"Then you shouldn't have brought me here at all," said Lilly, feeling

insulted; and she turned back.

He poured forth excuses, grew hoarse with excitement, and coughed and

choked. Then he led her back over the resplendent mosaic of the yard to

the gateway with its imitation marble columns, through which a chilly

draught was blowing.

"You will catch a cold," said Lilly to hasten her departure.

His face lighted up with a brilliant idea.

"Besides, you know," he said, "the store room wasn't heated."

"You should have thought of that sooner," rejoined Lilly, holding out

her hand with a smile of partial reconciliation. She was really sorry

for him in his helpless solicitude.

Nevertheless she continued to feel hurt. And a bit disturbed. The day

she had been looking forward to so happily for months had ended in a

discord.

And no matter how much she pressed him later, Mr. Dehnicke refused to

tell her what mystery lay concealed in his store room.

CHAPTER VII

Lilly began to ail. She suffered from headaches, heart-burn, lassitude,

insomnia and occasional attacks of vertigo.

The physician, called in at Mr. Dehnicke's insistence, was one of those

extremely busy men who make the rounds of numberless houses a day. First

he took a good look at the apartment--a setting he seemed to know--then,

upon a cursory examination, prescribed social distractions, walks, and

iron, much iron.

Social distractions had to be dispensed with; there was no opportunity

for them. Taking walks was not so easy either. Lilly did not care to

stroll about alone, and Mr. Dehnicke, the only person to accompany her,

preferred not to be seen on the street with her too frequently. In

order, he said, not to compromise her, though in all likelihood the

truth was, he feared becoming conspicuous by appearing in public with

that exotic, flowerlike beauty.

For no matter what happened, no matter that trouble, want and all sorts

of humiliations swept over her, no matter that boredom and displeasure

with herself crushed her spirits, Lilly's appearance never lost thereby.

On the contrary, the delicate milky whiteness of her cheeks, which

before had been a golden brown, lent her a new, soft charm. The great,

narrow, long-lashed eyes with the heavily drooping lids--those

improbable Lilly eyes--now had a weary, languishing brilliance, as if

they veiled all the painful riddles of the universe. Moreover, the last

year had given back to her the slim, regal figure of her maiden days and

taken away the womanly peacefulness it had acquired at Lischnitz. No

wonder that many a head turned after her and many an appreciative,

envious glance was sent askance at her companion, who was considerably

shorter than she.

Mr. Dehnicke was aware of all this, and being a staid, respectable

business man, and not wishing to be the object of gossip, he preferred

to stay indoors with her.

About the middle of February she received an invitation by mail from Mr.

Kellermann, whom she had not seen for several months.

GREAT CARNIVAL

KELLERMANN STUDIO

Magic Lantern Show, Flirtation, Opportunity for Crimes

Passionels, Cream Kisses, and other Attractions

That seemed like distraction enough, and Mr. Dehnicke, who, it happened,

had also been invited, was so energetic in his persuasions that he

finally conquered her timidity and induced her to go.

But when the day for the carnival came Lilly was seized by a great dread

of it, and at the last moment felt like withdrawing from her engagement.

She saw herself running the gauntlet of a gaping crowd of sardonic

sneerers, who whispered the story of her rise and fall behind her back.

She saw herself neglected and avoided, the object of derisive side

glances. She passed through all the tortures of the declassees, who must

drag through life with the mark of the sinner caught in the act branded

on their brows.

She chose the most beautiful of her Dresden dresses, which in the two

years had grown to be the very height of fashion. It was a white Empire

gown embroidered with gold vines. She arranged a narrow bracelet in her

hair like a diadem, and loosely laid over her head an oriental veil shot

with threads of gold. In case of need it would serve to conceal the

bareness of her bosom. When she had completed her toilet, she seemed to

herself so repulsive and conspicuous that this alone was sufficient

ground for not showing herself.

She did not venture to cherish a faint hope until her friend came to

fetch her. He saw her, and held on to the door knob, uttering a slight

cry of astonishment.

"Am I all right?" she asked with a diffident laugh, which entreated

encouragement.

Instead of replying he ran up and down the room breathing heavily and

choking over inarticulate words--a mute language which Lilly immediately

understood.

While sitting beside him in the coupe, she succumbed to another attack

of dread.

"You will stay right next to me, won't you?" she implored. "You won't

leave me, and you won't let a stranger speak to me, will you?"

He promised all she wanted.

Four flights up--a way she well knew.

The landing outside Mr. Kellermann's door was filled with clothes-racks,

on which awe-inspiring furs and humiliating lace mantles hung.

She clung to his arm.

Now to her ruin!

The large anteroom, into which not a single ray of light penetrated in

the daytime, and which Mr. Kellermann used as a kitchen, bedroom and

dining-room, had been converted into a sort of fairy forest.

Vari-coloured Chinese lanterns swung on the branches of pine trees, and

in their dim red glow several couples sat smiling and whispering on

narrow bamboo benches. They were so absorbed in themselves that they

paid little heed to the new arrivals.

All the more animated was Lilly's reception in the studio, which was

filled with a bright, glittering mass of humanity. A general "ah," then

absolute silence. A passageway naturally formed itself, down which the

couple seemed to be expected to pass. Lilly made a gesture, as if to

hide behind her friend. But he reached only up to her nose.

At the same instant Mr. Kellermann came hurrying up to them. He wore a

brown velvet costume consisting of a jacket, knee-length breeches, and a

Phrygian cap. Everybody, in fact, wore what seemed to him original and

becoming.

"Welcome, goddess, queen!" he cried in a voice for the entire company to

hear; and since nothing better occurred to him, he pressed kisses on her

gloved arm from wrist to elbow.

Then he begged to be allowed to show her the incomparable arrangements

of his new court of love. She followed him, whispering to her friend to

be sure to remain at her side.

Electric lights had been hung in the open air directly over the

skylight, converting it into a many-coloured, starry heaven. On looking

up one really thought a thousand little suns were shining down from out

of the night.

Rugs and ivy vines divided the left side, where the gable roof sloped

downward, into a number of small arbours, the entrance of each of which

was hung with gaily coloured bead portieres. And over each hung a great

printed placard bearing a highly suggestive inscription.

The first was called "Arbour of Lax Morality." Lilly turned a startled

look upon her guide, who observed with a smile:

"That's only the beginning, meant for bread-and-butter-misses and little

afternoon-tea-souls like you." And added:

"This is but an intimation

Of more wicked adjuration,"

while he pointed to the second entrance, the inscription over which

read: "Arbour of Wicked Vows."

"Oh, dreadful!" she cried in righteous dismay. Kellermann rolled with

laughter.

She could not help reading the next two signs, "Arbour of the Right to

Motherhood" and "Arbour of the Cry for Man," but she said nothing more.

There were two more divisions, a "Powder Room" and an "Arbour of

Perversity." This she did not understand.

"Now we'll go to the Criminal Side," said Mr. Kellermann, and led her

diagonally across the room, making way for her among the people, who at

her approach began to nod and hum and buzz, but with no trace of malice

or contempt. The very reverse. It was an ovation, a suppressed

demonstration of her triumph.

Her breast expanded. A faint, humble sensation of happiness stole over

her body like hot wine. She threw back her scarf. She no longer needed

to feel ashamed of her bare throat and shoulders. In the looks turned

upon her she read that no one would scoff at her.

She did not succeed in reaching the Criminal Side. So many gentlemen

wanted to be presented to her that Mr. Kellermann had all he could do

telling off their names.

From now on the carnival became something absolutely unreal, a dream

land, a fairy meadow, on which strange, large-eyed flowers were blooming

and sweet scents set heads a-reeling, and a haze sparkled with red suns;

where people laughed and jested and whispered, where bold, unheard-of

compliments floated in the air, and everything existed for Lilly to

caress and admire and love.

Yes, she loved them all, the men and the women, as soon as she met them.

They were all good, noble souls, scintillating with delightful conceits

and ready to perform friendly services. Each awakened a new hope, each

brought a new joy.

She felt how her cheeks glowed, what blissful intoxication was burning

in her eyes. And he at whom she looked with those eyes would quiver, and

respond with a gleam from his own, which seemed to be the reflection of

her happiness.

That was no longer another strange Lilly, who laughed and returned jest

with jest and went from arm to arm with a faint pang of regret. That was

she herself, doubly, triply herself.

Sometimes, when a gentleman became too bold in his talk, when an

unlicenced _double entendre_ seemed to lurk behind a joke, and Lilly

became nervous and did not know what to say and involuntarily looked

around for help, she always found her friend somewhere near at hand,

glancing over at her as if by mere chance.

That gave her a delicious sense of peace, a consciousness of being cared

for and hidden away, so that she could be even merrier than before, and

need not take offence at audacities.

Once she overheard behind her:

"Who's the lucky dog who has her for his mistress?"

The answer was:

"A little polished Mr. Snooks. There he stands."

This made her stop and think a moment, though she could not know to whom

it referred. But in the whirl of incidents it soon passed from her mind.

Oh, what people she met!

There were young blades in dress suits and white flowered waistcoats,

who paid her mad court, and asked, as if casually, though their

eagerness was visible under the nonchalance of their exterior: "What is

your day at home?"

Alas, she had no day at home. She lived a very retired life.

There were sombre philosophers, who agonised over the world's pain, wore

very long hair and monstrous neckties. They spoke to Lilly of "spiritual

high pressure" and the "specific gravity of related individualities,"

themes which did Lilly's soul good. One of them kept addressing her as

"Your Excellency." When she asked him why, he looked staggered and said

he had heard she was--then he broke off and substituted the paltry joke

that she so "excelled" all the women present he could find no more

suitable title.

One of the men was an exuberant old high liver, whose name she had read

with awe on many a beautiful picture. She would rather have kissed the

hem of his garment than see him dance about her comically trying to be

youthful.

There were many others who aroused her curiosity; but she could learn

nothing of their rank or character.

The company even boasted a real prince, a pale, blond, very young man,

who did not venture to ask to be introduced to Lilly, because his love

was always in threatening proximity. So he kept making detours about

her.

The women, of course, were more distant than the men, though those of

them who came to make her acquaintance gave themselves up to her with

effusive warmth.

One was a beautiful, voluptuous brunette with unsteady, glowing eyes and

a smile betokening wild abandon.

"We must get to know each other," she said. "I will introduce you to my

friend, and later we'll take supper together like a cosy little family."

Another was an extremely slim young woman with bright blue eyes, who

towered above most of the men. She wandered through the throng serene

and unconcerned in a long, white silk secession robe, looking like a

phantom. She spoke without moving her head and smiled without drawing

her lips. She had come from Denmark to study painting and at the same

time "live life," as she expressed it.

"Who are you?" she asked Lilly. "You are different from the rest. The

woman who comes here and does not want to be swept along in the current

must have strong arms."

She boldly threw back the wide sleeves of her gown as far as her

shoulders and exposed two lily-white, wonderfully curved arms, gleaming

like marble pillars.

Thereupon she wandered further.

The third was an extremely light-haired, very elegant woman, no longer

young. Her pretty, good-humoured face was tanned by the open air. With a

merry flash of her eyes she held out her hand to Lilly, as if they were

old acquaintances.

"Oh, how sweet and lovely you are!" she said softly. "We have all flown

here and don't know how. But where do _you_ come from? My name is ----"

she mentioned the name of a great musician who in Kilian Czepanek's home

had been revered as semi-divine.

"Yes, Welter's former wife--that's who I am," she added gaily, and

turned to the gentleman on whose arm she had walked up to Lilly.

"Another general's wife, like myself," thought Lilly, looking after her.

There were some married couples, too; for the most part extremely young

and extravagantly clad, who at first kept together timidly and looked

about with great, astonished eyes, and later frolicked about like

monkeys set at liberty. One couple seemed to have been dragged to the

carnival as a practical joke. The husband was a genuine complacent

beery German, the wife, a good, corpulent, black-silk creature. The man,

Lilly was told, was the landlord of the house, a well-to-do baker, who

had been invited to the carnival as a reward for good-naturedly having

permitted his fourth floor to be turned topsy-turvey. But the couple by

no means felt nervous or out of place. They made coarse, clumsy jokes,

and were always surrounded by a group of laughing auditors.

About ten o'clock--Lilly had just been entangled by one of the

long-haired and linenless in a profound discussion of false human

values--when all of a sudden a sort of cry of wrath was raised, issuing

at first from only one or two throats, then swelling to a loud thunder.

