"Oh," he said, obviously moved by the pleasant prospect.
She drew a breath of relief at having steered so smoothly past the rocks of her autobiography.
And he asked no questions. On the other hand he seemed as little disposed to be communicative in regard to his own situation past or present.
"Life has a sunny and a shady side," he said, "and he who sits on the shady side would do well to reflect whether or not he should speak much of it."
"But you can trust an old friend like me," cried Lilly. "Imagine we're sitting here on our porch in Junkerstrasse. Do you recollect? That evening we spoke to each other the first time was an evening just like this, in May."
"It was warmer," he rejoined quickly, and drew his coat together at his neck.
"Are you chilly?" she asked, laughing, because she was aglow.
"I didn't bring—" he paused an instant—"I didn't bring my spring overcoat along to-night."
"Then we'd better get up," she said, becoming meditative.
"We can tell each other all we have to say just as well walking as sitting."
So they strolled about the dark church a number of times, but no autobiographical narrative resulted. She evaded and he evaded, and when forced to speak, they regaled each other with generalities.
Lilly praised her happy lot in life, and he sighed repeatedly.
"Yes, it's hard, very hard!"
Exactly as once during examinations. The rhythm of it still sounded in her ears, as if she had heard it the day before.
"How are your father and mother?" she asked to change the subject.
His father had died two years before after a short sickness, and his mother still sewed neckties.
He adjusted something invisible under his raised coat collar, probably a gayly patterned testimony of maternal skill and goodness.
After Lilly had expressed her sympathy she ventured with throbbing heart to inquire after Mrs. Asmussen and her daughters.
Mr. Redlich smacked his lips audibly.
"Very unpleasant neighbours. The elder girl married a paymaster, who will probably be dismissed soon on account of his irregularities. The younger has charge of the library, the mother is completely in the clutches of drink."
He spoke with the same offended air as when Lilly had referred to her divorce.
"He must be extremely moral still!" she thought, with a sense of her own guilt and unworthiness.
But he was unhappy. That was certain.
And poor, very poor. Poorer than she had ever been in her life. Perhaps he was suffering the pangs of hunger while he walked at her side shivering in his thin, shabby jacket.
"How would it be, Mr. Redlich, provided your business permits you to, if you were to come to dinner to-morrow?"
His business, as a matter of fact, made it practically impossible for him to get off in the middle of the day, and he hadn't a moment's time for changing his clothes; but if she would receive him in the suit he was wearing—
"Oh of course," she laughed. "I'll even serve you with your mother's potato soup."
With that she pressed both his hands and slipped into a street car.
Oh, what a piece of good fortune!
Now she had the thing she had so long been seeking. Some one whom she could care for and pet and spoil; some one to whom she meant more than a toy or a show piece, who needed her as he needed bread and air, who languished for a gentle hand to lead him back to hope and joy.
Some one all to herself, all to herself!
Out of the grave of her youth he had risen exactly as she had dreamed in her dreams.
Life would again become rich—and happy—and full of secrets, tiny, gay, absolutely innocent secrets.
That night she slept little, wakeful as a child the night before Christmas.
The next morning, to the vast astonishment of the maid, a buxom wench from the country, who had rapidly fallen into city ways, Lilly rose early—the maid knew her to be a bit lazy—and went off to market.
"A friend is coming to dinner," Lilly laughingly explained.
She had to buy everything herself, the meat, the radishes, and above all the sausage that had once been the pride of his mother's potato soup.
She even attended to the cooking herself.
She set the table and removed the palm from beside the aquarium to have something green in the dining-room in place of flowers, which she had forgotten to buy.
He was the first dinner guest she had had for two and a half years, and such a dear one—the dearest, perhaps that life could present her with.
At half past twelve the maid, turning up her nose, announced a young fellow who insisted upon speaking to the lady.
"Why, that's he!" cried Lilly.
"He doesn't look it," observed the maid with a haughty upward inflection in her voice. Shrugging her shoulders she dawdled behind her mistress, who ran to meet the guest.
At first he shyly hesitated to step into the lighter part of the room, and hugged the door post and pulled at his suit, which really looked dreadfully frayed, even more so than the night before.
