He put a finger under her chin and shoved her head back. She kept her eyes almost closed and saw nothing except the red border of his military coat.
Suddenly she felt herself sinking. The red border mounted to the ceiling, bees buzzed about her ears—then nothing.
When she came to, something cold and wet was lying on her breast, and a woman's clothes smelling of smoke grazed her cheek.
The green twilight was still there.
A breastplate was hanging in front of her. It looked like a brightly scoured kettle.
She did not dare move, she felt so comfortable and easy.
A rough, bony hand kept chafing her forehead and a kindly voice repeated two or three times in succession:
"Poor little thing! Poor little thing! So young!"
After a time Lilly could not help giving a sign of consciousness, and the instant she stirred a sure arm came to the support of her head, and the kindly voice asked, was she feeling better and did she want anything?
"I want to go home."
"Not so easily done," said the voice, "because he gave orders that he wanted to speak to you again. But if you'll take a good piece of advice, say 'much obliged,' and 'good-by,' and be off as quickly as you can. This is no sort of place for a poor young girl like you."
Lilly sat up, and pulled down her waist.
The cook was standing beside her—a brown, furrowed, thick-lipped face. Stroking Lilly's shoulder she asked if she should bring her something to strengthen her heart, a cordial beaten up with the white of an egg, or something else.
"I want to go home."
"You shall, pretty soon, my dear. But I must call him in first."
She hustled out of the room.
Lilly reached for her hat, on which she must have been lying, because it was completely crushed and misshapen.
"Now I must certainly get a new one," she thought, and tried to reckon how much she could spare for it.
The door opened. He entered, followed by the cook.
Lilly was no longer afraid. Everything seemed far, far away. Even he. Nothing seemed to concern her any more.
"I think she's fit to be taken to the cab already," said the cook.
"You are no longer needed here," he said imperiously.
The cook ventured to stammer another suggestion.
"Get out!" he thundered.
With that she was outside the door.
Lilly experienced merely a lazy sensation of being startled.
"Nevertheless, I'm curious to know what he means to do with me now," she thought.
But her interest in her own fate was not great.
He walked up and down with a heavy tread. The silver spurs on his heels jingled.
"We'll have some light," he said. "The subject we're now to discuss requires clearness."
He summoned the lackey who had smiled the furtive, cunning smile. The lackey lit the gas jets of the chandelier, and on leaving the room gave Lilly a glance of wildly eager curiosity, this time without a smile.
Lilly still sat on the couch on which she had come back to consciousness, twirling her old hat without a thought in her brain.
In the full light of the chandelier she saw the colonel in all his resplendence still pacing silently up and down.
Lilly could look him in the face without a flutter.
"It's all the same to me what he does," she thought. "I cannot defend myself at any rate."
He moved a chair in front of her, and sat down—so close that his knees almost touched her.
"Now listen to me, my child," he said. His words rang out steely and choppy as words of command at a drill. "While you were lying here in a faint, I thought about you in the other room, and came to a decision—but more of that later. You have long noticed, I suppose, that my feeling for you is not paternal. The older I grow the less I comprehend so-called fatherliness. To be brief—I am seized by a passion for you which—rather upsets me. If I were ten years older than I am—I am fifty-four—I should say: 'That's senile.' Do you know what I mean?"
Lilly shook her head.
She saw his face next to hers so distinctly that, had she never looked upon it again, she would have remembered it to the end of her days.
His eyes embedded in red puffs, burned and bored again in the way that had frightened her so at first. His hair lay in bristling strands of grey at his temples and over his ears, but his moustache was black as coal, and shadowed his dark teeth like a spot of ink with a white line down the centre. From his mouth started the two limp folds which passed his shiny chin and disappeared in the collar of his military coat.
"How strange," thought Lilly, "that I must be the mistress of that bad old man."
But he wanted it so, and there was nothing else to do.
"If you were to make inquiries concerning me," he continued, "they'd tell you that despite my age, I know how to subdue women—probably because I never respected them any too highly. But this time—how shall I say?—the affair is in a manner peculiar. I need not conceal it—I cannot sleep. I haven't slept for many nights; which has never happened to me before. Such a state of matters may not continue, and I pledged myself to make an end of the absurdity in some way or other at the death of the old year." He looked at the clock. "I have half an hour still. I'm expected at a function. In short: it's true, I wanted to seduce you. That is, for a man of my years, who hasn't anything seductive about him any more, seduce is not the right word. At any rate not here; I'd given my word of honour in my letter. But youwerein my power—you need not doubt that an instant."
"I don't," thought Lilly, who was listening to all he said with as little concern as if she were reading it in a thrilling romance. The old fear had not returned. She was still waiting with lazy curiosity for what was to follow.
