She acquiesced; and if he had proposed plunging with him into the canal

she would have consented even more readily.

Before them stretched the roads of the park like long galleries with

garish walls of electric light, between which one was obliged to run

the gauntlet. The pedestrians who came towards them stared at this tall

pair, as they passed, with cold impertinent curiosity.

"This is worse than the crowded streets," she said. Her sore heart

fluttered dully with excitement.

He indicated a side path that was dark, and without speaking a word

they dived into the benighted solitude. Above the dense canopy of

branches the sky showed through rents in the clouds like tarnished

metal, reflecting the city's glare. The glimmer of lamps from the great

main avenues twinkled through the lattice-work of bare shrubs, and the

bells of the electric tramways, shooting hither and thither at a short

distance, sounded like repeated fire-alarms. Yet, here in the thickets

of the park, stillness and darkness reigned. You felt as if you were

being swallowed up by a sea of black oblivion. Every moment the silence

grew more oppressive. Then, all at once, he hurried a step in front of

her to bar her progress.

"What is the matter?" she asked, frightened.

"I am going to say something to you now," he began, "something which

will either bring us together again, or estrange us more than ever--in

fact, end everything.... I was too great a coward just now, and tried

to prevaricate. When I said I did not mean my verses seriously I was

not speaking the truth. I felt all that I wrote, only I felt it a

thousand times more strongly. But I should have refrained from

expressing my feelings.... I know now that it must have alarmed you. It

has caused you to change your opinion of me. You may be thinking that I

am a mere seeker of love adventures, who has tried to make capital out

of your trust and confidence. I promise you, dear gracious one, never

to annoy you by revealing my feelings again. But don't withdraw your

friendship, I earnestly entreat you.... Please do not.... Think what

will become of me if I lose you now!"

Ah! so this was it! This! It was this deviation from an excess of

reticence which had divided and stood between them. Oh, would to God

there had been nothing else! She could not help herself; she just

leaned against a tree and burst out crying. Her tears came with such

force that her veil was soon drenched through and through. She had to

throw it back and press her hands against her eyelids.

"For God's sake, what is it?" she heard him ask in a voice quite husky

from anxiety. "Have I wounded you so deeply? Is what I have said so

bad? I will retract everything; only forgive me--you must forgive me!"

When he thus asked her forgiveness for all the infinite joy he had

given her, her passion leapt up and set her on fire. The pose of

haughty dignity--aye, and her shame too--she cast to the winds; and

with a groan of abandonment she flung her arms round his neck, pressed

herself against him, and clung to his mouth with her lips and teeth.

Under the onslaught of this wild and impure embrace he recoiled, and in

thrusting her from him he dug his fingers deeply into the upper part of

her arm. How it hurt, but how she liked it!

"At last! at last!" her soul cried. Now he knew who and what she was,

and how much she had to give him.

When she gained command of herself again, she saw him leaning against

the same tree from which she had sought support a moment before. His

hat had fallen off, his eyes were closed. He was as pale and inanimate

as death.

For a moment all was still save for the clanging bells of the electric

trams from the near distance.

"Dearest, beloved," she whispered, stooping and leaning against his

knees. "Wake up, darling; wake up and come."

He opened his eyes and stared at her as if his wits were wandering.

"Come, come!" she cried joyously. "Come away from here. Come home. I

don't want to wander about any more here in the dark among the trees,

or in the restaurants and streets. I want to go home. With you, with

you!"

He did not answer. He seemed quite distracted. A dull sense of guilt

awoke in her, to be quickly drowned in exultation.

"Come, come to me!"

With both hands she drew him from the spot that had become the cradle

of her happiness--and of his too. His happiness stunned him and robbed

him of his senses; was there anything very extraordinary in that? When

Lilly Czepanek, whom hundreds of men had wanted in vain, gave herself

voluntarily it was enough to turn any man's brain. And as they made

their way through avenues and streets she poured out her pent-up soul

to him in an avalanche of chatter.

Didn't he realise what unheard-of folly it was for him to cherish any

doubts? From the very first moment she had been his. A miracle had been

worked for both of them. Never had she known what love really was till

the day when she had whistled to the squirrels skirmishing above their

heads.... Life had been nothing to her since then.... There was nothing

in the world that mattered except him--him and his eyes, his mouth, his

great purpose, his splendid wonderful work, for which she was ready to

work like a galley slave, and which she would enrich with her love; for

in his researches amongst ancient pictures and books he could gather

nothing but the grey ashes of love. She could teach him--she, Lilly

Czepanek--what true fresh young love meant; she who had been waiting

for him ever since she could remember. Had she not belonged to him

before the world began? God had meant them for each other. Nothing

could be clearer than that, because they had both felt that they had

met each other before. And so they had, in some dream-life. Yes, they

had met in their dreams, for she had dreamed of him always--always. It

was all just like what one read of in fairy-tales.

"Perhaps it is a fairy-tale! You--you whose Christian name I don't

even know yet--but what does that matter? Say, say it is _not_ a

fairy-tale."

But he said nothing. He walked on like a man walking in his sleep. He

followed her mechanically up her staircase, and stood stiffly under the

chandelier in the middle of the corner drawing-room, into which she had

led him, gazing round him in shy uncertainty, as if he had never been

in the room, and was puzzled to know how he had got there.

She clasped him to her playfully, saying he should rest and close his

eyes. Then she helped him off with his overcoat, forced him into an

arm-chair, and kissed his eyes till his lids drooped and he lay there

as if really asleep.

"Rest there, beloved, till I come back," she said.

And away she ran, bursting with joyous excitement, to the kitchen to

tell Adele to get supper as soon as possible. Next, she hurried into

her room and changed the rustling silk she was wearing for a pale-blue

tea-gown with turquoise embroideries, in which Richard used gallantly

to declare she looked like Venus herself. She loosened her hair to make

it look more curly, and took off all her rings. A single plain gold

bracelet was her only ornament.

The sulky Adele, who had transformed the table like magic into a

flower-garden, was actually beaming, for at last it seemed as if a

little human comedy was to come off in this dully respectable,

disorderly household. The plate gleamed on the clean damask cloth, and

golden-yellow bananas and pears sent forth a fragrance from the

dessert-dishes.

He ought to be as satisfied as she was. Her heart beat normally now;

she had lost all fear. She would have felt like a conquering heroine if

she had not been so humble in her joy. One thing she could be proud of,

and that was, she had so much, so very much to give him.

When she went into the drawing-room again, she found him no longer

resting in the arm-chair. He was standing at the writing-table,

absorbed in contemplating Richard's photograph, to her great

discomposure. If only she had thought of slipping it into a drawer; but

now it was too late. He let his eyes glide over her Venus draperies in

perplexity; then he caught hold of both her hands.

"Why have you made yourself so beautiful for me?" he asked.

"I wanted you to feel just a little bit at home here," she said,

letting her eyes fall. "Nothing more. Now come to supper. You know

we've had nothing to eat this evening."

"Eat and drink _now_ ... But I will sit with you at the table, if you

like, while you eat."

"Then I won't have anything, either," she said, putting her arm round

his neck and drawing him so closely to her that the pressure almost

took her breath away.

Peterle, the small monkey, who had been asleep in his corner, now woke,

and made a little jealous whimper as he stretched his grey hands

through the bars as if to plead his right to be a third in the compact.

The strange sound made the guest start.

Lilly smilingly reassured him. "After supper I must introduce you to my

little people. My friends must be your friends, you know."

He drew himself up. "How can you? What would you introduce me as?" he

asked.

"Oh no!" Lilly protested; "I did not mean anything of that kind. I only

meant ..." She couldn't say what.

Then she felt her arm clasped in his trembling fingers. His eyes burned

into hers.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She felt a little giddy. "Who am I? ... I am a woman who loves you as

you have never been loved by anyone."

He passed his hands over her shoulders in a grateful caress. "I must

make you understand me clearly," he said. "I don't want to force your

confidence. But when two beings have stood as near to each other as we

have during the last hour, they naturally want to know everything there

is to know. I have never met a woman in the least like you before. I am

quite ignorant, for the one or two little experiences I have had count

as nothing. In Rome a baker's daughter was in love with me, but she ran

away with a marquis. In my student days I had a few other affairs of

the kind. That is all. I have been in society very little. And now, all

at once, here I am with you in my arms--you, the most glorious and

perfect thing I have ever seen in my life! A woman who hardly seems to

belong to this world at all.... I cannot take my eyes off you in your

blue _peplus_.... You stand there the image of an antique statue, a

masterpiece of Lysippus or Praxiteles come to life. And I am to call

that mine? Why, the mere thought is sheer tragedy. We are both making

for a precipice without an attempt to save ourselves."

"Why should we?" she cried, throwing back her head in ecstasy, as if

she were tossing back a bacchante's wild locks. "We love each other,

and nothing else matters."

He sank into the chair next her, and with dry tearless sobs buried his

face in his two hands. She knelt down in front of him, and bending

forward planted little fugitive kisses on his clenched hands.

"No!" he cried, springing up again, "this must not be. I must not let

myself be driven into a false position. You may think as you do, and be

willing to sacrifice all that you have and are--very well. But I, who

am to accept such infinite goodness--I must speak out, so that you will

be quite clear for whom you are doing it. I must not leave open a

shadow of a possibility of your being misled. I am a poor young chap

living on his uncle's bounty. I have no prospects, for my great work is

still in embryo, and the articles I write are nothing to speak of. I

have still to win by unremitting toil a _pied-a-terre_ in life. It may

take me ten years.... I could never submit to being supported by you.

You must think what you will of me, but I say now, once for all, that a

marriage between us is out of the question."

At first she could hardly believe her ears. Here was someone

so-unworldly, so naive and ingenuous, as actually to mention marriage

seriously in Lilly Czepanek's corner drawing-room! Then she laughed

shrilly, in scorn of her shameless life.

"Do you take me for an adventuress who inveigles men into her net?" she

cried, jumping to her feet. "Do you take me for a harpy?"--Frau Jula's

expression came back to her--"a harpy who tries to catch every person

she chances to meet? Am I such a miserable wretch?"

He stared at her face with an astonished, uncomprehending glance.

"The woman who loves a man and desires to give him his crowning

happiness is not a 'miserable wretch,'" he said.

Ah, then he really meant it!

She thought of the days when she had still been innocent enough to wish

she was Richard's wife. How long ago was that? She must have sunk low

indeed for this most natural relationship between man and woman to

appear so strange to her!

She shuddered and felt she was turning pale. What if he had noticed?

She could bear anything but that. Shrinking from his searching eyes,

she replied timidly:

"I only wanted you to understand that you are free, and can always be

free. You can go when you like, at any time, and have nothing to fear."

"And you?" he asked.

"What about me?"

"In what position should I leave you if I went?"

"Oh, that would be my lookout," she exclaimed, laughing.

That was such a remote contingency, why should they worry about it

to-day? But he was not satisfied.

"There is something inscrutable about you. A touch of mystery.... How

shall I put it? Some wrong seems to cast a shadow upon you.... You say

that you go into society a great deal, yet I cannot get over the

feeling that you are lonely and perhaps unprotected. When I try to

penetrate farther into your soul, I feel that in some way or other you

have been harshly dealt with.... From now onwards I shall stand by you

as protector and adviser, but I am handicapped in being so ignorant of

the world and its ways. It might happen that with every good intention

I should only increase the mischief.... And I don't want to do that,

because to me you are hallowed. So I beg of you now to tell me as much

as you feel you can and may, of all that you have lived through and

suffered. Will you?"

She felt now that evasion was no longer possible. The hour of which she

had been in dread and had tried to postpone indefinitely had sounded.

Again a phrase of Frau Jula's came into her mind: "The way back to the

community of all the virtues is only made by lying."

With lying she had begun, with lying she must continue. For a moment

the wish rose in her heart to tell him the whole truth, but that would

be insane folly, absolutely suicidal. After all, it was not necessary

to lie. She had only to put a different complexion on her life's story,

to tell it as if it had been what to-day she would like it to appear.

"I'll turn down the lights," she said, and extinguished the

crystal-white flames of the chandelier, leaving only the rose-shaded

standard lamp to cast a subdued glow on their corner.

His hands in hers, leaning her head against his shoulder, she began her

whispered and halting confession.

She told him of her sheltered, merry childhood, free from care and full

of music, which played the part of both fairy and demon in her youth;

of her father's flight and the beginning of poverty and desperate

struggles. So far she had withheld nothing, perverted nothing. Even the

colonel was not altered, except that from habit she now and again

promoted him to the rank of general. Only, when Walter von Prell came

into the picture for the second time, it seemed inevitable that fresh

colours should be mixed on the palette; for she would, without doubt,

descend rapidly in her friend's esteem if she owned that she had

abandoned herself body and soul in light-hearted frivolity to a little

ne'er-do-well. So she made of that incorrigible rascal an ill-fated

laughing young hero, who had only been vanquished because all the

powers were ranged against him.

