To keep your body clean, be sureTo have your conscience just as pure.
To keep your body clean, be sureTo have your conscience just as pure.
It contained photograph albums, card-cases, a cigar clip in the shape of a windmill of olive wood, a green glass punch bowl, and a shaky pine bed modestly hidden behind blue woolen portières.
It contained, finally, hung over the sofa in a gilt-edged glass case, a mysterious round creation. The thing consisted of six strips of paper braided together and radiating from a common centre. It was covered with gauze, beneath which the outline of pressed flowers could dimly be distinguished.
It was in this best room on Neanderstrasse, four flights up, over a china shop, a piano-renting establishment, and a "repair studio," from the windows of which room an oblique view was to be obtained of the greenish grey waves of the Engelbecken, and into which a broad expanse of genuine Berlin smoky sky actually shone, that Lilly one day landed.
Mrs. Laue was a woman of fifty, worn out by overwork, with a face like a dried apple, and great staring, tearful eyes. She circled about Lilly in incredulous admiration, as if unable to comprehend that so much brilliance and beauty had strayed into her home.
The very day of her arrival Lilly was informed of her history. Her husband had been cashier and bookkeeper at one of the favorite variety theatres in Berlin, and twenty years before had departed this world, leaving her without home or protection. There was no rosy glamour to glorify tears wept in solitude, no comic songs to drown the cry of hunger.
Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for making others to sell.
After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her "pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist in her field.
In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table—she herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time—she had worked for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned—thanks to her renown as a specialist!—so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month.
Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers.
Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and "pearl necklace"—Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers—and other such things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are taken as a matter of course.
Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future.
In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had become vacant.
The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift her jubilantly to the throne of mistress.
More months passed.
Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible vividness.
But one thing she did not learn: to consider the brief span during which she had wandered on the heights as a mere episode that had interrupted her true, modest life like a caprice, a dream. In her consciousness she was and remained a sort of enchanted princess in the guise of a beggar until it pleased Providence to reinstate her in her own.
She solicitously cherished everything reminding her of her vanished glory.
The gala robes the colonel had had made for her in Dresden hung in Mrs. Laue's wardrobe; her underwear embroidered with the seven-pointed coronet filled Mrs. Laue's empty drawers with their blossom-like delicacy, and in a long row in front of the tall mirror in Mrs. Laue's best room lay the superb toilet articles of ivory and gold which had once been the pride of her "boudoir." These, too, still bore the seven-pointed coronet. Lilly would have considered it an outrage upon her most sacred rights had she had to part with them.
And all the time she awaited the future. She still studied advertisements, and wrote letters applying for positions; but the advertisements were usually forgotten and the letters seldom mailed.
However, feeling the need of occupation and companionship, she got into the habit of sitting with Mrs. Laue in the back room and helping her with her work. Soon she, too, was tapping, pasting, daubing, threading, and weaving just like her teacher. Having inherited taste and talent for everything artistic she soon outstripped Mrs. Laue. After having sold the shades Mrs. Laue would relate without envy how the patterns she designed and set together were instantly recognised and preferred.
Lilly's ambition was aroused. She strove to create works of art. She could not toil enough.
"If you wouldn't fool such a time over every little spray," was Mrs. Laue's criticism, "you would make more money than I do." After each transaction Mrs. Laue honestly settled accounts with Lilly.
But Lilly was satisfied with the forty or fifty marks a month that her work brought in. Her newly aroused fancy flew toward higher goals.
The dried grasses, the "grass flowers," as Mrs. Laue called them, charmed her especially. Their slender, aspiring stalks, the delicate grace of their branchings, the weary mourning of their hanging sprays, caused them to resemble tiny trees, weeping willows at the edge of a brook, ash-trees inclining over marble urns, or palms longingly rooted on parched rocks.
Lilly dreamed of a new sort of art—paintings on transparent glass with foregrounds of dried grass; lamp shades and window shades, on which woods of flowering grass and ferns charmingly shaded pasteboard houses standing out in relief with their windows cut out to let light shine as if from within; fleecy clouds, glowing sunsets, ridges of hills in hazy outline, and dark blue rivers, across which the moon threw swaying bridges of light.