"If you had showed fight, you would have been defeated all the more certainly. I am somewhat of an adept in such things. But your fainting spell occurred, and gave me an insight into your soul. I had to admit I should never have taken joy in my conquest. You're fine stuff, and I have no use for someone who would pine. Tearful mistresses have always been a horror to me. I love my comfort. I have had experiences I should not like to repeat. So, while you were lying here with my cook to take care of you, I determined I was on the wrong course."
Lilly had a warm sensation of happiness, as if some great act of kindness were being shown her.
"How noble, how glorious of him," she thought, "to let poor stupid me alone."
She cast a furtive glance at his hands hanging between his knees. They were yellow and long and bony. Had she not been ashamed to, she would have leaned over and kissed them, to show her gratitude.
The next moment she felt almost sorry that so noble a man should have nothing to do with her any more.
"I took further counsel with myself," he continued, and his voice was still steelier, as if tempered in the fire of his resolve. "The idea was not a new one. It had occurred to me frequently. At first it seemed ridiculous, then it came to be a last resort, from which I would not cut myself off, in case circumstances warranted—I am taking that way now. Why shouldn't I? I'm not very ambitious. I'm too well acquainted with the vile machinery of the government. It doesn't pay to oil it any longer than need be with one's sweat and blood. So the idea of quitting doesn't frighten me—of course I shall have to leave service. Perhaps I should at any rate. There are days when I can scarcely keep the saddle because of that cursed rheumatism in my hips."
"Why is he telling me all this?" thought Lilly, not a little flattered that so great and aristocratic a man should discuss such weighty matters with her.
"What exercises me more is that a whole generation stands ready to revenge itself for the robbery perpetrated upon it. To be sure, a strong hand would do some good. We should have to dare something—why not our side as well as the other? Well, what do you say, child?"
Lilly did not reply. She was ashamed that she was so stupid as not to have extracted a single idea from all he said. His words sounded like Hottentotese.
"Well, will you—yes or no?"
"I don't know—I don't understand what you mean," she stammered.
"Good Lord! I've been asking you all this time whether you'll be my wife," said the colonel.
The great moment of her hopes had arrived.
"Is this you, Lilly Czepanek, to whom such things happen? Or, is it someone else, with whom you changed places, some character in one of your brown-backed books, who will cease to live the instant you close it?"
He had not insisted on an answer that New Year's Eve. When she had fallen back in a tremble, incapable of uttering a syllable, incapable of thinking, he had taken her hands in his, and with the smile of a gift-giving god had begun to talk to her in a softer, gentler tone than she had thought possible in him. He told her to think the matter over; she might take three days, no, a week; he would have patience. But she must promise not to say a word about it to anybody.
She promised willingly, though she could not look him in the face, she was so horribly ashamed.
Then she had run home, and cried and cried without knowing whether from bliss or misery. When the sisters came creeping in at four o'clock in the morning—they had let down the bars of their propriety on New Year's Eve—she was still crying.
On rising, she came to the conclusion he could not possibly have been serious and he would take the first opportunity to recant—perhaps that very day.
She would not complain if he did. On the contrary she would breathe freer, and thank God for having rid her of the presence of a phantom.
At ten o'clock the bell rang.
A box of roses was delivered, the size and cost of which aroused the disapproving amazement of the sisters, who knew to a penny the price of roses at that season, and reckoned a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages for several months.
"I cannot for the life of me see," said the older, "why you don't yield to such a magnificent admirer. With us, of course, it's different. We belong to society, and we cannot give ourselves up. But you, nothing more than a shop girl, with no family to have to consider! Besides, there's no doubt but that shame has its charms. I in your place would make a venture—"
The younger and more sentimental sister opposed the older one's advice.
"The first time it should be from pure love," she said. "You owe it to your own soul, even if you are only a shop girl."
Without coming to an agreement upon this debatable point, they went off to witness the change of guards, which Colonel von Mertzbach, they said, contemplated directing in his own person on New Year's day, and the Colonel, reputed to be a very handsome man pursued by all the marriageable girls in society, was someone they wanted to see.
Lilly patted and kissed the roses of the upper stratum, and would have done the same to all in the box, had there not been so many.
Then she took heart, locked the door, and went to St. Anne's to pay St. Joseph a visit.
She nearly met the officers hastening to the main guard face to face, but managed in the nick of time to escape down a side street.
High mass had just concluded and had left an odor of incense and poor people between the arched aisles. A few persons were still praying at the side altars.
Lilly kneeled before her saint, leaned her head against the velvet-covered rail, and tried to lay bare her torn heart in order to obtain counsel and help.
"May I? Shall I? Can I?"
