly shuddered again. Without question, without asking permission, the
+thin, melancholy person of the extinct eyes and commanding manners had
+taken possession of Lilly. The colonel and his housekeeper had exchanged
+a glance, a brief glance of mutual understanding, which, on the
+colonel's part, said:
+
+"I put her into your charge."
+
+And Lilly was thrown on Miss von Schwertfeger's mercy.
+
+The lady, to be sure, had afterward tried to insinuate herself into
+Lilly's good graces by calling her pet names and embracing her, and with
+her own hands bringing the comforting cup of tea to Lilly's bedside. But
+a voice within Lilly, who usually flew to meet everybody, whether man or
+woman, with expectant trustfulness, had called to her:
+
+"Be on your guard."
+
+While staring at the door which the spidery fingers had thrown open for
+her the night before and faint-heartedly recalling the incidents of the
+arrival, Lilly was overpowered, there in the midst of her gay glory, by
+a feeling of strangeness and solitude, which nearly broke her heart.
+
+She rapidly put on the morning gown, which Miss von Schwertfeger must
+have unpacked and hung next to Lilly's bed after she had fallen asleep.
+
+The third door had still to be investigated. Lilly hoped it would lead
+out into the open.
+
+She cautiously turned the knob and drew back with a little cry. What she
+saw fairly dazzled her.
+
+A small room flooded with sunlight and filled with flowers smiled at her
+like a tiny paradise. Azaleas as tall as a man spread their rosy
+coronets over a much-becushioned couch. And there was a dear little
+secretaire inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise shell, over the top
+of which a palm placidly waved its flattering fronds. But that was by no
+means the most beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing was the toilet
+table, which sent a lovely, shamefaced greeting to her from the corner
+where it stood. It was draped with white lace and the surface was
+covered with a large, smooth, even-edged plate of glass. The mirror was
+tall and composed of three adjustable faces, so that you could see
+yourself on all sides--the hair at the back of your neck, the fastening
+of your dress, everything.
+
+Lilly had long desired such a mirror, but had not dared to ask for it.
+
+The room, doubtless, was her "boudoir."
+
+She, Lilly Czepanek, owned a "boudoir!" Was the wonder conceivable?
+
+On the glass plate lay all sorts of things which you couldn't take in at
+first glance, yet expanded your eyes and your soul like a divine
+revelation. There were ivory-backed brushes--three--four--of varying
+degrees of hardness or softness; an ivory-backed hand-mirror with a
+charmingly carved handle, a powder puff in an ivory box, a glove
+buttoner, a shoe horn, everything of silver and ivory. And many more
+things, mysterious in their functions, the significance of which would
+have to be learned gradually. On each shone resplendent the gold
+monogram L. M. with a seven-pointed coronet above.
+
+It was enough to set one wild.
+
+After having inspected her treasures to her heart's content, Lilly
+prepared to extend her expedition of conquest to outlying districts.
+
+The room in which she was had only one window, or, rather, a glass door,
+leading to a balcony, on which there was a rocking chair, and the high
+railing of which was partly overgrown with young creepers. Later in the
+season, when the leaves had unfolded all the way, a person standing on
+the balcony would be completely screened by walls of green; but now, in
+early spring, there was still so much space between the shoots that he
+might easily be seen from below.
+
+Lilly softly opened the casement door and slipped out into the open air.
+
+To the left, rising above a wall, were the barns and stables, which
+formed a large quadrangle about the yard. To the right, giant trees, a
+chaos of mazy, moss-green branches set with the golden-green buttons of
+the leaf buds. Inside the labyrinth the birds kept up a scandalous riot,
+which deafened one's ears as with a hail-storm of sounds. Straight
+ahead, about thirty paces away, rose the gable roof of an ancient
+one-story structure, which also bordered on the park wall and seemed to
+open in front on the yard.
+
+There at last a few mortals were to be seen. Two gentlemen, one with a
+round grey beard, the other stout, middle-aged and copper-coloured, were
+walking up and down the lawn at the back of the house smoking and
+conversing, while a third--
+
+Who was that?
+
+The slim, sinewy young man with the high collar and light yellow
+gaiters, sitting at a window, pulling a red dog to his lap by a thin
+chain, that was--no, impossible!--yes, it was--it actually was--Walter
+von Prell!
+
+It was her merry friend, who had, so to speak, slunk off around the
+corner, the little lieutenant, famed as one utterly devoid of moral
+fibre--the only man that had ever kissed her mouth.
+
+Except the colonel, of course; but the colonel didn't count.
+
+There were the silvery white lids and the clinking bracelet and the mute
+laugh, which shook him like a storm each time the red dog with the
+pointed ears fell from his knees. The only change in him was that the
+close-cropped, velvety head of hair had been replaced by a somewhat
+unkempt growth shining with pomade.
+
+Lilly laughed aloud and stretched her arms to him.
+
+"Mr. von Prell! Mr. von Prell!" she was about to call out, but checked
+herself in time.
+
+No matter--now, she knew, she was no longer solitary in that strange
+world. Her merry friend was here, her comrade, her playmate, the man to
+whom she owed her good fortune.
+
+She remembered his having said, "The old man has taken a tremendous
+liking to me and wants me to run about his estate as Fritz
+Triddelfitz"--Lilly knew her Fritz Reuter well.
+
+Strange that in all these months it should not have occurred to the
+colonel to mention a word about Von Prell's being at Lischnitz. To be
+sure, he had seldom spoken of his estate. Even Miss von Schwertfeger
+cropped up in his mind only when he wished to reprimand his young wife.
+
+Perhaps he suspected it was Von Prell and no other who had discovered
+Lilly and brought her forth from concealment. However, she would tell
+the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger without an hour's delay that she
+had met an old acquaintance. They need not be informed of the kiss. To
+what end? It had no more significance than a kiss in a game of forfeits.
+
+She slipped back into the bedroom, and a moment later, while she was
+drawing aside the window curtains, someone knocked at the door--three
+short, sharp, rapid taps, which seemed to probe to the marrow of her
+bones.
+
+It was Miss von Schwertfeger, of course. Who else would have frightened
+Lilly so?
+
+Lilly received a kiss on her forehead; and her cheeks were patted with
+every appearance of consideration and fondness. But the great colourless
+eyes travelled silently up and down her body, and a wry, bitter smile
+hovered about Miss von Schwertfeger's fleshy yet severely cut mouth,
+the skin about which was reddened, as often happens when women with a
+fine skin age before their time.
+
+She carried clothes thrown over her arm, which Lilly recognised as her
+own.
+
+"I brought you these necessaries, my dear," she said, "so that you can
+dress this morning. Here in the country we don't go about in matinees.
+Besides, directly after you have breakfasted, we will make a little tour
+of the grounds to give you an opportunity of getting acquainted with the
+household and the people."
+
+"May I keep house myself?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.
+
+"If you know how," said Miss von Schwertfeger, and gnawed her lips and
+squinted.
+
+Lilly vaguely felt that her harmless query suggested the infraction of
+the housekeeper's rights, and, trying immediately to atone for her
+thoughtlessness, she added, stammering:
+
+"That is--I am only asking for what I will be--"
+
+She was going to say "permitted," but Miss von Schwertfeger interrupted
+her and said, drawing herself up:
+
+"My dear child, you are the mistress here; nobody is better aware of
+that than I. But I mean well by you when I advise you to ask for nothing
+at present. Pay attention to nothing but your deportment. Upon that
+depends how soon you will really be that which, unfortunately, you are
+now merely in name."
+
+Lilly, depressed and humiliated, maintained silence.
+
+The disciplinarian was already showing her fangs.
+
+"And I advise you," she continued, "to bear in mind that you must first
+study the ground you will have to tread in the future. For this you need
+a guide, who knows a thing or two of which you are ignorant. Otherwise
+you will find yourself in difficult situations, from which it will be
+impossible to extract you. And that in view of your relations with the
+colonel, would be greatly to be deplored."
+
+Lilly felt the tears rising. The old inability to defend herself, which
+was her gravest weakness, took hold of her again.
+
+"Oh, please," she begged, folding her hands, "don't _you_ feel hostile
+to me."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger's extinct eyes, which lay half buried under heavy
+lids, lighted up--was it with a question, or with amazement, or pity?
+
+For a moment she stared into space, turning her head aside, and Lilly
+saw a noble, bold profile of cameo cut, which appeared to belong to a
+different person.
+
+Then Lilly felt long arms about her neck. The embrace in which she was
+held seemed warmer, more genuine than any of the caresses Miss von
+Schwertfeger had yet bestowed upon her.
+
+"You're a dear child, you _are_ a dear child," said she, and with that
+left the room.
+
+Half an hour later Lilly, dressed in the garments Miss von Schwertfeger
+had brought, entered the dining room, where breakfast was being served
+by old Ferdinand, a dried-up, spindle-legged heirloom of a servant. That
+smooth, round-faced fellow with the mischievous smile, had been
+dismissed, thank goodness!
+
+The colonel came in from his early ride, his eyes sparkling with the
+pride of proprietorship. The little crisscross veins of his gaunt cheeks
+were filled with blood, and the grey brushes over his ears glistened
+with dew drops. The heavy jacket he wore was becoming to him, and the
+O-shaped legs were hidden under the table. He looked like a kingly old
+warrior, both evil and kind-hearted.
+
+Lilly flew into his arms, and he said with a sweep of his hand about the
+place:
+
+"Well, do you like--your home?"
+
+She kissed his hand for the "your home."
+
+The dining room was a long chamber, arched at each end and filled with
+carved pieces of furniture darkened by age. It was only moderately
+lighted by three large bow-windows giving upon the terrace, from which a
+flight of railed stone steps led down to the park.
+
+At breakfast they discussed the walk they had planned for showing the
+young mistress her new realm. The colonel would not hear of such a thing
+as having the people come to the castle and wait upon Lilly
+ceremoniously. They were wearing their Sunday-best that day at any rate
+and with no derogation to themselves could receive her in the spots
+where they lived and toiled.
+
+The upper employes, the inspectors and bookkeepers, would come to dinner
+Sundays, as had been the immemorial custom, and take that as the
+occasion for paying their respects.
+
+"The youngest of them used to be one of my men," remarked the colonel,
+"a Mr. von Prell--" He stopped short, looked Lilly over thoughtfully,
+then, as if reassured, continued: "But he left service some time before
+I did, and he's to learn farming on my estate."
+
+This was the very moment for Lilly's happy avowal. But the words died on
+her lips. She could not--for all her good intentions, she could not. As
+it was, those great colourless eyes, resting on her face, were putting
+her to the proof.
+
+However, one thing was certain--the colonel knew nothing. His silence
+had been due simply to the fact that he had not deemed the gay dog
+worthy of mention.
+
+"How's he behaving?" asked the colonel, turning to Miss von
+Schwertfeger.
+
+"Oh, Colonel," she said with a smile, regarding her long, bony fingers,
+on which her crescent-shaped nails shone like mother-of-pearl, "you know
+I never denounce unless I have to."
+
+"Such a good-for-nothing rascal," laughed the colonel.
+
+Lilly, instinctively taking her friend's part, thought the lady's words
+were in themselves sufficient denunciation.
+
+After breakfast they started out on their little expedition.
+
+Lilly was placed between the colonel and Miss von Schwertfeger, and a
+pack of dogs all of a sudden appeared to keep them company. Lilly
+thought them more likable than anything else about her.
+
+The kitchen was visited first. A perfect marvel of a kitchen, with tiled
+walls, porcelain sinks, and all sorts of up-to-date arrangements. Lilly
+did not know at what to look first.
+
+A face was there, an old, brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face, with a
+pair of moist eyes turned upon Lilly in mute questioning:
+
+"Don't you recognise me?"
+
+Lilly's eyes answered:
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+But she did not dare to speak with her lips as well as with her eyes,
+for fear Miss von Schwertfeger would inquire concerning the decisive
+moment of her life and come to despise her still more.
+
+She gave the old woman her hand, and the bond of friendship was renewed.
+
+Next they went to the servants' kitchen, where the Sunday soup was
+bubbling like a seething sea in a huge copper vessel. After this came
+the laundry with its wringers and mangles resembling brightly armoured
+monsters. It was good to smell the ancient odour of soap which had
+nestled permanently in every nook and cranny.
+
+In the pantries and storerooms, rows of hams wrapped in grey gauze
+depended from the rafters like gigantic bats. Sausages hung there, too,
+and last winter's golden pippins and other fine apples were still lying
+on straw beds. Long lines of wide-mouthed jars were ranged on the closet
+shelves--you could pilfer sweets to your heart's content.
+
+The party now cut diagonally across the paved yard, where the waggons
+and harvesters stood like soldiers on parade, to the barns and stables.
+
+The stable of the pleasure horses! Heavens! It was like a drawing-room.
+Upholstered wicker chairs with footstools in front stood about
+invitingly. A matting strip ran along the stalls, over each of which a
+porcelain plate proclaimed the name of the noble animal within. The
+horses moved supple, slender, lustrous necks and turned knowing human
+eyes to greet their beautiful mistress.
+
+"You will choose one of these for yourself," said the colonel.
+
+"I don't know how to ride," replied Lilly, embarrassed.
+
+The grooms standing about, cap in hand, grinned at her
+uncomprehendingly. A lady who could not ride had never before stepped
+into their world.
+
+The home of the draught horses was not nearly so interesting; it was
+dirty and malodorous, and the cow stalls nauseated Lilly.
+
+But she took good care not to betray her sensations. Ready to learn, she
+patiently listened to the explanations the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger gave in turn.
+
+A difficult piece of work was still ahead of them, the visit to the
+cottagers, who had just returned from church and were standing before
+their doors in expectant groups.
+
+The oldest and most trustworthy came first. There were many new names to
+learn, many dirty hands to shake and many eyes to look into which stared
+at her in respectful suspicion.
+
+Lilly felt she was fairly well able to cope with the situation. She
+found a few friendly words to reach the hearts of the old and the sick;
+and when she stooped and drew on her lap a blubbering little urchin a
+pleased whisper ran before her to smooth her path.
+
+At the end of the settlement were two structures originally erected for
+barns, but later converted into dwellings. Small windows in red and blue
+frames were set in the walls at irregular intervals, and what had once
+been the broad entrance had been built up with yellow bricks.
+
+Here lived the Polish immigrants, who had come as contract labourers
+from distant regions. The district in which Lischnitz lay had been
+German from times of old and had remained a German island amid the
+invading flood of Slavs.
+
+For this reason it was necessary to hold aloft the banner of Germanism,
+as Miss von Schwertfeger admonished lovingly. And Lilly felt mortified,
+as though she had been in the habit of disavowing it.
+
+Red head cloths gleamed. Great, blue, intimidated eyes prayed to her.
+Here and there an awed bobbing to the hem of her skirt, a shy attempt to
+kiss her sleeve.
+
+"_Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus_," she heard in a whisper about
+her, and involuntarily she answered: "_Na wieki wiekow!_ Amen!"
+
+In the course of her Catholic bringing up she had learned that this is
+the answer to a Polish greeting.
+
+A glad humming and buzzing, a ripple of happiness ran through the
+fearsome huddling little group. The lovely young _pana_ had spoken
+their language, the language of their God.
+
+"I had no idea you could speak Polish," said the colonel, his voice
+grating with blame of her.
+
+Lilly gave an embarrassed laugh and explained.
+
+They tarried a shorter time at the next entrance, where a group of young
+fellows in heavy grey jackets were twirling their caps and making
+awkward bows. Lilly scarcely ventured to give them a cordial nod. Even
+that, she felt, was forbidden.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger said not a word, but with aquiline nose in the air
+held aloft the banner of Germanism.
+
+"Now, my dear," she said when they reached the castle door, "put on your
+dark blue cloth dress. I have already had it taken from the trunk and
+pressed. You will find it in your room, and a lace collar to wear with
+it. That is the correct thing here for Sunday dinner, which we take in
+the middle of the day."
+
+Lilly obediently donned the blue gown. It enhanced her slim grace. Her
+heart beat for fear that her merry friend, who could not suspect she had
+disowned him, would betray both of them at the first meeting by a
+careless word of recognition.
+
+The dinner bell rang and the next instant came those three probing taps
+on the door.
+
+Lilly in alarm started away from the mirror. Miss von Schwertfeger
+should never discover she was vain. She looked Lilly up and down a
+while, then grasped both her hands, and buried her pale blue eyes, which
+now flared up again, in the improbable eyes.
+
+"God grant," she said, "that you don't cause too much mischief in this
+world, my child."
+
+"Why should I cause mischief?" Lilly faltered, mortified again. "I don't
+do a bit of harm to anybody."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger laughed.
+
+"The one good thing is, you don't know who you are," she said, and drew
+her to the corridor and down the old stairway, which cracked at every
+step.
+
+In the dining room were four dark men's figures besides the colonel's.
+At Lilly's entrance they hastily drew up in line.
+
+One was the man with the round grey beard--"Mr. Leichtweg, our chief
+inspector," said the colonel. The next was the stout, copper-coloured
+man--"Mr. Messner, our bookkeeper." Somebody else was introduced, and
+then--then--
+
+"Lieutenant von Prell, who is learning farming here," said the colonel.
+
+Just a slight inclination of her head, the same as to the others, no
+more.
+
+But my poor, merry friend, how you look!
+
+A long frock-coat fell below his knees, his narrow-pointed head was lost
+in his high collar, his clothes hung in loose, limp folds. Every feature
+of his, every marionette movement bespoke rigid formality and
+obsequiousness.
+
+Lilly stood there lost in pity and astonishment. If she had not seen him
+that very morning while he was--
+
+"Shake hands with the gentlemen," she heard whispered behind her.
+
+She started and pressed the honest country fists more firmly than
+beseems a chatelaine. But she quickly let go Von Prell's freckled hand,
+which was still well kept.
+
+"Thank the Lord, he won't betray us," she thought.
+
+Then came grace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The finches were the maddest of all. The titmice, too, made a racket,
+and so did the nuthatches, and the blackbirds behaved as if they were
+lords of the place, while the stay-at-home starlings formed in groups
+among themselves and paid no attention to the rest of the world. Beside,
+there were the hedge-sparrows and wrens, who added a fair share to the
+chorus. But the fanfare of the finches was too much for ears accustomed
+to the tiny twittering of a caged canary.
+
+Old Haberland knew them all. Old Haberland was the gardener, who
+pottered about in felt shoes and lived, in a measure, from the colonel's
+bounty, since he held sway now over nothing but the lawn sprinkler. He
+knew which birds nested on the ground and which in the branches. He knew
+the time each began to sing and the best place to stand if you wanted to
+study their plumage and habits.
+
+It was terrible to think that the squirrels had to be shot. Lilly almost
+hated the old man when he sallied forth, his pea-rifle under his jacket,
+with evil intent against the jolly little marauders--Haberland
+maintained the vermin recognised his gun and scurried off when they saw
+it. The magpies and jays were no friends of his, either. His love was
+the shy, green woodpecker, whom he had actually coaxed into nesting in
+the park. And that gay marvel of a bird, the hoopoe, came without fear
+at any hour of the day to the back of the castle, where it sang its
+hututu and transfixed the insects in the grass with its curved sabre of
+a bill.
+
+Those were mornings full of glow and brilliance, such as could not have
+been since the creation of the world.
+
+When you opened the door at five o'clock in the morning the cool purple
+mist crept in and folded itself about your body like a royal mantle. On
+the pond, where the reeds rose up over night, pushed by underground
+powers, lay sunlit vapours, which gradually lifted and ascended
+heavenward. Everything steamed. Sometimes white lights seemed to have
+been kindled on the lawn, and the little clouds in evaporating rolled
+heavily from the glistening campions, as though surfeited with the dew
+they had drunk.
+
+Such mornings!
+
+Who can describe the mad delight of the dogs when their beautiful young
+mistress appeared on the steps smiling, clad in a white blouse and short
+skirt and armed with garden shears? They had been awaiting her there a
+long time, every now and then emitting short, impatient sounds, half
+whine, half yelp. For _they_ had not hesitated an instant to recognise
+her absolute rule, in utter disregard of the pitying benevolence with
+which Miss von Schwertfeger--whom they detested--stood by and smiled.
+
+Bebel, the terrier, the cleverest of all, did not count, because he sped
+after the colonel on his early cross-country gallop. But there was
+Pluto, the long-eared setter, who, out of employment at this season,
+gave chase to the rabbits on his own account. There were Schnauzl, the
+poodle, and Bobbie, the dachs, living in constant feud with each other
+for the first place in Lilly's favour. Dearest of all was Regina, the
+panther-like Great Dane, one of whose forelegs had been broken. As if to
+apologize for her disgraced existence, she always crept back of anyone
+she met; but at night, to compensate, she was untiring in her
+watchfulness, and maintained a steady reign of terror.
+
+Who can describe the joyous caracoling of the colts in the pasture, the
+craving for love the yearling manifested when the mistress, who always
+carried sugar with her, pushed back the bars, and stretched her arms to
+caress the slender heads of her favourites?
+
+Who can describe the chagrin of the turkey cock, great enough when the
+pheasants got first peck at the bread crumbs, but knowing no bounds when
+those stupid ducks squatted right on Lilly's feet, as though that were
+the most natural thing in the world? At times his jealousy so swelled
+him with rage that he even dared to nab one of Pluto's ears. But Pluto
+disdained to do more than shake him off in scorn.
+
+Yes, those were wonderful mornings!
+
+And when the height of the flowering season came, she never wearied of
+wandering about and filling baskets with blue, golden and snowy blossoms
+until she was fairly drowned in a floral sea.
+
+After the morning stroll came breakfast, when from sheer joy and
+tenderness Lilly hesitated about whose neck first to throw her arms, the
+colonel's or Anna's--on certain confidential occasions she was called
+Anna. Lilly, in general, was very affectionate with Miss von
+Schwertfeger, despite her fear of that lady's censoriousness and despite
+other fears of which she could not rid herself.
+
+Yes, she thought, it was a strict school, indeed, which she had entered.
+
+Not a word, not a step, not a movement remained unobserved, or, if
+necessary, unreproved. She learned to sit at table and in an arm-chair,
+how to prepare and serve tea, how to invite a person to be seated, how
+to begin a conversation, how to introduce strangers to each other
+without getting into a muddle, how to pass over forgotten names, and
+offer everybody at table a fair portion of cordiality. All these things
+Lilly learned, and, oh, much more.
+
+But they were only the rudiments to be practised in the small world of
+the castle or when occasional visitors dropped in. Real instruction was
+to begin in the fall; for then expeditions to neighboring estates would
+be undertaken. In the meantime the colonel wished to avoid all contact
+with the families round about. He could do this without provoking
+comment, his long bachelorhood serving as a plausible pretext for
+wishing to prolong his honeymoon to the utmost.
+
+By autumn Lilly was to have been converted into a veritable _grand
+dame_, who would do honour to her husband's name and rank, and whose
+tact and ease would conquer all mistrust whether at the festivities in
+the homes of the gentry or in the club house.
+
+This, the highest ideal on earth, Miss von Schwertfeger kept before
+Lilly's eyes every minute of the day, and Lilly dreamed of it as she had
+dreamed of approaching examinations when in the Selecta. Full of fears
+and doubts she worked over herself night and day.
+
+Her soul found calm only when she went on one of her rambles, or, better
+still, when she sat behind locked doors in her boudoir.
+
+No, no, Heaven preserve her! Not her boudoir! That wasn't its name.
+
+The first time she had said "boudoir," Miss von Schwertfeger turned very
+condescending. It was a sitting-room. Only butchers' and bankers'
+wives--in Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes one and the same--would disfigure
+it with the other name.
+
+Thus Lilly stumbled at every step.
+
+Occasionally, when he quartered officers on their way through the
+country, the colonel, as if to test Lilly's social ability, would have
+her preside at table with Miss von Schwertfeger's assistance.
+
+Each time the same scene was enacted. At first Lilly would be stiff as a
+mechanical doll, incapable of addressing a word she had not learned by
+rote to these guests gleaming in military resplendence. A glass or two
+of wine would give her courage. Gradually she would liven up, and even
+grow merry, and finally bubble over with harmless pleasantries--from
+where they came flying into her head she did not know--which would so
+enrapture the gentlemen, most of whom were well past their prime, that
+they directed all their remarks to her, as if to pay her court, while
+their eyes hung on her face in enjoyment and desire.
+
+Now the colonel would grow uneasy. He would cast furtive glances at Miss
+von Schwertfeger, who usually sat with her eyes on her plate and a wry
+smile on her lips; and then despite the gentlemen's protestations of
+regret, the ladies would leave the table.
+
+Lilly grew hot with the fire she herself had kindled in the heads of her
+guests. It caused her pleasure and distress, and forced her to sit at
+her window until midnight, staring into the blue twilight of the park
+with beating heart and quivering nerves and flushed cheeks streaming
+with tears.
+
+Forebodings of mad acts and riotous self-abandon flashed up in her
+brain. A parching fever enervated her body. Her clothes, her room, the
+park, the world became too contracted. A wild dance of looks and flames,
+a whirl of fiery red, inured, desirous masculinity chased through her
+head.
+
+On such nights, when the guests had at last retired, the colonel, more
+or less intoxicated, would force himself into her bedroom, and begin by
+reproaching her for not having been ladylike enough. Lilly would cry and
+try to excuse herself. Then he would kiss the tears from her lashes,
+snatch her clothes from her body, and throw himself next to her in bed.
+
+Shuddering with foolish pangs of conscience, quivering in disgust of his
+drunkenness, happy, nevertheless, to feel that tormenting tenseness
+relax, she gave her body up to him.
+
+On other nights when she felt uneasy and alone and desired his presence,
+when her body as well as her soul longed to cling to him in the humble
+sense of belonging to him entirely, then he was not to be had. He kept
+his door locked.
+
+On the whole he was loving and gracious to her. He handled her as if she
+were a gay, fragile toy, to be wound up not too often, and each time it
+has been played with enough, to be laid aside carefully for use on the
+next occasion. This treatment suited her. At least she was spared dread
+of those outbursts of wrath which set the walls a-tremble two or three
+times a day, and frightened every living thing in the vicinity. Even
+Miss von Schwertfeger was not sure how to take them. She silently set
+her teeth, and bowed her head as before the inevitable.
+
+Lilly could never fathom the relation existing between the colonel and
+his housekeeper. Usually it seemed to her the many years of mutual
+confidence had welded them together inseparably. Then came times when
+they studiously avoided each other, the colonel in haughty preoccupation
+with his own affairs, Miss von Schwertfeger squinting sarcastically and
+suggesting by her manner a feeling of rancor, a menace.
+
+Now and then it even occurred to Lilly that when the lady had been young
+and fair, she had been the colonel's love. But Lilly dismissed this
+idea. Miss von Schwertfeger was far too proud to endure the bitterness
+of such companionship, and _he_ was too dominating to tolerate the
+presence of such a creditor.
+
+All that Lilly learned of her past was that she was the daughter of a
+poor yet aristocratic army officer, and had been left an orphan with her
+own living to earn after her confirmation. She had now been managing the
+colonel's household for nearly twenty years. The fact that Miss von
+Schwertfeger, homeless and without resources, like herself, had also
+been thrown upon the colonel's tender mercies gradually aroused in Lilly
+a sense of sympathy and kinship, although she could never cast off a
+slight feeling that she must be on her guard against this woman.
+
+She really owed Miss von Schwertfeger a debt of gratitude. Without her
+ready advice, Lilly would have fallen innumerable times from the road
+leading to the lofty heights where she would sit enthroned as aristocrat
+and lady of a manor. Ridiculers would have taken base advantage of her
+modesty; her sportive manner of equality would have invited
+impertinence; she would have ended in losing every vestige of power.
+Perhaps people would even have come to despise her.
+
+As it was, everybody loved her. She found shining glances to greet her
+in the kitchen, in the stables, among the villagers, and at the lodge;
+while in the barn, where the Polish women dwelt behind smouldering
+brushwood and drying wash, she was a veritable idol.
+
+Whether a rumor had gotten about of her Slavic name, or her Catholicism,
+could not be determined. However that might be, the fact remained that
+these strange, despised people, who glided among the stiff and haughty
+Germans with the humble look of a child in their eyes and the plaintive
+melodies of their country on their lips, revered Lilly as their redeemer
+and patron saint.
+
+She liked to busy herself with the gentle, good-natured folk. She
+visited the sick, and cared for the destitute. The girls seemed to her
+like poor sisters, who needed watching over; and as for the boys, why,
+they were a charge that God Himself had put into her keeping.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger looked askance at these kindly attentions. "The
+people belonging to the place," she said, "are beginning to complain
+that you prefer the immigrants to them. You would do well to take your
+walks in another direction."
+
+Lilly remonstrated. Henceforth Miss von Schwertfeger kept close watch,
+and did not leave her side when the barn dwellings happened to be in
+seductive proximity.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger even converted Lilly to Protestantism.
+
+Not in her soul. Heaven forefend!
+
+"Love your Holy Virgin and your St. Joseph as much as you want to," she
+said, "but just remove that font and those little images from your
+bedside. As for going to church, you may drive to Krammen to attend mass
+on Sunday; of course you may; the colonel would not think of forbidding
+you to. But take my advice, dearest, and sit next to us in our pew. Do
+it for my sake, you won't regret it."
+
+Lilly did not offer much resistance, and by way of reward received a
+small altar to keep in her room. When locked, it looked like a dainty
+jewel casket, but inside was the infant Jesus in the arms of the Madonna
+and--oh joy!--there was St. Joseph on the left leaf of the folding door,
+and St. Anne on the right leaf.
+
+Lilly wept with delight.
+
+Nevertheless she could not love the donor with all her heart and all her
+soul. No matter how often they sat together chatting confidentially,
+Lilly remained in solitude.
+
+And in fear.
+
+She did not dare even to eat her fill. As if to make up for Mrs.
+Asmussen's long-forgotten mush, Lilly had developed a ravenous appetite;
+but noticing Miss von Schwertfeger's apprehensive sidelooks at her
+heaped plate, she usually rose from table only half satisfied. To stay
+herself until the next meal she drew upon the treasures of the
+storeroom.
+
+Old Maggie the cook, in whom she possessed a sworn ally, kept watch to
+warn Lilly of Miss von Schwertfeger's approach. Once, however, the
+omnipotent housekeeper caught her there, and Lilly dished up the excuse
+that she wanted to learn housekeeping; which declaration was received
+with condescending merriment.
+
+Had it not been for old Maggie, Lilly would never have learned a single
+detail of the management of the large household, Miss von Schwertfeger
+studiously keeping her from regular activity of any sort, whether out of
+vainglory or consideration Lilly could not determine.
+
+If Lilly wanted to help with a piece of work, it was done already, or
+she mustn't spoil her hands, or she might injure herself.
+
+Her passionate desire to learn horseback riding was also thwarted by
+Miss von Schwertfeger, who was always discovering signs of approaching
+motherhood, though they proved each time to be false.
+
+Even playing on the piano was denied her. The yellow old instrument of
+torture, the keys of which resembled the decayed teeth of a smoker--just
+like the colonel's--was not to be replaced by a new piano until autumn,
+when they would go to Danzig to select one.
+
+She thought of the times preceding her marriage, hardly more than half a
+year ago, as belonging to her long-vanished youth. She would have
+ridiculed one who had told her, youth still lay ahead of her nineteen
+years.
+
+It was good that over there in the lodge a witness of her sweet, foolish
+past was living along in madcap thoughtlessness. This alone persuaded
+her that her maiden days had not been a mere dream, that she had not
+been a colonel's wife from the cradle upward.
+
+In all this time she had met her merry friend only at Sunday dinners,
+when he played a comic role making his jerky reverences in his long
+frock coat.
+
+Sometimes when standing on her balcony at twilight behind the foliage
+now closegrown, she saw him at his window in the lodge cutting capers
+with his wild little red fox of a dog. A feeling would then come over
+her that the only person who actually belonged to her in this alien
+world was yon light-haired good-for-nothing, who pursued all the maids
+on the demesne. Old Maggie told tales. At night he would ruin the
+toughest horses trying to get back from his secret excursions before
+dawn; and in his den behind closed shutters--
+
+At this point Maggie lost her faculty of speech. The things that took
+place behind those closed shutters must have been dreadful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+One red August morning Lilly, sprinkled with dew from head to foot and
+clasping a bunch of dewy roses in both arms, entered the dining-room,
+where Anna von Schwertfeger, tall and thin in her greyish blue linen
+dress, was standing at the table smiling to herself.
+
+It was not her manner, it was not her greeting; both were as usual. It
+was an intangible something which instantly caused Lilly to realize that
+an extraordinary event had occurred.
+
+Katie, she noticed, who helped Ferdinand with the serving, had red
+eyelids and kept gnawing her lips while setting the table. Katie was of
+finer material than the average servant girl, her father having been a
+teacher, and was very pretty besides; owing to which qualities Miss von
+Schwertfeger had selected her as Lilly's special maid.
+
+When Katie left the room, Lilly began to ask questions.
+
+In reply Miss von Schwertfeger merely kissed her with redoubled
+tenderness, and observed:
+
+"Why should you sully your pure young spirit with such ugly things? If
+certain people are bent upon breaking their necks, that's their
+business. We cannot help them."
+
+"Breaking their necks--that must mean Walter von Prell," thought Lilly,
+and said aloud: "After all this is my home, and nothing that happens
+here in my future province"--she modestly said "future"--"ought to be
+kept from me."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger yielded to her arguments.
+
+"It will be painful to you," she said, "because I know you like him."
+
+"Him--whom?" queried Lilly, conscious of blushing.
+
+"In fact all of us like him," continued Miss von Schwertfeger by way of
+mitigation, "the colonel most of all. So long as he confined himself to
+the rooms of the labourers' girls I winked my eyes, and begged the
+kitchen help not to annoy me with gossip about his adventures. But if he
+commits the outrage of breaking into the castle, it's time the matter
+ended."
+
+"Why, what did he do?" asked Lilly, in fright.
+
+"For some weeks past I noticed certain things which struck me as rather
+curious. In spots the vine on your balcony was withered--"
+
+"On--my--" Seized with a wild suspicion Lilly stepped a pace nearer to
+Miss von Schwertfeger, and clutching her arm asked: "What has my balcony
+to do with Mr. von Prell, Miss Anna?"
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger avoided Lilly's look.
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear," she said, "calm yourself. Persons in my
+position have to keep their eyes wide open. That's what they are there
+for. I was simply acting for your protection, because anyone who does
+not know you as I do might come to the vile conclusion that if a man
+climbs up to your balcony--"
+
+Lilly began to cry.
+
+"It's so low, so low."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger drew her to the sofa and stroked her brow.
+
+"I have gone through much worse things, dear child. At any rate, I
+wanted to get at the bottom of the affair, and although, I need not say,
+I hadn't the least suspicion of you"--she turned her eyes away
+again--"nevertheless I spent a few nights outside your door."
+
+Lilly started. While she had been sleeping in innocent unconsciousness,
+someone had lurked in hiding close by--so fast was she held captive!
+
+"And about one o'clock this morning I caught him in the act. Fancy! The
+dare-devil had the temerity to lean one of Haberland's ladders against
+your balcony--that was the cause of the broken, withered vines--and
+enter your sitting room through the glass door--glass doors, dearie,
+ought never be left open. He passed your bedroom, and went to the
+corridor without seeing me, of course. Since Katie is the only person
+who sleeps on that side I charged her with it early this morning. She
+made no denials. I always act in such matters with the utmost mildness
+and reserve, and I told her she might give notice and leave on the
+first. But what shall we do about the young man? I know this is the one
+place where he can be brought to turn over a new leaf. Should the
+colonel dismiss him, all's over with him. And I have no right to conceal
+his conduct from the colonel. An affair that so nearly compromises his
+wife's honour--"
+
+"What has my honour to do with Mr. von Prell if he runs after servant
+girls?" Lilly ventured to interject, hoping to improve his prospects a
+bit by playing the innocent.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger had just time enough to enlighten her innocence
+concerning all the evil results of Mr. von Prell's mad conduct, when the
+table began to quiver from the colonel's tread as he came tramping down
+the corridor.
+
+"Don't say anything--not yet!" begged Lilly, and with that was hanging
+on the colonel's neck to hide her confusion.
+
+The colonel noticed nothing amiss.
+
+His suspicions, ever alert, had gone to sleep now that he knew his young
+wife secure under the Argus eyes of his old and tried housekeeper.
+
+He was no longer that greedy lover, simulating youthfulness, who had
+spied upon her every look and emotion, jealous of his mastery. The
+humourous condescension with which he watched the doings of the lovely
+gentle child gave him a natural semblance of fatherliness, which became
+him well.
+
+His visits to the club house in the garrison town nearby, at first only
+occasional, had begun to grow more frequent. Sometimes he even departed
+from his custom of leaving after supper, and took the afternoon train.
+But whatever time he left, he never returned before two o'clock in the
+morning, since there was no train to bring him back earlier.
+
+During breakfast he good-humouredly explained to the ladies that he
+would have to go to town that day to unload the barley crop on the Jews.
+
+An idea occurred to Lilly which filled her soul with sacred joy. The
+colonel's absence must be employed for rescuing Von Prell. How, she did
+not yet know, but save him she must. She was the only one to do it. If
+she did not concern herself in his behalf, who else was there in the
+wide world to tow his drifting vessel to security?
+
+After the colonel had left the room, she plucked up the courage to put
+in a plea with Miss von Schwertfeger, who, however, refused to relent.
+
+"On the next occasion he will do even worse things," she said. "Then the
+shame both for him and for us will be still greater."
+
+"No, he won't do anything worse," Lilly averred. "He will get better.
+You need only take him to task."
+
+"I'm old enough to," replied Miss von Schwertfeger, with a bitter-sweet
+smile, "and I possess the authority. But, to be quite frank, the subject
+is rather a delicate one, and I should like nevermore to have a thing to
+do with such sordid affairs."
+
+The extinct eyes, over which the lids lay like heavy blankets, fell into
+a fixed stare, which Lilly had frequently noticed. It seemed to bring to
+the top an old, dark, bitter hatred which had long lain buried. Then
+Miss von Schwertfeger herself returned to the subject.
+
+"All I can agree to," she said, "is, that if he comes to me of his own
+will and begs my pardon, maybe I will yield. That's all I can do without
+incurring the blame of being underhanded."
+
+"Why, he doesn't even suspect he's been discovered."
+
+"I should like to wager," rejoined Miss von Schwertfeger, "that Katie
+will use her first free moment to run over to him."
+
+"And if she doesn't?" cried Lilly, scarcely mastering her anxiety.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger took her head between her hands.
+
+"If I did not know, dearie, what a sweet, harmless young creature you
+are, I should say your interest in the little rake is most curious. Now,
+you needn't blush. I know there's nothing back of it. At all events, I
+will wait until to-morrow, because you plead for him, my love."
+
+Thus the conversation ended. Nothing more was to be expected of Miss von
+Schwertfeger.
+
+"If I don't save him, he will be driven away, and if he's driven away,
+he'll go to rack and ruin, and if he goes to rack and ruin, I shall be
+to blame."
+
+In this fashion Lilly's thoughts kept revolving dizzily in her brain.
+
+The simplest thing would be to come to an understanding with Katie, but
+that was unbefitting Lilly's station. Besides, it had not occurred to
+the poor girl, who crept about apathetically, to run over to see Von
+Prell. Later in the day, in fact, she got an attack of cramps and had to
+be put to bed.
+
+At four o'clock the colonel drove off to the station. He had stuck a
+package of blue banknotes into his bill-folder; which was an unfailing
+sign that he would not return before early morning.
+
+Evening came. The lowing of the cattle and the cracking of whips
+proclaimed the end of the day's work.
+
+Lilly crouched behind the vine on her balcony, and listened to what was
+going on at the lodge. Finally the scapegrace appeared at his dormer
+window dragging his little dog by a chain. He was wearing the sort of
+greenish grey jacket with innumerable pockets that managers of estates
+affect; and each pocket was stuffed full, giving his figure a warty
+appearance. Nevertheless he was a dear, bright little fellow, well worth
+the saving.
+
+If she were to signal to him and throw down a piece of paper, would it
+be possible for him to pick it up later without being seen?
+
+She went into her room and scrawled a few lines in pencil.
+
+"Everything has been discovered. Miss von Schwertfeger promises to keep
+silent provided you--"
+
+She stopped short. Should the note fall into strange hands the stupidest
+mortal would construe them into a confession of guilt.
+
+"I will speak to him," she decided.
+
+The supper bell rang.
+
+How strangely Miss von Schwertfeger regarded her, as if she had gotten a
+glimpse into the depths of Lilly's soul and discovered her bold design.
+But she did not refer to the malefactor again.
+
+On rising from the table she put her arm through Lilly's, after her wont
+when she intended to bar the way to Lilly's Polish friends.
+
+"She won't let go the whole evening," thought Lilly, raging inwardly.
+
+In a short while, however, word was brought that Katie had grown sicker,
+and it might be necessary to send for the physician.
+
+"I'll be back directly," said Miss von Schwertfeger, as she left the
+room giving Lilly a look expressive of stubborn resistance.
+
+In an instant Lilly had slipped out of the door and was running down the
+terrace steps leading to the park.
+
+Profound silence reigned. The only sound was of a splashing which came
+from behind a cypress tree where old Haberland, still occupied with
+watering the roses, was filling his cans.
+
+Lilly made straight for the lodge considering ways of making him look
+from his window and see her.
+
+She was saved from committing this indiscretion.
+
+He was lying at full length on the green bench outside the house,
+smoking a cigarette with evident gusto, the dog's chain wrapped about
+his left wrist, and the dog himself asleep at his feet. None of the
+other men were about.
+
+Her heart's throbbing almost deprived her of breath.
+
+"Mr. von Prell!"
+
+He jumped to his feet, the dog along with him.
+
+"Mr. von Prell, I should like to speak with you."
+
+He put his hand to his head to remove his cap, but no cap was there.
+
+"I am at my lady's service."
+
+"Will you accompany me a little way?"
+
+"At my lady's service."
+
+He threw away the stump of his cigarette, glanced about hastily for his
+vanished cap, then walked at her side bare-headed, stiff as a puppet in
+his extravagant respect.
+
+Lilly led the way into the interior of the park, where the clusters of
+trees and the open grassy spaces melted into purple-edged darkness. She
+had gotten back her calm. The desire to save him gave her strength of
+which she had not deemed herself capable.
+
+"You must not misunderstand my coming to you," she began.
+
+"Certainly not, my lady," he replied, bowing obsequiously. "The evening
+is so lovely, and old acquaintances like to chat with each other once in
+a while."
+
+"If I had wanted anything like that," said Lilly, making no effort to
+conceal her sense of insult, "I should have invited you to the castle.
+If I come to you instead, you can readily imagine the matter is more
+important."
+
+"What can be more important to me than strolling here at my lady's
+side?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, Mr. von Prell, if you knew the difficulty you were in, you would
+take care not to indulge in such talk."
+
+Lilly had never thought herself capable of so much haughtiness.
+
+"What difficulty can I be in, my lady?" he rejoined, raising his brows
+and wrinkling his forehead. "My soul has worn half-mourning ever since I
+was condemned to live in a certain close distance from, or, rather, a
+certain distant proximity to--my gracious lady. Whether Tommy and myself
+possess the character for enduring this trial--come, come Tommy, don't
+be a goose. Our lady benefactress will have no objections to your not
+treading on her train."
+
+Tommy obstinately planted his forelegs and had to be dragged along like
+a lifeless toy.
+
+"You'll strangle the poor little beast," said Lilly, happy to have found
+a way of avoiding his personalities.
+
+"He will simply be sharing the sensations of his master," said Von
+Prell, illustrating his reply by clutching at his throat and emitting a
+horrible gurgle.
+
+Such behaviour must no longer be permitted. Lilly owed it to herself and
+her position to resent it.
+
+"Mr. von Prell," she said very condescendingly, "do you realize that by
+the same time to-morrow you will probably have been dismissed?"
+
+He was touched at last. He frowned and bit the ends of his moustache;
+but then he said:
+
+"What gives me some satisfaction in the fact is that my lady seems to
+take no slight interest in the matter."
+
+Now she became angry in earnest.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. von Prell," she cried. "I wear
+myself out and take great risks trying to help you, and you show your
+gratitude by making silly remarks all the time."
+
+"Courage, Tommy," he said, taking the dog in his arms. "First they flay
+us, then they kick us out. Our one comfort is, we are innocent
+sufferers. Poor, poor Tommy."
+
+"Don't try to whitewash yourself," Lilly reprimanded. "Miss von
+Schwertfeger discovered everything--your relations--you understand--your
+nightly trips to my balcony and through my room--everything. Do you
+think I take pleasure in having to treat you like a criminal when I've
+always thought so much of you? Don't you think I'd much rather be proud
+of you, than stand here and see you driven away like a stray dog? Or can
+you say anything in justification of yourself? Can you? Tell me."
+
+She talked herself into such warmth that she forgot the unseemliness of
+her being there with him. She was now that which she wanted to be--the
+benevolent chatelaine, who turns everything to good account; and her
+breast swelled with the consciousness of her lofty ethical undertaking.
+
+They had stepped from under the dark arches of the linden walk. A few
+sharply defined streaks of red still coloured the west, and cast a deep
+glow over his narrow, freckled face.
+
+He looked completely crushed and penitent, and Lilly regretted having
+dealt with him so harshly.
+
+"I realise," he began after a short pause, his voice quivering as with
+suppressed excitement, "I realise I must not let so grave a charge go
+without justifying myself. And I can justify myself, I most undoubtedly
+can. But in doing so, I am compelled to disclose a secret, which--I
+really do not know if I ought to initiate you into the horrible
+mysteries that threaten to ruin my life."
+
+"What are they?" queried Lilly, in terrified curiosity.
+
+"Well, then, from my boyhood up I have been pursued by an awful fate,
+which comes upon me when I am utterly defenceless and imposes upon me
+responsibility for misdeeds of which I am absolutely innocent, and
+places me in breakneck situations, which--I will be outspoken--I
+am--well, I am a somnambulist."
+
+The merry little devils frolicked between his silvery lids, and Lilly,
+in spite of herself, burst out laughing. He joined in with his dear,
+mute tehee, which shook him like a storm; and they stood there laughing
+till they wearied. Lilly no longer thought of her chatelaine's dignity,
+or her ethical mission.
+
+As if by mutual agreement they turned into the deserted depths of the
+park, which bordered on a bosky beech grove with neither fence nor hedge
+between.
+
+It grew darker at each step.
+
+Tommy resigning himself to his fate trotted behind his master
+obediently.
+
+"Well," said Von Prell, after they had recovered from their laugh, "why
+should I try to throw dust in your eyes? I am a poor pickerel floundering
+here on dry land. Have you the faintest notion of what it means to keep
+company with three plebeians and lead a useful vegetable existence, and
+from morning till evening steadfastly practise dutifulness and
+uprightness? It's more than a fellow can stomach. I tell you, it's enough
+to drive him to a dose of castor oil. Tommy self-denyingly helps me tide
+over the worst moments, but every now and then he, too, is a
+disappointment to me. Will my lady permit me to use this occasion for
+asking her an extremely important question?"
+
+Pleased at his having grown serious, Lilly assented.
+
+"Can you--can you wag your ears?"
+
+She succumbed to another paroxysm of laughter as to a spell of sickness,
+leaning against a tree and panting for breath, while he continued with
+profound affliction in his voice:
+
+"I am master of the modest art and have been proud to exercise my skill
+ever since I was at high school, where it was considered the acme of
+human accomplishments. I made up my mind to train Tommy to do the same
+trick, and I spent many an hour over him in difficult intellectual
+effort, but without result. One day, however, I discovered he could wag
+his ears much better than I can, and, I assume, always had been able to.
+Only he did it when he wanted to, not when I wanted him to. Isn't that
+distressing? Doesn't it reflect the general aimlessness of human
+endeavour? O dearest baronissima, I am afraid I shall soon become a
+great philosopher out of sheer boredom."
+
+Lilly could now see only the outline of his figure, behind which the
+dog's eyes glowed like two beacon lights. Since her school days she had
+not abandoned herself so completely to a spirit of pure fun, and she had
+to wait until a pause came in her laughing before she could tell him it
+was high time to be returning.
+
+He obediently turned on his heels, transferring Tommy's chain from one
+hand to the other.
+
+The catastrophe that menaced him seemed to have passed from his mind.
+Lilly, therefore, since time pressed and something had to be done for
+him, took the bit between her teeth, and reported what Miss von
+Schwertfeger intended to do, and what she demanded from him as the price
+of her silence.
+
+Lilly was helping him, but not with that beautiful, dignified air of
+superiority with which she had wanted to hold out her rescuing hand. She
+felt she was like a playmate of his, and every few moments a
+half-suppressed giggle interrupted her speech.
+
+"The worthy dame has an unconquerable desire to stand about on people's
+toes," said Von Prell. "But since we've gotten ourselves into a scrape,
+my dear little Tommy, we'll have to juggle to get ourselves out of it.
+Thank you very much, my lady. In accordance with your instructions I
+will go to her and ask her to forgive me--before going I'll oil my
+speaking apparatus. I will be more than repentant, I will even be
+roguish. That works on respectable old maids like Spanish fly. And I
+will use the opportunity to the best advantage for our future
+intercourse with each other--provided of course, my young queen agrees."
+
+Oh, she agreed fully!
+
+"But how will you do it?" she asked fearfully.
+
+"Leave the matter to me," he replied. "Your duenna is a knowing old
+beast. But I am even more knowing. I shouldn't be surprised if to-morrow
+I didn't earn an occasional supper in the castle, at which I shall have
+the opportunity of looking into the eyes of my exalted mistress without
+being observed by the two High Mightinesses."
+
+There were several things in his speech that grated on Lilly. He might
+make merry as much as he pleased at Miss von Schwertfeger's expense, but
+the colonel stood on too high a plane to be the butt of his ridicule.
+And now that Von Prell was out of danger, it occurred to Lilly for the
+first time how detestable his conduct had been, and how lacking in
+character she was to be sauntering about with him in the dark, laughing
+at his sallies.
+
+"One moment, Mr. von Prell," she said. "I warned you of the danger you
+were in, because I thought I owed it to our former friendship. But now
+that I have told you, we have nothing more to do with each other. My
+time is up. Good evening, Mr. von Prell."
+
+With that she hurried on ahead along the obscure wood path, and gave no
+look around. Suddenly she felt something soft and warm and living slip
+between her feet. She screamed and turned about for Von Prell's help. At
+the same instant a chain wound itself about her ankle, and held her
+fast.
+
+Since she and Von Prell had turned back, the dog in his eagerness to get
+home, had been straining on the chain with all his might, and had taken
+her hastening off as a signal to break away, thus entangling himself in
+her dress. The more he tugged the more painfully the chain cut into her
+flesh.
+
+That made an end of Lilly's ire.
+
+Von Prell had to kneel and hold down the unruly little animal, while he
+unwound the chain from her ankle.
+
+"Tommy, Tommy, what have we done? We have grievously hurt our noble
+mistress. We can't be blamed for pulling at our chains, but if in doing
+so we get under people's skirts, we give great offence. Shame on you,
+you rascal."
+
+He planted a kiss on the dog's pointed little snout.
+
+"Doesn't he ever bite?" asked Lilly with interest.
+
+"He has had the benefit of a rigorous military training, as a result of
+which he has grown accustomed to kisses."
+
+Another burst of gaiety. Von Prell held the struggling little ball of
+wool up to Lilly, and asked whether she would like to try a kiss, too.
+
+Laughing she declined, and, laughing, she went home with him.
+
+Characterless as she was.
+
+Still laughing aloud, she entered the lighted hall of the castle, where
+Miss von Schwertfeger met her with great reproachful eyes.
+
+"Where have you been, my dear?" she asked, evidently prepared to meet
+the grave situation in a mild spirit, while subjecting Lilly, none the
+less, to a keen cross-examination.
+
+"He's so funny!" Lilly sang out, hiding her face red with laughter on
+Miss von Schwertfeger's shoulder.
+
+"Did you--"
+
+"Of course I did. Do you suppose I'd leave such a delightful, jolly old
+friend of mine in the lurch?"
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger's face became rigid.
+
+Lilly gave herself a little shake and uttered a joyous gurgle. Then she
+ran off to her room, undressed, and burying her head in the pillows
+laughed herself to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+In laughter it began, and in laughter continued.
+
+When Lilly awoke the next morning she saw that everything about her, the
+chandelier, the washstand, and the pretty, sentimental gleaner on the
+wall, had assumed a new aspect, and the sun was shining twice as
+brightly.
+
+She stepped to the mirror in her nightgown, and forthwith had to laugh
+again at the reflection she saw there, a veritable street Arab's face
+with sly, darting eyes and saucy nose.
+
+At breakfast she fairly sparkled with playful conceits, chased the
+stiff-legged colonel about the table, and felt a warm sense of gratitude
+toward Miss von Schwertfeger rise within her.
+
+As for Miss von Schwertfeger, she smiled to herself significantly; and
+when the colonel left the room, caught Lilly by her ears, kissed her on
+her forehead, and said:
+
+"You baby, you."
+
+She made no reference to the confession Lilly had let slip that she and
+Von Prell were old friends. In fact, to judge by her manner, you might
+suppose she had not heard it.
+
+Lilly ran up to her balcony, pushed aside the creepers, and sent a
+summoning nod to Von Prell, who was walking up and down uncertainly
+between the castle and the lodge.
+
+He understood, bowed, and disappeared in the direction of the terrace
+steps.
+
+What took place between him and Miss von Schwertfeger remained a secret;
+and there was no finding out whether or no she had questioned him in
+regard to his former relations with the colonel's wife. But whatever the
+doubts on that score, the success of his interview was indisputable. So
+far from having to slink away from the place, he appeared at the supper
+table that very same day, ushered in by the colonel himself. In his
+striped coat, white waistcoat and high collar, in which his face lay
+almost buried, and wearing his most respectful expression, he was the
+very embodiment of correctness.
+
+"I heard," said the colonel, leading him to Lilly, "that Mr. von Prell
+doesn't feel entirely happy over there in the lodge. If you have no
+objections he will come to meals oftener after this."
+
+Lilly hadn't the slightest objections. The thought, however, that Katie
+would appear in the doorway the next instant almost choked her. But
+another maid took Katie's place in handing old Ferdinand the dishes.
+Lilly gave Miss von Schwertfeger a questioning look, which she answered
+in a whisper, so as not to be overheard by the gentlemen:
+
+"The poor girl got very sick, and asked for a long leave of absence.
+Most likely she will never come back again."
+
+In her gratification Lilly impetuously pressed Miss von Schwertfeger's
+hand under the table. She had a dim idea that Katie had been dismissed
+in order to spare her the repugnance of witnessing something impure.
+
+The gentlemen without delay plunged deep into a discussion of the
+cavalry, richly interlarding their talk with proper names.
+
+Mr. von Prell sat inclined toward the colonel to take in the
+instructions of his old commander, and kept blinking his lids in
+respectful attention. The colonel dominated like a wrathful god. He
+spoke gruffly and noisily and shot out his dagger glances as if to mow
+down rank after rank of the enemy's army. But this was nothing else
+than a craftsman's vain joy in his work.
+
+Lilly listened, and would gladly have taken part in the conversation,
+but the men had forgotten her presence, and a jealous gloom clouded her
+spirit, for which she did not know whether to blame the colonel or Von
+Prell.
+
+When Von Prell rose to take leave the colonel laying his hand on the
+young man's shoulder said:
+
+"See here, why haven't we done this before?" The glance he sent Lilly
+seemed to signify: "Such an amount of caution was really unnecessary."
+
+When the first cool days in September brought on the colonel's gout
+again, and his visits to town had to be postponed indefinitely, Von
+Prell's invitations to supper grew more frequent.
+
+The colonel groaned and cursed each time he mounted a horse, though he
+refused to listen to Lilly when she pled with him to give up his morning
+gallop.
+
+"Too bad all of you are always so dreadfully concerned about me," she
+observed, "because sometimes I might take your place in riding about the
+country."
+
+The colonel and his housekeeper exchanged looks.
+
+"After all, it's a shame she can't ride horseback. Any decent sort of a
+riding master might take her in hand. My morning excursion is more than
+enough for me. What do you think, Anna, can we entrust her to that
+humbug Von Prell?"
+
+Lilly's face lighted up with joy. Miss von Schwertfeger let her eyes
+rest on her glowing cheeks and said very slowly, as if to chew the cud
+of every word:
+
+"You know Von Prell is reckless. What if he should bring our darling
+back to us some day with broken bones? At all events, it seems to me,
+before deciding, we had better consider the matter carefully."
+
+Though Lilly took good care not to utter a syllable expressive of desire
+or opposition, she was not successful, apparently, in concealing her
+secret wishes; for the next time they were alone together, Miss von
+Schwertfeger suddenly took Lilly's face between her hands and said:
+
+"Get rid of the idea, darling. Do. Believe me, it's better so."
+
+About this time Lilly made a remarkable and somewhat suspicious find.
+She enjoyed going on expeditions of discovery through the spacious
+castle, only part of which was inhabited; and on one occasion while
+rummaging about in one of the third-story guest rooms, now seldom used,
+she extracted from a chiffonier a light gauze shirt, covered with silver
+spangles and shot with silver thread, resembling the shirt she had often
+had to wear during the Dresden stay before going to bed. Her own shirt
+these days hung undisturbed in her closet, from which it had not been
+removed even for Miss von Schwertfeger's inspection, because Lilly was a
+little ashamed of it.
+
+Her curiosity was piqued by the vestment she had found, and folding it
+carefully she went down to question her friend about it.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger was sitting over her account books, and scarcely
+looked up when Lilly entered. But suddenly the gleam of the tinsel in
+the sunlight attracted her attention. A quiver ran through her body. Her
+eyes widened, her figure stiffened, as if she were looking at a ghost.
+
+"What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly.
+
+"I thought I had cleared up thoroughly," she said, shaking herself.
+
+She snatched the garment from Lilly's hand, wrapped it up in a piece of
+paper, and carried it to the kitchen, followed by Lilly, who saw a
+whirl of smoke carry bits of silver thread up the hearth chimney.
+
+Old Maggie stood by looking in bewilderment from one to the other. She
+seemed to know what the discovery involved, but later, when Lilly tried
+to extract information from her, she had lost her faculty of speech.
+
+"I didn't always use to be just where the colonel was," she stuttered.
+"Ask Miss von Schwertfeger. She knows. She'll tell you."
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger would not tell. She went about with compressed
+lips, gave short answers when spoken to, and kept her extinct eyes
+fastened upon empty space.
+
+One evening at supper, her demeanour, apparently from no external cause,
+underwent a sudden change. She laughed, chatted, was tender to Lilly,
+and attentive to her master, pitying him on account of his pain,
+suggesting new remedies, and obtaining his promise to give up his
+morning ride.
+
+"By the way," she went on, "as to Lilly's taking riding lessons, I've
+thought it over carefully, and have come to the conclusion that if we
+are present--at first, at least--we may entrust her to the young man."
+
+Lilly fetched a deep sigh of joy; but the two pairs of eyes could not
+have detected the trace of a smile on her face, the faintest glimmer of
+delight, so well had she learned to keep herself under control.
+
+The next morning the riding lessons began, with the colonel and Miss von
+Schwertfeger, of course, in attendance.
+
+Walter von Prell appeared in riding boots and a jockey's cap. The
+forward inclination of the upper part of his body seemed to signify, "I
+am awaiting orders," and his respectfulness and obsequiousness kept him
+shifting from one foot to the other.
+
+For the first essay they had chosen a lamblike grey mare, narrow-chested
+and somewhat overtrained in the fore-hand, yet a smart, well-fed animal.
+
+Mr. von Prell proceeded very methodically to explain the construction of
+the saddle and bridle, showed Lilly how the girths are buckled, how the
+snaffle and curb rein have to lie, and how to keep the curb chain from
+choking the horse.
+
+Next came learning how to mount. When Lilly for the first time put her
+foot on his interlaced fingers she felt a warm thrill to the very back
+of her neck, as if this contact with him were a sign of secret
+understanding between them.
+
+"One, two, three," he counted, and there she was in the saddle.
+
+The colonel clapped his hands in approval, and Walter von Prell blushed
+with pride to the roots of his blond hair.
+
+From now on he had the game in his hands.
+
+"Who'd have thought that blusterer has such a lot of pedantry in his
+make-up?" said the colonel turning to Miss von Schwertfeger, who nodded
+silently and took a deep breath, as if something were oppressing her.
+
+By the time Lilly was ready to dismount, she had learned how to draw in
+the reins and slacken them and to turn to the right or the left; and she
+had even ventured a trot about the yard. In short, as the colonel
+good-humouredly remarked, "She was on the road to becoming the most
+dashing horsewoman in the army."
+
+The lessons followed in quick succession. Either Miss von Schwertfeger
+or the colonel was always present, and there was no opportunity for
+private conversation between Lilly and Von Prell.
+
+Von Prell maintained his stiff, abject obsequiousness, while Lilly
+burned with the desire to see his waggery flash up in a look or word
+intelligible to her alone.
+
+One day, it chanced, both guards were absent.
+
+The colonel was busied with the construction of a riding-ring, in which
+his gout might defy the inclemencies of the weather, and Miss von
+Schwertfeger was nowhere to be found.
+
+Lilly's heart beat violently when she met her friend, and the smile with
+which she held out her hand to him, expressed uneasy triumph.
+
+He responded with a sly thrust of his tongue in the direction of the
+terrace, where her honour was wont to stand.
+
+"She couldn't be found anywhere," whispered Lilly.
+
+"_What_ will we do?" he moaned, wringing his hands. "Why, without the
+worthy dame's protection we shan't even be able to mount."
+
+Deep blue heavens arched above. A cool breeze, heavy with the smell of
+freshly turned soil, blew across the courtyard.
+
+He pointed with a wily look to the open gate.
+
+She laughed and nodded assent.
+
+The next minute she was galloping at his side along the grassy wood
+path, where no Argus eyes could follow her, in utter abandon, inwardly
+exulting and eagerly expectant of mad pranks to be played.
+
+Von Prell, for his part, seemed indisposed to avail himself of his
+unhoped for liberty. He held his eyes fixed on the road in front, every
+now and then caught at her reins, regulated the length of the stirrup,
+and made her sit better in the saddle. He was the riding master,
+nothing else.
+
+"How's Tommy?" she asked at length, bored.
+
+"Tommy sends his regards," he replied, without removing his gaze from
+the road, "and says we'd better pay attention to nothing but the horses
+to-day, because if something should happen we'd never be allowed to go
+out again."
+
+"And I send my regards to Tommy, and tell him he's a goose."
+
+"I will without fail," he rejoined, and nodded his riding crop.
+
+They now entered a grove of birch trees, where the ground was somewhat
+boggy and demanded added attention.
+
+But Lilly had eyes for nothing but the silvery gleam of the trunks and
+the golden webs which quivered in the wind and floated down on her
+cheeks.
+
+"Oh, see how beautiful!" she said with a blissful sigh.
+
+"Walk your horse, please."
+
+A demon took possession of Lilly. Touching her horse with her crop she
+went off in a mad gallop that was contrary to all the rules and
+regulations of horseback riding.
+
+The next instant, however, Von Prell was at her side gripping her reins
+and pulling up both horses.
+
+They looked at each other with flashing eyes.
+
+Lilly felt she had to throw herself over toward him just to be nearer to
+him.
+
+"Say, Lilly, what do you mean by that?" he hissed.
+
+She started and showed her white teeth.
+
+"Say, Walter, what do you mean by that?" she retorted.
+
+They turned the horses' heads and rode back home slowly, in silence,
+without looking at each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The threshing machine had been singing its autumn song for many a day.
+Its monotonous whirr could be heard far beyond the castle court. It
+carried no message of golden blessings or glowing crystallised sunlight.
+From morning till late at night it moaned and howled like an aeolian harp
+in stormbeaten branches; and sometimes soft, long-drawn cries burst from
+its entrails, as if the sheaves it was torturing and tearing had been
+endowed with speech.
+
+So much dreamy bliss dwelt again in Lilly's soul that she got nothing
+but allurement and yearning from this music, which entirely obsessed her
+in her morning slumber and kept her lying in bed a long time in a drowsy
+half-sleep the better to listen to its even, unvarying singsong.
+
+All the while she thought of him.
+
+A comrade, a playmate, that was what she had needed all along, some one
+in whose company to make merry and complain, some one who would confess
+all his follies, his most secret sins, and then receive laughing
+absolution. For whatever his crime, he was not the guilty one; his youth
+was the sinner, the same sweet, mischievous youth which filled her soul
+with melancholy and her body with shuddering, which dominated them both
+like a beneficent yet tormenting divinity, who favoured the one and
+ruined the other.
+
+He had to be saved--saved from his own frivolity, from that fatal
+condition of his soul which threatened to entangle and choke him in a
+net of vulgar escapades. Rumours of the low life he was leading kept
+cropping up not to be silenced, and she needed but to step inside the
+servants' hall for a stream of gossip to come gushing over her like a
+jet of dirty water.
+
+Her first intervention was to be only the beginning of the great mission
+she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, walking
+before him and holding up her hands against every evil temptation, until
+he had become as pure, as undesirous as herself.
+
+Thus she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing machine.
+
+The first ride beyond the castle gates, though taken without permission,
+had been approved, even commended; and others were to follow. But Lilly
+hesitated. She wanted to learn a decent canter, she said, before
+venturing upon new roads. As a matter of fact, she was burning with
+eagerness for another such hour in Von Prell's company, and merely
+lacked the courage to bring it about.
+
+The morning after that first ride he was the same cringing riding master
+as before, outdoing himself in respectfulness and over-polite while
+rigorous in imparting instruction. Lilly had fully expected he would
+whisper a familiar word hinting at the day before, a soft "Lilly." There
+was plenty of opportunity, but nothing of the sort took place.
+
+The next few lessons went in the same fashion. Neither Lilly nor Von
+Prell thought of leaving the courtyard. But one day the decree went
+forth from the colonel himself.
+
+"Enough of this hopping about on the gravel. Get out of here and air
+yourselves in the wind of the fields."
+
+"At your command, Colonel," said Von Prell, touching his cap. He rode
+his horse up to Lilly's and gently steered both of them out of the gate.
+
+Her heart stood still. She forgot to say good-by to the colonel, she
+was so preoccupied with anticipation of the pleasure in store for her.
+
+They went the same road that had brought her the great experience of the
+week before.
+
+The willows dripped with dew and at the slightest touch showered down a
+rain of drops. Lilly laughed and shook herself. Instead of joining in,
+he guided his horse to the edge of the road, leaving the middle to her.
+
+"But I _want_ to get wet," she said.
+
+"As my lady says," he replied, stiff as a poker in his stupid,
+artificial respect.
+
+Then they rode on in silence.
+
+When they reached the spot where the great event had occurred which gave
+the lie to his present behaviour, she ventured to send him a furtive
+sidelong glance. But he did not respond, seeming not to have noticed her
+look. His jockey cap pulled close over his head down to the back of his
+neck, his thin, tightly-drawn face, sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish
+body, all muscle and bone, he sat on his saddle as if he and his horse
+were one.
+
+"How I love him, in spite of everything, the dear little fellow," she
+thought, and pictured to herself how horribly abandoned she would feel
+if ever he were to leave the place. And it became clear as day to her
+that the gay excitement in her soul, the sense of abundance in her life
+here where she dwelt, had arisen from nothing else than his always,
+always being near by.
+
+They rode along at an even gait. The brown ridges bordering the opposite
+bank of the stream drew nearer and nearer. Von Prell seemed to be making
+for them, but this did not serve her purpose, because the hour for a
+frank talk had struck.
+
+To-day or never!
+
+She made a great effort to go over in her mind what she would say to
+him. But her thoughts were incoherent. She had to keep her attention
+fixed on the horse; and so long as she remained in the saddle she felt
+herself too much under Von Prell's control.
+
+Summoning all her courage she asked:
+
+"Can't we dismount?"
+
+He paused to consider, but she had jumped from her horse already, and he
+had just time enough to grasp the mare's snaffle. He reprimanded her,
+though in the end he had to yield.
+
+They walked side by side, Von Prell leading both horses.
+
+The path led through a stone pit sparsely grown with oak trees and
+alders. Golden marigold buttons dotted the marshy spots, and the
+bur-reed stretched out its bristly fruit on crinkled arms. Reddish dock
+raised its aging stalk and the floating grass was drawing in its blades
+in expectation of approaching autumn.
+
+A mountain-ash, felled by a storm, stretched diagonally from the side of
+the road across the ditch. Its purplish red clusters of berries glowed
+like flames which by right should have been extinguished long ago, but
+which a mysterious life-force kept feeding.
+
+"I'd like to sit here," said Lilly
+
+He bowed.
+
+"If you please."
+
+"But you must sit down, too."
+
+"I must hold the horses, my lady."
+
+"You can tie them to a tree."
+
+He considered a while.
+
+"I can," he said, and tied the reins about the stump of the fallen tree.
+
+When he was about to sit down next to her, she moved nearer to the
+middle of the trunk to make room for him, and she sat with her feet
+dangling over the ditch water.
+
+He shoved himself after her, swinging his upper body between his arms,
+which held him like props.
+
+"No further," she said. She did not want him too close to her.
+
+"At my lady's service," he answered, and kicked his heels.
+
+The grotesque stiffness of his speech annoyed her.
+
+"Don't you know a better way of addressing me when we are alone?" she
+asked, looking him full in the face.
+
+"I do, but I mustn't"
+
+"And last time--how about then?"
+
+"It happened to be my birthday," he replied, "and I wanted a pretty
+gift, so I presented that to myself."
+
+"And to-day's my birthday," she laughed. "What will you present me
+with?"
+
+"Whatever my lady wishes."
+
+"Call me comrade."
+
+"Once or always?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Just _say_ comrade, or be comrade, too?"
+
+"Be, be, be," she cried. "The being is the chief thing."
+
+"Agreed!" he said, cautiously sliding his right hand along the swaying
+trunk.
+
+"Agreed!" she said, and they shook hands on it.
+
+"There's something else to be passed upon in connection with this," he
+observed, and cleared his throat.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Is this comradeship to be accompanied or not to be accompanied by the
+use of the first name?"
+
+"Not," rejoined Lilly, thinking she had made a great sacrifice.
+
+He took the prohibition at its face value and said obediently:
+
+"As my comrade wishes."
+
+Now her time had come. Lilly drew in a deep breath and said:
+
+"I have something very serious to say to you, Mr. Von Prell."
+
+He seemed to suspect evil.
+
+"Ouch," he said, and bit his gloved thumb.
+
+Lilly began. She would say absolutely nothing about that affair with
+Katie, even though it was very dreadful, because what is to be forgiven
+must also be forgotten. But if he thought the life he had been leading
+ever since he had come to Lischnitz had remained a secret, he was
+greatly mistaken. Even the scrubbing women laughed at him behind his
+back. But he couldn't expect anything else, if he--and she recounted the
+list of his sins, which, in spite of herself, had reached her ears from
+the servants' hall.
+
+Lilly was ashamed of what she said. She had meant to speak of entirely
+different things--of the loftiness of human existence, of the greatness
+of self-abnegation, of keeping oneself pure for the sake of genuine
+feelings, of the mysterious spiritual union of the elect on earth, and
+much more in the same strain. But when she saw him, as he sat there with
+his back curved and his feet turned inward, causing bulbs to appear and
+disappear on the soft leather of his riding boots where they covered his
+big toes, nothing better occurred to her.
+
+He did not interrupt her.
+
+When she had concluded he maintained silence and occupied himself with
+following the movements of an insect which was wriggling in the dark,
+slimy water of the ditch.
+
+"Have you nothing to say," she asked, "after I have reproached you with
+such disgraceful behaviour?"
+
+"What should I have to say?" he asked in turn. "My one claim to
+celebrity is my being a man utterly devoid of moral fibre. Should I lose
+that one claim, too?"
+
+"If you have nothing within yourself to hold you up, lean on me," she
+cried, glowing with eagerness. "Let me be your friend, your adviser,
+your--"
+
+"Foster-father," he suggested, and swished about the slime with his
+crop.
+
+She realised that everything she said was lost on him; that he even
+seized whatever opportunity offered to make merry at her expense.
+
+"Please get up and let me by," she said. "Why should I cast what is best
+in me before one who is unworthy?"
+
+He made no movement to leave his seat.