His inflamed eyes, two red rifts, blinking behind his round glasses, gave him a sheepish, groping, helpless appearance. The bold thinker's forehead had acquired an unpleasant backward slope because the genius lock no longer fell over it. And the triumphant blond mane had turned into a strawy, matted mass, apparently untouched by a comb this many a day.
He was unable to say much.
He swallowed the potato soup with tremulous devoutness, leaving the slices of sausage for the last. When his plate was quite dry he spitted them on his fork one at a time, and on conveying each bit to his mouth cast suspicious glances to right and left as if somebody were standing nearby to snatch it away.
The roast he received with greater composure. He heaped his plate high without paying the least attention to the maid, who grinned villainously.
He drank Richard's good claret in long draughts. A mottled red flecked his cheeks; he laughed and felt he was himself again.
At first Lilly had been somewhat depressed; but as he gradually thawed out, she began to hope he might be made to pass muster after all.
Then it suddenly occurred to her that now at last an opportunity presented itself for the genuine salvation of a human being, not merely a game of enamoured self-deception as with Walter von Prell.
The thought filled her with blissful, confident hope.
After the meal they went into the drawing-room. With masterful ease of manner born of the unwonted drink, he promptly seated himself in the rocking chair and tickled the snarling monkey.
He sat leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched out. The fringed ends of his trousers slipped into the expanded tops of his boots, exposing the tattered rubber drawing loops.
It was an appalling sight.
"I'll have to do something," thought Lilly, and cogitated on the best way to help him.
As for Mr. Redlich, now that his spirits were in turmoil, he turned his innermost being outward and aired his views of life.
Oh, what a display of gall and poison!
He had become so embittered by long privation and eternal envy of those who seemed gay, happy, and favoured by fortune, that no values, no attainments, no prosperous undertakings could withstand his onslaught. Everybody was hollow, corrupt and hypocritical. Everything depended on birth, cliqueism, "pull." Success, no matter in what line, was an ineradicable stain.
But this time also he said little of his personal experiences. Lilly could not even discover if he was still a student. He acknowledged only one thing, with bitter resentment, that his deepest feelings had been badly damaged in his constant struggle for existence.
While he spoke and laughed spasmodically, two lugubrious, sarcastic folds cut a deep semicircle in each emaciated cheek. Lilly dimly recalled that a tendency to those folds had existed in the times long ago.
"Oh, you poor, poor fellow!" she thought, and vowed soon to make a man of him again, both outwardly and inwardly.
But his visit left her feeling sad and depressed.
"After all—am I better off?" she thought. "Where is the confidence in life I used to have? Where is my joy of life? Where is my Song of Songs?"
The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings.
"Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs everything."
"With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the stuff I have at any rate."
But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful.
"What's he like?" he asked.
In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant career—a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else.
What was his specialty?
She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for him.
Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she scarcely knew what she was saying.
Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked uneasy and nettled.
"I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked.
"Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction so smoothly.
"Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him."
Perfect.
The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky underwear.
Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line.
The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich without offending him and having him refuse them.
When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said.
When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases, withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit.
"I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging here."
Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy.
Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them?
"Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold a glance at his own trousers.
Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he gave him the suit?
No, he could think of no one.
Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn't believe she was mistaken—a remarkable similarity of figure—though the general had measured a bit more about the waist—and if he wanted to entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor—
The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? Nobody could class him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his principles would never permit him to wear a person's cast-off clothes.
With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project.
But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go, because Richard might enter any moment.
At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked, stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening.
"Haven't you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded, taken aback. For Richard's sake she did not care to receive visitors late in the day.
No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was—it was—. He hung on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below.
"Then what is it?"
"I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and—and—"
"Well, and?"
"And if it's dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with me."
With that he jumped down the steps.
"The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought, looking after him.
The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor.
When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his boots from turning up—they were too long for him—he had stuffed them with cotton wads.
Even the maid sent him friendlier glances.
A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair. But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him. His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink claret.
His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination, and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes.
He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly's situation, and she was grateful to him.
Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture of his unsuccessful career.
After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and, consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships.
"After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the green valley.
But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not explicit.
"Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do."
He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate ambition.
To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried to find out what lot in life he desired for himself.
He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to breathe pure air.
"All of us want something lovely like that," she thought.
It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country, preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself.
"And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to water."
She nearly cried with envy.