An endless succession of pictures suddenly took form in Lilly's mind, and new ones kept coming and coming. She did not know what to do with all that wealth of imagery.
Mrs. Laue, who for twenty years had unswervingly stuck to pasting her oiled paper and felt that every desire to abandon her modest work was heretical, warned Lilly with all her might.
But Lilly was possessed.
And one day she resorted to extreme measures. She took her arrow-shaped brooch set with six small emeralds to the jeweler, who gave her eighty marks. It was worth five times as much, of course. She used the money to buy polished cut-glass plates, which were held together in pairs by brass screws and could be hung at the window by dainty chains. She also purchased a box of paints, and while Mrs. Laue clasped her hands in dismay, she set to painting bravely.
But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.
Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with white silk ribbons.
Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in Lilly's outstretched hands.
As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to oppress her soul that as her life went on—that which she called life—she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great, watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of the grave.
This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out of doors, no matter where—out into the world, into the arms of life.
Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way—all this filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten and obviously was in the wrong.
Then the waiting—the waiting—the never-sleeping, ever-hungry waiting.
For what? She herself did not know.
But somethinghadto come. Her lifecouldnot end here among those bits of oiled paper.
From time to time the thought of the rich bronze manufacturer to whom Walter had recommended her rose to the surface of her soul as a vague craving. But the fervor with which she clung to this shadow terrified her, and she instantly chased it from her mind.
A year had passed since Walter's letter had been written. It was much too late to seek help from him.
So she waited a few months more.
Sometimes when her glance fell on the mirror while she was undressing and she beheld the image of a human being consecrated by beauty, round, slim, with long-lashed, yearning eyes and a mouth ripened by kisses, glad astonishment seized her at the thought: "Is that myself?" And she was overcome by a transport compounded of consciousness of her youth and readiness for love.
The world was there just to press her to its heart. Then even that dingy work-a-day existence became a blessing, because it keyed up her energies to intoxication and flight.
And at twilight, when she stretched herself on the sofa in a brief moment of leisure, and saw the blue flash of the electric tram flit across the ceiling, dreams came gently gliding upon her, resolving that burning expectancy into soft, half-fulfilled desires; a feeling that she had been saved stole over her soul like a thanksgiving, and that which she usually bewailed as lost happiness became nothing more than a nightmare from which a benign destiny had freed her.
But such hours were rare. And they resembled the solacing mirage that arises before the eyes of the thirsty traveller, rather than the drink itself.
The winter passed in fog and rain.
Now came the mild March evenings when rosy clouds floated like blossoms over the house tops. Then came spring itself. The freshly trimmed little trees on the open places put forth brownish green buds, which by degrees turned into pale bunches of leaves.
Lilly saw as little of all that glad bourgeoning, that snowy florescence of cherry trees, that brilliant glow of the hawthorne as when she dusted the yellow powder from Mrs. Asmussen's bookcases.
Mrs. Laue did not like taking walks. To her the idea of passing a meadow without gathering flowers, or a garden without thrusting her hand between the rails, was inconceivable; and she feared being caught in the act, an experience she had often had.
Lilly for her part would not venture out alone, dreading the unrestrained crowd.
Then came those hot, hazy, oppressive Sunday afternoons when endless throngs stream from the city to the suburbs, when the streets lie stretched out dead in all their length, and when the overcast heavens fairly weigh upon those who have been left to pant between the walls of the houses.
On those afternoons Mrs. Laue would stick genuine rhinestone studs into her ears, would don a brown velvet dress with a black jet collar on the square-cut neck, and in this costume would pay Lilly a formal visit in the best room. The Dresden gowns would be taken from the wardrobe and carefully compared with the gorgeous dresses worn by the charming ladies of the proscenium box twenty-five years before. The faded pictures of long-forgotten stars would be fetched down from the walls and examined as to their charms. Exciting tales would be told of their own adventures, in which, amid blithe sinning, marital fidelity asserted its modest worth.
The afternoon would decline pale and perspiring as a fever patient. A hot breeze would blow in through the window. The varnish of the rosewood furniture would reek, the walls of the houses opposite would shine as if polished with wax, and Mrs. Laue, munching her cheese cake, would again repeat the tale of her stale virtues.