+
+"Look, comrade," he said, pointing to the dark, mirror-like surface of
+the water. "A water spider is gliding about there all the time with its
+legs up and its head down. If you were to ask it why, it would say it
+doesn't know how to glide differently. That's its nature. What's to be
+done?"
+
+"A man can restrain himself," she cried, flaring up and casting
+indignant glances at him. "A man can look up to heights, to an ideal. He
+can listen to the advice of a friend who means well by him--that's what
+he can do."
+
+"And what does his friend advise?" he asked flatteringly, while swinging
+himself nearer.
+
+But this time she did not answer. She covered her face with her hands
+and cried, cried so that her body shook with sobs.
+
+"For God's sake, sit still," he exclaimed, stretching his arms about her
+in a wide circle, for she was in danger of losing her balance on the
+slim, swaying trunk of the mountain-ash. "Do sit still, Lilly, else
+you'll fall into the water."
+
+She shuddered. She heard nothing of what he said except that sweet,
+secret, criminal "Lilly," for which she had been longing the whole
+week.
+
+Then he promised her everything she wanted of him. He wouldn't run after
+any more servant girls, he wouldn't spend nights boozing with the
+inspector and the bookkeeper, he wouldn't--oh, what wouldn't he do, if
+only she stopped crying.
+
+"Your word of honour?" she said, raising her wet, reddened eyes.
+
+"My word of honour," he replied without an instant's hesitation.
+
+She smiled at him, happy and grateful.
+
+"You won't regret it," she said. "I'll be close at hand, I'll be your
+friend, I will do whatever I can."
+
+"And whatever the two High Mightinesses permit," he added.
+
+This time the epithet "High Mightinesses" did not annoy her. She
+shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, they--yes, of course."
+
+Then they both laughed till they came near falling into the ditch after
+all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Delightful times followed. A game of hide-and-seek with herself, a
+long-drawn draught from an unfailing fount of expectancy, anticipation,
+delicious aftertaste and joyous recollections. Each day brought new
+pleasures and untold wealth.
+
+Sometimes when Lilly threw open the shutters in the morning and the
+fresh red September air flowed in over her she felt as if God had spread
+a mantle of sunny gold over the heavens to wrap both of them in, so snug
+and close that the whole world disappeared, leaving no one but
+themselves behind, pressed against each other in laughter and drunk with
+all that light.
+
+She felt she was growing more beautiful from day to day and emanated a
+sort of radiance which caused all who met her to look up with a smile of
+astonishment and satisfaction, mingled, however, with a touch of
+melancholy, such as always comes over us when we see a human being or a
+flower developing too happily, too proudly for its glory to endure.
+
+The two High Mightinesses did not keep their eyes closed, either.
+
+The colonel found no formula for such symptoms in his store of
+experiences. Had Lilly gone about downcast, staring dreamily into space,
+had she crept about him timidly, had she wavered between ardour and
+estrangement, his suspicions would have grown lively. He would have
+begun to sound and spy on her. But it was not in his power to discern
+aught else than increased spiritual well-being in her pliable, blissful
+tenderness.
+
+So he smirked complacently at the harmless gaiety his young wife
+radiated, and with paternal calm accepted the lavish caresses, which
+served as an outlet for her overwrought ecstasy.
+
+Anna von Schwertfeger shared no less benevolently in Lilly's happiness.
+She seemed to harbour as little suspicion as the colonel that a third
+person was playing a part in her life. Otherwise she would scarcely have
+viewed the growing frequency with which the two young people met with
+such unbegrudging kindliness.
+
+Often after supper she drew Lilly into the room on the ground floor,
+where she dwelt amid her account books. A genuine old maid's home, with
+canary birds, flower pots, faded family photographs, and all sorts of
+gilt and china knick-knacks, remnants of past glory such as are handed
+down from generation to generation in families of decayed gentlefolk.
+
+At other times she came gliding into Lilly's bedroom at an incredibly
+late hour, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and did not stir until
+she heard the sound of the colonel's carriage coming from the station.
+
+The two women would plunge into profound conversations concerning life
+and death, solitary old age and overflowing youth, the measure God has
+set for each mortal, and the misfortune of trying to exceed that
+measure. Anna von Schwertfeger no longer pried or warned, yet her
+fashion of hopping from subject to subject, of heedlessly expressing an
+opinion the very reverse of one she had uttered a moment before, seemed
+sufficient reason for supposing that her mind was occupied with very,
+very different things.
+
+Often while her speech flowed on monotonously Lilly would be astonished
+to look up and find her eyes resting on her intently, almost
+apprehensively. Then again Lilly would feel herself stroked and kissed
+with such pitying inwardliness that she herself was touched, and later,
+when left alone, she began to feel afraid of the dark, as if a menacing
+fate were crouching at the bottom of her bed ready to pounce on her and
+choke her.
+
+But from where was misfortune to drop on her? Wasn't she more securely
+stowed away than ever before in her life? Whom did she deceive? Wherein
+did she sin? Even if the few little secrets binding her to Walter should
+be discovered, how would she be punished? She would simply get a fine
+sermon like a naughty child, nothing worse.
+
+Thus she comforted herself before the aftertaste of Miss von
+Schwertfeger's late visits was dispelled by new dreams of happiness.
+
+September neared its end.
+
+Lilly went horseback riding with Von Prell almost every day, or she met
+him at twilight, as if by chance, in deserted parts of the park. They
+would spy each other strolling about some one of the various places they
+had fixed upon once for all. Then there was the pea-shooter to fall back
+upon in case different arrangements had to be made.
+
+Von Prell had brought the convenient instrument from the city, and it
+reposed innocently in a corner of Lilly's balcony, to all appearances
+nothing more than a superfluous curtain-rod. It enabled her to blow
+whatever message she wanted through the foliage on the balcony directly
+into his open window.
+
+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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the first Sunday in October.
+
+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.
+
+The sunflowers in the tenants' gardens were already sinking their singed
+heads and the asters showed signs of having suffered from the murderous
+blows of Jack Frost.
+
+But the air was as sweet and spicy as in spring, and from the fields
+came a singing as of meadow larks.
+
+"Such a day, such a day!" thought Lilly, and stretched herself in a
+vague yearning for secret conversation and glad pranks.
+
+She must have thought a little too loud, for Miss von Schwertfeger
+asked:
+
+"What's the matter with to-day?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Lilly, blushing. "I feel as if it were some
+festival."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger looked at her askance and said, emphasising each
+word:
+
+"I should like to make a festival of it for myself and visit a friend of
+mine in the city. But the colonel is away and I don't know--"
+
+Lilly started so violently that she lost her breath for an instant. But
+she mastered herself cleverly and began to persuade Miss von
+Schwertfeger, first speaking coolly, then more warmly and urgently. She
+needed a little outing; she hadn't left the place all summer; she lived
+like a prisoner, and ought to grant herself at least one hour of
+freedom.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger nodded meditatively, and that glassy stare came
+into her eyes which always discomfited Lilly.
+
+At the midday meal, which the two took in each other's company, she was
+still undecided; but as soon as they rose from table she ordered the
+carriage to be brought around and drove off without saying good-by.
+
+Lilly, who watched her departure, ran for the pea-shooter. The foliage
+of the creepers still hedged in her little domain so perfectly that Von
+Prell could not see her. But she could see him as he sat at the open
+window brooding over a book with a deep fold between his brows.
+
+"My good influence," thought Lilly triumphantly, and it almost made her
+feel sorry to tear him away from so salutary an occupation.
+
+The inspector and the bookkeeper were walking up and down near the lodge
+smoking their Sunday afternoon cigarettes.
+
+So more than ordinary caution was necessary.
+
+The pellet containing her missive hit Von Prell's forehead, rebounded,
+and fell on the grass outside the window.
+
+Von Prell had himself so well in hand that he even refrained from
+looking up to show he understood. After a while, however, he let the
+book fall out of the window as if by accident, and then got up to fetch
+it with an indifferent air.
+
+Half an hour later they met behind the carp pond.
+
+He was wearing a new black and white checked fall suit, similar to the
+one the fateful stranger in the railroad train had worn.
+
+"You're entirely too elegant," Lilly joked. "I'd rather not be in your
+company to-day."
+
+"That would be a sin and a shame," he observed. "I had these trappings
+constructed extra for to-day."
+
+"Why for to-day?"
+
+"Because to-day's our festival."
+
+"How did that occur to you?" she faltered, startled that their thoughts
+had taken the same course.
+
+"Oh, a person gets notions," he replied, and smiled significantly.
+
+Under the same impulse they took the path leading to the beech grove
+which they had wandered through on the first evening of their renewed
+friendship.
+
+"How's Tommy?" Lilly asked, recollecting the third party to the
+alliance.
+
+"He bit away the flooring in my room and dug a hole for himself, where
+he snarls like an eagle-owl. I shouldn't advise you to stick your
+wedding-ring finger into his hole. You might suddenly lose your ring and
+your finger, too."
+
+"Why have you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.
+
+"Why have I let myself get so wild?" he retorted.
+
+"Well, you're growing tame again," replied Lilly, caressing him with her
+eyes. His recent tameness was all her doing.
+
+"Do you think so?" he asked, and drew his brows together masterfully, as
+in his lieutenant days.
+
+"Haven't I your word of honour?" she exulted.
+
+"Pshaw!"
+
+Lilly basked in the superbness of her mission of salvation.
+
+"No matter how much you disdain my influence," she replied, "everybody
+sees that a change has taken place in you. Mr. Leichtweg says you're
+always the first to begin work now. You've borrowed that great book on
+agriculture from the colonel--it impressed him tremendously--and Miss
+von Schwertfeger said a little while ago you always look so appetizing
+now. Yes, Mr. von Prell, I take the credit for all this, and if things
+continue the same way we shall remain good friends."
+
+"Apropos of appetizing," he said, "your neck beginning back of your ears
+is all covered with tiny, silky hairs. Do you know from what that
+comes?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense," Lilly exclaimed, blushing. "Why? Do you know?"
+
+"A wise man has theories. For instance, observe this plot of grass." He
+pointed to a clearing below them, through which a rill trickled, and
+which was closely grown with tender, juicy grass of a vivid green. "From
+the way it looks you'd suppose it was still spring. Until late in the
+summer that plot stood under water, and the spots that least often or
+never get dry grow the finest down--that's nature."
+
+Lilly was on the point of taking his botany lesson in earnest when she
+chanced to notice the wicked grimace he was making. Then she understood
+the shameless allusion and had to laugh over it helplessly.
+
+"Listen, baronissima, how about playing tag? We owe it to the
+circulation of your excellency's blood."
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when with a blithe shout she
+darted off down the slope, the bottom of which was lost in the purple
+darkness of autumn. But at the end of a short stretch she tripped over
+the Scotch plaid she had taken along and had refused to let Von Prell
+carry. She fell full length and he came just in time to help her to her
+feet.
+
+This having spoiled Lilly's taste for tag they mounted the hill like
+well-behaved children.
+
+Here their eyes could travel over a rippling lake of leaves far, far
+away. The beeches glowed a deep red, the maples danced in all the
+colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered with bright flames, the elm
+flaunted its flakes of gold, while the oak alone obstinately retained
+its green garb of summer.
+
+Lilly stared into the violet-veiled distance.
+
+The sun hid itself behind gold-rimmed clouds, from which fiery tracks
+descended to earth. A narrow band of scarlet edged the horizon.
+
+"Shall we sit down here?" asked Von Prell.
+
+"No, not here," said Lilly, seized with a vague dread. "I'll begin to
+cry here."
+
+She ran ahead of him, back into the woods, and came again upon the path
+leading along the rill.
+
+Here the darkness of evening prevailed, but the sun-charm in which they
+had been enveloped worked its magic here, too, and filled her heart with
+a happy devoutness.
+
+Oh, how happy she was! How happy she was!
+
+No fear and no danger so far as her thoughts could reach; and no danger
+from her own heart, for the man walking by her side was her friend and
+playmate, nothing more. He might not and could not be anything else. No
+secret wish, no distorted desire came from him or went to meet him.
+
+Everything uniting him to her was clear and transparent as sunlight.
+Even if the others must not have a suspicion of their intercourse, there
+was no sin in it--only salvation for him and laughter for her and youth
+for both.
+
+She felt a warm-hearted impulse to take his hand, but fearing to be
+misunderstood she checked herself.
+
+Thus they walked at each other's side to the spot where the rill was
+caught up in a rotting wooden conduit, from which it spouted with a soft
+singsong.
+
+Withered ferns covered the light green moss with their ragged red
+fronds and tired leaves came fluttering down out of the beech trees.
+
+"Let us rest here," suggested Lilly.
+
+"But it's damp."
+
+"We'll spread the plaid," she said eagerly, taking the blanket from
+him--he had managed to snatch it away from her--and threw it over the
+fern stalks, which cracked under the weight.
+
+She sat down on the right side of the plaid and invited him to make use
+of the left side, to keep his fine new suit clean.
+
+"Do you hear the vesper bells?" he asked. "We ought to be eating supper
+now."
+
+"We poor church mice, we have nothing," she laughed.
+
+"Who told you so?" he asked, triumphantly producing a small paper
+package from his pocket, which contained a mashed, crumbly piece of
+cake. They laid it between them and ate the morsels from their hollowed
+hands, laughing all the while. The cake tasted like sweet wine, and
+Lilly felicitously hit upon its correct name, punch-tart, of which she
+was especially fond.
+
+"The English call it tipsy-cake," he explained. "It quite befuddles
+one."
+
+"That amount of intoxication I'll risk," she laughed, and threw herself
+on her back, folding her hands behind her head.
+
+She lay there a time without moving and looked up to the sky, of which
+jagged oval bits shimmered through the foliage. Rosy flakes swam in the
+opalescent ether, and way beyond appeared the vault of another heaven,
+which in some places burst through the nearer sky like a deep blue
+foreboding.
+
+Lilly stretched her arms upward yearningly.
+
+"Do you want to catch the larks?" he asked.
+
+No, not that, but she would like to have one of the falling leaves.
+
+They kept dropping, dropping from the boughs like birds with broken
+wings, and fluttered over the ground in little spirals, as if undecided
+where to rest.
+
+"We'll see to which of us the first one comes," he said, and also
+stretched himself on his back.
+
+"The one to whom a leaf comes first will be blessed with a great piece
+of good fortune," she added.
+
+They lay still and waited.
+
+At last one floated toward him and prepared to settle on his nose.
+
+But he would not permit this--hers must be that great piece of good
+fortune--and he blew the leaf back to her.
+
+She in turn was too proud to accept so munificent a gift and blew it
+back to him.
+
+Thus laughing and tossing themselves about, they kept the leaf whirling
+between them, and suddenly in the heat of the struggle their lips
+touched--touched and would not separate.
+
+The next instant they held each other in close embrace, and the instant
+after she was his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rill purled, the leaves fell as before. But a fiery mist lay upon
+the earth, and all over small suns winked rainbow coloured eyes.
+
+Why had it happened?
+
+She fell back without thinking and noticed that the heavens above were
+also clothed in fire.
+
+Her comrade sat beside her with his back curved like a berated schoolboy
+and rubbed his nails against one another.
+
+"Oh, let's go home," said Lilly, downheartedly.
+
+"As my lady commands," he replied, grotesquely respectful again.
+
+She laughed a weary, mirthless laugh.
+
+Apparently he was concerned with getting rid of what had happened as
+speedily as possible.
+
+"Oh, now it's all the same," she sighed; "now we can quite calmly call
+each other by our first names."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+First came dread, the same senseless dread that had dominated Lilly's
+being before her engagement. It stiffened her limbs, bound her arms to
+her body, crippled her knees, beat against the walls of the veins in her
+neck and created a black void in her brain.
+
+But after she had gone through the first meeting with Von Prell and
+nothing fateful occurred, her fear died down and what remained was a
+searching attentiveness, a readiness to jump aside at the least sign of
+danger, a tense anticipation of ticklish questions to be answered
+properly and pitfalls to be avoided with a crafty assumption of
+innocence.
+
+The colonel noticed nothing--he, the most suspicious of married men,
+with the keenest scent, who harboured the least illusions concerning the
+opposite sex, he noticed nothing. He even believed the headache myth and
+lavished mocking yet tender pity upon her, while he sat at her bedside
+laughing and helping her change the compresses that Miss von
+Schwertfeger had solicitously prepared.
+
+It was more difficult for Lilly to endure the woman's caresses. Behind
+them lurked a squinting pair of eyes, shy, heedful, and endeavouring to
+look harmless, while, in spite of themselves, revealing a greedy desire
+to know.
+
+The anxiety that so far as the colonel was concerned gradually lulled
+itself to sleep, grew sharper with regard to the self-sacrificing
+friend, who at any moment might become her enemy and betrayer.
+
+Lilly did not dare to cry until night time, when she felt sure of being
+alone. She would jump out of bed to wash her eyes, go back to bed again
+and cry until sleep took her in its soothing arms.
+
+It was not shame, nor regret, nor longing love. It was a feeling of
+infinite solitariness, it was a straying about in perplexity.
+
+"What will happen now?"
+
+For something must surely happen--confession, convent, flight together,
+suicide together, or one of all those events described in Mrs.
+Asmussen's books as following upon so atrocious a deed.
+
+The week passed.
+
+Lilly had arisen from her sick bed several days before, but she had not
+seen Von Prell. She could discover no signs of him, even when she locked
+all the entrances to her room and rushed to the window for a glimpse of
+him.
+
+All the while the colonel kept recommending horseback riding. There was
+Von Prell to take her and the exercise would do her good.
+
+At last, Saturday at dusk, she felt she had to yield--they would meet at
+dinner the next day at any rate.
+
+The horses were pawing before the door.
+
+The moment for the meeting before which she had recoiled had arrived
+with its threat of fresh dangers.
+
+When she saw her friend ascend the terrace steps in his high, shiny
+riding boots, looking pale and thin, and moving as if by springs to
+display his counterfeit respect, something within her suddenly turned
+numb.
+
+"Why, that young man there is an utter stranger," she felt. "He doesn't
+concern you in the least--you are looking upon him for the first time in
+your life."
+
+They rode out of the gate.
+
+The colonel had gone to the stables, but Miss von Schwertfeger stood on
+the terrace with her hands clasped and looked after them.
+
+The road, muddy with recent rains, plashed under the horses' hoofs and a
+cold evening wind crinkled the winter wheat. A yellow sheen hiding the
+poverty-stricken sun glimmered behind the ragged birch boughs.
+Everything looked sad and weary. It even seemed a vain task to have
+sowed the winter wheat.
+
+They trotted on side by side in silence--a long, long series of anxious
+moments.
+
+"He must speak some time," thought Lilly, biting her tongue till it
+bled.
+
+He kept his eyes fixed undeviatingly upon the road ahead, making only
+slight movements of his right hand from time to time to adjust his
+reins.
+
+"He'll call me 'my lady' again," she thought, and felt ashamed in
+advance for both of them.
+
+Finally she took heart and spoke to him.
+
+"Do walk your horse," she said, almost crying.
+
+"Of course, comrade," he replied, and reined in his chestnut.
+
+"Comrade! Comrade!" she burst out, and passionately searched his eyes
+with hers.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as always when he feared a scolding, and said
+nothing.
+
+"Say something, won't you?" she screamed, quite beside herself.
+
+"What should I say?" he queried, making a little gesture, as if to
+scratch his head. "It's a nasty business. We know it." And muttering to
+himself, he repeated, "Nasty business, nasty business!"
+
+"Is that all you have to say to me?" she cried.
+
+"My dear friend," he replied, "I am small, my heart is small. It's not
+a suitable spot for harbouring great anguish of the soul."
+
+"Pshaw, who's speaking of anguish of the soul? But what's to become of
+us, that's what I should like to know."
+
+"As soon as I come into possession of an unencumbered manorial estate,"
+he replied with a gesture of invitation, "a castle, stables, vehicles
+and other animate and inanimate things thereunto appertaining, I shall
+take the liberty of applying to your husband for your hand."
+
+This completely robbed Lilly of her self-control.
+
+"If you keep on making such jokes," she screamed, bursting into tears,
+"I'll ride to death, now, before your very eyes."
+
+"A difficult thing to do with that well-behaved nag of yours."
+
+Lilly was at her wits' end and simply let the tears course down her
+cheeks in silence.
+
+At last he changed his tone.
+
+"Well, well, child," he said, "be sensible for a change. All I want to
+do is tickle the superfluous tragedy out of your soul. And as soon as
+you make a glad face again I'll try to give the matter most serious
+consideration."
+
+Lilly wiped her tears away with the flap of her riding gauntlet and
+smiled at him obediently.
+
+"Fine," he praised her. "'Twas not idle in the poet to write '_O weine
+selten, weine schwer. Wer Traenen hat, hat auch Malheur._' I'll tell you
+something. We two pretty orphans were exactly meant for each other and
+we've been brought together here in this enchanted castle. But we should
+have _had_ to meet, no matter where, even if we hadn't been two hearts
+that beat as one long before. To be accurate, the colonel married us
+right at the beginning, and the only shame is that your marriage
+contract with him wasn't drawn up accordingly. But that's not to be
+altered, and we shall have to get around the matter in secret ways. See
+here, child, we both are headed in the same direction on the sea of
+life. We have the same to win and the same to lose. So cheer up! Go it!
+We're ragtag and bobtail both of us, at any rate."
+
+"I'm not ragtag and bobtail!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "I have pride and
+a sense of honour, and even if I have sinned a thousandfold, I know how
+to die for my sins."
+
+"It's not so easy to die. Usually the opportunity is lacking, and when
+the opportunity once presents itself we show it a clean pair of heels."
+
+Lilly felt a hot desire to protect him against the self-degradation in
+which he indulged.
+
+"You don't believe what you say," she cried. "You are the boldest, the
+most daring of men. I know you are. Without a moment's hesitation you
+would face death for the sake of your honour. If you would only summon
+all your strength the whole world would lie at your feet. I will always
+keep reminding you of that. I will work over you until you get back
+belief in yourself, until you feel you are on the upward road. I will
+share all your hardships, all your temptations, and I will protect you
+from all evil. For what should I be here if not for you?"
+
+She felt she was so completely his that she could have thrown herself at
+his horse's hoofs; and when she recalled the first moments of their
+meeting that day she could scarcely realise why he had seemed so
+repulsive and alien.
+
+"You're a touching creature," he replied. "It's really lucky the
+creepers on your balcony are so thoroughly knit together."
+
+She started.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she faltered, oppressed by a foreboding of
+ill.
+
+"And lucky the ladder was left there. It can be leaned against the
+balcony and the vines can break all they want to, even Miss von
+Schwertfeger wouldn't notice anything amiss. Well?"
+
+He blinked his silvery lids at her enticingly.
+
+She did not know where to turn to hide her face from his gaze, she felt
+so ashamed.
+
+"I'll never belong to you again," she cried. "I swear I won't by all the
+saints! I should be a thing of loathing to myself. As for you, I should
+utterly despise you. Pah!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Pity to lose the opportunity," he observed, and turned the horses'
+heads.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He appeared at dinner the next day, virtuous in his frock-coat and black
+necktie. He strutted and scraped and bowed, pursed his lips in
+extravagant respect, and scarcely dared to take the demitasse from her
+hand.
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes passed between the two, watching and
+questioning.
+
+Late that Sunday night the following occurred:
+
+The colonel had gone off to town, Miss von Schwertfeger had retired to
+her room, and Lilly sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown brushing
+her hair.
+
+Suddenly she heard a gentle tapping at the window, as if the autumn wind
+were blowing a twig against the closed shutter. But the action of the
+wind is irregular, and this sound kept time--now a little louder, now a
+little softer--and recurred at even intervals.
+
+It frightened her, and she wanted to run down to Miss von Schwertfeger;
+but she bethought herself in time. She hastily put on her dressing gown,
+cautiously raised the window, and opened the shutters the least bit.
+
+At first she saw nothing.
+
+There were no stars in the heavens and the whole of the lodge seemed
+buried in darkness. Then she thought she saw a staff waving up and down
+close to the shutter.
+
+She opened the shutter an inch wider and recognised--the pea-shooter.
+
+Now she knew what was up.
+
+She jumped back and drew the bolt. Then threw herself back in bed, where
+she lay holding her fingers in her ears. But when she withdrew them she
+again heard that short, regular tapping, which now rose almost to a
+knocking.
+
+The nightwatch, who made the rounds of the court and park once an hour,
+need only find the ladder leaning against the balcony and all was lost.
+
+Her fright deprived her of her senses.
+
+Trembling in every limb, she ran into her dressing room, where there was
+no light, and opened the balcony door about half an inch. Through the
+crack she whispered into the darkness:
+
+"Go away, and never try such a thing again."
+
+Then she listened with her ear to the opening.
+
+Nothing to be seen or heard.
+
+But when she wanted to close the door it would not go shut. She groped
+along the crack in search of the obstacle, and came upon a round,
+hollow, wooden something, which an invisible hand had shoved there.
+
+The wretched pea-shooter!
+
+She moaned and covered her face with her hands, and the next moment was
+hanging in his arms in a half swoon.
+
+After that evening he had her completely in his power--defenceless,
+without a will of her own, at the mercy of his wishes and whims.
+
+It was not happiness. She experienced scarcely a single transport of
+feeling. That came later, when she had conquered her horror of the
+monstrous deed, and her fear of discovery had weakened. Nothing occurred
+to disturb them, and Lilly expanded in a sense of defiant security.
+
+Then it was a blissful sailing over awful abysms, a delirium of the
+senses, a nebulous ecstasy, a delightful writhing under lacerating
+blows, an ebb and flow of magnanimous scorn of self and blasphemous
+prayers.
+
+Laughter came again. Not the old simple laughter that had dominated the
+play of her spirit until within a short time before. No, this laughter
+was sardonic exultation, the exultation of the hounded thief, who
+carries his booty off to security, behind the backs of his pursuers.
+
+Lilly also found reasons for justifying herself.
+
+"I am merely fulfilling my destiny. I am now getting back the possession
+which fate promised to me and which the old man so long kept from me."
+
+In addition there was a redeeming element in all she did, consecrating
+the most arrant deception and endowing it with purity. This was the
+consciousness that he was being saved. Under the spell of a lofty love
+he would learn to scorn vulgar escapades and, borne on the wings of a
+woman's expiating favour, he would rise to the heights on which men and
+heroes dwell.
+
+With these thoughts she drugged her conscience each time; and when he
+lay in her arms she gave them whispered expression--the doors were not
+heavy and all sounds must be muffled.
+
+He laughed and kissed the words from her mouth. If she grew uneasy and
+demanded pledges, he vowed the stars out of the heaven.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger now never stayed in Lilly's room later than
+eleven o'clock. This was the hour he might come, and by half past one he
+had to be gone.
+
+Of course he had to confine his visits to the evenings when the colonel
+went to town. On account of the time the trains ran, the colonel could
+not possibly return before two. Besides the carriage could be heard at
+some distance.
+
+Before Walter left he had to unlock the door to the colonel's room, and
+smoke a cigarette to rid the atmosphere of the stable and leather smell
+he brought with him from his own room. For it often happened that the
+colonel stuck his head in before going to bed; or, if the wine had
+loosened his tongue, he would even awaken Lilly, seat himself at her
+bedside, laugh, cast about his dagger glances pick his yellow teeth, and
+tell the juiciest stories which had arrived fresh from the Berlin
+centres of obscenity and made the rounds of his club in town.
+
+Lilly played the drowsy pussy, and purred and yawned She began to feel
+so secure that once she actually fell asleep right in the middle of a
+laugh.
+
+Oh, if only there had been no Miss von Schwertfeger!
+
+Not that Miss von Schwertfeger had noticed anything. The horrors of such
+a possibility were inconceivable. But her restless, hasty comings and
+goings, the almost anxious greed with which she pried about, gave
+sufficient cause for concern.
+
+She looked very pale and worn, while the fleshy region about her mouth
+and her sharp, scenting nose glowed a still deeper red.
+
+You might suppose she tippled in secret. But such thing would be bound
+to leak out, and at table scarce a drop passed her lips.
+
+"Let her do whatever she wants to," thought Lilly, "if only she doesn't
+come spying on me as she did on Katie."
+
+And sometimes it occurred to Lilly that she herself was no better than
+the poor maid Katie, whom they had chased from the castle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+It was shortly before midnight one evening late in November.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger had said good-night, and _he_ was sitting at
+Lilly's pillow wet and frozen through. He had been standing in the
+chilly drizzle a long time before the signal agreed upon--two rattles of
+the shutter bolt--had summoned him to her room.
+
+Now, everything was serene. The entire house was asleep; the watchman
+had made his rounds, and the ladder, which Von Prell drew up after him
+for greater security, reposed peacefully on the balcony.
+
+The blue-shaded chandelier bathed the warm, perfumed room in the light
+of a summer evening. Drops of rain splashed softly against the shutters,
+and the November wind whined like a beggar.
+
+Lilly lay comfortably under her blue silk quilt, holding his hand and
+dreaming up into his face, which, even in moments of self-abandon,
+retained its expression of abashed roguery. She saw the freckled bridge
+of his nose, the white-lashed, blinking eyes, the peaked chin covered
+with stubble and almost hidden by the green collar of his working
+jacket. He could no longer smarten himself for her sake. His housemates
+might notice the change.
+
+They did not say much to each other. If only he was with her, he who
+belonged to her in life and death, who like herself had been cast astray
+in this strange world.
+
+She drew his head down and stroked his forehead smooth from lack of a
+man's cares, and wiped away a few drops still clinging to his temples.
+
+The clock on the wall struck twelve softly, the hanging lamp swung back
+and forth, casting long sliding shadows on the ceiling, like the shadow
+of a rocking cradle, or like great raven's wings flitting to and fro
+inaudibly.
+
+Suddenly from the court came the rumble of carriage wheels, whether in
+arrival or departure they could not determine. Both started up and
+listened and looked at the clock.
+
+Twelve--impossible! The horses were never harnessed before quarter to
+two. They would have to wait entirely too long at the station.
+
+Perhaps it was the milkman who had been delayed at the railroad in
+getting his cans.
+
+They calmed down.
+
+A long, precious hour was still ahead of them, rich in care-free
+pleasures and oblivion.
+
+To express his triumph Von Prell sucked in his cheeks and rounded his
+eyes.
+
+With a luxurious smile Lilly put out her arms and drew herself up to
+him.
+
+At that instant three short, sharp raps sounded on the door opening into
+the corridor, and Miss von Schwertfeger called:
+
+"Open the door, Lilly! At once!"
+
+Walter jumped to his feet.
+
+When Lilly looked around he had already left the room.
+
+She felt a ringing in her ears, a dull desire to let herself sink down;
+but renewed raps at the door tore her out of bed and insisted upon her
+turning the key.
+
+Before she could stow herself under the covers again to conceal her
+overwhelming shame, she noticed Miss von Schwertfeger look about the
+room hastily, make a dash for something round and grey unostentatiously
+lying in a corner--Lilly did not realise it was Walter's cap until
+later--shove back the bolt of the door to the colonel's room, and then
+in sudden transition to tranquillity seat herself alongside Lilly's
+pillow.
+
+"Be careful not to cry," Lilly heard her say; and that instant the
+colonel's step resounded in the corridor.
+
+"Well, well, so late! How time does fly when you talk!" cried Miss von
+Schwertfeger for the benefit of the colonel before he entered. Her voice
+expressed endless astonishment.
+
+There he stood disagreeably surprised, it seemed, not to find his young
+wife alone.
+
+"Where did you drop from all of a sudden, colonel? You didn't order a
+special train, did you? You couldn't have flown here either. At least
+I've never observed that you possess the art of flying, have you Lilly
+dear? Poor Lilly's lying there perfectly stiff with surprise."
+
+Thus Miss von Schwertfeger talked against time, evidently trying to
+secure a few moments for Lilly in which she might pull herself together.
+
+And the colonel willy-nilly had to render account. On the way to the
+station it had occurred to him that one of the neighbours--he mentioned
+the name--was celebrating his birthday that day. So he drove over to his
+place instead of going to town.
+
+"Well," said Miss von Schwertfeger, "the greatest marvels have the
+simplest explanations. Good-night, dear, I hope you sleep well and get
+rid of that headache of yours."
+
+The colonel pricked up his ears.
+
+"If she has a headache, why didn't you let her go to sleep long ago?"
+
+When once aroused, not the least inconsistency escaped his attention.
+But Miss von Schwertfeger was his match, and rejoined without an
+instant's hesitation:
+
+"She wanted compresses again, but I thought it better simply to hold my
+hand to her forehead. She was just about to go to sleep; and we ought
+not to disturb her any more. Don't you agree with me, colonel?
+Good-night, colonel."
+
+With that she extinguished the lights.
+
+Lilly wanted to cry to her:
+
+"Stay here, stay here, he'll choke me."
+
+But Miss von Schwertfeger was already out in the corridor; and she had
+done such excellent preliminary work that the colonel after a brief "I
+hope you feel better," to Lilly, left the room without further question.
+
+Had he remained, the game might have ended in a nervous breakdown.
+
+Lilly lay in bed paralysed by a dull fright, listening now for sounds in
+the colonel's room, now to the wailing of the wind, interrupted for
+three or four seconds by a very, very soft rustle.
+
+That was the ladder gliding over the rail as Walter let it down from the
+balcony. So long as he had seen the light in Lilly's room, he had wisely
+remained on the balcony. She could hear him remove the ladder and set it
+where it belonged. Now at length, now that she felt they were both
+secure, came a shuddering realisation of what had happened, accompanied
+by a desire to call out and cry aloud.
+
+Anna von Schwertfeger! What had her conduct meant? What had impelled her
+to implicate herself in so sinful a deed? Wasn't she risking her name,
+her existence, the reward of many years' labour? How had Lilly, wretched
+sinner that she was, come to deserve so great a sacrifice? Her heart
+expanded in gratitude. She could no longer endure lying in bed. She
+would have to go down and thank Anna forthwith.
+
+She dressed without making a sound, took the precaution to bolt the door
+between the two bedrooms, and slipped out into the dark corridor, where
+she peeped through the keyhole of the colonel's room, and saw him lying
+in bed already. The old oak steps cracked frightfully; but they had that
+habit even when no one was walking on them, and often kept up the sound
+of a tread all night.
+
+Light was shining in Miss von Schwertfeger's room. Lilly heard her
+sharp, hard steps as she paced to and fro.
+
+Finally she ventured to knock.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"I, Anna. I--Lilly."
+
+"What do you want? Go back to bed."
+
+"No, no, no. I must speak to you. I must."
+
+The door opened.
+
+"Well, then, come in."
+
+Lilly wanted to throw her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger's neck, but
+she shook her off.
+
+"I'm not in the mood for scenes," she said. Her trumpet-toned voice,
+which she muffled with difficulty, had lost all traces of sympathy. "And
+you needn't thank me, because I did not act from love of you."
+
+Lilly seemed very small to herself and very much scolded. Since the days
+of her thrashings at the hands of Mrs. Asmussen no one had ever given
+her such a reception.
+
+"First you help me," she faltered, "and then--"
+
+"Since you are here, you might as well answer some questions I have to
+ask," said Miss von Schwertfeger. "Close your dress--it's cold here--and
+sit down." Lilly obeyed. "In the first place: did I in any way ever help
+to bring about a meeting between you and that man?"
+
+"When could you have?"
+
+"That's what I am asking."
+
+"On the contrary. You weren't even willing for me to take the riding
+lessons."
+
+"Then, later, did I ever leave you without supervision while you were
+taking your lessons?"
+
+"Without supervision? Why, almost always you yourself were present."
+
+"Was it I who proposed your going out riding alone with him?"
+
+"You? Of course not. The first time we went without asking, and after
+that it was the colonel who wanted us to."
+
+"Was I careful to see that everything in your room was in order?"
+
+"I don't know. I think so. Why, even lately I've noticed you come to my
+room before you went to bed as if to say good-night."
+
+"You've probably taken me to be your enemy, your spy."
+
+"You wouldn't put yourself out for me very much, I thought."
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger laughed a hard, dreary laugh.
+
+"What you say is very valuable," she said. "It proves to me that I made
+no blunders in carrying out my plan, and need not reproach myself for
+anything."
+
+"What plan?" asked Lilly, utterly bewildered.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger measured her with a glance of pitying scorn.
+
+"My dear child, I knew everything. I saw it coming from the very first,
+the moment you met him. I calculated it on my fingers the way I
+calculate the cost of a meal. I simply let matters drift. I could do so
+without dishonouring myself. Besides there was no use interfering. You
+were bent upon your own ruin."
+
+"What have I done to you," Lilly stammered, swallowing her tears, "to
+make you hate me so? I never wanted to oust you from your position. I
+subjected myself to you from the very first. I put myself completely
+into your hands, and now you do this to me."
+
+"If I hated you, you wouldn't be sitting here. You would probably be
+straying along some country road. I had you in my grasp and could have
+crushed you at least a dozen times, but didn't. However, I'll tell you
+the truth. I _did_ hate you, that is, before I knew you. I imagined you
+a sly, fresh little thing, who held off from the colonel in a pure
+spirit of calculation, until he adopted the extreme measure to which old
+libertines resort in such cases. But when I saw you, you dear child,
+without malice or guile, defenceless, and with the best intentions in
+the world to love the colonel and me, too, if possible, I had to back
+down--I and my hate. Then you became nothing else to me than a small,
+insignificant creature, which one uses so long as it is serviceable, and
+shoves aside after it has fulfilled its purpose. I am not concerned with
+you any more. You dropped out of the game long ago, and now the colonel
+and myself are playing it alone. I'll have to have it out with him, and
+then my work's done."
+
+Lilly felt nothing but dull, impotent astonishment, as if doors were
+being opened and curtains drawn aside, and she were looking into men's
+hearts as into a fiery abyss.
+
+"I thought you were so attached to him," she said. "I thought--"
+
+Suddenly it occurred to her that her first suspicion had not been far
+from the truth. This hardened, commanding spinster, whose beauty was not
+yet entirely faded, had found favour in the eyes of her employer some
+ten or fifteen years before, had then been neglected, and was now
+taking revenge.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger divined her thoughts, and dismissed them with a
+shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"Had it been that," she said, "I should have known how to acquiesce in
+my fate. And if I had still retained my place in the castle, I should
+have cherished it as my sanctuary. No, my dear, matters in this world
+are not so simple. There are even worse hells."
+
+Lilly now heard a story which filled her soul with horror and pity--the
+story of the house she lived in, the story of which she was the
+concluding chapter.
+
+The colonel, who had always been a man of violence and a mad voluptuary,
+had insisted upon taking in pupils in housekeeping under the pretext
+that when he came home on leave, he had to have youth and jollity about
+him. He reserved for himself the choice of the pupils. In this way only
+those came whom he had decided upon in advance. For a long time Miss von
+Schwertfeger noticed nothing amiss. But the servants began to tell her
+stories of secret orgies and mad chases on the upper floor, of how the
+colonel pursued girls clad in glittering raiment--the colonel had always
+liked transparent robes of silver. Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes were
+completely opened when some of the girls attempted suicide. She left.
+But she was poor and accustomed to command, and she could not endure
+subordinate positions. Dreadful distress was the result. The colonel had
+not lost her from sight; and when it seemed to him she had sunk low
+enough, he again offered her the position of housekeeper in his castle,
+promising she would have nothing to complain of. She crawled back to him
+like a starved dog. Soon he broke his word, and the indecent goings-on
+began again. But she no longer had the courage to resist. She learned to
+be blind and deaf when lewd glances were exchanged at table and screams
+and laughter penetrated to her room during the night. She even learned
+to keep curious servants at a distance, and throw a cover of concealment
+over the house's shame. Her relation to the girls became motherly.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," she interposed, "if he hadn't made the same
+proposition to you, saying I would take care of you."
+
+The fateful evening in which she had become the colonel's betrothed
+arose in Lilly's memory. While walking about her greedily, still in a
+state of indecision, he had spoken of a fine, aristocratic woman under
+whose protection she should live in his castle until she had grown into
+womanhood.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger went on with her recital. She described how rage
+at the disgraceful position she was in ate into her soul like a
+malignant cancer, how it finally took sole possession of her being to
+the exclusion of every feeling except the desire for reprisal. His
+marriage should furnish the weapons. She would be blind and deaf, just
+as she had been compelled to be before. Nothing else. She would simply
+let matters take their natural course.
+
+Thus she had acted until that night.
+
+And that night the sword must surely have fallen on Lilly and the
+colonel; but at the last decisive moment she realised her strength would
+not hold out. That young, good-natured, guiltless yet guilty wife, had
+become too dear to her. She could not sacrifice Lilly to her scheme of
+revenge.
+
+"I thought you said you hadn't acted out of love for me," Lilly ventured
+to interject.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger fixed her eyes on Lilly's face in an aggrieved
+stare.
+
+"My dear child, if you weren't a stupid thing, who has to sin in order
+to mature, you would have a better understanding of what goes on inside
+a person like myself. For the present be satisfied that you are out of
+danger."
+
+In a gush of gratitude Lilly threw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger, and
+kissed her face and hands; and Miss von Schwertfeger no longer repulsed
+her. She stroked her hair, and spoke to her as to a child.
+
+Kneeling at her feet Lilly confessed. She told how her relations with
+Walter had developed insensibly, how they had been old friends, and how
+he had really been the author of her happiness.
+
+"Happiness?" Miss von Schwertfeger drawled, and drew in the air through
+the right corner of her mouth, causing a sound like a whistle.
+
+Lilly started, looked at her, and understood.
+
+The question burned in her brain: "Am I better than I should have been
+had I allowed the colonel to drag me here without marrying me?"
+
+Eleven months had passed since that night when he courted her.
+
+She put her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger, and cried, cried, cried.
+It was so good to know there was a sisterly, no, a motherly, person in
+whose dress she could bury her tearful face. She had not experienced
+such easement since the day a certain knife had been waved over her
+head.
+
+The affair with Von Prell, of course, could not go on. He and Lilly must
+not meet even once again. Miss von Schwertfeger demanded it, and Lilly
+acquiesced without a word of protest.
+
+If only she had not had her mission!
+
+"What mission?" asked Miss von Schwertfeger.
+
+Lilly told of the holy task she had to perform in his life; how her love
+had awakened him to the realisation of a loftier, purer life; how she
+had to answer with every drop of blood in her body for his rising to
+better things and entering upon a noble, beneficent field of activity.
+
+It was Miss von Schwertfeger's turn to be astonished. She listened, and
+looked at Lilly with great, doubting eyes, then got up, and paced the
+room agitatedly, muttering:
+
+"Incredible! Incredible!"
+
+When Lilly asked her what was incredible, she kissed her on her
+forehead, and said:
+
+"You poor thing!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will suffer much in life."
+
+Thereupon it was agreed that Miss von Schwertfeger should speak with him
+once again, and the price of her silence was to be the breaking off of
+all relations between him and Lilly. They must not take their rides
+together, either.
+
+Lilly begged for only one thing, to be allowed to write him a farewell
+letter. She thought she owed this to him so that he should not harbour
+doubts of her and his future.
+
+Then the two women parted.
+
+Released, redeemed, born into a new life, Lilly walked upstairs,
+forgetting every precaution. But, thank goodness! the colonel was
+snoring.
+
+The clock struck four, and the shuffling of the stablemen already
+resounded in the courtyard.
+
+Before Lilly threw herself in bed, she cast a look of farewell at the
+lodge, and rejoiced that renunciation was so easy. She had not thought
+it possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+     "Dear Beloved Mr. von Prell:--
+
+     From what has happened you can imagine that everything between
+     us must come to an end. Yes, all's over. We shall never see
+     each other except at meal times. If you ask me whether I am
+     very sad, I will be brave and say, "no," hoping thereby to
+     assuage the pain of parting for both of us.
+
+     But easy or difficult--that's not the question. The main thing
+     is, our feelings should raise us to pure heights. True
+     greatness of renunciation must illumine our lives. Yes, I
+     expect you to show the greatness of renunciation. Our lives
+     after this must be dedicated entirely to recollections of the
+     past. Besides, can we hope ever again to find anything so
+     beautiful as those unspeakably exquisite hours we passed
+     together? I have given up thoughts of happiness, and you must
+     do the same. From now on my one sacred interest will be my
+     husband's welfare; and I ask you, with all the strength you
+     possess, likewise to labour at the reconstruction of your life.
+
+     Life is earnest, solemn, holy. I feel it is. The conviction
+     comes upon me with force, and has possessed me ever since I was
+     led back to the right path by a friend of mine. You must feel
+     it, too.
+
+     This letter is my last to you. Write to me once again. Oh, only
+     once. And stick the answer in the pea-shooter, which still
+     stands on the balcony. I shall have no peace until I know our
+     souls are united by the same ideal. Farewell, and at table
+     don't make any secret allusions to the past. You would merely
+     hurt me and make me doubt your good faith.
+
+     Ever with feelings of sisterly friendship,
+
+     Your L. v. M."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Dearest Friend:--
+
+     The profound emotions which have held me in their grip since my
+     interview with our honoured friend, have, if possible, been
+     deepened by your lovely letter. I feel a tremendous impulse to
+     accomplish by deeds of atonement that which has never yet been.
+     I am prepared to scorn the seven deadly sins. I will carry in
+     mind all the paragons of virtue from the young Tobias to St.
+     Helena, and will try to find that pure happiness in the great
+     renunciation you demand of me, which alone, they say, is
+     unalloyed with regret--an advantage which bears little weight
+     with me, since I am acquainted with that evil institution only
+     by hearsay.
+
+     Well, then, dearest, most charming of women, farewell. It was
+     _very_ delightful. I can swear to that without perjuring
+     myself. Should you require pledges for the future, I can
+     further swear that: 1, I will shun alcohol; 2, I will declare
+     war upon the female sex; 3, I will devote myself to the
+     encyclopedia of agriculture with inordinate, unalterable love.
+     Ha, do you smell the rarified atmosphere?
+
+     Once more, farewell. After I have climbed the ladder of my
+     hopes for the last time, I will lay it to repose under a wintry
+     grave of pine branches. When the time comes, may it awaken to a
+     new spring.
+
+     With a kiss on your slim, refreshingly large hand,
+
+     Your much improved,
+     Walter von Prell."
+
+Lilly found this letter the second morning after the great event in the
+shape of a pellet stuck into the mouth of the pea-shooter, which leaned
+innocently against the jamb of the balcony door.
+
+It did not provide her with unqualified satisfaction. There were turns
+of expression in it which raised doubts as to the sincerity of his
+conversion. Nevertheless, his asseverations were so plain and
+unmistakable she felt she might take the core to be sound. It was simply
+that he could not refrain from his wanton way of speaking, which the
+person who loved him would have to acquiesce in.
+
+She kissed the letter and stuck it in her bosom, to lie there warm and
+secure awhile before she tore it up.
+
+In the afternoon she took a walk about the grounds, and actually found
+under her balcony a long heap of pine branches from between which a few
+ladder rungs peeped at her familiarly.
+
+Rejoiced at this token of his pain she ran off to the park, now soggy
+from the autumn rains, and sauntered about, marvelling from time to time
+that renunciation was so easy.
+
+After all it was not so easy.
+
+She discovered it was not in the course of the next few days, when life
+began to lose its content and intensity, when the hours jogged along in
+dreary autumnal greyness, and the evening came and the morning came
+without a reason why.
+
+Moreover, she failed to find that support in Anna von Schwertfeger which
+she had expected to. Although her friend withdrew none of the promises
+she had made, yet a shadowy wall circumscribed her, which no insinuating
+love could penetrate. She seemed almost to fear that too great
+familiarity with Lilly would bring down upon her own head the sin of the
+adulteress.
+
+Lilly had much to suffer from the colonel these days. She, like the
+rest, now fell a victim to his attacks of fury. And what was worse, in
+moments of quiet self-abandon, she would suddenly feel his dark,
+lowering look fastened upon her, betokening many a thought in his mind
+which boded her no good.
+
+She began to fear he had gotten wind of her affair with Von Prell; but
+Anna pooh-poohed the idea.
+
+"The symptoms would be rather different," she remarked. "Such a
+suspicion would not pass without leaving a few broken chairs or lamps
+behind. My opinion is, he feels bored at home. He's hankering for the
+regiment, and holds you responsible for the change in his life. I
+sincerely hope he doesn't come to hate you on that account. In that
+event only two courses would be open to you: separation or suicide."
+
+Here was small comfort. And no less dispiriting was his hesitation to
+introduce her to the neighbours. Long before, Miss von Schwertfeger had
+declared Lilly's education complete. No colonel's wife or high-born dame
+could now find fault with her manners. But the colonel looked at her
+distrustfully, and deferred the visits from week to week.
+
+Lilly kept up bravely in all her tribulations. Faith in herself and,
+still more, faith in him, gave her peace and strength.
+
+She regulated her days strictly according to rule with a fixed
+occupation for each hour. She learned Goethe's poems by heart, studied
+Shakespeare in English, read histories of art, and lost herself in the
+mazes of the French Revolution.
+
+She took special delight in a large geographical work, in which there
+were many pictures of southern ports, tropical forests, and bald, rocky
+mountain ranges.
+
+There were also full illustrations of Italy--pious pilgrims on crusades,
+enigmatic churches, and slender-columned porticos, which filled her with
+an ardent longing to be there.
+
+When she travelled great distances into strange countries and looked
+about timidly to find her way back again, whom did she see standing
+there all of a sudden, blond, freckled, in a black and white checked
+fall suit, making deep reverences? "As my lady commands."
+
+The tears welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her one diversion was to stand behind her balcony door--without his
+knowing she was there, of course--and look over to the lodge through the
+openings in the vine, the last leaves of which fluttered like little red
+flags.
+
+Oh, she might be proud of him. When he sat at the window in his leisure
+hours he never let himself be seen without the encyclopedia of
+agriculture in his hands.
+
+He closed his shutters early every evening. In his frivolous days he had
+hung heavy portieres at the windows, which, with the help of the
+shutters, prevented the tiniest ray of light from penetrating to the
+outside.
+
+Lilly doubted not in the least that his student's lamp burned until late
+at night, while he sat there over his book copying valuable extracts and
+soaring on the pinions of great creative ideas.
+
+She soared with him. She knew he could not lose his footing now. She had
+his vow, and he held her honour in his keeping. That would serve as a
+talisman, a guide on the road leading upward to a new life.
+
+A few weeks passed.
+
+He begged to be excused from coming to Sunday dinners; for which she was
+grateful to him. Fortune had favoured her still further by having
+bestowed a cold upon her that fateful night, as a result of which the
+physician forbade horseback riding throughout the winter. In this Miss
+von Schwertfeger probably had a hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once on a day early in December, the colonel, as if to spite his
+customary surliness, appeared at dinner in high feather. He chuckled to
+himself, his eyes danced and looked cunning, secret laughter, as it
+were, ran down his cheeks in rivulets.
+
+Lilly ventured to ask what was amusing him.
+
+At first he refused to speak.
+
+"Oh, stuff and nonsense, mind your own affairs." But he could not
+contain himself, and finally began: "Well, guess what happened to me.
+One of the men at the club said to me I'd better look sharp to my Prell,
+because stories were afloat that he kept knocking about in vile joints
+night after night and had even gotten mixed up in a nasty brawl on
+account of a hussy of a barmaid."
+
+Lilly felt an icy numbness creep slowly upward from her feet. Her limbs
+grew rigid. She smiled, and the smile cut into her cheeks like a
+sharp-edged stone.
+
+"At first, of course, I merely laughed at him, because, you know,
+there's only the one train to take going and coming, and lately _I've_
+been on that train nearly every day. No horse can stand twenty miles
+each way night after night, and the pocket money I give him won't hire a
+special train. That's what I said to the major; but he insisted. The
+younger gentlemen had told him; and it would be a pity if after all Von
+Prell had to be deprived of his uniform. When I got to the station at
+one o'clock, the business was still buzzing about in my head. I had a
+few moments' time, so I looked through the whole train--fourth class and
+all. Of course, not a sign. I did the same thing three times in
+succession. Well, I thought, it's a lie. And now listen. Yesterday, when
+I was just about to get into the train at this end, I remembered I had
+left my umbrella in the carriage. I can't get used to that piece of
+furniture. So I went back. The platform was already empty, but the train
+was still standing there; and when I passed the baggage car--sliding
+doors open--I saw someone on the opposite side jump out to the tracks
+and scamper off. 'Stop!' I called. But he ran and ran, into the woods. I
+was going to tell the baggage master, who was on the platform next to
+the locomotive, but Prell flashed into my mind. I said to Henry: 'Drive
+as if the devil were after you,' and we reached here in five minutes.
+But then, I reflected, he must have heard the carriage wheels from the
+path. So I went up to my room to hurry and turn on the lights. I wanted
+him to think I was in my room already. Did I wake you up, Lilly?" The
+colonel started. "How you look, Lilly!"
+
+"I?" she said, and smiled again.
+
+"She hasn't been feeling very well all day," Miss von Schwertfeger
+interjected hastily. "Besides, your story's very exciting, colonel. I'm
+all keyed up, too."
+
+"Hm," he muttered, twisting the end of his black dyed moustache,
+evidently little desirous of concluding his tale. But Lilly could not
+calm herself.
+
+"I must know, I must know," she cried, clasping her hands. She was
+beside herself.
+
+"Well, then," said the colonel, fixing his eyes on her, "down I go again
+in a jiffy--in ambush in front of the lodge--there he comes, stooping
+like a polecat--stands still--eyes my window--sees the light--aha, he
+thinks, all right. And just as he's about to stick the key in the lock,
+I tackle him by the collar."
+
+Lilly burst out into a mad laugh.
+
+"Isn't that funny, isn't that funny!" she cried. This time the colonel
+believed her.
+
+"Something funnier's coming," he continued. "'If you confess
+everything,' I said, 'I'll pardon you. But only on that condition.
+Otherwise you're off to-morrow bright and early.' Well, what do you
+think the rascal was up to? The good-for-nothing has a lady
+love--barmaid in the Golden Apple--where the sergeants and clerks
+resort. So, for the sake of bumming with her, he bribed a railroad
+official and actually went to town and came back as a piece of the
+king's baggage. Night after night rode in the same train as I did--each
+way. If _that_ isn't rank impudence, what--Lilly!"
+
+A pause ensued. Lilly experienced a sensation of swaying and reeling as
+if tossed on stormy seas, a buzzing and singing; at the same time she
+felt Miss von Schwertfeger press her hand under the table by way of
+warning.
+
+The colonel rose, took Lilly's head between his hands, and pressing it
+until she thought her ears would split, said:
+
+"It seems you _do_ need rest."
+
+With that he faced about, and left the room abruptly.
+
+"Now gather your wits together," Lilly heard her friend's disturbed
+voice behind her, "because after this he'll be on the look-out."
+
+Lilly wanted to throw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger's breast and be
+petted and comforted. But Miss von Schwertfeger, as if afraid somebody
+might catch her in too intimate a conversation with Lilly, held herself
+aloof, and said coolly, though in a friendly tone:
+
+"Excuse me, dear, I have something I must attend to this minute."
+
+With that, she, too, left the room.
+
+What now?
+
+Lilly stared into space. The remnants of the precipitate meal littered
+the table; the dark carved furniture cast black-edged rays from out of
+the room's wintry twilight; the brass chandeliers gleamed palely. All
+was as usual, and yet nothing was there, nothing but an awful,
+all-devouring void, an abyss which drew her into its bosom with the
+enticements of grappling hooks and huge tongs.
+
+She stepped to the window and looked out apathetically.
+
+The bare branches swayed in the wind, the ivy on the railing fluttered,
+even the arched stalks of the rose bushes, the heads of which the
+gardener had secured under heaps of earth, trembled and quivered this
+way and that. The world was writhing in the clutch of winter. The only
+still things were the leaves lying on the thin coating of snow which
+covered the ground; but the leaves were dead already.
+
+What now?
+
+If _that_ could happen, then the very earth beneath her feet gave way;
+then there was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no strength, and
+no fidelity; then you might as well throw yourself down beside the
+leaves out there and die.
+
+But before that--what?
+
+Dishes rattled behind her. No one had rung for the maid, but she had
+come of her own accord and was helping Ferdinand clear the table.
+
+Lilly thought of Katie and that other creature in whose arms he had made
+mock of her and her faith in him.
+
+She dragged her torpid legs up the steps to the rooms where she felt at
+home. In passing the colonel's door, she caught the sound of his tread
+as he fairly ran to and fro.
+
+She experienced not the faintest fear of him.
+
+"Let him run, if he wants to," she thought.
+
+When in her own room, she heard him give orders to have the carriage
+brought around immediately.
+
+"For all I care, he may stay here."
+
+She stepped out on the balcony.
+
+The iciness benumbing her neck crept into her arms and spread down to
+her very finger tips.
+
+There sat Walter, as always in his free time after dinner, completely
+absorbed in the great encyclopedia of agriculture, so full of zeal for
+study that every now and then he would pass his hand through his hair in
+a preoccupied way and without looking up--he hadn't so much time to
+spare, Heavens! no!--he would flick the ashes from his cigarette into a
+flower pot.
+
+In the face of this infamous game, which he played for the sole purpose
+of deceiving her, Lilly was seized by a wild, infuriated desire to
+denounce him, which completely robbed her of her senses. A stinging and
+pricking lifted her paralysed arms. The iciness gave way to a painful
+fever, which throbbed in her temples, and hung a red curtain before her
+eyes.
+
+She saw nothing, heard nothing.
+
+She rushed down the staircase, tore open the garden door, leapt down the
+stone steps, and ran at full speed straight across the lawn to the
+lodge.
+
+Whether someone spied her or not she did not care.
+
+The door to his room banged against the wall.
+
+She had not stopped to knock.
+
+A rank, pungent smell, as in a menagerie, assailed her nostrils.
+
+There he was, sitting at the window. He jumped to his feet. The grey
+daylight glided over his head.
+
+"He's had his hair cut brush fashion again," thought Lilly. "The
+dissolute life he's living demands it; the elegance of the dives demands
+it."
+
+"Good Lord!" he said, crumbling his burning cigarette between his
+fingers, "a pretty howdy-do!"
+
+"Why--? Why did you--?" she screamed at him. "You're a blackguard! Your
+word's not to be trusted! You're a liar!"
+
+"Confound it!" he said, and looked about helplessly. "_How_ will my lady
+get out of this mess?"
+
+"You broke your promise--the most sacred bond uniting us.
+You--you--threw it away on a barmaid--a barmaid, a creature who would
+hang herself on anybody's neck for a couple of pennies. You're a vulgar
+profligate! You're not worth a woman's having tried to save you--you
+don't _want_ to be saved--you _want_ to go to the bad--"
+
+"All very good and fine," he said, "and probably very saddening and
+incontrovertible truths; but will my lady please explain how she expects
+to get out of here?"
+
+"I don't know anything I am more indifferent about," she cried. "I came
+for you to give me an account of yourself. I am asking you to answer
+me--immediately--here--now--on the spot."
+
+"Certainly, my lady, I will without fail. But first--damn it! hell! Get
+away from the window!"
+
+He cast a sharp, all-embracing glance at the castle. Nothing suspicious
+to be detected at that moment, at least.
+
+Alarmed by his snarling at her in that way, Lilly fled into the interior
+of the room, which was low, dark, and ill furnished. Here the vile
+animal smell was still stronger. From where it came was made clear to
+her the next instant. As she approached the rear wall, something
+suddenly snapped at her foot, and two little circular torches gleamed up
+at her wickedly.
+
+"Down, Tommy!" called Von Prell, while Lilly recoiled with an
+exclamation of fright.
+
+So that was Tommy, the other member of the triple alliance.
+
+Lilly leaned against the arm of the old spindle-legged sofa. Its worn
+springs squeaked under her pressure and pricked her thumbs, and the
+thought flashed into her mind:
+
+"What am I doing here? What is it all to me?"
+
+Von Prell the while stepped from door to door listening.
+
+"If that old Leichtweg had happened to be in the next room," he said,
+"we should be dying a dog's death. But if you go this instant, the front
+way, into the courtyard, they might suppose you had come to ask
+something, and perhaps we can patch it up still."
+
+All Lilly perceived in his words was a sly attempt at evasion, and a
+fresh flood of indignation overwhelmed her.
+
+"First justify yourself," she cried. "Until you do, I won't go this way,
+or that way, or the other way."
+
+To enforce her resolve she dropped down on the screeching sofa, which
+was covered with a dirty grey horseblanket folded into several
+thicknesses for protection against the sharp points of the springs.
+
+He was compelled to yield.
+
+"Very well, then, look here--a fellow's a human being, isn't he? And if
+he's given the go-by in that common way--"
+
+"Common way?" faltered Lilly. "What was common in my letter? Didn't I
+tear my heart out and throw it at your feet, and didn't Miss von
+Schwertfeger--?"
+
+She could not continue. Wrath and despair choked her utterance.
+
+In the meantime Von Prell, who at first had been at a complete loss,
+arrived at the proper policy to adopt.
+
+"Yes, that's just it," he said, growing more aggrieved with each word.
+"Is a love like ours to be concluded with a lukewarm homily? And that
+Schwertfeger--did I deserve being dismissed by you like an asthmatic old
+dog through the intermediation of a third person, a horrid, disgusting
+creature? Isn't it enough to make a man desperate after all he's done
+for you?"
+
+"What--did you--do for me?" queried Lilly.
+
+"Well--wasn't I a self-sacrificing comrade the whole time? Wasn't I
+disloyal even to my old colonel for your sake, that fine old gentleman,
+who saved my life, you might say? You see, all that's no small matter.
+Do you suppose it didn't cut me to the quick? Do you suppose I didn't
+get the blues? And then to be fooling round here alone night after night
+with that dung-beetle, that Tommy--the beast smells, I tell you. So why
+not try to dull one's feelings? Shouldn't I--how shall I say?--deaden
+the anguish of lost love? Not even deaden it? It's a perfect mystery to
+me how you can demand such a thing of me. We speak different languages,
+my dear child--there's a yawning chasm dividing our natures--and you're
+even willing to risk our two lives for such mummery. As a rule, I'm
+_not_ an old aunt, but indeed, if only I had you out of this place."
+
+Throughout this long speech he had walked about Lilly in a semicircle,
+with one hand thrust in the belt of his Norfolk jacket, making short,
+jerky steps, which forcefully expressed his righteous indignation.
+
+Lilly sat on the sofa stiffly upright, mechanically turning her head
+after him now to the right, now to the left, and staring at him with
+great, uncomprehending eyes.
+
+When he stopped speaking, he drew a cigarette from the case and
+energetically beat off the superfluous tobacco with the index finger of
+his left hand.
+
+Lilly rose in all her height, leaving the sofa and the table next to the
+sofa far below her.
+
+"Listen, Walter," she said, "from this moment everything between us is
+at an end."
+
+"Why, wasn't it long ago?"
+
+"I mean--inwardly, too."
+
+"Oh, inwardly, too!" He made a little grimace. "With you that probably
+means if you have something in your stomach."
+
+When Lilly saw her love so ridiculed and mutilated, she could no longer
+restrain herself. With an outcry she ran from the sofa, and hid her
+face--anywhere at all--on the wall next to the window.
+
+"Get away from the window!" she heard him hiss.
+
+Oh, what did she care!
+
+In the extremity of his fright he took to pleading.
+
+"Just come away from the window," he said. "It was all mere twaddle. I
+simply wanted to make you laugh again, nothing more. Please come away
+from the window."
+
+She did not budge.
+
+To crawl off somewhere! To crawl away and hide herself and all her
+shame.
+
+She felt his hands seize her rudely.
+
+That, too! To suffer violence, too!
+
+She flung him off, wrestled with him, clawed at his neck--
+
+And suddenly--
+
+A whistling, a clash and clatter--shivers of glass flew over their
+heads, and a long, dark something, like the shaft of a lance, sped past
+them, knocked against something, rebounded, and fell at their feet.
+
+The same instant Lilly felt a rush of cold air on her forehead, which
+aroused her from the stupefaction of surprise.
+
+One of the two upper window panes had been broken.
+
+No living creature was to be seen. But the balcony door yonder, which
+had been closed a moment before, now showed a dark opening, and was
+swinging shut.
+
+"A narrow escape," murmured Walter, and stooped to pick up the
+mysterious thing from the floor, while the fragments of glass gritted
+beneath his feet.
+
+"The pea-shooter," Lilly faltered.
+
+"A mercy he didn't happen to have his fowling-piece at hand," said
+Walter, "else we'd be riddled into sieves."
+
+With the back of his hand he wiped away the sweat of fright standing on
+his forehead in bright beads.
+
+None the less he was a brave little chap, and knew on the instant what
+to do.
+
+He sprang to the wardrobe under which Tommy had burrowed, fetched out
+his army revolver, and tested all its parts. Then he said:
+
+"Now, please go into Leichtweg's room, and lock yourself in. The
+colonel's simply gone to load his gun. Then he'll be here."
+
+But Lilly refused. Her wrath against him had completely evaporated.
+
+"Let me stay with you, let me stay with you!" she begged, clasping his
+shoulders.
+
+"Impossible, child," he replied, with the old masterful lift to his
+brows. "What's coming is men's business."
+
+"Then I'll stand out in the hall, and receive him at your door."
+
+He bit his lips.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you take it that way, I can't help myself. Sit
+down, please."
+
+He removed the key from the outside of the door, stuck it in the lock on
+the inside and cautiously turned it several times.
+
+"Between loading and shooting," he said then, "there's a great big
+difference--but the devil knows."
+
+He took out his watch, and listened intently for sounds from the
+outside, while he counted, "a half--one--one and a half--two. Probably
+can't find his cartridges." Then commandingly: "Do sit down. You'll need
+your legs to-day."
+
+Lilly sank in one corner of the sofa, and he seated himself in the
+other, placing the watch between them on the bumpy seat. Both counted
+now with their eyes fastened on the second hand. "Two and a
+half--three--three and a half--four--four and a half--five minutes."
+
+Not a sound, save the wind howling in the bare branches.
+
+Then it seemed to them they heard the trot of horses starting in the
+courtyard and dying away on the other side of the gates.
+
+"Whom's he gone to fetch?" asked Walter. "We're not ready for seconds
+yet."
+
+Red suns danced before Lilly's eyes. The ceiling began to rise and sink.
+
+Walter kept on counting.
+
+"Seven--eight--eight and a half."
+
+Nothing.
+
+"Nine--nine and a half--ten--" Suddenly he emitted a faint whistle, and
+grasped his revolver.
+
+The front door grated on its hinges, steps resounded, but not the
+threatening, thundering steps of a vengeful husband. They were soft,
+hesitating, dragging steps.
+
+Then for a while nothing again--no sound, except the breathing of two
+persons--and someone else--on the other side of the door, it seemed.
+
+"Who's there?" called Walter.
+
+Now came a knock.
+
+Soft, broken, as if of trembling, failing fingers.
+
+"Who's there, in the devil's name?" he called again.
+
+"Anna von Schwertfeger."
+
+He jumped up and opened the door.
+
+There she stood, ashen-hued, red about the mouth, her lids quivering.
+
+"The colonel has just driven off to Baron von Platow. He will return in
+three hours. He charged me to tell you, Lilly, that when he comes back
+he doesn't want to find you on his premises."
+
+"And what did he charge you to tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.
+
+Miss von Schwertfeger, without regarding him, took Lilly's hand.
+
+"Come. You haven't much time. We must pack."
+
+"But--but where am I to go?" she asked, helplessly, suffering herself to
+be drawn to her feet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she got to the door of the lodge, she saw the carriage that was to
+convey her from the castle already rolling up the driveway.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+She was Lilly Czepanek again.
+
+In the divorce proceedings there had been no attempt at dissimulation or
+concealment, and the case moved along rapidly. Lilly alone was found
+guilty, and, upon the colonel's deposition, was deprived of the right to
+use her married name.
+
+"There is nothing to be saved from the ruins," wrote Mr. Pieper, "except
+the jewels which I hope you diligently accumulated by following my
+advice and standing in front of fine shop-windows. The pearl necklace
+your ex-husband put about your neck on your wedding day--owing in part,
+I may now say, to my suggestion--which I will try to get back for you,
+is in itself sufficient to keep your head above water several years."
+
+The result of this letter was that Lilly took the pearl necklace, which
+after her flight she had found in one of her trunks among the laces and
+evening gowns, carried it to a jeweller, had him pack it up, and
+addressed it to Miss von Schwertfeger.
+
+She felt justified in considering the less valuable trinkets to be her
+personal property. She had already disposed of a considerable number of
+them, and what was left would scarcely suffice for more than half a
+year. Then poverty.
+
+But her material condition gave her little concern.
+
+Her regret for what she had lost was too profound, her consciousness of
+the shame she had undergone too lively, but that her future should not
+have been hidden from her perceptions behind a veil of tears.
+
+Yes, tears, tears--oh, she learned to shed tears.
+
+She learned to swallow tears like salt sea water; she sucked them into
+her mouth with her lower lip thrust out, she shook them from her cheeks
+like drops of rain. And they kept welling up again, finally without
+cause, even after the pain had subsided--awake or asleep, they just
+came.
+
+She had gone away that grey, windy December day just before nightfall in
+a trembling state of stupefaction without complaint, without attempts at
+self-justification.
+
+Gone away blindly--anywhere--simply gone away--in all haste.
+
+She landed in Berlin, the haven of all the wrecked.
+
+In that world where oblivion spreads its blessing hands alike over the
+righteous and unrighteous, where enticing possibilities flash and
+sparkle, illuminating the dark days of inertness and prostration, where
+regret over a lost past by and by becomes tense, desirous expectation of
+happiness, and where the god Chance reigns supreme--in that world of the
+unknown and forsaken, in which none but those who are both old and poor
+sink into nothingness, hopeless outlaws--into that world Lilly crept.
+
+Many a dreary month she knocked about in lodging houses where divorcees
+with lost reputations huddle together, reminding one of little heaps of
+decaying apples; where the tone is given by Chilian attaches and agents
+of mysterious trades from Bucharest and Alexandria. In a friendly way
+she avoided the confidences of companions in misery, who lavished words
+of comfort, and with mute disregard repelled the advances--physical
+advances as well--of her enterprising, olive-complexioned neighbours.
+
+After a while she began to look about for a position--something unique,
+something between a lady in waiting and a chaperon, which would not be
+incongruous with her former station and the quiet dignity of her
+bearing.
+
+But positions of that sort seemed remarkably scarce.
+
+And all she reaped of her endeavours were the tender attentions of a few
+old gentlemen who came to see her in the evening, and could not find
+their way out again until the door was held wide open for them.
+
+Discouraged, she gave up going to employment bureaus and the useless
+ringing of front door bells. But her expectations had not yet sunk to
+the level of those of a shop-girl or model in a dressmaking
+establishment. And they never would sink so low, because "general's
+wife," as she was branded, no matter where she went, was written all
+over her.
+
+In that seething sea of humanity she tossed about without so much as a
+straw to clutch at; except, indeed, Walter's letter, which Miss von
+Schwertfeger forwarded to her two months after her expulsion. The poor
+boy was now completely ruined. Nevertheless, his letter gave proof of a
+modest attempt to offer her some support.
+
+     "Dearest Friend:--
+
+     I'm done for. I've been shot. A mere trifle when it happens to
+     others; but when it happens to oneself, the consequence is, it
+     considerably lessens one's hopes of entering upon a glorious
+     career as head waiter on the other side of the Atlantic.
+
+     Nevertheless I thank fate for having been gracious enough to
+     lead across my path so good, so touching a lamb, one so filled
+     with the desire to redeem, as my baronissima.
+
+     You will readily understand, O dearest, supergracious woman,
+     that I in turn also feel a slight obligation to play the
+     redeemer, if only to preserve our souls for each other.
+
+     But "the how" presents some difficulties, to be sure. If I were
+     to recommend you to the care of my former friends, your future
+     would be settled. For in blissful hours leaves and virtues
+     still fall.
+
+     Therefore I descend a step to those regions in which a sturdy
+     Philistinism creeps on its belly before our coronets, even when
+     those coronets lie shattered on the ground.
+
+     In Alte Jakobstrasse in Berlin there dwells a respectable
+     manufacturer of bronze ware, a comrade of the reserves, etc.,
+     by name Richard Dehnicke, who feels he is indebted to me
+     because I pumped him for coin.
+
+     I am writing to him by this mail. Step boldly in among his
+     lamps and vases. The former, I hope, will brighten your nights,
+     the latter, daintily line your way in life, and he will not ask
+     the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of
+     beautiful women. Some queer fish there have to be in the world.