Lilly distinguished the words "hunger" and "fodder."

Mr. Kellermann's pacifying voice resounded to still the clamour. An

accident, he said, had occurred to interrupt the spreading of the bread

of which each guest would receive a piece--a poor devil of an artist

couldn't afford a more abundant repast. He had hurriedly sent across the

street for what was missing, and would the gentlemen please content

themselves until it arrived? As for those who were _very_ hungry and did

not worry about the taking of human life, the hosts had provided arsenic

sandwiches and strychnine tarts, which were to be found in the closet

marked "Poisons."

The whole assemblage made a dash for the Criminal Side, where for the

sake of the _crimes passionels_ a whole arsenal of deadly instruments

had been prepared. Gallows dangled from the ceiling, ladders led down to

abysses, and a cannon was discharged. The company immediately snatched

the poisonous sandwiches from the sideboard, and sometimes even absolute

strangers offered one another "a bite," like school children.

Then came the regular supper.

A buffet had been set up among the pines in the anteroom, piled mountain

high with all sorts of goodies, Yorkshire hams, cold game, lobster,

sliced salmon, and heaven knows what else. So stormy was the onslaught

on that buffet--which, providentially had been placed against a

wall--that the forest of pines gave way. Twigs flew about, branches

broke, and a mass of laughing, cursing creatures rolled among the

overturned tree-boxes.

Somebody had a brilliant idea--chuck the whole forest down stairs.

Forthwith the Chinese lanterns were extinguished, and despite the

protestations of the landlord, who feared for the sleep of his other

tenants, tree after tree went crashing down the steps and piled up at

the bottom.

The ladies' light dresses were completely strewn with pine needles, pine

needles settled in their hair and on their bosoms. The whole place

smelled of Christmas.

One could hardly enjoy eating for all the laughing.

Besides, there were not enough chairs and tables for everybody. So, to

be able at least to balance the plate on their laps, they sat crowded

close up against one another on the stairs, where the company was fed

from above downward each time fresh provisions were procured from the

buffet and brought out into the hall.

Some enterprising pioneers even climbed up on the heap of pine trees and

swayed on the springy branches like birds. Benevolent souls on the upper

landing handed them their food on forks tied to walking sticks.

Lilly, fairly sick with laughter, sat on one of the steps quite

surrounded by strange gentlemen, all of whom wanted to be fed by her.

She was in such a state of beatitude that she wished her life might end

with the carnival. If she had any care in the world, it was to see to

it that the gentlemen about her got enough to eat.

The last of the refreshments were the cream kisses promised on the

invitation. They swung on long strings from the ceiling, and each guest

had to snap like a dog for his portion. If anyone used his hands he was

rapped over the knuckles.

This sport, which at first created fresh storms of folly, soon had to be

relinquished because the cream dropped on the ladies' dresses. Lilly's

Empire gown was also stained, but the instant the cream fell on it one

of the gentlemen kneeled and sucked the spot away.

When a trumpet blast summoned the company back to the studio, everybody

was unhappy, Lilly in especial.

But when she saw her friend again, whom she had quite forgotten, she

quickly took comfort. Pressing against his arm and beaming with delight

she reported to him amid gurgles of laughter all she had experienced in

the meantime.

Now, it seemed to her, she again saw the looks of those who passed her

fastened on her face in strange seriousness, betokening something like

compassion. But she had too much to relate to give those strange looks

much thought.

The speeches now began. Lilly begged her friend to stay at her side. She

had romped enough, she said, and needed something "homey."

He pressed his arm against hers gratefully.

"Why are you trembling so?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, nothing," he replied lightly.

The first of the speakers was one of the long-haired, linenless, sombre

ones. Something weighty and solemn, like a hymn, was to usher in the

numbers on the program.

He recited an ode entitled "Super-Smoke," in which such words as

"sublime mist" rhymed with "amethyst," and "super-desire" with

"passionate fire."

Lilly understood not a word, though the poem must have been very

beautiful, because at the conclusion the gentlemen burst into wild

applause. "Bravo! Bravo! Super-smoke! More Super-smoke!"

The sombre poet, who naturally interpreted these exclamations as a call

for "_da capo_," bowed and felt flattered and started off again:

"Super-Smoke, an Ode."

He found he was in for it. "Enough, enough," came from all sides, and it

turned out that the gentlemen had merely wished to express their desire

for something smokeable in the language of super-men.

The next to ascend the platform was a slim, very elegant gentleman with

a dark brown Van Dyke beard and a gleaming monocle. He had been

introduced to Lilly. Dr. Salmoni smiled sadly, and held his curved left

hand close to his nose to scrutinise his long nails. His intention, he

said was to draw up an intellectual inventory of the evening. For the

purpose he would make a few remarks as a basis of his "so-to-speak

destructive construction of this social heterogeneity."

With that, a hail-storm of audacities and personalities came rattling

down on the heads of hosts and guests.

Though Lilly understood only a fraction of what he said, she felt she

had to blush with shame for each person his ill-natured words hit. But,

strange to say, nobody took offence. On the contrary, each one upon

getting his raking tried to outdo the others in noisy applause.

"What a happy world," thought Lilly, "where people have become

absolutely invulnerable and the most heinous sins simply add to their

honour."

Her own misdeed, from which she had suffered so long as from a

festering sore, suddenly appeared something like a child's amiable

prank.

"Was it idiocy in me to grieve so?" she asked herself, and pushed her

hips downward with her hands, as if to brush away all the old chains

from her limbs.

The elegant doctor could deal in compliments also. Each of the lovely

women received her little bon-bon rolled in pepper. And when he spoke of

a lotos flower that had drifted there from fairyland and still seemed to

dread the glory of the new sun shining upon it, Lilly again saw all

glances turned upon her.

"But let her take courage," Dr. Salmoni continued. "Should she need some

one to help her dreamily await the night, she may count, I feel certain,

upon every one of us."

He was rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of all the gentlemen, and

Lilly did not even feel ashamed.

Upon concluding, and after gathering in a harvest of praise from the

auditors, who crowded up to him--those who had gotten the hottest

"roast" were the most eager--he stepped to Lilly's side and said _sotto

voce_:

"I beg your pardon most humbly for having mentioned you in the same

breath as this set. People on our level ought to have a tacit code; they

ought to understand each other without making bald declarations. But I

was tired of just cracking a whip. Besides, I may assure you, I don't

_always_ play the fool."

He stuck his monocle in his waistcoat pocket and looked at Lilly with

his sharp grey eyes as if to tear her heart to tatters.

"People on our level," he had said. Lilly felt flattered that so clever

and prominent a man should rank her with him.

The next performer was a "minstrel," a mercurial, black young fellow,

who accompanied himself on the mandolin. He struck up a highly

sentimental ditty, like a troubadour's.

The lady's name I will not cite,

Far purer she than the moonlight.

She is so chaste, she burns with shame

To hear the stork called by its name.

And if rash Eros bids you try

To steal a kiss, however shy,

Her face grows pale--Heaven forefend!--

And stammers she: "Now this must end!"

The second strophe, the temperature of which rose many degrees, ended

with the line:

Quoth she: "Now cut it out! Now stop."

And the third strophe, whose outrageous explicitness Lilly scarcely

ventured to understand, wound up with the French:

_Tout ce que vous voulez, mais pas ca._

An endless round of clapping and shouting followed the song.

Lilly was astonished, but did not resent it. She resented nothing any

more. Leaning back in her chair with half-closed eyes, she let the

lights, the sounds, the vulgarities, the laughter and applause pass as

in a dream.

From time to time she looked around at her friend.

He stood behind her, and smiled reassuringly, but said nothing. A

mottled red burned on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps

he had drunk too much champagne. As for herself, though she had taken

only a sip, her head was spinning dizzily.

At two o'clock the speech-making ended. Now the final restraints were

thrust aside. The company romped madly, danced, kissed, drank,

quarrelled, and fought duels. Lovers stabbed themselves and were carried

out dead. The cannon shot off crackers. A thin, droll youngster clad in

a Greek gown, which an obliging model had lent him, stood in front of

the "Arbour of the Right to Motherhood," and held forth in a singing

falsetto. Science had shown, he said, by the results of artificial fish

culture that man as a factor in reproduction would soon be unnecessary.

At the entrance to the "Arbour of the Cry for Man" a small, wild person

with curly black hair had climbed on a chair and kept screaming "A

woman! A woman! A woman!" Into the "Arbour of Perversity" they had

pushed the baker and his corpulent better half, and each time the two

kissed on command a shout of laughter went up outside.

Lilly's head was a-whirl with the tumult. Everything turned in a circle,

screeching, darting, hammering, like a series of painful flashes.

"We'd better be going," Mr. Dehnicke's voice behind her advised.

She arose and stretched her arms with a shiver.

_That_ had been life! Life! Life!

Then she followed him.

Mr. Kellermann had noticed her leave, and furtively slipped up to her in

the hall. His open collar hung over his jacket, his cheeks were puffed

and shiny. He looked like a young Falstaff.

He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say,

"It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps.

The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann

turned to Lilly and whispered:

"The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?"

"Entirely," she replied with a languid smile.

"You'll never come?"

"Never."

"And I tell you"--he led her to one side next to the banisters--"I tell

you, you _will_ come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and

you won't know--"

Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent.

Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to

these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the

bacchic faun.

She laughed at him.

* * * * *

The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down.

Leaning lightly against her friend's shoulder she walked airily down the

steps singing and swaying her hips.

The whole world seemed to have passed into a soft, perfumed, chiming

twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining.

Dehnicke's carriage was waiting.

"Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in

her fill of the invigorating, snowy air.

She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang

and beat time with her feet.

He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night.

"Do say something," she cried.

"What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his

bleared eyes.

They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and

then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage.

Lilly sank into a drowsy state.

"Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this

way forever."

Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter's arm was clasping her

waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter's

neck, as once on blessed November nights.

But--where did Walter come from all of a sudden?

She started up and sank back, wide awake.

No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great

shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with

her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper

arm.

"And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to

demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written.

He was demanding it after all.

How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on

the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later--Walter, whom

everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered

to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there

was salvation for her on earth.

To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had

a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But

now it availed nothing.

Cautiously, as if fearing to hurt him, she withdrew from his arm and

pressed against the other side of the brougham.

"Why didn't you stay?" he asked, stammering like a drunkard. "Weren't

you comfortable?"

She shook her head.

He repeated the question several times. She maintained silence. She felt

any word she might utter would entangle her still further.

Then he clasped her hand, which hung down limply.

"I mayn't," she whispered, extracting her hand from his. "And you

mayn't, either."

"Why mayn't we?"

"You will reproach yourself dreadfully later when you recall you are

responsible to him."

"Whom?" he asked.

"Whom? _Him._ Whom else? You always say you're nothing but his agent,

and--"

A laugh, a hoarse, guilty laugh, interrupted her. He had folded his

hands across his knees, and he laughed and drew a deep breath and

laughed again, as one who has rid himself of a wearisome burden.

A horrid certainty faced her.

"Then all that wasn't true?" she faltered, staring at him.

"Nonsense, perfect nonsense," he cried. "He wrote me _once_, before he

left for the United States. 'Look out for her. Don't let her go to the

dogs. She's too good for them.' Nothing else and never again. There! Now

you know it. Now I'm rid of it. I've had a hard enough time over it. But

what could I do? I had begun so I had to go on. There was no use--"

He jerked up the window and leaned against it panting.

Lilly wanted to ask, "Why did you do it?" but was afraid to. She knew

what was coming. One thing stood before her with horrible clearness: she

was in his hands beyond rescue. She lived in his house, spent his money,

saw the world with his eyes. She was what he had determined she should

be: his courtesan, his creature.

The river!

She tore at the brougham door, and set her right foot on the step, but

he pulled her back and shut the door again.

"Be sensible," he commanded. "Keep your wits about you."

She burst into a fit of weeping, piteous, harrowing, heartbreaking. She

had not shed such tears since the days of her divorce. She saw nothing

and heard nothing. Sometimes she seemed to catch the sound of his voice

as from a great, great distance. But she did not understand what he

said. Simply to cry, cry, cry, as if salvation lay in crying, as if fear

and distress would flow away with her tears.

The brougham came to a stand. She felt herself being lifted out. He

carried the key in his pocket.