Once started, the rest was smooth sailing. She invented a touching

farewell scene, taking place amidst a thousand vows of faithfulness,

floods of tears, and promised bridal prospects. The horrors of the

duel, of which she had never taken the trouble to find out the

particulars, were exaggerated to such a degree that her lover emerged

from it an incurable cripple. He had set steam for America, firmly

resolved not to turn up again in the old country till he was in a

position to expiate his misdeed by marrying her; and he had in the

meantime confided her as a sacred trust to his friend, a worthy,

excellent young man, whose character was made up of nobility and

unselfishness. It was the latter who, out of regard for the unhappy

banished lover, had four years ago taken her fate into his keeping,

kept watch over her, and introduced her into society. He had also, with

rare tact and unselfishness, managed for her the little fortune saved

from her days of affluence, and given her the support of his valuable

advice and assistance in all questions concerning her everyday

practical life. He came every day at tea-time to inquire courteously

after her health, and he sometimes escorted her home from a theatre or

social gathering, and had a cigarette afterwards. His circle of friends

had become hers, and everyone they knew honoured and respected their

relationship, as it was based on high-souled loyalty to his friend

abroad.

Thus Lilly Czepanek related her story with so much conviction that she

almost began to believe it herself. And was it not a fair enough

account of her life, as Richard had represented it before her descent

to the depths on the night of the Kellermann carnival?

She did not mention either Kellermann or Dr. Salmoni, or make any

reference to "the crew," which was natural enough; but she spoke of her

ill-fated art with tears and regret, and said it should be for the last

time. She wished never to allude to it again.

When she had finished speaking and looked up at him with a feeling of

relief, expecting to receive his absolution, she was startled at the

change in his face. He had turned a deathly hue, his feverish eyes were

cast up to the ceiling, and there were deep lines of pain in his

cheeks.

"Doesn't he believe me?" flashed through her brain.

He sprang up, seized Richard's photograph, which stood on the

escritoire in a frame, and brought it close to the light of the shaded

lamp.

She knew that he was thinking of Walter, and said, "That is not his

photograph."

"Who is it, then?"

"His friend ... the manufacturer."

Disappointed, he threw the frame on one side. "Have you no picture of

_him_?"

Yes ... she had, but where was it? The big pastel portrait was in the

attic; the smaller photograph she must have crammed away in some

drawer.

"I put it away," she said apologetically; "I could not bear seeing it

before me every day."

The reason was not very clear. He could, if he liked, interpret it as

her growing love for him. Yet, how pitiable and ludicrous it all was!

She would rather have thrown herself at his feet, and cried, "Forgive

... forgive. Take me as I am; don't cast me off!" Instead, she was

obliged to go on lying, disgracefully, desperately, like a common

adventuress on the verge of being found out.

"Will you mind very much if I ask you to look for the photograph?"

"Oh, my beloved! Why do you torment yourself?"

"Please look for it," he said.

Further resistance was not to be thought of. She fetched the key of the

escritoire, unlocked and opened the drawers at random, and searched

wildly, hardly seeing what she was doing, among the papers. Ah, here it

was! She hadn't looked at it for years. Imperiously and vindictively

the light-lashed eyes glanced at her as much as to say: "Cheat, lie,

and swindle. I have done it too."

"This is it," she said.

He took it to the light, stared long and earnestly at the features. His

lips twitched, and he jerked the photograph nervously as he held it in

his hand.

"Just as I once stood before the photograph of the young orphaned

heiress," she thought; but that was long ago.

Then she heard his voice asking hoarsely, "Will you answer a single

question, which is of vital importance to me?"

"Ask anything you like, dearest."

"Are you still building on the return of this young man?"

Where did the question lead? She felt she only had to say "No" to break

down all obstacles. But if she did, the tale she had been telling her

friend about Walter would be utterly without sense or meaning, and who

could tell then if his suspicions would not at last be aroused?

So she steered a middle course, and said, "Often I am inclined to

doubt"--she hesitated over her words. "You see, I am waiting for two

... There's my father, who seems to have vanished for ever.... I never

hear from him either."

"And you feel yourself bound to him still?"

She felt the noose tightening about her neck.

"Answer me."

There was something in his tone that abolished every loophole of

escape. She felt that it was a matter of life and death. She held up

her arms as if taking a solemn oath.

"Since I have known you, I don't care one way or the other. If you wish

me to be faithful to him, then I will wait for him ... till the crack

of doom; if you would rather I threw him over, I will do that too."

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. He stood now exactly as he

had done in the dark bit of the park. And she felt the same anxiety on

his behalf. "Why will he torture himself so?" she thought. And it

occurred to her for the first time that he was taking her and

everything she said in earnest; that he, to whom loyalty was a law,

expected loyalty from her in the natural course of things. Ah, how

little he knew!

She was so deeply ashamed of herself that she dared not question or

come near him.

He drew himself up with a powerful effort, and she saw the cloud of

wrath on his brow that had awed her the first day of their

acquaintance.

"Listen," he said. "After what you have been telling me, I see that I

was on a wrong tack. You are not lonely and forsaken, the world has not

sinned against you. On the contrary, you are protected and cared for,

and have a future, however uncertain, to look forward to. You would

lose all this through me. His friend would not, of course, continue his

support if he heard anything about me. And it would be the same with

the others, who at present constitute your world."

She wanted to shriek with laughter, to whistle her contempt of all that

had made up her life hitherto, but the sound was stifled in her throat.

She recollected in time that to snap her fingers at her past might

precipitate a catastrophe, which would expose the misery of her

position. To him she might only belong in dark, secret hours.

"And what have I to offer you in compensation?" he continued. "Nothing.

My work is still in the clouds. I am not even sure of myself. And when

I think of this last hour----" He broke off and turned his eyes away.

"Then you don't love me?" she said in a depressed tone.

He flung himself on her chair, so that kneeling on the cushions he

could encircle her waist with his hands.

"My God! be merciful! You see what I am enduring; don't make it harder.

I should always be repeating to myself, every day and every hour, 'Over

in America there's a fellow working himself to death for her.... He

doesn't write because he is ashamed to confess how his maimed body is

standing in his way and bringing all his enterprises to naught' ... at

least, I can think of no other reason for his silence--for no man could

forget a woman like you. Meanwhile, I have stolen you from him, and sit

here with you in my arms.... I don't know ... the idea of a man leading

a profligate life does not shock me ... but to rob a poor hard-working

cripple of his all ... I think the meanest scoundrel in creation would

draw the line at that.... I know I shall never get over it, but"--he

collapsed, hitting his head against the arm of the chair, and

sobbed--"better to part now, at once, on the spot, than wait till it is

too late for both of us."

The blow had fallen. Cleverly as she thought she had garbled her story,

she was caught in her own net.

"You mean that you will--oh God!" she cried.

He got up. "Good-bye," he said, "good-bye, and thank you. Do not think

too harshly of me."

"If I tell him the truth now, it'll only make him go all the faster,"

she thought, looking round her helplessly.

His hands were held out waiting for hers; his eyes drank her in, as if

by so doing he could imprint her image on his heart for ever.

"I will put myself in front of the door," she thought. "I will throw

myself on him and suffocate him with kisses."

But the desire not to sink in his estimation made her timid and

faint-hearted.

"Don't go yet," she besought him, clinging to his hands. "Stay one more

hour, just one--a farewell hour."

He disengaged himself gently, and turned to the door.

She stood in the middle of the room, drawn up to her full height, the

wide sleeves of her blue Venus drapery fell back from her arms,

displaying their matured beauty, as she held them out to him

beseechingly.

"If he sees me like this," she thought, "he will yet be mine."

But he did not look back. He staggered, and knocked his forehead

against the panel of the door as he opened it; and then all at once it

seemed as if he were wiped off the face of the earth, and with him

light and everything.... A swarm of bees rose buzzing into the air, and

in the darkness that suddenly surrounded her the floor sank deeper and

always deeper towards the canal waters ... a hatchet struck her on the

head and then all was over.

* * * * *

At first it sounded like a twittering of birds, then like the murmur of

an enormous crowd in a wide sunny square, and then there were only

two voices left: a man's voice and a woman's whispering eagerly

together--the old cook, Grete, and the manservant with the impudent

twinkle in his eye. Yes, of course, it was they. The colonel would come

in immediately and ask her to be his wife. At the same instant she felt

something cool, damp, and soothing on her aching head. Just as she had

felt that night.... "Am I to live through it all again?" she thought,

startled, and she began to cry, and entreat, "Oh, please, Herr Colonel,

let me go. I am far too bad a girl for you. Oh, dear Herr Colonel!"

"Good God! she is delirious," said the masculine voice, which was

certainly not that of the impudent manservant.

Ah! how comforting it was to lie under the magic of this voice, in

which a note of homeliness quivered.

"So he hasn't gone, after all," she thought, and leaned back

contentedly on her cushion, which had been placed on the carpet as a

support for her neck. If she had known his Christian name, she would

have called him by it now. But she was still ignorant of it, even after

all that had passed between them. What a shame it was! She could only

put out her arms a little towards him in silence. He was already

kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.

She must keep quiet, absolutely quiet.

"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up at him in

bliss.

Yes, yes; everything. Ways and means must be found of seeing each other

often as friends, as brother and sister. No; there should be no

parting, no separation. No one was bound to inflict such hideous

torture on himself as that.

She thought with a shudder of the moment when darkness had gathered in

around her, and she had sunk into the mire. So would her life always

have been without him. But now, as brother and sister, they were free

to greet in light-hearted joyousness a new dawn.

Such happiness was almost inconceivable.

She groped for his arm, and pillowed her cheek in the palm of his hand

with a deep-drawn happy sigh. But Adele, who had all this time been

discreetly looking out of the window, now interposed with the

suggestion that a fresh compress was needed, as the wound in her

mistress's forehead was still bleeding. And so it was adjusted.

CHAPTER XIV

In human development each spring, as it comes round, has its particular

significance and associations. Every spring finds a man different;

every one opens old wounds anew, and sounds hidden depths. Sometimes it

passes like a stupid unprofitable game, because he himself is feeling

stupid and unprofitable; others torment him with a thousand futile

admonitions, because he is utterly unable to render account to his own

conscience. Sometimes spring finds him barren and clogged, like ground

that cannot recover from the ravages of winter. And, again, spring

carols deceptive songs of liberation and redemption in a man's heart,

as if it was in its power to liberate and redeem. But the most

beautiful manifestation of spring is when we are scarcely aware of it,

because its budding and sprouting is but symbolic of the jubilant

stirring of spring within us, the widening and growth of our being

spiritually.

Such a spring now dawned for Lilly. Everything seemed to wear a new

face. The early sunshine had never before cut such grotesque little

capers on the wall, never had there been such ravishing violet

twilights at the end of rainy days, never had people worn such hopeful

festive looks as they passed her, never had the din of street traffic

sounded so full of an infectious revelling in activity.

Yes, and all at once she too found no end of things to do. Every hour

was full of delightful and urgent engagements. If anyone had told her

during the last few years that she would ever again, with burning

cheeks and a feverish brain, get up dates, quotations, historical

allusions, and foreign words, she would have laughed at them.

But now, whatever she did, she must not idle. As that time she had been

ready with her answer about Giotto, so she must always have a response

on the tip of her tongue when it was expected of her. All her eagerness

to learn, which had been quenched in her for years by a feeling of

isolation and uselessness, now streamed forth anew. And her mind--like

a starved and uncultivated pasture--absorbed everything it was offered

with an insatiable maw. It demanded hardly an effort to commit things

to memory; she had only to imagine that she was quoting to him, and

lines remained with her.

She managed it all with the utmost secrecy, for Konrad--yes, that was

his name, Konrad; he was called Konrad--must not suspect that her

knowledge was brand-new and fresh from the mint. She sneaked alone to

the museums and picture galleries because she wanted him to think she

had been at home in them from time immemorial. Then she practised up

several pieces of old music that might be of use to him in his work.

And often did she bless her father's rigid discipline, which had kept

her at the piano till late in the night.