+
+     My address will be
+
+     Walter von Prell,
+     Street-lounger & Candidate for Fortune,
+     Chicago, First Stockyard to the Left.
+
+     P. S.--Tommy sends his regards. Before going I planted a ball
+     in his forehead."
+
+This letter, the last and only greeting from her friend, left Lilly
+untouched. Soon after, Miss von Schwertfeger wrote, he set sail for the
+United States with a crippled arm. Their love had deserved an honourable
+burial, even if its rapture had not been genuine, even if its lofty
+purpose had set in dirt and disgrace.
+
+"If only to preserve our souls for each other," he had written, the dear
+little fellow.
+
+The letter, however, offered a certain guarantee that in her hour of
+need, a helping hand would be stretched out to steady her. But the
+measure he recommended, she never, never thought of adopting. What she
+feared above all was that something which emanated from the eyes of men
+fixed upon her face in desire, that something which issued from men's
+lips persuasively, masterfully.
+
+She wanted to keep her fate in her own hands and go her own way.
+
+What that way was to be, she had not yet determined.
+
+So irresolute had sorrow and anxiety made her that nothing but a faint
+breeze would have been required to head her life in a certain direction.
+
+But no breeze blew upon her.
+
+Months passed. Miss von Schwertfeger ceased to write. Lilly's money gave
+out. The little treasure of trinkets dwindled rapidly.
+
+The lodging houses to which she moved grew ever more modest. Chilian
+attaches and Greek trafficers were replaced by bankrupt real estate
+agents and unemployed bank clerks, who wanted to solace her in her
+loneliness by spending the evenings with her. And the women who came in
+soiled kimonos to pay her neighbourly visits cast greedy glances at the
+few brooches, bracelets and rings she still had left.
+
+So Lilly determined to make an end of this life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+One of the best of the "best rooms" in Berlin which are to be found in
+houses having once known those renowned better days and which are let
+out to decent young women for thirty marks, including service and
+breakfast, was to be had from the widow Clothilde Laue.
+
+It contained red plush furniture, which embodied the acme of good taste
+at the time of the Franco-Prussian War. It contained a pier glass
+fantastically stuck from top to bottom with New Year's cards, cards of
+congratulation, and illustrated advertisements of soaps and powders. It
+contained photographs on the walls of actors once famous, whose fame in
+the meantime had faded no less than the autographs they had written
+beneath their pictures. It contained a washstand, whose marble top was
+covered with a tidy embroidered with the sententious couplet:
+
+    To keep your body clean, be sure
+    To have your conscience just as pure.
+
+It contained photograph albums, card-cases, a cigar clip in the shape of
+a windmill of olive wood, a green glass punch bowl, and a shaky pine bed
+modestly hidden behind blue woolen portieres.
+
+It contained, finally, hung over the sofa in a gilt-edged glass case, a
+mysterious round creation. The thing consisted of six strips of paper
+braided together and radiating from a common centre. It was covered with
+gauze, beneath which the outline of pressed flowers could dimly be
+distinguished.
+
+It was in this best room on Neanderstrasse, four flights up, over a
+china shop, a piano-renting establishment, and a "repair studio," from
+the windows of which room an oblique view was to be obtained of the
+greenish grey waves of the Engelbecken, and into which a broad expanse
+of genuine Berlin smoky sky actually shone, that Lilly one day landed.
+
+Mrs. Laue was a woman of fifty, worn out by overwork, with a face like a
+dried apple, and great staring, tearful eyes. She circled about Lilly in
+incredulous admiration, as if unable to comprehend that so much
+brilliance and beauty had strayed into her home.
+
+The very day of her arrival Lilly was informed of her history. Her
+husband had been cashier and bookkeeper at one of the favorite variety
+theatres in Berlin, and twenty years before had departed this world,
+leaving her without home or protection. There was no rosy glamour to
+glorify tears wept in solitude, no comic songs to drown the cry of
+hunger.
+
+Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved
+to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by
+an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for
+making others to sell.
+
+After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and
+disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her
+"pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist
+in her field.
+
+In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and
+where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table--she
+herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time--she had worked
+for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and
+weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned--thanks to her renown as a
+specialist!--so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her
+treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month.
+
+Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers.
+
+Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few
+betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of
+unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine
+aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because
+she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists
+only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and
+"pearl necklace"--Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers--and other such
+things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are
+taken as a matter of course.
+
+Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She
+helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she
+encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held
+before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future.
+
+In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every
+day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There
+were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their
+fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the
+artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the
+hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated
+artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a
+pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had
+become vacant.
+
+The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift
+her jubilantly to the throne of mistress.
+
+More months passed.
+
+Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights
+became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because
+some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible
+vividness.
+
+But one thing she did not learn: to consider the brief span during which
+she had wandered on the heights as a mere episode that had interrupted
+her true, modest life like a caprice, a dream. In her consciousness she
+was and remained a sort of enchanted princess in the guise of a beggar
+until it pleased Providence to reinstate her in her own.
+
+She solicitously cherished everything reminding her of her vanished
+glory.
+
+The gala robes the colonel had had made for her in Dresden hung in Mrs.
+Laue's wardrobe; her underwear embroidered with the seven-pointed
+coronet filled Mrs. Laue's empty drawers with their blossom-like
+delicacy, and in a long row in front of the tall mirror in Mrs. Laue's
+best room lay the superb toilet articles of ivory and gold which had
+once been the pride of her "boudoir." These, too, still bore the
+seven-pointed coronet. Lilly would have considered it an outrage upon
+her most sacred rights had she had to part with them.
+
+And all the time she awaited the future. She still studied
+advertisements, and wrote letters applying for positions; but the
+advertisements were usually forgotten and the letters seldom mailed.
+
+However, feeling the need of occupation and companionship, she got into
+the habit of sitting with Mrs. Laue in the back room and helping her
+with her work. Soon she, too, was tapping, pasting, daubing, threading,
+and weaving just like her teacher. Having inherited taste and talent for
+everything artistic she soon outstripped Mrs. Laue. After having sold
+the shades Mrs. Laue would relate without envy how the patterns she
+designed and set together were instantly recognised and preferred.
+
+Lilly's ambition was aroused. She strove to create works of art. She
+could not toil enough.
+
+"If you wouldn't fool such a time over every little spray," was Mrs.
+Laue's criticism, "you would make more money than I do." After each
+transaction Mrs. Laue honestly settled accounts with Lilly.
+
+But Lilly was satisfied with the forty or fifty marks a month that her
+work brought in. Her newly aroused fancy flew toward higher goals.
+
+The dried grasses, the "grass flowers," as Mrs. Laue called them,
+charmed her especially. Their slender, aspiring stalks, the delicate
+grace of their branchings, the weary mourning of their hanging sprays,
+caused them to resemble tiny trees, weeping willows at the edge of a
+brook, ash-trees inclining over marble urns, or palms longingly rooted
+on parched rocks.
+
+Lilly dreamed of a new sort of art--paintings on transparent glass with
+foregrounds of dried grass; lamp shades and window shades, on which
+woods of flowering grass and ferns charmingly shaded pasteboard houses
+standing out in relief with their windows cut out to let light shine as
+if from within; fleecy clouds, glowing sunsets, ridges of hills in hazy
+outline, and dark blue rivers, across which the moon threw swaying
+bridges of light.
+
+An endless succession of pictures suddenly took form in Lilly's mind,
+and new ones kept coming and coming. She did not know what to do with
+all that wealth of imagery.
+
+Mrs. Laue, who for twenty years had unswervingly stuck to pasting her
+oiled paper and felt that every desire to abandon her modest work was
+heretical, warned Lilly with all her might.
+
+But Lilly was possessed.
+
+And one day she resorted to extreme measures. She took her arrow-shaped
+brooch set with six small emeralds to the jeweler, who gave her eighty
+marks. It was worth five times as much, of course. She used the money to
+buy polished cut-glass plates, which were held together in pairs by
+brass screws and could be hung at the window by dainty chains. She also
+purchased a box of paints, and while Mrs. Laue clasped her hands in
+dismay, she set to painting bravely.
+
+But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections
+of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors
+ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance
+and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained
+nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.
+
+Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the
+stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again
+took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with
+white silk ribbons.
+
+Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum
+silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that
+had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set
+free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in
+Lilly's outstretched hands.
+
+As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to
+oppress her soul that as her life went on--that which she called
+life--she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper
+every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a
+horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great,
+watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still
+shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of
+the grave.
+
+This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out
+of doors, no matter where--out into the world, into the arms of life.
+
+Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened
+her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young
+fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned
+brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way--all this
+filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
+
+A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty
+independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a
+helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy
+security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and
+felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten
+and obviously was in the wrong.
+
+Then the waiting--the waiting--the never-sleeping, ever-hungry waiting.
+
+For what? She herself did not know.
+
+But something _had_ to come. Her life _could_ not end here among those
+bits of oiled paper.
+
+From time to time the thought of the rich bronze manufacturer to whom
+Walter had recommended her rose to the surface of her soul as a vague
+craving. But the fervor with which she clung to this shadow terrified
+her, and she instantly chased it from her mind.
+
+A year had passed since Walter's letter had been written. It was much
+too late to seek help from him.
+
+So she waited a few months more.
+
+Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing
+and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round,
+slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses,
+glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she
+was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and
+readiness for love.
+
+The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy
+work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies
+to intoxication and flight.
+
+And at twilight, when she stretched herself on the sofa in a brief
+moment of leisure, and saw the blue flash of the electric tram flit
+across the ceiling, dreams came gently gliding upon her, resolving that
+burning expectancy into soft, half-fulfilled desires; a feeling that she
+had been saved stole over her soul like a thanksgiving, and that which
+she usually bewailed as lost happiness became nothing more than a
+nightmare from which a benign destiny had freed her.
+
+But such hours were rare. And they resembled the solacing mirage that
+arises before the eyes of the thirsty traveller, rather than the drink
+itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The winter passed in fog and rain.
+
+Now came the mild March evenings when rosy clouds floated like blossoms
+over the house tops. Then came spring itself. The freshly trimmed little
+trees on the open places put forth brownish green buds, which by degrees
+turned into pale bunches of leaves.
+
+Lilly saw as little of all that glad bourgeoning, that snowy florescence
+of cherry trees, that brilliant glow of the hawthorne as when she dusted
+the yellow powder from Mrs. Asmussen's bookcases.
+
+Mrs. Laue did not like taking walks. To her the idea of passing a meadow
+without gathering flowers, or a garden without thrusting her hand
+between the rails, was inconceivable; and she feared being caught in the
+act, an experience she had often had.
+
+Lilly for her part would not venture out alone, dreading the
+unrestrained crowd.
+
+Then came those hot, hazy, oppressive Sunday afternoons when endless
+throngs stream from the city to the suburbs, when the streets lie
+stretched out dead in all their length, and when the overcast heavens
+fairly weigh upon those who have been left to pant between the walls of
+the houses.
+
+On those afternoons Mrs. Laue would stick genuine rhinestone studs into
+her ears, would don a brown velvet dress with a black jet collar on the
+square-cut neck, and in this costume would pay Lilly a formal visit in
+the best room. The Dresden gowns would be taken from the wardrobe and
+carefully compared with the gorgeous dresses worn by the charming ladies
+of the proscenium box twenty-five years before. The faded pictures of
+long-forgotten stars would be fetched down from the walls and examined
+as to their charms. Exciting tales would be told of their own
+adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its
+modest worth.
+
+The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A
+hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood
+furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if
+polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again
+repeat the tale of her stale virtues.
+
+When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed,
+burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. From without she would
+hear the shouts of the merry-makers returning from the country.
+
+The next morning the pasting of flowers would begin anew.
+
+July came. She could no longer endure it.
+
+One Monday, while she was lying in bed and early dawn found her still
+awake, still waiting, her pillow wet with tears, the desire for life
+suddenly gripped her heart so strongly that she jumped from bed with an
+outcry, a jubilant exclamation, and finally determined: "I will do it
+to-day. I will take the difficult step, and go on a begging pilgrimage
+to that strange man."
+
+But no--mercy, no! Beg--she would not beg. Oh, she had long before
+carefully arranged all that.
+
+She would merely ask for a bit of advice, which an experienced
+connoisseur of arts and crafts could easily give without sacrificing
+more than five minutes of his business time. She would simply find out
+from him how and where she could learn transparency-painting.
+
+Whatever his answer, the foundations of a new life would have been
+laid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Was it a path of destiny?
+
+The street wore its usual appearance. Truck waggons rattled along; women
+doing their marketing crowded in front of the provision shops; young
+men, hastening by with portfolios or books in their arms found time to
+turn and look after her. Lilly perceived this as always with a sense
+partly of satisfaction, partly of chagrin.
+
+Was it a path of destiny?
+
+The throbbing of her heart as she walked along said to her, "Yes."
+
+She felt she was going to market to sell herself.
+
+Herself--everything left of herself; her bit of pride, her bit of
+freedom, her faith that she was one of the elect, her faith in the
+miracle that some day was to be accomplished in her behalf.
+
+The walk lasted nearly an hour.
+
+She lost her way. She asked the policemen. She stood in front of shop
+windows to look at her reflection--she was afraid of not pleasing. And
+each time she saw the soft, slim contour of her tall figure with its air
+of pleasant self-sufficiency, she drew a breath of relief.
+
+When she read the name of the street where he dwelt, she started in
+fright. She had secretly hoped she would not find it, and would have to
+return after all.
+
+His house presented nothing remarkable. A grey, four-story structure
+with a broad, unadorned square carriage entrance, across the full width
+of which was a scaffolding
+
+        Liebert & Dehnicke
+    Manufacturers of Metal Wares,
+
+was inscribed in gold characters on an enormous iron plate stretching
+along half the front of the house.
+
+From the opposite side of the street she scrutinised every detail, still
+oppressed by the question whether she had not better turn back.
+
+The second story windows were closely hung with dainty ecru lace
+curtains. On the sills were snowy white porcelain pots filled with
+geraniums and marigolds. That part of the house looked better kept and
+more prosperous than everything round about.
+
+"That's probably where he lives," she thought, and felt a slight dread
+in the face of so much serene yet severe beauty.
+
+Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door
+with iron grill work, which was next to the carriage entrance and seemed
+to lead up to that awe-inspiring second story.
+
+But the door was locked, and before ringing she peeped through the
+grating. She saw a dark staircase solemnly lined with cypress trees and
+laurel bushes. In the background at the head of the stairs was a window
+glowing blue and red and throwing rainbow colors on a white bust in
+front of it. Lilly recognized the bust, having seen it in the display
+windows of the art shops. It was Clytie, whom she had always loved
+because of her gentle melancholy.
+
+As she looked upon all this her heart sank again. She seemed to herself
+totally unworthy to step into those formal, peaceful regions. So she
+descended the three door steps and entered the profaner carriage
+entrance, where several labourers in white overalls were busily engaged
+covering the bare brick walls with highly veined marble stucco.
+
+Men were at work in the yard as well. The round cobble stones with which
+it had once been paved were lying in heaps, and the ground was being
+covered with an ornate mosaic, of a light grey broken by white swirls
+and circles, like the flooring in ancient churches.
+
+At the back of the yard rose the bald brick side of the factory, which
+also was undergoing changes in accordance with the general beautifying
+scheme. Up to about the second story the wall was being set with yellow
+and blue tiles. They looked gay and festive, and upon the completion of
+the repairs the old smoky court would have the appearance of a decorated
+salon.
+
+"They're doing things here in great style," thought Lilly, growing even
+more timid.
+
+To her left in a corner of the court she saw a building to which not a
+drop of the varnish being used on the other parts of the establishment
+had been applied. It stood there with bare, dun-colored plastered walls.
+Next to an extremely plain flight of iron steps was a metal plate
+inscribed "Office."
+
+Lilly went up the iron steps and entered a badly lighted, dusty room
+divided in two by a wooden rail, on the farther side of which a half
+dozen young people were sitting at desks covered with spotted,
+threadbare felt. They all stared at her in astonishment. It did not
+occur to one of them to ask her what she wanted.
+
+Evidently a person like herself had never before been seen in the place.
+
+The group was turned to stone and did not regain animation until she
+drew her card from her gold brocade purse and silently laid it on the
+table. Then the six of them jumped up and tried to get possession of
+it. There came near being a row.
+
+But one of them, a tall, straw-complexioned fellow, who seemed to have
+some authority, chased the others back to their seats with a few furtive
+nudges, and bowing and scraping, said to Lilly he would immediately go
+see whether Mr. Dehnicke--and with the card in his hand disappeared into
+a back room.
+
+A few moments passed. Lilly could hear subdued voices through the
+half-open door.
+
+"Czepanek? Don't know her. Ask her what she wants. What does she look
+like?"
+
+The answer, which lasted several seconds, seemed to have been
+satisfactory, for the clerk came out and without further ado opened the
+gate in the wooden railing and ushered Lilly into the back room.
+
+At last _he_ stood before her.
+
+Stocky, middle-sized--shorter than herself--with a tendency toward
+stoutness. A round, well-kept face, good, greyish blue eyes, which said
+little; an arched brow, light brown hair brushed back smooth from his
+temples, a short moustache turned up abruptly at each end, probably to
+proclaim the lieutenant. Remarkably small hands and ears. Everything
+about him breathed tidiness and scrupulousness, though it would not have
+mattered if he had been less well groomed.
+
+He was taken aback at Lilly's entrance. His eyes grew round with polite
+astonishment.
+
+The consciousness that she had not failed to make an impression
+emboldened her, and gave her a sense of security. It was not in vain
+that she had gone through Miss von Schwertfeger's schooling.
+
+"I have come to you at the recommendation of a friend of both of us, who
+prepared you for this visit," she began, inwardly rejoiced to be able
+once again to play the _grande dame_.
+
+A mirror hung opposite, and Lilly regarded with satisfaction the
+discreet wreath of violets about her lilac turban, and the
+violet-coloured tailor-made suit. Her image looking affably from the
+frame reminded her of a picture by some portrait painter of high life.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke silently drew up a chair for her. An expectant distrust was
+to be detected in his eyes in place of the consternation of the first
+seconds. Evidently he did not dare to place her in the class in which,
+to judge from her appearance, she belonged.
+
+His head was set a bit obliquely on his neck, inclining to the left, as
+if he had recently had an attack of lumbago. This posture increased
+Lilly's impression that he suspected her.
+
+She looked down at her brocade purse, and acted as if she could scarcely
+suppress a smile.
+
+He became still more confused.
+
+"May I ask," he stammered, "who that friend--? I don't recall." In
+perplexity he turned over the visiting card his clerk had brought him.
+
+Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose
+her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots.
+
+"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having
+received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you
+to interest yourself in a lady who--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair.
+His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened
+to pop from their sockets.
+
+"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I
+received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my
+lady--"
+
+So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's
+consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.
+
+But so it could not remain.
+
+"I call myself Lilly--Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn,
+though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the
+assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.
+
+Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly
+to be read in his features.
+
+"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have
+gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why
+didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited--a month--several
+months--then I took to looking for you--in vain. I even thought of going
+to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of
+reserve--"
+
+Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.
+
+"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of
+ever having the great pleasure--"
+
+In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand.
+However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw
+she did not respond.
+
+Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was
+so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate
+aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of
+one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.
+
+"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your
+door in vain."
+
+"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by
+way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers,
+with everything I am and--" He paused. The word "have," which should
+naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man,
+would allow to pass his lips so lightly.
+
+"I will not make great demands on you, of course," Lilly replied airily,
+to put a little damper on his ardour. "I simply do not want to be
+without someone to advise me as to a way of earning my livelihood, and
+since--Mr. von Prell"--at last the name came out--"said I might place
+perfect confidence in you--"
+
+"You may rely upon me as upon Mr. von Prell himself."
+
+"That's not saying a great deal," flashed through her head, but she kept
+from revealing her thought by so much as a smile.
+
+"By the way, what do you hear from him?" he asked.
+
+Lilly blushed. If she admitted his silence, she laid herself bare,
+irremediably. So, not to appear forsaken and cast aside, she said:
+
+"On parting we agreed not to write to each other for the time being. We
+thought in the struggle ahead of us that eternal waiting for news and
+that eternal fear for each other would not leave us with the strength
+necessary for meeting the demands of life. But you probably have gotten
+a letter from him lately?"
+
+He started, and reflected an instant.
+
+"Yes--that is, no. Not lately. Sometime ago he wrote--he was getting
+along. He said he was about to make a career for himself. And he asked
+most urgently as to your whereabouts; in regard to which, of course, to
+my great distress, I could not enlighten him."
+
+This did not sound very likely. A moment before he himself had been
+asking for news of Walter, and now when she inquired for Walter's
+address, he had to acknowledge, stammering, that the letter had not
+contained an address and for that reason--
+
+It was quite clear he had fabricated.
+
+Probably he hoped to acquire greater importance in her eyes by
+representing his relations with her lover as still continuing. But since
+similar motives had led her to trifle with the truth, she had no cause
+for feeling angry with him.
+
+She now told him the purpose of her visit; described the delicate craft
+she had learned a few months before, the desire she had to perfect
+herself in it, and her helplessness when it came to practical matters.
+Might she ask Mr. Dehnicke to recommend some artist who could instruct
+her? That was all she had come to him for.
+
+He listened to her with professional interest, and acted as if he took
+her plans ever so seriously. But behind the mute thoughtfulness of his
+features lay something that did not please her. It was not pity, most
+certainly not. It was rather a holding back and seeking, then an
+increasing satisfaction, as if he felt he was gaining ground in the
+measure in which the helplessness of her situation became apparent.
+
+"A very easy matter," he replied, his manner less constrained than
+before. "There are several real painters among the artists who furnish
+the models for my business. One of them"--he turned the pages of a
+book--"Kellermann--the very man--and then--. However, we'll drop that
+for the present. There are other things to be considered in connection
+with your practising your profession which, it strikes me, are more
+important. So please don't consider me impolite if I put some questions
+to you."
+
+Lilly nodded assent.
+
+"What artistic training have you had?"
+
+"Well, you see, that's just it," Lilly replied, getting the better of
+her embarrassment. "Just because I never had any I should like--"
+
+He did not move a muscle.
+
+"What are your means of support?"
+
+She was silent. She felt as if her clothes were being drawn from her
+body piece by piece.
+
+"I need not tell you," he added, "it's not my intention to pry into
+matters that do not concern me. But since you honoured me by asking my
+advice--"
+
+"I still have some jewels," she said, looking at him severely and
+haughtily. "When they go, I'll have nothing."
+
+He nodded slightly, as if to say, "I thought so."
+
+"One more question: in what sort of a place are you living now?"
+
+"In the sort of place befitting my condition. Four flights up, with a
+poor woman, the one from whom I learned pasting pressed flowers."
+
+As she said this, her glance fell upon the mirror and showed her the
+image of the beautiful aristocratic society dame, who had condescended
+to bestow a visit upon Mr. Dehnicke, "comrade of the reserves," in his
+dark hole of an office.
+
+He rose, and for a few moments paced up and down between the desk and
+the door. He was so spruce and his clothes fitted him so snugly that
+everything about him cracked and creaked. In his polished rotundity he
+looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. He had a little bald
+spot, too. But the expression of his face remained serious, almost
+uneasy, as if he were weighed down by heavy thoughts.
+
+He came to a halt before her and his voice quivered a little as he
+spoke.
+
+"What I am going to say has its roots in the many years of genuine
+friendship that unite me to Mr. von Prell--"
+
+The mocking, condescending words with which Walter had recommended him
+to her, occurred to Lilly.
+
+"I passed so many delightful hours in his company. I owe him so much
+inspiration and--" He stopped. He owed him so much he could not remember
+it all on the instant. "I will remain in debt to him the rest of my
+life."
+
+"Who feels he is indebted to me because I pumped him for coin," was what
+Walter had written. Then there really did exist such touching creatures
+in the world.
+
+"But I am most grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me by
+bequeathing his betrothed to me, so to speak."
+
+"Betrothed!" The word had been uttered. She had not deceived herself. It
+frightened her, but she did not repudiate it. Until that day she had not
+even dreamed of considering Walter and herself bound to each other,
+neither herself, nor the poor little fellow who did not know how to care
+for himself, much less for a wife and child. But then--in the eyes of
+this man with his middle-class morals, that was the only justification
+for her bungled, ill-regulated existence. And not only in his eyes--in
+the eyes of the whole world--and, if she cared, in her own eyes, too. If
+she clung to the man who was practically dead to her, fastening upon him
+all her wishes and feelings, she would have a support for her entire
+being. She could ask for absolution and justification even before God.
+
+All this flashed through her mind with lightning rapidity while Mr.
+Dehnicke continued to asseverate his friendship for Walter, and look at
+her with his round eyes in undesirous adoration. Finally he came to the
+point.
+
+"In his place and for his sake I advise you most urgently to quit
+surroundings that do not suit you, and create an environment in keeping
+with your past. If you ever wish to realise your plans you will have
+to."
+
+"What has my environment to do with my art?" queried Lilly, shrugging
+her shoulders.
+
+"Well, in the first place you must have a studio where you can receive
+your customers--where you can show them who you are and the extent of
+your artistic demands, and what the real nature of your artistic
+intentions are. That is the only way of preventing your customers from
+treating and paying you like an ordinary worker."
+
+"But the customers don't come to me," she interjected.
+
+"They should come to you," he exclaimed, talking himself into a degree
+of eagerness. "An artist with self-respect doesn't take one step outside
+his studio to offer his wares for sale. You must treat yourself the same
+way."
+
+She mentally calculated the value of the rest of her brooches, rings,
+and bracelets, and rejoined with a smile:
+
+"Easily said."
+
+Mr. Dehnicke made a bold sally.
+
+"My sincere friendship for Walter"--now he called him by his first
+name--"gives me the right--how shall I say? to make provision, to--"
+
+Lilly saw what was coming and shut off further discussion.
+
+"I feel content where I am," she declared, "and until I have created
+with my own efforts the suitable environment that you so kindly wish for
+me, I do not feel I am entitled to make a change."
+
+He bowed. His friendly zeal cooled off markedly. But he asked for her
+address, so that he might know where he should send her the desired
+information.
+
+Lilly hesitatingly gave it to him, and added the request that in no
+circumstances should he come to see her.
+
+He bowed again, and his coolness became rigidity.
+
+But Lilly rejoiced that she had known so well how to keep him at a
+distance. Nobody in the wide world should call her a beggar.
+
+She therefore took leave all the more graciously, for she had not come
+to him in order to frighten him away forever.
+
+He was quick to profit by her warmer tone, and became ardent again.
+
+If there was anything else he could do for her--if she felt lonely--and
+required company.
+
+Lilly looked at his right hand, saw no wedding ring there, and smiled
+"no."
+
+He understood look and smile, for he said, hemming and hawing in an
+endeavour to conquer fresh confusion:
+
+"I live alone with my mother, but unfortunately I cannot take you to see
+her because she is sickly and since my father's death has withdrawn
+entirely from society. But I would be most careful as to the company to
+which I should introduce you."
+
+"I took that for granted," Lilly replied with amiable condescension. "In
+spite of that--thank, you, really--in the peculiar position I am in it
+is better for me not to mingle with people."
+
+She gave him a regal bow, held out her hand, and left.
+
+He followed her respectfully, and the six young gentlemen stood up in a
+row and curved their backs like their employer.
+
+With flushed face Lilly passed the partially completed decorations in
+the yard, and walked along the imitation marble entrance to the street,
+thinking, in mingled triumph and disenchantment:
+
+"No, that was _not_ a path of destiny."
+
+But she had suddenly acquired a betrothed. That was something, at any
+rate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures,
+enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about
+thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got
+great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and
+small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.
+
+He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions,
+like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung
+oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and
+their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.
+
+When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused
+light from above--it was so high it seemed a very part of the
+heaven--she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green
+unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was
+squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a
+narghile that had gone out.
+
+"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without
+rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."
+
+Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow,
+hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust
+from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.
+
+"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have
+gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen
+herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."
+
+Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day
+before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.
+
+"Now his manner will change," she thought.
+
+Nothing of the sort took place.
+
+"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are
+you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"--here she was "general's wife"
+again--"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like
+this comes along."
+
+"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly,
+who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.
+
+He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.
+
+"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver--dry referring
+to bread as well as to giver--_did_ say something to me day before
+yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of
+apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to--"
+
+When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into
+unrestrained laughter.
+
+"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy
+the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a
+treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the
+heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able
+to look a rose in the face again."
+
+Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic
+lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long
+before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to
+instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.
+
+"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked
+herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain
+matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I
+should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can
+afford to pay for such valuable services--"
+
+He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would
+probably look out for that.
+
+"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she
+replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that--" she
+grasped her parasol--she had kept her gloves on.
+
+"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few
+moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.
+
+"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.
+
+"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.
+
+"It is more important to me than the first. It is--I should like to be
+treated like a lady."
+
+"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be
+fine as silk, I tell _you_, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of
+fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best:
+superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar.
+Now select."
+
+This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that
+for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as a _grande
+dame_, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her
+court and took her as a "good fellow."
+
+However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she
+came he was wearing boots.
+
+He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild
+flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in
+her childish plan.
+
+He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which
+colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in
+planning new effects.
+
+"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will
+deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely
+conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean,
+of course, Dame Nature."
+
+While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or
+chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the
+centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.
+
+The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul"
+were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour
+bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out
+their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing
+trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs
+which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays,
+finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.
+
+And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty,
+half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the
+floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a
+riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless
+conception and a laughing ability to execute.
+
+One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a
+pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid
+camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead
+lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy
+chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock,
+while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.
+
+There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the
+woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.
+
+One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these
+paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on
+exhibit.
+
+"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he
+replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric
+lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but
+not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because
+there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from
+dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who
+must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for
+twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers.
+Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"
+
+"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"
+
+He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length
+on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large
+glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the
+ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.
+
+She declined, and pressed him for an answer.
+
+"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains
+weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my
+manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her
+corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here
+is the foam-born body. Begin--look and paint to your heart's content.'"
+
+Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his
+clasped hands up to her.
+
+"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have _I_ to do with all
+that!"
+
+"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible
+respect to--. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for
+freedom long enough--she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I
+can't sleep--then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady,
+who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and--"
+
+"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.
+
+After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor
+even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see
+her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous
+desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly
+had to forbid his ever referring to it.
+
+Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not
+suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on
+the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's
+opinion, was highly commendable.
+
+In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood
+over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark
+and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic
+and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within,
+constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an
+extremely early period in the world's history.
+
+Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had
+declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with
+those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to
+let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had
+visited him.
+
+Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from
+him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.
+
+But one day Mr. Kellermann said:
+
+"What the devil--the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming
+all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up
+here every day to see how things are progressing."
+
+Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly
+blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a
+degree of satisfaction.
+
+At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she
+could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and
+wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden,
+seven-pointed coronet--she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he
+had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to
+come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.
+
+His reply arrived without delay.
+
+Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to
+visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her
+wishes.
+
+And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.
+
+Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink
+carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the
+windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration
+and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had
+saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace
+blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and
+festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in
+the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and
+scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady,
+who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than
+gotten.
+
+Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.
+
+He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room
+from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and
+in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.
+
+How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him
+permission--he hadn't wished to appear intrusive--he would have waited
+even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated
+everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which
+did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty
+manner.
+
+Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having
+caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while
+felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the
+role of the "general's wife"--partly against her will--who does the
+honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.
+
+Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She
+said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the
+transparencies at the windows.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into
+exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh
+start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like
+monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.
+
+Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.
+
+"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I
+ought to show them to you first."
+
+He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:
+
+"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing
+them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by
+inordinate professional conceit, and it might be--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.
+
+Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only
+slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at
+the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his
+smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:
+
+"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies
+to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the
+buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I
+might even dispose of them as goods of my own."
+
+Lilly flushed with gratitude.
+
+"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have
+found customers for myself?"
+
+The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.
+
+"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed
+expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home
+worthy of yourself."
+
+"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the
+wherewithal."
+
+"That may mean years."
+
+"I will wait years."
+
+"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being
+an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified--"
+
+Lilly drew herself up.
+
+"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I
+might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the
+world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would
+merely humiliate me."
+
+She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of
+insult.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of
+fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.
+
+When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the
+following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been
+settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few
+moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent
+friend. It was his only opportunity--
+
+"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him
+to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak
+about my betrothed."
+
+"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat
+stirred when she uttered it.
+
+The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen
+and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in
+the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly
+tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very
+dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a
+courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls
+of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great
+actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their
+signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.
+
+Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee,
+the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order
+for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert & Dehnicke, Mfrs. of
+Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven
+transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."
+
+The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Now followed happy times.
+
+With part of the sum she had earned Lilly bought new material, and soon
+more sunsets glowed beyond woods of dried grass.
+
+When she lay on her bed during the hot summer nights, sleepless from
+overwork, she would give herself up to wild dreams of what she would do
+when her art had conquered the world.
+
+She would start a workshop, like Mr. Dehnicke's, employ about a dozen
+women with Mrs. Laue, of course, as forelady. Then hunt up her father,
+and transfer her poor crazy mother to a fine private insane asylum. What
+else? Oh yes, provide for Walter, certainly. Now that she felt she was
+his fiancee, and her future was his, this was her bounden duty. To be
+sure he must first let himself be heard from. But some day, Lilly knew,
+when he was at a loss where to turn, he would get word to her in some
+way or other. Then she would send him money--in abundance--in
+overflowing measure--everything her craft threw into her lap.
+
+No, not everything. One task, the greatest, the holiest, merely to think
+of which was presumption, dominated her life.
+
+Whether or not her father returned, his work, his immortal work, must
+never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its summons to life the
+score of the Song of Songs still lay asleep in Lilly's locked trunk. But
+its sleep was no longer so sound, so dreamless as in the years just
+gone by. It began to stir and moan. It gave out a humming and ringing
+which echoed through the day's work and crooned in Lilly's sleep,
+causing chords and melodies to sound when she least expected them.
+
+From the blue hills beyond which the sun set in flames came a soft
+strain as if blown by evening winds: "How beautiful are thy feet in
+sandals, O prince's daughter!" And out of the dark depths of the
+fabulous woods fluttered fragments of songs of the rose of Sharon and
+the lily of the valley.
+
+It was almost as if invisible little beings were singing who led a
+pleasant existence inside those bright-windowed pasteboard huts.
+
+Like Lilly herself the whole world would some day have a share in the
+treasure whose guardian fate had destined her to be.
+
+Wherever she went or stood, whatever she did or thought, from all
+corners hopes came dancing forth, beckoning and smiling. A new, larger,
+purer existence was now to begin. The ends of that golden thread which
+her insane mother had cut in two with the bread knife, had been tied
+together again, and drew her upward, upward. She had divinations of
+something sacred which gave forth blessings, something to be prayed for
+and struggled for.
+
+A few more months and it would all come to pass.
+
+A piece of good fortune seldom comes unaccompanied by another; and so it
+happened that--miracle of miracles!--her betrothed gave a sign of life.
+
+It was one of the first days in September between eleven and twelve
+o'clock in the morning when Mr. Dehnicke appeared at her door without
+having announced his coming. Lilly was not completely dressed, and
+refused at first to see him in. However, he was so insistent that the
+business on which he had come was extremely important, that she did not
+venture to dismiss him, and offering a thousand excuses she received him
+in her matinee.
+
+He let a shy glance of admiration travel over her, and then drew a
+broad, strange-looking piece of paper from his pocket, which proved to
+be a check on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and some odd
+marks.
+
+"What shall I do with it?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Read the letter it came enclosed in," he replied unfolding a large
+sheet.
+
+"Mr. Richard Dehnicke, Dear Sir," was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell
+had deposited five hundred dollars to be paid over to Baroness Lilly von
+Mertzbach.
+
+Lilly was shaken by a storm of gratitude.
+
+She ran up and down the room pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+_She_ had wanted to provide for him, and now _he_ was providing for
+_her_.
+
+Suddenly she was fairly overwhelmed by a feeling of distrust.
+
+She came to a standstill, and looked from the check to Mr. Dehnicke and
+back at the check again.
+
+Both were wrapped in silence.
+
+"Do explain," she cried, utterly perplexed.
+
+"What is there for me to explain?" he rejoined. "I am merely the
+middleman, or, if you will, the agent in the affair, which really
+concerns no one but you and your affianced."
+
+"If at least he had given his address," cried Lilly.
+
+"It almost looks as if he wanted to eradicate all trace of himself," Mr.
+Dehnicke observed.
+
+It was so romantic and so unlike Walter--how could she help being at a
+loss!
+
+But there was "Baroness von Mertzbach." Walter was the only person not
+likely to know of her having had to renounce her married name. That, at
+least, was an indication of the genuineness of the remittance.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke inclined his head to the left as usual, and regarded her
+with calm indifference--he was the innocent middleman, nothing more.
+
+"After this unexpected turn of events," he finally said, "you will, of
+course, no longer refuse to take up the sort of life that accords with
+your social position and is so essential for the sale of your works."
+
+She shook her head, biting her lips.
+
+Hereupon he became insistent, more insistent than she had thought his
+modesty would permit him to be.
+
+"You _must_. For his sake you must. I am responsible to him for that. If
+he should return and want to marry you, he must not find a declassee. I
+am responsible to him for that."
+
+Lilly asked for time to consider.
+
+From now on her distant lover held sway over her life with a certain
+emphasis. What had been mere fancy became reality.
+
+Not that she thought of him unqualifiedly as the real sender of those
+mysterious five hundred dollars. On the contrary, the voice would not be
+silenced that said to her: "You are being played with." But she was
+afraid to listen to it, or even draw inferences and come to conclusions.
+For if she were to lose the single friend she had, then what?
+
+In order to down all her doubts and scruples she worked diligently, and
+nearly once a week had batches of sunsets ready to be taken away. And in
+the meantime Mr. Kellermann had brought her new motifs: a Gothic
+cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a hunting lodge with many
+gleaming windows, and--_chef d'oeuvre_--the moon rising over peaceful
+waters, whose silvery sheen was broken by fern fronds.
+
+October came.
+
+The first Sunday of the month Mr. Dehnicke called to take Lilly out
+walking. He had come for her twice before, and Lilly had accompanied him
+gladly. Had he offered to take her to the country, her happiness would
+have been complete.
+
+The autumnal sun lay peacefully upon the tattered leaves of the bare
+little trees that edged the square fountain. Groups of people sauntered
+by aimlessly, looking bored and depressed. The winter was already laying
+its icy touch on men's spirits.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with
+human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and
+protector at her side in all that bustle.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally
+began:
+
+"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the
+future?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on
+this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel
+you are of some value in the world.
+
+"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his
+modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would
+delight in."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to
+assume that our tastes are absolutely similar."
+
+"Oh, no! I'm not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I
+think would please you, unless I'm very much mistaken. It belongs to a
+lady customer of mine who left town."
+
+"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than
+to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."
+
+He reflected.
+
+"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid,
+to be sure, won't be in, because it's Sunday, but the porter's wife
+knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to--"
+
+Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger,
+but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered
+that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses
+are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of
+glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety grass hang over the blue
+waters of a canal.
+
+"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.
+
+The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Koenigin-Augusta-Ufer."
+
+Dehnicke went to the porter's lodge and spoke a few words through the
+window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs
+of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare
+flagging at home, which hurt one's feet.
+
+He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the
+maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he
+unlocked the door with the key.
+
+In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door
+on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in
+the halls.
+
+They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and passed
+through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with glass doors
+curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture
+consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a
+large, dark, highly polished dining-table.
+
+"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn't be
+bad for a sample room and private studio for you."
+
+Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.
+
+Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with
+strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a
+broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held
+together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.
+
+"Does your customer belong to the nobility?" asked Lilly, seized by a
+vague feeling of envy.
+
+"Not that I know of. Her husband isn't a nobleman. But maybe she herself
+is of noble extraction."
+
+Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her
+underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue's musty drawers.
+How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in
+the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the
+aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with
+the poor-people's odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with
+deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.
+
+"Happy creature!" she said softly.
+
+It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life
+and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no
+matinee, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.
+
+"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said
+Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the
+left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was
+flooded with sunlight.
+
+Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.
+
+She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely
+outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms
+radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany
+furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables--a woman about to
+dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in
+prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a
+little bookcase, a lady's secretaire, paintings on the walls, and even
+an upright piano.
+
+"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.
+
+There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows
+stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the
+sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped
+at them from another window.
+
+Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact
+all this was--like a bird's nest--yet how inconceivably charming when
+contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.
+
+"Why, it's a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were
+rising in her eyes.
+
+"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly
+had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the
+house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like
+that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for
+your assistants to work in."
+
+Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others,
+though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table
+with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner
+was a comfortable iron bed.
+
+"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained
+Mr. Dehnicke.
+
+It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.
+
+They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had
+not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over
+the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of
+the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed
+beneath a curtain of lavender crape.
+
+"What's that?" Lilly asked.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the
+secretaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same
+mysterious veil.
+
+Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the
+covering over the large picture.
+
+"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a
+theft.
+
+"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little
+more heavily than usual.
+
+She tugged--tugged more violently--the crape fell off--and before her
+hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the
+uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in
+crayon.
+
+Lilly's knees trembled. Cold shivers ran through her body. She refused
+to believe, to understand. Then she felt Mr. Dehnicke take her hand and
+draw her to the outside hall.
+
+He lit a match.
+
+On the porcelain plate she now read what she had previously been unable
+to decipher:
+
+        Lilly Czepanek
+     Pressed Flower Studio
+
+She uttered a cry, rushed back into the drawing-room, threw herself in
+the corner of the sofa, and wept the hot, blissful tears of desire and
+yearning that had so long been repressed.
+
+When she ventured to look up again, she saw Mr. Dehnicke waiting before
+her, modest and correct, with his sober, serious face.
+
+She was ashamed of herself for being so happy; and full of qualms she
+held her hand out to him gratefully.
+
+"May I hope that in my capacity of Walter's representative I have
+chanced in a measure to satisfy your taste?"
+
+There was no more thought of refusing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The mottled golden tops of the chestnuts grew paler, the gaps ever wider
+that the autumn ate into the foliage. Where a soothing green had cut off
+the view, now glittered the bright wavelets of the canal. Long barges,
+laboriously pushed by poles, trailed along in their cumbersome fashion,
+and the shaggy watchdogs barked up at the aristocratic windows.
+
+Grey, rainy days came stealing upon the city like an enemy, and
+loneliness laid its octopus clutch on Lilly's breast.
+
+But her work! Yes, she had her work. So long as the first infatuation
+had lasted and Lilly felt she might hope for some realisation of her
+plans, she had clung to her work day and night.
+
+But the hoped-for turn of events never came. The announcements she had
+had printed remained unheeded. Mr. Dehnicke, sole purchaser of her
+goods, begged her--with a hesitating, embarrassed manner, to be sure,
+yet explicitly enough--not to be hasty, since the general state of the
+market was dull.
+
+By degrees her zest in her profession began to languish. She gave up
+going to Mr. Kellermann for lessons, especially since his insistence
+upon setting free his "chained beauty" grew steadily more annoying. She
+locked the half-filled sample closets and completed none but the pieces
+Mr. Dehnicke ordered.
+
+Oh, those dark, pitiless days, which no laughter brightened, no waiting
+shortened, and no purpose bound together.
+
+The kitchen was ruled by a young maid, ever silent, whose eyes were
+greedy and too knowing. Each morning, while the little canary peeped,
+the fish were given fresh water.
+
+It was somewhat better in the evening when the lights were lit and the
+crystal chandelier radiated a brilliant white light. Lilly would then
+wander from room to room changing the position of this or that ornament
+and constantly reassuring herself how beautifully she lived and how
+happy she was.
+
+But of what avail was the old rose carpet with its vague vine pattern,
+the wine-coloured furniture, and the bronze bodies looking as if a
+golden breath had blown over them? Those bronze bodies whose innermost
+being after all was nothing more than a zinc alloy, having originated in
+the factory of Liebert & Dehnicke. Of what avail the charming secretaire
+and the writing paper with the golden coronet stamped on it, of which
+Mr. Dehnicke had immediately ordered five hundred sheets? There was
+nobody to rejoice with her, nobody whom her longing brought to her side.
+
+She would often seat herself at the piano and let her fingers stray over
+the keys. But she did not get the pleasure out of playing that she had
+anticipated. Her father's discipline had long lost its effects. She had
+forgotten the pieces she had once known by heart, and she lacked the
+calm and patience to learn all over again.
+
+Yes, it was strange what disquiet would seize her the instant she
+touched the keys, a feeling of dread, an anticipation of impending
+danger, a consciousness of her own unworthiness.
+
+She could not keep on; she had to shut down the lid and take to
+wandering again from room to room until her legs wearied and ten o'clock
+summoned her to bed.
+
+In those joyless, unoccupied days, a piercing, stinging desire for man
+awoke in her, causing her nerves to tingle and a sweet, tormenting
+shudder to thrill her body.
+
+The whole of the two long years her senses had been mute. Tears of
+regret had drowned that which the colonel's senile depravity had
+enkindled, and the weeks of love with Walter von Prell had fanned into
+lively flames. Drowned it forever, it seemed. But there it stood again,
+transporting and shaming and refusing to be silenced by prayers or
+reproach.
+
+Often she felt she would have to run out on the street just to catch the
+glance of any stranger--as in the Dresden days--and see desire flare up
+in eyes veiled with yearning.
+
+But the people she might encounter on the street were rough and common.
+The mere thought of them made her tremble.
+
+The only time she went out was to visit her former landlady.
+
+The walk lasted a full hour, and before she had reached her former home,
+many a naive admirer, many a keen _boulevardier_, had bobbed up beside
+her and tried to enter into a pleasant conversation. She always ran to
+the other side of the street, shaking herself. Sometimes, yes,
+sometimes, she would have liked to reply.
+
+When she lay in bed with closed eyes, she dreamed of strong-willed,
+sharply cut men's faces, to which she looked up in yielding happiness.
+
+She often dreamed, too, of Mr. Dehnicke, good, sound, loyal Mr.
+Dehnicke.
+
+If he were to come to her some day and falter in that guilty way of his
+which she liked so well: "I love you inordinately, and want you to
+marry me," what would she say to him?
+
+Each time she thought this a furtive sense of comfort stole over her.
+
+As for the man who by full right stood closest to her, she never dreamed
+of him. Sometimes, it is true, when her longings did not know where to
+strike root, those anxious yet blissful November nights would recur to
+her. But the part of hero might have been played by any other man as
+well as Walter.
+
+Walter himself had grown to be a sort of tyrannical conscience with her.
+
+She loved him--of course! How could she help loving him? He was her
+"betrothed," and he was working for her. But sometimes, when she stood
+in front of the sofa and felt his cold, blue eyes resting upon her
+haughtily and masterfully, and she recalled the sorry, inconstant little
+fellow he actually had been, she felt a desire to shake off everything
+that came from him and held her under a spell, as one tries to rid
+oneself of a preposterous nightmare.
+
+If only Mr. Dehnicke had not kept alluding to him with so much devotion
+and respect, treating himself as the modest agent, who would have to
+render account to his dear friend, when that dear friend would return in
+honour and glory.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke came punctually twice a week to inquire after her health
+and drink tea. He would leave in time to reach his office before it was
+closed for the day. These scant hours were always a festival for her.
+
+What wonder? She had no one beside him. He was the only person who bound
+her to the rest of the world and brought incident and interest into her
+life.
+
+She spent hours in fixing up the tea table, in trying different ways of
+lighting the room, in arranging the flowers, and standing before the
+mirror--for him.
+
+When he came at last and sat opposite her, they conversed long and
+seriously about the cares that oppressed him, the plans he was revolving
+in his mind, his disgust at the artists who considered it a disgrace to
+work for the trade, and did so only if the pistol was held to their
+heads, and then disdainfully, clenching their teeth; his trashy
+competitors, who built palaces in order to throw dust in the eyes of the
+buyers, and who thereby had forced him to transform his good old
+business place in accordance with modern ideas of decoration.
+
+Most distressing of all was his clientele. The artistic ideals of the
+metropolis in a measure made a moral demand upon him to go over to the
+secession and place on the market long-necked, narrow-hipped bodies in
+distorted attitudes. The real public, however, the well-intentioned
+public with purchasing power, would have nothing to do with all that
+rubbish. It clung to knights and high-born dames, to maidens plucking
+flowers or carrying water, to fighting stags and swinging monkeys. So he
+stood between the devil and the deep sea. On the one hand was the danger
+that people would ridicule him as old-fashioned, on the other hand, the
+danger of losing most of his old hereditary customers. So he had to
+steer carefully along a middle course, and that was extremely difficult.
+
+He also spoke frequently of the factory, with its hundreds of
+industrious hands, who laboured day after day for the prosperity of the
+house; and of the alterations being made in his yard and sample room,
+which, to judge by the architect's plans and the sum he calculated they
+would cost, would produce something worth seeing.
+
+But what doesn't competition force a man to do?
+
+Lilly listened with shining eyes.
+
+She shared in all his activities. She wanted to see everything and
+experience it with him, not only the renovation of the sample room, but
+also the doings in the factory with its machines, its clatter of wheels,
+its hissing of flames, and screeching of files. She never wearied of
+questioning. She had to know how the workmen looked and behaved, their
+wages, their lot in life, and what became of them. She felt that there
+in his factory was real existence, while her life was nothing but a
+dull, idle waking dream.
+
+"Oh, how happy you must be," she often cried out admiringly, "to have so
+many souls in your keeping!"
+
+"If the whole bunch of them didn't keep you in a stew all the time," he
+rejoined.
+
+But she would not admit the qualification.
+
+He was certainly a beneficent god to them all, she said, even if he did
+not feel it himself. He must be, because of his power and his good
+heart.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke gladly listened to such expressions. While she was speaking
+he would jump up abruptly, as if seized by a mighty, revolutionary idea,
+pace up and down the room excitedly, then stop in front of her and stare
+down at her with a dark solicitous look in his eyes, apparently unable
+to reach some great decision against which he was struggling.
+
+Lilly pretended not to notice his behaviour, though she knew exactly
+what was fermenting in his soul.
+
+"Let him alone, don't help him," she thought. "He must do whatever he
+wants to do of his own impulse. Otherwise he will bear me a grudge."
+
+If only there hadn't been that hateful sense of duty toward Walter,
+which, like herself, Mr. Dehnicke probably felt only in part, and
+shammed as a matter of decorum.
+
+There was something else that gave her qualms. Although he had promised
+to, he had never fulfilled the wish she had expressed to see his
+factory.
+
+However, he spoke openly of his mother, and did not shrink from
+confessing how greatly she had influenced him, though Lilly could read
+into his words that he wished for more freedom to develop his powers.
+When his father had died twelve years before, he had been a minor, and
+had had to yield to his mother's guidance. The old lady continued to
+maintain her authority. Dehnicke discussed each undertaking with her,
+and if she approved, it was executed, even if he did not concur.
+
+Lilly felt a dull terror arise within her of that old lady who sat
+commandingly in her arm-chair behind those respectable porcelain flower
+pots, and directed the conduct of so powerful a man as Lilly's
+benefactor.
+
+Her heart would contract when she imagined her first meeting with the
+old lady.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Christmas Lilly had more work to do. Two dozen transparencies had
+been ordered and had to be completed before the holidays. 24x30=720.
+Well, she could see ahead again.
+
+For the first time in four years she forgot to send her mother a
+Christmas gift. To compensate, she made a particularly "poetic" lamp
+shade and had it delivered anonymously to Mr. Dehnicke's mother the day
+before Christmas. She herself did not know why she did this. Perhaps it
+was a sort of propitiatory offering, such as timid souls were wont to
+sacrifice to unknown gods as an expiation for unknown sins.
+
+Counting upon her friend's coming, though by no means certain he would,
+she had made a little heap of her gifts for him, and at the fall of dusk
+with throbbing heart began to listen for the ring of the door bell.
+
+Her fears were idle. At half past five he appeared loaded with parcels.
+He had displayed tact in his choice of the simple presents--things she
+still needed in the apartment, a few embroidered collars, a boa, because
+she had to be careful of her sables, and a few little pieces from his
+factory to adorn the empty top of her secretaire. At each of her
+exclamations of delight he protested mildly. The things really came from
+Walter, as she knew.
+
+"And what comes from you?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing," he replied, turning his palms upward.
+
+"I know of something you could give me that Walter has nothing to do
+with."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Show me your factory."
+
+This time he did not evade her request. A date was immediately set--the
+first workday after New Year, when everything would be in running order
+again.
+
+Then Mr. Dehnicke added with an embarrassed air:
+
+"But please wear something dark and simple."
+
+"Why?" asked Lilly, frightened. "Do I usually dress conspicuously?" She
+felt as if some one had boxed her ears.
+
+"Oh, not that. But your good clothes might be soiled."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On January the second at about noon Lilly stood in front of the house in
+Alte Jakobstrasse, which she had not seen since she had paid Mr.
+Dehnicke that memorable first visit in his office.
+
+"It has almost turned out to be a path of destiny after all," she
+thought, and looked up furtively at the porcelain flower pots in the
+second story windows. She started. It seemed to her a white head had
+moved behind the lace curtains.
+
+"That smacks of a guilty conscience," she thought, and with awed,
+sidelong glances walked past the door that opened upon the broad,
+laurel-lined staircase which her unworthy feet might never tread until
+she had been received into the circle of bourgeois virtue.
+
+But the carriage gate stood hospitably open. The scaffolding had been
+removed, and the imitation marble of walls and columns shone
+challengingly in their variegated colours. The magnificence of the
+courtyard beyond oppressed her heart again.
+
+The office building had also undergone changes. The dun-coloured plaster
+had given place to a broad sandstone facade adorned by the busts of
+eminent artists; and gilded railings gleamed where once the
+sorry-looking iron staircase had been.
+
+There was her friend hurrying down the steps to meet her.
+
+Despite the stinging cold he wore no hat. In holding out his hand to her
+he cast a furtive look of scrutiny at all the windows. It seemed he,
+too, had a guilty conscience.
+
+He first led her to the sample room. Its brand-new magnificence exceeded
+her boldest expectations. Columned halls with coffered ceilings
+stretched out in a long vista as in a museum. There were endless rows of
+tables and cases, on which, gleaming with gold and silver lights,
+sparkling with crystal prisms, glowing with the hot red of copper, or
+shading off softly into the light green of the patina, stood thousands
+of works of German art and industry, "imitation bronzes," destined to
+fill the show windows of shops and carry the semblance of display-loving
+prosperity into the huts of the poor.
+
+There were corpulent begging friars, dancing gypsy girls clad in
+boleros, ogling dandies, postillions blowing horns, pecking chickens,
+dogs fetching game, calenders set in horse-shoe frames, cigar clips in
+the shape of little champagne bottles; tall pelicans holding lamps in
+their bills; figurines of men and women stretching up their arms, just
+as in Mr. Kellermann's studio, though here not aimlessly, since they
+bore aloft vases, candelabra and bowls. There were arbours screening
+love couples, with red electric bulbs hidden in the foliage; brownies
+beside shining mushrooms, sea shells to serve as ash trays, snakes
+writhing about the chalices of flowers, or about porcelain eggs, or
+copper dice. The whole pitifulness of a vulgar sense of art seemed to
+have crept into this glittering conglomeration and been concentrated
+there ready to scatter to all quarters of the globe.
+
+When Lilly gave her friend a questioning or astonished look because of
+some monstrosity, he shrugged his shoulders and observed:
+
+"That's what the people want."
+
+Despite some dissatisfaction with what she saw Lilly could have walked
+up and down for hours amid all that sparkle. She felt she belonged there
+by right. Had she been asked for her opinion she would have said without
+a moment's reflection: "Throw this away, and this, and this." But nobody
+appealed to her judgment, and everything went its way without her.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke then took her to the factory.
+
+Unfortunately the foundry, in which the basic part of all the work is
+done, happened just then to be closed. Through an open window Lilly saw
+the black gaping depths of the hearths, about which dirty troughs were
+standing, and over all, over chimney-hoods and vessels, a thick layer of
+ashes.
+
+They descended a flight of dirty steps and passed through damp rooms
+smelling of all sorts of poisons, where rows of mighty vats stood filled
+with vile fluids, and elderly men bustled about, who looked like sombre
+scholars, whereas they were nothing more than mere labourers. At Lilly's
+entrance they cast a look of surprise at her then concerned themselves
+about her no further. And they did not greet their employer.
+
+"This is the galvanising room," explained Mr. Dehnicke, and continued as
+they walked past the vats, "The nickle bath, steel bath, silver bath,
+and so on."
+
+Up in a loft surrounded by an iron netting, the wheels of a machine
+whirled, and vari-coloured electric bulbs glittered among them.
+
+"That's where the electric current is generated which goes through the
+different baths."
+
+Lilly did not understand, but she enjoyed the inconceivable rapidity
+with which the wheels span around and the buzzing sound they made.
+
+In the room where the chasing was done many men stood at long tables
+industriously at work smoothing down the unevennesses of the cast metal,
+and preparing the separate parts of an ornament for joining. The joining
+was done in the next room, where the flames of the blowpipes darted and
+hissed and little clouds of metallic vapour shot sparks into the air. At
+each workman's place lay small heaps of burnished limbs, which made one
+feel sorry for the truncated body from which they seemed to have been
+severed.
+
+In the next room the thinner parts were beaten into shape in iron dies.
+It was here that the flowers and foliage were made, the ribbons and
+vines and arabesques, everything that curled and dangled daintily. The
+workingmen looked all the coarser and unwieldier by contrast. They
+scarcely glanced up when Lilly and Mr. Dehnicke entered, and continued
+to hammer as if stupefied into dealing those blows.
+
+Lilly had a keener eye for the appearance and bearing of the men than
+for the work they turned out. She made comparisons, decided who was well
+off and who in distress, who took pleasure in his work and who went
+through the day's toil doggedly, because driven to it by need. Each shop
+had its peculiar physiognomy. In one the majority looked fresh and
+agile, in another galled and weary.
+
+And now, as often before when Mr. Dehnicke had spoken to her of his
+employes, a senseless desire arose in Lilly to watch over the fate of
+all these people, help where help was necessary, bring sunshine to the
+gloomy, and relief to the suffering. But she took good care not to
+acquaint Mr. Dehnicke with her absurd ideas.
+
+"Now we will see the most delicate of all the operations," said Mr.
+Dehnicke. "It is putting on the patina, which gives the pieces their
+real style."
+
+He opened the door to the next shop, and the smell of a thousand poisons
+again assailed Lilly's nostrils.
+
+Here there were women at work also, side by side with the men. They
+applied varnish and acids and brushed and rubbed. They looked sallow and
+jaded. At Lilly's entrance they were so taken aback that they dropped
+their brushes and cloths and stared at her in utter astonishment.
+
+"One would have to begin with these to win the confidence of all," Lilly
+thought, and gave them a cordial nod.
+
+But they seemed to take her greeting as mockery or blame, and turned
+back to their work with a grimace well-nigh scornful.
+
+In the packing room, where women and children were employed exclusively,
+Lilly's appearance produced a happier impression. The girls laughed and
+whispered, and nudged one another with their elbows.
+
+The only one who paid no attention to her was a pregnant woman, who
+seemed to find it difficult to keep from sinking to the floor. She held
+her drooping lips tightly compressed and a vivid red spotted her cheeks.
+Nevertheless her arms moved in feverish haste wrapping one paper wisp
+after the other about the limbs of the figure standing on the table in
+front of her, and inclining now to the right, now to the left under her
+manipulations.
+
+Lilly led Mr. Dehnicke aside and asked:
+
+"May I give her something?"
+
+"She's being provided for," he replied, unpleasantly affected, it
+seemed. He quickly opened another door.
+
+"This leads to the store room, where the pieces are kept until sold,
+with the exception, of course, of those which are made to order."
+
+Lilly looked down a dimly lighted corridor, from which the cold air blew
+upon her. On the shelves and stands stood endless rows of phantom
+beings, shapeless in their grey paper envelopes.
+
+"Oh, how queer," said Lilly, shivering a little, and preparing to walk
+along the narrow passageway. The very same instant, however, she noticed
+her friend start as in fright, and cast a helpless look about him. Then
+he stepped in front of her and blocked the way.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Lilly, surprised.
+
+He turned colour and said:
+
+"We had better not go in there. We'll go somewhere else. Besides,
+there's nothing to look at there, not a thing. You yourself see there
+isn't."
+
+He planted himself squarely in front of her, so that she could not
+possibly look down the long line of shelves.
+
+This, of course, merely heightened her curiosity.
+
+"But I would like to," she said, and assumed the over-bearing, haughty
+expression with which she was wont to get her way with him.
+
+"No, no," he burst out hastily. "It's a business secret. I mayn't
+betray it to a soul. Even the employes are not allowed to come here.
+Really I can't permit it."
+
+"Then you shouldn't have brought me here at all," said Lilly, feeling
+insulted; and she turned back.
+
+He poured forth excuses, grew hoarse with excitement, and coughed and
+choked. Then he led her back over the resplendent mosaic of the yard to
+the gateway with its imitation marble columns, through which a chilly
+draught was blowing.
+
+"You will catch a cold," said Lilly to hasten her departure.
+
+His face lighted up with a brilliant idea.
+
+"Besides, you know," he said, "the store room wasn't heated."
+
+"You should have thought of that sooner," rejoined Lilly, holding out
+her hand with a smile of partial reconciliation. She was really sorry
+for him in his helpless solicitude.
+
+Nevertheless she continued to feel hurt. And a bit disturbed. The day
+she had been looking forward to so happily for months had ended in a
+discord.
+
+And no matter how much she pressed him later, Mr. Dehnicke refused to
+tell her what mystery lay concealed in his store room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Lilly began to ail. She suffered from headaches, heart-burn, lassitude,
+insomnia and occasional attacks of vertigo.
+
+The physician, called in at Mr. Dehnicke's insistence, was one of those
+extremely busy men who make the rounds of numberless houses a day. First
+he took a good look at the apartment--a setting he seemed to know--then,
+upon a cursory examination, prescribed social distractions, walks, and
+iron, much iron.
+
+Social distractions had to be dispensed with; there was no opportunity
+for them. Taking walks was not so easy either. Lilly did not care to
+stroll about alone, and Mr. Dehnicke, the only person to accompany her,
+preferred not to be seen on the street with her too frequently. In
+order, he said, not to compromise her, though in all likelihood the
+truth was, he feared becoming conspicuous by appearing in public with
+that exotic, flowerlike beauty.
+
+For no matter what happened, no matter that trouble, want and all sorts
+of humiliations swept over her, no matter that boredom and displeasure
+with herself crushed her spirits, Lilly's appearance never lost thereby.
+
+On the contrary, the delicate milky whiteness of her cheeks, which
+before had been a golden brown, lent her a new, soft charm. The great,
+narrow, long-lashed eyes with the heavily drooping lids--those
+improbable Lilly eyes--now had a weary, languishing brilliance, as if
+they veiled all the painful riddles of the universe. Moreover, the last
+year had given back to her the slim, regal figure of her maiden days and
+taken away the womanly peacefulness it had acquired at Lischnitz. No
+wonder that many a head turned after her and many an appreciative,
+envious glance was sent askance at her companion, who was considerably
+shorter than she.
+
+Mr. Dehnicke was aware of all this, and being a staid, respectable
+business man, and not wishing to be the object of gossip, he preferred
+to stay indoors with her.
+
+About the middle of February she received an invitation by mail from Mr.
+Kellermann, whom she had not seen for several months.
+
+                    GREAT CARNIVAL
+                  KELLERMANN STUDIO
+
+    Magic Lantern Show, Flirtation, Opportunity for Crimes
+        Passionels, Cream Kisses, and other Attractions
+
+That seemed like distraction enough, and Mr. Dehnicke, who, it happened,
+had also been invited, was so energetic in his persuasions that he
+finally conquered her timidity and induced her to go.
+
+But when the day for the carnival came Lilly was seized by a great dread
+of it, and at the last moment felt like withdrawing from her engagement.
+
+She saw herself running the gauntlet of a gaping crowd of sardonic
+sneerers, who whispered the story of her rise and fall behind her back.
+She saw herself neglected and avoided, the object of derisive side
+glances. She passed through all the tortures of the declassees, who must
+drag through life with the mark of the sinner caught in the act branded
+on their brows.
+
+She chose the most beautiful of her Dresden dresses, which in the two
+years had grown to be the very height of fashion. It was a white Empire
+gown embroidered with gold vines. She arranged a narrow bracelet in her
+hair like a diadem, and loosely laid over her head an oriental veil shot
+with threads of gold. In case of need it would serve to conceal the
+bareness of her bosom. When she had completed her toilet, she seemed to
+herself so repulsive and conspicuous that this alone was sufficient
+ground for not showing herself.
+
+She did not venture to cherish a faint hope until her friend came to
+fetch her. He saw her, and held on to the door knob, uttering a slight
+cry of astonishment.
+
+"Am I all right?" she asked with a diffident laugh, which entreated
+encouragement.
+
+Instead of replying he ran up and down the room breathing heavily and
+choking over inarticulate words--a mute language which Lilly immediately
+understood.
+
+While sitting beside him in the coupe, she succumbed to another attack
+of dread.
+
+"You will stay right next to me, won't you?" she implored. "You won't
+leave me, and you won't let a stranger speak to me, will you?"
+
+He promised all she wanted.
+
+Four flights up--a way she well knew.
+
+The landing outside Mr. Kellermann's door was filled with clothes-racks,
+on which awe-inspiring furs and humiliating lace mantles hung.
+
+She clung to his arm.
+
+Now to her ruin!
+
+The large anteroom, into which not a single ray of light penetrated in
+the daytime, and which Mr. Kellermann used as a kitchen, bedroom and
+dining-room, had been converted into a sort of fairy forest.
+Vari-coloured Chinese lanterns swung on the branches of pine trees, and
+in their dim red glow several couples sat smiling and whispering on
+narrow bamboo benches. They were so absorbed in themselves that they
+paid little heed to the new arrivals.
+
+All the more animated was Lilly's reception in the studio, which was
+filled with a bright, glittering mass of humanity. A general "ah," then
+absolute silence. A passageway naturally formed itself, down which the
+couple seemed to be expected to pass. Lilly made a gesture, as if to
+hide behind her friend. But he reached only up to her nose.
+
+At the same instant Mr. Kellermann came hurrying up to them. He wore a
+brown velvet costume consisting of a jacket, knee-length breeches, and a
+Phrygian cap. Everybody, in fact, wore what seemed to him original and
+becoming.
+
+"Welcome, goddess, queen!" he cried in a voice for the entire company to
+hear; and since nothing better occurred to him, he pressed kisses on her
+gloved arm from wrist to elbow.
+
+Then he begged to be allowed to show her the incomparable arrangements
+of his new court of love. She followed him, whispering to her friend to
+be sure to remain at her side.
+
+Electric lights had been hung in the open air directly over the
+skylight, converting it into a many-coloured, starry heaven. On looking
+up one really thought a thousand little suns were shining down from out
+of the night.
+
+Rugs and ivy vines divided the left side, where the gable roof sloped
+downward, into a number of small arbours, the entrance of each of which
+was hung with gaily coloured bead portieres. And over each hung a great
+printed placard bearing a highly suggestive inscription.
+
+The first was called "Arbour of Lax Morality." Lilly turned a startled
+look upon her guide, who observed with a smile:
+
+"That's only the beginning, meant for bread-and-butter-misses and little
+afternoon-tea-souls like you." And added:
+
+    "This is but an intimation
+    Of more wicked adjuration,"
+
+while he pointed to the second entrance, the inscription over which
+read: "Arbour of Wicked Vows."
+
+"Oh, dreadful!" she cried in righteous dismay. Kellermann rolled with
+laughter.
+
+She could not help reading the next two signs, "Arbour of the Right to
+Motherhood" and "Arbour of the Cry for Man," but she said nothing more.
+
+There were two more divisions, a "Powder Room" and an "Arbour of
+Perversity." This she did not understand.
+
+"Now we'll go to the Criminal Side," said Mr. Kellermann, and led her
+diagonally across the room, making way for her among the people, who at
+her approach began to nod and hum and buzz, but with no trace of malice
+or contempt. The very reverse. It was an ovation, a suppressed
+demonstration of her triumph.
+
+Her breast expanded. A faint, humble sensation of happiness stole over
+her body like hot wine. She threw back her scarf. She no longer needed
+to feel ashamed of her bare throat and shoulders. In the looks turned
+upon her she read that no one would scoff at her.
+
+She did not succeed in reaching the Criminal Side. So many gentlemen
+wanted to be presented to her that Mr. Kellermann had all he could do
+telling off their names.
+
+From now on the carnival became something absolutely unreal, a dream
+land, a fairy meadow, on which strange, large-eyed flowers were blooming
+and sweet scents set heads a-reeling, and a haze sparkled with red suns;
+where people laughed and jested and whispered, where bold, unheard-of
+compliments floated in the air, and everything existed for Lilly to
+caress and admire and love.
+
+Yes, she loved them all, the men and the women, as soon as she met them.
+They were all good, noble souls, scintillating with delightful conceits
+and ready to perform friendly services. Each awakened a new hope, each
+brought a new joy.
+
+She felt how her cheeks glowed, what blissful intoxication was burning
+in her eyes. And he at whom she looked with those eyes would quiver, and
+respond with a gleam from his own, which seemed to be the reflection of
+her happiness.
+
+That was no longer another strange Lilly, who laughed and returned jest
+with jest and went from arm to arm with a faint pang of regret. That was
+she herself, doubly, triply herself.
+
+Sometimes, when a gentleman became too bold in his talk, when an
+unlicenced _double entendre_ seemed to lurk behind a joke, and Lilly
+became nervous and did not know what to say and involuntarily looked
+around for help, she always found her friend somewhere near at hand,
+glancing over at her as if by mere chance.
+
+That gave her a delicious sense of peace, a consciousness of being cared
+for and hidden away, so that she could be even merrier than before, and
+need not take offence at audacities.
+
+Once she overheard behind her:
+
+"Who's the lucky dog who has her for his mistress?"
+
+The answer was:
+
+"A little polished Mr. Snooks. There he stands."
+
+This made her stop and think a moment, though she could not know to whom
+it referred. But in the whirl of incidents it soon passed from her mind.
+
+Oh, what people she met!
+
+There were young blades in dress suits and white flowered waistcoats,
+who paid her mad court, and asked, as if casually, though their
+eagerness was visible under the nonchalance of their exterior: "What is
+your day at home?"
+
+Alas, she had no day at home. She lived a very retired life.
+
+There were sombre philosophers, who agonised over the world's pain, wore
+very long hair and monstrous neckties. They spoke to Lilly of "spiritual
+high pressure" and the "specific gravity of related individualities,"
+themes which did Lilly's soul good. One of them kept addressing her as
+"Your Excellency." When she asked him why, he looked staggered and said
+he had heard she was--then he broke off and substituted the paltry joke
+that she so "excelled" all the women present he could find no more
+suitable title.
+
+One of the men was an exuberant old high liver, whose name she had read
+with awe on many a beautiful picture. She would rather have kissed the
+hem of his garment than see him dance about her comically trying to be
+youthful.
+
+There were many others who aroused her curiosity; but she could learn
+nothing of their rank or character.
+
+The company even boasted a real prince, a pale, blond, very young man,
+who did not venture to ask to be introduced to Lilly, because his love
+was always in threatening proximity. So he kept making detours about
+her.
+
+The women, of course, were more distant than the men, though those of
+them who came to make her acquaintance gave themselves up to her with
+effusive warmth.
+
+One was a beautiful, voluptuous brunette with unsteady, glowing eyes and
+a smile betokening wild abandon.
+
+"We must get to know each other," she said. "I will introduce you to my
+friend, and later we'll take supper together like a cosy little family."
+
+Another was an extremely slim young woman with bright blue eyes, who
+towered above most of the men. She wandered through the throng serene
+and unconcerned in a long, white silk secession robe, looking like a
+phantom. She spoke without moving her head and smiled without drawing
+her lips. She had come from Denmark to study painting and at the same
+time "live life," as she expressed it.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked Lilly. "You are different from the rest. The
+woman who comes here and does not want to be swept along in the current
+must have strong arms."