Supported by him she stumbled up the steps and thought from time to

time:

"Why, I was going to throw myself into the river."

He led her to the sofa and turned on the lights of the chandelier. Then

he undid the buckle of her cloak and removed the veil from her hair.

She lay there languidly, looking apathetically at the tablecloth.

The bird awoke and peeped to her.

"It's late," she heard Mr. Dehnicke say, "and the carriage is waiting.

But I can't leave you this way. I must vindicate myself. I want you to

know how everything happened."

"It makes no difference," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

"To me it does," he rejoined. "I don't want you to think I'm a rascal."

"That makes no difference either," she thought.

"I loved you," he began, "long before I knew you, when you were still

our colonel's wife."

She looked up at him in surprise.

As he stood there in his short, close-fitting dress suit, with a pale,

joyless, pleading face, uneasily plucking at the tablecloth, he who was

really master there, it seemed to her she was looking upon him for the

first time.

"I had been called into service for the manoeuvres that summer," he

continued, "and the club was still full of you. Even the ladies of the

regiment talked of nothing else. There were ever so many pictures of

you, too, in circulation. Some of the men had snapped you on the sly.

The instant I saw you I should have recognised you, because I remembered

every feature. Yes, I may repeat with perfect truth, I loved you even

then. What's more, after Prell's letter came and you were to step into

my life, good Lord! what plans for winning you didn't I work out in

those one and a half years! Then at last you appeared and exceeded my

wildest fancies. But when I saw that in between you had become a _grande

dame_, and how devoted you were to Walter--you kept talking of him--I

lost my last hopes. Of course, I had never seriously counted upon

winning you, because, though I lay some stock in myself, I'm not really

self-assured--and besides--to have some one like you for a love--that's

more happiness than anyone can dream of."

When he said "a love," passionate bitterness welled up within Lilly.

"To have me for a wife," she thought, "_that_ is certainty more

happiness than anyone can dream of."

She burst out laughing.

He took her laugh as a sign of modest deprecation of his compliment, and

talked himself into greater enthusiasm. Did she think a single person in

all that company to-night was worthy of unlacing her shoe-ties? Did she

realise how immeasurably she was raised above everything bearing the

name woman?

From out of her tear-stained eyes the question now candidly shone which

pride and shame forbade her to utter.

He must have understood, because he paused suddenly, clapped his hand to

his forehead, looked agitated, and paced up and down the room,

suppressing sobs. She heard him murmur, "I can't--impossible--I can't."

"Oh--if he can't," she thought, and stared at him with her cheeks

pressed between her hands.

He halted in front of her, and tried to talk. But he could only choke

down half-articulated words, and he took to pacing the room again.

Lilly caught snatches of words--"mother"--"never persuade her"--"must

give up the business." And again and again, "I can't--impossible--I

can't."

"He's right," she thought. "A person like me--he really can't." And

feeling her renunciation was final she drew a deep breath, and

collapsed.

He hastened to her, frightened; leaned over her, and wanted to stroke

her hands. But she shook him off. Since he could not find a word in

justification of his weak evasion, he took up the thread where Lilly's

tortured laugh had cut it off.

"Remember one thing, dearest, dearest friend. I don't want anything for

myself--no reward--nothing. Long ago I gave up all wishes for myself, I

swear to you. The only thing I wanted was to draw you out of the hole

where you were being degraded into a proletarian. Oh, I know it from

experience. It lasts a few years--no more. They either go on the street,

or they grow more careworn and uglier and uglier. Soon you'd never

suspect what they once were. To keep the same thing from happening to

you, I thought of that device of the check, and wrote to my American

agents. When I saw you were completely taken in, I didn't sleep for

several nights out of pure joy, because then I knew I shouldn't have to

stand by and see you go to your ruin."

"Why should I go to ruin?" Lilly interjected. "By the time your check

came I had already earned a decent little sum. You yourself helped me,

and you yourself said, if I continued the same way--"

She stopped short in fright at the thought that if she had to separate

from him, this one avenue would be cut off, too. The idea was a

nightmare.

No word of encouragement came from him. He kept plucking at the

tablecloth in dogged reserve.

"Say something! Have you already forgotten everything you did for me?"

He raised his head.

"Well," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "if you insist. At any rate,

it may be well to be perfectly frank this evening."

"Why, what else is there?" Lilly cried.

"Do you remember when you visited the factory, I wouldn't let you into

the storeroom?"

"Certainly. But what--"

"And afterwards I said it was because the room wasn't heated?"

"Yes--but I can't see what that has to do with my work."

"If you had gone the least little bit further, you would have seen every

one of your transparencies, fifty-six in all. The last were still

unwrapped."

Lilly looked up at him as to her executioner. Then she fell down before

the sofa. She had no more tears to shed, but the soft darkness of the

cushions was soothing to her eyes. To see nothing more, to hear nothing

more, to think nothing more. To die quickly, forthwith, before hunger

came, and shame.

A long silence followed.

She thought he had already gone when she felt his hand stroking her

shoulder and heard his voice with a mournful quiver in it pleading:

"My dear, dear friend, tell me, _tell_ me, what could I do? Could I rob

you of your one pleasure, your one assurance? Was I to say to you, 'It's

amateurish, unsalable?' I saw your whole soul was wrapped up in it, and

you lived from it spiritually, as it were. I thought: 'When her affairs

are all smoothed out, I'll just let it die a natural death.' And you

know it was in a fair way to die naturally. You hardly thought of it the

last month. Dearest, dearest friend, do reflect, what wrong did I do? I

helped you out of wretched surroundings, I gave you a few months of joy

and freedom from care, and I didn't even ask for so much as a kiss. If

you want, return to your Mrs. Laue to-morrow, and it will be as if

nothing happened. Or remain here quite calmly until you have found a

position. I won't thrust myself on you. You needn't see me. When

I--leave here--now--"

He could not continue.

After a period of silence Lilly raised her head in fright and curiosity

to see what had become of him. She found him in a chair inclined over

the table, his head hidden in his arms, and his back shaken with mute

sobs.

She stood next to him a while, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

She was so sorry for him--oh, how sorry she was for him!

Then she gently laid her hand on his hair.

"Take comfort, dear friend," she said. "It will be much worse for me

than for you. I won't have anybody at all."

And she shuddered, thinking of her approaching loneliness.

He straightened himself up and silently reached for his hat. His eyes

were even more bleared than before; his head inclined still further to

the left.

Oh, how sorry she was for him!

"Good-by," he said, pressing her right hand. "And thank you."

"I will write to you," she said. "I should like to think it all over

to-night. I shall probably move to-morrow, immediately."

"Whatever you wish," he said.

As he was drawing on his overcoat something long and cylindrical

gleaming with gold and silver fell noiselessly from his pocket to the

floor.

Lilly picked it up. It was a huge cracker.

Both had to smile.

"That lovely carnival had to have this sad ending," she said.

He sighed.

"Did you enjoy yourself? I hope for that at least."

"Oh, what's the difference so far as I'm concerned?" said Lilly,

deprecatingly.

"A great difference. The whole affair was gotten up for you."

"How--for me?"

"Well, do you suppose Mr. Kellermann, who at the very best earns fifty

to a hundred marks a week, can afford such an entertainment? The

physician ordered diversion, and on account of the position you are in,

I couldn't offer you any, so I hid behind him, and--"

She opened her eyes wide.

If he loved her to that extent!

"You dear, dear friend," she said, and for one instant lightly leaned

her head against his shoulder.

He threw his arms about her quickly, greedily, as if she would be

snatched from him the next instant. His whole body quivered, and she

felt his warm tears on her forehead.

Since he did not venture to kiss her even yet, she offered him her lips.

"The third," she thought.

When she glanced up, she saw Walter's eyes on the wall looking down at

her with a base, sneering smile. Just as she had feared in the carriage.

Terrified, she drew Mr. Dehnicke's attention to the portrait.

"We'd better have it sent right down to the basement to-morrow," he

said.

And since they now had very much to say to each other, the carriage was

immediately dismissed, because it was half past three, and the coachman

and the horses needed a rest.

CHAPTER VIII

A new life began for Lilly once again.

An end to her loneliness!

Every afternoon Mr. Dehnicke came for his cup of tea, and now he was no

longer Mr. Dehnicke; he was Richard, dear, beloved Richard, to whom one

waved and nodded cheerily from the window, whom one received with

outstretched arms in front of the apartment door, against whose knees

one crouched on the floor, and from whose forehead one smoothed away the

naughty frown of care with a tender "poor boy, poor boy."

Oh, how needless to have hoarded up such a wealth of love! She could

lavish it in profusion, yet there was always a fresh supply.

Away with the _grande dame_, the haughty aristocrat! She stooped to him,

played the little girl, wanted to be found fault with and scolded,

looked terrified at the faintest shadow of displeasure on his face, and

tried to read his every wish--wishes he himself was not aware of--from

his eyes. She wanted to be grateful for his goodness, his tenderness,

for everything he had done to save her from ruin.

No wonder, then, that by degrees he lost his adoring upward glance, and

began to make demands, sometimes very whimsical demands, and assume the

manner of a husband. Now and then he even recalled his benefactions, not

very emphatically, though with sufficient explicitness to change what

was at first voluntary humility into a duty.

Since Lilly had become his mistress, his attitude to the world had

veered about, so that his entire life stood on a different basis.

The pedantic bronze manufacturer so dreadfully concerned for his good

name and standing in respectable society had changed into a daring fast

liver.

So far from hesitating to be seen at Lilly's side on the streets and

promenades, he could not display himself to the eyes of the crowd often

enough. The good old brougham no longer sufficed. He must also have a

new-fashioned, spacious victoria, in which to drive with Lilly along

Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. When they went out together in the

evening, he chose the places where most of fashionable Berlin is to be

found, and tried to obtain seats from which they could be observed on

all sides.

He sat in the boxes at theatre with a swelling shirt front, carefully

tailored and barbered and manicured, and endeavoured to present an

indifferent blase smile to the glasses levelled upon him and his

companion.

He ordered his clothes from the representatives of London houses that

bob up in Berlin every spring and autumn in search of customers. He

adopted a monocle and stuck his handkerchief inside his left cuff. The

military officer in him came to the surface and endeavoured to ape the

effeminate gestures of the fops of the Guard.

In short, he bent all his energies upon proving himself worthy of a

mistress of Lilly's rank and qualities. He soon discovered that

connection with so exquisite a creature, so far from damaging him, cast

an unhoped for glamour about his life, even about his business, lending

it an air of splendour that all his superb remodelling had not been able

to give it.

If the senior member of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, the world said,

can indulge in such an extravagance, his goods must be selling much

better than we thought. And many a dealer who had formerly bought of

his competitors now came to him, impelled by those mysterious powers of

suggestion whose laws psychologists and historians have in vain

endeavoured to fathom.

People showed him greater respect, but a respect mitigated by that

jovial, confidential smile which the world always smiles when it pardons

a man of proven harmlessness an interesting secret little infirmity.

Questions like "When are we going to see you outside of business?" or

"What do you say to making a night of it together now and then?"

questions from persons who had paid no attention to him formerly, became

as cheap as the bronze wares of Liebert & Dehnicke.

"By right, I ought to charge you to the expense account of the

business," he once said with a smile to Lilly, who by and by ceased to

feel pained at delicate jokes of that sort.

The evening excursions, which took place three or four times a week,

gradually became a matter of habit, and rapidly acquainted Lilly with

all the soap-bubble pleasures that float from the witch's cauldron of

Berlin life.

It was now too late in the winter for those great public balls, at which

one shams the mysterious lady of rank beneath a silk domino. To

compensate there were the theatres where observances are lax and the

lowest vices of the Parisian boulevards, diluted and warmed over, are

dished up to tickle the palates of hungry pleasure-seekers; all-night

cabarets, where obscene jests are clothed in literary garb, and wild

women escaped from the confines of middle-class life vie with

professional music-hall singers for the palm of vulgarity; bars and

grill-rooms; back rooms of aristocratic restaurants which the law

forbids to be locked, and in which chilly orgies are smiled upon

mockingly by correct waiters; and, to wind up with, certain cafes,

sparkling with lights and blue with cigarette smoke, where the weary

nerves seek and find their final stimulation in contact with prostitutes

selling their wares in open market.