Oh, she longed to. Such a piece of fortune would never come her way again, never, never. To be rich, a baroness, to have all the splendours of the universe laid at her feet. Where outside of fairytales do such marvels occur?
If only there hadn't been one thing about him. But what that one thing was she could not determine.
It wasn't his eyes, no matter how dagger-like they looked. It wasn't the bristly hair on his temples either, nor the grating voice of command.
Now she knew! It was the two dewlaps that fell from chin to throat. Yes, that's what it was. No use trying to dissemble with herself and pretend she did not see them. She shuddered at the mere thought of them.
None the less, the sisters had called him ahandsomeman, and rich, aristocratic women ran after him. It would be sheer folly to refuse.
And wasn't he the noblest, the best, the most exalted of men? Wasn't he like God Himself?
She imagined herself living and breathing for him. She would sit at his feet and learn. She would flutter about him like a gay bird. No, she could not imagine a person being gay in his presence. But a person could be poetic. You could languish away into unknown remotenesses, gaze at the evening clouds, present a noble, pale picture, up to which strange young men would look with consuming passion, and be honoured by not a glance in return—she could do this, because her life would be dedicated to the one who was to be her protector, friend, and father, who would elevate her to heights from which otherwise a ray would never have fallen upon her.
"I will, I will!" life within her cried. "Dear St. Joseph, I will!"
St. Joseph raised a threatening finger.
But St. Joseph always raised a threatening finger. He couldn't help himself. That was the way the sculptor had made him. The sight of that finger, however, was vexatious and not calculated to help a poor human being out of a dilemma.
The next day she received a letter from Mr. Pieper, asking her to call at his office on a matter of great importance.
Hot and cold waves shivered up and down her back.
"He knows," she said to herself.
Mrs. Asmussen was greatly displeased when Lilly asked for permission to go out.
"You get flowers and expensive gifts, and you want to leave the library every day. I very much fear me I shall have to offer up a daily prayer for you again."
But Lilly showed her the guardian's letter, and she yielded.
Lilly had not seen her guardian since the day, a year and a half before, when she had left the hospital tottering from weakness. Timidity had prevented her from availing herself of his invitation to visit him again. Besides, there had been no occasion to. Nobody had inquired for her. From time to time a tall, dry man, whom she recognised as Mr. Pieper's managing clerk, had called on Mrs. Asmussen and held a short conversation with her. This was the one sign that the man to whose protection Lilly had been consigned thought of her.
"Mr. Pieper says, will you please walk in," said the clerk.
The prominent lawyer, as on the previous occasion, was sitting behind his desk. When Lilly entered, he raised his head, and inspected her a few moments in silence. Then he smiled and rubbed his shining pate, and said in a long drawl:
"U—m—m! So—o—o!"
His eyes glided over her body as over a piece of goods for sale.
Lilly, whose respect for the man rendered her breathless, made a gesture which was half bow, half courtesy, and pulled at the short sleeves of her overcoat.
"Now I understand," continued Mr. Pieper. "You have developed in a way, my child, which in a measure excuses all sorts of masculine absurdities, even if it does not justify them—the masculine intellect is here to suppress all ebullitions. I forgot my manners—good morning, Miss Czepanek."
He rose and held out his cold, spongy hand, which under pressure felt as limp as if it were boneless.
"Oh, do please show me your gloves," he said.
Lilly started like a guilty thing, drew her elbows back, blushed and stammered:
"I was just going to buy a new pair."
"Don't!" he rejoined, smacking his lips with gusto. "Grey rags like these arouse emotion. Your cloak arouses emotion, too. Your clothes make a piquant contrast to your general appearance. Lovers of such naïve, sentimental things are easily moved by them to lyric outbursts, even if lyricism is not their forte."
He laid his arm in hers with a confidential manner, and led her to a heavily upholstered settee.
"Be seated in this chair of torture," he said, "though to-day we're not going to extract even a tooth. Taking everything into consideration, you have done well for yourself. I am content with you, my child."
He stroked his straw-coloured beard complacently, and grinned like a trickster after the performance of a particularly artful dodge. "When do you think the wedding will take place?"
"Why, there has not been—an engagement—yet," stammered Lilly.
"Well, there won't be what is called a real engagement—sending out notices and receiving visits, and so on. As little stir as possible, Miss Czepanek, as little stir as possible. That's my advice. In the delicate situation in which we find ourselves, contrary influences are always to be feared."
"I haven't said 'yes' yet," Lilly ventured to interject.
This amused him immensely.
"Who'd have thought it! A mock refusal! Who'd have thought it! I didn't take you for so good a business woman, Miss Czepanek."
"I am at a loss as to your meaning," said Lilly, who without fully realising why, was growing hot with indignation.
He put one hand to his hip, and continued to be amused.