They saw a great deal of each other. He came every other evening as a

regular thing. He avoided the afternoons, knowing that they were

devoted to the friend of her fiance, but often in the middle of the day

he bounded up the stairs with a book or a flower, and begged for a

little music. He never would stay to lunch, however warmly she pressed

him. For the most part he was not at his ease in her flat; he would

walk up and down restlessly, look at his watch and then hurry off. At

first she was hurt, and asked him teasingly if he thought he was in the

enemy's country when he came to see her. But, of course, she did not

yet thoroughly understand him. Every day revealed some new and unusual

trait in his character.

He was still extremely young, not only in years. She had known many

callous, _blase_ old men of twenty-five--which was his age. His youth

was within him. His thoughts were young and passionate, and she had

never met anyone who expended so much care on mere thinking. His ideas

seemed to be to him tangible beings, with whom he had to come to grips

and either hug to his heart or spurn with his foot. Friends or enemies

to him were all the great thinkers and creators of other times. He

associated with them as with masters and comrades; defied them or

despised them; submitted reverently to their teaching, or made fun of

them.

His thought and his conversation were a perpetual flow of antitheses

and a whirl of paradoxes, a forcible pushing forward of research, a

ruthless sport. He could not be neutral or indifferent. He saw in

everything problems that cried out for solution, questions of urgency

in which it was necessary to take sides. He loved or he hated; there

was no middle course for him.

She followed him and hung on his lips, with all the fervour of a

disciple and lover. She annexed his ideas, and let them take root or

die off in her mind as chance willed it. She had such riches to choose

from that one more or less did not matter.

Of his personal affairs he talked very little. Not because he was

reserved or lacking in confidence, but because he deemed them of no

importance or interest. Lilly had to drag everything out of him, bit by

bit.

The image of his parents had faded with time, though he still cherished

an enthusiastic regard for their memory. For him his uncle had stood in

the place of parents, the rich parvenu and man of the world, whose heir

he would ultimately be, and to whom he now owed his freedom from sordid

cares about money.

She could not quite make up her mind what their relations were to each

other. Often he spoke as if he loved the old man tenderly, but at other

times a hardness, even bitterness, crept into his judgment of him,

showing that their natures were diametrically opposed, and there was a

lack of harmony between them.

His friends were few--mostly old fellow-students, who went their own

way--and he had no experience of family life. Thus he was able to

bestow on Lilly all his free hours.

They met frequently in restaurants, oftenest in the little Italian

wine-shop, where they wondered when the waiter turned out the lights,

as it seemed to them that they had only just come.

Now and then they bought their supper at the butcher's and baker's for

a few pence, and, laughing over their purchases, shook the dust of the

town off their feet and retired to the Tiergarten. There they looked

for an empty seat off the beaten track of the wide avenues, but not too

lonely and remote. It was not till loving pairs began to wander by,

like shades from the nether world, that they felt they were hidden and

unseen. If a couple sat down beside them, they were sure to get up

again soon, for they needed the night and darkness more urgently than

these two.

Then, when the pale-green lacework of leaves, which appeared quite

detached from the grey branches, darkened gradually into a shadowy

black ragged outline, when the fire of the evening sky toned down into

the purple of night, when the nightingale--often only a few yards

away--burst into song, then they watched shoulder to shoulder the stars

come out one by one and illumine the twilight, which night after night

became longer. Then their thoughts rose on wings to pictures and music,

to sagas of the North and Italian olive-groves. Then questions of

mystery and solemnity were mooted, hesitatingly and fearfully, and

answered promptly with the charity and cocksureness of a joyous young

scepticism.

Lilly was left in no uncertainty as to his opinion about the

immortality of the soul, the origin of the universe, and God Almighty.

Often she felt as if she were left shivering alone in a vast icy-cold

wilderness where there was no All-loving Father, no hope of an

after-life, and much less of a St. Joseph.

"Your creed, then, is simply atheism?" she asked nervously.

"If you like to call it so, yes," he replied, laughing.

She felt forthwith bound to become an atheist too--one of those who in

the eyes of Holy Church must roast for all eternity in the depths of

hell. But if he could exist under the bann of excommunication, so could

she. Her only regret was for St. Joseph.

How long it was since she had given her dear saint a thought!

Nevertheless, it would be a pity if she could never run to him again

with her joys and sorrows--at least, never without feeling ashamed of

herself--especially now when her soul was burdened with so many new and

varied experiences. There was nothing restful and soothing in the high

art that Konrad unfolded before her; rather did she feel perpetually

stimulated and goaded on to further delights and excitements.

Together they listened to all the great orchestral works the spring

produced. They heard the Eroica, Brahm's Second Symphony, and a gem of

Grieg's beyond expression beautiful. At concerts they joined the crowd

in the cheap places, which they both loved; their hands, touching as if

by accident, telegraphed with a slight pressure the vibrations of their

souls' sympathy with some subtle passage of hidden beauty. Oh, what

hours those were! And then those other hours which they spent high up

among the "gods" at theatres, where they were far out of sight of "the

crew." With Shakespeare's deathless characters, and Wagner's legendary

heroines passing before her, how intensely did she realise the wretched

barrenness of her previous life!

They did not neglect the modern drama either. Of all the plays he took

her to, "Rosmersholm" moved her most deeply--she, with her load of

concealed guilt, was the counterpart of Rebecca; he in his unsuspecting

purity was Rosmer. His high-toned emotional life had, as it happened in

the play, an ever-stronger and more elevating influence on hers. But

what if the garbage in which her existence had its being should

gradually revert from her on to him, would she not then be his evil

genius and destroyer? The thought was intolerable. Even while the play

was going on she cried so bitterly that she attracted the attention of

people sitting near her, and Konrad proposed taking her out, but she

indignantly refused to go.

Still sobbing and supported by his arm, she tottered home along the

bank of the river, a path he had chosen because it was quieter and

darker than the main street. When they came to the bridge across the

Spree, she stopped, and seemed fascinated by the black waters below. He

let her be, till she began to climb up the railed parapet to see "what

it felt like." Then he pulled her down by force from her dangerous

position.

"Why shouldn't I?" she thought. "When he knows all, I shall be bound to

go down there and alone."

After that evening, more anxiously than ever did she devote herself

daily and hourly to keeping the slightest breath of suspicion from him.

She was not ashamed of her great ignorance, which she combated with all

her might, but it was the loose, cynical tone to which intercourse with

"the crew" had habituated her that she lived in terror of disclosing in

conversation.

She braced up what had become lax in her by resuscitating the remnants

of the good manners and breeding she had once practised, and so it came

about that she recaptured a good deal of that inner dignity of spirit

which she had assumed at the outset of her relations with Konrad. Only

now it was not the mere empty acting of an affected _role_, but the

outcome of all that her nature still possessed of nobility and

refinement. Much that had recently dominated her mind became absolutely

unintelligible to her, especially the tendency caught from her circle

of regarding everything from an erotic point of view. Amazed, she saw,

beyond the narrow sphere in which she had revolved, world after world

opening, so full of glorious and beautiful things to be enjoyed that

she had hardly time to bemoan and feel ashamed of the past.

It was true that when she remembered how she had been bold enough to

kiss him, hot shame crept over her. She could not help being afraid

that her behaviour on that occasion must ever remain a blot on his

image of her. Yet there was not the smallest sign either in word or

look that he did not reciprocate the reverence and esteem which she

cherished for him. And this mutual respect always seemed to hang

between them like a veil, obscuring the beloved one's features in a

vertigo of happy fears which, however, robbed of their sting her

self-reproaches for her failings.

There was to be no mention of love between them. Instead, they carried

on a tender, almost shy, brother and sister comradeship. The word

"friendship" was constantly occurring in their conversation; they

extolled its sacred influence with grave faces without exactly

understanding what they meant by it.

It was hard for her to endure his actual presence. The only caress that

Konrad permitted himself from time to time was, when they were sitting

together, to lay his right arm lightly on her shoulder. Though she

would then have gladly drawn closer to him, she finally moved further

away, unable to bear the torture of restraint. She never dared

contemplate for a moment the remotest prospect of their being actually

lovers. At night, when she couldn't sleep, she was content with

picturing herself dozing on his shoulder; that was in itself supreme

bliss enough; her imagination hardly ever strayed into forbidden

preserves. It was as if her girlhood's modesty, which the sensuality of

her old husband had so rudely outraged, had come back to throw a

merciful shroud over her trembling soul. And all the wealth of golden

thoughts and virginal sensations, the fairy-tale glamour that common

things irradiated, the amusing importance of every tiny event, the

delightful expectancy of hoping for she knew not what--all this was

girlish, and reminded her of long-vanished and forgotten days.

If she had but known a single human being to whom she could have

confided all this happiness and folly, how glad it would have made her!

This desire to tell someone became at last almost uncontrollable. More

than once she had only just checked herself in time, and nearly told

Richard her secrets, risking thereby a disastrous ending.

One day she plucked up heart and journeyed to the south of Berlin to

tell her former landlady some of the experiences she was passing

through. The old friendship between them had never quite ceased. Even

if they rarely saw each other, Lilly had taken care, by sending

frequent greetings and little presents, to keep herself alive in Frau

Laue's affectionate remembrance.

The present "young lady" tenant of the best room opened the door to

her.

Frau Laue sat as usual at the long white work-table, with her damp

finger-tips tapping energetically among the heaps of pressed flowers

and the paper lamp-shade lappels. She did not stop tapping when Lilly

sat down beside her, and pushed the offering of sweets that she never

forgot to bring in front of her.

"No, thank you, child," she said. "Every sweet I bite is a flower the

less. The likes of us can only afford to eat sweets on holidays. We

have no one, you see, to give us everything heart can desire and keep

us like princesses. I would like to change places with you for a day,

before I go down to my grave, just to see what it feels like to have

nothing to do but go for walks in the morning and feed a pair of

goldfish."

"Is that your idea of happiness?" exclaimed Lilly, with a sigh.

"You are never beginning to complain of your lot!" cried Frau Laue

indignantly. "If I were you I should thank the Lord every hour for

having given me such a friend."

"And you think there is nothing more to wish for?" asked Lilly.

"What more can anyone want?" she scolded, still tapping. "You can't

expect him to marry you now. And marriage isn't an enviable estate

after anyone has gone through the mill you have.... He's sure to make

you a handsome allowance if you behave yourself, and you'll never

suffer want to the end of your days."

"So all my hopes are to be centred, then, on a pension?" demanded

Lilly.

"Well, why not?"

"I can think of other more desirable objects in life."

"What are they then, eh? Work? Just try it! See what it is to work,

after living by your emotions for years.... Or perhaps you're thinking

of taking up with another lover? You'd have a fine time of it if you

did. Take my advice, child, and never do that, or you'll deserve to

paste flowers like me, sixteen hours a day till you die."

And while she went on ceaselessly pasting one dried plant after another

on the gummed paper, she continued to lecture and admonish Lilly

severely.

Lilly got up to go with a little shiver. Here she had nothing to hope

for, that was evident. She looked round her, feeling suddenly as if it

was all strange to her, and said to herself, "I don't think I shall

ever come here again."

* * * * *

The next morning the tormenting desire to unburden her heart to some

sympathetic ear awoke in her more strongly than ever, and she bethought

her of Frau Jula.

The clever flighty little woman had been holding aloof from the set

for some time. No one seemed to know what she was doing; even her

red-headed admirer had no information to give, and was shy of talking

about her. Still, Lilly felt sure that the sympathy she needed would be

forthcoming if she could find her out.

The smart, yellow satin little nest that the red-headed one had fitted

up for her near Unter den Linden was deserted. The porter told Lilly

that the "gnaedige Frau" had recently moved into the suburbs, as she had

become nervous of the town. Lilly smiled and asked for her address,

which was written down for her on a card, and then she set out to call

on Frau Jula.

In a quiet wooded neighbourhood, much patronised by poets and

philosophers, she had taken up her abode in a simple-looking little

villa, crammed with books and manuscripts and busts of eminent men.

She herself appeared to be greatly changed. Her dark hair, which she

had worn before in a wild frizz on her forehead, was now parted in the

middle and smoothly brushed down over her ears in a prim fashion, which

gave her an alarmingly virtuous air, although this particular style of

coiffure happened just then to be the rage in circles where virtue for

aesthetic reasons is not a valuable asset.

Though she welcomed Lilly as usual with outstretched arms, there was a

want of spontaneity in her manner, and the delight that beamed from her

eyes seemed rather forced, as if she were thinking of something else.

Without asking Lilly how she was, or paying any attention to her looks

or clothes, she poured forth an account of her own affairs.

"You'll be awfully surprised, of course," she said; "but I can't help

it. I never made any secret to you of my little conscientious scruples,

which, after all, were superfluous, as I was not so very bad."

"Oh really?" thought Lilly.