From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire. She gave him money to insert advertisements in theKreuzzeitung, wrote letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little circle of friends to do what they could for him.
All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him these days.
He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word.
"That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease.
One day the bomb exploded.
Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown of revenge puckered his brow.
Lilly jumped from her seat, paling.
As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from his buttonhole into his soup plate.
For a moment silence prevailed. Nothing but the tittering of the maid in the kitchen was to be heard.
"I beg pardon," said Richard in the same threatening manner. "I merely wanted to make sure how you are really getting along."
"Mr. Dehnicke, a good friend of mine—Mr. Redlich, my old friend," said Lilly.
Now Richard scrutinised his dread rival more closely—looked in amazement and disapproval at the rank growth of his beard and shaggy mane—his gaze travelled downwards—and brightened—a nonplussed look, but also a joyous look of recognition, betrayed itself in his features. Wasn't thathissuit andhisshirt?
His eyes dropped lower without halting at the napkin in the soup plate.
Weren't thosehistrousers? Weren't thosehisdiscarded boots which the brilliant intellectual scholar was wearing?
"Oh, that's it," he said. "Nothing more." With a wicked grin of scorn he turned to Lilly, who could scarcely keep on her feet. "May I speak to you alone for an instant?"
"Will you excuse me, Mr. Redlich?" she said, and in her confusion and from force of habit, she opened the door to—the bedroom, as if that were the prescribed place for single ladies to receive their gentlemen friends. Richard, who was as accustomed to the way as she, followed her, unconscious of the exposure of intimacy.
"Listen," he said upon shutting the door. "I was a donkey for having been jealous of your affinity. But now I swear to you, your friends may come and go, morning or evening, any time you wish. I'll always keep old suits on hand for them. Good-by—goosie!"
He left. She could hear him laughing even after the door fell shut behind him.
She was frightfully ashamed. How would she ever summon the courage to appear before her girlhood friend again, before that moral person who had shrunk at the mere mention of her divorce?
Then she realised she was standing in the bedroom.
Everything was revealed, all the disgrace of her existence, all, all.
No matter how unworldly he might be, the rôle of the man who had so suddenly intruded in the apartment and as suddenly disappeared, must be patent.
A long time she hesitated, the knob in her hand, listening to what Fritz Redlich was doing. She feared his tread, the clearing of his throat. His very silence boded evil.
At last, trembling, ready to confess everything amid tears of contrition, she stepped into the dining-room.
Lo and behold! He sat quietly at his accustomed place rubbing at the spot the wet napkin had made on his waistcoat. The blue goggles lay next to his plate, and he blinked at her amiably with no air of constraint.
"Has the gentleman left already?" he asked innocently.
At that moment the roast was brought in, and he fell to with avidity, making no further mention of the interlude.
Actually—so pure was his conscience that he did not detect the impure even if thrust under his very nose.
Oh, how grateful she was to him!
To prove her gratitude she told him he might come evenings also—Richard permitted it—without waiting to be invited.
If she should happen to be out, the maid would prepare supper for him, and see to it that he lacked nothing, absolutely nothing. And mindful of the wry face the maid had cut the first day he came, she enjoined her emphatically:
"Now be real pleasant and friendly to him, so that he always feels at home here."
The buxom wench turned down the corners of her mouth and said nothing.
Lilly now went to work in behalf of Fritz Redlich with redoubled zeal.
She again found a ready assistant in Mrs. Jula.
"Leave the thing to me," said Mrs. Jula one day "There's somebody up there I've known a long time"—she hesitated a bit—"he's all-powerful, and has taken the Good Lord's place in many a minister's family. If I were to write to him—but, of course my name must be kept out, it's still a red rag to the bull up there."
The next day Lilly sent her one of the advertisements that Fritz Redlich had inserted in the paper. Mrs. Jula was to forward it to a certain person, and the response would then go directly to Fritz Redlich without the intermediation of a third party. Lilly preferred that his future fortune should appear to be due entirely to his own efforts.
And behold! Mrs. Jula was successful.
One evening the next week Fritz Redlich appeared at Lilly's unexpectedly—a frequent occurrence now, whether she was at home or not—and complacently informed her his advertisement had been so convincing that he had immediately received an invitation from a minister in Further Pomerania to send his references and be ready to leave Berlin at short notice. The minister seemed to be quite keen for him.