+
+She boldly threw back the wide sleeves of her gown as far as her
+shoulders and exposed two lily-white, wonderfully curved arms, gleaming
+like marble pillars.
+
+Thereupon she wandered further.
+
+The third was an extremely light-haired, very elegant woman, no longer
+young. Her pretty, good-humoured face was tanned by the open air. With a
+merry flash of her eyes she held out her hand to Lilly, as if they were
+old acquaintances.
+
+"Oh, how sweet and lovely you are!" she said softly. "We have all flown
+here and don't know how. But where do _you_ come from? My name is ----"
+she mentioned the name of a great musician who in Kilian Czepanek's home
+had been revered as semi-divine.
+
+"Yes, Welter's former wife--that's who I am," she added gaily, and
+turned to the gentleman on whose arm she had walked up to Lilly.
+
+"Another general's wife, like myself," thought Lilly, looking after her.
+
+There were some married couples, too; for the most part extremely young
+and extravagantly clad, who at first kept together timidly and looked
+about with great, astonished eyes, and later frolicked about like
+monkeys set at liberty. One couple seemed to have been dragged to the
+carnival as a practical joke. The husband was a genuine complacent
+beery German, the wife, a good, corpulent, black-silk creature. The man,
+Lilly was told, was the landlord of the house, a well-to-do baker, who
+had been invited to the carnival as a reward for good-naturedly having
+permitted his fourth floor to be turned topsy-turvey. But the couple by
+no means felt nervous or out of place. They made coarse, clumsy jokes,
+and were always surrounded by a group of laughing auditors.
+
+About ten o'clock--Lilly had just been entangled by one of the
+long-haired and linenless in a profound discussion of false human
+values--when all of a sudden a sort of cry of wrath was raised, issuing
+at first from only one or two throats, then swelling to a loud thunder.
+Lilly distinguished the words "hunger" and "fodder."
+
+Mr. Kellermann's pacifying voice resounded to still the clamour. An
+accident, he said, had occurred to interrupt the spreading of the bread
+of which each guest would receive a piece--a poor devil of an artist
+couldn't afford a more abundant repast. He had hurriedly sent across the
+street for what was missing, and would the gentlemen please content
+themselves until it arrived? As for those who were _very_ hungry and did
+not worry about the taking of human life, the hosts had provided arsenic
+sandwiches and strychnine tarts, which were to be found in the closet
+marked "Poisons."
+
+The whole assemblage made a dash for the Criminal Side, where for the
+sake of the _crimes passionels_ a whole arsenal of deadly instruments
+had been prepared. Gallows dangled from the ceiling, ladders led down to
+abysses, and a cannon was discharged. The company immediately snatched
+the poisonous sandwiches from the sideboard, and sometimes even absolute
+strangers offered one another "a bite," like school children.
+
+Then came the regular supper.
+
+A buffet had been set up among the pines in the anteroom, piled mountain
+high with all sorts of goodies, Yorkshire hams, cold game, lobster,
+sliced salmon, and heaven knows what else. So stormy was the onslaught
+on that buffet--which, providentially had been placed against a
+wall--that the forest of pines gave way. Twigs flew about, branches
+broke, and a mass of laughing, cursing creatures rolled among the
+overturned tree-boxes.
+
+Somebody had a brilliant idea--chuck the whole forest down stairs.
+Forthwith the Chinese lanterns were extinguished, and despite the
+protestations of the landlord, who feared for the sleep of his other
+tenants, tree after tree went crashing down the steps and piled up at
+the bottom.
+
+The ladies' light dresses were completely strewn with pine needles, pine
+needles settled in their hair and on their bosoms. The whole place
+smelled of Christmas.
+
+One could hardly enjoy eating for all the laughing.
+
+Besides, there were not enough chairs and tables for everybody. So, to
+be able at least to balance the plate on their laps, they sat crowded
+close up against one another on the stairs, where the company was fed
+from above downward each time fresh provisions were procured from the
+buffet and brought out into the hall.
+
+Some enterprising pioneers even climbed up on the heap of pine trees and
+swayed on the springy branches like birds. Benevolent souls on the upper
+landing handed them their food on forks tied to walking sticks.
+
+Lilly, fairly sick with laughter, sat on one of the steps quite
+surrounded by strange gentlemen, all of whom wanted to be fed by her.
+She was in such a state of beatitude that she wished her life might end
+with the carnival. If she had any care in the world, it was to see to
+it that the gentlemen about her got enough to eat.
+
+The last of the refreshments were the cream kisses promised on the
+invitation. They swung on long strings from the ceiling, and each guest
+had to snap like a dog for his portion. If anyone used his hands he was
+rapped over the knuckles.
+
+This sport, which at first created fresh storms of folly, soon had to be
+relinquished because the cream dropped on the ladies' dresses. Lilly's
+Empire gown was also stained, but the instant the cream fell on it one
+of the gentlemen kneeled and sucked the spot away.
+
+When a trumpet blast summoned the company back to the studio, everybody
+was unhappy, Lilly in especial.
+
+But when she saw her friend again, whom she had quite forgotten, she
+quickly took comfort. Pressing against his arm and beaming with delight
+she reported to him amid gurgles of laughter all she had experienced in
+the meantime.
+
+Now, it seemed to her, she again saw the looks of those who passed her
+fastened on her face in strange seriousness, betokening something like
+compassion. But she had too much to relate to give those strange looks
+much thought.
+
+The speeches now began. Lilly begged her friend to stay at her side. She
+had romped enough, she said, and needed something "homey."
+
+He pressed his arm against hers gratefully.
+
+"Why are you trembling so?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he replied lightly.
+
+The first of the speakers was one of the long-haired, linenless, sombre
+ones. Something weighty and solemn, like a hymn, was to usher in the
+numbers on the program.
+
+He recited an ode entitled "Super-Smoke," in which such words as
+"sublime mist" rhymed with "amethyst," and "super-desire" with
+"passionate fire."
+
+Lilly understood not a word, though the poem must have been very
+beautiful, because at the conclusion the gentlemen burst into wild
+applause. "Bravo! Bravo! Super-smoke! More Super-smoke!"
+
+The sombre poet, who naturally interpreted these exclamations as a call
+for "_da capo_," bowed and felt flattered and started off again:
+"Super-Smoke, an Ode."
+
+He found he was in for it. "Enough, enough," came from all sides, and it
+turned out that the gentlemen had merely wished to express their desire
+for something smokeable in the language of super-men.
+
+The next to ascend the platform was a slim, very elegant gentleman with
+a dark brown Van Dyke beard and a gleaming monocle. He had been
+introduced to Lilly. Dr. Salmoni smiled sadly, and held his curved left
+hand close to his nose to scrutinise his long nails. His intention, he
+said was to draw up an intellectual inventory of the evening. For the
+purpose he would make a few remarks as a basis of his "so-to-speak
+destructive construction of this social heterogeneity."
+
+With that, a hail-storm of audacities and personalities came rattling
+down on the heads of hosts and guests.
+
+Though Lilly understood only a fraction of what he said, she felt she
+had to blush with shame for each person his ill-natured words hit. But,
+strange to say, nobody took offence. On the contrary, each one upon
+getting his raking tried to outdo the others in noisy applause.
+
+"What a happy world," thought Lilly, "where people have become
+absolutely invulnerable and the most heinous sins simply add to their
+honour."
+
+Her own misdeed, from which she had suffered so long as from a
+festering sore, suddenly appeared something like a child's amiable
+prank.
+
+"Was it idiocy in me to grieve so?" she asked herself, and pushed her
+hips downward with her hands, as if to brush away all the old chains
+from her limbs.
+
+The elegant doctor could deal in compliments also. Each of the lovely
+women received her little bon-bon rolled in pepper. And when he spoke of
+a lotos flower that had drifted there from fairyland and still seemed to
+dread the glory of the new sun shining upon it, Lilly again saw all
+glances turned upon her.
+
+"But let her take courage," Dr. Salmoni continued. "Should she need some
+one to help her dreamily await the night, she may count, I feel certain,
+upon every one of us."
+
+He was rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of all the gentlemen, and
+Lilly did not even feel ashamed.
+
+Upon concluding, and after gathering in a harvest of praise from the
+auditors, who crowded up to him--those who had gotten the hottest
+"roast" were the most eager--he stepped to Lilly's side and said _sotto
+voce_:
+
+"I beg your pardon most humbly for having mentioned you in the same
+breath as this set. People on our level ought to have a tacit code; they
+ought to understand each other without making bald declarations. But I
+was tired of just cracking a whip. Besides, I may assure you, I don't
+_always_ play the fool."
+
+He stuck his monocle in his waistcoat pocket and looked at Lilly with
+his sharp grey eyes as if to tear her heart to tatters.
+
+"People on our level," he had said. Lilly felt flattered that so clever
+and prominent a man should rank her with him.
+
+The next performer was a "minstrel," a mercurial, black young fellow,
+who accompanied himself on the mandolin. He struck up a highly
+sentimental ditty, like a troubadour's.
+
+    The lady's name I will not cite,
+    Far purer she than the moonlight.
+    She is so chaste, she burns with shame
+    To hear the stork called by its name.
+    And if rash Eros bids you try
+    To steal a kiss, however shy,
+    Her face grows pale--Heaven forefend!--
+    And stammers she: "Now this must end!"
+
+The second strophe, the temperature of which rose many degrees, ended
+with the line:
+
+    Quoth she: "Now cut it out! Now stop."
+
+And the third strophe, whose outrageous explicitness Lilly scarcely
+ventured to understand, wound up with the French:
+
+    _Tout ce que vous voulez, mais pas ca._
+
+An endless round of clapping and shouting followed the song.
+
+Lilly was astonished, but did not resent it. She resented nothing any
+more. Leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, she let the
+lights, the sounds, the vulgarities, the laughter and applause pass as
+in a dream.
+
+From time to time she looked around at her friend.
+
+He stood behind her, and smiled reassuringly, but said nothing. A
+mottled red burned on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps
+he had drunk too much champagne. As for herself, though she had taken
+only a sip, her head was spinning dizzily.
+
+At two o'clock the speech-making ended. Now the final restraints were
+thrust aside. The company romped madly, danced, kissed, drank,
+quarrelled, and fought duels. Lovers stabbed themselves and were carried
+out dead. The cannon shot off crackers. A thin, droll youngster clad in
+a Greek gown, which an obliging model had lent him, stood in front of
+the "Arbour of the Right to Motherhood," and held forth in a singing
+falsetto. Science had shown, he said, by the results of artificial fish
+culture that man as a factor in reproduction would soon be unnecessary.
+At the entrance to the "Arbour of the Cry for Man" a small, wild person
+with curly black hair had climbed on a chair and kept screaming "A
+woman! A woman! A woman!" Into the "Arbour of Perversity" they had
+pushed the baker and his corpulent better half, and each time the two
+kissed on command a shout of laughter went up outside.
+
+Lilly's head was a-whirl with the tumult. Everything turned in a circle,
+screeching, darting, hammering, like a series of painful flashes.
+
+"We'd better be going," Mr. Dehnicke's voice behind her advised.
+
+She arose and stretched her arms with a shiver.
+
+_That_ had been life! Life! Life!
+
+Then she followed him.
+
+Mr. Kellermann had noticed her leave, and furtively slipped up to her in
+the hall. His open collar hung over his jacket, his cheeks were puffed
+and shiny. He looked like a young Falstaff.
+
+He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say,
+"It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps.
+
+The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann
+turned to Lilly and whispered:
+
+"The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?"
+
+"Entirely," she replied with a languid smile.
+
+"You'll never come?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And I tell you"--he led her to one side next to the banisters--"I tell
+you, you _will_ come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and
+you won't know--"
+
+Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent.
+
+Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to
+these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the
+bacchic faun.
+
+She laughed at him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down.
+Leaning lightly against her friend's shoulder she walked airily down the
+steps singing and swaying her hips.
+
+The whole world seemed to have passed into a soft, perfumed, chiming
+twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining.
+
+Dehnicke's carriage was waiting.
+
+"Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in
+her fill of the invigorating, snowy air.
+
+She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang
+and beat time with her feet.
+
+He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night.
+
+"Do say something," she cried.
+
+"What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his
+bleared eyes.
+
+They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and
+then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage.
+
+Lilly sank into a drowsy state.
+
+"Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this
+way forever."
+
+Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter's arm was clasping her
+waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter's
+neck, as once on blessed November nights.
+
+But--where did Walter come from all of a sudden?
+
+She started up and sank back, wide awake.
+
+No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great
+shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with
+her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper
+arm.
+
+"And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to
+demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written.
+
+He was demanding it after all.
+
+How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on
+the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later--Walter, whom
+everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered
+to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there
+was salvation for her on earth.
+
+To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had
+a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But
+now it availed nothing.
+
+Cautiously, as if fearing to hurt him, she withdrew from his arm and
+pressed against the other side of the brougham.
+
+"Why didn't you stay?" he asked, stammering like a drunkard. "Weren't
+you comfortable?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+He repeated the question several times. She maintained silence. She felt
+any word she might utter would entangle her still further.
+
+Then he clasped her hand, which hung down limply.
+
+"I mayn't," she whispered, extracting her hand from his. "And you
+mayn't, either."
+
+"Why mayn't we?"
+
+"You will reproach yourself dreadfully later when you recall you are
+responsible to him."
+
+"Whom?" he asked.
+
+"Whom? _Him._ Whom else? You always say you're nothing but his agent,
+and--"
+
+A laugh, a hoarse, guilty laugh, interrupted her. He had folded his
+hands across his knees, and he laughed and drew a deep breath and
+laughed again, as one who has rid himself of a wearisome burden.
+
+A horrid certainty faced her.
+
+"Then all that wasn't true?" she faltered, staring at him.
+
+"Nonsense, perfect nonsense," he cried. "He wrote me _once_, before he
+left for the United States. 'Look out for her. Don't let her go to the
+dogs. She's too good for them.' Nothing else and never again. There! Now
+you know it. Now I'm rid of it. I've had a hard enough time over it. But
+what could I do? I had begun so I had to go on. There was no use--"
+
+He jerked up the window and leaned against it panting.
+
+Lilly wanted to ask, "Why did you do it?" but was afraid to. She knew
+what was coming. One thing stood before her with horrible clearness: she
+was in his hands beyond rescue. She lived in his house, spent his money,
+saw the world with his eyes. She was what he had determined she should
+be: his courtesan, his creature.
+
+The river!
+
+She tore at the brougham door, and set her right foot on the step, but
+he pulled her back and shut the door again.
+
+"Be sensible," he commanded. "Keep your wits about you."
+
+She burst into a fit of weeping, piteous, harrowing, heartbreaking. She
+had not shed such tears since the days of her divorce. She saw nothing
+and heard nothing. Sometimes she seemed to catch the sound of his voice
+as from a great, great distance. But she did not understand what he
+said. Simply to cry, cry, cry, as if salvation lay in crying, as if fear
+and distress would flow away with her tears.
+
+The brougham came to a stand. She felt herself being lifted out. He
+carried the key in his pocket.
+
+Supported by him she stumbled up the steps and thought from time to
+time:
+
+"Why, I was going to throw myself into the river."
+
+He led her to the sofa and turned on the lights of the chandelier. Then
+he undid the buckle of her cloak and removed the veil from her hair.
+
+She lay there languidly, looking apathetically at the tablecloth.
+
+The bird awoke and peeped to her.
+
+"It's late," she heard Mr. Dehnicke say, "and the carriage is waiting.
+But I can't leave you this way. I must vindicate myself. I want you to
+know how everything happened."
+
+"It makes no difference," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"To me it does," he rejoined. "I don't want you to think I'm a rascal."
+
+"That makes no difference either," she thought.
+
+"I loved you," he began, "long before I knew you, when you were still
+our colonel's wife."
+
+She looked up at him in surprise.
+
+As he stood there in his short, close-fitting dress suit, with a pale,
+joyless, pleading face, uneasily plucking at the tablecloth, he who was
+really master there, it seemed to her she was looking upon him for the
+first time.
+
+"I had been called into service for the manoeuvres that summer," he
+continued, "and the club was still full of you. Even the ladies of the
+regiment talked of nothing else. There were ever so many pictures of
+you, too, in circulation. Some of the men had snapped you on the sly.
+The instant I saw you I should have recognised you, because I remembered
+every feature. Yes, I may repeat with perfect truth, I loved you even
+then. What's more, after Prell's letter came and you were to step into
+my life, good Lord! what plans for winning you didn't I work out in
+those one and a half years! Then at last you appeared and exceeded my
+wildest fancies. But when I saw that in between you had become a _grande
+dame_, and how devoted you were to Walter--you kept talking of him--I
+lost my last hopes. Of course, I had never seriously counted upon
+winning you, because, though I lay some stock in myself, I'm not really
+self-assured--and besides--to have some one like you for a love--that's
+more happiness than anyone can dream of."
+
+When he said "a love," passionate bitterness welled up within Lilly.
+
+"To have me for a wife," she thought, "_that_ is certainty more
+happiness than anyone can dream of."
+
+She burst out laughing.
+
+He took her laugh as a sign of modest deprecation of his compliment, and
+talked himself into greater enthusiasm. Did she think a single person in
+all that company to-night was worthy of unlacing her shoe-ties? Did she
+realise how immeasurably she was raised above everything bearing the
+name woman?
+
+From out of her tear-stained eyes the question now candidly shone which
+pride and shame forbade her to utter.
+
+He must have understood, because he paused suddenly, clapped his hand to
+his forehead, looked agitated, and paced up and down the room,
+suppressing sobs. She heard him murmur, "I can't--impossible--I can't."
+
+"Oh--if he can't," she thought, and stared at him with her cheeks
+pressed between her hands.
+
+He halted in front of her, and tried to talk. But he could only choke
+down half-articulated words, and he took to pacing the room again.
+
+Lilly caught snatches of words--"mother"--"never persuade her"--"must
+give up the business." And again and again, "I can't--impossible--I
+can't."
+
+"He's right," she thought. "A person like me--he really can't." And
+feeling her renunciation was final she drew a deep breath, and
+collapsed.
+
+He hastened to her, frightened; leaned over her, and wanted to stroke
+her hands. But she shook him off. Since he could not find a word in
+justification of his weak evasion, he took up the thread where Lilly's
+tortured laugh had cut it off.
+
+"Remember one thing, dearest, dearest friend. I don't want anything for
+myself--no reward--nothing. Long ago I gave up all wishes for myself, I
+swear to you. The only thing I wanted was to draw you out of the hole
+where you were being degraded into a proletarian. Oh, I know it from
+experience. It lasts a few years--no more. They either go on the street,
+or they grow more careworn and uglier and uglier. Soon you'd never
+suspect what they once were. To keep the same thing from happening to
+you, I thought of that device of the check, and wrote to my American
+agents. When I saw you were completely taken in, I didn't sleep for
+several nights out of pure joy, because then I knew I shouldn't have to
+stand by and see you go to your ruin."
+
+"Why should I go to ruin?" Lilly interjected. "By the time your check
+came I had already earned a decent little sum. You yourself helped me,
+and you yourself said, if I continued the same way--"
+
+She stopped short in fright at the thought that if she had to separate
+from him, this one avenue would be cut off, too. The idea was a
+nightmare.
+
+No word of encouragement came from him. He kept plucking at the
+tablecloth in dogged reserve.
+
+"Say something! Have you already forgotten everything you did for me?"
+
+He raised his head.
+
+"Well," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "if you insist. At any rate,
+it may be well to be perfectly frank this evening."
+
+"Why, what else is there?" Lilly cried.
+
+"Do you remember when you visited the factory, I wouldn't let you into
+the storeroom?"
+
+"Certainly. But what--"
+
+"And afterwards I said it was because the room wasn't heated?"
+
+"Yes--but I can't see what that has to do with my work."
+
+"If you had gone the least little bit further, you would have seen every
+one of your transparencies, fifty-six in all. The last were still
+unwrapped."
+
+Lilly looked up at him as to her executioner. Then she fell down before
+the sofa. She had no more tears to shed, but the soft darkness of the
+cushions was soothing to her eyes. To see nothing more, to hear nothing
+more, to think nothing more. To die quickly, forthwith, before hunger
+came, and shame.
+
+A long silence followed.
+
+She thought he had already gone when she felt his hand stroking her
+shoulder and heard his voice with a mournful quiver in it pleading:
+
+"My dear, dear friend, tell me, _tell_ me, what could I do? Could I rob
+you of your one pleasure, your one assurance? Was I to say to you, 'It's
+amateurish, unsalable?' I saw your whole soul was wrapped up in it, and
+you lived from it spiritually, as it were. I thought: 'When her affairs
+are all smoothed out, I'll just let it die a natural death.' And you
+know it was in a fair way to die naturally. You hardly thought of it the
+last month. Dearest, dearest friend, do reflect, what wrong did I do? I
+helped you out of wretched surroundings, I gave you a few months of joy
+and freedom from care, and I didn't even ask for so much as a kiss. If
+you want, return to your Mrs. Laue to-morrow, and it will be as if
+nothing happened. Or remain here quite calmly until you have found a
+position. I won't thrust myself on you. You needn't see me. When
+I--leave here--now--"
+
+He could not continue.
+
+After a period of silence Lilly raised her head in fright and curiosity
+to see what had become of him. She found him in a chair inclined over
+the table, his head hidden in his arms, and his back shaken with mute
+sobs.
+
+She stood next to him a while, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+She was so sorry for him--oh, how sorry she was for him!
+
+Then she gently laid her hand on his hair.
+
+"Take comfort, dear friend," she said. "It will be much worse for me
+than for you. I won't have anybody at all."
+
+And she shuddered, thinking of her approaching loneliness.
+
+He straightened himself up and silently reached for his hat. His eyes
+were even more bleared than before; his head inclined still further to
+the left.
+
+Oh, how sorry she was for him!
+
+"Good-by," he said, pressing her right hand. "And thank you."
+
+"I will write to you," she said. "I should like to think it all over
+to-night. I shall probably move to-morrow, immediately."
+
+"Whatever you wish," he said.
+
+As he was drawing on his overcoat something long and cylindrical
+gleaming with gold and silver fell noiselessly from his pocket to the
+floor.
+
+Lilly picked it up. It was a huge cracker.
+
+Both had to smile.
+
+"That lovely carnival had to have this sad ending," she said.
+
+He sighed.
+
+"Did you enjoy yourself? I hope for that at least."
+
+"Oh, what's the difference so far as I'm concerned?" said Lilly,
+deprecatingly.
+
+"A great difference. The whole affair was gotten up for you."
+
+"How--for me?"
+
+"Well, do you suppose Mr. Kellermann, who at the very best earns fifty
+to a hundred marks a week, can afford such an entertainment? The
+physician ordered diversion, and on account of the position you are in,
+I couldn't offer you any, so I hid behind him, and--"
+
+She opened her eyes wide.
+
+If he loved her to that extent!
+
+"You dear, dear friend," she said, and for one instant lightly leaned
+her head against his shoulder.
+
+He threw his arms about her quickly, greedily, as if she would be
+snatched from him the next instant. His whole body quivered, and she
+felt his warm tears on her forehead.
+
+Since he did not venture to kiss her even yet, she offered him her lips.
+
+"The third," she thought.
+
+When she glanced up, she saw Walter's eyes on the wall looking down at
+her with a base, sneering smile. Just as she had feared in the carriage.
+
+Terrified, she drew Mr. Dehnicke's attention to the portrait.
+
+"We'd better have it sent right down to the basement to-morrow," he
+said.
+
+And since they now had very much to say to each other, the carriage was
+immediately dismissed, because it was half past three, and the coachman
+and the horses needed a rest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A new life began for Lilly once again.
+
+An end to her loneliness!
+
+Every afternoon Mr. Dehnicke came for his cup of tea, and now he was no
+longer Mr. Dehnicke; he was Richard, dear, beloved Richard, to whom one
+waved and nodded cheerily from the window, whom one received with
+outstretched arms in front of the apartment door, against whose knees
+one crouched on the floor, and from whose forehead one smoothed away the
+naughty frown of care with a tender "poor boy, poor boy."
+
+Oh, how needless to have hoarded up such a wealth of love! She could
+lavish it in profusion, yet there was always a fresh supply.
+
+Away with the _grande dame_, the haughty aristocrat! She stooped to him,
+played the little girl, wanted to be found fault with and scolded,
+looked terrified at the faintest shadow of displeasure on his face, and
+tried to read his every wish--wishes he himself was not aware of--from
+his eyes. She wanted to be grateful for his goodness, his tenderness,
+for everything he had done to save her from ruin.
+
+No wonder, then, that by degrees he lost his adoring upward glance, and
+began to make demands, sometimes very whimsical demands, and assume the
+manner of a husband. Now and then he even recalled his benefactions, not
+very emphatically, though with sufficient explicitness to change what
+was at first voluntary humility into a duty.
+
+Since Lilly had become his mistress, his attitude to the world had
+veered about, so that his entire life stood on a different basis.
+
+The pedantic bronze manufacturer so dreadfully concerned for his good
+name and standing in respectable society had changed into a daring fast
+liver.
+
+So far from hesitating to be seen at Lilly's side on the streets and
+promenades, he could not display himself to the eyes of the crowd often
+enough. The good old brougham no longer sufficed. He must also have a
+new-fashioned, spacious victoria, in which to drive with Lilly along
+Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. When they went out together in the
+evening, he chose the places where most of fashionable Berlin is to be
+found, and tried to obtain seats from which they could be observed on
+all sides.
+
+He sat in the boxes at theatre with a swelling shirt front, carefully
+tailored and barbered and manicured, and endeavoured to present an
+indifferent blase smile to the glasses levelled upon him and his
+companion.
+
+He ordered his clothes from the representatives of London houses that
+bob up in Berlin every spring and autumn in search of customers. He
+adopted a monocle and stuck his handkerchief inside his left cuff. The
+military officer in him came to the surface and endeavoured to ape the
+effeminate gestures of the fops of the Guard.
+
+In short, he bent all his energies upon proving himself worthy of a
+mistress of Lilly's rank and qualities. He soon discovered that
+connection with so exquisite a creature, so far from damaging him, cast
+an unhoped for glamour about his life, even about his business, lending
+it an air of splendour that all his superb remodelling had not been able
+to give it.
+
+If the senior member of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, the world said,
+can indulge in such an extravagance, his goods must be selling much
+better than we thought. And many a dealer who had formerly bought of
+his competitors now came to him, impelled by those mysterious powers of
+suggestion whose laws psychologists and historians have in vain
+endeavoured to fathom.
+
+People showed him greater respect, but a respect mitigated by that
+jovial, confidential smile which the world always smiles when it pardons
+a man of proven harmlessness an interesting secret little infirmity.
+
+Questions like "When are we going to see you outside of business?" or
+"What do you say to making a night of it together now and then?"
+questions from persons who had paid no attention to him formerly, became
+as cheap as the bronze wares of Liebert & Dehnicke.
+
+"By right, I ought to charge you to the expense account of the
+business," he once said with a smile to Lilly, who by and by ceased to
+feel pained at delicate jokes of that sort.
+
+The evening excursions, which took place three or four times a week,
+gradually became a matter of habit, and rapidly acquainted Lilly with
+all the soap-bubble pleasures that float from the witch's cauldron of
+Berlin life.
+
+It was now too late in the winter for those great public balls, at which
+one shams the mysterious lady of rank beneath a silk domino. To
+compensate there were the theatres where observances are lax and the
+lowest vices of the Parisian boulevards, diluted and warmed over, are
+dished up to tickle the palates of hungry pleasure-seekers; all-night
+cabarets, where obscene jests are clothed in literary garb, and wild
+women escaped from the confines of middle-class life vie with
+professional music-hall singers for the palm of vulgarity; bars and
+grill-rooms; back rooms of aristocratic restaurants which the law
+forbids to be locked, and in which chilly orgies are smiled upon
+mockingly by correct waiters; and, to wind up with, certain cafes,
+sparkling with lights and blue with cigarette smoke, where the weary
+nerves seek and find their final stimulation in contact with prostitutes
+selling their wares in open market.
+
+In the beginning Lilly opposed these doings. Her senses demanded
+satisfaction of another sort. She had a vague feeling of mournfulness,
+as if each day of this new pleasure-filled life were carrying her
+farther and farther from those laurel-lined stairs to which her longing
+had gone out. But when she saw that her every wish for quiet encountered
+sulky resistance, she gave up her desires voluntarily, and kept her
+dreams for a better time, a time which would bring all her hopes to
+fruition, which--which--her fancy might venture no farther.
+
+Besides, it was always so fascinating, so dazzling.
+
+Lilly and Dehnicke were seldom left alone. In proceeding from place to
+place they would meet acquaintances, many of whom Lilly had seen at the
+carnival; and they would join company informally; or frequently,
+appointments were made beforehand. So there was quite a group of them, a
+little fixed nucleus, about which newcomers kept crystallising.
+
+One of the faithful was that sweet little brunette with the unsteady,
+glowing eyes and the foolish smile, who had wanted her friend and
+herself to form a little family group at supper with Lilly and Dehnicke.
+Her name was Mrs. Sievekingk. A vague desire for "life" had caused her
+to run away from her husband, a physician somewhere in Further
+Pomerania. After having gone through various experiences she was now
+living with the proprietor of a large steam laundry, a red-haired swell,
+thin as a broomstick, Wohlfahrt by name. He suffered from dyspepsia, and
+Mrs. Sievekingk always had ready in her hand-bag an assortment of pills
+and powders. But this touching, energetic care of him did not prevent
+her from deceiving him for the sake of any man who courted her.
+Everybody knew it and nobody blamed her. She was a poetess and had to
+create experiences to sing about. As a result many a lover who thought
+he was sinning with her in absolute secrecy would a few weeks later
+discover an exact portrait of himself as the hero of a passionate sketch
+or a murky love poem in some magazine of the latest school.
+
+There was Mrs. Welter also, the divorced wife of the renowned composer,
+whose round, russet face--she had returned lately from a mysterious
+pleasure trip to Algeria--formed a droll contrast to the golden aureole
+of her mass of dyed hair. It was dangerous to associate with her. She
+borrowed of everybody she met, although she was in comfortable
+circumstances, receiving an ample alimony from her former husband's rich
+relatives. Her constant state of want was due to her infinite goodness,
+which led her to turn over all she possessed and all her friends gave
+her to two cashiered lovers, each of whom in his way was a scamp. Nobody
+knew to whom she was attached at present. She was frequently seen with a
+district attorney, who was stiff as a poker and too formal to use a
+toothpick on his hollow teeth, and so sat for hours in silence busily
+rolling his tongue between his jaws.
+
+Among others was an extremely thin little shrewmouse, dainty and
+devilish, with steely eyes and thin pinched lips turning inward. She
+always wore white silk, and dragged a rustling, fan-shaped train. She
+called herself Mrs. Karla. Nobody knew her real name except her lover, a
+mere boy, the son of a manufacturer. Pale, puny, and completely in her
+toils, he followed her about until dawn indulging her in her sapping
+lust for pleasure. In an unguarded moment he revealed that she was the
+wife of a Jewish scholar who lived in absolute seclusion, and actually
+believed that she was occupied in satisfying the social demands of the
+Berlin West Side. And while she wantoned with all sorts of people in
+music halls and _chambres separees_, her husband sat quietly at home
+poring over his statistical tables.
+
+There were women of every description, for whose past and whose means of
+subsistence no one concerned himself, provided they were pretty and
+elegant and not exactly _cocottes_.
+
+In addition to the ladies' legitimate escorts were a large number of
+gentlemen, who came every evening to fish in troubled waters. These
+gentlemen constituted the real enlivening element, and among them was
+the Dr. Salmoni who had wielded "the big stick" at Mr. Kellermann's
+carnival while smiling a mournful smile. In his company, Lilly felt, she
+always grew embarrassed and reticent, although it seemed to her a secret
+bond united them. As at the carnival, he exercised his caustic wit upon
+every person who crossed his path, with the exception of herself, whom
+he passed by considerately. Now and then he dissected her with his
+probing eyes, and two or three times he whispered softly _en passant_:
+"What are you seeking to find here, lovely lady?"
+
+Mr. Kellermann, too, presented himself not infrequently; grew befuddled,
+and then threw out remarks about "a chained beauty crying to be set
+free," remarks which Lilly assiduously endeavoured not to hear. At the
+end of the evening he usually discovered he was out of pocket, upon
+which Richard came to his rescue.
+
+Such was the world in which from now on Lilly's days--and nights--glided
+along.
+
+She received mysterious messages of all sorts; invitations from strange
+gentlemen to discreet rendezvous, flowers sent anonymously, from modest
+bouquets of violets to gorgeous baskets of orchids, visits from ladies
+of suspicious character, who were organising private charity circles,
+and with highly significant smiles asked Lilly to join--a turbid surf of
+desire forever rolling up to her threshold. At first it frightened her;
+finally she took no notice of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring came, and with it the races at which everybody appears who lays
+claim for any reason at all to membership in the world of elegance.
+
+Since Lilly had been enthroned at Richard's side, the slumbering cavalry
+officer in him had been awakened to such lively consciousness, his
+passion for native horse-breeding had swelled to such vast proportions
+that he would not have dreamed of missing a single race. Although he
+never betted, his pockets were stuffed with crumpled tips; chances and
+pedigrees constituted his sole topic of conversation, and Lilly, who
+took not the least interest in it all, willingly lent him her undivided
+attention.
+
+One morning, on studying the account of the previous day's race in her
+paper, the following passage attracted her notice:
+
+"Among the charming representatives of the world which knows no _ennui_,
+was the impressive beauty who for some time past has permitted glimpses
+of herself everywhere, and who still radiates the discreet atmosphere of
+the _haute volee_, which, it is rumoured, was once her native element.
+She favors violet, and in accordance with a famous precedent, she might
+be dubbed '_la dame aux violettes_.' We congratulate ourselves upon the
+appearance of this new star, who will only add to the reputation of our
+metropolitan life."
+
+"Who can that be?" thought Lilly, slightly envious, and passed in
+review the beautiful women she had admired the day before.
+
+Then suddenly the blood rushed to her head. Her glance sought the
+Redfern costume, which she had not yet hung away, and was lying across
+the back of a chair. It was two years old, but so wonderfully well made
+that it could compete with the new creations of the spring. Since this
+was the only suit of the sort she possessed--Richard must be spared
+unnecessary expense--she had worn it several times in succession.
+
+"Yes, she no longer doubted--the item referred to her and no other. Her
+first thought was:
+
+"How pleased Richard will be."
+
+She, too, was pleased. Mrs. Laue's boldest prophecies seemed about to be
+fulfilled. She was growing famous. She actually figured in the papers.
+
+But that feeling of dread! That enigmatic, senseless dread which forever
+crouched in the bottom of her heart, and crept to the surface at the
+very moment a new event led her on a stage further toward grandeur and
+happiness. Since she had stepped into the world at Richard's side, she
+had encountered nothing but what awakened gladness, pride and hope.
+Everybody respected and flattered her. Scorn of herself, self-torturing
+thoughts, had passed away, giving place to a quiet appreciation of her
+own value in the presence of strangers. But that stupid, dull dread
+never left her. It would not be silenced.
+
+Earlier in the afternoon than usual, Richard came down the street
+beaming and openly waving the paper up to her.
+
+After they had embraced ten times and read the passage in the paper
+twice as often, Richard turned taciturn and gloomy, folded his arms like
+Napoleon, and paced up and down the room with short, sharp steps.
+
+You could see ambition seething in his brain.
+
+The bell rang.
+
+Little Mrs. Sievekingk was announced.
+
+She had come for a friendly little talk with Lilly several times before,
+though the two had not grown more intimate as a result. This time she
+arrived opportunely, to help them taste the joy of Lilly's fame.
+
+Her grey velvet suit shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, and the red
+turban with the waving aigrette nestled in her dark, curly head like a
+tongue of flame darting downward.
+
+She held her hand out to Lilly with her seductive smile, but when she
+turned to Richard, her eyes flashed with some of the energy with which
+she insisted upon her lover taking a dose.
+
+In the presence of strangers Lilly and Richard still kept up the myth of
+a Platonic friendship. So Richard modestly reached for his hat to
+extract from Lilly the polite request that he stay a little longer. But
+the small, dark woman anticipated them.
+
+"Don't be foolish," she said, "don't behave as if you weren't perfectly
+at home here. You may call each other by your first names, as if from a
+slip of the tongue, and I'll pretend not to have heard a thing."
+
+Lilly and Richard smiled, and while Lilly poured a cup of tea for her
+guest, Richard played with the paper. He wanted to make certain whether
+Mrs. Sievekingk had learned of the great triumph.
+
+"What I really came for was on account of that stuff," she said, "and
+you are the very person I want to speak to about it. I suppose you're
+awfully proud of it."
+
+Richard made a deprecating gesture, and smiled complacently.
+
+"To be quite frank, I credited you with a grain or two more sense."
+
+"I beg pardon," Richard observed, taken aback.
+
+Lilly started. Her dread of the morning grew into the suspicion that her
+great fortune had a cloven hoof.
+
+"Just let me speak," said the little woman, her eyes now flashing very
+steadily with a conscious purpose. "I have experience in such matters.
+My red-head began the same way with me. Has the thought never occurred
+to you, Mr. Dehnicke, that when a choice creature like this one sitting
+here, something so sweet and glorious that you'll never find her like,
+entrusts herself to you, you have assumed a vast responsibility? Do you
+think we're here to puff and swell your vanity? We're not factory girls
+or ballet dancers to be stuck into silks and laces and led around to
+show the world that you're a fine buck. We have fallen from society, I
+know, but we're not to be classed, not by a long shot, with those women
+to whose ranks you would like to reduce us."
+
+Richard wanted to reply, but could not find the right words, and Mrs.
+Sievekingk continued, bending toward Lilly tenderly:
+
+"So here comes a poor little mite in its unsuspecting aristocracy, and
+says: 'Take me. Do with me what you want.' And what will you do with
+her? You'll make a fast woman of her, at least what the world takes to
+be a fast woman. Don't contradict me. As a beginning you've already done
+very well." She pointed to the paper.
+
+"Once the yellow journals take us up, then the counts of the Guard are
+on the spot, and then, may the Lord have mercy on us! They're much
+better-looking and more chivalrous than you; and if we _must_ become
+_cocottes_, we'd like at least to know for whom and for what. And if
+you affect indifference, then you're nothing in our opinion but a bad
+joke of yesterday."
+
+Lilly's breath was taken away. She had not thought it possible that
+anyone should dare to speak to Richard in such a tone. She laid her hand
+on his shoulder deprecatingly to pacify him. She feared he might become
+angry and enforce his rights as master of the place.
+
+The very contrary occurred.
+
+"I will gladly do what you say," he replied, mealy-mouthed, "if only I
+knew--"
+
+"I'll tell you what you don't know. You mustn't lead her around like an
+animal in a show. Don't expose her to the gaze of all sorts of people.
+Don't seat her in the front of the box at opera for every rake to stare
+at."
+
+Richard plucked up his spirits for a defence.
+
+"Aren't _you_ to be seen everywhere?"
+
+"Certainly. Because I myself want to see things. That's the reason I ran
+away from my horror of a husband. Nevertheless I don't take box seats.
+And I don't fly around race tracks either. I'm by nature a Bohemian,
+while Lilly, with her quiet, refined heart, is a bourgeois, and a
+bourgeois she ought to remain, as if she were your wife by law. But
+neither of us wants to descend to the demi-monde, I mean what we mean by
+demi-monde in Germany. In the French sense we've been in it a long time.
+That's what I have to say to you, my dear sir."
+
+Richard arose helplessly, quite red in the face, gnawing ferociously at
+his moustache.
+
+"I've always had nothing but her good at heart," he said. "Beside, it
+was your wish, too, wasn't it, Lilly?"
+
+Lilly could not make denial. She did not want to shame him any further;
+and she turned aside without replying.
+
+"And supposing it was her wish a thousand times!" the little woman
+rejoined in Lilly's stead. "You should have said to her: 'My dear, you
+don't understand. Since we are not married'--_nota bene_, that would be
+the best for both of you--'we must live modestly, otherwise I should do
+you mortal injury, I should throw you in the mire.'"
+
+Lilly felt tears rising to her eyes, as always when the subject of
+marriage in connection with Richard and herself; arose. Not to show her
+emotion, she quickly left the room to fetch Richard's overcoat. It was
+already quarter of six.
+
+She accompanied him to the door and kissed him tenderly. He must by no
+means suppose that he had jarred her or that she bore him a grudge.
+
+When she returned to her guest, she took his part eagerly. He was very
+dear and good. He had saved her from ruin, and certainly meditated no
+evil.
+
+"I'm not here to sow dissension," said the little woman, laughing. She
+then asked to be allowed to remain a little longer. "My first name is
+Jula, and please avail yourself of it in the future."
+
+They sat hand in hand on the straight sofa, over which Walter's
+masterful smile had been replaced by an extremely indifferent
+sheep-shearing scene. On the glass plate in front of each was a bit of
+nibbled cake. For the first time in her life Lilly enjoyed the pleasure
+of possessing something like a friend--she had always felt uneasy in
+Miss von Schwertfeger's presence.
+
+The canary bird sang a sorry spring song, and the sparrows outside in
+the chestnut trees responded. The May sun painted red spirals on the
+wall, and from time to time a greenish golden flash darted from the
+aquarium when one of the little fish shot through the waving algae.
+
+The hour of confidences had struck.
+
+"I put on mighty superior airs just then," said Mrs. Jula. "But it was
+necessary to, my dear. Because you're just like me, you are standing on
+the very edge. One touch, and over we go--where no one will pick us up.
+If we could rely on our own character, our plight would not be so bad,
+but there are no two ways about it, we can't always be faithful--we
+don't want to be."
+
+"How can you say such a thing?" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.
+
+Mrs. Jula ran her little red tongue along her lips.
+
+"Just wait, my dear. The men we meet are really not calculated to make
+us see that we are here for one alone. In fact, the only way to enjoy
+them is in the plural. Oh, I could tell you things! But I don't want to
+alarm you. Besides, there's a danger attached to the plural. Each man we
+give ourselves up to robs us of a piece of what is best in us--what is
+best, I tell you, even if we can't clearly define it. It isn't
+consciousness of our own worth, because, if possible, that survives.
+It's not purity either. We don't give a fig for purity. Happiness,
+certainly not. We should die of dulness if we stuck to one man. I've
+spoken to a number of women, and they all have the same feeling. Some of
+them think it's better not to fall in love, and do it just from caprice.
+Some swear by the grand passion, which is to consecrate everything. No
+two persons, I suppose, think alike in this respect. And now I want to
+give you a little advice, because your turn will come some day. Don't
+accept any gifts, at least, no gifts of money value. At the utmost
+flowers, and none too many of them. And don't give gifts in return,
+because everything belongs to 'him.' Married women may; but it's not
+seemly for us. In general, avoid the _amant de caeur_, because
+_amant-de-caeurdom_ is characteristic of prostitutes. Married women may
+do all that, because they have to take revenge for being tied to the
+'one.' We, on the contrary, are free. We are permitted to go whenever we
+want to. But we mustn't. Anything, but not that."
+
+"Why mustn't we?" asked Lilly, who suddenly began to feel her chains.
+
+"Married women may. They _may_ everything. They may be divorced as often
+as they want, and carry their heads just as high as before. As for us,
+each time we're thrust lower into the world of prostitutes; and the
+oftener we change, the more we become free booty. All very well if we
+have money of our own. But neither you nor I have. They hover over us
+like vultures ready to swoop down upon us. If she's allowed herself to
+be supported by him--and _him_--and _him_, why isn't she to be had
+for _my_ good money, too? That's the reason we must hold fast to the one
+we have, no matter how small and horrid he is, no matter how repulsive
+we think him.
+
+"I don't understand," said Lilly. "If you're with a man, you love him."
+
+"Oh--do you mean to say you loved every man you were with?"
+
+"Why, there weren't so many," replied Lilly. "Beside my husband, the
+general"--she could not deny herself the joy of uttering that proud
+word--"there was only one other, and now--here--"
+
+"Oh, stuff!" cried Mrs. Jula in righteous indignation. "Do you want to
+blossom in my eyes as a rose of virtue?"
+
+Lilly protested she was speaking the truth.
+
+Mrs. Jula could not credit it.
+
+"Why, then, you're not one of us! You ought really be a judge's wife."
+
+Lilly laughed. She who had always thought sentence had long before been
+pronounced upon her immoral conduct, now heard herself ridiculed for her
+excess of virtue.
+
+"Oh, if I were to tell you the stories of all the women we meet,"
+continued Mrs. Jula. "One of them goes with girls in secret. One rents
+out rooms to students, but only to students she likes. And then there's
+one"--her voice sank to a whisper--"who fetches her lovers in from the
+street."
+
+Lilly shuddered.
+
+"What! I've sat next to a woman like that, and never suspected it!"
+
+Mrs. Jula's eyes glowed into space.
+
+"It's dreadful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "Well, it doesn't
+bother me. I have my poems. They lend sanctity to my acts and wash me
+clean again. It's for their sake I do it all. I need sensations, yes, I
+need sensations. I must feel my blood chase through my veins. I must
+study, study--something new in each one. No matter how inane a man may
+be, so inane that a thimble would hold his soul, nevertheless he has one
+hour of intoxication to give you, one hour in which all the bells chime
+and even the spheres make their heavenly music. And the more men you
+possess, the more life you possess, the more souls you creep into. All
+the doors of life fly open. All the secrets are revealed. If you can
+hear the pulsebeat of a stranger, can feel it under your fingers--he's
+yours--he's you yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that's life.
+That's what I call life."
+
+Lilly said to herself she could not possibly take this talk seriously,
+though hot and cold waves shivered through her body.
+
+"I don't understand what you say," she replied, and rose.
+
+Mrs. Jula did not even hear her. A mystic fire smouldered in her eyes.
+She looked like a priestess sacrificing to dark gods.
+
+It struck eight o'clock.
+
+The maid had set the table in the dining-room, and had laid a cover for
+the strange lady, who did not seem disposed to leave. She now came to
+announce that the meal was served.
+
+"Will you stay and dine with me?" asked Lilly, somewhat against her
+will.
+
+At last Mrs. Jula woke up. She neither accepted nor declined, but arose
+and disengaged her flaming hat from her dark curls.
+
+"I'm crazy, am I not?" she said, and the foolish, seductive smile
+blossomed about her lips again.
+
+Drawing a breath of relief, Lilly opened the door to the dining-room.
+
+The table gleamed with snowy damask, strewn with leaves of light formed
+by the pierced shade of the hanging lamp. The gaily coloured dishes,
+which Lilly had bought cheap at a sale, were a copy of an old Strasburg
+pattern. The knives and forks as well as the set of casters and the
+sugar tongs were of the finest plate, to be distinguished from real
+silver only by the mark.
+
+When Richard stayed for the evening meal, he should find everything as
+shining and substantial as at his mother's.
+
+Mrs. Jula burst into raptures.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful your place is. How dear! How charming! Am I not right
+in saying you were born to be a married woman? You ought to see my
+rubbish at home. What's the use? If my red-head has spoiled his stomach
+in a restaurant on larded lamb kidneys or turkey _aux truffes_, the next
+day I have to prepare gruel and toast and I serve it to him directly
+from the pot. What's the use of making a lot of fuss and setting a
+table?"
+
+"Thank the Lord!" thought Lilly. "She's herself again."
+
+The meal was modest enough--various cold cuts with roasted potatoes, and
+the remnants of a pastry for dessert. But Mrs. Jula ate as if such
+delights had not been spread before her for years. And she had to know
+exactly where Lilly got her supplies.
+
+Lilly informed her accurately. For the sake of cheapness, she said, she
+got her cold meats from a man in the country, whose address she would be
+glad to give Mrs. Jula.
+
+"I divined it immediately," said Mrs. Jula, softly, her eyes staring
+meditatively. After a pause she added more softly: "That's just the way
+it was there."
+
+"There--where?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Why, in my home."
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Jula threw her napkin on the table, jumped from her seat,
+and stepped to the open window, wringing her hands and pressing them to
+her forehead.
+
+"I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin!" she moaned
+out into the night.
+
+"What's the matter?" faltered Lilly in fright, and also jumped up.
+
+"I want to go back to my husband. I want to go back to my husband. He's
+a cross old piece, I know. And it's death to live with him. It's true,
+it's true! But I do want to go back to him. I'm going to ruin here. I'm
+going to ruin here."
+
+Lilly stepped behind her and stroked her neck.
+
+"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave
+me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides,
+you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with
+a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower
+woods reposed unseen. "No, you won't go to ruin You will reach the
+heights, from which you will look down on us poor women."
+
+Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder.
+
+"Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can't pull myself out of this
+whirlpool. It's as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I'm going
+to ruin. I'm going to ruin."
+
+Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the
+unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where
+she had sat before.
+
+"It's nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So
+I'm going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There
+mustn't be a ray of light."
+
+Lilly closed the door of the dining-room.
+
+They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the canal
+through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey
+over the tear-stained face.
+
+"Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her
+adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who
+that woman is? _I_ am that woman."
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put
+on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to
+meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look--as a
+rule he turns back and speaks to me--and I go with him to common
+saloons, or to a little confectionery shop--anywhere he wants to. Or I
+sit with him on a bench in the dark--and if he pleases me still more--I
+go with him--wherever else he wants to."
+
+"Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she
+knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the
+street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed
+through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply
+been too fearsome to answer him.
+
+"Now that you know what I am, you won't want me to stay sitting here on
+your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I'm ready to go." She
+reached out pleadingly for Lilly's hands.
+
+Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is
+grievously ill and must render that assistance which the moment
+requires.
+
+"But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How
+did it come about?"
+
+"Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how _your_ life turned out as
+it did? It's all very well and good for people to reproach us with
+weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish
+gives birth to another. And you always think you're doing what is right
+and what fate has prescribed."
+
+"That's true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own
+life.
+
+"This is what I've always said to myself: my poetry requires it. I must
+have experiences, pictures, that _frisson_, as the French say. But all
+that's a mere pretext. The truth is, we hunt and hunt and hunt. Your
+husband's not the right one. Your red-head's not the right man, and none
+of the rest of them--your sporting business man, or your
+eh-eh-lieutenant. But he must be _somewhere_! The stranger sitting at
+the next table, he's the one, surely. So you come to an understanding
+with him--after all he's _not_ the right one. It is most certainly not
+the fine ones. Because they take the trouble to possess us without
+taking the trouble to find out whether there's anything fine in us, too.
+So you keep on hunting. Perhaps you will meet him on the street. Finally
+it turns into fever, which wholly consumes you. Sometimes I can scarcely
+fall asleep in anticipation of the next dark evening when I shall rove
+about again. Now, do you see, I must be going to my ruin? When I saw
+your beautifully set table, all of a sudden a longing for my home and my
+husband came over me again. Yes, I sometimes have that longing. He has
+bleared eyes and he smells of carbolic acid. Oh, that vile smell! I'd
+like so to smell it again For all I care, he may even throw the
+stethoscope at me again. Besides, he wrote to me I should return to him
+If I want to, I can. _But_--I will remain here--and go to my ruin.
+Life's funny."
+
+She rose and groped for her hat and hatpins lying on the table.
+
+Lilly did not want to let her go in such a state of mind.
+
+"If you feel it is driving you to your ruin, that it's a poison in your
+blood, why don't you try to resist? Why don't you pluck it out of your
+system? Mere force of will must help some."
+
+"I've said that to myself," rejoined Mrs. Jula. "But I've never had
+anyone to whom I could speak about it and who could help me. Now I've
+found you, it will be easier for me. Now I feel I might be able to.
+Maybe I will."
+
+"Do you want to give me your promise?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand
+to her.
+
+"Yes, I promise," Mrs. Jula cried, and delightedly clapped her hand in
+Lilly's. "You will be my saviour. You are already. I feel it. To show my
+thanks I will stand guard over you and see to it that no one spoils you.
+You shan't get to be what I am, or the others."
+
+"Oh, I'll take care of myself," faltered Lilly.
+
+"Yes, that's what you say! But when the dreary void comes--and 'he'
+grows more and more insipid--just you see! You've nothing left to say to
+yourself--and you mustn't have children--for God's sake!--we _don't_
+have them--all of us know how to prevent them from coming. You mustn't
+share his activities with him either. He acquaints you with as many of
+them as he is compelled to. And behind it all you feel the hostility of
+his family, who look upon you as a species of harpy. Then those cursed
+schemes of his for marrying that he dishes up whenever he's angry. Above
+all, the longing. It's like a steady toothache. That's it--like the
+toothache. You don't want to think of it, but wherever you go, it
+tortures you. For life _cannot_ end that way. Something _must_ happen.
+It's much worse than if you're married. Just you wait and see."
+
+Mrs. Jula's wild words increased the pain at Lilly's heart. A desolate
+mournfulness threatened to attack her.
+
+"Stop," she said. "If it must come, it will come soon enough. I don't
+care to think of it beforehand."
+
+"Right you are, my dear. It doesn't help any, either."
+
+Mrs. Jula now took leave.
+
+"Will you remember your promise?" asked Lilly from the hall door.
+
+"Forever and ever, I swear to you," and Mrs. Jula slipped down the
+stairs.
+
+With her brain in a whirl Lilly returned to her dark drawing-room, sad
+and distraught, and leaned her head out of the open window for a whiff
+of fresh air.
+
+She saw the little woman, who had just emerged from the front entrance,
+lightly and gracefully trip along the pavement.
+
+A gentleman in a chimney-pot and patent leather shoes came towards her,
+passed her, started, stopped abruptly, turned about, and, when he
+reached her side, raised his hat with exaggerated politeness.
+
+In the light of the street-lamp Lilly saw her face smiling up at him
+curiously, insinuatingly--and then they went on their way--together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Richard reluctantly adapted himself to a less showy existence. He still
+wanted to parade his possession of Lilly; but little Mrs. Jula's homily
+had sunk deep into his conscience, and he did not dare to disobey her.
+
+Nevertheless he was bored and vexed and sulky, and Lilly was on the
+point of herself suggesting that they go to the races, when she received
+news of her mother's death.
+
+She shed the number of tears and suffered the amount of affliction
+befitting her tender heart. In reality her mother had been dead to her
+so long before that her grief could not be very profound.
+
+Before leaving Berlin to attend the burial at the insane asylum, her
+greatest concern was to have as simple a mourning dress made as
+possible. She felt ashamed that she had provided so poorly for her sick
+mother during her lifetime, and she wished to avoid giving offence by
+elegance of appearance; which did not prevent the officials and
+physicians of the institution from dancing attendance on her and
+treating her as if she were a sort of shining black bird of paradise.
+
+She spent three glowing spring evenings at the little heap of earth in
+prayer and meditation, and returned to Berlin in a serious frame of mind
+with thoughts stirred up like soil freshly turned by the plough.
+
+When at her mother's grave she felt she hated Richard; but when she
+found him awaiting her at the station she sank into his arms
+helplessly, eager for consolation. Now he really was her all.
+
+For the next few months it was taken for granted that her mourning stood
+in the way of pleasure seeking. Richard, it must be said to his credit,
+behaved sweetly and considerately. He sat at home with her many a night,
+read unintelligible books, played backgammon, and preferred falling
+asleep on the sofa to luring her into the world of gaiety.
+
+But since it was not right that he should become entirely estranged from
+society, it was arranged that he was to have every other evening for
+himself.
+
+His beautiful mistress's reputation had smoothed his path. Relying upon
+the support of two of her admirers, he ventured to apply for admission
+into one of the aristocratic clubs, which welcomed him without a single
+black ball. From now on he could enjoy the supreme delight of losing his
+firm's well-earned money to young scions of the aristocracy, foreign
+attaches, and other superior beings.
+
+Lilly disliked hearing of his losses. She worried over his annoyance,
+which he invariably revealed. Whenever he told of his bad luck, she felt
+constrained, and then offered to make up by saving even more than she
+had heretofore. Though he laughed each time and assured her that what
+she cost him signified as little as if he were to indulge in one
+additional cigarette a day, she clung to her conviction that she was a
+parasite, and was partly responsible for the welfare of Liebert &
+Dehnicke.
+
+When he spent a quiet evening with her resting from his nocturnal
+campaigns, they always "talked business." Lilly displayed a sharp sense
+for practical matters, even for accounts, and her artistic judgment was
+sure.
+
+Richard very often brought home drawings of models, and the two sat
+bent over the outspread rolls planning and consulting with each other
+like partners.
+
+Those were well-nigh blessed hours.
+
+Lilly never wearied of inquiring about the factory; how many people were
+employed there at that particular time; whether this or that man or
+woman was still working for him--she did not know the names, but
+designated the people by an accurate description of their
+appearance--what pieces were in process of making; and whether the
+supply of articles of one or other model had not yet given out, so
+thoroughly informed she kept herself as to the firm's sales.
+
+The factory, as she often jestingly remarked to Richard, was her unhappy
+love. To call for him at his office at closing time was her greatest
+delight, and had she been permitted to, she would have busied herself at
+the factory every day. But he objected. His employes knew of the close
+relationship between them, and he must avoid gossip and ridicule.
+
+Lilly felt sure this was not the only motive. She had long fully
+realised that his mother was not kindly disposed to her. Though at first
+he had spoken of her quite freely, he now evaded a reply when Lilly
+directly asked for her. Probably he feared exciting the old lady's
+indignation if he permitted his mistress to make herself at home in his
+office.
+
+So Lilly contented herself with sympathetic interest from afar in the
+welfare of the little kingdom.
+
+On the evenings she was left alone, at a loss what to do with herself,
+she got into the habit of visiting the house in Alte Jakobstrasse.
+
+She left a little before ten o'clock, and took up her station on the
+opposite side of the street, from where she gazed reverentially at the
+old grey structure. She admired the imitation marble columns, which
+formed a decorative frame about the entrance after the fashion of a
+Renaissance gateway. She stared up at the dimly lighted second story
+where his mother dwelt, and pressed timidly into the darkness of a
+doorway if she saw the threatening shadow of a woman's figure glide
+across the curtains.
+
+When it grew late and the tenants of the house ceased to come and go,
+she ventured to cross the street, mount the three front-door steps,
+press her face against the iron grating, and peep into the hall. The
+sheen of the leafy pyramid, the subdued milky whiteness of the Clytie
+bust, the dark glow of the stained glass window mingled to produce the
+mysterious, alluring impression of a dusky chapel.
+
+The front-door steps became like a goal of a pilgrimage up to which
+penitents crawl on their knees; the stained glass window became a
+heavenly aureole, the Clytie bust a benedictory saint.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late in the summer Richard was called to the manoeuvres.
+
+His letters were curt and reserved, and unsuccessfully concealed his ill
+humour. Finally they were dated from the hospital.
+
+He had fallen from his horse and his left knee joint was inflamed. He
+would be unable to ride for a long time, perhaps forever.
+
+He returned in October wearing a gutta percha knee cap, and promptly
+sent in his resignation from the regiment.
+
+The fall from his horse in truth was a fortunate incident. Rumours of
+his relation with the divorced wife of its former commander had reached
+the regiment. The comrades noticeably held aloof from him, and
+evidently his chiefs were merely awaiting confirmation of the report to
+call him to account officially; a procedure which in the circumstances
+would have brought his lieutenancy in the reserves to a catastrophal
+end.
+
+The accident was his salvation; and his object in adopting an irritated,
+reproachful manner in Lilly's presence was merely to make her aware of
+what he was sacrificing because of his love of her.
+
+Indirectly he had heard news of the colonel which filled Lilly with
+horror. It had gradually become a fixed idea of the colonel's that Anna
+von Schwertfeger had acted in collusion with Lilly and Von Prell; and
+man of violence that he was, he had chased her from his castle. Since
+then he lived alone, a maddened misanthrope, and it was feared he would
+come to a sad end.
+
+An ominous greeting from those sunny days of Lilly's past.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few months later that occurred which Mrs. Jula had prophesied: one day
+Richard spoke to Lilly of marrying another woman, not, however, for the
+purpose of annoying her, but because he had formed the habit of
+disburdening himself of every vexation by talking it over with her.
+
+His mother was entertaining an enormously wealthy orphan girl.
+
+Of course for Richard--wholly and entirely for Richard.
+
+She sat at table every day, a pale, strawy blond, and looked at him
+questioningly with great, strange eyes:
+
+"Aren't you soon going to propose?"
+
+His mother delivered long sermons. It could not go on the same way. A
+few more seasons like the last and all the respectable families would
+point the finger of scorn at him.
+
+It was enough to drive him distracted.
+
+Lilly felt as if glacial waters were trickling down her back.
+
+But she bore up bravely. She smiled at him, and betrayed no more
+excitement than if he had been consulting her about some doubtful
+factory model.
+
+"Do you feel you could get to love her?" she asked.
+
+"What does 'to love' mean?" he rejoined, avoiding her gaze.
+
+"Well, everything has to be taken into consideration."
+
+"You talk just as if I were serious about it," he cried. "Altogether you
+act as if you didn't care, as if you would like to be rid of me in a
+twinkling."
+
+With languid eagerness Lilly tried to assure him she did not wish to
+stand in his way, not in the least, least bit. She had only his
+happiness at heart, and if he cared to make her proud by showing
+confidence in her, he would not take this step, neither now nor later,
+without discussing it with her beforehand.
+
+He was touched. He kissed her and said:
+
+"Oh, it's nonsense."
+
+But the conversation left Lilly as in a nightmare, and the one thought
+obsessed her:
+
+"If he deserts me, I shall sink into the mire after all."
+
+Grief over her mother's death was a vanishing cloud compared with this
+torturing anguish.
+
+The vultures Mrs Jula had spoken of occurred to her, all those vultures
+with their white fronts and black dress suits, who were waiting to
+snatch her to themselves with their moneyed claws the instant her friend
+and protector abandoned her. From them her thoughts flitted to those
+other vultures in Kellermann's picture, who perched on the sunburnt
+rocks ready to pounce on the naked beauty when she should lose the
+strength to defend herself.
+
+"Her chains are her weapons," thought Lilly. "And that's the way it is
+with me. If I am set free, I am lost."
+
+The next day she and Richard carefully avoided the dangerous topic,
+though Richard remained distraught and uneasy.
+
+Finally Lilly took courage, and though her feelings compressed her
+throat like a murderous clutch, she said:
+
+"I see you haven't come to a decision yet, Richard. Wouldn't you like to
+bring me her picture, so that I can see what she is like? No one knows
+you so well as I do, and no one will know so well whether she suits you
+or not."
+
+Richard violently denied that he was undecided. What did _he_ care for
+that doll of a girl?
+
+But his resentment was disingenuous, and his eyes stared into vacancy.
+
+She had five millions.
+
+And the next day he actually brought the photograph.
+
+Lilly laid it down without unwrapping it. Mere contact with the picture
+made her hands tremble. She feared the first sight of the girl's face
+would expose her own great distress.
+
+"Why, you're not even looking at it," said Richard, with some
+disappointment in his tone.
+
+"Time enough after you've gone," said Lilly, rejoiced that she could
+smile so indifferently.
+
+She called to him when he was out in the hall:
+
+"I'll tell you to-morrow--you'll know then."
+
+The next instant she caught up the picture. Her heart knocked at her
+ribs. But first she had to wave "good-by" to Richard, as was her habit
+and duty.
+
+And then--and then--
+
+A girl's face, good, placid, somewhat peaked, with poor, though amiable
+eyes. Her blond hair was plaited country fashion, and the heavy braids,
+thick as a woman's wrist, drew her head back a bit. A timid smile
+played about her full lips.
+
+Something just to be loved, something which would revive with happiness
+as a spray of lilacs in fresh water. Not turbulent, none too
+gifted--wifely and yielding.
+
+Just what Richard needed.
+
+Lilly placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees in
+front of it. She prayed and wrestled with her soul.
+
+She had to reiterate again and again:
+
+"Just what he needs. He won't have another such chance."
+
+And the five millions!
+
+If she were not to set him free she would be one of those harpies which
+Mrs. Jula said the world of respectability considered her and her like
+to be.
+
+"But I am in possession, therefore mine is the right. What good are her
+five millions to me, if I go to ruin on account of them? Why need I
+sacrifice myself for him, for him or for anybody in the wide world?"
+
+"Harpy, harpy!" rang in between.
+
+So thought the vampires described in children's mythologies as having
+beautiful hair and murderous claws.
+
+"I will tear to shreds the flesh of him whom I possess."
+
+Oh, what a night!
+
+She crouched in bed with her knees drawn up and her face buried in her
+lap, sobbing, sobbing.
+
+At last, toward morning, she found what she had been seeking. Out of
+tears, out of bitterness, out of shuddering and prayer arose the
+alleviating resolve: that very afternoon when he came she would tell
+him--but no!--why wait until the afternoon? Why wait until he entered
+the rooms where the force of familiarity, his loving resistance might
+shiver the great sacrificial work to bits?
+
+It must be in some other place where she seemed more of a stranger to
+him, which she could leave the instant she felt his proximity caused her
+to waver.
+
+She was not allowed to visit him in his office without special
+permission. But at the midday recess, when it was quieter than at other
+times, he retired to his back room for his actual work of the day, and
+she might be sure of entering unseen and speaking to him without fear of
+interruption.
+
+So sacred a resolve sanctioned everything.
+
+She used the morning for assorting his letters and tying them together.
+She wanted to hand them to him along with his betrothed's picture when
+she bade him farewell. He need never fear she might cause him trouble in
+the future.
+
+Then she dressed--more carefully than usual--washed herself with milk of
+lilacs to remove the traces of tears, waved her hair, and drew it into a
+knot at the nape of her neck, as she had seen on statues of Greek women.
+She was their equal--like them, serenely raised above sorrow and joy.
+
+She drove to the office.
+
+The clock struck quarter past one when she stood in front of the
+columned gateway.
+
+Nobody was to be seen in the yard except the porter, who lifted his cap
+with a confidential smile.
+
+She was still their employer's mistress.
+
+If only she had taken the precaution to send in her card.
+
+The front office door was open as usual when he worked in the back room,
+and she well knew the secret spring of the gate in the railing.
+
+She prudently knocked at the inner door, which as a rule stood slightly
+ajar, but which to-day was closed.
+
+"Come in," he said.
+
+She stepped in and faced--his mother.
+
+Lilly had never seen her, and she had imagined her quite, quite
+different, a tall, thin, imposing old lady. Next to Richard's desk sat a
+medium-sized, rotund woman with a black lace cap on her grizzled hair.
+She looked at Lilly with an expression of surprise and displeasure in
+her cold, grey eyes.
+
+Lilly instantly knew it was she.
+
+Richard, who had been leaning back comfortably in his revolving chair,
+jumped to his feet.
+
+Rigid with fright, Lilly stared at the old lady, who now rose from her
+seat also, while an evil gleam of anger and contempt lighted up those
+cold eyes.
+
+"A fine state of affairs," she cried, turning her head jerkily from
+Richard to Lilly and back to Richard. "I'm not secure even in my own
+home. I beg of you, Richard, do not expose me to another meeting with a
+person of this sort."
+
+With an indignant snort she pushed past Lilly, who stood to one side in
+respectful terror.
+
+"What are you doing here? What do you mean by coming here in this way?"
+
+Richard had never shouted at her so before.
+
+He planted himself squarely in front of her, thrust his hands in his
+trousers' pockets, and gnawed the ends of his moustache. His head hung
+on his left shoulder. He looked like a treacherous, butting bull.
+
+She wanted to hand him the picture and the letters, tell him everything
+she had intended to; but her voice failed. Her knees threatened to give
+way.
+
+"I--I--I--" she faltered, and choked.
+
+"I--I--I--" he mimicked her. "I--I--I'd like to wriggle myself in here.
+I--I--I'd like to be mistress here--isn't that so? No, my little angel.
+This can't go on! It has to stop--at once! I've long had my suspicions
+of what you call your unhappy love of the factory. Get out of here! Get
+out of here, I say."
+
+Before he had finished Lilly was out.
+
+She still held the parcel in a convulsive grip.
+
+She reeled as she walked along--past bright red houses, which threatened
+to fall on her. A truck loaded with flour bags scattered white clouds. A
+pulley screeched in a factory yard. When someone came toward her, she
+made a wide detour, keeping to the edge of the pavement. She feared he
+might grin his contempt at her.
+
+A skein of silk thread lay on the pavement. Lilly picked it up, and
+thought of hanging herself.
+
+Something must be done.
+
+To be abandoned--very well--if it could not be helped. Each one, when
+her turn came, would have to resign herself to her fate.
+
+But to be chased away--thrown out--like a thief--like the vilest woman
+of the street--to be shaken off like a disgusting worm, to be spat upon!
+
+Something must be done.
+
+Anything to take revenge upon him.
+
+Even if he was now unsusceptible to her revenge--all the same! He would
+discover he had been to blame throughout. If she descended into the
+mire, which had heretofore filled her with horror, if she went to
+ruin--!
+
+Something must be done--any deed of self-degradation which made her fit
+to be treated in that way and no other--and freed her from those
+torments--those torments.
+
+Her heart hung in her breast like a painful swelling. She could have
+drawn a line about it, so sharply defined it was against her side. It
+seemed to be in the clutch of sharp claws.
+
+Again those lurking vultures occurred to her, the vultures of
+Kellermann's picture.
+
+They were waiting for Lilly Czepanek. For whom else?
+
+Suddenly something flashed and hissed in her brain like a tongue of
+fire.
+
+That was it! That was it!
+
+She summoned a cab.
+
+On! On!
+
+Whither?
+
+She ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to Mr.
+Kellermann's studio.
+
+She ran up the steps, the same steps down which eight months before she
+had glided at Richard's side rocked in bliss. All a-tremble she stepped
+into the dark anteroom, which had the stuffy smell of a badly aired
+bedroom. Her hand almost failed her as she knocked at the studio door.
+
+Mr. Kellermann in his breeches and slippers was squatting on the floor
+beside the Turkish tabouret in exactly the same position as at her first
+visit. He was busied with a coffee machine, and looked contented and
+seedy.
+
+"Mercy on us!" he said, and drew the collar of his night-shirt together.
+"What signifies this sudden appearance, O noble goddess? Are the suns
+setting again?"
+
+Lilly did not reply. She laid her hat and wraps on a chair, and began to
+unhook her waist, looking about for a screen. There was none.
+
+The models who came to pose for Mr. Kellermann were not squeamish.
+
+He jumped up and stared at her.
+
+When he realised what she meant to do, he broke into exclamations of
+delight.
+
+"What did I say? What did I say? I said you'd come. You see! We've
+reached the point at which we're screaming to be set free."
+
+"I'm not screaming," she replied, drawing up the corners of her mouth
+disdainfully. "If you please, look somewhere else."
+
+He made a dash for the picture leaning against the wall in its blind
+frame, blew the dust off, drove the wedge in tight, and adjusted the
+easel, laughing all the while, and grunting:
+
+"She came after all."
+
+Lilly had torn off her outer garments and was pulling at the drawing
+ribbon of her chemise. Her paralysed fingers could scarcely untie the
+knot.
+
+Now she stood entirely unclothed.
+
+The garish studio light pricked her flesh painfully as with a thousand
+needles.
+
+She wanted to groan and creep into a corner, but she turned her clenched
+fists outward, threw back her shoulders, and presented herself to the
+painter's greedy gaze.
+
+"Why don't you begin?" she asked. As she spoke she felt that her
+smarting scorn was distorting her face.
+
+"I'll begin immediately," he stammered, choking over each word. "I won't
+utter--a syllable--or the vision will vanish. I'll begin."
+
+He snatched up the palette, pressed the tubes, and readjusted the
+picture on the easel.
+
+He made a few strokes, then threw the brushes down. He reeled like a
+drunkard.
+
+"No use this way," he said, mumbling to himself. "You must pose."
+
+"Just as you wish," she replied, still with that mocking smile, and
+stretched out her arms like the beauty of the picture.
+
+He was not yet satisfied, and wanted to approach her. He did not dare
+to.
+
+"I will move the mirror, so that you can see for yourself what is wrong
+in your pose."
+
+He did so.
+
+Lilly shuddered. A strange wild animal, which was not even beautiful,
+seemed to be standing there.
+
+"Not right yet," she heard him say. "The attitude is meaningless--you've
+got to know what it's for."
+
+He went to the back of the studio and rummaged among all sorts of gear
+and fetched out a tremendously thick chain, the colour of rusty iron,
+which did not clank while being handled.