When at last she took leave Lilly would groan and sink on her bed, burying her face in the close-smelling pillows. From without she would hear the shouts of the merry-makers returning from the country.
The next morning the pasting of flowers would begin anew.
July came. She could no longer endure it.
One Monday, while she was lying in bed and early dawn found her still awake, still waiting, her pillow wet with tears, the desire for life suddenly gripped her heart so strongly that she jumped from bed with an outcry, a jubilant exclamation, and finally determined: "I will do it to-day. I will take the difficult step, and go on a begging pilgrimage to that strange man."
But no—mercy, no! Beg—she would not beg. Oh, she had long before carefully arranged all that.
She would merely ask for a bit of advice, which an experienced connoisseur of arts and crafts could easily give without sacrificing more than five minutes of his business time. She would simply find out from him how and where she could learn transparency-painting.
Whatever his answer, the foundations of a new life would have been laid.
Was it a path of destiny?
The street wore its usual appearance. Truck waggons rattled along; women doing their marketing crowded in front of the provision shops; young men, hastening by with portfolios or books in their arms found time to turn and look after her. Lilly perceived this as always with a sense partly of satisfaction, partly of chagrin.
Was it a path of destiny?
The throbbing of her heart as she walked along said to her, "Yes."
She felt she was going to market to sell herself.
Herself—everything left of herself; her bit of pride, her bit of freedom, her faith that she was one of the elect, her faith in the miracle that some day was to be accomplished in her behalf.
The walk lasted nearly an hour.
She lost her way. She asked the policemen. She stood in front of shop windows to look at her reflection—she was afraid of not pleasing. And each time she saw the soft, slim contour of her tall figure with its air of pleasant self-sufficiency, she drew a breath of relief.
When she read the name of the street where he dwelt, she started in fright. She had secretly hoped she would not find it, and would have to return after all.
His house presented nothing remarkable. A grey, four-story structure with a broad, unadorned square carriage entrance, across the full width of which was a scaffolding
was inscribed in gold characters on an enormous iron plate stretching along half the front of the house.
From the opposite side of the street she scrutinised every detail, still oppressed by the question whether she had not better turn back.
The second story windows were closely hung with dainty écru lace curtains. On the sills were snowy white porcelain pots filled with geraniums and marigolds. That part of the house looked better kept and more prosperous than everything round about.
"That's probably where he lives," she thought, and felt a slight dread in the face of so much serene yet severe beauty.
Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door with iron grill work, which was next to the carriage entrance and seemed to lead up to that awe-inspiring second story.
But the door was locked, and before ringing she peeped through the grating. She saw a dark staircase solemnly lined with cypress trees and laurel bushes. In the background at the head of the stairs was a window glowing blue and red and throwing rainbow colors on a white bust in front of it. Lilly recognized the bust, having seen it in the display windows of the art shops. It was Clytie, whom she had always loved because of her gentle melancholy.
As she looked upon all this her heart sank again. She seemed to herself totally unworthy to step into those formal, peaceful regions. So she descended the three door steps and entered the profaner carriage entrance, where several labourers in white overalls were busily engaged covering the bare brick walls with highly veined marble stucco.
Men were at work in the yard as well. The round cobble stones with which it had once been paved were lying in heaps, and the ground was being covered with an ornate mosaic, of a light grey broken by white swirls and circles, like the flooring in ancient churches.
At the back of the yard rose the bald brick side of the factory, which also was undergoing changes in accordance with the general beautifying scheme. Up to about the second story the wall was being set with yellow and blue tiles. They looked gay and festive, and upon the completion of the repairs the old smoky court would have the appearance of a decorated salon.
"They're doing things here in great style," thought Lilly, growing even more timid.
To her left in a corner of the court she saw a building to which not a drop of the varnish being used on the other parts of the establishment had been applied. It stood there with bare, dun-colored plastered walls. Next to an extremely plain flight of iron steps was a metal plate inscribed "Office."
Lilly went up the iron steps and entered a badly lighted, dusty room divided in two by a wooden rail, on the farther side of which a half dozen young people were sitting at desks covered with spotted, threadbare felt. They all stared at her in astonishment. It did not occur to one of them to ask her what she wanted.