Lilly's heart throbbed with pride. Nothing in the world would have induced her to betray that she was at the bottom of his good luck.
His happiness was her work! He himself, therefore, was her possession, more absolutely her possession than anything in the world.
During the meal an exalted, blissful silence prevailed. Since he had not announced his coming, there was no potato soup, the usual first course.
She excused herself for the omission, and added with a little pang:
"At any rate you won't take many more meals with me."
"Probably," he said with an embarrassed glance at the maid, whose presence evidently troubled him. Had she not been there, he would very likely have given warmer expression to his feelings.
After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room.
It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to which he submitted, snarling all the while.
The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell.
Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly.
"Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as before."
Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune!
She told him so for about the hundredth time.
"Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard, very hard."
"Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out. We're old friends."
"I will gladly if you wish it."
Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer hesitatingly, like a light in the distance.
"Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have you ever been in love?"
He started as if he had been hit.
"In love? What do you mean?"
"Well—what do you think—I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of the rocking chair with her thumb nail.
He seemed to breathe more easily.
"For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the desire."
"And hasn't any woman ever loved you?"
"Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders.
His embittered dejection annoyed her.
"Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little teasing.
He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled him with dread.
Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman.
An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago, which would prove to him how mistaken he was.
She choked it down.
Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving Berlin.
Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the little canary also slept.
Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she passed the rocking chair.
She halted in front of him again.
There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow.
Poor, poor fellow!
"You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women."
With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank under the light touch like a cushion.
He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and coughed a little.
"Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That's good advice. If I want to make a pleasant impression in my new position—"
As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on his neck.
Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave.
She was too embarrassed to invite him to remain.
The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down the stairs.
"Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window.
He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark.
Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him.
The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused thoughts.
"I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself.
Nevertheless she was glad she had.
The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly's protégé was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling expenses had already been forwarded to him.
Lilly wept tears of joy.
Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him her own.
And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl—everything.
And once again—before parting—she would lay her hand on his mass of hair. Then what would might follow.
The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him—he no longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in the saucepan.
The clock struck eight. He had not come.
"He's busy packing," she comforted herself.
The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard sometimes did.
Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven.
Then she went to bed sad and weary.
The next morning she received the following letter:
"My dear Mrs. Czepanek:—After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too frequently forced me into circumstances conflicting with my principles. My firm character was led into temptations from which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge intact.I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I hereby duly express my thanks. Nobody shall say Fritz Redlich is an ingrate.I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circumstances compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But had you really respected me, you would have spared me that humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in question evidently once belonged.I may not conclude without making the following remarks: improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had continued to let you think me a dunce.I remain your ever gratefulFritz Redlich,cand. phil. et theol."
"My dear Mrs. Czepanek:—
After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too frequently forced me into circumstances conflicting with my principles. My firm character was led into temptations from which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge intact.
I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I hereby duly express my thanks. Nobody shall say Fritz Redlich is an ingrate.
I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circumstances compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But had you really respected me, you would have spared me that humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in question evidently once belonged.
I may not conclude without making the following remarks: improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had continued to let you think me a dunce.
I remain your ever grateful
Fritz Redlich,cand. phil. et theol."
Fritz Redlich,cand. phil. et theol."
Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience.
It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the incident had its humorous aspect.
Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently passed for a widow of rank in a hall resort on the Baltic sea.
She accepted the homage of several old maids, allowed a young missionary to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and respectfully declined the honourable proposal of a widower, the city treasurer of Pirna. Those were six weeks to her liking.
The following winter went in much the same way as the preceding.
At Christmas Richard presented her with a hired carriage, the door of which, of course, was decorated with the seven-pointed coronet. He had engaged it in order to avoid disagreeable encounters with his mother, who spoke of Lilly with increasing severity, and had frequently demanded the equipage when he was out driving with his mistress.
He also gave Lilly a sable cloak, one of the new-fashioned sort, with countless tails, which cost a small fortune.
Despite Richard's reproaches she made little use of either. That feeling of dread, never to be stilled, told her that such false display would drive her ever on into the world which she wanted to flee.