+
+"It won't be cold and won't weigh you down," he said with a short,
+forced laugh. "It's made of papier mache."
+
+Then she had to suffer his coming close to her and laying the chain
+about her body.
+
+He was panting and his breath streamed upon her hotly.
+
+Each tremulous touch of his fingers was like a sabre slash.
+
+He returned to the easel, groped for the brushes and began to paint
+again.
+
+Suddenly he cast everything from him, seized the picture with both hands
+and dashed it against the easel. One of the rods tore through the canvas
+and split it in two.
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.
+
+He threw himself upon her.
+
+She feebly attempted to defend herself with the chain.
+
+But the chain was made of papier mache.
+
+And she would not have had it otherwise.
+
+Down into the mire, quickly, with closed eyes!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day Richard paid his customary afternoon visit. His lids were
+reddened and his eyes glassy. He looked completely crushed, but he
+behaved as if nothing had occurred.
+
+Lilly had scarcely expected him, and she received him with frigid
+astonishment.
+
+"Oh," he said, "on account of yesterday. After you left I had a tough
+discussion with mama. You mustn't come to the factory. I had to promise
+her that. As for the rest, I think we'll not speak of it any more. The
+young lady's leaving this evening. So let's kiss."
+
+They kissed. And all was as before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Once more the chestnuts put on their yellow cloaks and the peep holes in
+the foliage widened. From her window Lilly could see the ducks foraging,
+and the odorous, fruit-laden barges on their laborious way to market
+sunk deep in the water under their summer cargo.
+
+Once more the world muffled itself up for winter weather; once more
+metropolitan amusements turned on their gay lights.
+
+In decent half-mourning the chase began again. Richard objected to
+remaining like a pickle in a jar.
+
+This time, however, they entirely renounced box seats at dazzling shows
+and suppers at aristocratic restaurants. Richard no longer had to
+establish himself triumphantly in the possession of a famous--at the
+same time cheap--_horizontale de grande marque_. They quietly remained
+on a middle-class level, where German champagne reigns supreme and the
+star Kempinski is in the ascendant.
+
+But here, too, in cabarets and theatres where smoking is allowed, in
+jolly little nooks and respectable looking back rooms, they passed
+numberless hours in riotous abandon.
+
+The women, who in the other world had felt somewhat out of place and
+embarrassed, enjoyed themselves better in these more modest
+surroundings, and the gentlemen were content that their shirt fronts
+retained the starch longer.
+
+The personnel remained about the same. Only a few dandies dropped away,
+who saw no fun in life unless it offered them an occasional opportunity
+to receive a condescending nod from a few lieutenants of the Guard in
+citizens' clothes.
+
+Lilly followed the crowd, and thought it had to be so.
+
+For the most part she sat there saying little and smiling a friendly
+smile. She permitted the gentlemen to pay her court and was moderately
+responsive. She listened indifferently to the confidences of the ladies,
+all of whom were well-disposed to her, because as everyone soon
+realised, Lilly had no desire to poach on another's preserves.
+
+They might have taken her to be limited or phlegmatic, if from time to
+time the champagne had not relaxed her rigidity and enlivened her with a
+different spirit. She slowly came out of her state of torpor. Her eyes
+flashed, her cheeks reddened. She laughed aloud, made madcap remarks,
+told the colonel's club jokes, and finally fell into a sort of ecstasy,
+in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous chirp, imitated well-known
+actors, and even danced the bold dances she had seen on the variety
+stage.
+
+Her memory was incredibly good. She remembered things she had heard only
+once, and quite unconsciously, for in her normal state she recalled even
+less than others. The wine first had to wash away the barriers that
+always hemmed her being.
+
+Her associates soon became aware of this, and tried to trick her into
+the condition that promised them a merry entertainment. But she resisted
+with all her might. She waged constant warfare without even Richard as
+an ally. It flattered his vanity to have his beautiful mistress admired
+because of her talents.
+
+The next day Lilly always felt bruised and battered and despondent.
+
+And sometimes when the field of her spiritual vision was completely
+filled with red, kicking legs and the empty teasing dribble of comic
+songs, she heard a still small voice in admonition:
+
+"There was a time when you lived otherwise. There was a time when you
+aspired to the heights."
+
+But Lilly feared to listen to this voice.
+
+She felt she was worthless because she was defenceless.
+
+And because nobody was there who understood her and held out his hand to
+her.
+
+Frequently, on the evenings she was left to herself, she slipped out of
+the house as if she were committing an evil deed, and took a seat in the
+gallery of some good theatre, where she thought no one would recognise
+her; or at a concert, among the music students, who sat on the steps or
+leaned against the railings, following the selections with thick scores
+in their hands. Lilly behaved as if she were one of them.
+
+But concerts no longer touched her. She felt uneasy and out of place,
+and turned her attention to some young man because of his bold profile
+or his fine head of hair.
+
+"He is one of those favoured talented persons," she thought, tormented,
+and looked at him long and languishly, until he returned her dallying
+with ardour.
+
+Though she burned to have him speak to her, she lacked the courage to
+grant him additional signs of her favour, having before her eyes Mrs.
+Jula's appalling example. Besides, the throbbing of her heart was
+sufficient enjoyment.
+
+Already she was so completely under the spell of an erotic world that
+every excitement of her mood was immediately transmuted into a desirous
+love game.
+
+And the longing, that eternal toothache, of which Mrs. Jula had spoken,
+had begun to drill her nerves.
+
+It had come like a thief in the night. It filled her sleep with flaming
+pictures and converted her waking hours into a twilight doze.
+
+She waited, but nobody came. Nobody took the trouble to pick up her lost
+soul from out of the dust.
+
+There was only one man who observed her and seemed to have a suspicion
+of what was taking place in her soul.
+
+He was Dr. Salmoni.
+
+Dr. Salmoni was considered a great man, one of the luminaries in
+Berlin's intellectual life. He was editor of an art magazine, which had
+once conducted a revolutionary campaign against the great men of the old
+school, and had fashioned new gods, erected new altars at which the
+masses might burn incense. But the steady burning of incense was not in
+Dr. Salmoni's line. He promptly bethought himself that the divinities
+before whom every Tom, Dick, or Harry was crawling on his knees, were,
+at bottom, creations of his and of his friends, fetiches to be rejected,
+just as they had been exalted. And he began a merry war upon them also.
+People easily endured Dr. Salmoni's hate; his quips sputtered in the air
+harmless as skyrockets; nobody believed his imputations. The only time
+he was dangerous was when he showed pitying benevolence. Then somebody's
+reputation was surely at stake. In certain circles Dr. Salmoni's praise
+was equivalent to a death sentence.
+
+As in the previous winter, the distinguished Dr. Salmoni condescended
+every now and then to take part in the innocent sport of the little
+circle whose forte was not exactly intellectuality. His appearance
+always caused a flutter of joyous reverence; the company instantly moved
+closer to make place for him, and as soon as he leaned back gently in
+his chair, smiled his sad, compassionate smile, and stroked the peak of
+his light-brown Van Dyke beard, they hung on his lips expectantly
+awaiting a titillating stream of spiteful sallies.
+
+But the jester's role did not always suit him. He plunged into profound
+tete-a-tetes, or dreamed in silence, according to his mood. Sometimes he
+even showed a naive, trusting side of his nature, like a leopard playing
+with dogs.
+
+He seldom addressed Lilly; but his piercing eyes often glided over her
+face, as if to spy upon her feelings and grope about in her soul.
+
+One evening he seated himself next to her, and asked her to cut his meat
+for him--he had strained his wrist throttling a certain celebrity.
+Waxing more intimate, he next asked her to feed him, though his left
+hand had by no means been disabled.
+
+So for the first time they entered into a conversation.
+
+Lilly quailed. She feared she might not acquit herself creditably.
+
+"I am surprised," he said. "You've been going about with this loud crew
+for over a year, and I don't read the slang in your eyes yet."
+
+"Slang in my eyes? What do you mean by slang in a person's eyes?"
+
+"Do me the favour to regard the women here." He pointed furtively at
+Mrs. Jula, Mrs. Welter, Karla, and a few others. "Look at the way they
+roll their eyes and exchange glances. It's the lingo of a--well, I won't
+say vice--I despise words without nuance--I'll say of a thievish fancy.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"I think so," faltered Lilly.
+
+"But you still have some of the childlike expression you had when you
+made your debut. Not altogether. A fleck of disdain is in your eyes.
+Disdain is not the right word. At the edge of deserts there are certain
+salt seas--dark green and empty. Do you catch the idea? Because the
+ground is poisonous."
+
+"Possibly," said Lilly, constrained.
+
+"Nevertheless, it's wonderful. Your soul's like a filter. It assimilates
+nothing but what it wants to. Or have you a secret store to draw on,
+which gives you the right to mock at us--some constant ideal--some goal
+in the hazy distance--some great song--a Song of Songs?"
+
+Lilly started up with a faint outcry, but not so faint as to fail to
+attract general attention.
+
+"I merely stepped on her foot," Dr. Salmoni explained, "and she is still
+innocent enough _not_ to consider it unintentional."
+
+All laughed.
+
+"A joke exactly suited to their understanding," he whispered, bending
+toward her shoulder. "I'll pretend not to have heard your involuntary
+avowal. That alone has value in my estimation which is voluntary. And I
+will not ask you as I did a year ago: 'What is thy quest here, lovely
+lady?' I will ask you: 'What hast thou to lose here?' I myself will
+furnish the answer. Your style--you have your style to lose. You are on
+the point of becoming styleless; which is always a misfortune and a
+crime. To me style is virtue, greatness, genuineness, force, religion, a
+God-ordained quality--all in one and a few things more. Remain bodily
+and spiritually intangible. Rise to a healthy, gladsome vice--_tant
+mieux_. Dress your hair for evening prayers, or let it flow over the
+pillow like a bacchante--but decide which."
+
+"I believe a moment ago you were pleading for nuance," said Lilly, the
+edge of whose wit was sharpened by his, "and now you're advocating a
+dogma."
+
+"Hear, hear!" he praised her. "Excellent. But no. I'm not preaching a
+dogma. I'm preaching the exercise of one's will, the will to
+personality. Do you understand? The result will be rich enough in
+nuances. Undoubtedly you have the material in you for a _grande
+amoureuse_, but alas not the courage."
+
+"Well, then, not the material," she flashed back happily.
+
+He laughed like a child.
+
+"In one's old age one gets lectures on logic from little, virtuous
+women." He magnanimously allowed her the pleasure of having outdone him
+in repartee.
+
+Thereafter Lilly reflected much upon the conversation. What a vast deal
+he knew of her! Was he in alliance with supernatural powers?
+
+"The will to personality," he had said.
+
+She felt blissful. Up to the heights again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On another occasion, as they were walking behind their companions along
+Friederichstrasse, still gaily alive at midnight, he adopted a different
+tone.
+
+"I have a sure feeling that you are afraid of me," he said.
+
+"I?" she queried, confused and drawing a deep breath. "Why should I be?"
+
+"Because you know I have a message for you, a message to which, in the
+bottom of your heart, you don't feel equal."
+
+"I don't understand," she stammered, though she fully took in his
+meaning. She knew precisely what role he could play in her life if--
+
+"I am a man who likes tones pianissimo. I don't care to blow my
+sensations on a comb. Otherwise your ears might have tingled on certain
+occasions. However, I must say, it's abominable to see a woman like you,
+a woman created to wander on the heights of thought and enjoyment,
+seduced by a few Bismarck herrings into cutting capers with them. I
+won't mention names, but I assure you, you can't get drunk on lukewarm
+dish water, and intoxication is the great thing in life, at least while
+our blood runs lively in our veins."
+
+Lilly trembled on his arm.
+
+They were passing a crowd of roysterers, young fellows shouldering their
+canes, with swimming eyes dreaming into space. One whistled Wagner,
+another sang a students' song; and sweet little street-walkers cast
+longing, seductive glances at them. Lilly and Dr. Salmoni passed more
+people, adults and half-grown girls, men and youths. All seemed under
+the spell of the same transport. It was like a great dance, at which
+each offered his neighbour hand and mouth and body and soul.
+
+"What can I do?" she whispered, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.
+
+"I will tell you," he replied with a smile which harboured dark
+promises. "You must learn to live another life along with this one. One
+all for yourself, for yourself and a few select. Do you understand? As a
+Frenchman once said, you must lay out a secret garden, in which you will
+cultivate in absolute quiet those thoughts and desires that seem dear to
+you, and above all, those that seem to be forbidden and those that you
+have stolen by the way, no matter how. Do you understand?"
+
+"Whatever I have stolen has brought me misfortune," said Lilly,
+hesitatingly.
+
+"Rather the law which calls it stolen. The distinction is a difficult
+one to make. However, you may believe me in this: so long as we are not
+permeated with the religion of self-exaltation--do you understand me,
+child?--so long as we haven't rooted out the words 'attachment' and
+'duty' from our thoughts, our road is not perfect. We continue to knock
+our toes on the crushed stones that the others heap up ahead of us under
+the pretext that they are levelling the way."
+
+"Sometimes they do," said Lilly, recalling all the good things she had
+received from Richard.
+
+He smiled at her with compassionate indulgence.
+
+"You seem to be suffering from what I call chain madness."
+
+"What is that?" asked Lilly, suspecting, to her dismay, that he again
+divined what lay in her innermost being. Could he know of the shameful
+role that a certain chained beauty had played in her life?
+
+"It is said," he continued, "that if galley slaves who have worn chains
+for many years are liberated, they cannot endure their freedom. They
+complain that their arms and legs have been chopped off. They miss the
+support and weight of their chains. You have such beautiful arms for
+stretching upward. Just exercise them a little."
+
+"And such long legs for running away," she supplemented with a tortured
+laugh. "The only question is: Whither?"
+
+"Oh, oh! Why run away immediately?" he asked, stroking her hand, which
+rested on his arm, and speaking as to a child. "You would simply run
+into the arms of another so-called duty. First you must be free
+inwardly. You must first forget to fetch and carry for persons who are
+themselves meant to fetch and carry."
+
+"Teach me," she burst out.
+
+"I will bring you some books," he said, as if deliberating, "books which
+will lead you back to yourself. To-morrow at noon, I will--"
+
+At that moment they were separated.
+
+In bed Lilly lay with clasped hands smiling up at the ceiling.
+
+She was again aspiring to the heights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the next day when he was to come, dread fell upon her again, dread
+of him, of Richard, of herself.
+
+It was the first secret visit, the first to knock a breach in the peace
+of her home.
+
+When she saw him step from the cab with several volumes in his arm, she
+flew into the kitchen and told the maid to say she was not at home.
+
+But the instant he left she seized the books which he had brought.
+
+Some were printed in Roman type and looked dreadfully scientific.
+However, they were intelligible, and Lilly took up one after the other.
+What she read sent the blood coursing turbulently through her veins, and
+mounted to her head like sweet wine.
+
+All the books spoke of the "will to power," "the free man," "the right
+to live one's life," "the religion of passion," and similar things. In
+each pure beauty was extolled as the goal of human endeavours; in each
+the word "individuality" recurred numberless times in numberless
+connections. Each taught you to look down upon your fellow-beings with
+vigorous pride, and despise them as a blunted, debased, tortured and
+enslaved mass. In each you wandered along in blessed solitude--or in the
+company of a very few like-minded, noble souls--on free wind-swept
+mountain heights surrounded by an eternally bright ether.
+
+It was a constant offering of incense, an insatiable lashing of oneself
+into satiety, pleasant murder, hymn-singing rape. The main subjects
+invariably were intoxication, dreams, life's festivals, and ecstasy.
+
+Thus, a veil of intoxication and dreams was spread over Lilly's soul.
+She felt she was enveloped in a sapphire haze shot with the purple of a
+distant glow. She heard hot, wrathful music storming onward in discords
+like maenads tearing down every hindrance in their way. She felt she was
+climbing up perpendicular rocks, ever higher, ever higher, fighting the
+whole time against the dizziness which threatened to cast her back into
+the abyss. But she did not sink. She clung to the edge, which bruised
+her hands, and laughed down--laughed--laughed--at the sorry wretches
+there below crawling along in flocks, permitting themselves to be ground
+to death for their bit of daily bread.
+
+Then she felt sorry that she alone had scaled such heights, that she
+alone should be up there enjoying the wild, golden sunlight, while all
+the others little conceived that deliverance was at hand. She wanted to
+hold out her hand to her poor, starving brothers and sisters and draw
+them up after her. But they could not understand her message of
+salvation--he had said "message of salvation." She saw wasting faces,
+dank with the sweat of death; glassy eyes unable to turn from the
+gleaming penny, their pay. She saw pregnant bodies, swollen yet
+emaciated.
+
+The working woman in Richard's wrapping room recurred to her. She
+recalled her hands flying in feverish haste about the swaying doll. She
+and others recurred to Lilly, with the timid hate and the hopeless
+yearning in their weary eyes.
+
+Her unhappy love for the factory, which she thought had been
+extinguished forever on that day of shame, awoke within her again, as a
+quiet, painful tenderness, like the spring anticipations that tremble in
+us when the February snows begin to melt.
+
+This, to be sure, was hardly the sense or purpose of Dr. Salmoni's
+books. But they served another purpose most admirably. Her faint
+toothache rose to a veritable anguish. The desire for a man, any man not
+Richard, who understood her and swept her along with him, overwhelmed
+her with such force that she could only twist this way and that and feel
+she would perish under the lash.
+
+Somewhere the "one" was surely to be found. Was it not possible for a
+favouring wave in this sea of humanity to toss him to her feet?
+
+One evening she put on simple, dark clothes--she might have been taken
+for a seamstress returning from work--and slipped down the street, as
+she used to when Richard's house drew her to it with a thousand secret
+threads.
+
+Since she was unskilled in strolling about aimlessly and needed a goal,
+she listened to the voice of her newly awakened love, and took the
+accustomed route to Alte Jakobstrasse. On the way she shudderingly
+avoided two old beaux and a fresh clerk.
+
+The latticed gates of the famous marble-columned portal cried an iron
+"Halt!"
+
+She stood a long time pressed up against her old door on the opposite
+side of the street, and stared at the house to which fate had anchored
+her.
+
+Lights were burning in his mother's room.
+
+The two gas jets of the chandelier resembled her cold, clear eyes. The
+rest of the jets were not turned on, probably from motives of economy.
+
+Of the factory nothing was to be seen save the dark top of the chimney
+towering above the roof of the house in front.
+
+A sorry greeting. Nevertheless a greeting. She would have liked to say
+"How do you do?" to the beloved staircase also. But she no longer dared
+to cross the street.
+
+Then, as if after a good deed accomplished, she turned homeward feeling
+at ease.
+
+She repeated the visit three times in the course of the week. She began
+to feel that the aimless journeys were a life necessity.
+
+Once, just as she was disposing herself comfortably in her protecting
+doorway, an elegant slim gentleman, who evidently had come the same way
+behind her, stopped and raised his hat.
+
+Dr. Salmoni.
+
+Lilly in her fright nearly forgot to return his greeting.
+
+If he were to betray her to Richard! Richard would assume that jealousy,
+or even worse, had driven her there.
+
+"Well, well," began Dr. Salmoni, complacently rolling the words in his
+mouth. "It strikes me as somewhat touching that we should meet directly
+opposite Liebert & Dehnicke. As you know, I'm a gentle nature, a soul in
+socks, as it were. So I refrain from asking you what stirrings of your
+heart prompted you to come here. You know the fairy-tale of the queen
+who sallied forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd.
+Thus a pearl may stray into a bronze ware factory. I should not have
+permitted myself to follow you intentionally. I was seduced by a certain
+play of lines and curves. Perhaps a certain suspicion of brilliance
+shone through--but a young pheasant should not be shot out of season.
+Let your fruit ripen, is a very sound motto, and not only with respect
+to _soi-disant_ love. But it's questionable whether mottoes are worth
+the while. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of
+Virginia tobacco, and Virginia tobacco smells, and is celebrated far and
+wide _because_ it smells. Do you get my profound meaning?"
+
+"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen
+here!"
+
+"Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing
+with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume
+that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you
+wish."
+
+He offered her his arm. She declined.
+
+They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther
+west side.
+
+He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire
+set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally
+forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play
+of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and
+her sorry existence.
+
+But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He
+merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it.
+
+He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head
+downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk
+necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked.
+Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that
+she was being stroked tenderly.
+
+When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to
+contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always
+thought the same, it seemed to her.
+
+He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from
+country life, extolled discreet horseback rides _a deux_, and the
+transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been
+present at all the events of her life.
+
+"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation.
+"I know it all."
+
+Oh, if his past had been similar!
+
+So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.
+
+When he began to speak of the books he had brought her--he
+considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had
+called--she ventured a languid resistance.
+
+"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"The books confuse and sicken me--I don't know. You said they would lead
+me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing
+strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.
+
+"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing.
+"Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a
+higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time
+there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual
+craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is
+really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must
+accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for
+enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows
+and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of
+miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom
+they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But
+scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they
+took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death--on account
+of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same
+to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral
+exactions."
+
+Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.
+
+Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to
+withdraw it.
+
+They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark masses a
+lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings
+stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel
+streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.
+
+"We're going out of the way of society. And if I wanted to exploit the
+present conjuncture of circumstances I should profit by your being lost,
+your feeling that you need protection. But I'm not a calculating nature.
+In matters of emotion I'm like a child. I take whatever the heavens rain
+down on me. Aren't you the same way?"
+
+"I'm too heavy," replied Lilly, ready to bare her soul to him. "I'm full
+of scruples. I think a lot over everything."
+
+"The question is _what_ you think," he said gaily.
+
+She wanted to reply and talk to him--tell him all her thoughts. She felt
+like holding out her heart on her open palm, so that nothing should
+remain concealed from him. But shame before his great wisdom sealed her
+lips.
+
+"Why do you take the trouble to bother with a stupid thing like me?" she
+asked, to show him her humility at least.
+
+"Perhaps because I have a mission to fulfil in your life. 'Perhaps,' I
+say, because one can never be sure whether there is such a thing as
+reflex action of the emotions. Certain _moments psychologiques_ will
+teach us."
+
+Though his meaning was not at all clear to Lilly, a hesitating sense of
+happiness stole over her that so mighty a man should actually concern
+himself with her.
+
+"You are entirely in his power," she thought, "and you will be whatever
+he wants you to be."
+
+At that moment he drew her arm a little closer, and her pressure in
+response brought his hand for an instant on her breast.
+
+She was overwhelmed with fright. He might think she was offering herself
+to him. If he were to take her home, were to ask--
+
+"I'd like to get into a tram," she faltered. "I'm very tired."
+
+He whistled for a cab, which just then came swaying out of the fog.
+
+"No, no," she burst out, thinking of nothing but that she must not
+lightly forego the joy of his friendship. "Not with you--I must go home
+alone--on account--"
+
+She tore her arm from his and ran to the next stopping place so quickly
+that he was just about able to reach her before she jumped on the first
+tram that came along. She scarcely said good-by.
+
+The smile with which he looked after her was by no means melancholy.
+
+He might, he should triumph.
+
+She, Lilly Czepanek, was once again aspiring to the heights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later they met again; this time in a large company which had
+visited a _cafe chantant_, and was to wind up the evening at a
+respectable bodega.
+
+Unluckily somebody else took the seat at her side, which she had
+carefully reserved for him.
+
+That upset her.
+
+The champagne heated up everybody's spirits.
+
+Lilly, out of spite and boredom, drank more than was good for her.
+
+Provocative merriness burned in her eyes. Her cheeks took on the Baldwin
+apple hue that they all dearly loved. Her laughter rang out clear, her
+body moved more nonchalantly.
+
+Suddenly she heard a general outcry: "Lilly! Lilly! We want Lilly!"
+
+Terror stopped her pulse.
+
+She had never ventured to perform in his presence. In fact, she had not
+been asked to when he had been there, for then _he_ formed the centre of
+attraction.
+
+But she felt:
+
+"I can do it to-day. To-day I will show him what I am."
+
+She rose, brushed her hair from her forehead, and gave herself a little
+shake, as was her wont when she jerked aside the everyday Lilly, the
+craven-hearted Lilly, the Lilly of the oppressed feelings, the Lilly who
+feared to face her fellow-beings, the stiff-jointed Lilly.
+
+She made a dash and began.
+
+First she imitated the beautiful Otero, and crowed and cuckooed. Her
+auditors rolled with laughter. Then she hit off certain cabaret stars.
+Sucking her fingers like an innocent babe, she sang in flute tones:
+"Please let me in your room."
+
+She croaked in a droll, bull-frog bass: "Once I was ambassador," and
+peeping from behind the clothes rack she cooed the song of the
+passionate dove: "Coo--coo--coo--kiek!"
+
+They insisted on her concluding with a fandango. She protested. In vain.
+
+They shoved the tables against the wall, and Lilly, making her own music
+through her teeth, whirled about the room more madly than ever before,
+and finally collapsed in a corner almost swooning.
+
+The tumult of applause promised never to subside.
+
+The women kissed her again and again, the men stroked her hair and arms,
+the stiff district attorney sounded a trumpet blast, and Richard, quite
+pale with pride, stood there in his Napoleon attitude, tugging at his
+moustache.
+
+But Dr. Salmoni remained at a distance, sad and modest, as if it all
+concerned him not in the least.
+
+The only sign by which she knew he realised it was all meant for him was
+a rapid glance of understanding which he threw to her like a laurel
+wreath.
+
+She was still rocking in the tempest when the company prepared to break
+up.
+
+That had been intoxication, the sort of which he had spoken. It hissed
+like a flame through her heart and limbs.
+
+Dr. Salmoni himself helped her on with her fur coat--Richard was busy
+paying the waiter--and while he deliberately laid the sable scarf about
+her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear:
+
+"May I come to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," she screamed, alarmed at herself.
+
+Then in defiance of her own cowardice, she turned abruptly on her heels
+and shouted sharply, as in anger, directly in his face:
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"
+
+"What's the matter?" everybody asked.
+
+She merely laughed shortly. What did she care for the others? Wasn't she
+aspiring to the heights again?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning it was all a spectral dream. The one clear point was:
+"He's coming."
+
+With the applause still ringing in her ears she had stretched herself
+and thought:
+
+"Now he knows what I am. Now he knows I'm no dull, shrivelled, half-way
+creature for the valleys, no slave nature, no sheep that runs with the
+flock, no Mrs. Grundy-made fool, who voluntarily conforms to each and
+every convention. Now he knows I'm a free, proud woman, who, like
+himself, drinks in the light on the heights, one of those complete
+women, those maenads who dance a wild dance over abysms and mock at death
+even when he has them in his clutches."
+
+Then her faintheartedness crept over her again. What after all had she
+done besides drink herself into a champagne mood, sing a few comic
+songs, and dance an abandoned dance? She had behaved like a music-hall
+danseuse, and had harvested the very doubtful approval of a
+semi-intoxicated audience.
+
+If that alone was required for belonging to the elect, to the mighty,
+laughing, chosen ones, of whom Dr. Salmoni's books spoke!
+
+No, oh, no! After last night's performance he could feel nothing but
+contempt for her, or, at most, pity. It was to tell her this to her face
+that he would come to visit her, if at all. He would let her feel her
+lowness and then go his own way, benevolent but untouched.
+
+She would not suffer him to go. She would cling to him and cry:
+
+"You promised to lead me up to the heights out of these depths of
+distress, out of this insipid existence, out of this void! Be true to
+your word. Do not desert me. I will do whatever you wish. I will be your
+thing, your creature. But don't desert me."
+
+In feverish expectancy she dressed, waved her hair, and rouged her lips,
+pale from nights of pleasure. She made herself as beautiful as she
+could.
+
+A little before twelve the bell rang.
+
+He?
+
+No. Mrs. Jula.
+
+As if by mutual agreement she and Mrs. Jula had avoided each other since
+that evening of confidences. And now, without having announced her
+visit, here she stood, wearing her most cordial expression, and asking
+for a brief interview.
+
+Lilly hesitated.
+
+"Really I shan't keep you long, my dear. I understand--you're expecting
+some one."
+
+"Not that I know of," replied Lilly, aware she was blushing.
+
+"Don't deny it. Dr. Salmoni is coming. I know the joke. I once stood the
+same way, pale one instant, the next instant red, and waited for him.
+The only difference is, my house gown wasn't such an angelic red. I was
+plain Bordeaux red. All the same to him. He takes us in Bordeaux red,
+too."'
+
+"What do you mean?" Lilly faltered.
+
+"What do I mean? Do you know what our circle with all our pretty legeres
+women is to Dr. Salmoni? It's a sort of fishing pool, where he angles
+from time to time to land something for which he just then happens to
+have an appetite. There you have it, my dear!"
+
+"That's slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He's never made approaches
+to me. We've never so much as mentioned the word love to each other."
+
+"No need," replied Mrs. Jula, and laughed exultingly. "He doesn't bother
+with such petty things. He knows when the time comes we shall swim into
+his net without it."
+
+Lilly felt herself getting still angrier.
+
+"We've always spoken of pure, noble things, of a proud humanity. And if
+you and your like cannot understand his language, if you insist--"
+
+"One moment, my dear," Mrs. Jula interrupted her. "No need to be
+insulting. I came to you out of good motives. As for the others--it was
+_toute meme chose_ to me. I even licked my chops. But _you_, I love
+you, even if you don't want to have anything to do with me. _You_ he's
+to leave as you are. And last night, when I saw how far things had gone,
+I couldn't quiet down. I had to come to you before he--"
+
+"Really, you're mistaken," said Lilly, though unable to refrain from a
+furtive glance at the clock.
+
+Mrs. Jula, upon whom the glance was not lost, made a little grimace.
+
+"Never mind. When the bell rings I'll slide out through the guest room.
+But before then I am in hopes of having completed my work. See here,
+child"--she seated herself at one end of the sofa and drew Lilly down
+beside her--"why, all of us poor women crave to rise again, or once did,
+when like you we were tolerably faithful to the one. At the
+psychological moment, enter Dr. Salmoni. He doesn't have to work so hard
+for some of us, but he seems to like it. He must first salivate on us
+like an adder on a sparrow. He has various methods. With a cold mug like
+Karla, of course, he behaves very differently from the way he behaves
+with such as you or me. To us he says in the beginning: 'I cannot get
+over my astonishment at seeing you in these surroundings. Tell me, what
+seek you here?'"
+
+Lilly started.
+
+"Well, did he, or didn't he?"
+
+"Yes--but--"
+
+"Very well, yes. That's all I want to know. Then he describes the
+dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet
+abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully
+particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it
+went?"
+
+"Yes--but--" stammered Lilly.
+
+"Good. Then _he_ will deliver us. _He_ will guide us. He's the mountain
+guide ordained. 'Upward--up to the heights!' _N'est-ce pas?_"
+
+Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame.
+
+"Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature
+little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we
+all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It
+quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that
+we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the
+mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we're such
+sheep, and he's so clever--so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give
+the devil his due."
+
+"But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield
+him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our
+entire past with us?"
+
+"Yes, child. People in similar circumstances usually have similar
+experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past--of those of us who came
+from the country. I'm a landed proprietor's daughter. Didn't he tell you
+in a by-the-way that he had passed a great part of his youth in
+castles?"
+
+Lilly assented.
+
+"Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased
+estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was
+saucy."
+
+In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing.
+
+"Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well
+feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because
+afterwards, oh, how it hurts!"
+
+"Yes, tell me, how is it--afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.
+
+"Very simple. After he's gotten what he wants, finis. He buttons up his
+coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, '_au revoir_,' but there
+never is a _revoir_. You never see him again."
+
+"Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can't treat a woman
+so currishly."
+
+"You--_never--see--him--again_, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man
+has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore--not a line
+in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she
+was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later
+in company, you don't read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the
+very most he 'jollies' you like the rest."
+
+Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later"
+encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every
+recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his
+comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this
+world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.
+
+She hid her face on the sofa arm shaken with a storm of shame and guilt.
+
+"Never mind," Mrs. Jula comforted her. "Nothing has happened yet."
+
+The bell rang.
+
+Lilly hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid to dismiss the visitor,
+but Mrs. Jula restrained her.
+
+"What's gotten into your head?" she whispered. "Would you have him think
+you're afraid of him? That way you'll never be rid of him. Laugh at him.
+Do you understand? _Laugh_ at him--long and hard."
+
+Lilly wanted to run after her and beg her to remain. Was she, Lilly,
+his match? He was already entering the room.
+
+Drawn to her full height she looked at him as at a dead enemy.
+
+"My dear child," he said, kissing her hand, which she quickly withdrew.
+
+He had exercised great care in dressing. He wore straw-coloured gloves,
+and held his silk hat pressed to his breast. His monocle danced on his
+white waistcoat. An air of smug self-confidence, of unpretentious
+mastery enveloped his being like a mild glory. The way he settled
+himself comfortably in his chair, the way he amiably crossed his legs
+indicated that of course she had been subjugated.
+
+Lilly was no longer fearful or timid, nor did she experience the pangs
+of disillusionment. She was simply possessed of cool, conscious
+curiosity.
+
+She followed each of his movements with astonished eyes, as he passed
+his hand over his shining hair cut brush fashion, and pulled his
+trousers up and exposed the red-dotted stockings on his ankles.
+
+She kept saying to herself:
+
+"So _that's_ what you are, _that's_ what you are."
+
+He began to speak in a soft, compassionate, caressing voice, while his
+peering eyes glided up and down her body.
+
+"You're excited, dear child. I understand. When two people like us are
+brought alone together for the first time in their lives, their feelings
+run away with them. Don't be ashamed. What led us to each other is such
+a delicate, subtle understanding--the fluid between us is of such a
+rare, fleeting quality--"
+
+"Yes--fleeting, especially," thought Lilly, "--that it would really be
+a shame if we did not taste every drop of it. And a superabundance of
+feelings would simply be a hindrance to the spiritual epicureanism in
+both of us, particularly in me."
+
+As he spoke, slightly smacking his lips and swaying back and forth, the
+refrain of a Viennese ditty in her repertoire occurred to her: "I have
+much too much sentiment."
+
+"He has much too much sentiment," she said to herself, and smiled
+involuntarily.
+
+He saw the smile, which she tried to conceal by lowering her face, but
+he misinterpreted it.
+
+"There is a coy virginity about you," he said with an admiring shake of
+his head, "which always fills me with astonishment."
+
+"Oh, you jackanapes," thought Lilly, and smiled again.
+
+Now he hesitated a bit. He had not had all his experience for nothing,
+and a flash of greed and suspicion darted from between his lids.
+
+"Oh," he continued, "has some of the delightful humour that you
+surprised us with last night remained over for to-day?"
+
+"Perhaps," she replied with an upward glance which was almost
+coquettish.
+
+"Oh, splendid!" he cried. His face now brightened into a mischievous
+smile, in which gaiety and devilishness counterbalanced each other. "Are
+you one of those who can laugh in her sleeve at--at--how shall I
+say?--at the whole humbuggery of it all--and at yourself? At yourself,
+my child, that's the main thing. Then you and I are one--nothing divides
+us. Then--"
+
+"May God forgive me," she thought, and held her handkerchief to her
+mouth to suppress her tittering.
+
+"Laugh at him," Mrs. Jula had said.
+
+But he seemed to take it as an invitation, as a delicate, friendly hint
+to cut the preamble short; for he sprang toward her and clasped her
+body.
+
+She pushed him back--she wrestled with him.
+
+Tears of shame and indignation welled up in her eyes.
+
+"What sort of a thing have I become?" a voice within her cried, while
+she struck at him with her fists.
+
+In the midst of the struggle she succeeded in reaching the bell.
+
+The maid appeared.
+
+He picked up his hat from the carpet, murmured something like
+"riffraff," and disappeared.
+
+Disappeared also from the little circle that he had sometimes honoured
+with his presence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Henceforth Lilly ceased to aspire to the heights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The next year Lilly went through two little love affairs which were of
+no significance in her after life.
+
+During a four weeks' stay in the Riesengebirge, she met a novelist whose
+name was then on everybody's lips. He was airing his newly acquired fame
+in the Bohemian resorts and plucking what flowers he found by the
+roadside. He forced himself upon Lilly without much ceremony, and a few
+days later went his way in search of pastures new.
+
+And in Berlin she favoured a handsome, extremely elegant hussar of the
+Guards, who had flirted with her from his seat at the next table in an
+aristocratic restaurant. But he wounded her pride by attempting to repay
+her with a little leather box which came from the jeweler's. She sent
+back the box and turned him off.
+
+She disliked the thought of both adventures, and soon wiped them
+entirely from her memory.
+
+At Christmas a companion came to live with her. She had frequently
+complained to Richard that her life was empty; she craved something
+alive and loving to take care of. So he gave her a little naked monkey
+which could not warm itself even in her bosom. When angry, the monkey
+spat his scorn of her yearning in her face.
+
+Every now and then a marriage scheme was again propounded.
+
+Lilly knew the signs perfectly.
+
+When Richard paced through all the rooms, taciturn and distraught,
+wrinkling his forehead; when apropos of nothing he began to philosophise
+on the futility of all things earthly; when mama required the carriage
+at unwonted hours, and little packages of concert and opera tickets
+filled his purse, she knew something was impending.
+
+And then it seldom lasted long before Richard broke silence.
+
+One had two millions, the other three. Influential relatives, mines,
+factories, legacies, government contracts, whole blocks of houses, and
+innumerable building lots nodded in the distance.
+
+Sometimes Lilly's drawing-room hummed with so many figures that it might
+have been a stockbroker's office.
+
+One of the prospective brides even was poor. But she was a general's
+daughter, and mama adored her.
+
+"I'm a general's widow," said Lilly.
+
+Whether rich or poor, they all disappeared, because none of them was
+good enough for him.
+
+Lilly meditated and schemed; this is the way she should be, and this
+way, and this way. She must have white, column-like arms such as the
+Danish girl at the carnival; and she must have an extremely delicate,
+scarcely perceptible bosom--her own seemed to Lilly to have become too
+voluptuous--and when she laughed, two dimples must form in her cheeks,
+because dimples were a sign of peaceableness.
+
+Peace she demanded for him above all. She knew he could not bear
+disputes. As a matter of fact they never did quarrel. But if a little
+disagreement arose, he went about for days looking miserable, spoke in a
+woebegone, sick tone, and had to be petted like a child. Which she did
+with joy, though he by no means deserved it.
+
+For, whatever the standpoint from which you viewed such things, he had
+become an out and out good-for-nothing.
+
+He might be pardoned the very respectable sums he lost at the club, but
+he debauched like a married man, and his experiences were none of the
+purest.
+
+One day a pretty young thing with an eight weeks' old baby on her arm
+came to Lilly and wept and screamed, and declared Lilly must cede her
+place to her because she had the child by him and so the greater right.
+
+Lilly comforted her and gave her some wine, and, filled with envy,
+tickled the baby's wet little chin until it laughed. Whereupon the girl
+left quieted, and even kissed Lilly's hand on parting.
+
+That afternoon Richard listened to an eloquent discourse.
+
+Lilly felt herself to be entirely free from jealousy.
+
+Whenever he appeared looking embarrassed or with a crafty expression in
+his eyes, his head inclined all the way to the left, and radiating an
+odour of cheap perfumes, she always received him with an indulgent
+smile, which he understood very well and feared like a plague.
+
+However valiant his resolve to maintain silence, it scarcely lasted half
+an hour before he sat there hopelessly stranded, making partly veiled
+confessions and asking for praise and comfort.
+
+In a life of this sort, which reflected all the faults and perfidies of
+marriage without bestowing its sense of dignity and natural rights, it
+was inevitable that Lilly should withdraw into herself more and more and
+look forward to her future with increasing gloom.
+
+She passed her days as on a swaying bough in momentary expectation of
+being blown into the depths. Then again her life seemed to her like a
+straight, bare road, which gave no signs of coming to an end, but ever
+unrolled hopeless stretches ahead.
+
+Always the same pleasures, the same faces, the same aimless drifting
+from place to place until dawn.
+
+Sometimes she felt so weary--as if after a day's hard labour.
+
+Sometimes, too, she went on strike, and remained in bed reading the
+_Fliegende Blaetter_, or dreaming of old times with closed eyes.
+
+Mrs. Asmussen's sunless hole among the books became a paradise, her
+mush, food for the gods. Lilly's thoughts stepped cautiously about the
+pictures of her girlhood loves, as if it were a crime to charm them back
+into being. From this arose a happy, yet fearful presentiment that one
+or the other of them would return, and hold out his hand, and say: "Now
+you have strayed in strange lands long enough. Come back home."
+
+Which of them it was she did not venture to say. But one of them it must
+be. Something, something _must_ happen. It could _not_ go on the same
+way.
+
+Now and then, when her secret disquiet filled her with unrest, she took
+again to her nocturnal strolls. In the electric tram she would ride to
+distant districts, where, with a guilty soul, she sauntered along lively
+streets.
+
+Just like Mrs. Jula.
+
+Yet she could never bring herself to listen to any of her pursuers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on one such excursion in May far out on the north side, somewhere
+near the Rosentaler Tor, that she met a young man who paid not the
+slightest attention to her, who did not look like a gentleman, and yet
+seemed familiar.
+
+So familiar that her heart pained her.
+
+She racked her brain, but could not place him.
+
+Making up her mind quickly she turned about and followed him.
+
+He wore a brown, sweat-soaked hat and a salt and pepper suit with a
+yellow tinge to it, which had seen better days. His coat collar was
+shiny, and his knees had worked great bags into his trousers, the bottom
+of which hung in black fringes over his crooked heels.
+
+None of her friends in disguise. Her friends wore different trousers.
+
+He stopped in front of various display windows--a cigar shop, a
+butcher's, and, longest of all, a haberdasher's. From which Lilly
+concluded his undergarments also required a change.
+
+When he turned his profile toward her, she saw a lean, bony face with a
+prominent nose and a bush of reddish-brown hair on either side of his
+chin. He did not appear to be sickly; rather seedy or withered. But the
+lids of his small, slit-like eyes were swollen and inflamed, and before
+he stepped into the garish illumination of the shop window, he planted
+dark-blue goggles on his nose.
+
+He carried a thin cane, which he pressed into the shape of a bow on the
+pavement and then let shoot out straight again. The silver handle of
+this cane, which did not harmonise with the shabbiness of his clothing,
+recalled something to Lilly connected with chilliness, warm rolls,
+autumnal glow, and Sunday chimes.
+
+She cried aloud. Now she remembered.
+
+Fritz Redlich! Yes, it was Fritz Redlich. No doubt of it. Her girlhood
+love! Her girlhood love! Her great warrior in life's battles! Her St.
+Joseph's protege!
+
+Oh, God, her St. Joseph! And the revolver! And the potato soup with
+sliced sausage! And the three graves at Ottensen!
+
+"Mr. Redlich! Mr. Redlich!"
+
+Trembling, laughing, she stood behind him and stretched out both hands.
+
+He dropped his goggles and blinking his weak eyes, suspiciously
+scrutinised the tall, elegant lady from behind whose lace veil two
+great, tear-filled eyes were shining a blissful greeting. Then he
+awkwardly pulled at the brim of his hat.
+
+"Mr. Redlich--I'm Lilly--Lilly Czepanek. Don't you remember me any
+more?"
+
+Yes, now he remembered.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "why shouldn't I?"
+
+As he spoke he gave a furtive jerk at his waistcoat, as if that were the
+readiest way of improving the poverty of his appearance.
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Redlich! We haven't seen each other for an eternity. I
+think it must be seven or eight years. No, not quite. But it seems much
+longer. Everything's gone well with you in the meantime, hasn't it? And
+I suppose you're dreadfully busy. But if you're not, we might spend a
+little time together now."
+
+He really was quite busy, but if she so desired, they might remain
+together a while.
+
+"How would it be if we went to a restaurant and took a glass of beer?"
+she suggested, still between laughter and tears. "Well, well, Mr.
+Redlich, who'd have thought it possible?"
+
+He was decidedly opposed to taking a glass of beer.
+
+"Restaurants are always so stuffy and full of people, and the beer here
+is so wretched--unfit to drink."
+
+"The poor fellow has no money to pay for it," Lilly thought, and
+proposed sitting on a bench instead. It made no difference, just so they
+were together.
+
+"That's worth considering," he said, "although--" He looked about warily
+on all sides to see if anyone was scandalised at the ill-matched couple.
+
+They turned into the quieter Weinbersgsweg. Lilly, looking at him
+sidewise with pride and emotion, as if she had created him out of
+nothingness, kept murmuring:
+
+"Is it possible? Is it possible?"
+
+In a dark spot near a church they found a pleasant bench overhung with
+lilac buds which a love couple had just vacated.
+
+"Well, now tell me all about yourself, Mr. Redlich. My, the things we
+have to say to each other!"
+
+"There _is_ a good deal to tell," he replied, hesitating, "but perhaps
+my lady will begin."
+
+"Oh, pshaw, I haven't been a 'my lady' for a long time," cried Lilly,
+blushing consciously.
+
+"Yes, to be sure--I heard something of the sort," he replied.
+
+Lilly felt there was a note of blame in his tone, as if his
+susceptibilities had been offended.
+
+"But I'm not in the least sorry," she hastened to add. "All in all I
+lead a much freer and pleasanter life. And I haven't the slightest
+cares. I have a charming little home. In fact, I'm in the best of
+circumstances. And I'd be ever so happy if you were to come and see for
+yourself. I'm always at home in the middle of the day. And I'd like you
+to dine with me some time."
+
+"Oh," he said, obviously moved by the pleasant prospect.
+
+She drew a breath of relief at having steered so smoothly past the rocks
+of her autobiography.
+
+And he asked no questions. On the other hand he seemed as little
+disposed to be communicative in regard to his own situation past or
+present.
+
+"Life has a sunny and a shady side," he said, "and he who sits on the
+shady side would do well to reflect whether or not he should speak much
+of it."
+
+"But you can trust an old friend like me," cried Lilly. "Imagine we're
+sitting here on our porch in Junkerstrasse. Do you recollect? That
+evening we spoke to each other the first time was an evening just like
+this, in May."
+
+"It was warmer," he rejoined quickly, and drew his coat together at his
+neck.
+
+"Are you chilly?" she asked, laughing, because she was aglow.
+
+"I didn't bring--" he paused an instant--"I didn't bring my spring
+overcoat along to-night."
+
+"Then we'd better get up," she said, becoming meditative.
+
+"We can tell each other all we have to say just as well walking as
+sitting."
+
+So they strolled about the dark church a number of times, but no
+autobiographical narrative resulted. She evaded and he evaded, and when
+forced to speak, they regaled each other with generalities.
+
+Lilly praised her happy lot in life, and he sighed repeatedly.
+
+"Yes, it's hard, very hard!"
+
+Exactly as once during examinations. The rhythm of it still sounded in
+her ears, as if she had heard it the day before.
+
+"How are your father and mother?" she asked to change the subject.
+
+His father had died two years before after a short sickness, and his
+mother still sewed neckties.
+
+He adjusted something invisible under his raised coat collar, probably a
+gayly patterned testimony of maternal skill and goodness.
+
+After Lilly had expressed her sympathy she ventured with throbbing heart
+to inquire after Mrs. Asmussen and her daughters.
+
+Mr. Redlich smacked his lips audibly.
+
+"Very unpleasant neighbours. The elder girl married a paymaster, who
+will probably be dismissed soon on account of his irregularities. The
+younger has charge of the library, the mother is completely in the
+clutches of drink."
+
+He spoke with the same offended air as when Lilly had referred to her
+divorce.
+
+"He must be extremely moral still!" she thought, with a sense of her own
+guilt and unworthiness.
+
+But he was unhappy. That was certain.
+
+And poor, very poor. Poorer than she had ever been in her life. Perhaps
+he was suffering the pangs of hunger while he walked at her side
+shivering in his thin, shabby jacket.
+
+"How would it be, Mr. Redlich, provided your business permits you to, if
+you were to come to dinner to-morrow?"
+
+His business, as a matter of fact, made it practically impossible for
+him to get off in the middle of the day, and he hadn't a moment's time
+for changing his clothes; but if she would receive him in the suit he
+was wearing--
+
+"Oh of course," she laughed. "I'll even serve you with your mother's
+potato soup."
+
+With that she pressed both his hands and slipped into a street car.
+
+Oh, what a piece of good fortune!
+
+Now she had the thing she had so long been seeking. Some one whom she
+could care for and pet and spoil; some one to whom she meant more than a
+toy or a show piece, who needed her as he needed bread and air, who
+languished for a gentle hand to lead him back to hope and joy.
+
+Some one all to herself, all to herself!
+
+Out of the grave of her youth he had risen exactly as she had dreamed in
+her dreams.
+
+Life would again become rich--and happy--and full of secrets, tiny, gay,
+absolutely innocent secrets.
+
+That night she slept little, wakeful as a child the night before
+Christmas.
+
+The next morning, to the vast astonishment of the maid, a buxom wench
+from the country, who had rapidly fallen into city ways, Lilly rose
+early--the maid knew her to be a bit lazy--and went off to market.
+
+"A friend is coming to dinner," Lilly laughingly explained.
+
+She had to buy everything herself, the meat, the radishes, and above all
+the sausage that had once been the pride of his mother's potato soup.
+
+She even attended to the cooking herself.
+
+She set the table and removed the palm from beside the aquarium to have
+something green in the dining-room in place of flowers, which she had
+forgotten to buy.
+
+He was the first dinner guest she had had for two and a half years, and
+such a dear one--the dearest, perhaps that life could present her with.
+
+At half past twelve the maid, turning up her nose, announced a young
+fellow who insisted upon speaking to the lady.
+
+"Why, that's he!" cried Lilly.
+
+"He doesn't look it," observed the maid with a haughty upward inflection
+in her voice. Shrugging her shoulders she dawdled behind her mistress,
+who ran to meet the guest.
+
+At first he shyly hesitated to step into the lighter part of the room,
+and hugged the door post and pulled at his suit, which really looked
+dreadfully frayed, even more so than the night before.
+
+His inflamed eyes, two red rifts, blinking behind his round glasses,
+gave him a sheepish, groping, helpless appearance. The bold thinker's
+forehead had acquired an unpleasant backward slope because the genius
+lock no longer fell over it. And the triumphant blond mane had turned
+into a strawy, matted mass, apparently untouched by a comb this many a
+day.
+
+He was unable to say much.
+
+He swallowed the potato soup with tremulous devoutness, leaving the
+slices of sausage for the last. When his plate was quite dry he spitted
+them on his fork one at a time, and on conveying each bit to his mouth
+cast suspicious glances to right and left as if somebody were standing
+nearby to snatch it away.
+
+The roast he received with greater composure. He heaped his plate high
+without paying the least attention to the maid, who grinned
+villainously.
+
+He drank Richard's good claret in long draughts. A mottled red flecked
+his cheeks; he laughed and felt he was himself again.
+
+At first Lilly had been somewhat depressed; but as he gradually thawed
+out, she began to hope he might be made to pass muster after all.
+
+Then it suddenly occurred to her that now at last an opportunity
+presented itself for the genuine salvation of a human being, not merely
+a game of enamoured self-deception as with Walter von Prell.
+
+The thought filled her with blissful, confident hope.
+
+After the meal they went into the drawing-room. With masterful ease of
+manner born of the unwonted drink, he promptly seated himself in the
+rocking chair and tickled the snarling monkey.
+
+He sat leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched out. The
+fringed ends of his trousers slipped into the expanded tops of his
+boots, exposing the tattered rubber drawing loops.
+
+It was an appalling sight.
+
+"I'll have to do something," thought Lilly, and cogitated on the best
+way to help him.
+
+As for Mr. Redlich, now that his spirits were in turmoil, he turned his
+innermost being outward and aired his views of life.
+
+Oh, what a display of gall and poison!
+
+He had become so embittered by long privation and eternal envy of those
+who seemed gay, happy, and favoured by fortune, that no values, no
+attainments, no prosperous undertakings could withstand his onslaught.
+Everybody was hollow, corrupt and hypocritical. Everything depended on
+birth, cliqueism, "pull." Success, no matter in what line, was an
+ineradicable stain.
+
+But this time also he said little of his personal experiences. Lilly
+could not even discover if he was still a student. He acknowledged only
+one thing, with bitter resentment, that his deepest feelings had been
+badly damaged in his constant struggle for existence.
+
+While he spoke and laughed spasmodically, two lugubrious, sarcastic
+folds cut a deep semicircle in each emaciated cheek. Lilly dimly
+recalled that a tendency to those folds had existed in the times long
+ago.
+
+"Oh, you poor, poor fellow!" she thought, and vowed soon to make a man
+of him again, both outwardly and inwardly.
+
+But his visit left her feeling sad and depressed.
+
+"After all--am I better off?" she thought. "Where is the confidence in
+life I used to have? Where is my joy of life? Where is my Song of
+Songs?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which
+she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's
+purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings.
+
+"Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea
+together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy
+one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to
+know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the
+same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked
+simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes
+again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs
+everything."
+
+"With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the
+stuff I have at any rate."
+
+But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful.
+
+"What's he like?" he asked.
+
+In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she
+began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a
+highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his
+university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant
+career--a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else.
+
+What was his specialty?
+
+She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he
+would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for
+him.
+
+Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she
+scarcely knew what she was saying.
+
+Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a
+tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked
+uneasy and nettled.
+
+"I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction
+so smoothly.
+
+"Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and
+added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him."
+
+Perfect.
+
+The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge
+bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest
+style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky
+underwear.
+
+Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly
+striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line.
+
+The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich
+without offending him and having him refuse them.
+
+When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to
+show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said.
+
+When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally
+as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases,
+withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit.
+
+"I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left
+the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging
+here."
+
+Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.
+
+Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them?
+
+"Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold
+a glance at his own trousers.
+
+Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he
+gave him the suit?
+
+No, he could think of no one.
+
+Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn't
+believe she was mistaken--a remarkable similarity of figure--though the
+general had measured a bit more about the waist--and if he wanted to
+entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor--
+
+The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? Nobody
+could class him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his
+principles would never permit him to wear a person's cast-off clothes.
+
+With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project.
+
+But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the
+drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go,
+because Richard might enter any moment.
+
+At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked,
+stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening.
+
+"Haven't you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded,
+taken aback. For Richard's sake she did not care to receive visitors
+late in the day.
+
+No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was--it was--. He hung
+on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below.
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and--and--"
+
+"Well, and?"
+
+"And if it's dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with
+me."
+
+With that he jumped down the steps.
+
+"The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought,
+looking after him.
+
+The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a
+letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for
+enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the
+second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor.
+
+When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The
+suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his
+boots from turning up--they were too long for him--he had stuffed them
+with cotton wads.
+
+Even the maid sent him friendlier glances.
+
+A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair.
+But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him.
+His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help
+of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and
+gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or
+picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink
+claret.
+
+His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the
+peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination,
+and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes.
+
+He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly's situation,
+and she was grateful to him.
+
+Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional
+allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture
+of his unsuccessful career.
+
+After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and,
+consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology
+in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships.
+
+"After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny
+morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the
+green valley.
+
+But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During
+the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing
+envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not
+explicit.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor
+and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do."
+
+He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and
+ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who
+had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate
+ambition.
+
+To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried
+to find out what lot in life he desired for himself.
+
+He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man
+again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to
+breathe pure air.
+
+"All of us want something lovely like that," she thought.
+
+It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country,
+preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself.
+
+"And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the
+wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to
+water."
+
+She nearly cried with envy.
+
+From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire.
+She gave him money to insert advertisements in the _Kreuzzeitung_, wrote
+letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little
+circle of friends to do what they could for him.
+
+All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid
+attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him
+these days.
+
+He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being
+cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word.
+
+"That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask
+your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease.
+
+One day the bomb exploded.
+
+Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were
+present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table
+with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown
+of revenge puckered his brow.
+
+Lilly jumped from her seat, paling.
+
+As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there
+awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from
+his buttonhole into his soup plate.
+
+For a moment silence prevailed. Nothing but the tittering of the maid in
+the kitchen was to be heard.
+
+"I beg pardon," said Richard in the same threatening manner. "I merely
+wanted to make sure how you are really getting along."
+
+"Mr. Dehnicke, a good friend of mine--Mr. Redlich, my old friend," said
+Lilly.
+
+Now Richard scrutinised his dread rival more closely--looked in
+amazement and disapproval at the rank growth of his beard and shaggy
+mane--his gaze travelled downwards--and brightened--a nonplussed look,
+but also a joyous look of recognition, betrayed itself in his features.
+Wasn't that _his_ suit and _his_ shirt?
+
+His eyes dropped lower without halting at the napkin in the soup plate.
+
+Weren't those _his_ trousers? Weren't those _his_ discarded boots which
+the brilliant intellectual scholar was wearing?
+
+"Oh, that's it," he said. "Nothing more." With a wicked grin of scorn
+he turned to Lilly, who could scarcely keep on her feet. "May I speak to
+you alone for an instant?"
+
+"Will you excuse me, Mr. Redlich?" she said, and in her confusion and
+from force of habit, she opened the door to--the bedroom, as if that
+were the prescribed place for single ladies to receive their gentlemen
+friends. Richard, who was as accustomed to the way as she, followed her,
+unconscious of the exposure of intimacy.
+
+"Listen," he said upon shutting the door. "I was a donkey for having
+been jealous of your affinity. But now I swear to you, your friends may
+come and go, morning or evening, any time you wish. I'll always keep old
+suits on hand for them. Good-by--goosie!"
+
+He left. She could hear him laughing even after the door fell shut
+behind him.
+
+She was frightfully ashamed. How would she ever summon the courage to
+appear before her girlhood friend again, before that moral person who
+had shrunk at the mere mention of her divorce?
+
+Then she realised she was standing in the bedroom.
+
+Everything was revealed, all the disgrace of her existence, all, all.
+
+No matter how unworldly he might be, the role of the man who had so
+suddenly intruded in the apartment and as suddenly disappeared, must be
+patent.
+
+A long time she hesitated, the knob in her hand, listening to what Fritz
+Redlich was doing. She feared his tread, the clearing of his throat. His
+very silence boded evil.
+
+At last, trembling, ready to confess everything amid tears of
+contrition, she stepped into the dining-room.
+
+Lo and behold! He sat quietly at his accustomed place rubbing at the
+spot the wet napkin had made on his waistcoat. The blue goggles lay next
+to his plate, and he blinked at her amiably with no air of constraint.
+
+"Has the gentleman left already?" he asked innocently.
+
+At that moment the roast was brought in, and he fell to with avidity,
+making no further mention of the interlude.
+
+Actually--so pure was his conscience that he did not detect the impure
+even if thrust under his very nose.
+
+Oh, how grateful she was to him!
+
+To prove her gratitude she told him he might come evenings also--Richard
+permitted it--without waiting to be invited.
+
+If she should happen to be out, the maid would prepare supper for him,
+and see to it that he lacked nothing, absolutely nothing. And mindful of
+the wry face the maid had cut the first day he came, she enjoined her
+emphatically:
+
+"Now be real pleasant and friendly to him, so that he always feels at
+home here."
+
+The buxom wench turned down the corners of her mouth and said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly now went to work in behalf of Fritz Redlich with redoubled zeal.
+
+She again found a ready assistant in Mrs. Jula.
+
+"Leave the thing to me," said Mrs. Jula one day "There's somebody up
+there I've known a long time"--she hesitated a bit--"he's all-powerful,
+and has taken the Good Lord's place in many a minister's family. If I
+were to write to him--but, of course my name must be kept out, it's
+still a red rag to the bull up there."
+
+The next day Lilly sent her one of the advertisements that Fritz Redlich
+had inserted in the paper. Mrs. Jula was to forward it to a certain
+person, and the response would then go directly to Fritz Redlich without
+the intermediation of a third party. Lilly preferred that his future
+fortune should appear to be due entirely to his own efforts.
+
+And behold! Mrs. Jula was successful.
+
+One evening the next week Fritz Redlich appeared at Lilly's
+unexpectedly--a frequent occurrence now, whether she was at home or
+not--and complacently informed her his advertisement had been so
+convincing that he had immediately received an invitation from a
+minister in Further Pomerania to send his references and be ready to
+leave Berlin at short notice. The minister seemed to be quite keen for
+him.
+
+Lilly's heart throbbed with pride. Nothing in the world would have
+induced her to betray that she was at the bottom of his good luck.
+
+His happiness was her work! He himself, therefore, was her possession,
+more absolutely her possession than anything in the world.
+
+During the meal an exalted, blissful silence prevailed. Since he had not
+announced his coming, there was no potato soup, the usual first course.
+
+She excused herself for the omission, and added with a little pang:
+
+"At any rate you won't take many more meals with me."
+
+"Probably," he said with an embarrassed glance at the maid, whose
+presence evidently troubled him. Had she not been there, he would very
+likely have given warmer expression to his feelings.
+
+After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room.
+
+It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the
+naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered
+even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to
+which he submitted, snarling all the while.
+
+The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell.
+
+Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge
+after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly.
+
+"Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as
+before."
+
+Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune!
+
+She told him so for about the hundredth time.
+
+"Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles
+is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When
+I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence
+to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not
+only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the
+doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no
+wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts
+one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard,
+very hard."
+
+"Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out.
+We're old friends."
+
+"I will gladly if you wish it."
+
+Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since
+her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a
+motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit
+of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer
+hesitatingly, like a light in the distance.
+
+"Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have
+you ever been in love?"
+
+He started as if he had been hit.
+
+"In love? What do you mean?"
+
+"Well--what do you think--I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of
+the rocking chair with her thumb nail.
+
+He seemed to breathe more easily.
+
+"For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the
+desire."
+
+"And hasn't any woman ever loved you?"
+
+"Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his
+shoulders.
+
+His embittered dejection annoyed her.
+
+"Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little
+teasing.
+
+He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled
+him with dread.
+
+Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm
+had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme
+delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman.
+
+An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago,
+which would prove to him how mistaken he was.
+
+She choked it down.
+
+Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving
+Berlin.
+
+Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and
+ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the
+little canary also slept.
+
+Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she
+passed the rocking chair.
+
+She halted in front of him again.
+
+There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected
+nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow.
+
+Poor, poor fellow!
+
+"You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said
+with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women."
+
+With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly
+raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank
+under the light touch like a cushion.
+
+He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and
+coughed a little.
+
+"Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That's good advice. If I want to
+make a pleasant impression in my new position--"
+
+As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on
+his neck.
+
+Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave.
+
+She was too embarrassed to invite him to remain.
+
+The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down
+the stairs.
+
+"Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window.
+
+He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark.
+
+Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked
+away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him.
+
+The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused
+thoughts.
+
+"I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself.
+
+Nevertheless she was glad she had.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had
+gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly's
+protege was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling
+expenses had already been forwarded to him.
+
+Lilly wept tears of joy.
+
+Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back
+to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him
+her own.
+
+And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell
+him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl--everything.
+
+And once again--before parting--she would lay her hand on his mass of
+hair. Then what would might follow.
+
+The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her
+wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked
+his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him--he no
+longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in
+the saucepan.
+
+The clock struck eight. He had not come.
+
+"He's busy packing," she comforted herself.
+
+The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was
+standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard
+sometimes did.
+
+Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven.
+
+Then she went to bed sad and weary.
+
+The next morning she received the following letter:
+
+     "My dear Mrs. Czepanek:--
+
+     After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a
+     livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former
+     life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too
+     frequently forced me into circumstances conflicting with my
+     principles. My firm character was led into temptations from
+     which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge
+     intact.
+
+     I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I
+     hereby duly express my thanks. Nobody shall say Fritz Redlich
+     is an ingrate.
+
+     I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circumstances
+     compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the
+     suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But
+     had you really respected me, you would have spared me that
+     humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in
+     question evidently once belonged.
+
+     I may not conclude without making the following remarks:
+     improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face
+     of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this
+     advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had
+     continued to let you think me a dunce.
+
+     I remain your ever grateful
+
+     Fritz Redlich,
+     cand. phil. et theol."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience.
+
+It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because
+the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained
+without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the
+incident had its humorous aspect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a
+married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently passed for a
+widow of rank in a hall resort on the Baltic sea.
+
+She accepted the homage of several old maids, allowed a young missionary
+to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and respectfully declined the
+honourable proposal of a widower, the city treasurer of Pirna. Those
+were six weeks to her liking.
+
+The following winter went in much the same way as the preceding.
+
+At Christmas Richard presented her with a hired carriage, the door of
+which, of course, was decorated with the seven-pointed coronet. He had
+engaged it in order to avoid disagreeable encounters with his mother,
+who spoke of Lilly with increasing severity, and had frequently demanded
+the equipage when he was out driving with his mistress.
+
+He also gave Lilly a sable cloak, one of the new-fashioned sort, with
+countless tails, which cost a small fortune.
+
+Despite Richard's reproaches she made little use of either. That feeling
+of dread, never to be stilled, told her that such false display would
+drive her ever on into the world which she wanted to flee.
+
+And while Richard endeavoured with dogged greed to drain the cup of
+worldly delights to the very dregs, Lilly's desires went out more and
+more to middle-class respectability. She clung to it as the last hope,
+which enabled her to drag through her existence, the complete poverty
+of which tormented her increasingly there amid the lights and music and
+laughter.
+
+The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her
+intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she
+showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she
+elaborated with a lively fancy.
+
+But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that
+foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish
+disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little
+tales were nowhere to be found.
+
+When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she
+would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see."
+
+Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula,
+having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could
+not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her
+longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date,
+because it was St. Joseph's day.
+
+A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine.
+
+One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its
+instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring
+symphony.
+
+The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks
+going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy
+shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation.
+
+Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure
+remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences,
+throw herself on the bare earth--no matter what--but get away for a few
+hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was
+burdened by the spirit of idleness.
+
+She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the
+maid--this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to
+service with single ladies--and without troubling to order her carriage,
+took the electric tram to the Grunewald.
+
+At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an
+end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man,
+Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction.
+
+A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed
+and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually
+recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So
+she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss.
+
+Here nobody was to be seen far or near.
+
+The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the
+reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered
+near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each
+little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through
+the holes.
+
+Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to
+extinguish timid spring hopes.
+
+"In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought
+Lilly.
+
+But the freshness of the wind redolent of moss and pine needles did her
+good. She battled against its might, taking long strides. Her cheeks
+tingled, her frozen blood thawed, and sent fresh life pulsating through
+her fallow body.
+
+And her fallow soul.
+
+Suddenly she shook with a fit of laughter. It was all nonsense, her
+regret and her yearning, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's
+eternal marriage schemes. Even the respectability she desired was
+utterly vapid.
+
+What would she do with it? She, Lilly the free, the wild, the ruined?
+There was something else, something higher. There must be. Not in Dr.
+Salmoni's sense. No, oh, no. Something as hard and pure and
+life-bringing as this March wind sweeping through her limbs.
+
+Above her in a pine tree she heard a chipping sound which she had
+learned to recognise at Lischnitz. It was a call both of fear and
+invitation, which ended in a snappy "Tshek-tshek."
+
+Lilly stood still, looked up, and whistled.
+
+A pair of squirrels had been chasing about the trunk in corkscrew lines,
+and now, at her appearance, stood stock still in fright.
+
+"Tshek-tshek," Lilly clucked to incite the little red coats to play. She
+did not succeed, and picked up a pebble from the ground.
+
+Just as she was about to throw it, she saw, behind a tree trunk, two
+eyes fastened on her, large, questioning astonished eyes, which narrowed
+under her gaze, and darkened, and tried to turn away, but could not. She
+knew those eyes. She had looked into them long, long, long ago.
+
+But, no, she had not; she had never before seen them.
+
+The young man who, like herself, had been watching the squirrels play
+and was still standing half-concealed behind the trunk, his hat in his
+hand, was an utter stranger. Impossible that she had ever in her life
+met him. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.
+
+It was not easy to forget that serious, reserved Greek face, with the
+nervous nose narrow across the bridge and the shining dreamer's eyes.
+
+His appearance was not extremely elegant. It pleased Lilly better so.
+He wore a brown, somewhat old-fashioned overcoat, and the suit beneath,
+of which she caught a glimpse, was of a woolly material sprinkled with
+little tufts, by no means of German make and certainly not English.
+
+Gradually life came into him. He put on his hat, and stepped from behind
+the tree.
+
+"Now he'll speak to me," the sickening thought shot through Lilly's
+mind.
+
+No. He merely raised his hat, glanced at her again for the fraction of a
+second with an expression of query, astonishment, and, at the same time
+recognition, walked past her, and took the way she had just come.
+
+Lilly also wanted to leave the spot, but she was unable to; and since
+she must not be discovered looking after him she hid behind the same
+tree that had concealed him.
+
+"I wonder whether he will look back."
+
+No. He did not look back either. She felt hurt and neglected.
+
+The tall figure dwindled in the distance. "Never been in the army," she
+thought, judging from his rather heavy gait. Then it seemed to her that
+he stooped, drew himself up again, and looked back. In fact, he spied
+about a long time as if compelled to discover her.
+
+But she kept herself carefully hidden and did not move.
+
+He walked on and disappeared behind a curve.
+
+"What a pity I didn't take the carriage," thought Lilly.
+
+She might be overtaking him now without appearing to follow him, and the
+seven-pointed coronet would not have failed of its effect. As it was, he
+naturally cherished a bad opinion of the lady who walked about alone
+whistling like a boy and throwing pebbles at poor enamoured squirrels.
+
+Nevertheless, while walking homeward, she felt as if she had been
+presented with a lovely gift.
+
+Where could she have seen him before?
+
+She recalled a young man of the Dresden days. It was once when she was
+out walking arm in arm with the colonel along the Prager Strasse. She
+had seen eyes fixed upon her with the very same sad flash of recognition
+in them.
+
+Then--she remembered it well--she had wanted to look back and ask him:
+
+"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you want me to belong to you?"
+
+But even the partial turn of her head would have been a crime in her
+husband's eyes.
+
+And now, now that she was free, free to choose her friends according to
+her heart's desire, she had let him go, him, the one--whether the same
+as the Dresden man or another--who belonged to her, perchance, as she to
+him.
+
+She walked along with half-closed eyes, and conjured up his image. A
+small, dark, two-cornered beard, so close-cut on his cheeks as to give
+them a blue sheen. Such beards were seldom to be seen in Berlin.
+Frenchmen and Italians affected them. Full, firm, tightly compressed
+lips, lips such as a sculptor chisels. A high, square forehead, on which
+something like wrath seemed to be imprinted, not ordinary wrath against
+herself or any poor mortal. It was not of this world, and it really was
+divine love.
+
+Thus Lilly's enthusiasm fed itself. She forgot the way, and strayed
+about, finally arriving at a spot in an entirely different direction
+from that which she should have taken. The most dreadful things might
+have happened to her in the woods, where solitary ladies are exposed to
+encounters with tramps at any hour of the day. But she scarcely gave
+heed to her danger. She reached home two hours too late, tired, but in a
+glow.
+
+She could not eat. She threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamt.
+
+The bell rang. She heard a man's voice.
+
+It could not be Richard. He never came before half past four.
+
+Adele entered. There was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know
+whether the lady had lost her card-case. He had found one in the woods.
+
+Lilly jumped to her feet. Actually the little brocade case which she had
+held in her hand with her silver net purse was gone. In her excitement
+she had not missed it.
+
+"Like what does the gentleman look?"
+
+Tall and young and handsome, in fact, very handsome.
+
+"A short, dark beard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lilly reeled.
+
+"Let him come in," she stammered. She did not think of beautifying
+herself. She merely ran her hands over her face and hair in a dazed way.
+
+When he appeared in the doorway she scarcely recognised him, so thick
+was the red mist before her eyes.
+
+"I beg pardon," she heard him say--it was the serene voice of a man
+whose ways are not impure--"I would not have disturbed you had your
+address been on your cards. I found your number in the directory, but I
+couldn't be certain whether there were not more of the same name in the
+city."
+
+"You're very kind to have taken all that trouble," she replied, inviting
+him to be seated.
+
+"My name is Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting behind the back of his
+chair until she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa. On sitting
+down he drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
+
+She smiled her thanks; and feeling she must enhance the value of his
+courtesy, she said the case was a memento she prized highly, the loss of
+which would have distressed her.
+
+"A memento of my husband," she added.
+
+His face grew a shade more serious.