Evidently a person like herself had never before been seen in the place.
The group was turned to stone and did not regain animation until she drew her card from her gold brocade purse and silently laid it on the table. Then the six of them jumped up and tried to get possession of it. There came near being a row.
But one of them, a tall, straw-complexioned fellow, who seemed to have some authority, chased the others back to their seats with a few furtive nudges, and bowing and scraping, said to Lilly he would immediately go see whether Mr. Dehnicke—and with the card in his hand disappeared into a back room.
A few moments passed. Lilly could hear subdued voices through the half-open door.
"Czepanek? Don't know her. Ask her what she wants. What does she look like?"
The answer, which lasted several seconds, seemed to have been satisfactory, for the clerk came out and without further ado opened the gate in the wooden railing and ushered Lilly into the back room.
At lasthestood before her.
Stocky, middle-sized—shorter than herself—with a tendency toward stoutness. A round, well-kept face, good, greyish blue eyes, which said little; an arched brow, light brown hair brushed back smooth from his temples, a short moustache turned up abruptly at each end, probably to proclaim the lieutenant. Remarkably small hands and ears. Everything about him breathed tidiness and scrupulousness, though it would not have mattered if he had been less well groomed.
He was taken aback at Lilly's entrance. His eyes grew round with polite astonishment.
The consciousness that she had not failed to make an impression emboldened her, and gave her a sense of security. It was not in vain that she had gone through Miss von Schwertfeger's schooling.
"I have come to you at the recommendation of a friend of both of us, who prepared you for this visit," she began, inwardly rejoiced to be able once again to play thegrande dame.
A mirror hung opposite, and Lilly regarded with satisfaction the discreet wreath of violets about her lilac turban, and the violet-coloured tailor-made suit. Her image looking affably from the frame reminded her of a picture by some portrait painter of high life.
Mr. Dehnicke silently drew up a chair for her. An expectant distrust was to be detected in his eyes in place of the consternation of the first seconds. Evidently he did not dare to place her in the class in which, to judge from her appearance, she belonged.
His head was set a bit obliquely on his neck, inclining to the left, as if he had recently had an attack of lumbago. This posture increased Lilly's impression that he suspected her.
She looked down at her brocade purse, and acted as if she could scarcely suppress a smile.
He became still more confused.
"May I ask," he stammered, "who that friend—? I don't recall." In perplexity he turned over the visiting card his clerk had brought him.
Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower pots.
"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you to interest yourself in a lady who—"
Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair. His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened to pop from their sockets.
"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"
"I do."
"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my lady—"
So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.
But so it could not remain.
"I call myself Lilly—Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn, though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.
Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly to be read in his features.
"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited—a month—several months—then I took to looking for you—in vain. I even thought of going to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of reserve—"
Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.
"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of ever having the great pleasure—"
In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand. However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw she did not respond.
Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.
"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your door in vain."
"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers, with everything I am and—" He paused. The word "have," which should naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man, would allow to pass his lips so lightly.
"I will not make great demands on you, of course," Lilly replied airily, to put a little damper on his ardour. "I simply do not want to be without someone to advise me as to a way of earning my livelihood, and since—Mr. von Prell"—at last the name came out—"said I might place perfect confidence in you—"
"You may rely upon me as upon Mr. von Prell himself."
"That's not saying a great deal," flashed through her head, but she kept from revealing her thought by so much as a smile.
"By the way, what do you hear from him?" he asked.
Lilly blushed. If she admitted his silence, she laid herself bare, irremediably. So, not to appear forsaken and cast aside, she said:
"On parting we agreed not to write to each other for the time being. We thought in the struggle ahead of us that eternal waiting for news and that eternal fear for each other would not leave us with the strength necessary for meeting the demands of life. But you probably have gotten a letter from him lately?"
He started, and reflected an instant.
"Yes—that is, no. Not lately. Sometime ago he wrote—he was getting along. He said he was about to make a career for himself. And he asked most urgently as to your whereabouts; in regard to which, of course, to my great distress, I could not enlighten him."
This did not sound very likely. A moment before he himself had been asking for news of Walter, and now when she inquired for Walter's address, he had to acknowledge, stammering, that the letter had not contained an address and for that reason—
It was quite clear he had fabricated.