"And so you shall be the first of my former friends----"

"Former?" thought Lilly.

"To be told of my return to the bosom of respectability. To cut a long

story short, I am about to get married."

"To your red-headed boy?" asked Lilly, pleased and sympathetic.

"Well, no, not exactly." She contemplated her fingernails with a

pleased smile. "He has given his blessing, and there his _role_ ends."

"Then who is your future husband?"

Frau Jula meditated a moment. "It is rather an old story," she said,

hesitating. "You couldn't understand it unless you knew more of my

inner life during the last year or two. Do you happen by any chance to

have heard of Clarissa von Winkel, the authoress?"

Lilly remembered hazily having seen the name in certain old-fashioned

and puritanical magazines for family reading, which she had glanced

through for the sake of the pictures in cafes and confectioners' shops.

"Well, then, Clarissa von Winkel, who has gained quite a reputation as

the champion of a sound domestic morality, as opposed to the dangerous

modern ideas about free-love--that Clarissa von Winkel is myself."

Lilly was far too wrapped up in her own affairs to be able to bestow on

the humour of these confessions the appreciation they merited, though

she did experience a faint glimmer of amusement as she realised what

strange pranks human puppets can be made to play in life's great farce.

"Now, don't go and jump to the conclusion that I am converted, and have

become a prude and a canting bigot, or anything of the kind," Frau Jula

went on, with a certain dignity of tone, which became her quite as well

as her former outspoken cynicism. "There's been no Damascus in my

career. I have always had, as you know, two selves. One ..." She

hesitated a moment, "I needn't tell _you_ what it was like.... The

other craved for propriety, and white damask table-linen.... That is

why you always attracted me so, my dearest Lilly. I couldn't help

admiring your refined loyalty. Did I not always impress on you and urge

you to hold fast, no matter in what circumstance you were placed, to

this loyalty, which to us women is the crown of life? Don't you

remember what a point I made of it?"

Lilly could not remember, but she remembered a good many other

sentiments expressed by the lady at different times scarcely in

accordance with it. Her friend's new outlook on the world seemed ill

adapted to give her the sympathy she had come to seek in the joyous

tumult of her present feelings.

"Well, to continue my story," Frau Jula said. "Through getting my

articles and stories easily accepted, especially when I submitted them

to editors in person, I found myself on the road to making a nice

little fortune. My red-headed boy became merely a decorative appendage.

For that is where virtue scores; it pays so much better than vice if

you know the right way to set about it." There she slid her little

tongue along her red lips, in her old arch manner, though her face

remained immovably demure. "It was in the business of disposing of my

work that I met my intended husband. I have got a divorce from the

first brute at last.... He--this one--is the editor of a lady's paper

just started, which caters for quiet domestic and housewifely tastes.

It has got heaps of advertisements already. He is a man of high

intellectual endowments and strictly moral principles, which, as you

perceive, have not been without influence on myself."

So saying, she made a little double chin and folded her hands piously

in her lap.

"And, if I may ask, how did you manage to break with your old friend?"

questioned Lilly at length, almost forgetting her own trials in these

extraordinary confidences.

"Break with him?... What are you talking about?" Jula answered

suddenly, radiant again with foolish frivolity. "I couldn't be guilty

of such heartlessness, and when I said just now that his _role_ had

ended, I didn't mean you to take it literally.... What on earth would

the poor fellow do with his dyspeptic liver if I did not now and then

invite him to a family dinner? In the first place, I have sworn

solemnly to my future husband that my red-headed boy has never been

anything more to me than a brother. Yes, we women can swear things like

that, and not even blush in the process."

Lilly nodded thoughtfully. She, too, on a certain evening, would have

taken any oath that had been desired of her.

"And, secondly, I tell you in confidence that he has contributed

generously towards founding the new magazine. So the two are, as it

were, colleagues and partners. I arranged matters thus intentionally,

for I thought that it would be the best guarantee of the continuance of

amicable relations all round. You needn't open your eyes so wide, my

dear. Life is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its own nest.

Pray don't think I am afraid of disclosures and revelations. I shrug my

shoulders at the notion of such a thing. You know tragedy is a matter

of taste. I abhor it, so there's no tragedy in my philosophy. I say to

myself, it's safe to smile perpetually so long as you are made of iron

underneath."

Lilly felt slightly disgusted.

"If it is at such a price as this," she thought, "that one purges one's

life of tragedy, I would rather stick to unhappiness and leave

happiness alone."

She rose to go.

However much this small creature might surpass her in strength of mind

and will-power, so that she now stood with both feet firmly planted on

the rock of an honourable life, she was no longer a suitable friend for

Lilly.

"At all events," she said aloud, "I hope that your trust won't be

misplaced."

Frau Jula waved her hand in the air.

"Bah!" she sneered. "Men are all alike. Those who know the world are

devourers of women; those who don't are imbeciles. I can get on with

both classes."

"There is possibly a third," Lilly put in, annoyed. She felt as if

Konrad had been insulted.

"Possibly," responded Frau Jula, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I

don't know it." And then, putting both hands round Lilly's waist, she

said: "Tell me honestly, child; when you see me as I am now, and

compare me with what I was, does it strike you that I am posing?"

"To speak the truth," Lilly confessed, "it did at first."

Frau Jula sighed, "It is difficult to grow accustomed to a dress which

was not made for you.... Every one of us has a certain moral ambition;

no one more than the so-called immoral person. But I would like to know

one thing: whether my past sins or my present virtues are more to my

credit."

She smiled up at Lilly with a melancholy but mischievous face.

Lilly answered nothing. Beyond this little self-satisfied madcap she

saw rising her own fate, dark and threatening as a thunder-cloud.

When she was once more in the street, her restlessness and sense of

isolation took stronger possession of her than before. And yet she was

thankful that she had kept silent. She knew full well that if she had

submitted the portrait of her beloved to Frau Jula's acute judgment it

would have been returned to her desecrated. And now she faced the fact

that there was absolutely no one left in whom she could confide.

* * * * *

A few days later, however, in glancing, as she was in the habit of

doing, through the morning paper, her eye alighted on a passage that

awoke a ray of hope in her soul:

"St. Joseph's Chapel, Muellerstrasse. Vespers and Benediction" at

such-and-such an hour.

Her old, long-forgotten friend and counsellor was, then, still living!

He had his own church, even here in cold hardhearted heretical Berlin.

In all these years she had never entered a church. Since, acting on the

advice of Fraeulein von Schwertfeger, she had joined the Protestants in

worship, she had regarded herself as an apostate from the true Church,

and had not dared to seek solace in religion, and now she had become a

regular infidel. Yet the sight of the name of St. Joseph in the paper

touched a soft warm place in her heart.

Her feelings were as if, after long wanderings in foreign lands, she

had suddenly caught sight in the alien crowd of a dear long-lost home

face. Now she knew to whom she might turn, without any fear of being

misunderstood and sent empty away. Even if the great philosophers had

demolished him a thousand times over, he was still there, ready to

receive the outpourings of her poor silly overflowing heart.

Muellerstrasse lay somewhere in an extreme northerly direction; it was

in "Franz-Josef Land," the owner of a fruit and vegetable stall, of

whom she made inquiries, informed her. The way led through a network of

narrow streets, from one electric tram to another, past the Reichstag

buildings, the Lessing Theatre, along an interminable tree-flanked

road; and beyond the Weddingplatz, which Berliners regard as the end of

everywhere, the Muellerstrasse began.

No one seemed to have heard of a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph, not

even people who lived in the neighbourhood. At last someone she asked

said he thought there was a Catholic place up there in a yard, and

after a little further exploration she found what she sought. It was a

low iron building shaped like a shovel, between flowering shrubs, with

high tenements surrounding it. The side door was open, and garlands of

pine bid her "Welcome." She entered a plain whitewashed hall, filled

with the odour of incense, laurel, and new pinewood. In the background

was an alcove decorated to resemble a starry canopy. Behind the wooden

balustrade that separated the pictureless chancel from the rest of the

building rose two magnificent feathery palms. The low rolling tones of

an organ proceeded from the loft; the organist had probably lingered

behind after the funeral to improvise dreamily at the instrument.

Lilly's eyes wandered anxiously over the walls in quest of the shrine

of her saint. She wondered if he held up his finger here in smiling

warning, as did the kind old gentleman of St. Ann's in her native town.

There was no room for side altars, as every inch of space was filled

with benches. But that big picture over there in tawdry gilt frame,

with a console-table beneath piled with dusty nosegays, was that----?

She started back, shocked. Her saint, her own dear beloved saint was

simply absurd, with his sharp-featured, wax-doll's face, his flaxen

beard and seraphically pious smile. An infant Jesus in pink sat

triumphal on one arm, while in his other hand he daintily clasped a

spray of lilies. And pity succeeded her horror. How far behind her, how

infinitely far away, was the time when one could worship and pray for

miracles to a saint like this!

Could her good, faithful monitor in St. Ann's have been like this? She

hardly dared think of such a thing. He couldn't; no, he couldn't have

been so insipid and ridiculous. One place on earth must remain to which

one's memory in hours of smiling pensive melancholy might return on

holy pilgrimages. The organ began the prelude to an exquisite mass of

Scarlatti's with which Lilly had been familiar in her girlhood, and so

gradually she became more at home in the little chapel.

She knelt on a bench at the back, shut her eyes, and tried to fancy

that instead of this flaxen-haired caricature her real old friend was

looking down on her.

A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas came into her head that she had learnt

in class when a child: "Other saints have been given the power by God

to help us in certain circumstances, but to St. Joseph has been granted

the power to help us no matter what our need may be."

Such a power he had once had in her life. So she spoke to him again for

the last time across the waste of years that separated her from the

altar in St. Ann's. She was sure it would be the last time, because for

such childish things there could no longer be room in her soul. And as

she felt it was a farewell talk, she related, without reserve,

everything that had happened to her: how supremely happy she had

become; how she felt an awakening of new life within her, and her dead

self blossoming forth afresh, while the whole of creation seemed one

great symphony of joy. And she told him, too, of the gross deception

she was forced to practise, of her fear of discovery, and of the

delicious expectant tremors for which she could find no name.

Then she added that she no longer had any faith in him, and was, to all

intents and purposes, an atheist. Feeling reconciled, she placed the

carnations she had brought as an offering to the poor saint among the

dusty nosegays, and with a lighter heart went out, laughing, to meet

the spring that laughed at her.

* * * * *

There was not only this new-born Lilly who rode on the crest of the

wave far above all earthly cares and annoyances, but another Lilly, who

every other night enchanted her old set with her triumphant humour, her

_elan_, and brilliant wit, which amazed and took everyone by storm.

Richard, when he came to tea in the afternoon, never ceased to wonder

at the change in her. Instead of the gloomy listlessness, which had

characterised her for so long, he found her sprightly and full of gay

pranks, a creature of surprises, never still for a moment.

He accustomed himself readily to this new aspect of her being, though

it slightly abashed him, owing to his inability to keep pace with her;

and he praised the magical effects of the new tonic, haematogen, which

the doctor, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, had prescribed this

spring instead of iron.

Every night that they went out together on pleasure bent, the same

little comedy was enacted. At first she would say that she had caught

cold, or had a headache, that she was not in a mood for meeting people;

but when once he had prevailed on her to come, she would play with her

admirers as if they were puppies, and tell her lady friends things to

their faces that filled them with nervous gratification. Sometimes, it

is true, she would sit apart in sulky self-absorption, lost in dreams,

though now, if anyone teased her for doing it, she neither blushed nor

looked uncomfortable, but made such sharp, stinging repartees that the

men retired and hid their diminished heads. Only once during this

period did she drink herself into a light-headed condition, and that

happened to be on the very day that she at last decided to tell Richard

about her new friend. She had grappled with the question for two

months. It would have to be done in the end, but indecision as to how

she should do it made her put it off from day to day.

She was helped in her quandary by chance. One day Richard brought her

some sketches of vases about which he wanted her opinion, and forgot to

take them away with him when he left. Afterwards Konrad came across

them, and with a few swift pencil-strokes inserted the outline which

was in the original draft, but which the artist had omitted in

developing the plan. The next day Richard was utterly astonished to

find that the corrections had been made, and so accurately. Who was

responsible for them? Lilly, with recollections of her bungled

glass-plaque painting, dared not say that she was, and courageously

took the bull by the horns.

"My art history master made the corrections," she said.

"How long have you had an art history master?" he asked with round

severe eyes.