+
+A little pause ensued, during which his eyes rested steadily on her
+face, reading, questioning, comparing, and wondering. Nothing of that
+bold groping of other men's glances. A clean, unconscious joy amounting
+to devoutness lay in his look.
+
+"Didn't we meet just a little while ago at the edge of the woods?" Lilly
+asked warily.
+
+"Yes," he replied with animation. "And if I hadn't been so awkward I
+should have begged your pardon immediately for having unintentionally
+spied on you. I saw how startled you were. But I myself was so--how
+shall I say? All I thought was: 'Clear out. You'll be serving the lady
+best that way.'"
+
+His frank, blithe manner did her good, though it shamed her a little.
+
+"Now you've done me a much greater service," she said, feeling as
+appreciative as if he had saved her life.
+
+"Oh, don't speak of it. If only I had turned back instantly. But the
+earth seemed to have swallowed you up. I was worried about you."
+
+She smiled to herself, fearful in her happiness. A little more, and she
+would have acknowledged where she had stowed herself.
+
+"What did you think of me when you saw me strolling about the woods
+alone?" she asked.
+
+"That you don't feel alone when you're with nature. Otherwise you'd have
+had company with you."
+
+"You're right," she replied eagerly. "Besides, my carriage was waiting
+in the Hundekehlenrestaurant"--after all the carriage would play its
+part--"but it was imprudent of me. I suppose you are also very fond of
+nature?"
+
+"Very? I hardly know. I must say in Cordelia's words: I love it
+'according to my bond; nor more nor less.' To love nature is really no
+merit nor peculiarity. It is simply a vital function. Don't you agree
+with me?"
+
+"Certainly," she faltered, and thought, "Oh, how clever he is? How will
+I acquit myself?"
+
+"But to be quite frank," he continued, "I am having a strange experience
+with nature here. I cannot accustom myself to it. Its poverty oppresses
+me. I am like one who has outgrown his home and reproaches himself for
+it. I try to get back to my old attitude, and I admire and flatter
+German nature whenever I possibly can. But first other pictures in my
+mind must fade. You see I have just returned from Italy, where I spent
+the last two years."
+
+Heaving a deep sigh Lilly stared at him. She felt as if now he were
+absolutely unearthly.
+
+"Two whole years?" she asked in astonishment.
+
+"I am working on a large scientific work, on account of which--no, I was
+really sent to Italy on account of my health. My uncle, who's a father
+to me, wanted me to go. I didn't think of the work until I got there.
+Then my own country and my studies, everything, fell into the
+background."
+
+As he spoke his eyes glowed and stared into space, full of will and
+enthusiasm. The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings
+again in Lilly's breast.
+
+"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There
+all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you
+wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but
+I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything
+great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more
+beautiful--and--everything--sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"
+
+He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze.
+
+"Yes," he replied almost solemnly. "It is so, exactly."
+
+She tingled with delight. Did it not seem that with these words he made
+an avowal of the inner union between them, the avowal she had hoped for
+from the very first instant of their meeting? Did it not seem that
+nothing now separated them?
+
+She looked down helplessly.
+
+Was he really the embodiment of that shade which had so senselessly
+fastened itself upon her soul since the Dresden days?
+
+"I feel as if we had met before," she said softly without raising her
+eyes.
+
+"Exactly the way I feel," he rejoined hastily. "But it cannot be, for I
+should know where and when."
+
+"Were you in Dresden six years ago at about this time?"
+
+"No," he said. "Six years ago I was studying at Bonn. The semester came
+to an end at this season, but I went directly to my uncle, who was
+having his castle restored."
+
+"Where is his castle?"
+
+"Near Coblenz."
+
+So they had not met in Dresden.
+
+"But if we both have the same feeling--" said Lilly.
+
+"There are pictures in our souls which seem to be recollections, but in
+fact are previsions."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that one--that one--walks as on the edge of a knife between the
+past and the present, and reels and falls into a void the instant--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The instant--" he broke off--"I beg your pardon, are you an artist?"
+
+"Why?" she asked, unpleasantly taken aback. Did he want to make merry at
+her expense?
+
+"I read your sign outside."
+
+The sign! "Pressed Flower Studio."
+
+Violently torn out of sweet dreams and plunged into bitter reality!
+
+But now she must be on her guard. She must not lose his esteem.
+
+"In a way," she replied. "A very modest sort of art which I used to
+pursue. But it made me very happy. I learned it just after I lost my
+husband"--the fatal "divorce" would not pass her lips--"less for the
+sake of a livelihood than to lend my life content. But then I had to
+give it up--because--of a trouble with my eyes."
+
+Three lies in the same breath.
+
+Why not? She was lies within and lies without. Every gesture, every
+thought was a lie. But the great cry of her soul vibrating through her
+entire being, "You shall be mine; I will be yours," was _not_ a lie. And
+for his sake she continued to lie.
+
+"I don't like to speak of it." She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.
+"It still pains me. And please don't ever again refer to it in the
+future."
+
+"Again," "in the future," she had said, as if taking it for granted that
+they would continue to meet. Her words filled her with shame and
+confusion.
+
+She rose and turned her face aside.
+
+"I beg pardon," he said, abashed. "I could not have divined--" He rose
+to take leave.
+
+"Stay, stay, stay!" her soul cried. But she was unable to speak. She was
+benumbed.
+
+Perhaps he had seen through her lies, and had instantly realised who
+she was, and did not care to remain. She felt haughtiness congealing her
+features.
+
+"It was very kind of you," she said, graciously extending her finger
+tips.
+
+The moment had come in which to invite him to visit her, but the words
+froze on her lips.
+
+He had turned very pale and looked straight into her face expectantly.
+
+"I hope we meet some time again," he said finally.
+
+"I hope so," she replied very formally.
+
+He lightly touched her hand with his lips and left.
+
+Over! Over! And her fault!
+
+Happiness had come, had laid its blessing hand on her forehead, and had
+flown away again, leaving behind nothing but this pain, a wild pain,
+such as she had never before felt. It fairly tore at her throat and
+heart like a physical affliction.
+
+During the night she devised a thousand schemes for hunting him up and
+meeting him again.
+
+He was a scholar and probably frequented the library. She would go there
+and read and study, and some day she would surely meet him.
+
+Or, simpler still, she would write to him.
+
+"I don't love you," she would say. "Why should I? I scarcely know you.
+But I am confident that I could be something in your life. Therefore--"
+
+Then, disgusted with her lack of dignity, she rejected every plan.
+
+No, Lilly Czepanek after all would not throw herself away in such
+fashion.
+
+Once more it became impossible for her to remain at home.
+
+In the daytime she walked along the Potsdamer Strasse and Leipziger
+Strasse, where the metropolitan bustle is the greatest. In the evenings
+she did not visit distant districts as formerly, but with a busy air
+hurried incessantly up and down the lonely banks of the canal near her
+home.
+
+Despite her strict economy she always kept the light burning in her
+drawing-room, and did not confess to herself why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was about eight o'clock in the evening four days after the meeting.
+The stars hung like lamps in the heavens. Lilly was pacing along the
+further bank of the canal, when she noticed the figure of a young man
+who was looking fixedly in the direction in which her home lay.
+
+She could not distinguish his features, because he kept his back turned.
+Besides, he had selected a dark spot for his coign of observation.
+
+With a slight throbbing of her heart she continued on her way, though
+after a while her legs refused to carry her further in the same
+direction. She had to turn about.
+
+She found the dark figure still standing motionless among the trees.
+From across the water the light in her drawing-room peered through the
+bare branches.
+
+This time he heard her tread, and faced about.
+
+She recognised his features and started.
+
+He also thrilled with the shock of surprise. For an instant he foolishly
+pretended not to see her, but then he drew a deep breath and took off
+his hat with an abashed smile.
+
+Lilly trembled so, she could not hold out her hand.
+
+"Dr.--Rennschmidt," she managed to say.
+
+He was the first to recover his composure.
+
+"You will wonder," he began, stepping alongside of her, "why I stand
+here in the dark and look over there. If I were to say it was a mere
+chance, you wouldn't believe me. So I will frankly confess I could not
+rid myself of the thought that at our parting something went
+wrong--there was a misunderstanding--precipitancy--I felt I ought to beg
+your pardon for something."
+
+"If you felt that way, why didn't you come up to me, and tell me so?"
+
+"Was I permitted to?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You see, we men have no rights with women except such as they give us.
+No others exist for us. To be sure, we may stand in the dark here, and
+bite our lips--"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Don't ask me."
+
+His voice did not quiver, but a tremour ran through his arm, which
+grazed hers.
+
+Lilly, alarmed, stopped and helplessly looked back at the dark way she
+had come.
+
+"That means--I--I must say good-by?" he asked.
+
+In the light of the lamp she saw his eyes clinging to her with a look of
+fearsome inquiry.
+
+"Oh, no," she replied slowly, as if some one else were speaking in her
+stead. "Now that we are together, we will remain together."
+
+"I think so, too," he said. The same gravity of an oath lay in his words
+as she had put into hers.
+
+They walked along in silence.
+
+Then he began in a lighter tone.
+
+"But I must call your attention to something. Your light is burning. If
+you really do want to favour me with an hour, I'm afraid the thought of
+the waste will disquiet you."
+
+"Well, we'll put it out!" she replied gaily, and turned on her heels so
+abruptly that he continued to make two or three steps forward.
+
+As they crossed the slender arch of the Hohenzollernbruecke, he pointed
+up to the heavens.
+
+"Jupiter shines on our undertaking. I like him better than Venus, who
+runs after the sun and needs a rosy flooring for her feet."
+
+"Which is Jupiter?" asked Lilly standing still.
+
+He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six
+constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.
+
+"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look
+out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her
+mind.
+
+While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the
+light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take
+supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying
+down again.
+
+Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and
+sobbed.
+
+But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite
+proper.
+
+"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I
+know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's
+practically in Italy."
+
+She drew a deep breath.
+
+"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for
+nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian
+restaurant.
+
+They walked along the canal for about five minutes talking nonsense. The
+medley of lights of the Potsdamer Bruecke was quite near when he paused
+in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen
+wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of
+sand.
+
+"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to
+be had in Florence," he explained.
+
+They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the
+proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the
+bar.
+
+"_Sera, padrone_," Lilly's friend greeted him.
+
+From the anteroom they passed into a rather long, hall-like room filled
+with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of
+crisscrossed garlands of shiny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of
+being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets
+and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion
+for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wishing them
+on this March evening a "Happy New Year."
+
+"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the
+waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in
+his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
+
+At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long,
+thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the
+knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting
+Italian with fascinating rapidity.
+
+"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great
+sculptors employ them as assistants. They earn a great deal of money,
+and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish
+a household."
+
+Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, lustreless hair drawn
+very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches
+burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their
+dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made
+brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then
+fell to whispering busily.
+
+Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air,
+as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.
+
+"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader
+deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."
+
+"Where am I?" thought Lilly.
+
+It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a
+strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin,
+Germany, near the Potsdamer Bruecke, was the placard's complacent "Happy
+New Year."
+
+"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt,
+after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot
+cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has
+no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order
+some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."
+
+He nodded to the waiter, Francesco by name--Francesco, as if he had just
+stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively
+conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.
+
+The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in
+yellowish red gravy.
+
+Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told
+him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her
+life, never since she could remember, felt so good.
+
+The last course was a "_giardinetto_," a "little garden," of mandarins,
+dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.
+
+The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the glasses
+scattering bright drops.
+
+Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new
+friend's face.
+
+He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements
+like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or
+perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional
+attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of
+life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously.
+The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his
+seething ardour.
+
+He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness.
+He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them
+through a heavy mass of hair. But the mass was no longer there, and his
+hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.
+
+Everything about him bespoke force and decision--to Lilly's admiration,
+well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of
+health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not
+robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and
+sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward,
+a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely
+youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.
+
+"So _that's_ what you are," she thought and stretched herself in
+blissful peace. "At last."
+
+"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you
+feeling well?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about
+down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."
+
+Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive
+teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under
+all the ashes life had cast upon it.
+
+"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."
+
+"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never
+been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back--as a
+punishment--because a young man ogled me."
+
+"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you
+divine."
+
+"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."
+
+"Why at me?"
+
+"Because you shine like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."
+
+He became serious.
+
+"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life
+and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been
+opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout--sometimes I hardly know
+what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers bloody, and more keeps
+coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to
+whom."
+
+"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so
+miserably poor."
+
+He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.
+
+"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."
+
+"Isn't that the same thing?"
+
+He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.
+
+"What was your husband?" he asked.
+
+"I--am--the divorced wife--of an army officer of high rank," she replied
+with downcast eyes.
+
+This time--thank the Lord!--it was not a lie.
+
+Yet, to be accurate, she had lied.
+
+For see what she was _now_!
+
+He clasped her hand, which lay next to his on the table, and held it an
+instant.
+
+"If it is difficult for you to speak of your life, don't," he said.
+"Later, perhaps, when we know each other better, you will tell me. I
+will tell you about myself--and how I--came to do my work."
+
+"The work of which you spoke that time?" Lilly asked, strangely stirred
+by the sudden solemnity of his tone.
+
+Drawing a deep breath he stretched out his clenched fists and his eyes
+stared into space.
+
+"Yes--the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and
+future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and
+lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour
+created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and
+your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving."
+
+"I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly.
+
+"I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how
+restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung,
+painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have
+grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost
+frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the
+final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be
+formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work."
+
+"Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken.
+
+He smiled and shook his head.
+
+"I'm neither a poet nor a painter, nor a historian, nor a psychologist.
+Yet I must be something of each, and more to boot. My work requires it."
+
+Then he told his story.
+
+His father had been instructor at a university and an eminent jurist.
+His mother had died in giving him birth, and his father did not survive
+her long. He then came under the care of his uncle, a rich, experienced
+old bachelor, who had passed a lively life in business and
+pleasure-seeking, and now dwelt in merry singleness in his castle. He
+had given Dr. Rennschmidt an education and had assured him a small
+income which enabled him in a modest fashion to indulge his wishes and
+whims. Dr. Rennschmidt had intended to follow in his father's footsteps
+and enter an academic career, but the examinations, which he had passed
+honourably, had tried his health. So, to satisfy his uncle, he had given
+up the idea of a university career for the time being, and had gone out
+into the world. He had been drawn to Italy by his studies in the history
+of art, which he had always pursued with interest, though without
+considering them his life work. What fascinated him more than the
+churches and the museums was the free, beautiful humanity in which the
+lively southern race expressed its personality. He felt as if it had
+awakened in him a new, free humanity, conscious of its own powers. He
+felt more and more strongly the original unity of artistic and personal
+experience, past and present. The heroes of mythology and history, the
+characters in poetry and painting, and the poets and painters themselves
+all became so real and familiar that they seemed to be part of his own
+being. Surrounded by a people saturated with its own history, possessing
+the skill of a thousand years' exercise of art, always in touch with the
+spirit of the time, it seemed possible to him to penetrate into the
+emotional world of past generations. He learned to distinguish
+monuments of different periods and follow those related to each other
+step by step along the course of time.
+
+His guide always had been and remained art. Art was best able to wring
+speech from the silence of death and bid the dust add new forms to the
+old. Only one thing was still missing, knowledge of the sources of its
+convincing might, the A B C's of the language in which it expressed its
+thoughts.
+
+Lilly strained herself to follow him. She had never before listened to
+such language; yet it was not strange. Remnants from of old, from
+long-forgotten times seemed to cling to the bottom of her soul, which
+harmonised with what he said.
+
+"One day," he continued, "while I was staying in Venice, I went off on a
+short excursion to Padua. By railroad it's about the same as going from
+Berlin to Potsdam. I wasn't keen about seeing the art there, because I
+was still in the honeymoon intoxication of my love for the early
+Venetians. It was only for the sake of completeness. I got into a little
+church in which there are frescoes by Giotto. Do you know who he was?"
+
+"Certainly--Giotto and Cimabue," she said proudly.
+
+"Then I needn't say more. I really had little left in me for him and his
+people, because, as I said, the quattrocentists had heated my
+imagination. Now just conceive a Roman amphitheatre completely ruined
+and overgrown with ivy, nothing but the outer walls still standing, like
+the walls of a garden. In the enclosure is the little church built of
+brick, as sober and prosaic as a Prussian Protestant praying barn."
+
+Lilly smiled gratefully. A side-thrust at Protestantism was still a
+personal favour to her.
+
+"Services are no longer held there. It has been set aside as a national
+monument. When I entered I saw nothing at first but a blue radiance from
+the walls, a sort of modest background, with long rows of pictures on
+it, the story of Christ told quite simply, the way a preacher speaking
+to poor people would tell it on Good Friday, provided he is the right
+preacher for poor people."
+
+"But aren't we all poor people in the presence of Christ?" Lilly
+ventured to interpose.
+
+He paused, looked at her with large eyes, then assented eagerly.
+
+"Certainly. But not only in the presence of Christ, in the presence also
+of every great personality, of every great truth. But it isn't easy for
+us to cultivate that feeling--to make it clear to ourselves that we must
+be poor when what is given to us ought to enrich us. Religion is best
+able to inspire us with the feeling, if it finds the correct means of
+expression. And the Italians did. A poor man spoke to poor men. Therein
+lay the wealth of Giotto's gift. For what moves us to tears is not his
+vast competence, it is his incompetence. Do you get what I mean?"
+
+"I think I do," said Lilly, her face lighting up. "If a man desires
+something of us, and can merely stammer and stutter his desire, he
+affects us more than if he says it in a prepared discourse."
+
+"Exactly!" he cried joyously. "That's why Giotto's scant speech, his
+stammering created the whole language of art. Everything before him had
+simply been learned by heart from dead, Byzantine models. For the first
+time a man read life with simple eyes and a simple heart, and extracted
+from it what he had to say. That is why he became the universal master.
+To this very day if anyone succeeds in portraying supreme suffering and
+supreme delight with his brush, he owes his skill to that little
+church."
+
+"I can conceive," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source and a
+man were suddenly to come upon it, he would feel as you do."
+
+In the exuberance of his emotion Dr. Rennschmidt seized Lilly's arm with
+both hands.
+
+"That's the missing figure. It's strong enough to express what took
+place in me. But I came upon another source. While I walked along those
+frescoed walls, something suddenly stood before me clearly--and my work
+was there, sprung from nothing: the history of emotions. Emotions, you
+know, as art has seen and portrayed them in all generations. Not only
+the pictorial and plastic arts. They are only a fraction. Literature
+also. Poetry as well as painting, sculpture as well as music. I thought
+in that way I might succeed in creating a true, genuine history of the
+development of the human heart, which no moralist, no historian, no
+psychologist has yet attempted. Why not? The documents are at hand; just
+as fossils lie embedded in rocks for the guidance of zooelogists. They
+need merely be cut out. What do you think? Isn't it a work worth
+spending a lifetime on?"
+
+"It is," said Lilly, with the same solemnity.
+
+"Oh, but there's much to be thought over first," he went on. "You cannot
+make an impetuous onslaught like a bull on a red rag. Often art leads us
+astray because it strove to reproduce something entirely different from
+the emotional life of its time. Whether it succeeded or not is another
+question. And often it was wanting in the necessary means of expression.
+Oh, you and I will speak of this many more times. Don't look so
+frightened. I need you. After this evening I could not get along without
+you. Nobody before you ever listened with such faith and understanding.
+Besides, I've grown to be an utter stranger here. The people I know are
+full of their own interests, and scarcely listen to me. Then, too,
+there's a bit of madness in my undertaking, of which I really ought to
+be ashamed. But one thing comforts me: a bit of madness has underlain
+every great work until that work was completed and had compassed its
+end. Of course everybody has the same idea of his own work. So some time
+I'll rise above that feeling. But now, while I'm wrestling, and every
+day I think I have discovered a new vein of gold and then am compelled
+to throw a good deal away because it's pinchbeck, if I have nobody on
+whom I can pour out what oppresses and torments me, why the jumble
+fairly chokes me. So fate sent me to you. It was like an inner voice,
+which would not let me rest at my desk, but sent me out to watch your
+light. Now I have you, and I won't let you go. God knows, I shouldn't be
+so bold in my own behalf, but it's for my work. It is clamouring for
+you. For heaven's sake, why are you crying?"
+
+"I'm not crying," said Lilly, and smiled at him.
+
+But the tears kept rising, and veiled his lovely picture.
+
+"I know what it is," he said sadly. "I wasn't considerate. You are
+regretting your lost art, because I spoke so happily of my own work."
+Lilly started back as if she had seen a ghost, and made vehement denial.
+
+"No, no, it isn't that! Really not!"
+
+But he persisted in his belief; which drove the thorn of her own
+unworthiness all the deeper into her soul.
+
+"Let us go," she requested. "There is so much assailing me--happiness
+and unhappiness and all sorts of things--outside I'll be calmer."
+
+It was long after midnight. A cold wind swept across the water and
+soughed in the bare branches.
+
+He offered her his arm, and Lilly nestled in it as if she had been at
+home there from times immemorial.
+
+For a while they were both silent
+
+"In five minutes he'll leave me," she thought. She could not bear the
+grief of impending loss.
+
+"One thing is lying heavy on my conscience," he began. "You might think
+me overweening because I make so much of myself. But I don't wish to
+appear more important than others. I know every vigorous young fellow
+must have a similar work to bring purpose into his life. One has a book
+to write, another a business to carry on, another a dependent to
+support. For some it's enough if they keep their heads above water. It
+doesn't matter what. If you let yourself go, you're lost. And none of us
+want to be lost, do we?"
+
+"I think I lost myself long ago," whispered Lilly, shuddering and
+crouching like a whipped dog.
+
+He burst out laughing.
+
+"You, the best, the finest, the noblest."
+
+She knew how undeserved his praise was. Yet how delicious, oh, how
+delicious.
+
+They were now walking so closely pressed against each other that their
+cheeks almost touched. She closed her eyes and ardently drank in the
+warm breath of his life. She felt she was being wafted to unknown
+blessed distances.
+
+She did not come to herself until they reached her home.
+
+"When?" he asked her.
+
+She had no time the next day. She was invited out. But the day after.
+Yes, the day after, she had the whole evening free. He need only call
+for her.
+
+For fear she might after all ask him to come the very next day, she
+hurried into the house, ran up the steps, and concealed her happiness in
+the hushed apartment.
+
+She did not turn on the lights. The street lamps, shining on the walls
+of the drawing-room and touching rainbow colours on the chandelier
+prisms, provided sufficient illumination.
+
+She began to wander through the open doors from room to room, into the
+corner where the bed stood, around the dining table, across the
+drawing-room, into the cold guest room, which had never received a
+guest, up and down, back and forth, singing, crying, exulting.
+
+And from amid her tears and singing and exultation suddenly arose--how
+did it go?
+
+    Come, my beloved! Let us go forth into the field,
+    Let us spend the night in the villages.
+    Let us get up early to the vineyards,
+    Let us see if the vine have blossomed.
+
+No, not quite--a little different. But she would surely get it.
+
+Impetuously she raised the lid of the piano, which had long remained
+closed. As if the neglected instrument, unforced into silence, had
+suddenly acquired a life of its own, a flood of sound rushed toward her,
+of which she had deemed neither the piano nor herself capable.
+
+    Let us see if the young grape have opened,
+    Whether the pomegranates have budded,
+    There will I give my young love unto thee.
+
+Yes, that was the way it went. Exactly. She had found each note again.
+
+Where had it kept itself hidden all those long years?
+
+It seemed as if the last time she had sung it had been the very day
+before.
+
+Yet worlds of suffering lay between.
+
+No, not suffering.
+
+"If only it had been suffering," thought Lilly, "the Song of Songs would
+never have become mute."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The next morning on awaking Lilly began to worry anew.
+
+Nobody was so blind as not to detect, on coming closer how worm-eaten
+was her existence. Least of all he whose fine feelings vibrated under
+each spiritual touch and awoke an anxious echo in her soul.
+
+Even if it were possible for her to create a sort of island on which she
+might prevent him from coming into contact with her world, wasn't her
+very appearance a traitor? All those mad nights could not have passed
+over her without leaving traces. Two years before Dr. Salmoni had
+already remarked a change in her appearance. "A cold, disdainful look,"
+he had said.
+
+She jumped from bed, and ran to the mirror to subject every feature to
+suspicious scrutiny.
+
+Her eyes had grown tired. There was no disputing that. But they did not
+look disdainful. "Virgin Mary eyes," Dr. Rennschmidt had said, not
+"Madonna eyes." Was there a difference? On her brow were faint cobwebby
+lines; but she could well-nigh rub them away with her finger. "They will
+disappear with a little massaging," she said to herself. But the deep
+grooves on either side of her mouth were bad. They gave her face a
+haughty, satiated expression. "The paths that consuming passion long has
+trod," she quoted from "Tannhaeuser in Rom," which she knew almost by
+heart.
+
+And yet--had she not preserved her noblest, her profoundest feelings? As
+if to save them up for this One, and now that the One had come, it was
+too late perhaps.
+
+She spent the day in misery, and when Richard came for his tea, he found
+red eyes.
+
+That afternoon proved to her clearly what she possessed in Richard. He
+asked so few questions, and was so sympathetic and full of solicitude,
+that for a moment or two she felt comforted and secure. She almost
+succumbed to the temptation to tell him a little about her new
+acquaintance, as was right between two such good friends. Fortunately
+she resisted the impulse. Rather let Adele into the secret, who had
+several times observed encouragingly:
+
+"You may trust me fully. I know life far too well not to take the lady's
+side."
+
+Wishing to avoid "the whole crew," as she dubbed the circle of her
+friends, Lilly pled sickness, and Richard rested satisfied. In the
+evening it occurred to her she had told Dr. Rennschmidt she was going
+out. She hastily put out the light, and sat brooding in the dark until
+bedtime.
+
+The next morning the mail brought her a letter addressed in an unknown
+hand.
+
+She tore the envelope open and read:
+
+    I cannot rest, I cannot sleep before
+    I speak to you, before the prayer torn
+    From out my breast in passionate outpour
+    Swiftly on wind and wave to you is borne.
+
+    I sit and dream by lighted lamp; still lies
+    My work. With hours stolen I entwine
+    A crown of flame that heavenly aspires
+    In tongues of fire up round your head divine.
+
+    Oh, chide me not for uttering words uncalled;
+    Chastise me not for sacred spell I've broken
+    In which your lofty spirit is enthralled.
+    I am a struggler--I must needs have spoken.
+
+Good Heavens! Did this refer to her, to Lilly Czepanek, who ate her
+heart out in dull self-depreciation?
+
+If any human being in the world could think of her so, above all _he_,
+the most glorious--she knew the poem, though unsigned, came from
+him--then after all she was not in such a bad way; then perhaps her life
+had not taken a permanent hold upon her; probably her innermost being
+had remained intact, and values lay strewn in her soul which needed only
+to be used in order to sanctify and bless herself and others.
+
+Long after she knew the verses by heart she read them again and again.
+She could not tear her eyes from the beloved writing.
+
+Then she tried to set the words to music. She opened the piano, and
+fantasied. Her playing came back to her as on the other night;
+everything she had known as a girl and had thought long forgotten came
+back. She needed merely to drop her fingers on the keys, and there it
+was--or nearly so.
+
+But her finger joints were stiff, and the muscles of her lower arm soon
+wearied. She would have to practise and limber them.
+
+"When he visits me, I can even play a classic for him," she thought.
+Buoyed by the new hope she floated further along on the current of her
+newly won self-esteem.
+
+At the same time she kept careful count of each minute that separated
+her from the evening.
+
+Richard found her practicing assiduously.
+
+"What's gotten into you to-day?" he asked. "I hadn't the slightest idea
+you could play so well."
+
+"Neither had I," laughed Lilly.
+
+"You must play for the others this very evening."
+
+"This evening?" Lilly asked, alarmed. "I thought I had this evening
+free."
+
+"Free! What do you mean by free?" he rejoined, evidently annoyed. "You
+act just as if our going out in company were heaven knows what a
+sacrifice. You keep to yourself whenever you can possibly get a chance.
+Yesterday, in fact, Karla said nobody really knows what sort of life you
+lead."
+
+"I think that applies much better to Karla than to me. Nobody really
+knows her name."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Others have criticised your reserved ways, too. One
+man even hinted I'd better keep my eye on you more than I do, and not
+let you go your own way so much. So to hush them up I promised I'd bring
+you this evening instead of yesterday. There's no getting out of it."
+
+Lilly instantly reflected that a refusal, far from helping, would merely
+arouse his dormant suspicions. So she bravely choked down fright and
+tears. But when he left the anguish of disappointment was all the
+keener.
+
+What would Dr. Rennschmidt think if he came at the appointed time and
+found her out? Since he had not mentioned his address, she could not
+write to him, and he would have a full day in which to nurse evil
+suspicions.
+
+In an agony of apprehension she sought comfort with Adele, whose dry,
+peevish face perceptibly brightened. She seemed to be in her element
+when it came to deceiving a person, or, better still, two persons.
+
+"The best thing," she said, "would be for you to say a sick friend had
+asked you to come. Something sad like that takes them all in." She knew
+it from experience, she assured Lilly.
+
+That evening her friends did not get much entertainment out of Lilly.
+She disregarded the gentlemen, and gave the ladies rude answers. Mrs.
+Jula, the only one whose presence would have pleased her, was absent,
+as had become usual of late. They finally left her to herself and
+Richard, the dear fellow, who had hoped to parade his possession,
+helplessly gnawed the ends of his moustache.
+
+The next morning Lilly again suffered the torments of dread.
+
+When she had come home the night before, despite the late hour, she had
+awakened Adele, who said he had come and had looked dreadfully upset. He
+had gone away without saying anything.
+
+Another day spent in nervously counting the minutes. She stood in front
+of the mirror, utterly despondent, and dressed herself for him. She
+would have liked to sink at his feet when he entered. Nevertheless she
+determined to maintain in words and gesture, then and in the future, a
+certain gentle, melancholy grandeur of manner which would nip suspicion
+in the bud, and would correspond with the picture of her he had drawn in
+his verses. When she thought that that stupid, much-kissed head of hers
+should from now on be a "head divine," she grew thoroughly ill at ease
+from sheer sanctity.
+
+At half past seven the bell rang.
+
+She received him with a conventional smile, and the gentle, melancholy
+grandeur, which she succeeded in adopting perfectly, concealed her
+harassed spirits.
+
+His manner, she saw at the first glance, was also constrained. His eyes
+glided past her with a singularly empty expression.
+
+"He has divined everything," her soul cried.
+
+But she bore up nobly.
+
+"I must beg your pardon," she said, "for not having kept our
+appointment."
+
+"I hope your friend is feeling better," he said, while a disdainful
+smile of doubt played about his lips.
+
+She made all kinds of explanations, said whatever came into her head;
+and without looking at him, she knew he believed not a syllable.
+
+"I must beg _your_ pardon," he rejoined after she had finished, with the
+same lurking disdain in his voice and smile.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I sent you some verses which I hope you will consider nothing more than
+what they really are, a mere harmless stylistic effort without sense or
+significance."
+
+"He's already withdrawing," her guilty conscience cried; and all the
+colder and worldlier was her reply.
+
+"I admit your pretty verses did astonish me at first. I couldn't
+conceive that I was a fitting subject to inspire them. But then I
+thought you probably meant nothing more than what you just now said, and
+I did not feel offended. If you wish we won't say more about it."
+
+He looked at her with great questioning eyes, and she rejoiced at having
+requited him so bitterly.
+
+Wishing to observe the rules of decorum she invited him to stay for
+supper, though absolutely nothing had been prepared for a guest.
+
+"I thought I was to be permitted to take you out," he replied in a hard,
+disillusioned tone.
+
+She smiled politely.
+
+"Just as you wish."
+
+They descended the stairs in silence, and in silence paced along the
+canal, the same way they had walked three evenings before, pressed close
+against each other in drunken bliss. Then, too, they had not spoken;
+but, oh, how different had their silence been!
+
+"What have you done the last few days?" Lilly finally asked, to make
+conversation.
+
+"Nothing special. I tried to write an article for the _Muenchener
+Kunstzeitschrift_, on which I'm a collaborator. My subject was the
+Sienna School outside of Sienna. But it didn't turn out very well. The
+editor won't be satisfied."
+
+Lilly read reproach of herself in his words. Evidently he wanted to
+indicate that her entrance into his life was to blame.
+
+And when he asked to what restaurant she would like to go, she said, her
+wounded heart quivering:
+
+"I'm neither hungry nor thirsty, and people and light would hurt me."
+
+She wanted to add something about "not wishing to be a burden" and
+similar things, but swallowed the words before they were spoken.
+
+"If you wish to avoid people, we might go to the Tiergarten."
+
+Lilly agreed. Had he said, "Come down into the water of the canal with
+me," she would have assented even more willingly.
+
+The hard park roads stretched before them in the light of the electric
+lamps like long galleries with garish walls between which one was forced
+to run the gauntlet. The pedestrians coming toward Lilly and Dr.
+Rennschmidt measured the tall couple with cold, intrusive curiosity.
+
+"It's worse here than in the crowded streets," said Lilly.
+
+Her aching, despondent heart fluttered with excitement
+
+He pointed to a side path leading into darkness; and without speaking
+they dipped into solitude.
+
+Above the towering masses of branches the cloudy sky, looking like a
+metal whose brilliance has worn off, reflected the invisible sea of city
+lights. Through the lattice work of the leafless bushes gleamed the
+lamps lining the more public ways; and on all sides the gongs of the
+electric trams, shooting hither and thither, sounded like fire alarums.
+
+But there in the interior of the park, quiet and darkness prevailed.
+Lilly felt she had sunk into a black sea of mournfulness.
+
+The silence between them became intolerable.
+
+Suddenly Dr. Rennschmidt stepped in front of Lilly and blocked the way.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Mrs. Czepanek--Mrs. Czepanek--what I am going to say--what I am going
+to say"--his raised hands jerked back and forth before her face--"will
+either bring us together again--or--send us apart forever. I was
+cowardly before. I thought I could evade the truth. When I said I didn't
+mean what I wrote in my poem, I was lying. I felt exactly what I wrote.
+And a thousand times more strongly. But I oughtn't to have spoken. I
+know I frightened you. You were bewildered. You didn't know how to take
+me. You probably think me some enamoured adventurer who wants to exploit
+the trust you show. Dear, dear Mrs. Czepanek, I promise you I will never
+again annoy you with a display of my feelings. But don't withdraw your
+friendship from me. Please don't. Just imagine what would become of me
+if I were to lose you!"
+
+So _that's_ what it was!
+
+Oh, God! If nothing else stood between them.
+
+She could not help herself--she had to lean against a tree and cry. Her
+tears soon soaked her veil, and she raised it and pressed her finger
+tips to her eyes.
+
+"What's the matter?" she heard his voice, hoarse with anxiety. "Did I
+wound you so deeply? Was what I said so very bad? I will atone for it.
+Just pardon me. You must pardon me."
+
+When she heard him beg her pardon so humbly for the immeasurable
+happiness he had bestowed upon her, she was seized with a frenzy, and
+throwing her grand manner to the winds and her shame, to boot, she flung
+her arms about his neck with a groan of abandon, pressed her body
+against his, and kissed his lips, and sucked and bit them.
+
+Under the impetus of this wild, unchaste kiss, he staggered and held
+himself erect on her, digging his fingers into the flesh of her upper
+arm.
+
+How good it felt, because it hurt so!
+
+"At last, at last!" her heart cried.
+
+Now he knew who she was and what she had to give him.
+
+When she pulled herself together, she saw he had sunk back with his head
+leaning against the same tree that had supported her. His hat had fallen
+to the ground. His eyes were closed. His face had the ashen hue of
+death.
+
+For a few moments all was still. The only sound was the clanging of the
+tram bells.
+
+"My love, my love!" she whispered, stooping and then drawing herself
+upward on him. "Wake up, my love! wake up, and come!"
+
+He opened his eyes and stared at her with the look of a foolish slave.
+
+"Come, come," she exulted. "Come back, come home. I don't want to roam
+about any more--in the woods or restaurants. Come home! Come to me!"
+
+He did not respond. He seemed to have lost his mind completely.
+
+A dull sense of guilt awoke in her, but was instantly stifled by joy.
+
+"Come, come!"
+
+With both hands she drew him away from the spot that had become the
+cradle of her bliss--and his, too. Was it remarkable that happiness
+should benumb him and rob him of his senses? He upon whom Lilly
+Czepanek bestowed herself, Lilly Czepanek for whose favour hundreds had
+begged in vain, might well lose his senses. It by no means derogated
+from his dignity.
+
+While she drew him along the roads and streets, she let loose upon him
+her soul's tempest in a delirium of happy prattle.
+
+Hadn't he an inkling of what he was that he should have harboured such
+doubts? She had belonged to him from the very first instant. A miracle
+had taken place in her as well as in him. Never had she known what love
+was until the day when the squirrels chipped over their heads. The rest
+of her life no longer existed for her. _He_ alone was there. He and his
+eyes. He and his mouth. He and his will. He and the great, glorious work
+which she would toil for like a slave; which she would enrich with her
+love, because from old pictures and poems he would gather nothing but
+the grey ashes of love. Genuine, young blissful love, _she_ would teach
+him, she, Lilly Czepanek, who had waited for him ever since she could
+remember, who belonged to him from the beginning, from the beginning of
+time, you might say. He could see God had destined them for each other,
+because they both thought they had met before, whereas they had never
+met in life. At most in dreams. She had seen him in her dreams always,
+always. Exactly as in fairy tales.
+
+"Perhaps it is a fairy tale. Tell me, tell me, you whose first name I do
+not even know. But no matter. Tell me, it's not a mere fairy tale."
+
+But he said nothing. He walked along like a somnambulist. He followed
+her up the steps mechanically, and remained standing stiffly in the
+centre of the drawing-room, into which she had led him. When the lights
+were turned on, he looked about with a shy, searching glance, as if he
+had never seen the room, and could not recollect how he had come there.
+
+She clung to him, and said he should sit quite still and rest, and close
+those eyes of his. Then she helped him remove his overcoat, and pressed
+him into a seat and kissed him on both "those eyes" until his lids
+closed and he reclined there as if actually asleep.
+
+"Now wait, beloved, until I come back."
+
+She ran joyously into the kitchen to order Adele to prepare supper
+hastily. Then she hurried into the bedroom, where she changed her
+rustling silk dress for a light blue tea-gown, turquoise-studded, in
+which, as Richard was wont to say gallantly, she was Venus herself. She
+arranged her hair more loosely and discarded her rings The only jewel
+she left was a gold bracelet.
+
+Adele, the sulky, had transformed the table as if by magic into a bower
+of flowers, and her face was wreathed in smiles; for at last there were
+human goings-on in this respectably indecent house. The plated
+silverware gleamed on the fresh damask, and the aroma of golden bananas
+came from the fruit basket.
+
+He might be content. Lilly was. Her dread had disappeared. She felt
+well-nigh victorious. But her happiness was too humble to be totally
+unqualified.
+
+Her one pride, greedy for recognition, was that she had so much, so much
+to give him.
+
+When she entered the drawing-room, she no longer found him reclining on
+the arm-chair. To her terror she saw he was standing in front of the
+secretaire--absorbed in contemplation of Richard's picture.
+
+"Oh, if only I had taken it away before!" she thought Now it was too
+late.
+
+He let a confused, astonished look glide over the Venus robe, and
+fetching a deep breath, grasped both her hands.
+
+"Why did you make yourself so beautiful for me?"
+
+"Just to give you a little feeling of being at home here," she said,
+dropping her eyes. "Nothing more. But come. Let's go to supper. We
+haven't had anything to eat all evening."
+
+"Eat and drink now? Oh, very well--I'll just sit at table, if you want."
+
+"Then I don't care for anything either," she cried, clinging to him, and
+drawing her arm so tight about his neck that the pressure of his body
+fairly robbed her of her breath.
+
+Peter, the little ape, who had slept in his corner the whole time, awoke
+and whimpered jealously, and stretched his grey arms yearningly between
+the bars of his cage, as if wishing to be the third party in the
+alliance.
+
+Dr. Rennschmidt heard the strange sound and started.
+
+Lilly smiled and calmed him.
+
+"Later I'll introduce you to all my little ones. My friends must be
+yours, too."
+
+He drew himself up to his full height.
+
+"How is that possible? As what would you introduce me?"
+
+Lilly hastily parried.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean it that way. I merely meant--" She was at a loss what
+explanation to offer. Then she felt his trembling fingers clutch her
+upper arm. His eyes burned their way into hers.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.
+
+Her brain reeled.
+
+"Who am I? I am a woman--who loves you--who has never loved anyone
+before."
+
+He gratefully caressed her shoulders.
+
+"Understand me," he said. "I am not trying to force myself into your
+confidence. But if the relation between two human beings is what ours
+has been for the past hour, they want to mean everything in the world to
+each other. I have never met a woman like you. I am utterly helpless.
+The few little experiences I have had don't count. In Rome a baker's
+daughter loved me. She ran away with a marquis. When I was a student I
+went through a few similar episodes. I never mingled much in society.
+And now all of a sudden I have you in my arms--the noblest, the most
+glorious thing I've ever beheld. A creature not of this world. I keep
+looking at you as you stand there in your blue peplum--why, it's as if
+an old marble statue by Lysippus or Praxiteles had come to life. And
+that is to be mine? The mere desiring of it is naked tragedy. We are
+both making straight for a precipice, and we don't even resist."
+
+"Why resist?" she cried, in bliss, throwing her head back, as if to toss
+from her brow streaming bacchantic locks. "We love each other. Nothing
+else concerns us."
+
+He sank into the chair next to her, and pressed his face into both
+hands, his body heaving as with sobs.
+
+She kneeled before him, and bent her head, and planted little kisses on
+his clenched hands.
+
+"No," he cried, jumping up. "I will not permit myself simply to drift.
+If _you_ think as you do, you who are willing to sacrifice
+everything--very well! But I, who am the recipient, I must make
+everything clear to you, so that you know for whom you are making the
+sacrifice. I mustn't leave any possibilities open to mislead you. I'm
+nothing but a poor young fellow who lives by his uncle's bounty. I have
+no prospects. I can't build on my work. And the few articles I write
+don't count. I must first toil for my little place in the world. It may
+be ten years before I secure it. And I can't let you support me. Think
+what you will of me, but I must tell you: we cannot become husband and
+wife."
+
+At first she scarcely comprehended. It was impossible for her to realise
+that a man could be so naive, so unworldly as to speak of marriage in
+Lilly Czepanek's drawing-room.
+
+She burst into a strident laugh, the overflow of her scorn of her own
+worthless life.
+
+"Do you think," she cried, jumping to her feet, "that I'm nothing but an
+adventuress who tries to rope men into marriage, one of those
+harpies"--Mrs. Jula's word occurred to her--"who pounce upon every
+passerby? For what sort of a sorry wretch do you take me?"
+
+He looked into her face with astonished, uncomprehending eyes.
+
+"A woman who loves a man and wants to be the joy of his life is not a
+sorry wretch."
+
+Oh, if that was what he meant!
+
+The time when in all innocence she had wanted to be Richard's wife
+recurred to her. How long ago was it? How low she must have sunk if this
+most natural conception of the relation between man and woman should
+have become strange to her!
+
+She shuddered, and was aware of having turned pale.
+
+If only he had noticed nothing amiss. She could stand much, but not
+that.
+
+Humbly, in dread of his searching eyes, she replied:
+
+"I merely wanted to let you know that you are free and will remain free
+from first to last. You can leave whenever you want to, and nothing will
+have been."
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"What do you mean--I?"
+
+"As what will you remain behind if I go?"
+
+"I'll take care of that," she laughed.
+
+The contingency was very, very remote. Why split her head over it now?
+
+But he was not yet satisfied.
+
+"There's something peculiar about you. A whiff of mystery. A--a--how
+shall I say? The shadow of a wrong done you. You mingle much in society,
+you say. Yet I have the feeling that you are lonely and perhaps
+unprotected. Whenever I try to look into you, I feel as if rude hands
+had been laid on you. From now on I will stand by to protect and advise
+you. But I'm so inexperienced in worldly matters. It can easily come
+about that without divining it I may merely add to the mischief in your
+life. And I would not for the world--you are holy to me. So you must
+tell me now, to-night, whatever you may of what you have gone through
+and suffered. Will you?"
+
+Lilly felt evasion was no longer possible. The hour had struck of which
+she had lived in dread ever since she had met Dr. Rennschmidt, though it
+had seemed indefinitely remote.
+
+One of Mrs. Jula's sayings again flashed through her mind:
+
+"The road back into the community of virtue leads through lies."
+
+It had begun with lies; with lies it would go on.
+
+For an instant the wish shot up within her to tell him the full truth.
+But that was madness, suicide. In fact, she need not lie. She need
+merely put a different face upon matters, the face they wore when hope
+still shone upon her life and she actually was what she now endeavoured
+to appear to be.
+
+"It must be darker," she said, extinguishing the chandelier's piercing
+white glare. The only light now came from the red-shaded standing lamp,
+which cast a flowery shimmer upon them.
+
+Her hands in his, her head leaning against his shoulder, she began her
+whispered, faltered confession.
+
+She told of her sheltered, care-free childhood, in which music held
+sway, a benevolent spirit and a demon in one; of her father's flight and
+the poverty in which she and her mother were left.
+
+So far nothing to conceal or alter. The colonel also remained as he had
+been, except that she occasionally promoted him to the rank of general.
+It was not until Walter von Prell stepped on the stage the second time
+that it became necessary to mix in fresh colours. The mere
+acknowledgment that she had frivolously abandoned body and soul to a
+tattered and torn jovial ne'er-do-well would deprive her forever of her
+friend's esteem. So the sorry little good-for-nothing was quite
+naturally converted into a happy, yet ill-fated laughing hero who had
+been vanquished merely because all the dark powers combined against him.
+
+Once launched, she sailed serenely on. She represented the parting as
+having taken place amid a thousand vows and tears and bridal
+expectations. As for the duel, of which she had never learned the
+particulars, she exaggerated its horrors vastly, her lover emerging a
+total cripple, who left for America resolved not to enter her life again
+until he should be in a position to atone for his misdeed by marrying
+her. So for the meantime he placed her in the care of a simple, good
+young man, who was all nobility and self-sacrifice. For love of the
+vanished friend, this young man had taken Lilly's fate into his keeping
+four years before, and watched over her and led her into society. With
+rare disinterestedness he managed the little capital remaining from her
+married days, and always advised her in practical matters. He came every
+afternoon for a social cup of tea, and sometimes he escorted her when
+she went out in the evening. His circle had become hers, and everybody
+they knew honoured and respected the fine relationship existing between
+them, the basis of which was his noble loyalty to his friend.
+
+So Lilly Czepanek, with the force of conviction, recounted her life
+history. She almost believed in her own words. As a matter of fact, it
+was a fair picture of her life, such as Richard had once portrayed it,
+before she had begun to slip into the abyss the night of the carnival.
+
+Of Kellermann and Dr. Salmoni and the whole "crew," of course, she said
+nothing. But she alluded to her unfortunate art with tears--for the last
+time, she said--then it should never be mentioned again.
+
+She concluded. When, with a hesitating feeling of security, she looked
+up to him expecting to receive his absolution, she started at the change
+in his appearance. His face was livid, his eyes, fastened on the
+ceiling, glowed unnaturally, deep furrows of anguish had cut themselves
+into his cheeks.
+
+"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her head.
+
+He jumped up, and snatched Richard's picture from the secretaire, and
+carried it to the light of the standing lamp.
+
+Lilly knew he was thinking of Walter, and timidly interjected:
+
+"That isn't he."
+
+"Then who is it?"
+
+"His friend--the manufacturer."
+
+He cast the picture aside.
+
+"Haven't you a picture of _his_?"
+
+Yes--but where was it? The large pastel was in the lumber room. The
+small one very likely was stowed away in some drawer.
+
+"I packed it away," she excused herself, "because I couldn't bear to
+have it in my sight all the time."
+
+She did not tell him why the sight of it annoyed her. She preferred him
+to assume the cause was her newly awakened love.
+
+How ridiculous, how pitiful it all was!
+
+She longed to sink at his feet and cry to him:
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me--take me as I am, do not spurn me."
+
+Instead, she lied on, shamelessly, desperately, like an ordinary
+adventuress on the verge of discovery.
+
+"Will you do me the favour to hunt for the picture?"
+
+"Why do you want to torture yourself?"
+
+"Please, I beg of you."
+
+Further resistance was out of the question. She fetched the key of the
+secretary from a basket, opened the drawers at random, rummaged among
+the papers without half looking, and actually found it. There it was.
+She had not seen it for years.
+
+The white-lashed eyes looked haughty and cunning.
+
+"Lie and deceive, lie and deceive," they seemed to say. "That's just
+what I used to do."
+
+"Here it is."
+
+He stepped to the lamp, and stared at the picture long. His lips
+twitched from time to time, the picture quivered jerkily in his hands.
+
+"Exactly the way I stood in front of the rich orphan's photograph,"
+thought Lilly. But that was long ago.
+
+Then she heard him speak. His voice was hoarse.
+
+"Will you answer a question upon which much depends?"
+
+"Ask it, my love."
+
+"Do you still count upon--upon this young man's return?"
+
+Whither did the question lead? Lilly felt she need merely say "no," and
+every obstacle was removed. But if she said no, all her falsehoods about
+Walter and his friend would have had no significance.
+
+So she had to choose a middle course.
+
+"Sometimes I have my doubts," she managed to say, lingering over the
+words. "I am waiting for two now. My father seems to be gone--gone for
+good. And I don't hear from him either."
+
+"Do you consider yourself bound, just as you did then?"
+
+She felt the halter tightening about her neck.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+Something in his tone seemed to bar escape. It left no nook to hide in.
+Her answer meant life or death.
+
+She held up her arms as if swearing an oath.
+
+"Since I know you I don't care one way or the other. If you want me to
+be true to him, I'll wait for him--till Judgment Day. If you want me to
+throw him overboard, I'll throw him overboard."
+
+He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and stood there as he had in
+the park. She became alarmed again for his sake.
+
+"Why does he torture himself so?" she thought. Then it occurred to her
+for the first time that he took her and everything she had said
+seriously; that he, who himself practiced loyalty, assumed that loyalty
+was a life principle of hers, too.
+
+Oh, if he knew!
+
+She was so ashamed she did not dare to speak or approach him.
+
+He drew himself up energetically, and his forehead glowed with the
+wrathful will, which from the first had intimidated her.
+
+"Listen," he said. "After everything you've told me, I know I acted on a
+false assumption. You are _not_ neglected, the world has _not_ done you
+wrong. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for, and you're
+looking forward to a future, no matter how uncertain it may now be. You
+would lose all that through me. The instant your friend were to suspect
+my existence, he would, of course, withdraw his support. And all the
+others who now constitute your world would go with him."
+
+Lilly wanted to burst out laughing, and give vent to her utter contempt
+for everything that had constituted her former life. But another thought
+instantly restrained her. Dr. Rennschmidt must continue to think that
+Richard should not suspect his existence. To defy her past and present
+was to bring about a catastrophe which would irremediably expose the
+wretchedness of her situation. She might be his only in dark secret
+hours.
+
+He continued:
+
+"What I have to offer in return is nothing. I have nothing but my
+work--you know. And even my work is still in the clouds. Why, I'm not
+even certain of myself. If I think of what I have just--" He turned his
+eyes aside.
+
+"Of course, if you don't love me," said Lilly, dejectedly.
+
+He threw himself in front of her, placing one knee on a vacant part of
+the seat of her chair, and putting his arms about her body.
+
+"Have mercy on me. You see how I'm suffering. Don't make it _harder_ for
+me. Every day, every hour, I should say to myself: 'Over in America
+there's a man toiling and moiling for her. He doesn't write simply
+because he's ashamed to admit that he has accomplished nothing on
+account of his mangled body.' I can't conceive any other motive for his
+silence. A man doesn't forget a woman like you. In the meantime I sit
+here with you in secret, and hold you in my arms. I don't know--I--a
+person can debauch, he can commit adultery--so far as I'm concerned it
+wouldn't matter. But to rob a poor cripple of his all--I think the
+lowest scoundrel would draw the line at that. I don't know how I'll get
+over it--" He collapsed. His forehead hit against the arm of
+Lilly's chair, and dry sobs shook his body. "But--it would be
+better--immediately--on the spot--better than later--when it's too
+late--for both--of us."
+
+The blow had fallen. How cleverly she thought she had garbled the truth,
+and here she was caught in her own net of lies.
+
+"For God's sake," she screamed, "do you mean to say you will--"
+
+He rose to his feet.
+
+"Farewell," he said. "Think of me in peace. Thank you."
+
+"If I tell him the truth, he'll be all the more certain to go," she
+thought, looking about helplessly.
+
+His hands, stretched toward her, were waiting, his eyes hung on her
+thirstily, as if to drink in the picture forever.
+
+"I will plant myself at the door," she thought, "and throw myself on
+him, and stifle him with kisses."
+
+But the desire not to lose his respect made her small and timorous.
+
+"Not this instant," she implored, clasping his hands. "One hour--one
+parting hour--just one."
+
+He gently extricated his hands from her grasp, and turned to the door.
+
+Raised to her full height, Lilly stood in the centre of the room in her
+blue Venus robe and held out her hand to him. The wide sleeves fell
+away and revealed the mature womanly beauty of her arms.
+
+"If he sees me this way," she thought, "he will still be mine."
+
+But he did not turn about. He reeled. His forehead struck against the
+half-open door.
+
+All of a sudden he seemed to have been wiped out of existence, and with
+him the light of the world. A swarm of bees buzzed about her head, and
+in the darkness enveloping her, she sank through the floor, deeper,
+deeper, into the canal--a club dealt her a blow on her forehead--and all
+was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first it sounded like a chirping of birds, then like the murmur of a
+mighty throng in some wide sunny place; and then only two voices
+sounded, one a man's, the other a woman's. They kept up an eager,
+whispered conversation.
+
+The cook--Maggie--and the lackey with the mischievous smile. Of course,
+that's who they were.
+
+The colonel would enter the next instant and want her to be his wife.
+
+Something cool and damp dropped soothingly on her aching head. Just as
+then.
+
+"So I'll have to go through all that again," she thought in terror, and
+she began to cry and entreat:
+
+"Oh, colonel, please let me go. I'm much too bad for you! Oh, _dear_
+colonel."
+
+"For God's sake, she's raving!" said the man. After all he wasn't the
+horrid lackey.
+
+Oh, how deliciously at ease she lay in the spell of that voice, in which
+a home-like note quivered solicitously.
+
+"He didn't go at any rate." The thought tranquillised her, and she
+settled herself more comfortably on the pillow they had placed under her
+neck on the floor. If she had known his first name, she would have
+spoken to him. Why, how disgraceful not to know his first name yet. So
+she merely raised her arms a little toward him.
+
+Instantly he was kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.
+
+"Keep real quiet," he said, "real, real quiet."
+
+"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up to him in
+blissful peace.
+
+Yes, yes, everything would be all right. Ways and means would be found
+for their remaining together--like two friends, like a brother and
+sister. They wouldn't part--no, no, they wouldn't part. Nobody need be
+tortured so terribly as that.
+
+Lilly shuddered and thought of the moment when the light about her had
+gone out, and she had sunk into the wet, slimy depths.
+
+Thus life would have been without him.
+
+But now they would wander toward the dawning sun hand in hand like
+brother and sister in innocent gaiety, liberated and purified.
+
+Inconceivable happiness!
+
+Strange that neither of them had hit upon the idea sooner.
+
+She groped for his arm and with a contented sigh nestled her cheek in
+his hollow hand.
+
+But Adele, who all the while had considerately been looking out of the
+window, thought the compress ought to be changed, because the wound on
+Lilly's forehead was still bleeding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Each spring in a man's life has its peculiar aspect and its peculiar
+history. Each spring finds him different, each stirs new depths and
+opens fresh, hidden wounds. One spring passes by like a dull, vapid
+game, because he himself just then happens to be dull and vapid. Another
+tortures him with a thousand fruitless admonitions, because he cannot
+pay off a penny of the debt he owes himself. A third finds him listless
+and sodden as a field which cannot recover from the winter stress. And
+again the spring-time chants deceptive hymns of liberation and
+redemption in his heart, as if _it_ had the power to liberate and
+redeem.
+
+But most beautiful is that spring of which we are scarcely aware for all
+the spring joy within us; whose bourgeoning seems but a reflection of
+our spiritual bourgeoning, and which is but the accompaniment of the
+mighty growth that broadens our minds and souls and fairly bursts the
+bonds of our being.
+
+Such a spring broke upon Lilly.
+
+Everything took on a new aspect. Never had the morning sun painted such
+crinkly, laughing grotesques on the walls. Never had rainy days
+enveloped the world in such languishing violet twilights. Never had
+people's faces been brightened by so much expectant festivity. Never had
+the din and bustle of the streets revealed so much joyous, purposeful
+activity.
+
+Why, all of a sudden Lilly also was overwhelmed with work.
+
+Every hour was filled with urgent occupations. If anyone in the last few
+years had dared to tell her that the day would come again when with
+burning cheeks and a heated brain she would indiscriminately cram names,
+dates, biographies, lists of great men's works, poetical quotations, and
+foreign terms, she would have laughed him to scorn.
+
+But it would never do to loaf now. She must be ready with a response on
+any occasion, just as she had been when he asked her about Giotto. All
+her eagerness for knowledge, which a feeling of spiritual isolation and
+aimless endeavour had dammed up within her for years, now gushed out.
+Her mind, insatiate as a fallow, unfertilised field, absorbed whatever
+was thrown upon it. She scarcely needed to put forth the least effort.
+If she merely imagined herself repeating it to him, it remained in her
+memory.
+
+She went at her studies with the utmost secrecy. Konrad--yes, his name
+was Konrad--must not suspect that her wisdom had just issued brand-new
+from the laboratory. She also kept her visits to the museums a secret.
+He was to suppose she had always been thoroughly familiar with the
+masters. In addition she had to practice many a piece of early music
+which he wished to hear for his work. And often she blessed her father's
+strict hand which had held her down on the piano stool throughout many a
+long night.
+
+Lilly and Dr. Rennschmidt saw a great deal of each other--every other
+evening of course. He avoided coming afternoons, which, he knew,
+belonged to her betrothed's friend. But often he ran up to her in the
+middle of the day to bring her a book or some flowers and ask her for a
+bit of music. No matter how much she pressed him, he never remained for
+a meal. In fact, he seemed not to feel quite at ease in her apartment.
+He would walk up and down incessantly, pretty soon glance at the clock,
+and take leave. At first she felt hurt, then she asked him teasingly
+whether he thought he was in an enemy's country, and finally she adopted
+the policy of _laissez faire_.
+
+Oh, she did not yet thoroughly understand him. Each day laid bare new,
+unusual sides of his being.
+
+He was still very young. Not only in years. She had met many a cold,
+blase old man of twenty-five. His youth was deep-seated. He thought
+passionately. Lilly had never seen such fervour expended on pure
+thinking. Ideas seemed to him like tangible beings with which he had to
+strive breast to breast, and which he drew to himself if they proved to
+be friendly to his intellectual attitude, or rejected if hostile.
+Similarly, great thinkers and creators of the past were either allies or
+enemies. He associated with them as with teachers and comrades, adoring
+or despising them, submitting to their reprimands, or turning them into
+laughing-stocks.
+
+His thoughts and speech were in a constant state of flux with
+counter-currents and a whirl of contradictions. He was like a man
+forcibly cleaving a way, or giving merciless chase. He never remained
+indifferent or apathetic to a phenomenon, spiritual or physical.
+Everywhere he saw problems to be solved and vexed questions in regard to
+which he must take one side or the other. He either loved or hated. He
+scarcely knew a stage between.
+
+And Lilly followed him with all the ardour of a pupil and lover. She
+planted each idea of his in her being and let it take root or die as
+chance willed. No need to cherish it; she enjoyed sufficient wealth
+without it.
+
+He spoke little of his personal matters, not from distrust or reserve,
+but because he deemed them of small importance. Lilly had to extract
+jots of information by questioning.
+
+He was very enthusiastic about his parents, though their pictures seemed
+to have faded in his mind or lost form.
+
+His uncle had taken their place, the self-made man and globe-trotter who
+had made Dr. Rennschmidt his heir, and who even during his lifetime
+allowed him means for a modest, yet care-free existence.
+
+Lilly could not fathom the inner relationship of the two men. Sometimes,
+it seemed, Dr. Rennschmidt cherished a tender love for the old man. Then
+again he was skeptical, almost bitter in his judgment of him. Evidently
+a profound difference existed in their natures, though they struggled
+for compromise.
+
+He had few friends--chiefly old fellow-students--and he never paid
+purely social visits. As a result he could spend all his leisure hours
+with Lilly.
+
+They sat in the restaurants, generally the little Italian bodega, until
+the waiter turned out the lights over their heads, to their invariable
+surprise--they had just come.
+
+Or they bought their suppers for a few pennies at a delicatessen shop,
+and escaped the city dust in the Tiergarten, where they hunted up an
+empty bench somewhat removed from the public ways, yet not in too
+secluded a spot. It was not until love couples began to wander by in the
+dark like shades of the netherworld that they felt wholly concealed; and
+if others seated themselves on the same bench, they little objected,
+knowing well that love couples would never remain beside them long. They
+had much more urgent need of the night and solitude than Lilly and
+Konrad.
+
+While the light green leaves, still stemless, gradually melted into a
+dark, shadowy, jagged mass, and the sunset flames above merged into the
+sombre purple of night, and the nightingale sang for them sometimes only
+a few feet away, they would sit there shoulder to shoulder waiting for
+the stars to dot the twilight, each evening later and fewer in number.
+
+Their winged thoughts travelled far into the realms of music, painting,
+northern sagas and Italian landscapes. Questions of infinity arose,
+hesitating and halting, and were promptly disposed of with the sure,
+clear discernment of a happy, youthful latitudinarianism. Lilly was now
+accurately informed of the meaning of the universe and immortality and
+the soul and God.
+
+Often she felt as if she had been left alone to freeze in a vast, icy
+waste where there was no Father, no life after death, and certainly no
+St. Joseph.
+
+"What you believe, I suppose, is atheism, isn't it?" she asked
+timorously.
+
+"If that's what you want to call it," he laughed.
+
+So, from now on Lilly was an atheist, one of those who in the eyes of
+the Church were roasting in nethermost hell. But if excommunication did
+not drive _him_ to despair, she, too, could suffer it. She would even
+endure a Fatherless condition.
+
+Her one regret was for St. Joseph.
+
+Although he had not entered her thoughts for many a day, none the less
+it was a pity never again to be able to run to him in sorrow or joy,
+never, at least, without having to feel ashamed of herself, and that
+exactly at a time when she needed him so urgently, when her experiences
+fairly overwhelmed her with their force and number.
+
+She felt a desire to be lulled and calmed, and the lofty art that Konrad
+spread before her eyes by no means soothed her; rather, it goaded her
+on, though, to be sure, to fresh delights.
+
+They went to what few concerts the late season still offered, and heard
+the Eroica and Brahms' Second Symphony and an unutterably exquisite
+production by Grieg.
+
+They would take their stand in the cheaper part of the house, where they
+both delighted to be, and listen with the backs of their hands touching
+as if by chance. A slight pressure conveyed the feelings awakened by
+some subtle charm or expressive bit.
+
+What wonderful hours those were!
+
+And what wonderful hours when she sat at Konrad's side in the pit (where
+none of the "crew" could see her). As she learned to know Shakespeare's
+characters belonging to every age and time and Wagner's luminous
+fairy-tale realism, she understood fully how infinitely poor her
+previous life had been.
+
+He took her to see the moderns also.
+
+Of all the plays Rosmersholm affected her most.
+
+She, Lilly, with her secret guilt, was Rebecca. He in his unsuspicious
+purity was Rosmer. His high-pitched spirituality had an increasingly
+strong influence on her, as Rosmer's on Rebecca. But if the filth of her
+existence should gradually roll from her upon him, would she not be his
+evil demon, his ruination?
+
+The thought was intolerable. She wept so bitterly during the performance
+as to attract general attention, and Konrad offered to take her out. She
+indignantly repudiated the suggestion.
+
+On going home she staggered along the river side, still sobbing. He had
+chosen that way because it was darker and quieter, and he half carried
+her on his arm.
+
+On the Spreebruecke she stopped and stared down into the dark, living
+depths. He let her have her way, but when she began to climb up on the
+railing--to see what it was like--he forced her down from the precarious
+position.
+
+"What's the difference?" she thought. "When he finds it all out, I'll
+have to go down there after all--and alone."
+
+From that evening on the effort to keep him free of the slightest
+suspicion as long, as long as possible troubled her more than ever,
+occupied her thoughts every moment of the day.
+
+Her great ignorance caused her no shame--nevertheless she fought against
+it with all her might--but she lived in constant terror that the
+slovenly, cynical tone to which she had gradually habituated herself
+through long intercourse with the "crew," might crop out in her
+conversation.
+
+The bit of carefully cherished rigour and good-breeding which she
+fetched out from among the remnants of her former spiritual state did
+her sluggish being good. And so she acquired some of that "grandeur"
+which she had demanded of herself at the beginning of her relations with
+Konrad. This time, however, it was not empty affectation, but an inner
+quality, a natural outcome of the finest and tenderest feelings, which
+she might still call her own.
+
+Much that had long dominated her thoughts became unintelligible to her,
+especially the tendency caught from her friends, to transfer everything
+entering the circle of her thoughts to the realm of the erotic.
+
+In astonishment she beheld world upon world opening up beyond the narrow
+whirlpool in which she had been carried around and around. Such a wealth
+of great and beautiful things to taste and enjoy was suddenly spread
+before her, that she did not find the time to feel ashamed of what had
+been.
+
+But when she recalled how she had once dared to kiss him, shame ran hot
+through her body. That moment of wild abandon, she feared, might ever
+remain a stain upon his image of her.
+
+Yet there was not the slightest indication that he did not think of her
+with the same respect as she of him. This mutual esteem always hung
+between them like a gauze veil, obscuring the beloved man's face as
+behind a mist of mingled happiness and anxiety, though at the same time
+removing the sting of self-reproach from Lilly.
+
+They were never more to talk of love. Love gave way to a sweet,
+fraternal, though somewhat constrained relationship. The word
+"friendship" was frequently on their lips. They praised its hallowing
+force with a most serious mien, as if they had not the faintest notion
+of what it meant.
+
+It was difficult, however, for Lilly to endure Konrad's bodily
+proximity. The one caress he permitted himself was to lay his arm
+lightly on her shoulder when they sat side by side. Though Lilly then
+longed to press closer up to him she finally moved farther away, because
+the constriction of her breast mounted by degrees to veritable torture.
+
+She never ventured in the very slightest to think that some day he might
+become her lover. When unable to fall asleep, she pictured herself
+drowsing off with her head under his shoulder--that was bliss enough.
+
+Her fancies scarcely ever strayed into forbidden territory. The chastity
+of her maiden days, which the colonel's senile greed had rudely
+violated, once again laid its merciful veil about her tremulous soul. In
+fact it was all as in the long-forgotten days of her girlhood--the
+golden wealth of thoughts and sensations, the witching glamour about
+each little object, the delightful importance of the tiniest incidents,
+the hopeful disquiet hoping for she knew not what.
+
+If only there had been a single human being in whom to confide her joy
+and fears, her happiness would have been complete.
+
+The desire waxed so strong within her as to be nearly uncontrollable.
+She had found herself more than once on the brink of telling her secrets
+to Richard--a quick way of ending them.
+
+One day she decided to visit her former landlady and acquaint her with
+her great experience.
+
+The old friendship between Mrs. Laue and Lilly had never wholly died
+down. Though they saw little of each other, Lilly had kept herself alive
+in the old lady's memory by sending messages and little gifts.
+
+The tenant _pro tem._ of the "best room" opened the door for Lilly.
+
+Mrs. Laue, as always, was sitting at her long white work table tapping
+busily with her wet finger-tips now on a pressed flower, now on a gluey
+bit of paper. She did not suffer herself to be interrupted, not even
+when Lilly on taking a seat beside her pushed toward her the sweets she
+never failed to bring.
+
+"No, thanks, child," said Mrs. Laue. "Each bite more is one flower less.
+People like myself have to wait for a holiday before we can eat. We have
+nobody to provide for us and keep us like a princess. I'd like to be in
+your shoes just one day before I lie in my grave--go out walking early
+in the morning--with nothing to do but feed a couple of gold fish."
+
+"As if that were happiness," sighed Lilly.
+
+"Do you mean to complain of your lot?" cried Mrs. Laue indignantly. "If
+I were in your place, I'd thank the Lord every hour of the day for
+having sent me such a friend."
+
+"Do you think that would satisfy all your hopes?"
+
+"Why, what else do you want?" Mrs. Laue--ceaselessly tapping--rebuked
+her. "He can't marry you any more--that's out of the question. Besides
+marriage would be nasty after all you've gone through. But listen to me.
+Be careful! If you always behave yourself nicely, he will make you an
+allowance, and you'll have something to live on all your life."
+
+"So, I'm just to aim for an old age pension?"
+
+"Well, what else?"
+
+"I can conceive of many other objects in life."
+
+"What? Work? Try it. See what it's like after you've been nothing but
+emotions for years. Or take another lover? Then you'd be sure of a fine
+time. Let me tell you one thing, child; never for a single instant think
+of another man. If you were to do that, you'd deserve to paste flowers
+like me--sixteen hours a day--until you die."
+
+While incessantly pasting one flower after the other, she poured out a
+volume of well-intentioned admonitions.
+
+Lilly rose shivering.
+
+There was nothing to be hoped for from that quarter. She looked about
+her with a sudden feeling of estrangement.
+
+"I'll never come back here again," she thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning the uneasy desire to open up her heart and obtain
+counsel again awoke, even stronger and more tormenting than before. Her
+friend Jula occurred to Lilly.
+
+To be sure, the clever, hot-blooded little woman had held herself aloof
+from the crew's jaunts. Her friends had not the least idea of what she
+was doing, and her red-head, when appealed to, became reticent. But
+Lilly felt sure Mrs. Jula would not withhold the bit of comprehending
+sympathy she needed.
+
+It took Lilly a long time to find her.
+
+The coquettish yellow silk nest her red-head had fixed up for her near
+the "Linden" was empty.
+
+Mrs. Jula had migrated to a suburb, the porter informed Lilly. She had
+thought the neighbourhood too dangerous; which made no sense, because
+the street was never empty, day or night.
+
+Lilly smiled. The porter gave her the address, and she drove out to Mrs.
+Jula.
+
+In a little bosky corner where the poets and philosophers dwell, Lilly
+found a very sober little house, brimful of books and manuscripts and
+busts of eminent men.
+
+Mrs. Jula seemed to have undergone a great change. She no longer wore
+her curly hair in a disorderly pompadour about her forehead, but
+smoothly parted and drawn down over her ears. This gave her a
+disquieting touch of virtuousness, although that way of wearing the hair
+was just then the height of fashion in the very world in which virtue
+for esthetic reasons has little value.
+
+Though she came to meet Lilly, as always, with outstretched arms, her
+cordiality seemed not wholly genuine; and though she beamed with delight
+at seeing her friend again, her expression was somewhat distraught, as
+if she were holding much in reserve.
+
+"Without asking Lilly about herself or paying any attention to her
+appearance, Mrs. Jula burst into an account of her own affairs.
+
+"You'll be tremendously surprised, but I can't help it," she said. "I
+never kept my little scruples of conscience a secret from you--they were
+really superfluous--my sins had never been so dreadful--"
+
+"Hm, hm," thought Lilly.
+
+"So you shall be the first of our former circle--"
+
+"Former?" thought Lilly.
+
+"--to learn of my return to a decent existence. Well, not to beat about
+the bush, I'm going to get married."
+
+"Your red-head?" asked Lilly, happy and sympathetic.
+
+"Well, not exactly." Mrs. Jula regarded her finger-tips with a
+condescending smile. "My red-head has given me his blessings, but that
+ends his role."
+
+"Then who is he?" asked Lilly, struggling to overcome her bewilderment.
+
+Now Mrs. Jula hung back a bit after all.
+
+"You see, it's a long story," she said hesitatingly. "To understand it
+thoroughly you'd have to know more of the circumstances of the past two
+years of my life. Did you ever happen to hear of an authoress by the
+name of Clarissa vom Winkle?"
+
+Lilly recalled having seen the name in puritanic family sheets, which
+she had looked through in cafes and confectionery shops.