Probably he hoped to acquire greater importance in her eyes by representing his relations with her lover as still continuing. But since similar motives had led her to trifle with the truth, she had no cause for feeling angry with him.
She now told him the purpose of her visit; described the delicate craft she had learned a few months before, the desire she had to perfect herself in it, and her helplessness when it came to practical matters. Might she ask Mr. Dehnicke to recommend some artist who could instruct her? That was all she had come to him for.
He listened to her with professional interest, and acted as if he took her plans ever so seriously. But behind the mute thoughtfulness of his features lay something that did not please her. It was not pity, most certainly not. It was rather a holding back and seeking, then an increasing satisfaction, as if he felt he was gaining ground in the measure in which the helplessness of her situation became apparent.
"A very easy matter," he replied, his manner less constrained than before. "There are several real painters among the artists who furnish the models for my business. One of them"—he turned the pages of a book—"Kellermann—the very man—and then—. However, we'll drop that for the present. There are other things to be considered in connection with your practising your profession which, it strikes me, are more important. So please don't consider me impolite if I put some questions to you."
Lilly nodded assent.
"What artistic training have you had?"
"Well, you see, that's just it," Lilly replied, getting the better of her embarrassment. "Just because I never had any I should like—"
He did not move a muscle.
"What are your means of support?"
She was silent. She felt as if her clothes were being drawn from her body piece by piece.
"I need not tell you," he added, "it's not my intention to pry into matters that do not concern me. But since you honoured me by asking my advice—"
"I still have some jewels," she said, looking at him severely and haughtily. "When they go, I'll have nothing."
He nodded slightly, as if to say, "I thought so."
"One more question: in what sort of a place are you living now?"
"In the sort of place befitting my condition. Four flights up, with a poor woman, the one from whom I learned pasting pressed flowers."
As she said this, her glance fell upon the mirror and showed her the image of the beautiful aristocratic society dame, who had condescended to bestow a visit upon Mr. Dehnicke, "comrade of the reserves," in his dark hole of an office.
He rose, and for a few moments paced up and down between the desk and the door. He was so spruce and his clothes fitted him so snugly that everything about him cracked and creaked. In his polished rotundity he looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. He had a little bald spot, too. But the expression of his face remained serious, almost uneasy, as if he were weighed down by heavy thoughts.
He came to a halt before her and his voice quivered a little as he spoke.
"What I am going to say has its roots in the many years of genuine friendship that unite me to Mr. von Prell—"
The mocking, condescending words with which Walter had recommended him to her, occurred to Lilly.
"I passed so many delightful hours in his company. I owe him so much inspiration and—" He stopped. He owed him so much he could not remember it all on the instant. "I will remain in debt to him the rest of my life."
"Who feels he is indebted to me because I pumped him for coin," was what Walter had written. Then there really did exist such touching creatures in the world.
"But I am most grateful to him for the confidence he showed in me by bequeathing his betrothed to me, so to speak."
"Betrothed!" The word had been uttered. She had not deceived herself. It frightened her, but she did not repudiate it. Until that day she had not even dreamed of considering Walter and herself bound to each other, neither herself, nor the poor little fellow who did not know how to care for himself, much less for a wife and child. But then—in the eyes of this man with his middle-class morals, that was the only justification for her bungled, ill-regulated existence. And not only in his eyes—in the eyes of the whole world—and, if she cared, in her own eyes, too. If she clung to the man who was practically dead to her, fastening upon him all her wishes and feelings, she would have a support for her entire being. She could ask for absolution and justification even before God.
All this flashed through her mind with lightning rapidity while Mr. Dehnicke continued to asseverate his friendship for Walter, and look at her with his round eyes in undesirous adoration. Finally he came to the point.
"In his place and for his sake I advise you most urgently to quit surroundings that do not suit you, and create an environment in keeping with your past. If you ever wish to realise your plans you will have to."
"What has my environment to do with my art?" queried Lilly, shrugging her shoulders.
"Well, in the first place you must have a studio where you can receive your customers—where you can show them who you are and the extent of your artistic demands, and what the real nature of your artistic intentions are. That is the only way of preventing your customers from treating and paying you like an ordinary worker."