To his surprise and consternation, she began to rate him soundly. She

asked if he expected her to spend a miserable barren and frivolous

existence till the end of her days. Did he think it was a crime for a

woman of no occupation to try and improve her mind a little, so that

she might be clever enough to talk to a sensible man like him and his

associates? Surely that was better than spending all her time on gossip

and finery, and going to the dogs dressed up like a frivolous doll.

The phrase, "a sensible man like you," mollified him considerably.

"It's all very well," he said in a milder tone, "but why not have told

me before?"

She now began a long story.

She had seen an advertisement about six weeks ago in the _Lokal

Anzeiger_, in which an erudite young scholar offered his services as

coach to ladies and gentlemen with a thirst for self-improvement. She

had answered it, and the scholar had come and arranged a course of

lessons forthwith. It had led to a friendship between master and

pupil--of a purely platonic nature, of course. She had made up her

mind, she said, not to tell him, being afraid of exciting his jealousy,

till she was able to convince him of the absolute disinterestedness of

her intellectual endeavours by proving their success.

He knit his brow, and a sardonic smile, which she could not account

for, played about his lips.

"So you have got a young scholar for a friend again?" he asked, leaning

his head on one side and winking at her.

"Yes, and I am proud of it."

"I suppose he's going to be Regius professor?"

"He hasn't made up his mind what he's going to be."

"He is extremely brilliant, intellectual, and superior, I presume?"

She cast up her eyes ecstatically. "I should think so. I have never met

anyone like him." She stopped short, horrified at her own indiscretion.

"Ha! ha! I see," he said, as if some long-cherished suspicion had been

confirmed. "I see," and he got very red, and gnawed his moustache.

"Didn't I say what it would be?"

"You are jealous!" she cried. She felt herself writhing under a

shameful injustice.

Without another word he departed, scowling. An hour later a parcel from

Liebert & Dehnicke's was left at the door. As she opened it, a light

suit which she had seen Richard wear the summer before fell out. The

note that accompanied the parcel ran as follows:

"Darling Lilly,

"You see that I am true to my promise of coming to the assistance of

your intellectual affinities with cast-off wearing apparel. I shall be

happy, too, to send another supply of old boots to help them on their

road to success. This will show you how jealous I am.

"Yours,

"Richard."

That same evening she was in such exuberant spirits that she drank wine

immoderately; and never, not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni's

delectation, had she let herself go with such unbridled abandon and

exercised her art of mimicry with wilder _eclat_.

To wind up with, she danced on the top of the tables, joined together,

a Salome dance which was just then the rage. She accompanied herself

through her clenched teeth with quaint Eastern snatches of melody.

"What on earth is that gibberish?" the spectators asked each other.

Afterwards, when they put the question to her herself, she was

incapable of giving an answer. Insensible, she heard and saw nothing

more.

CHAPTER XV

The big railway station's grimy glass roof was pierced by the peaceful

golden light of a June Sabbath morning. Beneath the three bold archways

that led into the open air such masses of blue ether seemed to be

concentrated that, as the trains passed under them, it was like being

precipitated into a sun-drenched sea. Ribbons from girls' smart hats

fluttered against the Sunday coats of their swains, each of whom

appeared to think himself an indispensable master of the revels.

Athletic and boating clubs were represented in the crowd, smoking clubs

and music societies, and one warehouse's whole staff of clerks was

there.

Through the excited holiday throng a quiet, happy pair, looking round

them cautiously and keeping at a judicious distance from each other, so

that it might be doubted whether they were together, made their way to

a carriage in the front part of the train. Lilly walked ahead, and

again and again she saw the faces of people coming towards her grow

rigid with an almost solemn awe as they regarded her--a mute homage to

which she was used, but which had never filled her with so much

satisfaction as to-day, when she was followed by the only man in the

world in whose eyes she cared to be pleasing.

In his honour she was dressed entirely in festive white, a linen coat

and skirt, a soft lawn blouse, and a wide straw hat draped with a white

lace veil which shaded her brow, and beneath which her burnished brown

hair projected in great glossy waves. On her arm she carried a white

woollen shawl as a protection against the chilly night air, for it had

been agreed between them that they were not to worry about catching

certain trains home, but were to stay in the country till they were

tired of it.

They sat opposite each other in the corner seats of a third-class

compartment, without speaking. Together they were travelling into an

undiscovered land. "Trust yourself to my guidance," he had said, "and I

will give you a surprise. We are going on a voyage of discovery. I am

not in the least certain where the place is; if I were, it wouldn't be

a voyage of discovery."

This sensation of being led like a little child was a new and exquisite

joy. After an hour's journey, when the carriage had emptied, he signed

to her to get out.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Does that matter?" he rejoined.

He was right. What did it matter?

She did not even look to see what the name of the station was, and they

walked out of it into the main street of a bare little country town. On

the front of the yellow houses the sunlight lay like a soothing hand.

The low doors of the shops were locked, and half of the poor goods

displayed in the windows was covered by a sheet to show that it was

Sunday. Organ-notes sounded round street corners like sighing winds. A

turkey-cock came strutting consequentially from under a gateway and

gobbled at them; and then there were no more organ-notes ...

Houses were gradually left behind. A whiff of ripening grain came from

the fields, but the pungent fragrance of the yellow lupins outscented

it. All round them were meadows carpeted with white and pink tufts of

clover, and, beyond, dark firs rose on the slopes of sandy hills.

The road was shadeless, but they tramped along it gaily, and little

columns of silvery dust whirled in front of them. He knew everything,

and nothing escaped his keenly observant eye. He pointed out a wild

rabbit flicking the white underpart of its tail impertinently as it

scampered away with comical self-importance. Every moment there was

something fresh to look at.

Since her married days at Lischnitz Castle, Lilly had never seen the

spring blossom forth in the pure open country.

"Ah! if then I had had him for my guide," she thought, "all would have

been different."

As they entered the warm shade of the pine-woods, a squirrel ran almost

over their feet and darted a few feet up a tree, where it paused and

sat motionless, as if turned to stone.

They looked at each other, both thinking of the moment that had first

brought them together.

Lilly went close up to the little animal, but he did not stir.

"I feel as if I were on enchanted ground," she said; "if he began to

talk to us I shouldn't be surprised."

She threw herself down, with a sigh of content, on the grey cushiony

moss.

He followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands, they lay

on their backs and blinked at the sunshine flickering down on them

through the branches. They had nearly forgotten the squirrel, when

suddenly, close above them, he made a whistling sound, and then

scuttled for his life further up the tree to the topmost branches.

The scared little fellow had been staring at them all the time, not

daring to move until now.

"Do you see?" Konrad said. "As long as our human language sounds in

their ears, they'll take care to have nothing to do with us."

"All the same, we are bewitched here," she said, laughing. "I've never

before lain so luxuriously on the moss and had the sun shine on me so;

have you?"

"Yes, once," he answered. "I remember it quite well."

"When did you, and where?" she demanded instantly, jealous of any

moment of happiness in his life that she had not created for him.

"Oh, there's not much to tell about it," he said. "It was at Ravello,

perched like a gull's nest high up on the rocks above the sea, not far

from Amalfi--just about there is a fairy-land of magic country. Picture

old Moorish palaces half deserted and half lived in; marble courtyards

shut in by trellises; ruined fountains, with myrtle and laurel growing

in profusion, and little white climbing-roses trailing over every nook

and cranny. There was one place I would have given anything to get

inside ... It was a small mysterious gallery standing out against the

deep blue sky like a web of silver filigree. So once when there

was no one about--only a handful of olive-gatherers live in the

neighbourhood--I behaved like a schoolboy, and climbed the great iron

gate as high as a house, bar by bar, up one side and down on the

other."

"Oh, how splendid!" cried Lilly.

"Yes. I got inside. And when I had examined all the gorgeous details

with a professional eye, I threw myself full length on the warm stone

steps, and let the sun bake me through; just in the same position as we

are lying in here now under these Brandenburg pines. And--would you

believe it?--the little bluish-green lizards that you are so fond of

came and slowly and cautiously crawled all over me."

"Oh, how heavenly!" cried Lilly in rapture.

"And while I lay there, with the old marble fountain making music in my

ears, I fell fast asleep. But I had better have left going to sleep

alone, because there's a risk of getting sunstroke even in mid-winter.

I should in all probability have been a victim, if some tourists hadn't

come and thrown sticks and stones at me. Everything looked red and swam

before my eyes. To climb back over the gate was out of the question.

The key had to be fetched from the Sindaco, and subsequently I had to

appear before him and give an account of myself. But, thank goodness,

they didn't lock me up for trespassing, because all the witnesses

tapped their foreheads and said '_e matto_'--'he's mad.'"

"Never mind," she laughed. "You at least got your way, and saw the

inside of the forbidden garden. Many people have to be satisfied with

standing outside and looking through the railings."

"That's a pleasure that may be ours to-day," he remarked. And she had

to restrain her curiosity.

"It doesn't hurt, at any rate," he went on, "to practise now and then

standing outside. For God knows that generally the happiness we happen

to be craning our necks to reach is a forbidden garden."

Lilly gazed at him in alarm. What did he mean by that? Then their eyes

met in shy understanding. The disquieting expectancy to which she was

afraid to give a name crept over her suddenly like an ague.

"Let us go on," she said, springing to her feet, and she walked on

rapidly without looking round to see if he followed.

The woods grew clearer. They came to a little swampy coppice where

silver birches shot up their slender trunks gaily from mossy pedestals.

The hot midday air stirred in tiny wavelets. Somewhere not far off

church-bells were ringing, but no farmstead was in sight, and suddenly

they found themselves at diverging paths without knowing which

direction to take.

"A decision is called for," he said, and strained his ears for a moment

in the quarter whence the sound of church-bells came.

"I wish with all my heart," he added, "that there was a bell ringing

thus to guide me on my road in life." And he turned to the right.

Then he told her that he was standing figuratively at cross-roads. He

had been offered a post which, considering how young he was, ought not

to be scoffed at; but before accepting he was bound to consider whether

it would interfere with the progress of his life's work.

"It's a very good post, I suppose?" Lilly asked proudly. If he had been

appointed minister of the fine arts or Emperor of China she would not

have thought it in the least extraordinary. But he seemed disinclined

to say more.

"I would rather talk to you about it when it's settled one way or the

other," he replied. And she was perforce satisfied.

Red-tiled roofs appeared above the bushes, and the mirror-like surface

of a lake made a shining line against the horizon.

"Is that where we're going?" asked Lilly.

"It may be," he answered.

"Oh, don't be so mysterious," she scolded him in fun. "I've been very

good in not asking questions. But now I really must insist on your

telling me what your programme is."

"Yes, when we've got there," he laughed. "I know you, and don't want to

make you jealous before the right moment."

Could it be that there was another woman in the case?

Another woman? She did not betray her emotion, but as they walked on

she felt quite faint--partly from hunger and partly from mental

distress. The lake now lay before them in its early summer beauty, with

its greenish-grey girdle of reeds and rushes, and lights and shadows

flitting across it.

A little distance from the bank, on a shrubby slope, was the inn,

with "Logierhotel" printed on its signboard. It was one of those

orange-brick monstrosities built in the barbarous palatial-barn style.

But round it three or four ancient lime-trees spread their wide shady

branches, and they seated themselves on a white bench beneath them,

their mood harmonising with the scene.

To their left the lake stretched away into the hazy distance; on their

right, beyond the reeds and sedges of the shore, was a tiny village

with moss-green thatched roofs, and a stumpy, storm-beaten spire half

hidden among reeds and bushes. And close to them, not a hundred steps

from where they sat in the shade of the limes, there rose the wooded

slopes and mighty tree-tops of an ancestral park, from the interior of

which they caught the gleam of pillars, bridges, and white, vine-clad

balustrades. Very likely that was the forbidden garden, outside the

gates of which they were to stand to-day. How charming! how mysterious!

Anglers came up from the lake, scarlet of face and panting with thirst,

and these apparently were the only guests at the inn besides

themselves, for the Sunday stream of excursionists had not yet begun to

flow in the direction of this quiet nook.

The bill of fare which the landlady, equipped with all the wiles she

had acquired in the capital, smilingly handed to them presented a

dazzling abundance of good things. It was too bad that they all came

together. Lilly was asked to choose, but declined. Thoughts of the

strange woman who was certainly in the case depressed her. And she only

saw the laughing world, which threw its early summer gifts at their

feet so bountifully, through a mist of suppressed tears.

"Here we are at last," she said, sighing. "So you may as well confess:

what sort of woman is she?"

He laughed heartily. "So you've guessed, have you, that it _is_ a

woman?"

"If not, why should I be jealous?"

"I must admit you have every cause. I never set eyes on anything more

beautiful; the only pity is, that she is marble."

Oh! then that's all it was!