"Well, well, that's all very fine and practical. But you can't carry such jokes too far. Letmearrange matters. I have some knowledge of these affairs, though, I admit, so important a case has never come to me before. I will endeavour to hasten the wedding as much as possible—for the reasons I have already mentioned. I will also ask for all possible secrecy, at least until his resignation has been accepted. Then nothing need stand in the way of securing the banns, since getting an adequate trousseau need concern us in only a lesser degree. As for your conduct, my dear child, I advise you for the present to remain as undecided, as maidenly, as fresh as possible. The only change I suggest is to use better soap. Everything else may continue to be just as it is. Perhaps you will have to be placed with another family. In that case it will be necessary, of course, to get an outfit, for which the sum realised from the sale of your mother's effects, amounting to—one moment, please." He opened a large account book lying on a rack next to his desk, "amounting to—A, B, C, Czepanek—amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks and seventy-five pfennig, will come in very handy. Æsthetic enjoyment of the circumstances leads me to place my own purse also at your disposal. Well, so much for the time preceding the wedding! As to the incomparably more important time following, I should not like you to leave my office before I had given you a few delicate hints, althoughunfortunately, I must deny myself the pleasure of—"
He paused a moment, and rubbed his hands, while an epicurean, satyr's smile widened his broad face.
"The pleasure of taking a mother's place and giving you the advice with which a mother usually sends off a bride."
This time Lilly understood him, and her hot shame seemed to spread a red mist before her eyes.
"You may trust me implicitly in such matters as a will, life insurance, and alimony in case of divorce, provided, of course, you are the innocent party—or even, in a sense, a bit guilty. You were not placed in my keeping for nothing. However, there isonecircumstance—which circumstance has to be taken most frequently into consideration in marriages like yours—onecircumstance in which my professional skill, I am sorry to say, cannot provide you with adequate security. As to that, you must keep your eyes wide open for yourself. We human beings have been put in this world, my child, to do what gives us pleasure. Whoever says the reverse steals the sun from your heaven. But I warn you of three things: first, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions. You cannot fully comprehend this yet—"
As a matter of fact Lilly comprehended not a single word.
"But when the occasion arises, think of what I've said. The recollection may prove useful. And—here's something very important—do you love jewels?"
"I cannot say I have ever seen any."
"Well, in the jeweler's window at the Altmarkt?"
"We were always forbidden to stand in front of shop windows."
Mr. Pieper laughed his vilest laugh.
"I advise you when you are out walking with your husband to stand in front ofeveryshop window. Such little attentions may seldom be reclaimed. Pay special regard to pearls. In that way you will lay by a little reserve which will stand you in mighty good stead in your hour of need—and your hour of need will come, you may be sure it will."
Lilly nodded her head and thought:
"I will never, never, do that."
Mr. Pieper stroked his shining bald spot several times with his plump, white hand, and continued:
"Well, what else have I to say to you? I have a good deal more advice to give, but I fear not being understood. Just one thing, for the first few months. Marriage, no matter what sort of marriage, causes a peculiar derangement of the nervous system in natures like yours. Should you feel an inclination to cry, take a bromide. In general, take plenty of bromides—whether in case of great love, or—hm—great aversion. At certain times pull a cap over your head, so that you see nothing, hear nothing, and feel nothing, and, as it were, shunt yourself off from what goes on around you, yourself, your volition, and your feelings. The close atmosphere of the chamber which will at first envelope you will gradually evaporate—in this case probably at the end of a few months. Then you will breathe fresh air again, and instead of a tester, you will once more see the heaven of your maiden days. But, whatever happens, it is dangerous when one's nerves are overstimulated, to direct one's fancy too much upon the immediate environment and seek the necessary compensation that very instant. Turn from what is near, and dream about the remote blue mountains. Let your happiness ever dwell at a safe distance. You are young. It will draw closer. Give it time to become full fledged. I assume you haven't understood a word."
"Oh, yes I have," stammered Lilly, who wished not to be considered stupid, though he was right—his words fell upon her like hailstones, of which she was able to gather only a few here and there. Nevertheless, she had understood the last part, that about dreaming of the remote blue mountains. It did her heart good, and she would take his advice.
"However that may be," Mr. Pieper continued, "some sentence or other will occur to you on occasion. One point more, the most delicate of all, because it is, so to speak, the most spiritual. If what is about you gives no sound or response, if it does not echo to your call, you must not grieve, nor attempt to alter it. Cracked bells should not be rung. Rather make your own music. If I am not mistaken, you have a whole orchestra at your disposal."
"I have the Song of Songs," thought Lilly, triumphantly.