"But the customers don't come to me," she interjected.
"They should come to you," he exclaimed, talking himself into a degree of eagerness. "An artist with self-respect doesn't take one step outside his studio to offer his wares for sale. You must treat yourself the same way."
She mentally calculated the value of the rest of her brooches, rings, and bracelets, and rejoined with a smile:
"Easily said."
Mr. Dehnicke made a bold sally.
"My sincere friendship for Walter"—now he called him by his first name—"gives me the right—how shall I say? to make provision, to—"
Lilly saw what was coming and shut off further discussion.
"I feel content where I am," she declared, "and until I have created with my own efforts the suitable environment that you so kindly wish for me, I do not feel I am entitled to make a change."
He bowed. His friendly zeal cooled off markedly. But he asked for her address, so that he might know where he should send her the desired information.
Lilly hesitatingly gave it to him, and added the request that in no circumstances should he come to see her.
He bowed again, and his coolness became rigidity.
But Lilly rejoiced that she had known so well how to keep him at a distance. Nobody in the wide world should call her a beggar.
She therefore took leave all the more graciously, for she had not come to him in order to frighten him away forever.
He was quick to profit by her warmer tone, and became ardent again.
If there was anything else he could do for her—if she felt lonely—and required company.
Lilly looked at his right hand, saw no wedding ring there, and smiled "no."
He understood look and smile, for he said, hemming and hawing in an endeavour to conquer fresh confusion:
"I live alone with my mother, but unfortunately I cannot take you to see her because she is sickly and since my father's death has withdrawn entirely from society. But I would be most careful as to the company to which I should introduce you."
"I took that for granted," Lilly replied with amiable condescension. "In spite of that—thank, you, really—in the peculiar position I am in it is better for me not to mingle with people."
She gave him a regal bow, held out her hand, and left.
He followed her respectfully, and the six young gentlemen stood up in a row and curved their backs like their employer.
With flushed face Lilly passed the partially completed decorations in the yard, and walked along the imitation marble entrance to the street, thinking, in mingled triumph and disenchantment:
"No, that wasnota path of destiny."
But she had suddenly acquired a betrothed. That was something, at any rate.
Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures, enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.
He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions, like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.
When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused light from above—it was so high it seemed a very part of the heaven—she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a narghile that had gone out.
"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."
Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow, hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.
"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."
Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.
"Now his manner will change," she thought.
Nothing of the sort took place.
"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"—here she was "general's wife" again—"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like this comes along."
"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly, who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.
He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.
"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver—dry referring to bread as well as to giver—didsay something to me day before yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to—"
When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into unrestrained laughter.
"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able to look a rose in the face again."
Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.
"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can afford to pay for such valuable services—"
He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would probably look out for that.
"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that—" she grasped her parasol—she had kept her gloves on.
"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.
"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.
"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.
"It is more important to me than the first. It is—I should like to be treated like a lady."
"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be fine as silk, I tellyou, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best: superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar. Now select."
This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as agrande dame, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her court and took her as a "good fellow."
However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she came he was wearing boots.
He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in her childish plan.
He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in planning new effects.
"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean, of course, Dame Nature."
While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.
The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul" were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays, finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.
And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty, half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless conception and a laughing ability to execute.
One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock, while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.
There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.
One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on exhibit.
"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers. Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"
"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"
He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.
She declined, and pressed him for an answer.
"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here is the foam-born body. Begin—look and paint to your heart's content.'"
Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his clasped hands up to her.
"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what haveIto do with all that!"
"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible respect to—. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for freedom long enough—she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I can't sleep—then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady, who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and—"
"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.
After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly had to forbid his ever referring to it.
Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's opinion, was highly commendable.
In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within, constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an extremely early period in the world's history.
Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had visited him.
Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.
But one day Mr. Kellermann said:
"What the devil—the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up here every day to see how things are progressing."
Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a degree of satisfaction.
At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden, seven-pointed coronet—she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.
His reply arrived without delay.
Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her wishes.
And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.
Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady, who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than gotten.
Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.
He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.