+
+"Now listen: that Clarissa vom Winkle, who won a very acceptable
+reputation for championing the cause of simple, bourgeois morality as
+against the pernicious new-fashioned ideas of love--that Clarissa vom
+Winkle am I."
+
+Lilly was too strongly under the spell of her own fate properly to
+appreciate the humour of Mrs. Jula's avowal. Just a glimmering suspicion
+dawned upon her mind of the monstrous farce we human beings figure in at
+life's bidding.
+
+"Now on that account you're not to think me a convert or a bigot or
+something of the sort," Mrs. Jula continued with a certain little air of
+dignity, which became her as well as her quondam cordial cynicism.
+"There never was a special Day of Damascus in my life. I've always had,
+as it were, two souls in my breast; the one which--" she hesitated a
+moment--"well, which you know; and another which craves self-restraint
+and white damask and so on. That's the reason your unsuspicious loyalty
+always impressed me so, my dear. You probably recollect that I urged you
+to cling to your loyalty through thick and thin, because--you can't deny
+it--it's the crown of a woman's life. That's just what I said. Do you
+remember?"
+
+Lilly was unable to recall such sentiments, but she did recall many
+others scarcely harmonising with them. She began to feel quite uneasy.
+Her friend's new conception of life seemed ill adapted for a source of
+peace to her in the joyful stress that had led her to seek sympathy with
+Mrs. Jula.
+
+"Well, to continue," said the little lady. "I was always able to sell my
+essays and novels quickly, especially if I took them to the editors
+myself, and I found I was on the road to accumulating a tidy capital. My
+red-head became little more than an ornament. That's the beautiful thing
+about virtue. For the person who understands it, it is much more
+lucrative than sin." She ran her little red tongue over her lips in her
+knowing way, but maintained a perfectly demure face. "And then it was in
+disposing of my works that I met my husband to be. You know--I'm at last
+divorced from that old horror up there. This one is the editor of a new
+magazine for women. It stands for quiet domesticity and already has very
+good advertisements. He's a man of great intellectual gifts, and very
+firm moral principles, which, I suppose you've noticed, have not
+remained without influence on me."
+
+She made a little double chin and folded her hands in her lap.
+
+"And how did you manage to separate from--your old friend?" asked Lilly,
+from whose mind all these curious facts had almost driven her own
+concerns.
+
+"Separate? What are you thinking of?" rejoined Mrs. Jula, beaming again
+with sunny foolishness. "I wouldn't be as heartless as all that. Even if
+I did say his role had ended, you're not to take it so literally. What's
+the poor dyspeptic fellow to do if I refuse to set a place for him at my
+table now and then? Why do you look so surprised, Lilly? Something of
+the sort can always be managed. In the first place, I swore to my
+betrothed that my red-head had never been more to me than a brotherly
+friend. All of us women swear such things and don't even blush."
+
+Lilly nodded thoughtfully. That evening, had Konrad demanded it, she
+would have sworn an oath without a moment's hesitation.
+
+"In the second place--I'm telling you this in confidence--he contributed
+a considerable sum toward establishing the magazine. So the two
+gentlemen are partners. I arranged matters that way intentionally,
+because it seemed to me the best guarantee of a continuance of
+all-around friendly relations. Don't make such large eyes, dearie. Life
+is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its nest. And if you
+think I'm afraid of disclosures, I shrug my shoulders. Tragedy is a
+matter of taste. _I_ don't like it. So it doesn't exist for me. I always
+say to myself: you must wear a smile on your brow, but beneath the smile
+your brow must be of iron."
+
+Lilly experienced a sickish sensation.
+
+"If that's the price to pay for uprooting tragedy from one's life," she
+thought, "then I'd rather have unhappiness--I can swallow it--than all
+this happiness."
+
+She rose.
+
+No matter how high above her this woman towered in force of intellect
+and will, no matter how firmly she stood on the ground of virtuous life,
+she was no longer suited to be Lilly's friend.
+
+"I sincerely hope you will never be mistaken in your confidence," said
+Lilly.
+
+Mrs. Jula threw up her hand contemptuously.
+
+"Bah," she said, "_those_ men! A man who knows the world is a woman
+eater, and your 'pure' man is a simpleton. I can always get along with
+both classes."
+
+"There may be a third class," said Lilly, irritated, as if Konrad had
+been insulted.
+
+"Possibly," rejoined Mrs. Jula, shrugging her shoulders. "I've never
+come across it." Then putting both hands on Lilly's waist: "Tell me,
+child, perfectly frankly: if you look at me this way and compare me with
+what I used to be, does it seem to you that I'm posing?"
+
+"To be quite candid," Lilly admitted, "it seemed to me so at first."
+
+Mrs. Jula sighed.
+
+"It's very hard to adapt your figure to a dress that wasn't made for
+you. Everybody has a certain moral ambition, the so-called non-moral
+person most of all. But there's one thing I'd love to know: what is
+really the more valuable in me, my former sinning or my present virtue."
+
+She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy yet sly expression.
+
+This time Lilly did not respond. Beyond that complacent little
+scatterbrain her own happiness rose lofty and threatening as a
+storm-cloud.
+
+When out on the street the feeling of restless isolation took stronger
+hold of her than ever. Yet she was glad she had not spoken. She knew
+that if she had held up her beloved's picture to Mrs. Jula's sly
+understanding, it would have come back to her desecrated.
+
+Now there was actually not a soul to whom she could pour out her heart.
+
+A few days later in glancing over the paper, as was her daily habit, her
+eyes were caught by a sentence which suddenly sent a ray of light into
+her soul: "St. Joseph's Chapel--Muellerstrasse--evening services," and so
+on.
+
+Then her old, long-forgotten friend was still alive. He even possessed
+his own church here in cold, heretical Berlin.
+
+In all the years she had been in Berlin she had not entered a church.
+After having seated herself among the Protestants at Miss von
+Schwertfeger's advice, she had felt she was a renegade, and had not
+ventured to seek solace in religion.
+
+And now she was an atheist.
+
+But the name St. Joseph in the paper warmed her heart. She felt as one
+who has wandered long in foreign lands and suddenly among a throng of
+strangers beholds a dear face from home.
+
+Now she knew to whom to turn without fear of having to depart
+misunderstood and unheard. Even if the great scholars had done away with
+him a thousand times, he still existed for her stupid, surcharged heart,
+ready to receive the confession of her happiness.
+
+Muellerstrasse was somewhere on the extreme north side, "somewhere around
+Franz-Josephs-Land," her green grocer, to whom she had applied, informed
+her.
+
+She went through a maze of streets, from one electric tram to
+another--past the Reichtags buildings, the Lessing theatre, and the
+Stettin station--along the endless chausse. Beyond the Weddingplatz,
+which the Berlinese consider the end of the world, was where
+Muellerstrasse began.
+
+Nobody had the slightest notion of where a St. Joseph's chapel was, not
+even dwellers in the immediate vicinity. Finally somebody remembered
+seeing "a Catholic something or other," and Lilly at last found the
+object of her search.
+
+A low frame structure which might have been taken for a barn, and some
+blossoming trees set between towering tenements.
+
+The side door was open. Pine wreaths said "Welcome." Lilly saw a simple
+white hall permeated with the sepulchral smell of incense, laurel, and
+freshly cut pine, and in the background a niche decorated to resemble
+the starry heavens. Beyond the wooden balustrade separating the
+pictureless shrine of the high altar from the hall, rose two glorious
+palms. The low rumble of an organ came from the choir. The organist had
+probably stayed after the funeral to dream a bit.
+
+In suspense Lilly's glance glided along the walls in search of her
+saint's abiding place. Was he smiling and holding up his finger here,
+too, with the same benevolent, threatening manner as the good old uncle
+in St. Anne's?
+
+There was no place for side altars. The space was completely filled with
+benches. But that large picture there in the garish frame, with a
+console-table beneath covered with dusty bouquets--
+
+She saw it--and started in terror.
+
+Her saint, her dear, beloved saint, was simply ridiculous.
+
+He had a sharp-nosed, wax-doll face with a golden yellow beard and eyes
+cast down in pious modesty, and he was smiling mawkishly. The infant
+Jesus clad in pink triumphed on his left arm, while his right arm gently
+clasped a spray of lilies.
+
+Lilly's disgust turned into pity.
+
+How remote, how inconceivably remote, was that world in which one
+implored St. Josephs for signs of favour.
+
+Could it be that her good, true monitor in St. Anne's had been just as
+comical?
+
+Perish the thought. He should not be, he must not be so absurd. There
+must be _one_ place to which one's memory could travel homeward in hours
+of pleasant mourning.
+
+The organ was playing the prelude of a beautiful mass by Scarlatti,
+which Lilly well knew from of old. Gradually she began to feel at ease.
+
+She kneeled on the last bench, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine
+that instead of that blond caricature, her old friend was looking down
+upon her.
+
+A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas occurred to her, which she remembered
+from her Sunday school lessons: "God has granted other saints the power
+to help us in _certain_ circumstances; to St. Joseph he has granted the
+power to help us whatever our need."
+
+Once he had been so powerful in her life.
+
+She spoke to him across the hundreds of miles and hundreds of years that
+separated her from the altar in St. Anne's--the last time on earth, she
+was fully aware. There was no longer place in her soul for such
+childishness. And just because it was her farewell, she told him without
+reserve of her great experience--how infinitely happy she now was--how
+everything that had lain dead within her blossomed forth with fresh
+life--and how the entire universe was one great symphony of joy.
+
+And she told him of the monstrous deception she was practising, and her
+fear of discovery--and the sweet, impatient tremour for which there
+could be no image or name.
+
+Then she told him she no longer believed in him in the least--she had
+become an "atheist."
+
+Then, reconciled, she laid the carnations she had brought along for the
+poor out-of-the-way saint among the dusty bouquets and left with
+lightened heart, smiling at the spring which smiled upon her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Beside this Lilly, whom the stormy wind of her new life bore aloft to
+the heavens far above all earthly hindrances, a second Lilly lived, who
+spent every other evening with her old friends, and was the marvel of
+her circle, because of her triumphant mood, her merry wit, the youthful
+liveliness of an awakening intellect.
+
+When Richard came for his afternoon tea, he met with daily surprises. In
+place of the dragging gloom, which had long coloured her days, he found
+sprightliness and activity, a creature of novelties never still an
+instant. Though now and then abashed at his inability to keep pace with
+her, he gladly accustomed himself to this side of her being, and praised
+the magical qualities of the haematogen which the physician had
+prescribed that spring instead of the usual iron.
+
+The same scene was enacted each evening that Richard wanted to take
+Lilly out. At first she pleaded a cold or said she was not in the mood
+for meeting people. But once she had consented and was in the swing, she
+played with her admirers as with puppies, and awed the ladies by telling
+them things to their faces. Sometimes, to be sure, she sat as formerly,
+absorbed in dreamy silence, though now, if anyone attempted to liven her
+up, she no longer blushed and suffered herself to be teased without an
+attempt at self-defence. She paid back every intruder with such prompt,
+haughty satire that the men soon found it wiser to leave her to herself.
+
+In all this time she drank herself into a state of exaltation only once,
+and that on the day on which--at last!--she decided to tell Richard of
+the existence of her new friend.
+
+She had wrestled with herself for two months. Sometime or other it had
+to be, she knew; for what if they were seen together! But since she
+could not decide in what form to clothe the avowal, she had deferred it
+from day to day.
+
+Chance helped her out of the dilemma. One day Richard, in order to
+obtain her judgment, brought along some sketches of vases which had been
+submitted to him for purchase. On leaving he forgot to take them along.
+Konrad happened to see them, and in a few rapid strokes drew the outline
+which corresponded to the original draught, and which the artist in
+developing the plan had failed to insert.
+
+The next day when Richard saw the work he looked at Lilly in
+astonishment. The corrections were splendid--who had made them?
+
+Lilly, still suffering from the intimidation induced by her bungled work
+on the transparencies, did not dare to tell him she herself had. So
+taking heart she said:
+
+"My teacher, who's giving me lessons in the history of art."
+
+"Since when, I'd like to know?" asked Richard, his eyes growing round
+and severe.
+
+In her great embarrassment she took to scolding as best--or as
+worst--she knew how.
+
+"Do you think I can stand such a dull, inane, idle existence? Do you
+think it's a crime for an unoccupied young woman to strive for a bit of
+culture? Don't you think I'd be a better friend if I could keep pace
+with you and other clever people than if I go to my ruin jabbering a lot
+of nonsense and dressing myself up for show and behaving like any silly
+thing?"
+
+The turn about "clever people" flattered him.
+
+"All very well and good," he replied more mildly, "but why didn't you
+tell me before?"
+
+She concocted a long story.
+
+About three months before she had read an advertisement in the
+_Lokalanzeiger_ in which a young scholar offered his services to
+gentlemen and ladies possessed of a thirst for knowledge. She wrote to
+the scholar, he came, and the lessons began. Pupil and teacher had grown
+to be friends. Though their friendship, of course, was of a purely ideal
+nature, she dreaded awakening Richard's jealousy; so she had decided not
+to tell him until time should prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the
+absolute purity of her endeavours.
+
+He wrinkled his forehead, and a cunning grin, inexplicable to Lilly,
+played about his mouth.
+
+"So your friend's a young scholar?" he asked. His eyes twinkled, and he
+looked at her sidewise, his head inclined entirely to the left.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He's going to be _Privatdozent_, I suppose?"
+
+"He's not quite certain, but he probably will."
+
+"And I suppose he's highly intellectual and scintillating and superior?"
+
+She turned her eyes heavenward.
+
+"I've never in my life met a man who--" She stopped in fright. It was
+scarcely the better part of wisdom to give reins to her enthusiasm.
+
+"Hm, hm," he said, as one who finds long harboured suspicions confirmed.
+His face was quite red, and he gnawed the ends of his moustache.
+
+"I knew it!" cried Lilly. "You're jealous after all."
+
+She felt as if a bitter injustice were being done her.
+
+He said nothing more, and left lowering.
+
+An hour later a package from Messrs. Liebert & Dehnicke was left at the
+door.
+
+Lilly opened it and found it contained a man's suit, which she
+recognised as one Richard had frequently worn the previous summer.
+
+A letter accompanied the package.
+
+     "Dearest Lilly:--
+
+     As I promised you that time, I shall always be ready to come to
+     the assistance of your affinities with old clothes. To further
+     their progress I shall also be glad to provide them with old
+     boots.
+
+     You see how jealous I am.
+
+     Your Richard."
+
+In the exuberance of her delight Lilly drank to excess that evening.
+Never--not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni--had she allowed her
+imitative faculties such full play. She was in a state of mad
+self-abandon.
+
+In conclusion she danced on the tops of the tables set close together, a
+wild Salome dance, which had just then come into fashion.
+
+Between her clenched teeth she zimmed strange oriental melodies.
+
+"What's that she's mumbling?" the spectators asked.
+
+Later they put the question to her.
+
+But she had lost her senses. She was unconscious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the
+railroad station's sooty glass roof.
+
+Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great
+arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath
+them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.
+
+The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent
+Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an
+indispensable master of ceremonies.
+
+There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing
+societies, and an entire department store.
+
+In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked
+along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from
+each other, so that nobody could be sure whether or not they belonged
+together. They made for one of the front coaches.
+
+Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her
+grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness--a mute homage which she well
+knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since
+the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her
+triumph.
+
+In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white--a linen
+crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a
+white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath
+it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white
+zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had
+arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the
+country until they wearied.
+
+They sat in opposite corners of the third-class compartment smiling
+slyly and saying not a word.
+
+They were riding into the unknown.
+
+"Follow me," he had said. "I'll give you a surprise. We will go on a
+voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal.
+Otherwise it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."
+
+The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.
+
+About an hour must have passed and the compartment had long been empty,
+when he nodded to her to get out.
+
+"Where are we?"
+
+"What difference does it make where we are?"
+
+Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the
+station.
+
+They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine
+lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were
+locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display
+windows to proclaim the Sunday.
+
+Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A
+turkey cock strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them--no
+more organ tones.
+
+The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening
+grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it.
+Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background
+black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.
+
+They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of
+silvery white dust chased ahead of them.
+
+Konrad knew and saw everything--how the falcon flapping its wings stood
+still in the air--how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump
+leapt away in droll haste--every minute there was something new.
+
+Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming
+spring.
+
+"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have
+been so different."
+
+In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them
+almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man's
+height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.
+
+Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had
+first met.
+
+Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not
+budge.
+
+"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us,
+I shouldn't be a bit surprised."
+
+Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.
+
+Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they
+lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on
+them through the sparse fir boughs.
+
+They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel's presence, when a sudden
+chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little
+fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them
+too frightened to stir.
+
+"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at
+them, they'll take good care not to speak to us."
+
+"We're enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in
+my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me
+so. Have you?"
+
+"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."
+
+"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every
+happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.
+
+"Oh, there's not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far
+from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old,
+Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble
+courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle
+and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing
+roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I
+would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious
+gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An
+iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there
+was nobody about to see the street Arab escapade--only a few peasant
+labourers in the olive plantations live there--I actually climbed over
+that gate one day."
+
+"Glorious!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful,
+strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the
+sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg
+firs. And--think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so
+came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."
+
+"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.
+
+"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my
+ears, I fell asleep--a thing one had better not indulge in, because one
+may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I'm sure I should have,
+if some tourists hadn't come along and thrown sticks and stones at me.
+When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn't dream of climbing
+over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the
+sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a
+hearing--Who are you? Don't you know trespassing in the garden is
+forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn't send me to jail, because all
+the people tapped their heads and said: '_e matto_, he's crazy.'"
+
+"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the
+forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside
+the railing."
+
+"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly
+choked down her curiosity.
+
+"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn't hurt if one practices standing
+outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you
+crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."
+
+Lilly looked at him.
+
+What did he mean by that?
+
+Their eyes met in shy understanding.
+
+That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name,
+quivered through her like a fit of fever.
+
+"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking
+back at him.
+
+The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where
+birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.
+
+The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of
+a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly
+they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.
+
+"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the
+direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the
+right.
+
+"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me
+in life."
+
+Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a
+position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But
+before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he
+could continue with his life-work.
+
+"It must be a very high position, isn't it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had
+the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of
+China, she would not have been a bit surprised.
+
+But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:
+
+"I'd rather tell you about it when it's all settled."
+
+She had to be content.
+
+Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the
+horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine
+silver thread.
+
+"Is that it?" asked Lilly.
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"Oh, don't put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up
+to now I've been very good and haven't asked a single question. But do
+at last tell what you have up your sleeve."
+
+"Afterwards, when we're there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn't
+like to make you jealous before the time's ripe."
+
+Oh, if a woman _was_ in the case!
+
+Another woman!
+
+She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt
+quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.
+
+The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its
+greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.
+
+Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an
+inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame
+houses half-way between a palace and a barn.
+
+But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and
+the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly's
+and Konrad's mood.
+
+To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right,
+beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy
+green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in
+the bushes and reeds.
+
+And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a
+park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns
+and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.
+
+Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to
+stand that day.
+
+How beautiful and how mysterious.
+
+Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst,
+the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of
+Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.
+
+But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things--too
+bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card
+with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.
+
+Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of
+the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil,
+she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer
+treasures at their feet.
+
+"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a
+woman is she?"
+
+He burst out laughing.
+
+"So you know there's a woman in the case?"
+
+"What else would make me jealous?"
+
+"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen
+anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."
+
+Oh, if that was all.
+
+"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand
+in apology.
+
+While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that
+led up to their present pilgrimage.
+
+In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art
+dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty
+sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes
+upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in
+an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two
+did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter,
+and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The
+German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In
+defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale,
+and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's
+park--he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined
+for no unworthy setting.
+
+"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly,
+blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We
+have the right to enter it."
+
+But Konrad looked thoughtful.
+
+"It's not so simple as all that. Remember--as what shall I introduce
+you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I
+pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."
+
+A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned,
+outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.
+
+"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a
+burden to you."
+
+"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the
+world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of
+the entire place."
+
+Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.
+
+At this point--at last! the carp was served.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet
+high with never a break in it to peep through.
+
+But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end
+giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view
+some distance into the interior.
+
+Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms
+forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes
+draped the open grassy places. In the background on a hillock about
+which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with
+Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.
+
+"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.
+
+So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage
+escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there--a Ceres, a
+satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a
+glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were
+seeking was nowhere to be seen.
+
+They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road.
+An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led
+across.
+
+But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet
+gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.
+
+"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.
+
+"That is the way the gods went to Walhalla," she said.
+
+With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that
+bridge.
+
+Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.
+
+Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some
+distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along
+the other side of the fence.
+
+The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a
+fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the
+roll of bowling balls.
+
+Lilly and her friend passed without giving heed to these things. Their
+wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment
+increased their longing.
+
+Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to
+which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.
+
+Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and
+clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spiraeas grew in
+rank profusion between.
+
+The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about
+himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.
+
+Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the
+interior.
+
+Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its
+vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work,
+was half sunk in blooming acacias.
+
+Here at last they could get a good view of the park.
+
+In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here
+they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably
+stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only
+architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace,
+where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the
+iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.
+
+"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know
+what it's like."
+
+His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what
+"it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in
+the very same position.
+
+But where, where?
+
+Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?
+
+Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the
+door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded
+staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.
+
+That, too, was a forbidden garden!
+
+Forbidden gardens everywhere!
+
+"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to
+remain here."
+
+Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping
+as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their
+hearts' desire.
+
+Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their
+aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them
+would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of
+gold over the universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Evening came.
+
+Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like
+torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its
+cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold.
+It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all
+earthly promises.
+
+The two could no longer bear it on land.
+
+Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing
+about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very
+little.
+
+Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.
+
+Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow
+cut through a waving carpet of pollen.
+
+Among this year's tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey
+weather-beaten remnants of last year's growth. Dark bulrushes edged the
+shores, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.
+
+Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the massed park trees rising
+toward the heavens like purple walls.
+
+When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:
+
+"Oh, no use, it's out of the question."
+
+Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.
+
+Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage
+the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread
+her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for
+herself.
+
+She lay crouched at Konrad's feet with her back to the seat in the
+stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a
+different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into
+the land of the virtuous.
+
+She would give music lessons--her knowledge sufficed for beginners--and
+with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently
+fitted her--or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she
+must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so
+long as he needed her friendship.
+
+Or--not to wound the sensibilities of others--she would leave Germany,
+earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her,
+return a new, purified being.
+
+Or--oh dear, "or!"
+
+To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs.
+Discovery and death--the one involved the other--would come soon enough.
+
+The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed
+down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have
+thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black
+stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of
+wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.
+
+The foliage of the park slowly melted into a mass of darkness.
+
+Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim
+with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the
+unattainable.
+
+As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove
+suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park
+side. It seemed to continue inward without end.
+
+For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then
+he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.
+
+"What's the matter? What's the matter?"
+
+"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It must have flowed in somewhere--eh?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.
+
+"There it is."
+
+"You think we shall after all--?"
+
+The thought was too bold for utterance.
+
+"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from
+one side to the other."
+
+In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell
+upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and
+pledges.
+
+The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows
+set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond
+stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.
+
+Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before
+them.
+
+"O Lord!" cried Lilly.
+
+"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we'll be turned out
+after all."
+
+He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for
+the splash of a leaping fish.
+
+He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a
+mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there
+on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.
+
+They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the
+sound of clinking glasses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in
+the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.
+
+Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an unobstructed
+view of the castle--a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous
+simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not
+yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who
+had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.
+
+Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight
+sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the
+intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.
+
+"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren't a mill-stone about his
+neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.
+
+The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the
+vision of a moment.
+
+Passing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay,
+where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more
+into silence and darkness.
+
+To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with
+old statues and ivy-draped urns--to the left a world buried in darkness.
+A line of lindens, hundreds of years old, bordered the stream and
+stifled every ray of light in its dark halls.
+
+Perhaps this was where the marble bust was hidden. Lilly peered into
+every recess, though furtively, so as to reserve the pleasure of
+discovery for him.
+
+They now approached the daintily arched bridge they had seen from afar
+in the daytime.
+
+It did not lead to Walhalla, but from a spiraea bush to a hemp bush, and
+beneath it slept a pair of swans, who awoke at the stroke of the oars
+and with outspread wings swam behind the boat begging for bread.
+
+"Swans! The one thing lacking!" Lilly rejoiced softly, and sought in
+vain for a crumb. She turned to look after the swans and her neck
+touched his knees.
+
+"May I stay this way?" she asked a little anxiously.
+
+"If you're comfortable," he answered. There was a yielding tone in his
+voice which ran warm through her body.
+
+She unpinned her hat, and laid it on the back seat. Now she was free to
+lean her head lightly against him. With sweet alarm she felt his hand
+quietly stroke her head.
+
+But he seemed taciturn and self-absorbed, as if a burden were weighing
+upon him which he was not strong enough to shoulder.
+
+And again she felt, as ofttimes, that a veil hung between them, a veil
+seldom lifted aside, which obscured the true features of his being, no
+matter how closely her love drew her to him.
+
+"Oh, if only he were gay!"
+
+The park came to an end.
+
+The red evening glow, no longer shadowed by a mass of foliage, shone
+upon them insistently. The magic spell threatened to be broken. The
+world took on its ordinary aspect.
+
+"Come, turn," she asked softly.
+
+He rowed back again into the blissful night.
+
+Now he had to strive against the current, and could not avoid the sound
+of splashing.
+
+"If only they don't catch us," he said.
+
+"Oh, they are too happy," rejoined Lilly, "they wouldn't do anything to
+a happy person."
+
+"It seems almost like an enchanted castle, but who can tell--it may be a
+delusion."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, the most grievous wound may be hidden under powers, and many a man
+hides himself behind beauty because he has buried his powers."
+
+The doubt displeased Lilly.
+
+"But they should be happy," she exclaimed softly. "Those who can spare so
+much as they have given us to-day have enough left for themselves."
+
+"Illogical conclusion, darling," he replied. "You can enrich a beggar
+and still remain as poor as a church-mouse."
+
+"Are _we_ beggars?" she asked, raising herself up to him tenderly.
+
+"No, by God, we are _not_ beggars," he replied drawing a deep breath.
+
+There was silence for a time. Then it seemed to Lilly something warm and
+moist fell upon her forehead.
+
+For God's sake! He was crying! Crying with happiness. How had she
+deserved it--she, Lilly Czepanek--she--?
+
+To hide her own tears she crouched down again. It was in overflowing
+measure--unendurable. She wanted to sob, cry aloud, kiss his hands. Yet
+she was forced to clench her fists and stuff her gloves between her
+teeth, to keep him from seeing what was going on within her. It was a
+God-send that as they slowly approached the castle again, the sound of a
+woman's singing reached them. Full ringing tones, which in the ascending
+notes struck her heart like a lash.
+
+What was she singing? Wasn't it from Tristan? Lilly had never heard the
+opera, but it could only be from Tristan.
+
+She raised her head questioningly.
+
+"Isolde's _Liebestod_," Konrad whispered in her ear.
+
+He turned the boat toward the shore in the deepest darkness. They must
+not lose a note.
+
+Up there on the terrace the laughing and talking had ceased. The
+nightingale alone, in the linden thicket, would not be silenced, and
+mingled its sweet ecstasy with the exultation in death of the woman who
+like no other creation of God or man teaches us that the desire not to
+be is the most exalted affirmation of to be.
+
+Lilly, her whole body quivering, put her hand over her shoulder to grasp
+his. She had to hold on to him. Otherwise she felt she would sink into
+the void. She did not grow easier until she felt his warm fingers
+between hers.
+
+The song ended. The mighty arpeggios of the accompaniment died away.
+There was no applause. Each of the merry guests had realised his
+indebtedness to the occasion.
+
+Konrad pressed her hand and withdrew his, and took up the oars again.
+
+The forbidden garden began to disappear.
+
+The reddish dusk of night lay upon the meadows. Not sound far or near.
+Nevertheless the world seemed filled with the music of harps and ringing
+songs.
+
+"We haven't _seen_ your marble woman," Lilly whispered, stroking his
+knees, "but I keep thinking that was her voice."
+
+"I, too," he burst out passionately. "And she wasn't singing for the
+good folk up there, but just for us."
+
+"Oh, if only I could sing it like her," sighed Lilly.
+
+"Try."
+
+She remembered bits here and there, but was unable to gather them into a
+whole. Besides something else forced its way between, which now gushed
+up mightier than all else.
+
+With the Song of Songs of the greatest and richest her own poor Song of
+Songs mingled, undesired, uncalled.
+
+And she sang into the deep silence:
+
+    Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,
+    Where thou feedest?
+    Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?
+    For why should I appear like a vailed mourner--
+
+She stopped.
+
+"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."
+
+"It is--my--Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.
+
+Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.
+
+"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.
+
+Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the
+moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.
+
+"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly
+and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."
+
+Without speaking he laid the oars down.
+
+"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."
+
+He cast a searching glance in all directions.
+
+The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake,
+upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in
+scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of
+danger.
+
+Then he did as she had asked.
+
+They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with
+their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.
+
+And she told her tale.
+
+Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always
+emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years,
+though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious
+significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into
+chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul
+began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a
+sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil.
+It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had
+kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who
+would some day come to her.
+
+And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment
+had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into
+the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment
+to its creator and herself.
+
+In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.
+
+The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what
+was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more
+than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than
+she had known of herself up to that hour.
+
+He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and
+hopeful still within her. The other--the lazy, the impure, that which
+had ruined her heart and life--no longer existed. It no longer concerned
+her.
+
+While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not
+dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward
+him.
+
+She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken
+look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his
+feelings as it were in his clenched fists.
+
+Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no
+name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run
+to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.
+
+Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the
+bench.
+
+"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she
+laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the
+bench.
+
+His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.
+
+"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.
+
+So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all
+those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since
+the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.
+
+She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the
+verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:
+
+    For, lo, the winter is past,
+    The rain is over and gone;
+    The flowers appear on the earth;
+    The time of the singing of birds is come,
+    And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;
+    The fig putteth forth her green figs,
+    And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
+    Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
+
+She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook
+his head, and nestled closer.
+
+Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in
+among the reeds, and night had completely descended.
+
+But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.
+
+There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart"
+and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And
+then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:
+
+    Come, my friend!
+    Let us go forth into the field,
+
+But when it came to
+
+    Let us see if the vine have blossomed,
+    Whether the young grape have opened,
+
+she could scarcely go on.
+
+    Whether the pomegranates have budded,
+    There will I give my caresses unto thee.
+
+She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.
+
+"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.
+
+A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.
+
+"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."
+
+She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.
+
+A swift end to all bravery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood
+there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.
+
+Very timidly they rang the bell.
+
+"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the
+obsequious, smiling hostess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It would be wide of the truth to aver that no happy star favoured
+Lilly's ripened love.
+
+In the first place Adele proved to be a circumspect ally, thoroughly
+accustomed to be uncommunicative and passionately devoted to the cause
+of Lilly's lover. In the second place Richard, who had gone to his
+mother in Harzburg that epoch-making Sunday, had remained away the
+greater part of a week instead of one day. And in the third place, upon
+visiting her on his return, he was so preoccupied with himself and his
+own affairs as not to notice in the least Lilly's guilty embarrassed
+reception of him.
+
+He affected a highly lofty mien and talked through his nose, as always
+when he pulled his soul together, as it were, and became vividly
+conscious of having once been a cavalry officer. He even wore his
+monocle again hanging down over his navy-blue silk waistcoat.
+
+All of which taken in conjunction with the crafty expression with which
+he blinked his eyes and steadily looked past Lilly and dropped his head
+on his left shoulder, gave sufficient ground for the welcome assumption
+that he had delayed the visit to his mother and, instead,--like Lilly
+herself--had taken a side excursion _a deux_ into the blossoming world
+of spring.
+
+The conjecture, however, proved to be false.
+
+Richard had been in Harzburg the whole time and intended to return the
+very next day for a longer stay of at least four weeks.
+
+"What's the matter?" he exclaimed in alarm.
+
+Lilly, overwhelmed by the veritable tempest of happiness that burst upon
+her, had reeled and sunk on the arm of a chair.
+
+She instantly collected her wits again and denied that she had been
+overcome. Nevertheless, he remained full of solicitude, kissed her on
+her neck again and again, and would not permit her to go to the trouble
+of pouring out the tea for him. A guilty conscience peeped from every
+pore of his being.
+
+"Unfortunately," he said, trying to return to his former lofty manner,
+"unfortunately there's no longer a chance of our taking a trip together.
+Anyhow--we've gotten too used to each other. Both of us will have to
+practise getting along without each other. It's highly desirable we
+should. We certainly should."
+
+His words sounded like familiar music coming from a great, great
+distance.
+
+"Confess," she said smiling. "What is it this time?"
+
+Out he came with it, stuttering and choking over his words.
+
+An American heiress--of German extraction--millions and millions--not
+millions of marks, but millions of dollars--very stylish and chic--a
+wonderful piece of luck--mama in a quiver to have it go through--her
+parents favourably disposed--she, too, evidently not disinclined. This
+time or never.
+
+"Congratulate you," said Lilly, giving him a friendly handshake.
+
+He looked at her with large, astonished, and somewhat reproachful eyes.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+"Why--what else?"
+
+"How can you remain so cool? Doesn't the thought that your old friend is
+about to leave you move you in the least? I took you to be more loving,
+more sympathetic. I certainly did."
+
+"Please remember," said Lilly, "you reproach me the same way each time
+you make up your mind to marry because I don't want to be a hindrance to
+you. You always act as if _I_ had dismissed you, and not you me."
+
+He burst into expostulations.
+
+"Dismiss--what language you use! You haven't the least idea of what's
+going on within me--how I struggle and wrestle with myself. Why, I
+haven't slept for nights thinking what will become of you. But you
+behave as if it didn't concern you in the least! Altogether
+you're--frivolous! You have no feelings--now you know it."
+
+While he spoke, pictures of her approaching freedom danced before her
+eyes--nights of unshackled, glowing love, days full of sweet, vague
+dreams.
+
+What followed lay as far off as the end of the world.
+
+Smiling good-humouredly, she listened, and never even responded.
+
+"Though your future doesn't seem to worry _you_," he continued to
+upbraid her, "_I_ must give it all the more consideration. I must
+provide for you, and mama quite agrees with me."
+
+The word "mama" tore her from her world of dreams.
+
+Since the terrific encounter in Richard's office, it had scarcely ever
+passed their lips. They had employed a thousand circumlocutions and
+substitutes which they understood and which each appreciated in the
+other.
+
+Now "mama" suddenly rang in her ears, the symbol of her disgraced
+existence.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "if she's in it, it's bound to be humiliating to me.
+I'll tell both of you one thing: take good care not to make a
+proposition to me about money, or support, or anything of the sort. I'd
+consider it an outrageous insult, for which you could _never_ make
+amends."
+
+He ran up and down the room wringing his hands.
+
+"What are you talking about again! Quite apart from the fact that I'd be
+eternally disgraced in the eyes of the world. Woman, don't you know
+you're ruined if I turn you adrift empty-handed? Don't you know where
+you'd go to? To the bars and brothels! Don't you know it?"
+
+In blissful absentmindedness Lilly looked past him and his gallant zeal.
+
+"There are other ways," she whispered half to herself.
+
+"What ways?" he cried, "Marriage, forsooth? What decent man would marry
+you after you've been my mistress for four years?"
+
+"There are other ways than that, too," she repeated still smiling.
+
+She saw a life full of fight and vigour, a tossing hither and thither
+through storm and stress, a jubilant triumph which led her into the
+community of those who were as proud and true as _he_.
+
+But all that would come later, much, much later. Why think of it now?
+
+Richard put his own construction upon her words. He fixed his eyes upon
+her suspiciously, and stopping in front of her, asked with a shudder:
+
+"I say--are you going to do something foolish?"
+
+She burst out laughing. Probably he already saw her beautiful corpse
+taken from the water and stretched on the bier.
+
+"No, I won't do anything foolish. Certainly not for your sake. And even
+if I intended to, I'd have the good taste not to threaten you with it."
+
+He drew a deep breath of relief, though by no means quite calmed.
+
+"At any rate," he said, "I greatly dislike your poking here alone.
+You'll simply get the blues and feel irritated at me. I say, while I'm
+gone, wouldn't you like to take a little trip to a bath--Ahlbeck, or
+Schreiberbau, or some other place of the sort, where respectable people
+go?"
+
+Nothing on the surface but a faint twitch of her eyelids betrayed the
+laugh of scorn that shook her internally.
+
+"You know," she said, "I don't like to make up to people, and so I'd be
+all the more alone."
+
+He wrinkled his forehead lost in thought.
+
+"Well--then--" He hesitated and chewed his words as people are wont to
+do when they dread their own bravery, "--then--it would be best if
+you--come and stay near--"
+
+"Near--near what?"
+
+"Oh, don't act that way. You know what I mean."
+
+"I do, but I cannot believe it."
+
+"What's so awful about it? I could look after you now and then--or talk
+over matters--different things."
+
+"And show her to me so as to get my opinion and my blessing--eh?"
+
+"Well and supposing it's so? The way we are to each other--the way we
+haven't done a thing for years without asking each other's advice,
+what's so monstrous about it?"
+
+Lilly felt a patronising pity arise within her. She stroked his hands
+and said:
+
+"Dear friend, I don't think I'd furnish the right sort of assistance to
+you in your courtship."
+
+Her superior tone increased his ill-humour.
+
+"Goodness gracious! 'Assistance,' 'courtship!' You talk as if you were
+on the stage. Altogether you're so puffed up--so puffed up! Of course
+you simply want to revenge yourself on me by making me angry. I must say
+it's not at all noble of you at such a time."
+
+She laughed and stretched herself. How low it all was! How ridiculous!
+And how indifferent to her! After all did it concern her?
+
+To be alone--alone with him! There was nothing else in the world beside
+that.
+
+"Then you don't want to?"
+
+She shook her head, "No."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He prepared to leave in anger, but lacked the strength.
+
+"Lilly."
+
+"Hm?"
+
+"I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. You seem to think I'm not in
+earnest this time."
+
+"By no means, Richard. I wish you all possible happiness. But really,
+with the best of intentions, I can be of no service to you in this
+affair."
+
+"Of service to me! Of service to me! Who's speaking of service to me?
+Mama was quite right. If I break off this time, there won't be anything
+else for me any more. So make it quite clear to yourself. In a few weeks
+all's over between us."
+
+"So much the better," she came near saying. But she saw the tears in the
+corners of his eyes, and refrained from hurting him.
+
+Four years lived together lay behind them. He was too tightly tied to
+her apron strings. She felt she ought not to let him go without her
+advice and encouragement.
+
+So she spoke to him as to a child. She said his mother was right,
+praised his project, and counted up all the reasons why it absolutely
+had to be. In order to calm him as to her own attitude, she recalled how
+it had always been her ambition to let him feel his freedom and never
+stand in his way. She also assured him she would cherish friendly
+sentiments for him until the end of her days.
+
+Finally, on parting, they both wept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Now the way was clear. Now she might consecrate the new life and rejoice
+in it.
+
+July came and scorched the deserted streets.
+
+The denizens of the aristocratic west side who remained in town with no
+employer to drive them dreamed away idle days behind drawn shades,
+hovering between the couch and the bathtub.
+
+Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world
+endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when
+dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond
+the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the
+red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the
+street lamps.
+
+Then she strolled at Konrad's side in the blue twilight of the streets,
+always alert to escape the observation of acquaintances.
+
+Staid middle-class families promenaded to the beer gardens, love-couples
+met at the appointed street corners; and among them surged the mass of
+those whom life has left solitary with shy passionate yearnings, and who
+hope to steal from smiling chance that for which they no longer dare
+implore sterner gods. Over the exhausted city hung a sultry haze of
+secret desire, in which formal restraint and genuine feeling flickered
+and went out, leaving no sign of ever having been.
+
+How remote those days when Lilly herself wandered about in the same
+fashion, hoping for the intervention of fate, yet lacking the courage
+to compel it. And shuddering at dangers she had escaped, she clung
+closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
+
+She and Konrad always managed to find a secluded nook where gypsy bands
+played their fiddles, or Tyrolese strummed their dulcimers, or the host
+himself, some musician come down in the world acted as orchestra leader.
+In the ivy-hung corners between laurel trees planted in green painted
+tubs they had little fear of discovery.
+
+Their intercourse had undergone a change.
+
+There were still instructive discourses upon all sorts of subjects and
+Lilly intently hung upon Konrad's lips; but her holy ardour for
+knowledge had cooled down.
+
+That God does not exist, that Fra Lippo Lippi had been a
+good-for-nothing, that baroque art has it good points, and that a line
+gone crazy ought to be sent to the madhouse, even if it poses as
+ultra-modern, these and many more novel, interesting things Lilly had
+long known. But they no longer evoked discussion.
+
+Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in
+them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk
+to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning
+to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and
+jealous, and insist on leaving.
+
+She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her
+arm, on her heart.
+
+The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened
+suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the
+shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. The glow accorded
+with their mood.
+
+It was the greatest disaster for either of them to fall asleep, and thus
+shamefully curtail the time they spent together. So they agreed that the
+one who remained conscious longer should rouse the other.
+
+Lilly was invariably the one to remain awake. Konrad was exhausted by
+his work, and in the morning he could not doze off again after a cup of
+tea in bed, or in the afternoon rest on the couch. And when he lay there
+next to her with twitching limbs, like a thoroughbred hunting dog, she
+felt much too sorry for him to keep her promise.
+
+She would sit up in bed, and never weary of gazing at him in the dim
+light of the red-shaded candle.
+
+There was always something in his face to study--the strong-willed fold
+between his brows, deeper than before and still somewhat intimidating;
+the muscles of his temples incessantly working; and the curling upper
+lip, the right end of which every now and then twitched as if he were
+smiling at her in his sleep. He had grown thin. His skin had lost its
+firmness, and on his cheeks lay shadows which darkened at his jaws.
+There was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He looked like a young
+Christ, created just to be adored.
+
+Sometimes while staring at him, she thought:
+
+"If I were to kill him now, run a hat pin through his heart or something
+of the sort, he would belong to me, to me alone, forever."
+
+Then she would hollow her hand and place it on the left side of his
+breast and fancy she held his heart and with his heart his love, which
+she need never more give up.
+
+Once while she bent over him, he awoke with a start.
+
+"What's the matter? Did I do anything to you?" he asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Your expression is so strange, almost as if you were angry with me."
+
+She resolved not to stare at him any more. But she could not resist; she
+loved him too dearly.
+
+It was horrible when dread seized her that she might lose him. Many a
+night it attacked her with such awful force that she felt like screaming
+and raving and tearing her hair. But it would be wrong to rouse him. So
+she gently laid her head under his shoulder, one arm under his back, the
+other across his breast, and pressing close against him told herself she
+had grown into one with him.
+
+Then gradually she grew calmer and could find comfort in tears, or in
+picturing to herself how happy she would make him, unspeakably happy.
+She would envelop him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick as to
+prevent fate's rude blows from reaching him. She would be his muse,
+would wear an invisible aureole about her head, enkindle the desire
+within him for a thousand great deeds; she would give him the devoted
+care of a Sister of Mercy, would learn to cook and make her own dresses.
+No--rather attend scientific courses at the university, and study music.
+Oh, she would do many more things, that he should never weary of her.
+
+For all this, of course, she would first have to be free, with relations
+between her and Richard entirely broken off.
+
+She often thought of Richard also, but without a shadow of blame. She
+had long forgiven him for having led her to the brink of the abyss.
+
+"Each person acts according to the law of his own being," Konrad had
+said.
+
+Besides, Richard had once been her saviour.
+
+So far as the outer world was concerned, the new life was to begin as
+soon as Richard announced his engagement. He had written that his suit
+was progressing, and by right her free life with Konrad ought already to
+have commenced, but Lilly did not feel equal to a crisis. She shuddered
+at all the lies she would continually have to dish up to Konrad, once a
+change took place in her household.
+
+She avoided facing the poverty that was bound to come. It was only at
+night when she had worked herself into a joyous ecstasy on the sleeping
+man's breast, and her future with him stretched before her in gold and
+purple, that privation seemed to her the very sum and substance of
+happiness and plenitude.
+
+At three o'clock in the morning, when the street lamps went out one by
+one, and the grey of dawn came creeping over the ceiling, Lilly would
+have to awaken him.
+
+He must not meet any of the tenants of the house. She owed it to his and
+her own reputation.
+
+While dressing he groped about, drunk with sleep, among Lilly's ivory
+toilet articles, still resplendent with the seven-pointed coronet, and
+managed to get himself into shape for a stimulating cup of black coffee
+at the nearest Vienna cafe.
+
+For he felt that from Lilly's bed he must go to his desk with all
+possible speed.
+
+He could not be dissuaded from this madness.
+
+The passionate hours of the night demanded atonement; an idea to which
+he clung tenaciously, no matter that he spent the early morning hours in
+vain, wearisome brooding over his papers.
+
+Lilly, on the other hand, fell into a deep sleep, from which Adele
+roused her at about ten o'clock, when she brought in the breakfast tray,
+smiling contentedly.
+
+Lilly let Konrad have every other night for himself.
+
+She did not want to suck his lifeblood away. Even so he gave her
+sufficient cause for worry. His colour was bad, his eyes vacillated, his
+mood varied abruptly from violent gaiety to vacant-eyed self-absorption.
+
+All that would surely be different when once--what?
+
+To think of nothing, to plan nothing, to wish for nothing. Just to love
+him and know he was happy.
+
+She spent her days dreaming both pleasant and tremulous dreams. Her
+intense fervour for mental occupation had departed. Besides, all sorts
+of new and important things intervened to distract her; especially the
+need to please him, to hand him daily the draft that intoxicated him and
+kept him her own.
+
+Hitherto she had taken the beauty of her body as a matter of course, and
+had paid as little regard to it as to a hidden and useless object. Now
+she felt she must constantly take thought of the ideal he treasured in
+his mind, must try to resemble it--she well knew that in reality she
+approached it a little only when drunken bliss exalted her above herself
+and the stale and unprofitable flats of her life.
+
+Thus arose an eager cult of her flesh, something she had always
+despised.
+
+She took care of her body like a woman in a harem, perfumed her baths,
+manicured her toe nails, lengthened her eyebrows, and powdered her arms
+and shoulders. Every day she discovered new blemishes, which discouraged
+her and for which she sought new remedies.
+
+At the same time she was ever haunted by the fear that through sheer
+attention to her toilet she would acquire the look of a beautiful
+prostitute. So she locked away her jewellery and dressed very simply.
+None but the connoisseur could discern how much artistic care had gone
+into the creation of this faultless simplicity.
+
+When she was alone what troubled her most was jealousy. Not that she
+suspected him of relations with another woman. He stood too high in her
+estimation for that. But she was jealous of everything he did. The
+thought of his desk fairly tortured her. Each hour he spent away from
+her seemed traitorous to her love, and she thought of his friends with a
+hostility of which she had never deemed herself capable.
+
+On the evenings she was left alone, she held watch over his room from
+the opposite side of the street, where she stood pressed in a doorway
+exactly as formerly in Alte Jakobstrasse.
+
+When his lamp was lighted she was satisfied, but when she saw him come
+or go at a late hour, she did not sleep the whole night.
+
+He lived a short distance from her in a third-storey room. It was long
+before he permitted her to call on him.
+
+In the room next to his, he explained, lay a sick woman who had to be
+kept from the slightest excitement. The sound of a strange voice might
+aggravate her condition.
+
+While telling this to Lilly he strangely avoided her eyes and she felt
+that a hundred chances to one he was keeping something from her. But
+when upon her insistence he admitted her to his room one afternoon she
+found nothing to confirm her suspicions. She merely had to speak very
+low; which she had known beforehand.
+
+His room was just an ordinary student's room. It had two windows, a high
+ceiling, cheap furniture, and no couch and no carpet. But valuable
+engravings adorned the walls, and the customary pier-glass was hidden
+behind an old copy of the Madonna di Foligno, who looked down in serene
+loftiness upon the poverty of northern philistinism. There were long low
+bookcases full of books; and more books, for which there was no room on
+the shelves were piled up high in the corners, protected against dust by
+pieces of crushed oil-cloth, such as pedlars use for wrapping about
+their wares.
+
+As was to be expected, the desk was the only article that displayed a
+certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures, it was Konrad's own property.
+With its noble carving and broad top, it stood in the centre of the
+room, solemn as an altar.
+
+Not one woman's picture to be seen on it. Lilly had not given him hers,
+and evidently others were not deemed worthy of the place of honour.
+
+There was only one photograph, that of an old gentleman, framed with
+glass, which stood back of the blotting pad and the ink well. A
+weather-beaten, epicurean face, with fine snow-white hair, and shrewd
+eyes beneath half-sunken lids, eyes peculiar to old connoisseurs of
+women.
+
+It was the picture of the uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and
+supported him.
+
+Lilly felt a dull oppression, as if those eyes were looking her through
+and through, and needed but a glance to unveil the great secret that she
+concealed from her lover with a thousand subterfuges.
+
+"I'll be careful never to meet him," she thought.
+
+Konrad took from a drawer his precious treasure, the preliminary work on
+his great history of human emotions, and showed Lilly the reams of paper
+closely covered with writing.
+
+This work was his real love, and she, Lilly Czepanek, was nothing but a
+dark, bloodless shadow, which greedily glided through his nights.
+
+"Put it back again," she said discontentedly, and turned away to take
+leave.
+
+But even his great work was not enough for Konrad. In addition, he
+drudged over a number of short articles. As his name become known in
+professional circles, he received an increasing number of orders, all of
+which he accepted and tried to fill.
+
+And one day Lilly found out what the important position was of which he
+had spoken three weeks before on that never-to-be-forgotten excursion.
+
+"I couldn't make up my mind until to-day," said Konrad. "But now I have
+actually decided to take the position. It is assistant editorship on a
+magazine. The editor-in-chief called on me himself, and wouldn't let go
+of me until I said yes. A fascinating fellow. In spite of his great
+intellectual ability, a man of childlike innocence. And so frank and
+friendly. You must get to know him immediately, if you don't already."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Dr. Salmoni."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+No. It came about differently.
+
+Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.
+
+Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an
+act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the
+great passion that had blessed her life.
+
+After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on
+the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them
+must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the
+house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had
+then.
+
+In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a
+lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked
+with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always
+appeared.
+
+The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.
+
+Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with
+a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their
+happiest hours were wont to begin.
+
+The following day light was thrown upon the situation.
+
+Konrad came at twilight, paler than usual, his eyes shining unnaturally.
+
+"Listen, darling," he said, "I spent the night thinking everything over,
+and now I know what I ought to do. We can't go on this way."
+
+She thought he meant that he must leave her. An icy numbness spread over
+her body. She looked at him quietly awaiting the death blow.
+
+"Since we belong to each other," he continued, "we have never spoken of
+your betrothed. That doesn't mean I didn't think of him. And you have
+been very reticent about his friend, Mr. Dehnicke. All I know is Mr.
+Dehnicke is now off on a trip and has left you, so to speak, without a
+guardian."
+
+She forced herself to smile. Why did he prolong the agony?
+
+"I must confess, in the midst of all my happiness, I have always felt
+that this exploiting of the situation was nothing more nor less than
+contemptible so far as I myself am concerned. But I am not the one to be
+considered. The question is: what will become of you? The thing I
+dreaded from the very first has come to pass: your friends have begun to
+notice us together. You can't ask one person not to tell another. That's
+degrading. So your friend will discover everything. He will call you to
+account, you will be too proud to deny the truth, and the end of the
+story will be that you will be left alone, utterly unprotected. Because
+the way things are now, _I_ haven't even the right to protect you. The
+thought of it is sickening."
+
+He jumped up, ran his outspread fingers through his imaginary shock of
+hair, and tramped up and down.
+
+Lilly felt the blood begin to course through her veins again, and with
+it life and thought.
+
+The dear, noble, unsuspecting boy!
+
+She came near bursting into laughter. But she refrained herself and
+said:
+
+"You can be perfectly calm, Konni. Mr. Dehnicke won't find out, and
+even if he does, he won't believe it. Or if he believes it, he will take
+good care--"
+
+She could not continue. The great innocent eyes troubled her.
+
+"So you still think he will--?"
+
+Konrad also faltered. He, too, was unable to utter the unspeakable.
+
+Lilly regarded the buttons on her skirt, and said nothing.
+
+"When is Mr. Dehnicke coming home again?" he asked.
+
+"He's not certain. He's gone a-wooing," Lilly replied with a little
+feeling of triumph. She thought she was saying something which raised
+her above suspicion in the future--there was still a possibility of
+suspicion.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Why do you want to know?"
+
+"I want to speak to him."
+
+Lilly started. She could not believe her ears.
+
+It _could_ not be. Either she must have lost her reason or Konrad.
+
+"Don't be afraid," he reassured her. "I know quite well what I owe your
+reputation. But I should like to find out at last what _he_ thinks of
+your situation. There's a man in the United States whom you are pledged
+to, yet he doesn't let himself be heard from. He doesn't come for you.
+He doesn't write. Why doesn't he write? If he's ignorant of your
+whereabouts, he's perfectly aware that Mr. Dehnicke's business is known
+in Berlin. You can't be sure he's still alive. At first I tried to
+explain his silence in various ways. But now I say to myself, he's
+either dead or as good as dead. And are you to consider yourself bound?
+Should you make your entire social existence dependent upon a sort of
+guard of honour, which has nothing more to guard? I'd like to hold all
+this under Mr. Dehnicke's nose. He'll have to answer me. Don't you think
+he will?"
+
+"Konrad has less worldly knowledge than is permissible," thought Lilly,
+pityingly, and replied: "But I don't understand, Konni, what right you
+have to call a stranger to account."
+
+"That's my affair," he rejoined, tossing his head defiantly. "I must
+know if he will set you free. I won't brook his playing the slave-master
+over you."
+
+"And I won't brook your getting yourself into a false position," cried
+Lilly in reawakened alarm. She already heard blows and pistol shots. "I
+myself will speak to Mr. Dehnicke. I will free myself, I promise you.
+But you, if _you_ go to him, what will he think of me? At best you will
+merely succeed in compromising me."
+
+He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed victoriously.
+
+"If a man loves you and wants you to be his wife, why should that
+compromise you?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was hot and murky when these words were spoken. The canary ran about
+on the sand of his cage chirping wearily, his wings drooping; the gold
+fish hung motionless behind their glass walls, and the naked monkey
+whined in its sleep.
+
+The slimy canal water reflected bluish black clouds; a storm hovered in
+the atmosphere, and this was the thunder-clap.
+
+Lilly's first sensation was one of surprise--not joyous surprise, indeed
+not. Then came an unspeakably mournful cry, which no mortal ear heard,
+though all the more painful in its muteness.
+
+"Too late--a lost chance--nothing to hope for--no more happiness on
+earth--too late!"
+
+She leaned back on the sofa and studied the ceiling attentively and
+thoroughly.
+
+He was awaiting his answer.
+
+If she lowered her eyes, she would have to encounter his eyes, which ate
+into her soul. No salvation from those eyes, no salvation from that
+which must perforce come.
+
+And he was waiting.
+
+Then she heard her own voice, very clear and very calm, as if Mrs. Jula
+were speaking in her place, that little artist of life with the iron
+brow.
+
+"I thought, Konni, you and I had agreed never to marry."
+
+"How can you remind me of it?" he cried violently. "Did I know how
+things would turn out when I said it? Did I know who you are and what
+bliss and torture a goddess of a woman like you can bestow on a poor
+devil? Yes, torture. I must tell you everything to-day. I'm at my wit's
+end. There's a break in my life. Everything is torn asunder--my work, my
+thoughts, my belief in you. You want to be my good genius. Instead
+you're almost my evil genius. Don't be frightened. It's not your fault.
+I am not reproaching you--only myself, for being so weak. I want to
+work. I must work. I have assumed a number of _new_ duties. I thought if
+duty came from the outside, I could force myself into the right path.
+The very reverse has happened. I'm growing stupid just from wrestling
+with myself. I must bring peace into our lives, else we're both lost.
+And I can't have peace unless you belong to me _altogether_, unless your
+bed is next to my bed, and the desk is in the next room, and you're
+always with me."
+
+"I can move to you in the autumn," Lilly interjected timidly.
+
+"No, nothing of that sort any more. No self-reproaches, no
+secretiveness. Should I have it on my conscience that each additional
+day on which you sacrifice yourself, you're drawing nearer to ruin? And
+it's bound to ruin you. It will cling to you like dirt. And why should
+we create dirt out of what is most sacred to us? Or am I not good enough
+to be your life-companion? Do you think you will be too poor as my
+wife?"
+
+She repudiated the idea with a lively exclamation of scorn.
+
+"I don't know, and I don't need to know, how much you have. I am rich
+enough now. I get three hundred marks a month from my uncle; Dr. Salmoni
+pays me four hundred--"
+
+Oh, how she started at the name!
+
+"And I can easily earn another three hundred by writing articles--in all
+a thousand a month, a general's salary. You may be satisfied."
+
+"Keep quiet," she cried, almost beside herself. "It isn't that."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+He planted himself in front of her challengingly. Between his brows were
+those folds of wrath which cut her like a knife. She ducked her head.
+Never since the colonel's time had she experienced such fear of a human
+being.
+
+"Tell me what it is. Apparently you don't love me enough. You still
+cling to the man who forgot you long ago. You probably say to yourself:
+'The stupid boy is good enough for a passing love; he's good enough for
+whiling the time away. But if he shows any intentions of interfering
+with my life, I must get rid of him with all possible speed.' Am I not
+right? Tell me. Be brave! What harm can I do you? Just tell me that I'm
+nothing but a _pis aller_, the sort of man you wouldn't want as a
+husband. When I've made a name for myself, then you will be willing to
+consider marriage, too. Am I not right?--Well, then."
+
+He picked up his hat to go.
+
+"Have pity on me, Konni," she implored. She had glided down from her
+seat to lay her head on his knees, and now she crouched between the sofa
+and Konrad's chair, and groped for support.
+
+"I don't need _your_ pity, you don't need _mine_," he cried. "Until
+to-day you've been the noblest thing on earth to me. But I won't suffer
+myself just to be expunged from your life. Tell me why you don't want to
+marry me--_one_ plausible reason, and I'll never return to the subject
+again. I promise you."
+
+"Give me until to-morrow," she groaned.
+
+"Why? For what? To-day is as good as to-morrow. I've come to the end of
+my tether. I can't spend another night of torture."
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+That surprised him.
+
+"What will you write?"
+
+"Whether I may or not. And the reasons and everything."
+
+"During the night I'll manage to find some way out," she thought.
+
+"When will I get the letter?"
+
+"To-morrow morning by the first delivery."
+
+"Very well. I will wait until then. Good-by, Lilly."
+
+When he helped her back on the sofa, and held his hand out in farewell,
+and she saw his eyes fastened on her with their candid, magnanimous
+expression, which a lie had never clouded--unsuspicious still--she was
+suddenly convinced that evasion was no longer possible.
+
+"Truth! Nothing but the truth. Even if it lead to perdition, Konrad must
+now be told the truth." The thought flooded her soul like a warm,
+soothing stream.
+
+But she could not tell him the truth face to face. Nobody would have the
+strength of will for that.
+
+The reaction did not set in until she was left alone. The impulse for
+self-preservation asserted itself. If Mrs. Jula could do it, she could,
+too. Mrs. Jula had much worse things to conceal.
+
+Richard, of course, would say nothing; which was the main consideration.
+Now that he wished to go his own way, it was to his interest for her to
+vanish decorously from his life. The rest of the "crew" might tattle to
+their heart's content. Konrad was immune against their poison. The only
+dangerous person was Dr. Salmoni. But if she went to him soon and begged
+him, he, too, would maintain silence. He had sufficiently strong motives
+for hushing his disgraceful attempt upon her. Besides, Mrs. Jula had
+said: "You must wear a smile on your brow but beneath the smile your
+brow must be of iron."
+
+Thus Lilly revolved the situation in her mind.
+
+But in the midst of her brooding and planning she was seized with
+disgust of herself and her intentions, which tore the whole tissue of
+deceit into ragged bits.
+
+Why, it was sheer folly to think she would always be able to play the
+false part. If upon the mere mention of Dr. Salmoni's name she dreaded
+appearing on the street with Konrad, how could she go through a lifetime
+at his side haunted by that ever-present fear? What repulses and
+humiliations she would have to undergo whenever Konrad led her into the
+society in which as his wife she would belong--she, whom the papers had
+taken up and treated as a rising star in the fashionable demi-monde?
+And, worst of all, if Konrad should begin to suspect! How he would eat
+his heart away in shame and abhorrence, he, with his pride and delicate
+susceptibilities and that unworldly purity which alone accounted for the
+fact that no surmise as to her real life had ever touched his soul.
+
+What an awaking from a short, torturing dream!
+
+No, she could not do what Mrs. Jula had done.
+
+And she threw far from her the shameful thought with which the stress of
+the hour had stained her wrestling soul.
+
+An exultant craving for self-annihilation came over her, the desire to
+tear her breast open and throw her throbbing heart at his feet.
+
+So she sat down and wrote:
+
+     "My dear, sweet Konni:--
+
+     I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something
+     not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is
+     a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly
+     broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of
+     marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me
+     his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for
+     years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from
+     decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them
+     form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your
+     innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire,
+     clamoured for respect.
+
+     Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my
+     kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.
+
+     Lilly."
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock. Adele had gone to bed. It occurred to
+Lilly that she would have to go down to mail the letter herself.
+
+But the storm that had been impending the whole afternoon, was just then
+giving full vent to its fury. The rain was coming down in sheets, and
+gusts of wind blew through the open window across Lilly's desk.
+
+Once a shower of drops spattered the paper, at which she was staring
+with hot, dry eyes. It looked as if tears had fallen upon it while she
+was writing.
+
+"Very good," she thought.
+
+Then she felt ashamed. The time for farce was ended. But when she
+started to rewrite the letter, she stopped short with a shudder.
+
+What did those monstrous self-accusations signify? Were they the truth?
+
+Perhaps so in the mouth of a backbiting woman who needs facts about her
+friend in order to twist them into a crime, or in the mouth of one of
+those social hangmen who hold a halter in readiness for everybody's
+past.
+
+For herself, who knew how everything had come about, how from inner need
+and outer compulsion, from trustfulness and defencelessness, link after
+link of the chain had been forged which now clanked about her body, a
+burden of sin--for her there was another, a milder truth, which must win
+pardon and atonement for her in the eyes of every person who understood.
+
+She tore up the sheet, and began anew. She draughted a sketch, and
+polished it until it thoroughly satisfied her.
+
+     "My dearly beloved friend:--
+
+     She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom
+     you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until
+     to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you,
+     was at stake.
+
+     And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am
+     sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which
+     sanctified my life.
+
+     The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in
+     man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right
+     to go through life at your side.
+
+     I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core
+     of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a
+     piece of my virtue.
+
+     I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised
+     to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a
+     tool of base desires.
+
+     Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left
+     without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I
+     sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a
+     fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his
+     adventure he went to perdition.
+
+     He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his
+     care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for
+     his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent
+     upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while
+     thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I
+     was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at
+     him, I was so slavishly in his power--until now.
+
+     So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle
+     out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but
+     nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I
+     seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still
+     lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of
+     discouragement.
+
+     Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew
+     light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained
+     sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.
+
+     And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had
+     taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had
+     passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my
+     desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity.
+     These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them
+     to activity.
+
+     Even if I may not be your wife--your wife should be free of
+     stain--I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a
+     distance--wherever you tell me to go.
+
+     Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have
+     been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a
+     new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You
+     have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear,
+     tender, industrious hands.
+
+     Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again.
+     If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you
+     as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me
+     adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that
+     belongs to you unto death.
+
+     Lilly."
+
+She read and reread the letter, and read herself into a state of
+enthusiasm over it.
+
+Now the truth wore quite a different aspect.
+
+Then suddenly the question arose in her mind:
+
+"_Is_ it the truth?"
+
+Had she not luxuriated in choice words? Had she not smuggled in
+high-flown emotions foreign to her nature? Phrases like "dull night in
+which my spirit was enveloped" and "tried desperately to struggle"
+belonged in sentimental novels. They were inapplicable to her life. She
+had suffered not so much from despair as from boredom and during that
+"dull night" she had enjoyed herself greatly on many an occasion.
+Richard, the good fellow to judge by her insinuations, was a rank
+despot, and she herself a sorry, subjugated victim, whereas in reality
+she had been able to do or leave undone whatever her caprice dictated.
+
+It _was_ the truth, and yet it was not. Just as much and as little as in
+the first, dreadful letter. Each was correct enough in its way, and many
+another might have been written equally correct; but the truth, the
+genuine truth, which penetrated and illumined the whole, would appear in
+none. That truth she herself did not know, nor did anybody else. That
+truth vanished with the moment in which an event occurred, and no
+earthly power could summon it back. All that her words reflected were
+distorted images varying as her mood varied and as her pen travelled
+over the paper.
+
+"But I don't want to lie," she cried to herself. "I want to be true
+to-day."
+
+So she tore up the second letter also.
+
+What now? Should she write a third letter?
+
+It was long past midnight. Her eyes burned. Her temples throbbed with
+over-excitement, and Konrad was to hear from her by the first mail in
+the morning. She had promised him.
+
+At this point the full force of what had happened suddenly struck her.
+She realised that in the last four hours she had been face to face with
+the danger of losing him at once and forever.
+
+She was beset with an anguish of fear that threatened to rob her of her
+senses. She cried his name aloud, ran about the apartment, reeled,
+knocked against the walls, and wanted to throw herself from the window.
+
+She must go to him forthwith. That was the one idea she was capable of
+grasping. She would have the porter open the front door; she would wake
+Konrad up, force her way into his room and stay with him that night and
+forever. No matter what the consequences! It was all the same. Only to
+rid herself of that dread which burned her body like a living flame.
+
+The storm had subsided, but the rain was falling in a steady downpour.
+Lilly scarcely took the time to put on a cloak.
+
+In low shoes, without hat or umbrella, she dashed out on the street and
+splashed through the puddles.
+
+Light was shining from the two third-storey windows.
+
+She clapped her hands and cried:
+
+"Konni, Konni, Konni!"
+
+Again and again.
+
+But the windows were closed. He did not hear her.
+
+She saw his figure glide back and forth like a shadow, from one end of
+the room to the other, to and fro, to and fro, ceaselessly.
+
+And all the time the rain beat down on her, soaking through her clothes,
+while the cold wet of the pavement crawled up her legs.
+
+"Konni, Konni," she called louder.
+
+Passersby offered her their umbrellas; others taunted her, and cried,
+"Konni, Konni."
+
+At last the shadow halted. One of the windows went up.
+
+"Lilly--you?" his voice called, hoarse with fright.
+
+"At last--do come, my sweet Konni," a tipsy man, who had persistently
+held his umbrella over her, answered in her place.
+
+"For God's sake!"
+
+The light disappeared from the windows, and a few moments later Konrad
+appeared in the doorway with the front-door key and his lamp in his
+hand.
+
+The tipsy gentleman said good-by, bowing and scraping.
+
+"Lilly--what has happened? What are you doing here?"
+
+She pressed against the doorpost trembling. She was unable to speak.
+
+"I am with him," was her one thought. "So all's well."
+
+He passed his hand over her clothes.
+
+"Why, you're dripping wet. You're in house slippers. For God's sake,
+Lilly!"
+
+She wanted to say something, but was ashamed to let him see how her
+teeth were chattering.
+
+"And I can't even take you to my room. You know why. But I must. If I
+were to let you go back home again in the state you're in, you might
+catch your death of cold. We will be very careful--just as we were that
+time. We can't speak above a whisper. The girl's not out of danger yet.
+Give me your hand. Come on."
+
+With half-closed eyes she let herself be led up the stairs. Her wet
+dress flapped against the balusters. She felt she would have to crouch
+down on one of the steps and lie there until the porter came to sweep
+the dust and dirt away. But each step only took her nearer to the fate
+awaiting her up there in the third storey.
+
+Then with bent head she crept along the corridor into his room, where
+the imprisoned sultriness of the summer day suffocated her.
+
+Konrad pressed her into his desk chair. He drew off the soggy velvet
+rags from her feet, and brought her dry stockings; and after peeling her
+wet dress from her body he wrapped her in his great coat and blankets.
+
+She sat there accepting his service without a will of her own. She
+wanted to taste the delicious sensation of his loving care of her until
+the last moment.
+
+She had not said a word.
+
+When she had attempted to thank him, he pointed to the door leading to
+the next room.
+
+"Speak very low," he said, his mouth close to her ear. "The poor thing,
+it seems, is having a good night for the first time."
+
+Languid pity awoke in Lilly.
+
+But she had to talk.
+
+"What's the matter with her? Tell me," she breathed.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"My landlady swore me to silence. But you're mine now. You will keep the
+secret. Her daughter, her one child, ran away four months ago and gave
+birth to a baby. The mother went to fetch her back home. She's been
+hovering between life and death for six weeks. She's at last getting
+better."
+
+"Poor thing," said Lilly. And then the consciousness of her own misery
+came upon her with redoubled force.
+
+"Konni, Konni," she moaned on his neck. "Now it's all over. I was
+willing to starve with you, go begging with you. But what's the use?
+When once you know everything--"
+
+"That can't be so very bad, darling."
+
+"About me. About my life--my past."
+
+With a little jerk he freed himself and sat down opposite her.
+
+The look of questioning and terrified presentiment that congealed his
+pale face, seeming to turn it into a mask, filled her with fright, such
+fright as she had never experienced, because it was not on her own
+behalf; she was afraid of converting her own pain into his pain.
+
+"I wanted to write it to you--just the way it was, but I couldn't. It
+turned out wrong while I wrote. So I came to you before morning. If you
+want, I will tell you now--everything--"
+
+She could not continue. She turned her face aside and buried it on the
+desk.
+
+"Why don't you speak?"
+
+Konrad had quite forgotten the need for quiet, and both of them shrank
+at the sudden sound of his voice. "She's probably asleep," he said
+lowering his voice again. "Now tell me! What can it be?"
+
+He breathed heavily under the growing oppression of his soul.
+
+She began to speak. In a whisper, her upper body inclined toward him,
+she tried to tell him the things for which she had not been able to find
+words in her own home.
+
+The truth did not come out this time either. She felt it.
+
+Less, much less of it, than her letters would have given him. To
+distress him with every detail--never! No power in the world could have
+driven her to that.
+
+Her life became a long list of martyrdoms--a funeral procession draped
+in black--insults, humiliations, mortifications--an imprisonment without
+a ray of light or mercy--and all the time a constant struggle for
+deliverance--a noble withdrawal into herself--a dismal sacrifice for
+nothing.
+
+She talked and talked.
+
+He listened, with wide-open eyes. But when she uttered the name she had
+no right to omit, "Dr. Salmoni," he started and shrank back.
+
+Both of them had completely forgotten the sick girl in the next room.
+
+Sometimes Lilly had to wipe tears away, sometimes she grew indignant;
+now she ventured to glide by difficult points, now she lingered over
+touching self-reproaches.
+
+"It _is_ the truth after all," she said to herself defiantly, yet in
+fear, as she drew near the end of her narrative.
+
+It was the truth in so far as it was a resume of the good in her, the
+truth as it might take shape in his troubled mind, regardless of
+fact--and this truth, too, had its rights.
+
+Silence ensued.
+
+Her guilty look glided past him and rested on the photograph on the
+desk, which leered at her with its crafty, worldly eyes, as if to say:
+
+"My child, I know you much better than you do yourself."
+
+Something familiar and confidential lay in them, like a reflection of
+the merry world which a moment ago had seemed to her the abode of
+torture.
+
+She did not venture to remove her gaze from those omniscient eyes, which
+smilingly examined and disrobed her, and killed her last shy hope.
+
+The unbroken silence in the room became a burden.
+
+Suddenly Konrad and Lilly heard a low moan. It came from the next room,
+where the sick girl lay, who, because of her secret sin, had been
+wrestling with her poor life for weeks. The next instant the sound was
+partially stifled, as if she had stuck a handkerchief into her mouth.
+Then it broke out again all the more violently. Anxious words of comfort
+mingled with the groans. They came from the mother, who probably slept
+in the farther room, and had come in to find out the cause of her
+daughter's outburst of grief.
+
+Konrad's and Lilly's eyes met.