"I am and always shall be a silly," she said, laughing from relief, and

he kissed her hand in contrition.

While they were waiting for the fish which they had ordered, he told

her the story of how they came to be making their present pilgrimage.

He had one day, during his sojourn in Rome, seen in the window of an

art-dealer's shop the antique cast of a woman's head, much damaged, but

of such inspiring and sombre beauty that he went again and again day

after day to feast his eyes upon it. And one morning he found the owner

of the shop and a German gentleman standing in the doorway engaged in a

lively conversation, which, however, did not progress, as neither of

them understood what the other was talking about. He offered his

services as interpreter, and to his chagrin learned that the subject of

discussion was his favourite bust, which the German, a courteous and

cultivated country gentleman, wished to purchase. Setting aside his own

feelings, Konrad assisted in concluding the bargain on the Baron's

behalf, and had received an invitation from him to visit his house on

returning to Germany, in order that he might see the marble bust

adorning his park, and convince himself that its new surroundings were

not unworthy of its beauty.

"Oh! so the garden isn't forbidden after all?" cried Lilly, holding out

her arms ecstatically towards the green mysterious barriers. "We may

just walk straight in."

Konrad's face became thoughtful. "It's not so simple as that," he said,

"for how should I introduce you? You are not my wife.... Only between

ourselves you are my sister, and we are too young to trump up any other

plausible relationship."

A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Once more she felt despised

and rejected, ostracised from honourable society.

"You should have left me at home," she broke out. "I am only an

encumbrance to you."

"Ah, Lilly," he said, "what do I really care about marble busts? I

would rather stand behind the fence with you than have the run of the

whole park without you."

She caressed his hand, as it hung by his side, mollified and grateful.

And then at last the carp came.

* * * * *

Two hours later they were pacing along a seemingly endless wall, half

as high again as a man, with no break in it to peep through. "Not till

they came to the corner of the park where the wall ended did they find

a less impenetrable, high, moss-grown fence, which ran along to the

right. Now through the gaps they could get a view of the interior.

Venerable plane-branches formed arches over shady nooks, with groups of

oaks and limes between. The open grassy lawns were banked with

rhododendrons, the blossoms of which looked like violet eyes. On a

knoll in the background, a little round temple with Tuscan columns and

a shining green roof looked solemnly out of its dark surrounding

cypresses.

"She must be in there," Konrad said. But the little temple was empty,

so they prosecuted their search further afield. Not a single opening in

the foliage escaped their vigilance. Here and there statues gleamed, a

Ceres, a Satyr playing on his flute, and in a cypress thicket they

caught a glimpse of a shrine of the Virgin, but nowhere did they see a

sign of the strange, beautiful woman's head they were looking for.

They went on. A stream ran out from the park across the road, spanned

by a rough plank such as is to be met with in any country lane. But a

hundred paces away, inside the park, was another snow-white glistening

bridge, throwing its graceful arch boldly over the water.

"The Venetian bridges are like that," he said.

"Across such a bridge the gods entered Walhalla," she sighed.

They stood still and conjured up the joy of crossing that bridge. But

still they could not get on the track of the marble bust.

Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some

way from the lane. A row of Weymouth pines flanked the inner side of

the fence. The quaint village street was gay with Sunday festivities.

Dancing was going on to the accompaniment of piano and fiddles, and

somewhere bowls were rolling merrily; but they passed without taking

any notice of these things, for all their interest was still centred on

the forbidden garden. Every moment it drew them with more compelling

charms. Crumbling gate-posts were half-hidden among the village

lime-trees, and the palings were so rotten they hardly held together.

At this spot the foliage on the inner side was quite impenetrable to

the eye. Trunk was garlanded to trunk by growths of clematis and ivy,

and lilac and spiraea bushes were massed underneath. It looked as if the

master of the garden had, in addition to a stone wall, drawn a living

one around his demesne to hedge in himself and his family in happy

seclusion.

For a long time they walked on without being rewarded by another

glimpse of the inside of the park. Then unexpectedly they came to an

old three-cornered gateway which, with its vases and pillars, its

cracked belfry and lacework of latticed railings, was half buried in

blossoming acacias.

Here at last they got an uninterrupted view of the inside of the park.

A straight avenue of pines led in solemn dignity up to the castle, but

even at this favourable standpoint nothing of its architecture was

revealed to their gaze. Trees and bushes hid it from view. The only bit

of stone-work their eager eyes discerned was a flight of steps on the

columns of which marble nymphs raised aloft their snow-white wings.

"Isn't that lovely?" Lilly murmured with a sigh; and thrusting her face

through the iron bars, she whimpered and begged playfully to be let in.

"That is exactly how I stood, outside the gate at Ravello," he said.

"Now you know what it is like."

As he said this, it struck her that the sensation of being shut out

somewhere was familiar to her too. She knew as well as he did what it

was like. But where was it that cold iron had pressed her cheeks

before?

Ah! now she recollected. Had she not many a time stood without the

latticed door which barred the staircase to the private part of

Liebert & Dehnicke's warehouse? That pretentious, proud, forbidding

laurel-flanked ascent, which her unholy feet might never tread?

It, too, was a forbidden garden. Forbidden gardens abounded everywhere,

it seemed!

"I think we had better give it up," she said softly; "it only makes our

hearts ache."

So hand-in-hand they wandered back along the path they had come, close

to the fence, and talked persistently of other things. And yet their

eyes still lingered longingly in the neighbourhood of the park, and the

aspiration they both felt, but did not express for fear of hinting

reproaches, gilded everything with a fairy-tale glamour.

* * * * *

Evening came. Violet mists hung over the meadows, and the

copper-coloured trunks of the pines glowed like torches. The deeper the

setting sun sank into the reeds and rushes, the more the lake lost its

cool, blue, silvery sheen, and took on a network of ruddy gold. It

looked now as if it bore on its face the sparkling fulfilment of all

earthly promises.

Neither of them could tolerate being on shore any longer.

A boat lay at anchor by the hotel's bathing pavilion, where in the cool

of the evening happy bathers were splashing, and they hired it for a

mere song. Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the stern.

All kinds of water-flowers rose with a swish lightly to the surface as

the boat cut through a carpet of sedges. Mingled with the young green

of the sprouting reeds were the brown battered remnants of last year's

growth; stately bulrushes bordered the banks, and the water flag

planted her golden tents between them. Like huge dense walls of purple,

the park's wealth of timber rose high against the sky.

When Lilly pointed this out, Konrad shook his head and said: "It's no

good thinking any more about it." But, nevertheless, he kept casting

glances in that direction.

Lilly had scarcely ever been in a boat, and soon gave up steering as a

bad job. She spread her shawl at the bottom of the boat and made

herself a comfortable soft nest, into which she retired.

Crouched at Konrad's feet, she lay there with her back against the seat

in the stern. And thus, her eyes dreamily fixed on blue space, she

began to build castles in the air about her future, devising plans by

which, with a bound, she was to swing herself back into the midst of

respectability.

She would give music lessons--she was good enough for beginners--and

with the proceeds prepare herself for the stage, for which she had a

decided talent.... Or perhaps it would be wiser to go in for science,

to train her mind so that it might not lag behind his. She must be

intellectual enough to deserve his friendship so long as he desired her

to be his friend. Or--so that no harm should happen to anyone else--she

would go abroad and teach German, and come back a new and regenerated

woman at his summons. Or ... Ah! what? Or ... or ... lie and dream, and

drain the happiness of the hour to the dregs. Exposure and death--one

must entail the other--would come time enough....

The sun went down, melting into a blood-red haze. Nearness and distance

were now veiled in violet mists. The whole globe seemed to be diluted

into light and air, the reeds alone, with their slender black stems

latticing the evening afterglow, retained an earthly corporeal form.

The foliage of the park gradually melted into a dark undefined mass.

More than ever did it now seem to be a forbidden garden, filled with

thrills and mysteries, sinking for ever into the unattainable.

As the boat glided along the edge of the reeds, it suddenly drifted

near a blue bay, which cut like a wedge into the land on the park side,

so far in that it was impossible to see where it ended. For a moment

Konrad rested on his oars motionless, then he sprang to his feet with a

cry of delight.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You remember we saw a stream flowing out of the park on the village

side?"

"Of course I do."

"It must have flowed in somewhere, mustn't it?"

"Why, yes."

He pointed with his hand to the gleaming bay's narrowing tip.

"There's the place!"

"And do you really think that at last we have ..." She dared not

suggest it.

"If we like, we can in this boat traverse the whole unexplored region

by water."

In her childlike jubilation she jumped up with an exclamation, and

simply fell on his neck as if it was a natural thing to do, and they

had never made any platonic vows.

Slowly the boat drifted on with the current--between meadows lined with

weeping willows, where the evening mist hung like white scarves.

Peasants' cottages stood near, with fishing-nets spread out over the

fences. Then, at a bend in the stream, a dark gateway of foliage opened

like a huge vault in front of them.

"Oh, goodness!" cried Lilly.

"Hush!" he whispered, in pretended awe. "Now we must be as quiet as

mice, or we shall get turned out for trespassing, after all."

And the dip of his oars became so stealthy that it might have been

taken for the splash of a leaping fish.

Thus they rowed under the triumphal arch of leaves which thickly

interlaced overhead. It was pitch dark close around them, though here

and there from the right bank came an occasional gleam of summer

twilight. Lamplights, too, twinkled in the distance, and they could

catch the hum of voices, the clink of glasses, and now and then a stray

chord struck on the piano. The foliage parted, and an unimpeded view of

the castle lay before them. It was a wide, two-storeyed, box-like

structure, its ponderous simplicity dating from a period when the

grandees of Brandenburg still possessed little sense of the artistic.

But on the stone steps gleamed the marble nymphs that had greeted them

in the afternoon, and beyond their white bodies one saw on the terrace

itself a long table, round which was gathered, in the flickering

lamplight, a chattering, laughing party, passing gaily with song and

wine the intoxicating summer evening.

"And he might be sitting there too," thought Lilly, "if I were not

hanging like a millstone about his neck," and she felt almost as if she

must apologise to him.

They drifted quickly by on the current, and like the vision of a moment

the banquet vanished from their sight. They passed the brightly lighted

windows of the castle kitchen and offices, where servants flitted to

and fro like ministering spirits, and glided again into silence and

darkness. To their right, at the back of the house with its countless

windows, was a grass plot bordered with old statues and ivy-draped

urns; on their left everything was plunged in shadow. Here was an

avenue of century-old limes running along the bank of the stream, every

ray of light extinguished in its dark depths.

Maybe somewhere near here stood the marble head they longed to find.

Lilly's eyes searched every corner furtively, as if she scrupled to

deprive him of the joy of discovery.

The arched bridge, which they had admired earlier in the day, now

gleamed at them again out of the dusk. It evidently did not lead to

Walhalla, but to an islet of spiraea and hemp bushes, under the branches

of which a pair of swans were roosting. At the sound of the oars they

awoke, and with flapping wings pursued the boat, opening their beaks

for bread.

"Swans! the one touch that was wanted to make everything perfect!"

Lilly exclaimed jubilantly. "I wish I had some crumbs to give them."

She turned her head to look after the swans, and her neck rested

against his knees.

"May I stay like this?" she asked a little nervously.

"Yes, if it's comfortable," he answered; and there was a caressing

yielding in his tone that sent a warm glow through her limbs.

She took off her hat, not to crush it, and laid it on the seat in the

stern. Now her head was free to lean too against him lightly, and in

sweet anxiety she felt his hand rest for a moment tenderly on her hair.

Yet he was silent and preoccupied, as if some burden were weighing on

his mind, which he could not throw off. And again she felt as she had

often felt before, as if a veil hung between him and herself--a veil

that seldom lifted, and obscured from her the true characteristics of

his nature, much as she clung to him in loving intimacy.

Oh, if only he would be merry!

The park came to an end, and the red after-glow, no longer hidden by

walls of foliage, flamed in full glory over them. The spell threatened

to be broken. The world of magic became almost ordinary.

"Come, let us turn round," she begged softly.

And they turned the boat's head and rowed again into the dreamy bliss

of semi-darkness.

But now he had to strike out with a will, because they were rowing

against the current, and he could not prevent his oars from splashing

audibly in the water.

"We shan't get off. They will catch us now!" he said.

"Oh, but they are far too happy," she replied, "to be down on other

happy people."

"Yes, it looks almost like an enchanted castle; but--who knows? it may

be a snare and a delusion."

"Why should it be?"

"Ah, God knows!... Bleeding wounds can be hidden under flowers, and the

beauty with which a man may surround himself is often deceptive."