How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him permission—he hadn't wished to appear intrusive—he would have waited even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty manner.
Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the rôle of the "general's wife"—partly against her will—who does the honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.
Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the transparencies at the windows.
Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.
Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.
"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.
Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I ought to show them to you first."
He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:
"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by inordinate professional conceit, and it might be—"
Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.
Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.
Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:
"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I might even dispose of them as goods of my own."
Lilly flushed with gratitude.
"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have found customers for myself?"
The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.
"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home worthy of yourself."
"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the wherewithal."
"That may mean years."
"I will wait years."
"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified—"
Lilly drew herself up.
"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would merely humiliate me."
She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of insult.
Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.
When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent friend. It was his only opportunity—
"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak about my betrothed."
"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat stirred when she uttered it.
The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.
Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee, the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.
About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert & Dehnicke, Mfrs. of Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."
The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.
Now followed happy times.
With part of the sum she had earned Lilly bought new material, and soon more sunsets glowed beyond woods of dried grass.
When she lay on her bed during the hot summer nights, sleepless from overwork, she would give herself up to wild dreams of what she would do when her art had conquered the world.
She would start a workshop, like Mr. Dehnicke's, employ about a dozen women with Mrs. Laue, of course, as forelady. Then hunt up her father, and transfer her poor crazy mother to a fine private insane asylum. What else? Oh yes, provide for Walter, certainly. Now that she felt she was his fiancée, and her future was his, this was her bounden duty. To be sure he must first let himself be heard from. But some day, Lilly knew, when he was at a loss where to turn, he would get word to her in some way or other. Then she would send him money—in abundance—in overflowing measure—everything her craft threw into her lap.
No, not everything. One task, the greatest, the holiest, merely to think of which was presumption, dominated her life.
Whether or not her father returned, his work, his immortal work, must never be allowed to sink into oblivion. Awaiting its summons to life the score of the Song of Songs still lay asleep in Lilly's locked trunk. But its sleep was no longer so sound, so dreamless as in the years just gone by. It began to stir and moan. It gave out a humming and ringing which echoed through the day's work and crooned in Lilly's sleep, causing chords and melodies to sound when she least expected them.
From the blue hills beyond which the sun set in flames came a soft strain as if blown by evening winds: "How beautiful are thy feet in sandals, O prince's daughter!" And out of the dark depths of the fabulous woods fluttered fragments of songs of the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley.
It was almost as if invisible little beings were singing who led a pleasant existence inside those bright-windowed pasteboard huts.
Like Lilly herself the whole world would some day have a share in the treasure whose guardian fate had destined her to be.
Wherever she went or stood, whatever she did or thought, from all corners hopes came dancing forth, beckoning and smiling. A new, larger, purer existence was now to begin. The ends of that golden thread which her insane mother had cut in two with the bread knife, had been tied together again, and drew her upward, upward. She had divinations of something sacred which gave forth blessings, something to be prayed for and struggled for.
A few more months and it would all come to pass.
A piece of good fortune seldom comes unaccompanied by another; and so it happened that—miracle of miracles!—her betrothed gave a sign of life.
It was one of the first days in September between eleven and twelve o'clock in the morning when Mr. Dehnicke appeared at her door without having announced his coming. Lilly was not completely dressed, and refused at first to see him in. However, he was so insistent that the business on which he had come was extremely important, that she did not venture to dismiss him, and offering a thousand excuses she received him in her matinée.
He let a shy glance of admiration travel over her, and then drew a broad, strange-looking piece of paper from his pocket, which proved to be a check on the Lincoln and Ohio Bank for two thousand and some odd marks.
"What shall I do with it?" asked Lilly.
"Read the letter it came enclosed in," he replied unfolding a large sheet.
"Mr. Richard Dehnicke, Dear Sir," was informed that Mr. Walter von Prell had deposited five hundred dollars to be paid over to Baroness Lilly von Mertzbach.
Lilly was shaken by a storm of gratitude.
She ran up and down the room pressing her handkerchief to her eyes.
Shehad wanted to provide for him, and nowhewas providing forher.
Suddenly she was fairly overwhelmed by a feeling of distrust.
She came to a standstill, and looked from the check to Mr. Dehnicke and back at the check again.