In the beginning Lilly opposed these doings. Her senses demanded

satisfaction of another sort. She had a vague feeling of mournfulness,

as if each day of this new pleasure-filled life were carrying her

farther and farther from those laurel-lined stairs to which her longing

had gone out. But when she saw that her every wish for quiet encountered

sulky resistance, she gave up her desires voluntarily, and kept her

dreams for a better time, a time which would bring all her hopes to

fruition, which--which--her fancy might venture no farther.

Besides, it was always so fascinating, so dazzling.

Lilly and Dehnicke were seldom left alone. In proceeding from place to

place they would meet acquaintances, many of whom Lilly had seen at the

carnival; and they would join company informally; or frequently,

appointments were made beforehand. So there was quite a group of them, a

little fixed nucleus, about which newcomers kept crystallising.

One of the faithful was that sweet little brunette with the unsteady,

glowing eyes and the foolish smile, who had wanted her friend and

herself to form a little family group at supper with Lilly and Dehnicke.

Her name was Mrs. Sievekingk. A vague desire for "life" had caused her

to run away from her husband, a physician somewhere in Further

Pomerania. After having gone through various experiences she was now

living with the proprietor of a large steam laundry, a red-haired swell,

thin as a broomstick, Wohlfahrt by name. He suffered from dyspepsia, and

Mrs. Sievekingk always had ready in her hand-bag an assortment of pills

and powders. But this touching, energetic care of him did not prevent

her from deceiving him for the sake of any man who courted her.

Everybody knew it and nobody blamed her. She was a poetess and had to

create experiences to sing about. As a result many a lover who thought

he was sinning with her in absolute secrecy would a few weeks later

discover an exact portrait of himself as the hero of a passionate sketch

or a murky love poem in some magazine of the latest school.

There was Mrs. Welter also, the divorced wife of the renowned composer,

whose round, russet face--she had returned lately from a mysterious

pleasure trip to Algeria--formed a droll contrast to the golden aureole

of her mass of dyed hair. It was dangerous to associate with her. She

borrowed of everybody she met, although she was in comfortable

circumstances, receiving an ample alimony from her former husband's rich

relatives. Her constant state of want was due to her infinite goodness,

which led her to turn over all she possessed and all her friends gave

her to two cashiered lovers, each of whom in his way was a scamp. Nobody

knew to whom she was attached at present. She was frequently seen with a

district attorney, who was stiff as a poker and too formal to use a

toothpick on his hollow teeth, and so sat for hours in silence busily

rolling his tongue between his jaws.

Among others was an extremely thin little shrewmouse, dainty and

devilish, with steely eyes and thin pinched lips turning inward. She

always wore white silk, and dragged a rustling, fan-shaped train. She

called herself Mrs. Karla. Nobody knew her real name except her lover, a

mere boy, the son of a manufacturer. Pale, puny, and completely in her

toils, he followed her about until dawn indulging her in her sapping

lust for pleasure. In an unguarded moment he revealed that she was the

wife of a Jewish scholar who lived in absolute seclusion, and actually

believed that she was occupied in satisfying the social demands of the

Berlin West Side. And while she wantoned with all sorts of people in

music halls and _chambres separees_, her husband sat quietly at home

poring over his statistical tables.

There were women of every description, for whose past and whose means of

subsistence no one concerned himself, provided they were pretty and

elegant and not exactly _cocottes_.

In addition to the ladies' legitimate escorts were a large number of

gentlemen, who came every evening to fish in troubled waters. These

gentlemen constituted the real enlivening element, and among them was

the Dr. Salmoni who had wielded "the big stick" at Mr. Kellermann's

carnival while smiling a mournful smile. In his company, Lilly felt, she

always grew embarrassed and reticent, although it seemed to her a secret

bond united them. As at the carnival, he exercised his caustic wit upon

every person who crossed his path, with the exception of herself, whom

he passed by considerately. Now and then he dissected her with his

probing eyes, and two or three times he whispered softly _en passant_:

"What are you seeking to find here, lovely lady?"

Mr. Kellermann, too, presented himself not infrequently; grew befuddled,

and then threw out remarks about "a chained beauty crying to be set

free," remarks which Lilly assiduously endeavoured not to hear. At the

end of the evening he usually discovered he was out of pocket, upon

which Richard came to his rescue.

Such was the world in which from now on Lilly's days--and nights--glided

along.

She received mysterious messages of all sorts; invitations from strange

gentlemen to discreet rendezvous, flowers sent anonymously, from modest

bouquets of violets to gorgeous baskets of orchids, visits from ladies

of suspicious character, who were organising private charity circles,

and with highly significant smiles asked Lilly to join--a turbid surf of

desire forever rolling up to her threshold. At first it frightened her;

finally she took no notice of it.

* * * * *

Spring came, and with it the races at which everybody appears who lays

claim for any reason at all to membership in the world of elegance.

Since Lilly had been enthroned at Richard's side, the slumbering cavalry

officer in him had been awakened to such lively consciousness, his

passion for native horse-breeding had swelled to such vast proportions

that he would not have dreamed of missing a single race. Although he

never betted, his pockets were stuffed with crumpled tips; chances and

pedigrees constituted his sole topic of conversation, and Lilly, who

took not the least interest in it all, willingly lent him her undivided

attention.

One morning, on studying the account of the previous day's race in her

paper, the following passage attracted her notice:

"Among the charming representatives of the world which knows no _ennui_,

was the impressive beauty who for some time past has permitted glimpses

of herself everywhere, and who still radiates the discreet atmosphere of

the _haute volee_, which, it is rumoured, was once her native element.

She favors violet, and in accordance with a famous precedent, she might

be dubbed '_la dame aux violettes_.' We congratulate ourselves upon the

appearance of this new star, who will only add to the reputation of our

metropolitan life."

"Who can that be?" thought Lilly, slightly envious, and passed in

review the beautiful women she had admired the day before.

Then suddenly the blood rushed to her head. Her glance sought the

Redfern costume, which she had not yet hung away, and was lying across

the back of a chair. It was two years old, but so wonderfully well made

that it could compete with the new creations of the spring. Since this

was the only suit of the sort she possessed--Richard must be spared

unnecessary expense--she had worn it several times in succession.

"Yes, she no longer doubted--the item referred to her and no other. Her

first thought was:

"How pleased Richard will be."

She, too, was pleased. Mrs. Laue's boldest prophecies seemed about to be

fulfilled. She was growing famous. She actually figured in the papers.

But that feeling of dread! That enigmatic, senseless dread which forever

crouched in the bottom of her heart, and crept to the surface at the

very moment a new event led her on a stage further toward grandeur and

happiness. Since she had stepped into the world at Richard's side, she

had encountered nothing but what awakened gladness, pride and hope.

Everybody respected and flattered her. Scorn of herself, self-torturing

thoughts, had passed away, giving place to a quiet appreciation of her

own value in the presence of strangers. But that stupid, dull dread

never left her. It would not be silenced.

Earlier in the afternoon than usual, Richard came down the street

beaming and openly waving the paper up to her.

After they had embraced ten times and read the passage in the paper

twice as often, Richard turned taciturn and gloomy, folded his arms like

Napoleon, and paced up and down the room with short, sharp steps.

You could see ambition seething in his brain.

The bell rang.

Little Mrs. Sievekingk was announced.

She had come for a friendly little talk with Lilly several times before,

though the two had not grown more intimate as a result. This time she

arrived opportunely, to help them taste the joy of Lilly's fame.

Her grey velvet suit shimmered in the afternoon sunlight, and the red

turban with the waving aigrette nestled in her dark, curly head like a

tongue of flame darting downward.

She held her hand out to Lilly with her seductive smile, but when she

turned to Richard, her eyes flashed with some of the energy with which

she insisted upon her lover taking a dose.

In the presence of strangers Lilly and Richard still kept up the myth of

a Platonic friendship. So Richard modestly reached for his hat to

extract from Lilly the polite request that he stay a little longer. But

the small, dark woman anticipated them.

"Don't be foolish," she said, "don't behave as if you weren't perfectly

at home here. You may call each other by your first names, as if from a

slip of the tongue, and I'll pretend not to have heard a thing."

Lilly and Richard smiled, and while Lilly poured a cup of tea for her

guest, Richard played with the paper. He wanted to make certain whether

Mrs. Sievekingk had learned of the great triumph.

"What I really came for was on account of that stuff," she said, "and

you are the very person I want to speak to about it. I suppose you're

awfully proud of it."

Richard made a deprecating gesture, and smiled complacently.

"To be quite frank, I credited you with a grain or two more sense."

"I beg pardon," Richard observed, taken aback.

Lilly started. Her dread of the morning grew into the suspicion that her

great fortune had a cloven hoof.

"Just let me speak," said the little woman, her eyes now flashing very

steadily with a conscious purpose. "I have experience in such matters.

My red-head began the same way with me. Has the thought never occurred

to you, Mr. Dehnicke, that when a choice creature like this one sitting

here, something so sweet and glorious that you'll never find her like,

entrusts herself to you, you have assumed a vast responsibility? Do you

think we're here to puff and swell your vanity? We're not factory girls

or ballet dancers to be stuck into silks and laces and led around to

show the world that you're a fine buck. We have fallen from society, I

know, but we're not to be classed, not by a long shot, with those women

to whose ranks you would like to reduce us."

Richard wanted to reply, but could not find the right words, and Mrs.

Sievekingk continued, bending toward Lilly tenderly:

"So here comes a poor little mite in its unsuspecting aristocracy, and

says: 'Take me. Do with me what you want.' And what will you do with

her? You'll make a fast woman of her, at least what the world takes to

be a fast woman. Don't contradict me. As a beginning you've already done

very well." She pointed to the paper.

"Once the yellow journals take us up, then the counts of the Guard are

on the spot, and then, may the Lord have mercy on us! They're much

better-looking and more chivalrous than you; and if we _must_ become

_cocottes_, we'd like at least to know for whom and for what. And if

you affect indifference, then you're nothing in our opinion but a bad

joke of yesterday."

Lilly's breath was taken away. She had not thought it possible that

anyone should dare to speak to Richard in such a tone. She laid her hand

on his shoulder deprecatingly to pacify him. She feared he might become

angry and enforce his rights as master of the place.

The very contrary occurred.

"I will gladly do what you say," he replied, mealy-mouthed, "if only I

knew--"

"I'll tell you what you don't know. You mustn't lead her around like an

animal in a show. Don't expose her to the gaze of all sorts of people.

Don't seat her in the front of the box at opera for every rake to stare

at."

Richard plucked up his spirits for a defence.

"Aren't _you_ to be seen everywhere?"

"Certainly. Because I myself want to see things. That's the reason I ran

away from my horror of a husband. Nevertheless I don't take box seats.

And I don't fly around race tracks either. I'm by nature a Bohemian,

while Lilly, with her quiet, refined heart, is a bourgeois, and a

bourgeois she ought to remain, as if she were your wife by law. But

neither of us wants to descend to the demi-monde, I mean what we mean by

demi-monde in Germany. In the French sense we've been in it a long time.

That's what I have to say to you, my dear sir."

Richard arose helplessly, quite red in the face, gnawing ferociously at

his moustache.

"I've always had nothing but her good at heart," he said. "Beside, it

was your wish, too, wasn't it, Lilly?"

Lilly could not make denial. She did not want to shame him any further;

and she turned aside without replying.

"And supposing it was her wish a thousand times!" the little woman

rejoined in Lilly's stead. "You should have said to her: 'My dear, you

don't understand. Since we are not married'--_nota bene_, that would be

the best for both of you--'we must live modestly, otherwise I should do

you mortal injury, I should throw you in the mire.'"

Lilly felt tears rising to her eyes, as always when the subject of

marriage in connection with Richard and herself; arose. Not to show her

emotion, she quickly left the room to fetch Richard's overcoat. It was

already quarter of six.

She accompanied him to the door and kissed him tenderly. He must by no

means suppose that he had jarred her or that she bore him a grudge.

When she returned to her guest, she took his part eagerly. He was very

dear and good. He had saved her from ruin, and certainly meditated no

evil.

"I'm not here to sow dissension," said the little woman, laughing. She

then asked to be allowed to remain a little longer. "My first name is

Jula, and please avail yourself of it in the future."

They sat hand in hand on the straight sofa, over which Walter's

masterful smile had been replaced by an extremely indifferent

sheep-shearing scene. On the glass plate in front of each was a bit of

nibbled cake. For the first time in her life Lilly enjoyed the pleasure

of possessing something like a friend--she had always felt uneasy in

Miss von Schwertfeger's presence.