This scepticism displeased her.

"They must be happy!" she cried; "they who have given us so much to-day

must have enough for themselves too."

"It, doesn't follow, darling," he answered. "It's possible to make a

rich man of a beggar, and to be as poor as a church mouse one's self."

"Are we beggars, then?" she asked, raising herself gently up to him.

"No, by Jove! we are not beggars;" and he drew a deep breath.

There was a silence, and then it seemed as if something warm and damp

was falling on her forehead.

He was actually crying--crying for joy!

Did she deserve it? She, Lilly Czepanek, who ... And to hide her own

tears she withdrew into herself. It was more than she could bear. She

would have liked to sob and cry and kiss his hands, but instead she was

obliged to clench her hands, and stuff her gloves between her teeth so

that he should not notice her agitation. It was like an intervention of

Providence that, as they once more drifted close by the castle, the

sound of a woman's voice singing should fall on their ears.

What was the song? Ah! out of "Tristan." She had never heard it in the

theatre, but she was sure it could be nothing but "Tristan."

She raised her head interrogatively, and Konrad, stooping, whispered in

her ear, "Isolde's 'Liebestod.'" He quickly ran the boat ashore at the

darkest spot on the bank, for not a note must be lost. On the terrace

above, laughter and chatter were silenced. Only the nightingale in the

lime-boughs was undisturbed, and mingled its sweet rhapsody with the

exultant death-agony of the woman who, more than any other creation of

God or man, teaches us that the will not to be is the most triumphant

manifestation of being.

Lilly trembled from head to foot. She stretched her hands behind her to

reach his. She could not help holding on to him. If she had not held on

to him she must have sunk into space. Not till she felt his warm

fingers between hers did she become calmer.

The last note died away; the grand arpeggios of the _Nachspiel_ melted

into silence. There was no clapping or applause of any kind. That

lively party up there on the terrace were evidently impressed, and

realised what was due to the singer.

Konrad, with a silent pressure, let go her hands and went back to the

oars. She did not demur. The forbidden garden vanished, vanished

utterly.

The dusk of early night now lay on the meadows. Not a sound was to be

heard far or near. Yet the world seemed to echo with the melody of harp

and the sound of song.

"And we've never seen your marble beauty," murmured Lilly, stroking his

knees. "Yet I keep thinking that was _her_ voice."

"And I, too," he burst out passionately. "She wasn't singing for those

good people up there at all, but for us--for us alone."

"Ah! I wish I could sing it like her!"

"Try, at any rate."

She sang a few passages here and there. But she could not connect them,

and, what was more, something else rose and forced its way imperiously

into her memory.

With that grandest and most exquisite inspiration of the great master

mingled, unbidden, her own poor "Song of Songs." And she sang out into

the profound silence:

"Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou

feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for

why should I be as one that turneth aside ..."

She paused.

"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."

"That is my 'Song of Songs,'" she replied, drawing a deep breath.

Never before had she mentioned its name to a living soul.

"_Your_ 'Song of Song'?" he asked in astonishment.

And what lay before her was as clear as daylight; she would perhaps

never have such a chance again. This was the moment to lay bare the

secret of her youth to him.

"Put down the oars and listen, I am going to confide something to you.

You may think it quite silly and ridiculous, but to me it has always

been sacred."

Speechless, he shipped his oars,

"You must come and sit beside me, so that I can see your face."

His eye swept the water with a searching glance. The boat was again

drifting serenely on the mirror-like bosom of the lake, which seemed to

have gathered on its ripples all the throbbing blue and purple shadows

of the summer night. There was not the slightest sign of danger ahead,

so he obediently did as she wished.

They crouched close together at the bottom of the little craft, with

their heads propped against the seat that Konrad had occupied for so

long, and she told her story. She related how the legacy her poor

runaway father had left behind exercised a powerful influence on her at

all periods in her life.... If the years of her girlhood had been full

of it, later it even attained a higher and more mysterious

significance. It became, as it were, a symbol of all her efforts and

actions. When her life became a whirl of useless frivolity then it was

silent--sometimes for years together--but whenever her soul had an

uplifting, whenever her pursuits and ideals accorded, then it came to

life again. It outsang all that was low and unlovely in the world. From

disgrace and wickedness outwardly it had not been able to protect her

altogether, but it had at least kept her free within, and susceptible

to the advent of one for whom she had unconsciously waited. And now

that this one of all others had really come, she felt that the hour of

fulfilment, both for herself and for her "Song of Songs," had sounded.

Now it seemed that it must go forth into all the world to touch and

conquer every heart and to bring its creator and herself glory and

redemption.

So she talked herself into such a state of exalted enthusiasm that she

became unmindful of time and place, and everything but the one thought

that she still had more of what was best and purest within her to lay

at his feet. But she had said as much as she could say, more than she

could ever have believed she would confide to any human being, more

than till this hour she had known of herself. He now held her noblest,

truest self in the hollow of his hand, to do with it what he listed.

All that was lax and impure, all that had brought ruin into her heart

and life, was gone. She need no longer trouble herself about it.

While she had been telling him this wonderful tale, she would have

liked to see what effect it had upon him, but had not trusted herself

to glance at his face. Now, however, that it was finished, she ventured

to turn in his direction, and became aware that his eye rested on her

with a curiously confused and wild expression, such as she had never

noticed in him before; for, as a rule, he kept his emotions at a

distance with, as it were, fisticuffs. Her heart began to beat loudly,

and the unrest of expectation to which she could give no name became so

strong that she nearly ran to the other end of the boat to control it

and prevent herself suffocating.

Then she saw him shut his eyes and throw his head back against the

sharp edge of the seat. "You will hurt yourself," she whispered; and,

instead of fleeing from him as she wanted to do, she placed her arm to

serve as a cushion between his neck and the seat.

Now he lay on her breast and breathed heavily.

"Shall I sing you some more out of it?" she asked, bending over him

tenderly.

"Yes, yes, please," he murmured.

And she sang, in a half-coaxing voice, as if she were singing

lullabies, all those arias which, since the day her poor mother's mind

had sunk into eternal night, had never been heard by any human ear.

"The lily of the valleys" and "The rose of Sharon" she sang, and that

other lyric in which all the sounds and magic of spring were mingled:

"For, lo, the winter is past ... the flowers appear

on the earth ... and the voice of the turtle is heard in our

land."

So she went on singing, more and more. When she sometimes paused and

asked if he had heard enough, he only shook his head and pressed closer

to his soft pillow.

Once she glanced round and saw that they were moored in the reeds, and

that it was now completely night. But why should she mind that? Somehow

or other they would manage to get home.

She was drawing to the end. There were only "Set me as a seal upon

thine heart," "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's

daughter," to come; and, above all, the verse which began with words so

singularly appropriate to this day's adventures: "Come, my beloved, let

us go forth into the field." But when she came to the lines:

"Let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender

grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will

I give thee ..."

her breath failed her and she could not go on.

"Why have you stopped singing?" she heard him ask.

There was a buzzing of bees and a ringing of bells in her ears.

"Be brave!" a voice shouted within her; "be brave, or you will lose him

for ever."

But at that moment she felt two trembling lips seeking hers, and then

it was all over with thoughts of being brave.

* * * * *

Midnight was long past when the boat at last put in to the shore. The

bathing pavilion was dark and deserted, but in the hotel lights still

glimmered.

In extreme trepidation they rang the bell.

"There's always a room ready here for belated young married couples,"

said the deferential, smiling landlady reassuringly.

CHAPTER XVI

It would be incorrect to say that no lucky star shone on Lilly's love

at this stage of its development. In the first place, Adele proved, in

her born uncommunicativeness and passionate partiality for the handsome

"friend" of her mistress, a valuable ally. Secondly, Richard, who on

the memorable Sunday had been obliged to go off and join his mother at

Harzburg, remained away not for a day only, but for a whole week;

thirdly, when he visited her on his return, he was so full of his own

affairs that he had no eyes for her guiltily embarrassed reception of

him.

He affected a lofty and superior air, the nasal drawl of his

cavalry-officer days, and wore a monocle dangling over his navy-blue

silk waistcoat. Judging from which, and such symptoms as his head

inclining to an extreme angle on his left shoulder and his eyes

blinking slyly, it might have been gathered that instead of joining his

mother dutifully, he too had been on a spree _a deux_ in the country on

his own account.

This, however, proved an erroneous supposition. He had not only been

actually at Harzburg till the evening before, but he had to go back

there at once for a longer stay--for a month, at least.

"What's the matter with you?" he exclaimed; for Lilly, in a seventh

heaven of delight at the news, fell back in her chair almost swooning.

It was true that she immediately scrambled up again and would not own

to anything unusual in her behaviour; but he insisted on piling

cushions at her back, and would not allow her to risk the exertion of

pouring out tea for him. His every act was eloquent of a guilty

conscience.

"A summer holiday together is out of the question for us," he said,

trying to return to his lofty manner. "And not only that, we have

become much too dependent on each other. It will be well for both of us

to go our own gait for a bit, and best for all parties concerned. In

fact, it's absolutely necessary in view of coming circumstances."

This speech sounded as familiar to Lilly as an old tune in music. She

knew exactly what was coming.

"Confess," she said, smiling. "What's on the cards now?"

And then he came out with it, stuttering and drawling out his words. An

American, born of German parents, with millions of dollars, of

irreproachable style, extremely _chic_, approved by his mother, and her

own parents not averse, and she herself to all appearances agreeable.

If he didn't do it now, he never would.

"I congratulate you," Lilly said, tapping his hand playfully. He stared

at her with astonished and somewhat reproachful eyes.

"Is that all you've got to say to it?" he asked.

"What else should I say?"

"You can take it so coolly? Are you so utterly without feeling that the

thought of parting from your old friend doesn't affect you in the

least? I thought you were a little more womanly and sympathetic; I must

say I did."

"Please recollect," she said, "that every time that you have talked of

marrying you have made the same reproach when I have said I have no

desire to stand in your way. You talk as if it was _I_ who was showing

_you_ the door, instead of its being the other way about."

Then he flared up. "What expressions you use! How can you possibly tell

what I am going through--the wrestling and struggles I have with

myself? How many nights do you think I haven't slept a wink for

wondering what is to become of you? But you go on as if it had nothing

on earth to do with you. You are, in fact, as frivolous and heartless

as you can be; so now you know my opinion of you."

At his words, delightful visions of her freedom danced before her eyes,

glowing nights given up to uninterrupted love, days of sweet

anticipatory dreams. Anything that might happen afterwards seemed as

far off as the end of the world. She listened to the rest of his

harangue with an absent, indulgent smile.

"If _you_ don't see there's anything to worry about in your future," he

wound up, "that's all the more reason why I should take it into

consideration. I have to provide for you, and mamma agrees that it's my

duty."

The word "mamma" made her pull herself together.

Since the terrible scene in the counting-house, her name by mutual

consent had been left out of their conversations. They had substituted

for it evasions which each had understood and appreciated in the other.

Now, without warning, "mamma," the symbol as it were of all that was

disgraceful and degrading in her existence, flamed before her eyes.

"Any scheme that _she_ has a finger in," Lilly cried, "must humiliate

me to the dust. I tell you both straight that you had better be

careful. If you make any proposals to me about an allowance of money, I

shall consider it a bitter insult and never forgive you."

He paced the room, wringing his hands. "There you are, talking nonsense

again! Don't you see that the world would cry shame on me if I turned

you off with nothing? And, apart from that, what do you think would

become of you?... You'd be on the streets. Woman, do you realise that?"

With sublime indifference, she ignored both him and his heroic zeal on

her behalf.

"I can think of other ways," she said, half to herself.

Before her rose a life full of struggle and strenuous triumphs, a

tossing hither and thither through storms and hardships, and a jubilant

victory as she entered at his side into the society of those who were

as good and steadfast as _he_ was. But that final consummation could

only come later--much, much later.

Richard interpreted her differently. His eyes were fixed on her

suspiciously. He paused in front of her and asked, with a slight

shudder, "I say, are you going ... to act like a fool and injure

yourself?"

She burst out laughing. Already he evidently pictured her beautiful

corpse being dragged out of the water and laid out.

"No, I am not going to commit suicide ... at least, certainly not on

your account; and, if I wanted to, I would manage it with such good

taste that you would not be inconvenienced or have anything to reproach

yourself with."

"You can't mean that you think you'll marry!" he rejoined, still

unconvinced. "What decent fellow would marry you after you've lived

with me for four years?"

"There are other ways," Lilly repeated obstinately.