"You cannot imagine, my child, how important it is, when one lives in such close contact with another human being, not to lose one's touch with oneself. Keep a corner reserved for your own thoughts—they will amuse you greatly. He who likes to eat fresh eggs must raise his own chickens. Don't forget that. But keep your corner to yourself. Offer no superfluous resistance. No obstinacy. From the very start you must provide the course of your life with a double track, so that you can ride in either direction, as need be. I shouldn't wonder if under such conditions it wouldn't turn out to be quite a happy marriage, entirely apart from the external advantages—so long as they last—these are matters of adaptation and good luck which our will cannot control in advance. I will send you the marriage contract sealed. Until your coming of age—in about two years, I believe—I am at your disposal. If after a time you see that the milk in your cup has turned permanently sour, break the seal. A thorough lawyer can read all sorts of surprises out of the contract, which laymen do not immediately realise. But, as I said, inonecase he cannot. Beware of that one case. It is calledin flagranti. Some time cautiously inquire into its meaning. There you are! Now, may I give the colonel your consent?"
The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with yellow.
How beautiful and strange it was!
Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet cushion.
It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and forth in her brain.
A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay gentlemen, the colonel.
"The colonel's wife—the colonel's wife," throbbed the wheels.
But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:
"La—dy Mertzbach—La—dy Mertzbach."
Keeping time. Keeping time.
The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-glass a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave way.
Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy, she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to ask his forgiveness later.
There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.
That was the only embarrassing thing. If she weren't such a chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a change.
But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.
There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn't speak to anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body, giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had donned civilian's clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.
From time to time he leaned forward and asked:
"Are you comfortable, little girl?"
Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and then peeping from under her travelling gown.
What a crowd there had been at the station!
No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort. To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater. They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried to be inconspicuous.
When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or three muffled cries of admiration. And God knows, they did not issue from friendly lips.
It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.
At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in through the window.
She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and weeping like rain spouts.
So great was Lilly's fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the evil poison in these girls was transmuted into pained participation in another's joy!
And there he sat, the creator of it all.
Overcome by a sense of well-being and gratitude, she knelt on the carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and looked up to him worshipfully.
He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded—with a smile that seemed to say:
"My hour will come in due time."
It was there sooner than she had suspected.
"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."
"Where?" she asked, frightened.
"At the station—you know—from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."
"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had always spoken of going to Dresden.
"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."
In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their bags and trunks.
The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped into a circle of light.
The train glided off.
They stood there, and nobody concerned himself for them.
The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.
His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body quivered, as if she were at fault.
Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were still seething within him.
"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you." A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open the coach door, and run away into the night?"
She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped, would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen perhaps.
At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she returned his pressure.
Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the fleeting thought beset her again:
"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run away and never come back?"
She was already walking up the steps on his arm.
They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.
In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards, smoothly covered with a white counterpane.
She looked about in vain for another bed.
"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.
The colonel—when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel still—behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit, fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.
She remained leaning against the wall.
"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out of the window."
"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so, I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."
A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure of his possession.
He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.
A knock at the door.
A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated bottle.
"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish feeling.
"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for her in the trunk."
She clinked glasses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely moistened her lips with the wine.
He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:
"I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening."
Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh, and observed:
"All the better, all the better!"
He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.
"You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown."
She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before, lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous, lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before the wedding.
She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every movement.
Hesitating, faint-hearted she stood there, her fingers hanging to her collar, which she did not venture to unfasten.
Growing impatient he jumped up.
He was about to seize her, but the look she gave him was so full of despair that a knightly impulse bade him desist.
To account for his action he picked up a roll of paper that had dropped from the trunk while she had been rummaging for the nightgown.
Lilly saw something white gleam between his dark fingers.
"The Song of Songs!" occurred to her.
With a cry she jumped on him and tried to snatch away the roll. But his hand held it as in a vice.
He defended himself with ease, laughing all the time.
The thought that the secret of her life had strayed into alien hands, deprived her of her senses. She cried, she screamed, she beat him with her fists.
The matter began to look suspicious. A doubt as to the virginity of her soul, yea, even of her body, began to assail him.
"One moment, little girl," he said. "There are no nooks or crannies for hiding in now. Either you'll kindly let me see what this is without further delay, or I'll take you between my knees and hold you so fast you won't be able to move a muscle."
Lilly took to pleading.
"Colonel, dear,dearcolonel! A few sheets of music, and some songs, that's all, I swear to you,dearcolonel."
The droll innocence of her plea stirred his emotions; that humble, unconscious "colonel" set him laughing again. Besides, the daughter of a musician, as he knew her to be, might be expected to have ambitions.
"You yourself probably compose?" he asked.
"No—no—no—it's not that," she moaned. "But don't look in—give it back to me—if you don't, I'll jump out of the window. I will, by God and all the saints!"