The canary bird sang a sorry spring song, and the sparrows outside in

the chestnut trees responded. The May sun painted red spirals on the

wall, and from time to time a greenish golden flash darted from the

aquarium when one of the little fish shot through the waving algae.

The hour of confidences had struck.

"I put on mighty superior airs just then," said Mrs. Jula. "But it was

necessary to, my dear. Because you're just like me, you are standing on

the very edge. One touch, and over we go--where no one will pick us up.

If we could rely on our own character, our plight would not be so bad,

but there are no two ways about it, we can't always be faithful--we

don't want to be."

"How can you say such a thing?" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.

Mrs. Jula ran her little red tongue along her lips.

"Just wait, my dear. The men we meet are really not calculated to make

us see that we are here for one alone. In fact, the only way to enjoy

them is in the plural. Oh, I could tell you things! But I don't want to

alarm you. Besides, there's a danger attached to the plural. Each man we

give ourselves up to robs us of a piece of what is best in us--what is

best, I tell you, even if we can't clearly define it. It isn't

consciousness of our own worth, because, if possible, that survives.

It's not purity either. We don't give a fig for purity. Happiness,

certainly not. We should die of dulness if we stuck to one man. I've

spoken to a number of women, and they all have the same feeling. Some of

them think it's better not to fall in love, and do it just from caprice.

Some swear by the grand passion, which is to consecrate everything. No

two persons, I suppose, think alike in this respect. And now I want to

give you a little advice, because your turn will come some day. Don't

accept any gifts, at least, no gifts of money value. At the utmost

flowers, and none too many of them. And don't give gifts in return,

because everything belongs to 'him.' Married women may; but it's not

seemly for us. In general, avoid the _amant de caeur_, because

_amant-de-caeurdom_ is characteristic of prostitutes. Married women may

do all that, because they have to take revenge for being tied to the

'one.' We, on the contrary, are free. We are permitted to go whenever we

want to. But we mustn't. Anything, but not that."

"Why mustn't we?" asked Lilly, who suddenly began to feel her chains.

"Married women may. They _may_ everything. They may be divorced as often

as they want, and carry their heads just as high as before. As for us,

each time we're thrust lower into the world of prostitutes; and the

oftener we change, the more we become free booty. All very well if we

have money of our own. But neither you nor I have. They hover over us

like vultures ready to swoop down upon us. If she's allowed herself to

be supported by him--and _him_--and _him_, why isn't she to be had

for _my_ good money, too? That's the reason we must hold fast to the one

we have, no matter how small and horrid he is, no matter how repulsive

we think him.

"I don't understand," said Lilly. "If you're with a man, you love him."

"Oh--do you mean to say you loved every man you were with?"

"Why, there weren't so many," replied Lilly. "Beside my husband, the

general"--she could not deny herself the joy of uttering that proud

word--"there was only one other, and now--here--"

"Oh, stuff!" cried Mrs. Jula in righteous indignation. "Do you want to

blossom in my eyes as a rose of virtue?"

Lilly protested she was speaking the truth.

Mrs. Jula could not credit it.

"Why, then, you're not one of us! You ought really be a judge's wife."

Lilly laughed. She who had always thought sentence had long before been

pronounced upon her immoral conduct, now heard herself ridiculed for her

excess of virtue.

"Oh, if I were to tell you the stories of all the women we meet,"

continued Mrs. Jula. "One of them goes with girls in secret. One rents

out rooms to students, but only to students she likes. And then there's

one"--her voice sank to a whisper--"who fetches her lovers in from the

street."

Lilly shuddered.

"What! I've sat next to a woman like that, and never suspected it!"

Mrs. Jula's eyes glowed into space.

"It's dreadful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "Well, it doesn't

bother me. I have my poems. They lend sanctity to my acts and wash me

clean again. It's for their sake I do it all. I need sensations, yes, I

need sensations. I must feel my blood chase through my veins. I must

study, study--something new in each one. No matter how inane a man may

be, so inane that a thimble would hold his soul, nevertheless he has one

hour of intoxication to give you, one hour in which all the bells chime

and even the spheres make their heavenly music. And the more men you

possess, the more life you possess, the more souls you creep into. All

the doors of life fly open. All the secrets are revealed. If you can

hear the pulsebeat of a stranger, can feel it under your fingers--he's

yours--he's you yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that's life.

That's what I call life."

Lilly said to herself she could not possibly take this talk seriously,

though hot and cold waves shivered through her body.

"I don't understand what you say," she replied, and rose.

Mrs. Jula did not even hear her. A mystic fire smouldered in her eyes.

She looked like a priestess sacrificing to dark gods.

It struck eight o'clock.

The maid had set the table in the dining-room, and had laid a cover for

the strange lady, who did not seem disposed to leave. She now came to

announce that the meal was served.

"Will you stay and dine with me?" asked Lilly, somewhat against her

will.

At last Mrs. Jula woke up. She neither accepted nor declined, but arose

and disengaged her flaming hat from her dark curls.

"I'm crazy, am I not?" she said, and the foolish, seductive smile

blossomed about her lips again.

Drawing a breath of relief, Lilly opened the door to the dining-room.

The table gleamed with snowy damask, strewn with leaves of light formed

by the pierced shade of the hanging lamp. The gaily coloured dishes,

which Lilly had bought cheap at a sale, were a copy of an old Strasburg

pattern. The knives and forks as well as the set of casters and the

sugar tongs were of the finest plate, to be distinguished from real

silver only by the mark.

When Richard stayed for the evening meal, he should find everything as

shining and substantial as at his mother's.

Mrs. Jula burst into raptures.

"Oh, how beautiful your place is. How dear! How charming! Am I not right

in saying you were born to be a married woman? You ought to see my

rubbish at home. What's the use? If my red-head has spoiled his stomach

in a restaurant on larded lamb kidneys or turkey _aux truffes_, the next

day I have to prepare gruel and toast and I serve it to him directly

from the pot. What's the use of making a lot of fuss and setting a

table?"

"Thank the Lord!" thought Lilly. "She's herself again."

The meal was modest enough--various cold cuts with roasted potatoes, and

the remnants of a pastry for dessert. But Mrs. Jula ate as if such

delights had not been spread before her for years. And she had to know

exactly where Lilly got her supplies.

Lilly informed her accurately. For the sake of cheapness, she said, she

got her cold meats from a man in the country, whose address she would be

glad to give Mrs. Jula.

"I divined it immediately," said Mrs. Jula, softly, her eyes staring

meditatively. After a pause she added more softly: "That's just the way

it was there."

"There--where?" asked Lilly.

"Why, in my home."

Suddenly Mrs. Jula threw her napkin on the table, jumped from her seat,

and stepped to the open window, wringing her hands and pressing them to

her forehead.

"I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin! I'm going to ruin!" she moaned

out into the night.

"What's the matter?" faltered Lilly in fright, and also jumped up.

"I want to go back to my husband. I want to go back to my husband. He's

a cross old piece, I know. And it's death to live with him. It's true,

it's true! But I do want to go back to him. I'm going to ruin here. I'm

going to ruin here."

Lilly stepped behind her and stroked her neck.

"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave

me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides,

you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with

a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower

woods reposed unseen. "No, you won't go to ruin You will reach the

heights, from which you will look down on us poor women."

Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder.

"Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can't pull myself out of this

whirlpool. It's as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I'm going

to ruin. I'm going to ruin."

Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the

unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where

she had sat before.

"It's nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So

I'm going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There

mustn't be a ray of light."

Lilly closed the door of the dining-room.

They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the canal

through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey

over the tear-stained face.

"Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her

adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who

that woman is? _I_ am that woman."

"For God's sake!" cried Lilly.

"Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put

on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to

meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look--as a

rule he turns back and speaks to me--and I go with him to common

saloons, or to a little confectionery shop--anywhere he wants to. Or I

sit with him on a bench in the dark--and if he pleases me still more--I

go with him--wherever else he wants to."

"Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she

knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the

street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed

through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply

been too fearsome to answer him.

"Now that you know what I am, you won't want me to stay sitting here on

your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I'm ready to go." She

reached out pleadingly for Lilly's hands.

Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is

grievously ill and must render that assistance which the moment

requires.

"But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How

did it come about?"

"Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how _your_ life turned out as

it did? It's all very well and good for people to reproach us with

weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish

gives birth to another. And you always think you're doing what is right

and what fate has prescribed."

"That's true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own

life.

"This is what I've always said to myself: my poetry requires it. I must

have experiences, pictures, that _frisson_, as the French say. But all

that's a mere pretext. The truth is, we hunt and hunt and hunt. Your

husband's not the right one. Your red-head's not the right man, and none

of the rest of them--your sporting business man, or your

eh-eh-lieutenant. But he must be _somewhere_! The stranger sitting at

the next table, he's the one, surely. So you come to an understanding

with him--after all he's _not_ the right one. It is most certainly not

the fine ones. Because they take the trouble to possess us without

taking the trouble to find out whether there's anything fine in us, too.

So you keep on hunting. Perhaps you will meet him on the street. Finally

it turns into fever, which wholly consumes you. Sometimes I can scarcely

fall asleep in anticipation of the next dark evening when I shall rove

about again. Now, do you see, I must be going to my ruin? When I saw

your beautifully set table, all of a sudden a longing for my home and my

husband came over me again. Yes, I sometimes have that longing. He has

bleared eyes and he smells of carbolic acid. Oh, that vile smell! I'd

like so to smell it again For all I care, he may even throw the

stethoscope at me again. Besides, he wrote to me I should return to him

If I want to, I can. _But_--I will remain here--and go to my ruin.

Life's funny."

She rose and groped for her hat and hatpins lying on the table.

Lilly did not want to let her go in such a state of mind.

"If you feel it is driving you to your ruin, that it's a poison in your

blood, why don't you try to resist? Why don't you pluck it out of your

system? Mere force of will must help some."

"I've said that to myself," rejoined Mrs. Jula. "But I've never had

anyone to whom I could speak about it and who could help me. Now I've

found you, it will be easier for me. Now I feel I might be able to.

Maybe I will."

"Do you want to give me your promise?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand

to her.

"Yes, I promise," Mrs. Jula cried, and delightedly clapped her hand in

Lilly's. "You will be my saviour. You are already. I feel it. To show my

thanks I will stand guard over you and see to it that no one spoils you.

You shan't get to be what I am, or the others."

"Oh, I'll take care of myself," faltered Lilly.

"Yes, that's what you say! But when the dreary void comes--and 'he'

grows more and more insipid--just you see! You've nothing left to say to

yourself--and you mustn't have children--for God's sake!--we _don't_

have them--all of us know how to prevent them from coming. You mustn't

share his activities with him either. He acquaints you with as many of

them as he is compelled to. And behind it all you feel the hostility of

his family, who look upon you as a species of harpy. Then those cursed

schemes of his for marrying that he dishes up whenever he's angry. Above

all, the longing. It's like a steady toothache. That's it--like the

toothache. You don't want to think of it, but wherever you go, it

tortures you. For life _cannot_ end that way. Something _must_ happen.

It's much worse than if you're married. Just you wait and see."

Mrs. Jula's wild words increased the pain at Lilly's heart. A desolate

mournfulness threatened to attack her.

"Stop," she said. "If it must come, it will come soon enough. I don't

care to think of it beforehand."

"Right you are, my dear. It doesn't help any, either."

Mrs. Jula now took leave.

"Will you remember your promise?" asked Lilly from the hall door.

"Forever and ever, I swear to you," and Mrs. Jula slipped down the

stairs.

With her brain in a whirl Lilly returned to her dark drawing-room, sad

and distraught, and leaned her head out of the open window for a whiff

of fresh air.

She saw the little woman, who had just emerged from the front entrance,

lightly and gracefully trip along the pavement.

A gentleman in a chimney-pot and patent leather shoes came towards her,

passed her, started, stopped abruptly, turned about, and, when he

reached her side, raised his hat with exaggerated politeness.

In the light of the street-lamp Lilly saw her face smiling up at him

curiously, insinuatingly--and then they went on their way--together.

CHAPTER IX

Richard reluctantly adapted himself to a less showy existence. He still

wanted to parade his possession of Lilly; but little Mrs. Jula's homily

had sunk deep into his conscience, and he did not dare to disobey her.