+
+"She heard everything," their look said.
+
+For a brief instant the stranger's unhappiness caused them to forget
+their own. The great flood of the world's suffering poured over them
+easing the sting of guilt and drowning their personal pain.
+
+The sobbing in the next room was muffled under pillows.
+
+"My own darling," the comforting voice implored, and each tone swelled
+with love. "Don't worry. It isn't so bad. We will take the little baby.
+Even if he doesn't marry you, what difference does it make? Think of it,
+we have the baby! And then it will smile at you and say mama. You see,
+it isn't so dreadful."
+
+The sobbing quieted down, and turned into a heavy breathing, the first
+earnest of peace.
+
+"Oh," thought Lilly, "it must be good to have someone say: 'It's not so
+dreadful.'"
+
+Nobody would say that to her.
+
+A burning desire to be petted and comforted, like the young sinner next
+door, arose in her.
+
+"She has her mother," she groaned, bursting into tears, "but whom have
+I?"
+
+Konrad leaned over and took her hands from her face. His troubled eyes
+shone with such infinite loving kindness that they seemed not to be of
+this world.
+
+"Am I not here?" he asked.
+
+"What can you do for me?" she complained. "How can you bear me?"
+
+There were no sounds from the other room any more.
+
+Now the mother also knew that Konrad had a visitor at that late hour.
+
+"Listen," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear again. "We mustn't
+talk much more. Besides, my head's in a whirl. But there's one thing I
+see clearly: how ridiculous everything called guilt is when two people
+love each other, and when one has suffered like you. You have always
+been a saint to me, and you shall--continue to be in the future."
+
+"Future," Lilly faltered, starting up anxiously, "what sort of a
+future?"
+
+He wiped his forehead, yellow and dank with sweat.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "All I know is I can't live without you."
+
+She closed her eyes. She wanted to dream longer.
+
+"To be sure, it cannot be what we wanted." She noticed the hesitating,
+dragging gait of his speech. "Everything, of course--will have to be
+different."
+
+"Your life must not be different--it ought not to be different."
+
+"You can't blink facts, darling. Of course, I don't know _where_ we will
+live. But we'll manage to find some spot on the globe where nobody knows
+us."
+
+Now she understood.
+
+And forgetting herself and the sick girl and everything around she sank
+down at his feet with a cry and sobbed:
+
+"I don't want you to--you mustn't. You're entirely too young. You don't
+know the world. You don't know what you're doing. I don't want the
+sacrifice. I don't want to ruin you. I love you too much for that."
+
+He bent her head back and stroked her hair from her forehead.
+
+If only his eyes had not shone with that suffering loving kindness.
+
+The unhappiness of a lifetime already glowed in them.
+
+"If the question of sacrifice enters," he said, "then _I_ must ask a
+sacrifice of _you_. Will you make it for my sake?"
+
+"Everything, everything! Shall I die? Tell me."
+
+"I want only one thing of you. Come to me as you are. Don't bring a
+single possession of yours with you. Never return, not once, to your--to
+that apartment. From this moment on nothing of all that is to be. Will
+you promise me?"
+
+Lilly battled against violent alarm.
+
+Not to return home! Never to see her dear drawing-room again; never to
+feed the little canary or Peter--never!
+
+An ugly feeling, that such a sacrifice was rank folly, came and went
+again, as if a daub of dirt had been flung upon her, and immediately
+been wiped away. Then she decided hastily, and replied:
+
+"Yes, I promise."
+
+He drew a deep breath.
+
+"Now we will be perfectly quiet," he said. "The patient ought to sleep,
+and to-morrow morning I'll explain the matter to my landlady."
+
+"But what is to become of your great work?" Lilly asked, self-reproach
+rising up in her again.
+
+A melancholy smile passed over his face.
+
+"Who knows? That will depend upon my uncle. If he gives his consent, we
+can live as we please. Everything will be all right."
+
+"But if he doesn't?"
+
+Konrad's right hand, which had been gliding ceaselessly from her
+forehead to the nape of her neck, for an instant pressed her head
+painfully as if to fetch strength for the approaching life struggle from
+closer contact.
+
+"That will be all right, too," he said and smiled again.
+
+A little while later she lay at his side in the narrow bed, the edge of
+which cut her body. She put her head under his shoulder, and with both
+arms clasped his body, as always in her distress when she sought
+protection with him.
+
+
+But this time she slept, and he kept watch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Mrs. Laue was not a little astonished when one day her former tenant,
+the _grande dame_, appeared at her door in an ill-fitting alpaca suit
+and a sailor hat, trimmed with a green band, begging for admittance.
+
+The young lady tenant of the year had just been married, and the best
+room was vacant.
+
+Thus, it came about that Mrs. Laue's red plush furniture once more cast
+a fiery glow upon Lilly's life.
+
+The photographs of famous mimes smirked upon her patronisingly. And
+while performing her morning toilet, she was admonished:
+
+    To keep your body clean, be sure
+    To have your conscience just as pure.
+
+The way Konrad looked out for her was touching. He instantly drew all
+his money from the bank, five hundred marks, and himself went to buy an
+outfit for her, since she could not appear on the street in the garments
+she had worn when she had come to him.
+
+He had let the salesladies persuade him into buying the absurdest
+things. Lilly would have split her sides laughing over them, if they had
+not represented a goodly portion of his money.
+
+The shoddy dress struck her as a temporary masquerade; and nothing in
+the world would have induced her to wear it outside the house.
+
+Mrs. Laue shook her head dubiously.
+
+"When you moved away from here four years ago, you had the finest gowns
+and brooches and bracelets and all sorts of things; and now you come
+back in rags. It seems to me you're on the wrong road, Lilly dear."
+
+Konrad found as little favour in Mrs. Laue's eyes.
+
+"He's too young for you, and not stylish enough. Maybe he has ideal
+sentiments--if he hadn't he would snap his fingers at you. But I tell
+you, ideal sentiments always go hand in hand with trouble."
+
+Lilly thought the old woman's chatter abominable. But for lack of
+something better to do during the daytime--Konrad was busy and could not
+come until evening--she again took to pasting flowers in Mrs. Laue's
+company. Occasionally it seemed to her she had never gone away from her.
+
+Lilly had written to Adele the very first day, without, of course,
+mentioning her address. She told her not to be troubled by her absence,
+and to attend to the apartment as usual until Mr. Dehnicke's return.
+
+It was more difficult to pen her farewell to her old friend. She said
+nothing of Konrad. For the present her engagement was to be kept a
+secret. She gave as the sole cause for her flight her irresistible
+desire at last to live a different life. She also referred to her wish
+not to stand in the way of his future, and wound up with cordial words,
+which robbed separation of its bitterness.
+
+When she read the letter over, she felt a genuine pang, at which she was
+a bit ashamed.
+
+The days passed.
+
+The new life that had been the dream of her dreams for years had begun,
+freighted with boundless confidence, such as she had not ventured to
+hope for in her wildest fancyings.
+
+With her sins washed away, redeemed, reborn, she stepped back into
+virtuous society at the side of the beloved man, whom only a few days
+before, it would have been arrogance, sacrilege to wish to possess.
+
+Who would have believed it?
+
+And yet Lilly was unable to attain to perfect enjoyment of her
+unspeakable happiness.
+
+No matter how often she told herself it was nothing but a transition
+period, soon to pass, the misery of her old quarters, the poor-peoples'
+odour, the spiritual mustiness that pervaded the place, bad food, the
+lack of suitable clothes, money and service, all this worked upon her
+sufficiently to delude her into the belief that instead of rising to new
+honours, she was suddenly sinking from splendour and brilliance to a
+dull, dead level.
+
+No matter that she found fault with herself for this ungrateful frame of
+mind, the fact was, the feeling was there, and she could not dismiss it.
+
+And how account for it that five years before when she had descended
+from the genuine heights of life, delicately nurtured, a spoiled
+darling, accustomed to luxury and attention, such as is granted to few
+persons in the world, she had scarcely suffered from the wretchedness of
+these surroundings? In fact, though utterly without prospects, she had
+felt tolerably secure. But now that the idle comfort of a vapid
+existence fortunately lay behind her, and her beloved walked by her side
+ready to throw open the gates to a happiness she had never divined, she
+was unable to breathe among the red plush chairs. Trifles annoyed her,
+and she hankered for a bathroom and a hairdresser.
+
+Something must have departed from her during those years. She thought
+and thought, but failed to discover what it was.
+
+Added to all these troubles was her worry over Konrad's condition.
+
+Whenever her soul conjured up his image, her heart throbbed with mingled
+sensations--secret pangs of conscience, longings for atonement,
+reproaches, not to be stilled, of herself and--why conceal it?--of
+Konrad also.
+
+Her yearning for him no longer had a quality of joyousness; and yet, she
+was ever expectant of a letter from him by the pneumatic tube.
+
+If he wrote, he said too little; and if he sent no message at all she
+felt angry, though she well knew he had not a second to spare for her
+during the day, and was drudging as never before in his life.
+
+He would come at last between eight and nine in the evening; and then
+loaded with papers and books. He had manuscripts to read, proofs to look
+over, and letters to answer. He scarcely took time to eat, and while he
+snatched a few bites, troubled recollections of things he had forgotten
+during the day kept flashing up in his harassed brain.
+
+There was no thought of amorous nights. As a rule Konrad fell asleep in
+the midst of work.
+
+As he reclined there in the corner of the sofa, Lilly could appreciate
+how tired and worn he was. He no longer cared for his person. His
+clothes hung on him impressed, and in place of the velvety sheen on his
+cheeks, which had been her delight, she saw dark boils and coarse
+stubble.
+
+She would have given a great deal to learn what he thought of her in the
+depths of his soul. But she could extract nothing from him. He remained
+mute, with glowing eyes, and lips tightly compressed.
+
+Certainly she had no right to doubt him. She knew that he spent every
+spare minute trying to arrange for their life in the future.
+
+In Buenos Ayres the position of a high school teacher of German was
+vacant; the same in Caracas; and he could even become a university
+professor, though of course on the other side of the Atlantic. All he
+needed to do was present a few letters of recommendation from well-known
+professors.
+
+Such efforts, however, were necessary only in case his uncle refused his
+consent to Konrad's marriage with Lilly, and dropped his disobedient
+heir.
+
+If he said yes, if he furnished the means for their household, they
+could live aloof from the world wherever they wished, wherever
+conditions were best adapted for the precious work.
+
+Konrad had immediately written to his uncle about his engagement, and
+told of Lilly's past in the most touching words. He had not concealed
+the stains on her life, but he brought out strongly her fine qualities,
+the virginity of her soul, her nobility, her rich intellectual
+endowments, the number of her ideal interests.
+
+After he had sent off the letter, he read to Lilly a few passages from
+the draught of it. It was a bold document of revolutionary ideas.
+
+"I know that _I_ and you, too, are raised above the narrow conventions
+of philistinism, above the merciless judgments of social court-martials,
+above a Pharisaism which constitutes itself the watchdog of morality,
+and which with its code of formal, pedantic family relationships knocks
+to the ground all aspirations for free, high-minded conduct. You have
+lived in many parts of the world, and you have learned to know how
+mutable moral laws are everywhere, how hollow the pretence of regarding
+each as the sole God-ordained dogma, you know the sly, hypocritical
+paths and by-ways by which one manages to escape their tyranny, and you
+know that in the province of ethics there is only one thing which
+commands respect and admiration: the will to _kallokagathia_, to that
+form of life in which the noblemen of all times combined the beautiful
+with the good. Yes, beautiful and good. That is what Lilly is, her
+aspirations, and sufferings."
+
+How glorious!
+
+Who could be dull enough to resist such words?
+
+That is what Lilly said to comfort Konrad when uncertainty as to the
+immediate future weighed upon him heavily.
+
+Five days passed before the answer came upon which depended the weal or
+woe of two human beings.
+
+In reading it, Lilly saw the crafty eyes of the photograph turned upon
+her as if the old man stood there in person.
+
+     "My dear boy:--
+
+     I don't understand anything about _kallokagathia_ or similar
+     phrases. It's nearly half a century ago, since I ran away from
+     school. But I flatter myself that I can measure things pretty
+     accurately with my eyes, and size people up by their faces,
+     whether striking a bargain or on the Yoshiwara, whether on the
+     various exchanges or at baccarat. Which did not keep me from
+     being fleeced, or my life from being a series of stupidities,
+     especially in regard to women. Once I wanted, whether or no, to
+     bring along a young Circassian, because her eyebrows met
+     prettily; and once I wanted to marry a little Musme because she
+     massaged my legs so well, etc. I won't say anything of my
+     various attempts to save souls, because everybody goes through
+     that.
+
+     However, the god of old rogues and bachelors--perhaps with your
+     classical knowledge you can tell me his name--mercifully kept
+     any of my plans from maturing.
+
+     But your case seems to be essentially different. If it's really
+     as you say, if your betrothed is really such a paragon of
+     virtues--the world is full of surprises--and, chief of all, if
+     she does not pose as a repentant Magdalene and bank upon your
+     pity, it will be a pleasure to me to tweak Mr. Respectability's
+     nose and give you my cordial blessing.
+
+     But if your intentions bear a certain family resemblance to my
+     own in the past, then pardon me if I refuse to shoulder the
+     responsibility for what you are pleased to call your "future,"
+     even with this in view, and if I feel compelled to beg you
+     kindly to break off your connections with me.
+
+     In order to settle the matter to the best of my ability, I will
+     be in Berlin day after to-morrow; and I herewith ask you and
+     your betrothed to keep the evening free for your old uncle. As
+     I do not know where you metropolitans dine and drink, I will
+     have to let you know the place of our meeting after I reach
+     Berlin.
+
+     Until then,
+
+     Yours faithfully,
+     Uncle Rennschmidt."
+
+For the first time in that gloomy period Lilly saw Konrad's face relax
+with a smile of relief.
+
+"If that's his attitude, then there's no danger," he said. "He will have
+to drop his distrust at the very first glance. Who in the world can
+withstand you? You just have to be a little pleasant to him, and he'll
+be your adorer."
+
+But Lilly had her private opinion.
+
+Yes, if she had her former wardrobe to choose from, perhaps she might
+be sure of presenting the appearance she should to his uncle. But in
+either one of her two ridiculous shop-girl dresses, which she had to pin
+painstakingly before she could wear them, without jewellery, or the
+thousand little appurtenances of a fine toilet, from where, in such
+circumstances, was she to summon the self-confidence that would force
+the shrewd old woman connoisseur to capitulate?
+
+"I'm afraid I'll have to have some of your money for getting an evening
+costume," she said hesitatingly.
+
+He acquiesced with pleasure. She was to have whatever she still needed,
+and a hat with plumes and a lace mantilla, just like the one she had
+had.
+
+All this for two hundred and sixty marks.
+
+This, the entire sum he had left, was what he handed over to her for her
+new purchases.
+
+The dear boy, what sort of an idea did he have of fashionable dressing?
+
+After he left she carefully considered ways and means.
+
+While she wore herself out devising methods of patching up some sort of
+costume, the most glorious dresses hung by the dozens in her old
+closets, dresses which Konrad had not seen, because he had never gone to
+any festive gathering with her. The lace mantilla which had cost a small
+fortune was also there, and goodness knows what else!
+
+But with all her might she cast the temptation from her. She had given
+him her word of honour.
+
+She might deceive everybody else in the world, but not Konrad.
+
+So she decided to go on a shopping expedition the next morning and see
+whether she could not ferret out a good garment at Gerson's or
+Wertheim's in the reduced stock.
+
+But she was known in the shops, and the salespeople had had the
+experience that despite her economy she always bought nothing but the
+very best. How they would stare if she appeared at the counter in her
+tawdry trash.
+
+No, with the best intentions she could not place herself in so
+distressing a situation.
+
+She pondered a long time, but her thoughts kept returning to those
+wardrobes where her exquisite treasures reposed, and silently offered a
+wide choice.
+
+But nowhere a little back door to slip through; nowhere a pretext for
+lessening the gravity of the offence.
+
+Despite all these vexations, the night passed in caressing dreams,
+lighted by newly arisen hope.
+
+And as always when Lilly's frame of mind in sleep was healthy, she felt
+she was being peacefully rocked to the rhythm of familiar melodies. She
+recognised the "Moonlight Sonata," and Grieg's "Ung Birken," and the
+motifs of the Rhine Daughters, and mingling with them all the Song of
+Songs.
+
+As she was coming out of her sleep in the morning, she still heard:
+"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field."
+
+Suddenly with an exclamation of fright she sat up in bed.
+
+The Song of Songs--the score--her treasure--her legacy--where was it? In
+the drawing-room secretaire--buried, forgotten.
+
+Not to have thought of it once!
+
+Now there was no possibility of abiding by her promise. If she had kept
+her wits about her that momentous night, she would never have given it.
+
+She had been at a loss for a pretext, and here she had a justification.
+
+She did not experience the slightest pangs of conscience. It was a
+sacred cause that she was upholding.
+
+By eight o'clock she was already on her way to her former home.
+
+The sunny haze of the red August morning floated up to the
+violet-coloured heavens; sooty drops fell from the yellowing trees, and
+the wires of the electric trams sang their stormy song.
+
+Lilly joined the group of people at the nearest stopping place, which
+from minute to minute waxed and dwindled. While waiting for a car to
+convey her to the distant west side, she looked about in all directions
+to see whether by chance Konrad was coming down the street.
+
+In the car she sat with a newspaper held close to her face, and on the
+short path along the canal she slipped from tree to tree like a wild
+animal seeking cover.
+
+At last she reached her house.
+
+The porter, who was sweeping the front, greeted her with a shout of
+surprise. The green-grocer smiled a mischievous greeting up to her from
+his cellar door, and his two urchins, in whose mind Lilly was connected
+with sweets, hung to her skirt with happy little noises.
+
+All this instantly produced a sensation of returning home.
+
+Adele was still asleep. Why should she not be? She had nothing to do.
+
+When she opened the door, she showed the greatest delight. She even wept
+great tears, and Lilly suddenly realised what she was losing in her.
+
+Everything shone spick and span in the morning sunlight. Even the
+flowers had been kept watered.
+
+The canary beat his wings by way of greeting, and Peter wanted to break
+the bars of his cage to reach Lilly's shoulder.
+
+She did not know to whom or to what to turn first from sheer love, nor
+what question to ask first.
+
+Three letters and two telegrams lay on the card tray.
+
+The letters were in Richard's writing. The telegrams were directed to
+Adele and urgently inquired for Lilly's address.
+
+But after sending these missives, Mr. Dehnicke, Adele informed her, had
+given up his affairs in Harzburg and returned to Berlin. He had inserted
+advertisements for her in the papers, and came every day at the usual
+hour to find out if they had met with success. Then he sat on his
+customary seat, very quiet, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes until
+the time for returning to his office.
+
+"Did you tell him about Dr. Rennschmidt?"
+
+"What do you think of me, Mrs. Czepanek? Do you suppose I don't know how
+to look out for my mistress's honour? But the best thing would be if you
+were to come back and behave as if nothing had happened. That's what all
+my ladies used to do."
+
+Lilly asked her to fetch from the basement the smaller of the two
+leather trunks, explaining that she wished to take a few of her old
+possessions with her.
+
+After Adele had swung herself out of the room sulking, Lilly gathered up
+Konrad's letters from the secret drawer in which she had hidden them,
+and then ran hastily to her large wardrobe, from which she pulled out
+all her dresses and threw them on the bed in order to select whatever
+might be of use to her.
+
+At last the Song of Songs occurred to her.
+
+She opened the secretaire.
+
+The score, which had dreamed away its aimless existence for years in
+the back part of the lowest drawer, had acquired a strange aspect.
+
+The rubber band about it was sticky, and fell to bits when Lilly wanted
+to undo the roll.
+
+The sheets glided from her hand and flew over the carpet one by one.
+
+There they all lay--the arias and recitatives, the duos and orchestral
+interludes--mingled and confused, and on top the turtle dove solo for
+the clarionet, which she had sung with her mother while still a lisping
+babe.
+
+She looked at the scattered leaves in dismay.
+
+They had turned yellow and mouldy. Many of them were plastered with
+blood, her own blood, which had squirted from the knife wound her mother
+had inflicted, and covered large spots with black and reddish brown
+stains. Some of the stains had been eaten into holes, the work of the
+mice at Lischnitz.
+
+So there it was--her Song of Songs.
+
+Nevermore any hope. No rock of salvation for the future--no faithful
+Eckhardt in life's stress, and no guide to golden heights! A mere
+weather-beaten remnant, worn, though unused, honourable ballast which
+one drags along for unknown reasons--a light extinguished, a piece of
+wisdom without sense.
+
+Shrugging her shoulders, she kneeled on the floor, and gathered up the
+thin rolls hastily, without regard for their order.
+
+"I can arrange them some other time," she thought, though a faint doubt
+arose within her whether she ever would.
+
+Adele came with the trunk. It had taken her an extraordinary length of
+time. She replied to Lilly's questions in a confused way, and glanced at
+the clock furtively.
+
+She opened the trunk lid, and Lilly threw the score on the bottom.
+
+The empty open trunk was like a mouth gaping for fodder. The clothes lay
+spread on the bed. Her shoes stood next to the washstand. Hats, veils,
+blouses, lace mantillas, silk petticoats--all waited and seemed to cry:
+
+"Take me along."
+
+For an instant Lilly closed her eyes and groaned, remembering the
+sacrifice, the only one, he demanded of her.
+
+But it had to be.
+
+Both his and her future depended on it.
+
+"Mrs. Laue will hide them for me, and she can keep them afterwards," she
+thought.
+
+She made her decision. Blindly she gathered up whatever her hands fell
+upon--in addition to her dresses the ivory toilet articles with the
+seven pointed coronet, the triple hand mirror, the powder box, the
+receipt for her furs in the storage house, and numberless little _objets
+de luxe_.
+
+She did not forget her jewellery either.
+
+"In case _he_ needs some money," she thought.
+
+She sent Adele to order a cab. This time again it was an eternity before
+she returned.
+
+The porter helped carry the trunk down, and two hat boxes dangled in
+Adele's free hand.
+
+One more caress of the canary's greyish green wings, one more kiss on
+the monkey's velvety snout, then the door closed behind her forever.
+
+"Won't you leave an address?"
+
+What a secretive air Adele wore!
+
+"I will write to you, Adele, and sometime, I hope, you will come to me
+again."
+
+Adele did not respond, but looked down the street expectantly.
+
+A minute later Lilly, glancing from the hansom window as she was being
+driven along the canal, saw a taxicab whizz past from the opposite
+direction. In that second she recognised Richard seated inside.
+
+Red as a lobster, his head inclined to one side, he stared ahead of him
+with wild, searching eyes at the house she had just left.
+
+She hastily told the coachman to turn down a side street. She must not
+meet Richard until her fate had been decided before the world.
+
+But in a few moments, her heart throbbing, she heard behind her the
+rattle and clatter that had just died down in the distance. It grew
+louder and louder.
+
+The yellow wall of the taxicab shot by, turned about suddenly, and
+stopped. A man's voice called to Lilly's driver, and her cab was also
+brought to a stop.
+
+Richard was standing close to her, holding the open door in his
+trembling hand.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+His voice shrilled in a feminine falsetto. His Adam's apple rose and
+fell convulsively over his high collar.
+
+Lilly felt quite calm, quite equal to the situation.
+
+He who had so long been her lord and master now seemed like a poor,
+helpless shadow.
+
+"If you please, Richard, let me ride on," she said. "I took leave of you
+in my letter. I just came to fetch a few of my things, and now all's
+over between us. Why should we go on tormenting each other?"
+
+"Come back!" he hissed.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Come back, I say! You know where your home is. I won't let you stray
+about in the world any more. Heaven knows what may happen to you.
+Driver, turn back."
+
+The coachman turned his russet face inquiringly to the lady in the
+hansom.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Richard. I have the sole say as to this cab--and as
+to my future life, too. Just as you have had over your own."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense! I suppose you're alluding to the American heiress.
+She can go to the devil for all I care. That's the way I've felt for
+some time. But you--_must--come--back. You--must--come--back.
+You--must--you--must_."
+
+He grasped the hem of her skirt with both hands, as if to drag her from
+the carriage by her clothes.
+
+"I beg you to come back--I can't sleep--I can't work--I'm so used to
+you. If I had married, I should have come to you directly after the
+wedding. Our relationship wouldn't have changed an iota. And everything
+in your apartment is just as you left it. You saw it. Adele says Peter
+won't eat, and Adele herself is worried. She says she simply can't do
+without you. I'll give you a life-long annuity of twenty--by God! thirty
+thousand marks a year. What's the difference? Mother hasn't anything
+against it. She sees how I take it. She knows I won't ever marry after
+all. She'll never do anything to you again. You can come to the office,
+too. You can use our carriage instead of the hired one. I'll have a
+telephone put up between your apartment and the stable. And if you want
+I'll buy an automobile a thousand times finer than this one."
+
+That was the highest trump. No one could outbid an automobile. So he
+stopped to see the effect. Kneeling on the steps he leaned far into the
+hansom and stared into her face.
+
+Lilly realised she could not free herself from him, unless he learned
+the truth.
+
+She felt very sorry for him, but it had to be.
+
+"Listen, Richard! What you offer doesn't count with me anymore. Because
+I love another man--who wants to give me much more than you."
+
+"What! I'd like to know what sort of a young Vanderbilt he is!" he cried
+in jealous scorn. "Why, I never knew _that_ side of your nature."
+
+"He's not a young Vanderbilt, Richard. On the contrary, he's so poor he
+doesn't know where he'll get his bread from day to day. But I am engaged
+to him, and as his affianced I will have to ask you to stand out of my
+way."
+
+His mouth gaped. His eyes grew large and round. He reeled back against
+the hindwheels of the taxicab.
+
+"Go on!" Lilly cried to the coachman.
+
+She leaned back in her seat, drawing a deep breath of relief, though
+with a faint consciousness of guilt, as if she had rid herself of her
+old lover too lightly.
+
+Throughout the ride she heard back of her the chug-chug of a slow-moving
+automobile; and when she descended from her hansom, Richard descended
+from the taxicab, at a slight distance, though near enough for Lilly to
+catch the look in his eyes.
+
+It was the look of a whipped dog.
+
+As if someone were pursuing her, she ran up the four flights without
+concerning herself about the trunk. But a little while later the driver
+came panting up the stairs with it, apparently of his own accord.
+
+When she held out the money to him, he refused it.
+
+The gentleman downstairs, he said, had already paid for everything.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was the evening of the following day.
+
+The carriage that was taking Lilly to the dreaded meeting stopped in
+front of the renowned Linden restaurant which has been the resort of
+elegant folk for years.
+
+Although it was some time since Lilly had been there, she knew every
+stone of it.
+
+She knew Albert, too, the tall, dignified porter, who stood in the
+doorway, and put his hand to his braided cap. It was he who had acted as
+the go-between for her and the handsome hussar of the guards.
+
+With downcast eyes, pressing close to Konrad, she passed by him, hoping
+he no longer remembered her.
+
+"This is Lilly, uncle."
+
+An old bow-legged gentleman, slightly under medium size in an
+ill-fitting jacket and crumpled collar, came shambling out of a back
+room, and held out a broad, fleshy hand, the brown skin of which played
+loosely over his bones like a large glove.
+
+Lilly threw a timid glance of scrutiny at the all-powerful person, whom
+she had pictured to herself as a commanding yet complaisant thunderer.
+In reality he was a tottering, rotund, somewhat common-looking gnome.
+
+When she told herself that her conduct now and during the next hour
+would decide Konrad's and her own future, the old miserable timidity,
+which had not troubled her for some time past, began to paralyse her
+muscles and turned her into a doll, which smiled inanely and could not
+tell its own name.
+
+But the old uncle also seemed to have lost his power of speech.
+
+He looked her up and down repeatedly and well-nigh forgot to invite her
+to enter the back room.
+
+As with everything else about the place Lilly was familiar with this
+back room, its pressed leather walls, its red silk hangings, and the
+blue oriental rugs over the high-armed sofa.
+
+In the period when Richard was still possessed of the ambition to belong
+to the aristocracy of high livers, she had spent many a mad hour there
+late at night with him and his chance friends.
+
+An immaculate waiter helped her off with her brocade jacket and lace
+mantilla, and looked at her the while as if to say:
+
+"I ought to know you."
+
+Oh, that was a moment of agony.
+
+The uncle, who had not ceased furtively to cast awed yet sullen glances
+at Lilly, pulled himself together and said:
+
+"Well, let's have a cosy time together, children. Nice and pleasant,
+eh?"
+
+Lilly inclined her head.
+
+Her gesture was stiff enough apparently to increase the bow-legged old
+gentleman's respect. He seemed to be at a loss, and tramped about the
+room, played with the gold knobs which hung as a charm from his watch
+pocket, and two or three times nodded his solemn appreciation to Konrad.
+
+They seated themselves at the gleaming white table, resplendent with
+flowers and cut glass.
+
+About the bronze lamp--Lilly remembered it with its claws and slim lily
+design--hung a veil of violet orchids, which had surely cost an enormous
+sum.
+
+He knew how to live, the old untidy rogue. One had to admit that.
+
+Lilly saw her reflection in the mirror opposite her seat. It was
+reassuringly aristocratic.
+
+She had chosen a pleated dress of black Liberty silk with a waist of
+Chantilly lace, which despite its costliness lay in simple lines of
+grace about her breast and arms.
+
+Unsuspecting spirits might believe that a similar costume was to be had
+everywhere from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, from Cape Town to
+Christiania for two hundred marks.
+
+She had wisely refrained from wearing any jewellery, except the thin
+gold chain which she was wont to wear next to her skin. It encircled her
+high collar in maidenly modesty.
+
+She looked like a young noblewoman who has been held in strict
+seclusion, and who is taking her first look into the great world with
+shy, inquiring eyes.
+
+His uncle had assigned the seat on her right side to Konrad, and kept
+the place nearest the door for himself.
+
+The instant he took his seat at table he began to feel somewhat in his
+element.
+
+He uttered hoarse ejaculations and gave orders and was dissatisfied with
+everything.
+
+"See here, boy," he said to the waiter, who was placing the
+_hors-d'oeuvres_ on the table, "do you call that the right kind of a
+carafe for port wine? Don't you know that if port wine doesn't sparkle
+in the carafe, it takes away your thirst?"
+
+The waiter, intimidated by his snarling, wanted to go off in search of
+another carafe, but Mr. Rennschmidt declared he could not wait, he
+needed a "starter."
+
+"I'm still a little constrained," he said apologetically. "I'm not
+accustomed to associating with such beautiful and ungracious ladies."
+
+Lilly felt a prick at her heart.
+
+She met a reproachful look from her lover, which seemed to say:
+
+"You mustn't be so dumb. You must be agreeable to him."
+
+In the same mute language Lilly humbly implored his forgiveness.
+
+"I can't. You speak for me."
+
+In his anxiety Konrad began to converse as if he had been paid for
+entertaining them. He described the collection of antiques in his
+uncle's castle on the Rhine, touched upon the competition of the
+Americans, and, passing on to the subject of art in Italy, discussed the
+harmful effects of the Lex Pacca, and goodness knows what else.
+
+It was a highly illuminating little discourse, which his uncle seemed to
+follow with moderate interest, while squinting at Lilly and smacking his
+lips from time to time over a piece of canned tunny. Then Mr.
+Rennschmidt said:
+
+"All very true and edifying, my son. But couldn't you also impart some
+valuable information as to the state of the whiskey in this place?"
+
+Konrad jumped up to pull the bell rope, but his uncle restrained him.
+
+"Stop--stop--stop. This is my affair.... Here's the port for you....
+After all a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, even if she belongs to
+others. Here's to you, beautiful woman."
+
+That sounded like mockery. Did he wish to make sport of her before
+repulsing her?
+
+"In fact," he continued, addressing Lilly, "permit me to congratulate
+you. You've already worked a perceptible change in him. I see he already
+dances beautifully to your tune, eh?"
+
+Whether or no, she had to say something in reply.
+
+"I don't play tunes, and he doesn't dance," she said, making a mighty
+effort to pull herself together. "We're not free enough for that."
+
+"Aha, there's one straight from the shoulder for me," he laughed, but
+his laugh sounded resentful.
+
+"Lilly didn't mean any harm," Konrad interjected, coming to her rescue.
+"And really, we are not having an easy time of it. If Lilly hadn't
+helped me every day with her sweet comprehension, I don't think my
+strength would have held out."
+
+"All very well and good--or--or, or all very deplorable. But your old
+uncle hasn't gotten even a look from her--as advance payment on our
+future relationship."
+
+"Oh, if that's all," thought Lilly.
+
+And raising her glass to touch his, she tried to thank him for his
+having come around with a little coquettish shamefaced smile.
+
+It filled him with evident satisfaction. He twisted his pointed beard
+and ogled her confidentially with his leering eyes as if to extract from
+her a sign of secret understanding.
+
+"Thank goodness! Maybe he's not so dreadful after all," she thought. She
+drew a breath of relief as she felt the chains of her embarrassment
+loosening a bit.
+
+When the waiter returned, a grave discussion arose between him and Mr.
+Rennschmidt as to the brands of whiskey the hotel had to offer. It was a
+long parley and debate, ending in a call for the hotel-keeper himself,
+who went down into the cellar to hunt up a bottle he thought he must
+have somewhere with the label of a certain famous house and the date of
+a certain famous year.
+
+At length Mr. Rennschmidt was ready again to bestow his attention upon
+his beautiful niece to be.
+
+"I'm a sort of barnswallow. I built my nest of mud and such stuff. I
+traded in guano, train-oil, Australian blennies, pitch, and other more
+or less unclean things. So you can't blame me for wishing to recuperate
+by devoting myself to appetizing objects, such as you, my ungracious
+lady. All I wish is a little attention in return."
+
+"Oh dear," thought Lilly. "I'll be impertinent for once." So she said:
+"Mr. Rennschmidt, you know I'm sitting here like a poor, trembling
+student going up for the examinations. I beg of you"--she raised her
+clasped hands--"don't play with me like a cat with a mouse."
+
+She had struck the right note.
+
+"Is she opening her mouth at last?" he cried beaming. "And she has a
+wonderful little snout, Konrad, one of those mice snouts with long
+teeth, in which the upper lip says to the lower lip, 'If you don't come
+and kiss, I'll run away.' Isn't it so, Konrad, you stupid fellow, eh?"
+
+Lilly had to laugh heartily, and the _entente cordiale_ was finally
+concluded.
+
+And for a moment Konrad's dear tired face brightened with a smile of
+reassurance which expanded her heart as with a heaven-sent reward. She
+loved him so dearly she could have thrown herself at his uncle's feet
+for his sake. With a rising sense of triumph she thought:
+
+"_Now_ he shall see how agreeable I can be to that old horror."
+
+And indeed to make herself agreeable proved to be not so very excessive
+a task. When she looked at the old man with his round, crumpled roguish
+face, his darting, sly little grey eyes, and the fine, wavy, snow-white
+diplomat's wig--it actually was a wig, sharply defined on his forehead
+and brushed forward into locks over his ears--she felt more and more
+strongly that he was an old acquaintance with whom she had many a time
+played pranks and to whom the recollection of those pranks secretly
+bound her.
+
+Yet, surely, she had never met him before.
+
+Despite his proletarian exterior his assured manner breathed an air of
+gentlemanliness. And the way he constructed the menu was really
+wonderful. The sixty-eight-year-old Steinbergerkabinett, which looked
+like amber-coloured oil when he poured it into the Rhine wine glasses,
+suited the blue trout as perfectly as if it were its native element. And
+the next course, the sweetbread patties _a la Montgelas_, was worthy of
+what had gone before. Neither Richard nor any member of the crew was so
+skilled in the epicurean art as he.
+
+If only he had not kept tossing off one glass of whiskey after the
+other.
+
+"My brain has been dulled by long money-making, like a nail hammered on
+cast-iron," he said in self-justification. "I must whet it every now and
+then, or else it'll get as dull as the edge of a tombstone."
+
+When the Roman punch was served, a brief but hot discussion arose as to
+the merits of certain American drinks from which Lilly, with her
+knowledge of the whole range of beverages, came out with flying colours.
+She even knew accurately the ingredients of Mr. Rennschmidt's favourite
+mixture, the "South Sea bowl," a fiery concoction of sherry, cognac,
+angostura bitters, the yolks of eggs, and Chateau d'Yquem--in case of
+emergency Moselle might be used. She ventured to ask, might she not
+prepare the rare mixture for him after dinner; she could do it so
+expertly that he would have to admit he had not drunk anything more
+delicious between Singapore and Melbourne.
+
+Konrad, who had evidently never suspected her talents in this line,
+listened to her with an astonishment which filled her with pride.
+
+She sent him one furtive look after another, which asked:
+
+"Are you satisfied? Am I pleasant enough to him?"
+
+But he failed somehow to respond. He remained silent and abstracted, and
+sometimes he seemed to be remote from the company.
+
+"Dream on," she thought blissfully. "_I_ will look out for our
+happiness."
+
+The friendship between her and the old man waxed apace.
+
+By the time the wild duck came and with it the glowing Burgundy, which
+slipped down their throats like caressing flames, she had already been
+calling him uncle.
+
+And he for his part, repeatedly declared that he was "totally wrapped up
+in his dear, dear little Lilly."
+
+So this was the test, the cruel test, from which she had thought there
+was no concealment, no escape, the test that would bare her, dissect
+her, and turn her soul inside out.
+
+She could scarcely contain herself when she thought of it.
+
+Yes, yes. There sat that awful danger, whose moneybags held victory or
+defeat--a little monster grown tame, who stroked her fingers with his
+horrid wrinkled hands, and fawned on her for a crumb of her favour.
+
+He was really amusing, especially when he told jokes.
+
+What a lot of gossip from the colonies!
+
+She had not heard so many anecdotes in a whole year.
+
+For example there was the story of the German governor, Mr. Von So and
+So--she had met him once at Uhl's. He went to his post with his suite,
+consisting of his secretary, his valet, and his cook. Six months
+afterwards the cook went to him and said: "Governor, it's so and so
+far." He gave her two thousand marks and said: "But be sure and hold
+your tongue." Then she went to the secretary and said: "Mr. Mueller, it's
+so and so far." He gave her three hundred marks and said: "But be sure
+and hold your tongue." Then she went to the valet and said: "John, it's
+so and so far. We can get married." Three months afterward the valet
+went to the governor and said: "Your Excellency, that woman did us all.
+The brat's a nigger."
+
+And many another story he told of like nature.
+
+She had to hold her sides with laughter.
+
+"Laugh, Konrad, darling, laugh."
+
+He smiled, but his eyes remained serious, and his forehead tense.
+
+When the champagne was brought they drank "fellowship."
+
+It was horrible to kiss those thick, greedy old lips, but their future
+happiness demanded it.
+
+Konrad, too, was to get a kiss. But he refused it. Worse still, he
+wanted to prohibit her drinking.
+
+"She isn't careful enough," he muttered. "Please, uncle, don't give her
+so much. We have never drunk so much."
+
+But they both laughed at him.
+
+"He's always been a country yokel," the old man teased, "and has never
+known what's good. It's too bad for you to throw yourself away on him,
+Lilly dear. You ought to take a man like me. Not a booby in corduroy.
+He's a regular funeral torch."
+
+But on this subject Lilly brooked no teasing.
+
+"You let my little Konni alone, you old fright. You'd better tell your
+old chestnuts. Come along! Forward, march!"
+
+No, she would not permit a word against her sweet little Konni.
+
+The uncle fell to telling his stories again.
+
+Now they were anecdotes in pigeon-English, that lingo which the Chinese
+and other interesting personages in the Far East use as a means of
+communication with the white sahibs. "Tom and Paddy in the Tea House,"
+"The Virtuous Miss Laura in Macao," "The Guide and the Bayadere," each
+received a good box on the ear.
+
+"But Konni ought not to hear any more of this, uncle. I don't want my
+Konni to be spoiled for me."
+
+So she put her left ear close to the old gentleman's lips, and made a
+"whispering cave" with him, as was the wont of members of the "crew"
+when they flirted too outrageously or misbehaved in other ways.
+
+Anyone who had thought she was tongue-tied or unable to repay like with
+like would have been sadly mistaken. The general's club jokes suffered
+from no lack of juiciness, and what she had learned from the "crew" was
+certainly of no mean parentage.
+
+It was worth while to exert an extra effort for so appreciative an
+audience as "uncle." But Konrad, the innocent, had to submit to having
+his ears stuffed with the cotton batting upon which the calville apples
+had been served.
+
+After the coffee the old man demanded that Lilly make good her promise
+and prepare the South Sea bowl. He was sure her assertion had been a
+mere idle boast.
+
+No need to taunt her a second time.
+
+All sorts of bottles were called into requisition, besides the sherry
+and the angostura, an old sweet Yquem. It was really a pity to put it
+to such uses, so Mr. Rennschmidt suggested taking a glass or two on the
+side.
+
+To be sure the eggs broke at the wrong place and spilled over her gown
+and the carpet. But that made no difference; it only added to the
+pleasure. At any rate, the dear old uncle was paying for everything.
+
+To compensate, the flame of the alcohol lamp leapt in the air all the
+more wildly--up to the orchids--up to the sky--it would have delighted
+her to drink in the tongues of fire the way witches do.
+
+"Your luck, Konni--_our_ luck, Konni!"
+
+"Don't drink," she heard his voice. It was harsher than usual, and
+strange in its severity.
+
+"Country yokel," she laughed, thrusting out her tongue at him.
+
+"Don't drink," the voice admonished a second time. "You are not used to
+drinking."
+
+She not used to drinking? How dared he say such a thing? That was
+questioning her honour. Yes, it was questioning her honour.
+
+"How do you know what I'm used to?... I'm used to quite different
+things. I've sat on this very seat I'm sitting in more than once--more
+than ten times--and have drunk much, much more."
+
+"Dear heart, think of what you're saying. It isn't true."
+
+His voice once more sounded soft and gentle, as if he were reproving a
+naughty child.
+
+Such a shame. It was enough to make one cry.
+
+"How can you say it is not true? Do you think I'm a liar? Do you think
+I'm not familiar with such fashionable places as this? Pshaw! Shall I
+prove it to you? Very well. I can. I believe you'll find my name on the
+base of this lamp--Lilly Czepanek--Lilly Czepanek. Just look for it,
+look for it!"
+
+He started to his feet and fixed his eyes upon the mirror-like surface
+defaced by a jumble of characters scratched on it.
+
+But he could not find the L. C. for which he was looking. She had to
+come to his assistance. Not here.--Not there. The letters swam before
+her eyes. She had to try to catch them like the gold fish in her
+aquarium.
+
+Aha! There it was. There it was! L. v. M., with the coronet above. For
+at that time she had still dared to use the prohibited name for an
+occasional adornment.
+
+"Now you see I was right, Konni. Now you will let me drink, won't you.
+Here's to you, you sweet little yokel."
+
+He was so struck by this proof that he sank back in his chair and said
+not a word.
+
+But the uncle and she continued to drink and laugh at him.
+
+When she threw a look into the mirror, she saw as through a billowy haze
+a red swollen face with rumpled hair under a hat tilted back on the head
+and two deep flabby furrows running from her mouth to her chin.
+
+This caused her some disquiet. But she had no time to heed her feeling
+because that unspeakable old uncle had a new joke on the carpet.
+
+"Do you know, Lilly dear, the Chinese way of singing the Lorelei?"
+
+Before she had even heard a syllable she burst out into a wild laugh.
+
+He put one of his bowed legs over the other, pretending it was
+a Chinese banjo, and played a prelude on the sole of his foot:
+"Tink-a-tink-a-tink." Then he began in a nasal, croaking, gurgling
+voice, drawing out his l's endlessly:
+
+    O my belong too much sorry,
+    And can me no savy, what kind;
+    Have got one olo piccy story
+    No won't she go outside my mind.
+
+When he came to the second verse,
+
+    Dat night belang dark and colo,
+
+he tore his wig from his head to heighten the effect; and he now
+actually looked the very image of an old, nodding "Chinee," with his
+shiny pate and his bright slanting slits of eyes.
+
+It was a fascinating, an overpowering spectacle.
+
+Never in her life, not even on the professional stage, had she seen a
+clown's performance so provocative of side-splitting laughter.
+
+She would have died of envy had she not been Lilly Czepanek, the famous
+impersonator, who when the spirit moved her, needed but to open her
+mouth to evoke a storm of applause.
+
+Her matchless repertoire had lain fallow too long. But the beautiful
+Otero had not yet grown old, Tortajada still set your senses a-whirl
+with her dancing, and Matchiche had just come into fashion.
+
+Lilly merely had to shove her hat a little further back on her head and
+lift her black dress--even a Saharet would have had no cause to be
+ashamed of the silk petticoat she had brought in her trunk--and then off
+she could go.
+
+And off she went.
+
+Like a whirlwind over the carpet slippery with the yolks of eggs.
+
+"Heigh-ho--ole--ole.
+
+"You must shout ole and clap your hands.
+
+"Ole--e--e!"
+
+The uncle bawled. The floor rocked to and fro in long waves. The lamps
+and the mirror danced along. All hell seemed to be let loose.
+
+"Do shout, Konni,--ole--don't be so downcast. Ole."
+
+"Uncle, you have this on _your_ conscience!"
+
+What did he mean by that?
+
+Why did he burst into sobs?
+
+Why was he standing there white as chalk?
+
+"Ole--Ole--e--e--e."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It was nearly noon when Lilly woke in a glow of happiness.
+
+The uncle won over--the last obstacle removed--the future lying before
+her, a land of blossoms and golden fruits.
+
+What a farce and a lark the dreaded examination had been! What a
+jumping-jack, what a buffoon he was, that keen, penetrating man of the
+world, who had probably ground women's destinies as he would munch betel
+nuts.
+
+When she tried to review the events of the evening before, and arrange
+them in sequence, it came to her with a slight sense of oppression that
+at the end everything had resolved itself into a fog, shot with light
+and echoing with song and laughter, just as had happened yonder--in that
+other life, when she had romped wildly with Richard and the "crew."
+
+She could not puzzle out how she had mounted the steps and reached her
+room.
+
+As the fog lifted a little, she saw peering out of it a pale, set face,
+with an expression of pained surprise; she heard an outcry that sounded
+like a sob or a groan, and saw herself sobbing next to someone who was
+kneeling, who pushed her away with his hands.
+
+Had that happened?
+
+Had she dreamt it?
+
+Why, she had sung and danced so beautifully, she had disclosed her
+greatest talents. Could they by any possibility have displeased him? Had
+she gone too far in her self-abandonment?
+
+Her anxiety waxed.
+
+She jumped out of bed and dressed herself, possessed by one thought: "To
+go to him!"
+
+At twelve o'clock the door-bell rang.
+
+It was, it must be he!
+
+But when she hurried to the door to throw herself into his arms with a
+cry of relief, she found, not him, but his uncle, who stood twirling his
+hat in his horrid fingers like a petitioner, and looked up at her with
+an oily, wry smile, most obnoxious to her.
+
+"Is the examination to begin again?" The question rose in her mind. "Or
+is it just going to begin?"
+
+Her welcome died on her lips.
+
+Without speaking she let him in. She experienced a sickish sensation of
+vacancy and incorporeality, as if she might melt through the wall into
+her room.
+
+The old gentleman did not wait for her to open the door to the "best
+room," but opened it himself, and walked in, as if he were an old
+acquaintance.
+
+"Where is Konrad?"
+
+"Konrad?" With his little finger he scratched the silk band of his wig.
+"Oh, thereby hangs a tale." He drew out his watch with the clinking gold
+chain, and studied the dial. "It is just ten minutes after twelve. I
+suppose by now he's on his way to the station. Yes, he must be."
+
+"Is--he--going--away?" she asked, her breath beginning to fail.
+
+"Yes, yes, he's going to take a trip. Yes, last night--hm--last night we
+talked it over. So now he's going to take a little trip."
+
+"That's absurd," she thought. "How can he go away without me?" But she
+checked herself, and entering into the game, asked with apparent
+nonchalance, "Where's he off to so suddenly?"
+
+"Oh, just a little trip. Not worth talking about. A favourable opening
+presented itself. There happened to be a double cabin vacant on the
+steamer leaving from--thingumbob--well, never mind from where--outside
+cabin, you know--on the promenade deck--the best situation, you
+know--the water doesn't splash in and there's plenty of air--and air's
+what you always want, especially during those four days on the Red Sea."
+
+Then it was true. Her suspicions on awakening were being verified more
+swiftly than she had thought they would be. It was only the beginning of
+the test of her character and intentions.
+
+"What do people do in the Red Sea, uncle?" she asked with her most
+innocent smile.
+
+"What do people do in the Red Sea, child? Four thousand years ago the
+ancient Hebrews probably asked the same question. And everybody still
+asks it when he melts into perspiration there. But that's the only way
+of going to India. And I want to go back to India once again. I'm tired
+of trotting about on red brick pavements. So I persuaded him to come
+along for a little while--you know he's overworked; you'll admit that. I
+think it's the best thing to do in such cases, you see."
+
+Lilly felt a lump in her throat, as if all the gold knobs on his watch
+chain were choking her.
+
+"Rather a poor joke," she thought, "but goodness knows what he means by
+it."
+
+Whether she would or no, she had to keep up the game.
+
+"Konrad ought to have been polite enough to come and say good-by," she
+replied, pouting a bit, as if he were about to start off on a trip to
+Dresden or Potsdam.
+
+"Why, he wanted to, child; of course he did. But I said to him: 'You
+see, my boy,' I said, 'it always means such dreadful excitement. It's
+enough to give you an apoplectic stroke.' He agreed, and asked me to
+arrange matters with you."
+
+"Well then, let us arrange matters," she answered with the condescending
+smile that the farce, whatever its nature, merited.
+
+"He is probably down below in a cab waiting for a signal," she thought.
+
+The old gentleman put his stylish Panama beside him on the floor, leaned
+his short body back against Mrs. Laue's plush upholstery, and tried to
+assume an expression of sympathy and grief.
+
+The old clown!
+
+"If it were my affair, little one," he began, "I frankly confess I've
+gone crazy over you. Wrapped up, as I said yesterday. I know women from
+one end of the world to the other, and it is as clear as cocoanut oil to
+me: you're first rate stuff. You're fine as silk. But there are people
+who take themselves seriously and have great illusions, don't you know?
+People utterly without an idea that a human being is a human being,
+people who think they're something extra, and want life to dish up extra
+tit-bits to them. Oh, those people, I tell you, those people! That's the
+way the great disappointments come about--and reproaches--and
+despair--and tearing out your hair. He came near giving me a thrashing
+last night."
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" Lilly asked, growing more and more
+fearful.
+
+"As if I had led you into overshooting the mark! No, indeed. Nothing of
+the sort. I don't do such things. I don't set man-traps. And I told him
+so ten times over. But the misfortune is, we understood each other too
+well. We both belong to the same business. We're like two old
+shipmates."
+
+"What do you mean by 'we both'? You and I?" Lilly asked with frigid
+astonishment in her tone.
+
+"Yes, you and I, my child. Don't fall overboard. You and I. To be sure,
+you're a splendid beauty of twenty-five and I'm an old fool of sixty.
+But you and I have gone through the same mill. What need to explain to
+you at length? Have you ever searched for diamonds? I don't mean at a
+jeweller's--that you probably have. Well, a diamond lies in hard rock,
+in funnels, in so-called blue ground. If you come upon a blue ground
+funnel, you can imagine what it's like. There you squat. I went digging
+for diamonds once--with twenty men--day and night--for weeks and weeks.
+The blue ground was there, oh, indeed, it was, but the diamonds had been
+washed away. Do you see what I'm driving at? The fine ground is still in
+both of us, but what actually makes it fine, the devil has already
+extracted."
+
+"Why are you saying all this to me?" Lilly asked. Tears were rising to
+her eyes from sheer perplexity, because what he said could not possibly
+have anything to do with the great test.
+
+"I'll tell you, little girl. There are people who think there's no going
+back on their word. They have to swallow whatever they once put into
+their mouths. They won't spit it out even if it is a strychnine pill.
+Now _I_, on the other hand, think that nobody need consciously plunge
+into misfortune. Neither you nor he. And since it's best to wash the
+wool directly on the sheep's body, I came to you to make a little
+proposition. You see, here's a check book You're familiar with check
+books, I'm sure. On the right side are printed ciphers from five hundred
+up to--you can see for yourself. All the ciphers that make the amount
+higher than the sum written on the check, are cut off to keep little
+swindlers from cheating a man out of a hundred thousand marks with one
+stroke of the pen. Now look. This check is dated and signed. All that's
+missing is the sum, because I should never permit myself to offer you a
+certain amount. I leave it to you to specify what you think you need for
+a decent living in the future."
+
+He tore a check from the book and laid it on the table in front of her.
+
+"Thank heaven," thought Lilly, "all my tremours were needless."
+
+It was a clumsy trap. Even a blind man must see that his procedure was
+nothing more than a test of her disinterestedness.
+
+So, instead of throwing the old man out of doors--which she should have
+and would have done, had he proffered the check in all seriousness--she
+smiled and took the check from the table, and methodically tore it into
+bits, and with the middle finger of her right hand flicked one little
+pile of them after the other into his face.
+
+He jerked about uneasily in his chair.
+
+"Permit me," he said, "permit me--"
+
+"By no means--I will _not_ permit such vile jokes, uncle."
+
+"But you are rejecting a fortune, child. Consider--we've torn you from
+your moorings. We've thrown you, as it were, on the street. Upon us
+rests the responsibility of seeing to it that you are not driven to
+ruin. And if you think that by accepting the check you are lowering
+yourself in Konrad's eyes, I can swear to you he doesn't know a thing
+about it. And he never will, I'll swear to that also."
+
+She merely smiled.
+
+His little blinking eyes turned bright and staring. Suddenly there was a
+cold threat in their look.
+
+"Or--perhaps you intend to hold the boy to his promise and mean to twist
+his pledge into a halter about his neck? Is that the sort you are--eh?"
+
+"No, I'm not that sort."
+
+Her smile flitted past him and went to meet her beloved, who must soon,
+very soon, come storming up the stairs. Surely he could not endure
+waiting down there in the cab so long.
+
+"His word is in his own keeping. He never gave me a pledge. Even if he
+wanted to, I should never have accepted it. And even if what you said is
+true, he could go on his trip quite calmly--and return quite calmly. I
+would never attempt to meet him or reach him by letter, or remind him of
+what he is to me and will continue to be as long as I live. But I know
+it is _not_ true. He loves me, and I love him. And take care, uncle, not
+to play such low tricks with his future wife as to offer blank checks
+and the like. If I were to tell him about it, you'd all of a sudden find
+you're a lonely old man who can leave his money to a cat and dog
+asylum."
+
+Now he must see what a blunder he had committed. His mistake annoyed him
+so that he jumped from his seat with a muttered "Pshaw!" and tramped
+about the room playing with his watch charm, and murmuring two or three
+times something like "a hangman's job."
+
+But she probably misunderstood him.
+
+Finally he seemed to have reached a decision.
+
+He stopped close to her, laid his disgusting hands on her shoulders, and
+said:
+
+"Listen, my dear, sweet little girl. We can't part without arriving at a
+conclusion. If I weren't such a cursed mangy old pariah-dog, and if over
+and above this, I didn't have to be considerate of the boy's feelings,
+the matter would be perfectly simple. I should say: 'Little one, if you
+want to, come let's go to the nearest magistrate. But hurry, I haven't
+much time to lose.' Don't stare at me so. Yes, that's what I mean--with
+_me_--with me. You wouldn't need to regret it either. As for Konrad, see
+here, you must really say so to yourself--it won't do--we shouldn't hit
+it off--it would be harnessing before and aft. Because he is a rising
+man. He wants to climb to the top. He is still blessed with faith and
+you no longer possess it. Too early in life you tumbled into the great
+meat-chopping machine, which finally converts us all into complacent
+wormy mush. You yourself wouldn't feel happy. You wouldn't be able to
+keep pace. You would lie on him a lifeless cargo, and be conscious of
+it, too. I'm not laying so much stress on last night's eye-opener. It's
+not the appearance of a coast line that counts. It doesn't matter
+whether it's covered with palms or sand. The important thing is the
+interior. And in the interior I see steppes--scorched--waste-land--no
+birds flying across it--a desert where confidence will not strike root.
+Crawl into whatever shelter life offers you, little one. Cling to those
+who brought you to the pass you are in. But let the boy go. He's not
+meant for you. Be frank, didn't you say so to yourself long ago?"
+
+So that's what it was!
+
+No test--
+
+The end. The end.
+
+Lilly stared into space. She seemed to hear a tread dying away--a step
+lower, another step, another step, and another--growing fainter--ever
+fainter--as when Konrad had slipped away from her at dawn.
+
+But this time they would never return!
+
+She felt a slight gnawing disenchantment creep about her heart--nothing
+more. The worst would come later, she knew from of old.
+
+Then she saw herself dancing and yodeling and telling hoggish jokes with
+her hat tilted to one side and her petticoats raised to her knees--a
+drunken wench.
+
+She of the "lofty spirit" and "head divine,"--a drunken wench, not a
+whit better.
+
+Now she knew why he had stood there white as chalk, why that sob of
+distress had burst from his lips.
+
+And the feeling that poured over her in that second like a stream of
+boiling water was compounded as much of pity for Konrad as of shame of
+herself.
+
+"How does he bear it?" she faltered.
+
+"You can imagine how," he replied, "but I think I can pull him through
+it."
+
+"Uncle--I didn't _mean_ to!" she cried with a great sob.
+
+"I know, child, I know. He told me everything."
+
+For an instant wounded pride flared up within her. She stopped, picked
+up a few of the scattered bits of paper, and held them out to him in the
+hollow of her hand.
+
+"And you dared to offer me this?"
+
+"Why, what was I to do, child? And what _will_ I do with you?"
+
+"Bah!"
+
+She struck at him with both hands; but the next instant threw her arms
+about his neck, and wept on his shoulder. That was the place perhaps on
+which Konrad's tearful face had also rested the night before.
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt began to speak again. He made various proposals for her
+future. He would help her begin a new life, would give her the means for
+cultivating her great talent for the stage.
+
+But she shook her head at each of his suggestions.
+
+"Too late, uncle. Waste-land, you yourself said, where confidence will
+not strike root. I might aspire to music-hall fame. But to be quite
+frank, that wouldn't pay me."
+
+"The damned curs!" he hissed.
+
+"What curs?"
+
+"You know."
+
+She reflected as to whom he could possibly mean.
+
+"There was really only one," she observed. "Oh, yes, and another--and
+then one more. And later there were two besides, but they don't count."
+
+"It seems to me that's quite enough, little girl."
+
+He stroked her cheeks, smiling kindly, and she did not find his fingers
+so disgusting.
+
+She even had to smile in response, though she fell directly to crying
+again.
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt prepared to take leave. She clung to his shoulder; she
+did not want to let him go. He was the last bridge that joined her
+departing vessel with the land of happiness.
+
+"What message shall I take to him?" he asked.
+
+She drew herself up. Her eyes widened. She wanted to pour out all her
+grief. Her squandered love sought for words which would carry it to him
+purged and sanctified.
+
+But she found none.
+
+She looked about the room as if help must come from some quarter. The
+pictures of the ancient actors smiled upon her. Those who had once been
+so eloquent had become dumb, dumb as her own soul. The framed lamp shade
+greeted her as if the future she had to pass at Mrs. Laue's side was
+greeting her.
+
+"I don't know what to say," she faltered. Then something occurred to her
+after all. "Please ask him--please ask him--why he himself didn't come
+to say good-by. I know him. He is not a coward."
+
+Mr. Rennschmidt made his queerest face.
+
+"Since you're so remarkably sensible, child, I'll tell you. Of _course_
+he wanted to come and say good-by. I even told him I'd try to drag you
+to the station."
+
+Without an instant's reflection she made a dash for her hat.
+
+"Stop!"
+
+He had laid his hand on her arm.
+
+The little fat figure grew taller.
+
+"You will _not_ go."
+
+"What! Konni is waiting for me--Konni wants to speak to me--and I am
+_not_ to go?"
+
+"You--_will--not--go_, I tell you. If you're the brave girl I took you
+to be, you will not nullify the sacrifice you're making. You can reckon
+upon it, if he sees you again, you'll both remain hanging on each
+other."
+
+Her hat slipped from her hand.
+
+"Then--tell him--I'll love him--forever--forever--he'll be my last
+thought on earth--and--and--I don't know what else to say."
+
+He left the room without a word.
+
+Then she collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had
+occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life,
+disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being
+had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground
+helplessly with dimmed eyes.
+
+Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling
+in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour
+greeted all who entered its realm.
+
+Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been
+expelled from Lischnitz; she did not sink into a state of apathetic
+brooding, nor wrestle desperately with fate.
+
+All she felt was a dim void stretching endlessly before her, broken now
+and again by a sharp outcry like that of an animal bereft of its mate; a
+sense of faint-hearted acquiescence, a consciousness of inevitable
+imprisonment, of a fearful descent into dark depths, of a dismal death,
+lacking strength and dignity.
+
+Between the present and the future, the sort of future that beckoned to
+her from every street, rose the railing of the bridge she had tried to
+climb after seeing "Rosmersholm." And when she stared into space with
+tearless eyes, she saw far below the black, purple-patched water rolling
+idly along, and heard the iron rail clink under her sole.
+
+This clinking became stronger, and turned into an accompaniment of
+everything that came and went during the uneventful days.
+
+It drilled her brain, hammered at her temples, and tingled in every pore
+of her body.
+
+There was a text to the miserable melody.
+
+The text was: "To die!"
+
+Well, then, to die!
+
+What could be simpler? And what more compelling?
+
+But not to-day. To-morrow perchance, or day after to-morrow.
+
+Something might still happen. A letter might arrive, or even he himself.
+Or if neither of these contingencies came to pass--who could tell what
+miracle fate held in readiness for the morrow?
+
+To let hour after hour of one additional day pass in the same melancholy
+monotony.
+
+One evening, a week after Konrad's sudden departure, it happened that
+Mrs. Laue entered the best room at an unusual time with an emphatic
+manner, and said: "Now, Lilly dear, you cannot go on the same way. If
+you were to cry, I shouldn't say anything. But _this_ way you'll never
+come back to reason. There's only one sane and natural thing for you to
+do, return to your Mr. Dehnicke. If he had an inkling of how things are
+with you, he would have come to fetch you long ago. So you'll either sit
+right down and write him a nice letter, or to-morrow morning I'll give
+up my work and go to see him in his office. I'll get my expenses back."
+
+Lilly felt violently impelled to drive the old woman out of the room,
+but she had grown too discouraged to do more than turn away in impotent
+repugnance.
+
+"I haven't much time, I must say," continued Mrs. Laue. "I have to
+complete the dozen before going to bed. But you can make up your mind
+to one thing: if he's not here by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, he'll
+come at twelve at the very latest, because by that time I myself will
+have gone for him."
+
+Lilly laughed sadly in scorn. So that was the way the miracle looked
+which fate held in readiness for the morrow.
+
+Should she submit all over again to a man's puny supremacy? Crawl back
+into the cowardly comfort of perfumed imprisonment? Vegetate among inane
+festivities, in a sort of doze, or walk the streets when driven by
+disgust and boredom?
+
+She would not have the force to resist the next day when he came. She
+knew it well. Richard needed merely to look at her once with that
+whipped-dog expression which was entirely new to her in him. The very
+thought of it filled her with humiliating softness. Something was
+already stirring within her that would compel her to throw her arms
+about his neck and cry on his shoulder.
+
+It was really not worth while to bide the morrow for so pitiful a
+reward.
+
+So--she would die--that very day!
+
+That very day.
+
+It came to her like a cup of intoxication.
+
+With clasped hands she ran about the room weeping, rejoicing.
+
+She would be a heroine like Isolde, a martyr to her love.
+
+And the railing of the bridge was waiting. How it would quiver and hum
+when she climbed on it.
+
+Then the buzzing in her head grew louder. The air was filled with a
+medley of tones. The walls re-echoed with the refrain--the noise on the
+streets, the mighty roar of the city--everything sang:
+
+"Die--die--die."
+
+She tore off her gown and dressed to go out.
+
+At first she thought of wearing one of her two ill-fitting dresses,
+because they had come from Konrad, but she could not prevail upon
+herself to do so.
+
+"Die in beauty," Hedda Gabler had said.
+
+"Oh, if only I had his picture," thought Lilly, "so that I could take
+one last look at his eyes."
+
+But all she had from him were his letters and a few poems. They were to
+accompany her on her last walk.
+
+They were lying at the bottom of the leather trunk which was still
+hidden in Mrs. Laue's hole of a room, although the need for concealment
+was past.
+
+When she rummaged for the little packages among the contents of the
+trunk she came by chance upon the old score of the Song of Songs.
+
+She tenderly regarded the yellow stained roll.
+
+She was no longer angry with her Song of Songs or scorned it, as she had
+on that unfortunate morning when she had gone to her former home to
+break her promise to Konrad.
+
+Once again it became a dear, valuable possession, though neither a
+monitor, nor worker of miracles, nor a sanctuary. It still was an old
+remnant, but one to be kissed and petted and cried over, because a part
+of her own life clung to it.
+
+And some of her blood also.
+
+There were the dark stains.
+
+On the day of her going forth they had fallen upon it and on the day of
+her coming home, the deep waters would wash them away.
+
+Then her mind glided past the score back into the hazy past.
+
+Mists seemed to be lifting and curtains to be drawn aside, and her way
+seemed to lie behind her like a sharply defined band.
+
+She had been weak. And stupid. And had never considered her own
+interests. Every man that had entered her life had done with her what he
+would. She had never closed the doors of her soul, never shown her
+teeth, never given free play to the power of her beauty; but had always
+been ready to serve others, to love them, and make the best of
+everything.
+
+As thanks she had been persecuted and beaten and dragged in the mud her
+life long. Even the one man who had esteemed her had gone away without
+saying good-by.
+
+"But," she thought, "I have never hated a single one of them, and I have
+always had the right to regard myself as above the common, however I
+have suffered. However I have sinned. And the end was a heaven-sent
+gift."
+
+Did it not seem as if this Song of Songs, which lay there debased,
+stained, decayed, like her own life, had in truth hovered over her,
+blessing her and granting her absolution from her sins, just as in her
+early dreams and just as in her rhapsodies to Konrad during that hour of
+blissful self-surrender?
+
+"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."
+
+She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.
+
+Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several
+times again--but she did not understand what she was reading.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when she softly closed the tall door behind
+her.
+
+Mrs. Laue was still asleep.
+
+Nobody met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without
+being seen.
+
+Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at
+midnight.
+
+The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light--the trolley
+poles sparking and flashing between--silent, shadowy figures--it was all
+as if she were looking upon it for the first time.
+
+An oppressive fear beset her.
+
+Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon
+which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she
+would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on,
+irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.
+
+At the approach of each passerby she was impelled to hide herself, in
+the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.
+
+So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where
+withering linden trees scattered rain drops.
+
+Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind
+dark garden walls, past barns and factories.
+
+And her heels kept rapping: "Tap--tap--tap," as if she were wearing a
+pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.
+
+She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.
+
+But she cast the temptation from her.
+
+"If it were done, 'twere well it were done quickly," she had read
+somewhere.
+
+Forward with clenched teeth!
+
+The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the
+invisible waters.
+
+"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression
+at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the grassy slope.
+
+But she recoiled with a shudder.
+
+It had to be the bridge on the northwest side--fate had willed it so.
+
+It was still a great distance off, about an hour's walk.
+
+She came to livelier streets.
+
+The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent
+their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.
+
+On, on she must go!
+
+From the open doors of a basement cafe was wafted a hot garlic-laden
+vapour.
+
+What smelled like that?
+
+Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a
+farewell dinner.
+
+Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing
+stream over the pavement.
+
+What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?
+
+Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered
+the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.
+
+Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am
+lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the
+lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,--and it is all in
+the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen's dose of medicine
+has happily worked."
+
+The city noises swelled and called her back to life.
+
+She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin's unwearying
+night life.
+
+She passed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Strasse unrolled before her, a
+stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist
+enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by
+a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafes and cabarets
+glimmering red.
+
+The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She moved them without
+realising that she was moving them.
+
+She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole
+body like the vibrations of a mill.
+
+On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.
+
+Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their
+laughing quarry.
+
+The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped
+along.
+
+"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought
+Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with
+questions of honour and death."
+
+Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in
+whose shelter a person may die as he will.
+
+And her heels kept beating: "Tap--tap--tap." She could hear them even in
+all that noise.
+
+"Couldn't I go to some cafe?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one
+were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."
+
+Lights--mirrors--upholstery--curling blue cigarette smoke--a tingling in
+her parched throat.
+
+Once--once again! Not a quarter of an hour--a _whole_ hour--and still
+longer if she wished it--a poor bit of life which would do nobody any
+harm.
+
+But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not
+want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.
+
+So on--on.
+
+The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind--the dagger-like
+lights no longer pricked her.
+
+Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.
+
+She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to
+the northwest side.
+
+The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The
+pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The
+dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything
+about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom
+glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.
+
+Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.
+
+She passed a florist's shop, where the blinds of the show window had not
+been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the
+prickly foliage of laurels and cypresses.
+
+What had gleamed like that?
+
+Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase
+of the house of Liebert & Dehnicke.
+
+Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in
+triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.
+
+She reached a bridge.
+
+She crossed it quickly.
+
+That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker
+silence.
+
+"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three
+kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity.
+One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to
+ruin."
+
+Who had that been?
+
+Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured
+to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had
+helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never
+entered.
+
+He had spoken of blue olive vapours--the sea blackened by the breath of
+the sirocco--and shining meadows of asphodel.
+
+"What kind of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?"
+
+How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.
+
+But her heels said: "Tap--tap--tap," and the railing of the bridge
+called to her.
+
+A man spoke to her. Wouldn't she--?
+
+She shook him off like a worm.
+
+She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.
+
+By whom?
+
+Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.
+
+She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and
+tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:
+
+"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous
+rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."
+
+"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my
+promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an
+account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had
+not made superfluous confessions--"
+
+What then?
+
+"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and
+forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.
+
+She walked on reeling.
+
+More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a grass
+plot with a hedge about it.
+
+What sort of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?
+
+Suddenly she stood at the bridge.
+
+Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide,
+silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled
+into tiny sparks.
+
+A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the
+illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed
+by the darkness.
+
+Half-past one o'clock.
+
+Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.
+
+She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by
+horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.
+
+"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.
+
+"Yet--I will," she answered.
+
+She tried to go on--straight ahead--on the bridge, where the rail
+awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.
+
+The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary
+bank wavering.
+
+She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it
+into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger
+than she.
+
+Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on--on--whether
+she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail
+awaiting her.
+
+Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.
+
+All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even
+the lamps were reflected in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, one leap--and the thing was done.
+
+"Yes, I'll do it, I'll do it," a voice within her called.
+
+But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to
+her as she climbed over.
+
+She threw it--a bit of white flitted by--a splash below--sharp and
+distinct, which made her tingle all over like a slap in the face.
+
+When she heard the sound, she knew she would never do it.
+
+No! Lilly Czepanek was not a heroine; she was not martyr to her love;
+she was no Isolde, who finds the strongest affirmation of herself in the
+desire not to be.
+
+She was nothing but a poor thing who had been crushed and exploited, and
+would drag along through life as best she could.
+
+At the same time she began to array all the possibilities of a
+livelihood remaining open to her.
+
+She would _not_ return to the old life of dissipation. That was certain.
+No matter how much Richard's whipped-dog look might plead and beg.
+
+Anything else would do.
+
+To be sure, she had been completely robbed of her desire to work, and it
+seemed very doubtful whether it would ever come back to her again.
+
+But after all: something would present itself which would enable her to
+live in peace and virtue.
+
+Millions of human beings ask for nothing better and call it "happiness!"
+
+She sent one more searching look at the lazy waters, in which the Song
+of Songs had just disappeared.
+
+Then she turned and went back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the spring of the next year the business world of Berlin was
+surprised to read in the papers that Mr. Richard Dehnicke, senior member
+of the old, well-known firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, manufacturers of art
+bronzes, had married the much-talked-of beauty, Lilly Czepanek, and had
+gone to Italy to live there temporarily.
+
+Those who knew her were not surprised.
+
+She had always been a dangerous woman, they said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of Songs, by Hermann Sudermann
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