She pleased him so well with her eyes stretched in deadly terror, with her hair loosened by the struggle, with the expression of a tragic muse on the sweet, delicately cut child's face, that he wanted to enjoy the rare sight a little longer.
Accordingly, he assumed a black expression, and pretended to be what a few moments ago he had actually been.
She fell on her knees, and clasping his legs, stammered and whispered, almost choked with shame and distress:
"If you give it back to me, you can do with me whatever you want. I will do whatever you want. I won't resist any more."
The bargain, it struck him, was to his advantage.
"Shake hands on it?" he asked.
"Shake hands," she replied. "And never ask questions—yes?"
"If you swear to me by your St. Joseph it's nothing but music."
"And the libretto, I swear."
He handed her the roll, and she gave herself up to him—sold herself to the man who already possessed her for the Song of Songs, of which he had robbed her.
The rays of early morning shining on her eyes through curtains striped with yellow awoke her. She was resting comfortably pressed against something warm. She had slept deliciously.
What had happened to her came back to her slowly.
She leaned over and wanted to kiss him.
He was lying with his head thrown back, his mouth open. The light from the windows was playing on his shiny, furrowed chin. Little veins crisscrossed his gaunt cheeks like streams on a map. The inky moustache glistened with pomade. His eyelids were folded over so often that Lilly thought if they were stretched to their length they would reach to the tip of his nose.
"He doesn't look bad," she said to herself, but the idea of kissing him passed out of her mind.
She got up without making a sound, and all the time she dressed he did not stir. The old cavalry man was blessed with sound sleep.
She wrote on a sheet of hotel paper, "have gone to church," laid the sheet between his fingers, and slipped out, down the steps and past the porter, who was so astonished he forgot to pull off his cap.
The streets of the little town were dreaming in the quiet of the winter morning. Hillocks of snow swept from the middle of the street were heaped in rows along the gutters. A black swarm of crows squatted in a circle about the frozen fountain in the market-place. The faint sound of sleigh bells penetrated the grey air.
Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one spring, goggled after her.
Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing gloves—but no overcoats—came tramping along the middle of the street, puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals. All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders.
She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks.
The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who, however, did not have much to say to her.
An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if she had broken something, she did not know what.
She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed of herself.
Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy.
Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to close her eyes and clench her teeth—she was ashamed of the shiver, too.
Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set with pearls and precious gems.
"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd havesomething. Then I could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St. Joseph—and the swords inmyheart would be sumptuous to behold."
As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at the wedding.
She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot, surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint—how she had been borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon the fair and blessed distance.
None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.
"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and shrugged her shoulders.
Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return, that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted, distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.
"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.
She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She prayed to be able to love him—with as much passion as she had drops of blood—with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much delight as there was laughter in her heart.
And behold! Her prayer was heard!
With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and trust—as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he happened to wish.
The colonel wishing, on account of his mésalliance, to avoid his many military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.
He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple. Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath—that was all they needed. Close companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring about inward intimacy.
The colonel had good cause, indeed, to be satisfied with his honeymoon!
He, who in the course of his many amours had probably dandled hundreds of girls on his knees, who thought he knew women through and through, the tart and the sweet, the chaste and the coquette, the sensitive and the bold, the genuine and the flashy, those who confined their coy caresses to a man's hand and lower arm, and those who hung on men's lips biting and sucking them in a wild frenzy, he, the old voluptuary, to whom nothing feminine ought to have been strange, stood astounded, incredulous before this lovely marvel.
So much abandon and so much pride, so much tenderness and so much fire, so much ready comprehension and so much artless childishness, all mingled in one dreamy, laughing Madonna head, had never before presented itself to him, for all the fine art he had exercised in his roué's career.
What touched him most and completely puzzled him was the modesty of her desires, the fact that she made no demands of any sort.
When they took dinnerà la cartehe might be sure her eye would travel to the cheapest orders for herself; and the expression with which she would sometimes prefer a request to be allowed to drink orangeade, was as hesitating and shamefaced as if she were making a love avowal.
One day, on returning from the Grosser Garten by way of side streets, Lilly stood still in front of a poverty-stricken little provision shop. As a rule nothing could induce her to look into shop windows, and the colonel, curious as to her interest in the place, extracted from her the confession that she loved sunflower seeds—and would he be very angry if she asked him to buy some?
The more he overwhelmed her with gifts, the less she seemed to realise that money was being spent for her sake.
The long dearth she had suffered prevented her from appreciating the value of money, and whatever he put into her purse she handed out again without hesitation to the first beggar she met on the street. Then again it smote her conscience when he gave a flower girl two marks for a rose.
Once, upon her doing one of these incredible things, which usually sent the colonel into epicurean transports, he was seized with sudden distrust.