Nevertheless he was bored and vexed and sulky, and Lilly was on the

point of herself suggesting that they go to the races, when she received

news of her mother's death.

She shed the number of tears and suffered the amount of affliction

befitting her tender heart. In reality her mother had been dead to her

so long before that her grief could not be very profound.

Before leaving Berlin to attend the burial at the insane asylum, her

greatest concern was to have as simple a mourning dress made as

possible. She felt ashamed that she had provided so poorly for her sick

mother during her lifetime, and she wished to avoid giving offence by

elegance of appearance; which did not prevent the officials and

physicians of the institution from dancing attendance on her and

treating her as if she were a sort of shining black bird of paradise.

She spent three glowing spring evenings at the little heap of earth in

prayer and meditation, and returned to Berlin in a serious frame of mind

with thoughts stirred up like soil freshly turned by the plough.

When at her mother's grave she felt she hated Richard; but when she

found him awaiting her at the station she sank into his arms

helplessly, eager for consolation. Now he really was her all.

For the next few months it was taken for granted that her mourning stood

in the way of pleasure seeking. Richard, it must be said to his credit,

behaved sweetly and considerately. He sat at home with her many a night,

read unintelligible books, played backgammon, and preferred falling

asleep on the sofa to luring her into the world of gaiety.

But since it was not right that he should become entirely estranged from

society, it was arranged that he was to have every other evening for

himself.

His beautiful mistress's reputation had smoothed his path. Relying upon

the support of two of her admirers, he ventured to apply for admission

into one of the aristocratic clubs, which welcomed him without a single

black ball. From now on he could enjoy the supreme delight of losing his

firm's well-earned money to young scions of the aristocracy, foreign

attaches, and other superior beings.

Lilly disliked hearing of his losses. She worried over his annoyance,

which he invariably revealed. Whenever he told of his bad luck, she felt

constrained, and then offered to make up by saving even more than she

had heretofore. Though he laughed each time and assured her that what

she cost him signified as little as if he were to indulge in one

additional cigarette a day, she clung to her conviction that she was a

parasite, and was partly responsible for the welfare of Liebert &

Dehnicke.

When he spent a quiet evening with her resting from his nocturnal

campaigns, they always "talked business." Lilly displayed a sharp sense

for practical matters, even for accounts, and her artistic judgment was

sure.

Richard very often brought home drawings of models, and the two sat

bent over the outspread rolls planning and consulting with each other

like partners.

Those were well-nigh blessed hours.

Lilly never wearied of inquiring about the factory; how many people were

employed there at that particular time; whether this or that man or

woman was still working for him--she did not know the names, but

designated the people by an accurate description of their

appearance--what pieces were in process of making; and whether the

supply of articles of one or other model had not yet given out, so

thoroughly informed she kept herself as to the firm's sales.

The factory, as she often jestingly remarked to Richard, was her unhappy

love. To call for him at his office at closing time was her greatest

delight, and had she been permitted to, she would have busied herself at

the factory every day. But he objected. His employes knew of the close

relationship between them, and he must avoid gossip and ridicule.

Lilly felt sure this was not the only motive. She had long fully

realised that his mother was not kindly disposed to her. Though at first

he had spoken of her quite freely, he now evaded a reply when Lilly

directly asked for her. Probably he feared exciting the old lady's

indignation if he permitted his mistress to make herself at home in his

office.

So Lilly contented herself with sympathetic interest from afar in the

welfare of the little kingdom.

On the evenings she was left alone, at a loss what to do with herself,

she got into the habit of visiting the house in Alte Jakobstrasse.

She left a little before ten o'clock, and took up her station on the

opposite side of the street, from where she gazed reverentially at the

old grey structure. She admired the imitation marble columns, which

formed a decorative frame about the entrance after the fashion of a

Renaissance gateway. She stared up at the dimly lighted second story

where his mother dwelt, and pressed timidly into the darkness of a

doorway if she saw the threatening shadow of a woman's figure glide

across the curtains.

When it grew late and the tenants of the house ceased to come and go,

she ventured to cross the street, mount the three front-door steps,

press her face against the iron grating, and peep into the hall. The

sheen of the leafy pyramid, the subdued milky whiteness of the Clytie

bust, the dark glow of the stained glass window mingled to produce the

mysterious, alluring impression of a dusky chapel.

The front-door steps became like a goal of a pilgrimage up to which

penitents crawl on their knees; the stained glass window became a

heavenly aureole, the Clytie bust a benedictory saint.

* * * * *

Late in the summer Richard was called to the manoeuvres.

His letters were curt and reserved, and unsuccessfully concealed his ill

humour. Finally they were dated from the hospital.

He had fallen from his horse and his left knee joint was inflamed. He

would be unable to ride for a long time, perhaps forever.

He returned in October wearing a gutta percha knee cap, and promptly

sent in his resignation from the regiment.

The fall from his horse in truth was a fortunate incident. Rumours of

his relation with the divorced wife of its former commander had reached

the regiment. The comrades noticeably held aloof from him, and

evidently his chiefs were merely awaiting confirmation of the report to

call him to account officially; a procedure which in the circumstances

would have brought his lieutenancy in the reserves to a catastrophal

end.

The accident was his salvation; and his object in adopting an irritated,

reproachful manner in Lilly's presence was merely to make her aware of

what he was sacrificing because of his love of her.

Indirectly he had heard news of the colonel which filled Lilly with

horror. It had gradually become a fixed idea of the colonel's that Anna

von Schwertfeger had acted in collusion with Lilly and Von Prell; and

man of violence that he was, he had chased her from his castle. Since

then he lived alone, a maddened misanthrope, and it was feared he would

come to a sad end.

An ominous greeting from those sunny days of Lilly's past.

* * * * *

A few months later that occurred which Mrs. Jula had prophesied: one day

Richard spoke to Lilly of marrying another woman, not, however, for the

purpose of annoying her, but because he had formed the habit of

disburdening himself of every vexation by talking it over with her.

His mother was entertaining an enormously wealthy orphan girl.

Of course for Richard--wholly and entirely for Richard.

She sat at table every day, a pale, strawy blond, and looked at him

questioningly with great, strange eyes:

"Aren't you soon going to propose?"

His mother delivered long sermons. It could not go on the same way. A

few more seasons like the last and all the respectable families would

point the finger of scorn at him.

It was enough to drive him distracted.

Lilly felt as if glacial waters were trickling down her back.

But she bore up bravely. She smiled at him, and betrayed no more

excitement than if he had been consulting her about some doubtful

factory model.

"Do you feel you could get to love her?" she asked.

"What does 'to love' mean?" he rejoined, avoiding her gaze.

"Well, everything has to be taken into consideration."

"You talk just as if I were serious about it," he cried. "Altogether you

act as if you didn't care, as if you would like to be rid of me in a

twinkling."

With languid eagerness Lilly tried to assure him she did not wish to

stand in his way, not in the least, least bit. She had only his

happiness at heart, and if he cared to make her proud by showing

confidence in her, he would not take this step, neither now nor later,

without discussing it with her beforehand.

He was touched. He kissed her and said:

"Oh, it's nonsense."

But the conversation left Lilly as in a nightmare, and the one thought

obsessed her:

"If he deserts me, I shall sink into the mire after all."

Grief over her mother's death was a vanishing cloud compared with this

torturing anguish.

The vultures Mrs Jula had spoken of occurred to her, all those vultures

with their white fronts and black dress suits, who were waiting to

snatch her to themselves with their moneyed claws the instant her friend

and protector abandoned her. From them her thoughts flitted to those

other vultures in Kellermann's picture, who perched on the sunburnt

rocks ready to pounce on the naked beauty when she should lose the

strength to defend herself.

"Her chains are her weapons," thought Lilly. "And that's the way it is

with me. If I am set free, I am lost."

The next day she and Richard carefully avoided the dangerous topic,

though Richard remained distraught and uneasy.

Finally Lilly took courage, and though her feelings compressed her

throat like a murderous clutch, she said:

"I see you haven't come to a decision yet, Richard. Wouldn't you like to

bring me her picture, so that I can see what she is like? No one knows

you so well as I do, and no one will know so well whether she suits you

or not."

Richard violently denied that he was undecided. What did _he_ care for

that doll of a girl?

But his resentment was disingenuous, and his eyes stared into vacancy.

She had five millions.

And the next day he actually brought the photograph.

Lilly laid it down without unwrapping it. Mere contact with the picture

made her hands tremble. She feared the first sight of the girl's face

would expose her own great distress.

"Why, you're not even looking at it," said Richard, with some

disappointment in his tone.

"Time enough after you've gone," said Lilly, rejoiced that she could

smile so indifferently.

She called to him when he was out in the hall:

"I'll tell you to-morrow--you'll know then."

The next instant she caught up the picture. Her heart knocked at her

ribs. But first she had to wave "good-by" to Richard, as was her habit

and duty.

And then--and then--

A girl's face, good, placid, somewhat peaked, with poor, though amiable

eyes. Her blond hair was plaited country fashion, and the heavy braids,

thick as a woman's wrist, drew her head back a bit. A timid smile

played about her full lips.

Something just to be loved, something which would revive with happiness

as a spray of lilacs in fresh water. Not turbulent, none too

gifted--wifely and yielding.

Just what Richard needed.

Lilly placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees in

front of it. She prayed and wrestled with her soul.

She had to reiterate again and again:

"Just what he needs. He won't have another such chance."

And the five millions!

If she were not to set him free she would be one of those harpies which

Mrs. Jula said the world of respectability considered her and her like

to be.

"But I am in possession, therefore mine is the right. What good are her

five millions to me, if I go to ruin on account of them? Why need I

sacrifice myself for him, for him or for anybody in the wide world?"

"Harpy, harpy!" rang in between.

So thought the vampires described in children's mythologies as having

beautiful hair and murderous claws.

"I will tear to shreds the flesh of him whom I possess."

Oh, what a night!

She crouched in bed with her knees drawn up and her face buried in her

lap, sobbing, sobbing.

At last, toward morning, she found what she had been seeking. Out of

tears, out of bitterness, out of shuddering and prayer arose the

alleviating resolve: that very afternoon when he came she would tell

him--but no!--why wait until the afternoon? Why wait until he entered

the rooms where the force of familiarity, his loving resistance might

shiver the great sacrificial work to bits?

It must be in some other place where she seemed more of a stranger to

him, which she could leave the instant she felt his proximity caused her

to waver.

She was not allowed to visit him in his office without special

permission. But at the midday recess, when it was quieter than at other

times, he retired to his back room for his actual work of the day, and

she might be sure of entering unseen and speaking to him without fear of

interruption.

So sacred a resolve sanctioned everything.

She used the morning for assorting his letters and tying them together.

She wanted to hand them to him along with his betrothed's picture when

she bade him farewell. He need never fear she might cause him trouble in

the future.

Then she dressed--more carefully than usual--washed herself with milk of

lilacs to remove the traces of tears, waved her hair, and drew it into a

knot at the nape of her neck, as she had seen on statues of Greek women.

She was their equal--like them, serenely raised above sorrow and joy.

She drove to the office.

The clock struck quarter past one when she stood in front of the

columned gateway.

Nobody was to be seen in the yard except the porter, who lifted his cap

with a confidential smile.

She was still their employer's mistress.

If only she had taken the precaution to send in her card.

The front office door was open as usual when he worked in the back room,

and she well knew the secret spring of the gate in the railing.

She prudently knocked at the inner door, which as a rule stood slightly

ajar, but which to-day was closed.

"Come in," he said.

She stepped in and faced--his mother.

Lilly had never seen her, and she had imagined her quite, quite

different, a tall, thin, imposing old lady. Next to Richard's desk sat a

medium-sized, rotund woman with a black lace cap on her grizzled hair.

She looked at Lilly with an expression of surprise and displeasure in

her cold, grey eyes.

Lilly instantly knew it was she.

Richard, who had been leaning back comfortably in his revolving chair,

jumped to his feet.

Rigid with fright, Lilly stared at the old lady, who now rose from her

seat also, while an evil gleam of anger and contempt lighted up those

cold eyes.

"A fine state of affairs," she cried, turning her head jerkily from

Richard to Lilly and back to Richard. "I'm not secure even in my own

home. I beg of you, Richard, do not expose me to another meeting with a

person of this sort."

With an indignant snort she pushed past Lilly, who stood to one side in

respectful terror.