Both were wrapped in silence.
"Do explain," she cried, utterly perplexed.
"What is there for me to explain?" he rejoined. "I am merely the middleman, or, if you will, the agent in the affair, which really concerns no one but you and your affianced."
"If at least he had given his address," cried Lilly.
"It almost looks as if he wanted to eradicate all trace of himself," Mr. Dehnicke observed.
It was so romantic and so unlike Walter—how could she help being at a loss!
But there was "Baroness von Mertzbach." Walter was the only person not likely to know of her having had to renounce her married name. That, at least, was an indication of the genuineness of the remittance.
Mr. Dehnicke inclined his head to the left as usual, and regarded her with calm indifference—he was the innocent middleman, nothing more.
"After this unexpected turn of events," he finally said, "you will, of course, no longer refuse to take up the sort of life that accords with your social position and is so essential for the sale of your works."
She shook her head, biting her lips.
Hereupon he became insistent, more insistent than she had thought his modesty would permit him to be.
"Youmust. For his sake you must. I am responsible to him for that. If he should return and want to marry you, he must not find a déclassée. I am responsible to him for that."
Lilly asked for time to consider.
From now on her distant lover held sway over her life with a certain emphasis. What had been mere fancy became reality.
Not that she thought of him unqualifiedly as the real sender of those mysterious five hundred dollars. On the contrary, the voice would not be silenced that said to her: "You are being played with." But she was afraid to listen to it, or even draw inferences and come to conclusions. For if she were to lose the single friend she had, then what?
In order to down all her doubts and scruples she worked diligently, and nearly once a week had batches of sunsets ready to be taken away. And in the meantime Mr. Kellermann had brought her new motifs: a Gothic cathedral perched on perpendicular rocks, a hunting lodge with many gleaming windows, and—chef d'œuvre—the moon rising over peaceful waters, whose silvery sheen was broken by fern fronds.
October came.
The first Sunday of the month Mr. Dehnicke called to take Lilly out walking. He had come for her twice before, and Lilly had accompanied him gladly. Had he offered to take her to the country, her happiness would have been complete.
The autumnal sun lay peacefully upon the tattered leaves of the bare little trees that edged the square fountain. Groups of people sauntered by aimlessly, looking bored and depressed. The winter was already laying its icy touch on men's spirits.
Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and protector at her side in all that bustle.
Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally began:
"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the future?"
Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel you are of some value in the world.
"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would delight in."
"I'm not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to assume that our tastes are absolutely similar."
"Oh, no! I'm not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I think would please you, unless I'm very much mistaken. It belongs to a lady customer of mine who left town."
"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."
He reflected.
"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid, to be sure, won't be in, because it's Sunday, but the porter's wife knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to—"
Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger, but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety grass hang over the blue waters of a canal.
"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.
The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Königin-Augusta-Ufer."
Dehnicke went to the porter's lodge and spoke a few words through the window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare flagging at home, which hurt one's feet.
He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he unlocked the door with the key.
In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in the halls.
They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and passed through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with glass doors curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a large, dark, highly polished dining-table.
"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn't be bad for a sample room and private studio for you."
Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.
Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.
"Does your customer belong to the nobility?" asked Lilly, seized by a vague feeling of envy.
"Not that I know of. Her husband isn't a nobleman. But maybe she herself is of noble extraction."
Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue's musty drawers. How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with the poor-people's odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.
"Happy creature!" she said softly.
It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no matinée, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.
"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said Mr. Dehnicke.
They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was flooded with sunlight.
Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.
She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables—a woman about to dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a little bookcase, a lady's secrétaire, paintings on the walls, and even an upright piano.
"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.
There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped at them from another window.
Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact all this was—like a bird's nest—yet how inconceivably charming when contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.
"Why, it's a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were rising in her eyes.
"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for your assistants to work in."
Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others, though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner was a comfortable iron bed.
"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained Mr. Dehnicke.
It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.
They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed beneath a curtain of lavender crape.
"What's that?" Lilly asked.
Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the secrétaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same mysterious veil.
Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the covering over the large picture.
"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a theft.
"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little more heavily than usual.
She tugged—tugged more violently—the crape fell off—and before her hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in crayon.