"I say, little girl," he said, "are you an actress?"
Lilly did not even understand him. She looked at him with the great, sad eyes of innocence she always made on such occasions, and said:
"What are you thinking of! Since papa left I haven't evenseenan actress. I haven't been inside a theatre once."
That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the tickets in her hand wild with joy.
But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress. Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in awe about the gleaming gala robes as circumspectly as about a thicket of nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to introduce Lilly to society.
When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat—taller, lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever—the old robber was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.
The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the banal delight of shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.
The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and questioning and pointing of opera glasses began anew.
Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.
She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.
After this, two Lillies sat in her seat—the one in blissful self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike fancy through heavens and hells; the other making precise gestures like a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred; at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.
The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were spreading their peacock feathers.
The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.
Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress—white shirt front and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot persistence, as if she were a strange animal.
She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down her body.
Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the miscreant vanished.
The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.
He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.
When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.
Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room—off with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!
He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen youth.
Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done. In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again—she danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for help, as a Mænad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her fingers—as anything he wished.
This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of repulsion—a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while secretly hankering for something else—for the sobbing of violins and the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.
When he had had his fill of the spectacle—and this came soon because of his years—he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and pricked like needles, she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then, while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette in bed, and laughingly retailed smutty jokes; which he called, "singing his baby to sleep."
Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common dining room. He wanted to re-experience the prickly delight of seeing his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and envied him the possession of it.
As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed distances to which the way had been barred—she did not know by what—since the hour her great happiness had come to her.
Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue spirals.
Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.
It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.
She felt as if she would have to hurry after the passerby and ask:
"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"
She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.
For only the fraction of a second!
But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.
And he nodded several times as if to say:
"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"
He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.
That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.
To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent watch for him; but a host of others took his place.
Passersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered while waiting for him to draw near:
"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"
If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which said to her:
"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are walking."
And each occurrence saddened her.
It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no attention to her.
"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder why he scorns me."
In the dining room, on the Brühlsche Terrasse, and at other elegant places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change. She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of her eyes, and she looked without embarrassment directly into the faces of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.
She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve—just as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was starving, starving, starving—as she had never starved in her life.
The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her, though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was stabbed with a dart from his eyes.
It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows. This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and, as a rule, wind up with:
"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."
Despite his uncomfortable experiences he could not get himself to live alone again with his young wife. Habituated from youth up to motley associations, he required noise and light and laughter. But his suspicions waxed, and finally fastened upon Lilly, too.
He forbade the matinal visit to church, to which she clung so ardently.
What she had done, following a mere impulse, after the first awaking at his side, had by and by become a custom; and while he slept his profound sleep she dressed without making a sound and slipped out into the freshness of early morning.
Going to church served as a pretext.
Generally all she did was dip her fingers in the holy water and make her three genuflections. Sometimes she even contented herself, untroubled by scruples, with merely passing the church.
For here was an hour of golden liberty, the only one throughout the day.
First she hastened to the Augustus bridge to offer her breast to the winds always blowing there and watch the waters course by far below. Then she walked along the banks of the river, usually at a wild pace, in order to gather in as large a harvest of pictures and incidents as possible before creeping back to her husband's home.
Everything the hour brought was pregnant with significance.
The early morning mist lying red on the hills and descending to the river in golden ribbons; the chorus of the bells in the Altstadt; the first timid bursting of the boughs already russet with sap; the joggling carts on their way to market; the hissing and sparking of the swaying wires when the trolley-pole of an electric tram swept along underneath them—all this was joy, it was life.
Since she was not threatened with a gift in consequence she ventured also to look into shop-windows, and greedily, in amazement, devoured every morsel of art.
An end to all this from now on!
The gates suddenly swung shut through which she had escaped for a single hour her perfumed life-prison overheated by desire and indolence.
But she was so soft and pliant that she yielded without a murmur even in her innermost being.
It was his wish—that was sufficient.
Such a quantity of love lay fallow in her soul and cried for activity that in this time of inner conflicts she proffered him a double measure of tenderness. She had to, whether she wished to or not, whether her thoughts dwelled with him or glided off on the viewless path of dreams.
She was his slave, his plaything, his audience; she dressed him, admired his good looks, rubbed his hips with ointment, adjusted the hare's skin about his loins to protect him against his gout; brought him his sodium carbonate when he had eaten too much; massaged his grizzled head with hair tonic, the pungent perfume of which nauseated her, and stood by to help and advise when he trimmed his moustache.
She did it all with eager devotion and ingenuous confidence, as if in ministering to her husband she had found the end and aim of her existence.