"What are you doing here? What do you mean by coming here in this way?"

Richard had never shouted at her so before.

He planted himself squarely in front of her, thrust his hands in his

trousers' pockets, and gnawed the ends of his moustache. His head hung

on his left shoulder. He looked like a treacherous, butting bull.

She wanted to hand him the picture and the letters, tell him everything

she had intended to; but her voice failed. Her knees threatened to give

way.

"I--I--I--" she faltered, and choked.

"I--I--I--" he mimicked her. "I--I--I'd like to wriggle myself in here.

I--I--I'd like to be mistress here--isn't that so? No, my little angel.

This can't go on! It has to stop--at once! I've long had my suspicions

of what you call your unhappy love of the factory. Get out of here! Get

out of here, I say."

Before he had finished Lilly was out.

She still held the parcel in a convulsive grip.

She reeled as she walked along--past bright red houses, which threatened

to fall on her. A truck loaded with flour bags scattered white clouds. A

pulley screeched in a factory yard. When someone came toward her, she

made a wide detour, keeping to the edge of the pavement. She feared he

might grin his contempt at her.

A skein of silk thread lay on the pavement. Lilly picked it up, and

thought of hanging herself.

Something must be done.

To be abandoned--very well--if it could not be helped. Each one, when

her turn came, would have to resign herself to her fate.

But to be chased away--thrown out--like a thief--like the vilest woman

of the street--to be shaken off like a disgusting worm, to be spat upon!

Something must be done.

Anything to take revenge upon him.

Even if he was now unsusceptible to her revenge--all the same! He would

discover he had been to blame throughout. If she descended into the

mire, which had heretofore filled her with horror, if she went to

ruin--!

Something must be done--any deed of self-degradation which made her fit

to be treated in that way and no other--and freed her from those

torments--those torments.

Her heart hung in her breast like a painful swelling. She could have

drawn a line about it, so sharply defined it was against her side. It

seemed to be in the clutch of sharp claws.

Again those lurking vultures occurred to her, the vultures of

Kellermann's picture.

They were waiting for Lilly Czepanek. For whom else?

Suddenly something flashed and hissed in her brain like a tongue of

fire.

That was it! That was it!

She summoned a cab.

On! On!

Whither?

She ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible to Mr.

Kellermann's studio.

She ran up the steps, the same steps down which eight months before she

had glided at Richard's side rocked in bliss. All a-tremble she stepped

into the dark anteroom, which had the stuffy smell of a badly aired

bedroom. Her hand almost failed her as she knocked at the studio door.

Mr. Kellermann in his breeches and slippers was squatting on the floor

beside the Turkish tabouret in exactly the same position as at her first

visit. He was busied with a coffee machine, and looked contented and

seedy.

"Mercy on us!" he said, and drew the collar of his night-shirt together.

"What signifies this sudden appearance, O noble goddess? Are the suns

setting again?"

Lilly did not reply. She laid her hat and wraps on a chair, and began to

unhook her waist, looking about for a screen. There was none.

The models who came to pose for Mr. Kellermann were not squeamish.

He jumped up and stared at her.

When he realised what she meant to do, he broke into exclamations of

delight.

"What did I say? What did I say? I said you'd come. You see! We've

reached the point at which we're screaming to be set free."

"I'm not screaming," she replied, drawing up the corners of her mouth

disdainfully. "If you please, look somewhere else."

He made a dash for the picture leaning against the wall in its blind

frame, blew the dust off, drove the wedge in tight, and adjusted the

easel, laughing all the while, and grunting:

"She came after all."

Lilly had torn off her outer garments and was pulling at the drawing

ribbon of her chemise. Her paralysed fingers could scarcely untie the

knot.

Now she stood entirely unclothed.

The garish studio light pricked her flesh painfully as with a thousand

needles.

She wanted to groan and creep into a corner, but she turned her clenched

fists outward, threw back her shoulders, and presented herself to the

painter's greedy gaze.

"Why don't you begin?" she asked. As she spoke she felt that her

smarting scorn was distorting her face.

"I'll begin immediately," he stammered, choking over each word. "I won't

utter--a syllable--or the vision will vanish. I'll begin."

He snatched up the palette, pressed the tubes, and readjusted the

picture on the easel.

He made a few strokes, then threw the brushes down. He reeled like a

drunkard.

"No use this way," he said, mumbling to himself. "You must pose."

"Just as you wish," she replied, still with that mocking smile, and

stretched out her arms like the beauty of the picture.

He was not yet satisfied, and wanted to approach her. He did not dare

to.

"I will move the mirror, so that you can see for yourself what is wrong

in your pose."

He did so.

Lilly shuddered. A strange wild animal, which was not even beautiful,

seemed to be standing there.

"Not right yet," she heard him say. "The attitude is meaningless--you've

got to know what it's for."

He went to the back of the studio and rummaged among all sorts of gear

and fetched out a tremendously thick chain, the colour of rusty iron,

which did not clank while being handled.

"It won't be cold and won't weigh you down," he said with a short,

forced laugh. "It's made of papier mache."

Then she had to suffer his coming close to her and laying the chain

about her body.

He was panting and his breath streamed upon her hotly.

Each tremulous touch of his fingers was like a sabre slash.

He returned to the easel, groped for the brushes and began to paint

again.

Suddenly he cast everything from him, seized the picture with both hands

and dashed it against the easel. One of the rods tore through the canvas

and split it in two.

"For God's sake!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken.

He threw himself upon her.

She feebly attempted to defend herself with the chain.

But the chain was made of papier mache.

And she would not have had it otherwise.

Down into the mire, quickly, with closed eyes!

* * * * *

The next day Richard paid his customary afternoon visit. His lids were

reddened and his eyes glassy. He looked completely crushed, but he

behaved as if nothing had occurred.

Lilly had scarcely expected him, and she received him with frigid

astonishment.

"Oh," he said, "on account of yesterday. After you left I had a tough

discussion with mama. You mustn't come to the factory. I had to promise

her that. As for the rest, I think we'll not speak of it any more. The

young lady's leaving this evening. So let's kiss."

They kissed. And all was as before.

CHAPTER X

Once more the chestnuts put on their yellow cloaks and the peep holes in

the foliage widened. From her window Lilly could see the ducks foraging,

and the odorous, fruit-laden barges on their laborious way to market

sunk deep in the water under their summer cargo.

Once more the world muffled itself up for winter weather; once more

metropolitan amusements turned on their gay lights.

In decent half-mourning the chase began again. Richard objected to

remaining like a pickle in a jar.

This time, however, they entirely renounced box seats at dazzling shows

and suppers at aristocratic restaurants. Richard no longer had to

establish himself triumphantly in the possession of a famous--at the

same time cheap--_horizontale de grande marque_. They quietly remained

on a middle-class level, where German champagne reigns supreme and the

star Kempinski is in the ascendant.

But here, too, in cabarets and theatres where smoking is allowed, in

jolly little nooks and respectable looking back rooms, they passed

numberless hours in riotous abandon.

The women, who in the other world had felt somewhat out of place and

embarrassed, enjoyed themselves better in these more modest

surroundings, and the gentlemen were content that their shirt fronts

retained the starch longer.

The personnel remained about the same. Only a few dandies dropped away,

who saw no fun in life unless it offered them an occasional opportunity

to receive a condescending nod from a few lieutenants of the Guard in

citizens' clothes.

Lilly followed the crowd, and thought it had to be so.

For the most part she sat there saying little and smiling a friendly

smile. She permitted the gentlemen to pay her court and was moderately

responsive. She listened indifferently to the confidences of the ladies,

all of whom were well-disposed to her, because as everyone soon

realised, Lilly had no desire to poach on another's preserves.

They might have taken her to be limited or phlegmatic, if from time to

time the champagne had not relaxed her rigidity and enlivened her with a

different spirit. She slowly came out of her state of torpor. Her eyes

flashed, her cheeks reddened. She laughed aloud, made madcap remarks,

told the colonel's club jokes, and finally fell into a sort of ecstasy,

in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous chirp, imitated well-known

actors, and even danced the bold dances she had seen on the variety

stage.

Her memory was incredibly good. She remembered things she had heard only

once, and quite unconsciously, for in her normal state she recalled even

less than others. The wine first had to wash away the barriers that

always hemmed her being.

Her associates soon became aware of this, and tried to trick her into

the condition that promised them a merry entertainment. But she resisted

with all her might. She waged constant warfare without even Richard as

an ally. It flattered his vanity to have his beautiful mistress admired

because of her talents.

The next day Lilly always felt bruised and battered and despondent.

And sometimes when the field of her spiritual vision was completely

filled with red, kicking legs and the empty teasing dribble of comic

songs, she heard a still small voice in admonition:

"There was a time when you lived otherwise. There was a time when you

aspired to the heights."

But Lilly feared to listen to this voice.

She felt she was worthless because she was defenceless.

And because nobody was there who understood her and held out his hand to

her.

Frequently, on the evenings she was left to herself, she slipped out of

the house as if she were committing an evil deed, and took a seat in the

gallery of some good theatre, where she thought no one would recognise

her; or at a concert, among the music students, who sat on the steps or

leaned against the railings, following the selections with thick scores

in their hands. Lilly behaved as if she were one of them.

But concerts no longer touched her. She felt uneasy and out of place,

and turned her attention to some young man because of his bold profile

or his fine head of hair.

"He is one of those favoured talented persons," she thought, tormented,

and looked at him long and languishly, until he returned her dallying

with ardour.

Though she burned to have him speak to her, she lacked the courage to

grant him additional signs of her favour, having before her eyes Mrs.

Jula's appalling example. Besides, the throbbing of her heart was

sufficient enjoyment.

Already she was so completely under the spell of an erotic world that

every excitement of her mood was immediately transmuted into a desirous

love game.

And the longing, that eternal toothache, of which Mrs. Jula had spoken,

had begun to drill her nerves.

It had come like a thief in the night. It filled her sleep with flaming

pictures and converted her waking hours into a twilight doze.

She waited, but nobody came. Nobody took the trouble to pick up her lost

soul from out of the dust.

There was only one man who observed her and seemed to have a suspicion

of what was taking place in her soul.

He was Dr. Salmoni.

Dr. Salmoni was considered a great man, one of the luminaries in

Berlin's intellectual life. He was editor of an art magazine, which had

once conducted a revolutionary campaign against the great men of the old

school, and had fashioned new gods, erected new altars at which the

masses might burn incense. But the steady burning of incense was not in

Dr. Salmoni's line. He promptly bethought himself that the divinities

before whom every Tom, Dick, or Harry was crawling on his knees, were,

at bottom, creations of his and of his friends, fetiches to be rejected,

just as they had been exalted. And he began a merry war upon them also.

People easily endured Dr. Salmoni's hate; his quips sputtered in the air

harmless as skyrockets; nobody believed his imputations. The only time

he was dangerous was when he showed pitying benevolence. Then somebody's

reputation was surely at stake. In certain circles Dr. Salmoni's praise

was equivalent to a death sentence.

As in the previous winter, the distinguished Dr. Salmoni condescended

every now and then to take part in the innocent sport of the little

circle whose forte was not exactly intellectuality. His appearance

always caused a flutter of joyous reverence; the company instantly moved

closer to make place for him, and as soon as he leaned back gently in

his chair, smiled his sad, compassionate smile, and stroked the peak of

his light-brown Van Dyke beard, they hung on his lips expectantly

awaiting a titillating stream of spiteful sallies.

But the jester's role did not always suit him. He plunged into profound

tete-a-tetes, or dreamed in silence, according to his mood. Sometimes he

even showed a naive, trusting side of his nature, like a leopard playing

with dogs.

He seldom addressed Lilly; but his piercing eyes often glided over her

face, as if to spy upon her feelings and grope about in her soul.

One evening he seated himself next to her, and asked her to cut his meat

for him--he had strained his wrist throttling a certain celebrity.

Waxing more intimate, he next asked her to feed him, though his left

hand had by no means been disabled.

So for the first time they entered into a conversation.

Lilly quailed. She feared she might not acquit herself creditably.

"I am surprised," he said. "You've been going about with this loud crew

for over a year, and I don't read the slang in your eyes yet."

"Slang in my eyes? What do you mean by slang in a person's eyes?"