He seemed relieved, but went on: "I don't half like leaving you here to

mope alone. You'll get depressed, and then you'll be nasty to me. What

do you say to having a little change somewhere? You might go to Ahlbeck

or Screiberhau, or some strait-laced place like that."

Only by a slight quiver of the eyelids did she betray the scornful

laughter that convulsed her inwardly.

"You know I hate making acquaintances," she answered lightly; "and in

the midst of people who don't want me I feel doubly alone."

He relapsed into frowning meditation.

"Well, then," he hesitated, and drawled out his words as people do who

are afraid of their own boldness, "then ... perhaps the best thing

would be for you to come ... somewhere near."

"Near where?"

"Don't pretend you don't know what I mean."

"I do know, but I can hardly believe my ears."

"What is there so wonderful in it?" he growled. "I could look after you

sometimes, and have a chat about one thing and another."

"And show me her, I suppose, to get my opinion and my blessing?"

"Well, what if I did? You and I have consulted each other about

everything we have done for years.... I cannot for the life of me see

why it should be so monstrous in this case."

She felt something of patronising pity for him. She patted his hand and

said:

"I don't think, my dear boy, that I am quite the right person to assist

in your courtship."

"Good Lord! What next? You talk quite theatrically to-day. You are

evidently suffering from swelled head. Yes, swelled head, I say! You

are trying to get a rise out of me, and I don't like it, just now

especially."

She laughed and stretched herself. How petty it all was, and how

ridiculous! How little she cared! And why should she care?

Alone--to be alone with him. That was the only thing that mattered in

the whole world.

"You would rather not, then?"

She silently shook her head.

"Very well," he said, and looked as if he were going to leave her in

anger; but he hadn't the strength of mind, "Lilly."

"Yes?"

"I should like to prevent any future misunderstandings between us. You

seem to think that, this time too, it's all a joke."

"Not at all, Richard. I wish you every happiness. Only, with the best

intentions, I cannot be of much use to you in this matter."

"Of use to me! Who was saying anything about your being of use to me?

Mamma is right! She says if I don't pull it off this time I never

shall. So, understand once for all, in a few weeks all will be over

between us."

She nearly said, "So much the better"; but seeing that there were tears

in the corners of his eyes she refrained, for she didn't wish to hurt

him.

Four years of life spent together lay behind them. He was so dependent

on her for sympathy that she could not let him go without a word of

advice and encouragement. She spoke to him as if he were a child, said

that his mother was right, praised his scheme, and enumerated the many

good reasons why it ought to come about; and in order to put his mind

at ease with regard to her own complacent attitude, she reminded him

that it had always been her highest ambition that he should feel free

to do as he liked. She also assured him that to the end of her life she

would retain her sentiments of friendship towards him. And in the end

they both shed tears at parting.

CHAPTER XVII

Now the way was clear, now the new life might be consecrated with

rejoicing and thanksgiving. July came and scorched the deserted

streets. Those who remained in the aristocratic West-end, with no

employer to ply the lash, spent dreamy days behind closed shutters, and

wandered between bedroom and bath.

Lilly did not come to life till evening, when the town breathed out the

heat that it had absorbed during the day in a redhot glow, when dusty

clouds rolled over the yellow surface of the canal, and behind the

parched and prematurely faded chestnuts the red furnace of the sky

melted into the reflected lights of the street-lamps.

Then at Konrad's side she strolled through the blue twilight of the

streets, using her eyes so as to escape observation from acquaintances

who might chance to be about.

They met worthy, middle-class families on their way to the gardens.

Lovers joined each other at appointed street corners. And between these

two extremes was the floating element of those detached beings who are

alone and solitary in crowds, and who yearn to steal from laughing

Chance what they have prayed for in vain from sterner gods. A sultry

vapour of secret desires hung over the exhausted city, in which

conventional reserve and genuine sentiment flickered up and were

extinguished as if they had never been.

How long ago seemed the days when she herself had sauntered around,

hoping for fate to come her way, yet not daring to compel it. And, with

a shudder at the thought of the dangers she had escaped, she clung

closer to Konrad's protecting arm.

They always succeeded in finding some private nook after their own

heart to dine in, where a gipsy band scraped their fiddles wildly, or

Tyrolese played their zithers, or the landlord himself, a musician who

had known better days, acted as conductor of an orchestra. In ivy-clad

arbours, where the hot breeze stirred the dust on the evergreens in

tubs, they could pass the evening hours together without fear of

discovery. In the meantime a change had come over their intercourse.

There were still instructive and erudite harangues on every conceivable

subject, and listening attentively she hung on his lips with as much

eagerness as ever, but her holy zeal for scientific studies had

evaporated.

That God did not exist, that Fra Filippo Lippi was a scoundrel, that a

line gone mad should be consigned to an asylum even if it was modern of

the modern, that baroque art had its redeeming qualities--all this and

much else that was interesting Lilly had heard many times, but it no

longer provoked argument.

Often they looked long and silently into each other's eyes with a

tender smile of yearning, as if that were the most eloquent language in

which they could converse. Often too his thoughts wandered away on

their own solitary excursions, and only came back to her under

coercion. Then she was sad and jealous, and begged to go home.

Not till he was pillowed in her arms, lying close to her heart, was she

content. The heat of the day had baked the walls through. The curtains

were oppressive, and through the blinds a kind of desert cyclone blew;

but they took no notice, the sultriness suited their mood.

They dreaded falling asleep as a misfortune, which shamefully

abbreviated the hours of their being together, and so they promised

that the one who kept awake longer was to rouse the other.

It was she who always kept awake longer; for he was exhausted by the

day's work. For him there was no prospect of another doze after

breakfast in bed, or of a siesta on the couch as alleviation from the

midday heat. And as he lay with tired limbs outstretched, twitching

like a noble hound's after a day's sport, she had not the heart to keep

her promise. Then she would sit up beside him, and in the light cast

from the pink-shaded, dimly burning lamp gaze at him hour after hour

without tiring.

There was always something in his face to study. The frown of wrath, or

rather of power, between his brows was more sharply defined than it

used to be, and still frightened her a little. The muscles in his

temples were never at rest, and the firm, curved upper lip trembled at

the corners as if he were smiling at her in his sleep. He had become

thin. In the haggard hollows of his cheeks were shadows spreading

towards the jaws which they darkened, and there was a line of suffering

about his nostrils. He was like a young Christ, made to be worshipped.

Often as she gazed at him she thought, "If I killed him at this

moment--plunged a hat-pin into his heart--then he would belong to me

entirely, now and always."

Then she would grope on his left side for his heart, lay the hollow of

her hand against it, and fancy that she held it fast in her power, and

with his heart, his love for her, and need never more relinquish

either.

Once while she stooped over him, contemplating him thus earnestly, she

woke him, and he looked at her in alarm, and, still half-asleep, asked:

"What is the matter? Have I hurt you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Your eyes have such a curious expression, almost as if you were angry

with me."

She made a vow that she would not gaze at him any more, but she could

not help herself, and stared at him as much as ever. She loved him so

dearly.

It was terrible when a sudden anxiety possessed her that she might lose

him. Many a night this feeling of fear came over her with such cruel

realism that she could hardly resist the impulse to rave and scream and

tear her hair out by the roots. But she must not wake him, so she crept

gently closer to his side, put one arm behind his back, and flinging

the other across his breast, laid her head under his shoulder, and

clung to him so tightly that she felt almost as if she were growing

into a limb of his body.

Thus she became by degrees calmer, and could have a good cry, or give

herself up to fancying how infinitely happy she would make him.

Never since time began would a son of Adam have been so happy. She

would wrap him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick that no rude

strokes of fate could penetrate it. She would be his Egeria and inspire

his muse; with an invisible aureole surrounding her head she would

stimulate and encourage him to noble undertakings and great

achievements; she would tend him with the holy devotion of a sister of

mercy.... She would attend cookery classes, learn laundry-work and

dressmaking. No, it would be better for her to go to University

lectures, study science and music, and a hundred other useful things,

so that he should never find her a dull companion, or a useless

helpmate.

For all this, she must of course be free and get rid of Richard. She

thought a great deal about him, too; invariably without bitterness or

resentment. Long ago he had been forgiven for setting her feet on the

downward path.

"Everyone has his own standard of right," Konrad was wont to say. And,

after all, to Richard she once owed her salvation.

The new life was to begin publicly as well as privately, with his

engagement, which he wrote was on the eve of taking place. But she

still felt hardly equal to a crisis. She shuddered at the thought of

all the lies that would have to be told to Konrad as soon as a change

took place in her household.

She preferred to avoid as long as possible the inevitable hardships

lying before her in the future. Only at night, when she lay on the

sleeping man's breast, did she work herself up into an ecstasy of

sufficient rapture to look forward to poverty and privations shared

with him as a royal inheritance of purple and gold. At three o'clock in

the morning, when the lamps outside were extinguished one by one, and

the reflection of the first grey shadows of cold dawn lay on the

ceiling, she was bound in honour to wake him.

He must not meet other residents in the house on account of his own

reputation and hers.

As he dressed, he fumbled, half-asleep, among the ivory coroneted

brushes, and managed to complete a hasty toilette in time to reach the

nearest Viennese cafe as soon as it opened for a pick-me-up in the

shape of a black coffee.

For from Lilly's arms he insisted on going straight to his desk. She

could not talk him out of this insane proceeding. It was an atonement

that the night's pleasure demanded from him, and so he would sit

brooding among his books and papers till noon, often unable to write a

line from fatigue.

She, on the other hand, sank into a profound slumber, from which she

was awakened about ten o'clock by the entry of Adele, smiling

approvingly, with the breakfast-tray.

Every other night she allowed him to devote to his work. She had no

desire to sap his young life's blood. He made her anxious enough as it

was. She did not like his hectic colour, nor the glitter in his eye. It

disquieted her to see the abrupt changes in his mood from uproarious

gaiety to absent-minded self-absorption.

All this should be altered when--what?

Oh! why bother about plans? Why not go on just as she was--loving

him and making him happy? She passed her days in half-joyous,

half-terrified dreams. She now had lost her zest and delight in mental

exertion. There were other things that seemed more important than

cultivating her intellect--the abject desire to be ever pleasing to his

eyes, to hand him with unfailing regularity the intoxicating draught

that held him in her toils. Hitherto she had accepted her personal

charms as a matter of course, and valued them little more than anything

else that was not seen and of no use. Now the cult of her body became a

mania, for she so dreaded falling short of the ideal of her that she

knew he had engraved on his heart. The desire to be beautiful, and the

necessity of remaining beautiful, drove her to adopt methods which she

had hitherto disdained. She took as much pains with herself as a woman

in a harem. She perfumed her baths, tinted her nails, lengthened her

eyebrows, powdered her arms and shoulders, and continually fancied she

saw blemishes which needed new cosmetics to remove.

Then she was overtaken by a dread that all this care might only convert

her appearance into that of a beautiful professional harlot. For this

reason she left off wearing jewellery, and dressed more quietly than a

parson's wife. Only the eye of a connoisseur could detect the amount of

artistic ingenuity that her plain garb concealed.

Most of all when she was alone did jealousy occupy her thoughts. Not

that she imagined he had anything to do with other women. He was far

too noble to be suspected of that. But she was jealous of all that he

did, and of all his concerns. It was torture to her to think of his

writing-table. Every hour not spent in her society seemed like

treachery to their love, and she cherished an hostility towards his

friends such as she could never have believed herself capable of.

Often, on the nights that he spent apart from her, she would keep watch

on his rooms. She would stand opposite the house and look across the

street and up at the windows, much as she had once done in the Alte

Jakobstrasse. If the lamp was burning in his window she was content,

but if she saw him going out or coming in she did not close her eyes

all night.

He lived not far away, on the third floor of a Karlsbad lodging-house.

It was long before he would allow her to visit him there. Next door to

him, he had told her, was an invalid who needed the utmost care; any

excitement caused by the sound of strange voices might prove fatal to

her. When he spoke of the invalid his eyes avoided meeting hers, and

she thought there were a hundred chances to one that he was keeping

some secret from her.

When, however, after her persistent entreaties, he admitted her one

afternoon she found nothing to confirm her suspicion. She was only

besought to speak in a low tone, and she had known she must do this

beforehand. His room was little more than a student's den. It was

lofty, with two windows, but cheaply furnished--with no sofa and no

carpet. On the walls hung rare engravings, and the usual pier-glass was

displaced by a valuable copy of the "Madonna de Foligno," which looked

down with sublime serenity on the barren wastes of northern

Philistinism. Heaps of books were ranged on long low shelves, while

others were simply piled on the floor in different corners of the room,

covered with pieces of American cloth to keep them from the dust.