Nevertheless he lost his supernatural, god-like qualities in her eyes, became nothing more to her than a man, knightly to be sure, but whimsical and vain; for all his mental force intellectually indolent; for all his sensitiveness utterly brutal, and for all his thirst for love an oldish man, whose powers had long been enervated.
Not that she ever put it in this way to herself.
Had she seen his characteristics so clearly she might have come to hate and scorn him; for she was too immature to know that the witch's cauldron of worldly life brews the same out of most men's souls, provided the great feelings grow grey along with a man's hair, and he has erected no altar for himself at which he may seek refuge while sacrificing to it.
But the picture her fancy had made of him shifted and changed colours from day to day, taking on now one aspect, now the reverse, until a little pity mingled with her terrified respect, and her childlike relation to him was tinged by a certain motherliness, which would have been ridiculous had it not had its roots in the unfailing warmness of her heart, which transmuted another's weakness into cause for her solicitude.
Oh, if only she had not had to starve so!
Starve, when sitting at a festive board each day decked anew with choice viands.
Every morning Lilly eagerly read the theatrical and musical announcements posted in the hotel lobby, only to be drawn away swiftly by the colonel, who in his little garrison town had lost all interest in the arts. For lack of exercise his organs for perceiving and enjoying had lost their functions, and he shrank back petulantly from the intellectual work she expected of him.
Everything in which he took pleasure, the exaggerated gaiety of the music halls, the display of physical strength and agility, the loud colours, soon became an abomination to Lilly after her first curiosity had been stilled.
Wild horses, the colonel said, could not drag him to Shakespeare or Wagner again, then certainly not to a concert, the object of Lilly's profoundest cravings.
One day she saw an announcement of the Fifth Symphony, which was bound to her childhood days by a thousand ties. She maintained silence, as was proper; but when she reached their room she threw herself on the bed and cried bitterly. He questioned; she confessed. With a bored laugh he made the sacrifice and took her to the concert.
She had not been at a concert since her father's last performance.
When she entered she trembled, and suppressing her tears, drew the air in through her nose.
"You snuffle like a horse when he smells oats," joked the colonel.
"Don't you notice there's the same atmosphere at all concerts?" she asked in a joyous tremour. "Our concert hall at home smelt just like this."
But he had not noticed the similarity of smell, and he did not recall the Fifth Symphony.
"Such matters—" he began.
She was indifferent to all that preceded the symphony. She wanted to hear nothing but that trumpet call of fate which had once filled her, when just blossoming into womanhood, with a shudder of foreboding.
The call came and knocked at people's hearts, and set the knees of all those a-tremble who, companions and fellow-combatants, filled with the same fear and the same impotence, writhed like worms under the blows of fate.
Her husband amusedly hummed:
"Ti-ti-ti-tum, ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all he understood of it.
Turning about softly to urge him if possible to keep still, she noticed for the first time a profusion of yellowish-grey hair growing in his ear. It disgusted her.
"If he has hair in his ears," she thought, as though that were the reason of his deafness to music. A profound despondency seized her. Never again would she rejoice in the beautiful, never again stretch arms in prayer to wrestling heroism, never again quench her thirst for a higher, purer life at the sources of enthusiasm.
Between her and all that stood this man, who sang "ti-ti-ti-tum," and in whose ears there was a little bush of hair.
The soft consolation of the violins died away unheard, the melancholy acquiescence of the andante found no echo in her soul, and the triumphant jubilation of the finale—it brought her no triumph.
Tortured, debased, undone in her own eyes, she left the hall at the side of her yawning husband.
But her vital energy was too sound, her belief in the sunniness of human existence too lively to permit her to succumb to such moods.
Moreover, an event occurred which lent new wings to her being and flushed her with the intoxication of bold hopes.
Though little was said about plans for the immediate future, it was settled that they should remain in Dresden, or some other large city, until May, and then go to Castle Lischnitz, where the household, as always in the master's absence, was conducted by the oft-mentioned Miss Anna von Schwertfeger.
The colonel, forever hovering between trust and distrust of his young wife, was seized one evening by a fresh attack of doubts, and tried to get a view down to the bottom of her soul by questioning her as to how often and whom she had loved before she met him.
Unsuspecting as always, Lilly blurted out her two little experiences.
She told of Fritz Redlich first—because that had been the greater love—and then of the poor, consumptive teacher.
Despite his petty misgivings her husband's judgment had remained clear enough to appreciate the trustful purity of her conscience, and he sent his doubts to the devil with the laugh he usually reserved for his vulgar jokes.
But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her with the flame burning in his own heart.
Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his presence.
Suddenly he asked:
"How would it be—would you like to go there?"
Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.
He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run down to Verona or Milan.
She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet—itwastoo much bliss.
Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the trip.
First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a dozen other hindrances.
The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to hasten their departure.
The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.
To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.