"Do me the favour to regard the women here." He pointed furtively at

Mrs. Jula, Mrs. Welter, Karla, and a few others. "Look at the way they

roll their eyes and exchange glances. It's the lingo of a--well, I won't

say vice--I despise words without nuance--I'll say of a thievish fancy.

Do you understand?"

"I think so," faltered Lilly.

"But you still have some of the childlike expression you had when you

made your debut. Not altogether. A fleck of disdain is in your eyes.

Disdain is not the right word. At the edge of deserts there are certain

salt seas--dark green and empty. Do you catch the idea? Because the

ground is poisonous."

"Possibly," said Lilly, constrained.

"Nevertheless, it's wonderful. Your soul's like a filter. It assimilates

nothing but what it wants to. Or have you a secret store to draw on,

which gives you the right to mock at us--some constant ideal--some goal

in the hazy distance--some great song--a Song of Songs?"

Lilly started up with a faint outcry, but not so faint as to fail to

attract general attention.

"I merely stepped on her foot," Dr. Salmoni explained, "and she is still

innocent enough _not_ to consider it unintentional."

All laughed.

"A joke exactly suited to their understanding," he whispered, bending

toward her shoulder. "I'll pretend not to have heard your involuntary

avowal. That alone has value in my estimation which is voluntary. And I

will not ask you as I did a year ago: 'What is thy quest here, lovely

lady?' I will ask you: 'What hast thou to lose here?' I myself will

furnish the answer. Your style--you have your style to lose. You are on

the point of becoming styleless; which is always a misfortune and a

crime. To me style is virtue, greatness, genuineness, force, religion, a

God-ordained quality--all in one and a few things more. Remain bodily

and spiritually intangible. Rise to a healthy, gladsome vice--_tant

mieux_. Dress your hair for evening prayers, or let it flow over the

pillow like a bacchante--but decide which."

"I believe a moment ago you were pleading for nuance," said Lilly, the

edge of whose wit was sharpened by his, "and now you're advocating a

dogma."

"Hear, hear!" he praised her. "Excellent. But no. I'm not preaching a

dogma. I'm preaching the exercise of one's will, the will to

personality. Do you understand? The result will be rich enough in

nuances. Undoubtedly you have the material in you for a _grande

amoureuse_, but alas not the courage."

"Well, then, not the material," she flashed back happily.

He laughed like a child.

"In one's old age one gets lectures on logic from little, virtuous

women." He magnanimously allowed her the pleasure of having outdone him

in repartee.

Thereafter Lilly reflected much upon the conversation. What a vast deal

he knew of her! Was he in alliance with supernatural powers?

"The will to personality," he had said.

She felt blissful. Up to the heights again!

* * * * *

On another occasion, as they were walking behind their companions along

Friederichstrasse, still gaily alive at midnight, he adopted a different

tone.

"I have a sure feeling that you are afraid of me," he said.

"I?" she queried, confused and drawing a deep breath. "Why should I be?"

"Because you know I have a message for you, a message to which, in the

bottom of your heart, you don't feel equal."

"I don't understand," she stammered, though she fully took in his

meaning. She knew precisely what role he could play in her life if--

"I am a man who likes tones pianissimo. I don't care to blow my

sensations on a comb. Otherwise your ears might have tingled on certain

occasions. However, I must say, it's abominable to see a woman like you,

a woman created to wander on the heights of thought and enjoyment,

seduced by a few Bismarck herrings into cutting capers with them. I

won't mention names, but I assure you, you can't get drunk on lukewarm

dish water, and intoxication is the great thing in life, at least while

our blood runs lively in our veins."

Lilly trembled on his arm.

They were passing a crowd of roysterers, young fellows shouldering their

canes, with swimming eyes dreaming into space. One whistled Wagner,

another sang a students' song; and sweet little street-walkers cast

longing, seductive glances at them. Lilly and Dr. Salmoni passed more

people, adults and half-grown girls, men and youths. All seemed under

the spell of the same transport. It was like a great dance, at which

each offered his neighbour hand and mouth and body and soul.

"What can I do?" she whispered, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.

"I will tell you," he replied with a smile which harboured dark

promises. "You must learn to live another life along with this one. One

all for yourself, for yourself and a few select. Do you understand? As a

Frenchman once said, you must lay out a secret garden, in which you will

cultivate in absolute quiet those thoughts and desires that seem dear to

you, and above all, those that seem to be forbidden and those that you

have stolen by the way, no matter how. Do you understand?"

"Whatever I have stolen has brought me misfortune," said Lilly,

hesitatingly.

"Rather the law which calls it stolen. The distinction is a difficult

one to make. However, you may believe me in this: so long as we are not

permeated with the religion of self-exaltation--do you understand me,

child?--so long as we haven't rooted out the words 'attachment' and

'duty' from our thoughts, our road is not perfect. We continue to knock

our toes on the crushed stones that the others heap up ahead of us under

the pretext that they are levelling the way."

"Sometimes they do," said Lilly, recalling all the good things she had

received from Richard.

He smiled at her with compassionate indulgence.

"You seem to be suffering from what I call chain madness."

"What is that?" asked Lilly, suspecting, to her dismay, that he again

divined what lay in her innermost being. Could he know of the shameful

role that a certain chained beauty had played in her life?

"It is said," he continued, "that if galley slaves who have worn chains

for many years are liberated, they cannot endure their freedom. They

complain that their arms and legs have been chopped off. They miss the

support and weight of their chains. You have such beautiful arms for

stretching upward. Just exercise them a little."

"And such long legs for running away," she supplemented with a tortured

laugh. "The only question is: Whither?"

"Oh, oh! Why run away immediately?" he asked, stroking her hand, which

rested on his arm, and speaking as to a child. "You would simply run

into the arms of another so-called duty. First you must be free

inwardly. You must first forget to fetch and carry for persons who are

themselves meant to fetch and carry."

"Teach me," she burst out.

"I will bring you some books," he said, as if deliberating, "books which

will lead you back to yourself. To-morrow at noon, I will--"

At that moment they were separated.

In bed Lilly lay with clasped hands smiling up at the ceiling.

She was again aspiring to the heights.

* * * * *

But the next day when he was to come, dread fell upon her again, dread

of him, of Richard, of herself.

It was the first secret visit, the first to knock a breach in the peace

of her home.

When she saw him step from the cab with several volumes in his arm, she

flew into the kitchen and told the maid to say she was not at home.

But the instant he left she seized the books which he had brought.

Some were printed in Roman type and looked dreadfully scientific.

However, they were intelligible, and Lilly took up one after the other.

What she read sent the blood coursing turbulently through her veins, and

mounted to her head like sweet wine.

All the books spoke of the "will to power," "the free man," "the right

to live one's life," "the religion of passion," and similar things. In

each pure beauty was extolled as the goal of human endeavours; in each

the word "individuality" recurred numberless times in numberless

connections. Each taught you to look down upon your fellow-beings with

vigorous pride, and despise them as a blunted, debased, tortured and

enslaved mass. In each you wandered along in blessed solitude--or in the

company of a very few like-minded, noble souls--on free wind-swept

mountain heights surrounded by an eternally bright ether.

It was a constant offering of incense, an insatiable lashing of oneself

into satiety, pleasant murder, hymn-singing rape. The main subjects

invariably were intoxication, dreams, life's festivals, and ecstasy.

Thus, a veil of intoxication and dreams was spread over Lilly's soul.

She felt she was enveloped in a sapphire haze shot with the purple of a

distant glow. She heard hot, wrathful music storming onward in discords

like maenads tearing down every hindrance in their way. She felt she was

climbing up perpendicular rocks, ever higher, ever higher, fighting the

whole time against the dizziness which threatened to cast her back into

the abyss. But she did not sink. She clung to the edge, which bruised

her hands, and laughed down--laughed--laughed--at the sorry wretches

there below crawling along in flocks, permitting themselves to be ground

to death for their bit of daily bread.

Then she felt sorry that she alone had scaled such heights, that she

alone should be up there enjoying the wild, golden sunlight, while all

the others little conceived that deliverance was at hand. She wanted to

hold out her hand to her poor, starving brothers and sisters and draw

them up after her. But they could not understand her message of

salvation--he had said "message of salvation." She saw wasting faces,

dank with the sweat of death; glassy eyes unable to turn from the

gleaming penny, their pay. She saw pregnant bodies, swollen yet

emaciated.

The working woman in Richard's wrapping room recurred to her. She

recalled her hands flying in feverish haste about the swaying doll. She

and others recurred to Lilly, with the timid hate and the hopeless

yearning in their weary eyes.

Her unhappy love for the factory, which she thought had been

extinguished forever on that day of shame, awoke within her again, as a

quiet, painful tenderness, like the spring anticipations that tremble in

us when the February snows begin to melt.

This, to be sure, was hardly the sense or purpose of Dr. Salmoni's

books. But they served another purpose most admirably. Her faint

toothache rose to a veritable anguish. The desire for a man, any man not

Richard, who understood her and swept her along with him, overwhelmed

her with such force that she could only twist this way and that and feel

she would perish under the lash.

Somewhere the "one" was surely to be found. Was it not possible for a

favouring wave in this sea of humanity to toss him to her feet?

One evening she put on simple, dark clothes--she might have been taken

for a seamstress returning from work--and slipped down the street, as

she used to when Richard's house drew her to it with a thousand secret

threads.

Since she was unskilled in strolling about aimlessly and needed a goal,

she listened to the voice of her newly awakened love, and took the

accustomed route to Alte Jakobstrasse. On the way she shudderingly

avoided two old beaux and a fresh clerk.

The latticed gates of the famous marble-columned portal cried an iron

"Halt!"

She stood a long time pressed up against her old door on the opposite

side of the street, and stared at the house to which fate had anchored

her.

Lights were burning in his mother's room.

The two gas jets of the chandelier resembled her cold, clear eyes. The

rest of the jets were not turned on, probably from motives of economy.

Of the factory nothing was to be seen save the dark top of the chimney

towering above the roof of the house in front.

A sorry greeting. Nevertheless a greeting. She would have liked to say

"How do you do?" to the beloved staircase also. But she no longer dared

to cross the street.

Then, as if after a good deed accomplished, she turned homeward feeling

at ease.

She repeated the visit three times in the course of the week. She began

to feel that the aimless journeys were a life necessity.

Once, just as she was disposing herself comfortably in her protecting

doorway, an elegant slim gentleman, who evidently had come the same way

behind her, stopped and raised his hat.

Dr. Salmoni.

Lilly in her fright nearly forgot to return his greeting.

If he were to betray her to Richard! Richard would assume that jealousy,

or even worse, had driven her there.

"Well, well," began Dr. Salmoni, complacently rolling the words in his

mouth. "It strikes me as somewhat touching that we should meet directly

opposite Liebert & Dehnicke. As you know, I'm a gentle nature, a soul in

socks, as it were. So I refrain from asking you what stirrings of your

heart prompted you to come here. You know the fairy-tale of the queen

who sallied forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd.

Thus a pearl may stray into a bronze ware factory. I should not have

permitted myself to follow you intentionally. I was seduced by a certain

play of lines and curves. Perhaps a certain suspicion of brilliance

shone through--but a young pheasant should not be shot out of season.

Let your fruit ripen, is a very sound motto, and not only with respect

to _soi-disant_ love. But it's questionable whether mottoes are worth

the while. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of

Virginia tobacco, and Virginia tobacco smells, and is celebrated far and

wide _because_ it smells. Do you get my profound meaning?"

"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen

here!"

"Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing

with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume

that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you

wish."

He offered her his arm. She declined.

They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther

west side.

He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire

set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally

forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play

of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and

her sorry existence.

But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He

merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it.

He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head

downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk

necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked.

Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that

she was being stroked tenderly.

When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to

contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always

thought the same, it seemed to her.

He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from

country life, extolled discreet horseback rides _a deux_, and the

transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been

present at all the events of her life.

"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation.

"I know it all."

Oh, if his past had been similar!

So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.

When he began to speak of the books he had brought her--he

considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had

called--she ventured a languid resistance.

"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.

"Why not?"

"The books confuse and sicken me--I don't know. You said they would lead

me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing

strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.

"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing.

"Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a

higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time

there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual

craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is

really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must

accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for

enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows

and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of

miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom

they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But

scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they

took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death--on account

of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same

to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral

exactions."

Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.

Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to

withdraw it.

They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark masses a

lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings

stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel

streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.

"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.