And while Richard endeavoured with dogged greed to drain the cup of worldly delights to the very dregs, Lilly's desires went out more and more to middle-class respectability. She clung to it as the last hope, which enabled her to drag through her existence, the complete poverty of which tormented her increasingly there amid the lights and music and laughter.
The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she elaborated with a lively fancy.
But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little tales were nowhere to be found.
When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see."
Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula, having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting.
It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date, because it was St. Joseph's day.
A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine.
One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring symphony.
The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation.
Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences, throw herself on the bare earth—no matter what—but get away for a few hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was burdened by the spirit of idleness.
She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the maid—this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to service with single ladies—and without troubling to order her carriage, took the electric tram to the Grunewald.
At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man, Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction.
A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss.
Here nobody was to be seen far or near.
The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through the holes.
Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to extinguish timid spring hopes.
"In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought Lilly.
But the freshness of the wind redolent of moss and pine needles did her good. She battled against its might, taking long strides. Her cheeks tingled, her frozen blood thawed, and sent fresh life pulsating through her fallow body.
And her fallow soul.
Suddenly she shook with a fit of laughter. It was all nonsense, her regret and her yearning, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's eternal marriage schemes. Even the respectability she desired was utterly vapid.
What would she do with it? She, Lilly the free, the wild, the ruined? There was something else, something higher. There must be. Not in Dr. Salmoni's sense. No, oh, no. Something as hard and pure and life-bringing as this March wind sweeping through her limbs.
Above her in a pine tree she heard a chipping sound which she had learned to recognise at Lischnitz. It was a call both of fear and invitation, which ended in a snappy "Tshek-tshek."
Lilly stood still, looked up, and whistled.
A pair of squirrels had been chasing about the trunk in corkscrew lines, and now, at her appearance, stood stock still in fright.
"Tshek-tshek," Lilly clucked to incite the little red coats to play. She did not succeed, and picked up a pebble from the ground.
Just as she was about to throw it, she saw, behind a tree trunk, two eyes fastened on her, large, questioning astonished eyes, which narrowed under her gaze, and darkened, and tried to turn away, but could not. She knew those eyes. She had looked into them long, long, long ago.
But, no, she had not; she had never before seen them.
The young man who, like herself, had been watching the squirrels play and was still standing half-concealed behind the trunk, his hat in his hand, was an utter stranger. Impossible that she had ever in her life met him. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.
It was not easy to forget that serious, reserved Greek face, with the nervous nose narrow across the bridge and the shining dreamer's eyes.
His appearance was not extremely elegant. It pleased Lilly better so. He wore a brown, somewhat old-fashioned overcoat, and the suit beneath, of which she caught a glimpse, was of a woolly material sprinkled with little tufts, by no means of German make and certainly not English.
Gradually life came into him. He put on his hat, and stepped from behind the tree.
"Now he'll speak to me," the sickening thought shot through Lilly's mind.
No. He merely raised his hat, glanced at her again for the fraction of a second with an expression of query, astonishment, and, at the same time recognition, walked past her, and took the way she had just come.
Lilly also wanted to leave the spot, but she was unable to; and since she must not be discovered looking after him she hid behind the same tree that had concealed him.
"I wonder whether he will look back."
No. He did not look back either. She felt hurt and neglected.
The tall figure dwindled in the distance. "Never been in the army," she thought, judging from his rather heavy gait. Then it seemed to her that he stooped, drew himself up again, and looked back. In fact, he spied about a long time as if compelled to discover her.
But she kept herself carefully hidden and did not move.
He walked on and disappeared behind a curve.
"What a pity I didn't take the carriage," thought Lilly.
She might be overtaking him now without appearing to follow him, and the seven-pointed coronet would not have failed of its effect. As it was, he naturally cherished a bad opinion of the lady who walked about alone whistling like a boy and throwing pebbles at poor enamoured squirrels.
Nevertheless, while walking homeward, she felt as if she had been presented with a lovely gift.
Where could she have seen him before?
She recalled a young man of the Dresden days. It was once when she was out walking arm in arm with the colonel along the Prager Strasse. She had seen eyes fixed upon her with the very same sad flash of recognition in them.
Then—she remembered it well—she had wanted to look back and ask him:
"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you want me to belong to you?"
But even the partial turn of her head would have been a crime in her husband's eyes.
And now, now that she was free, free to choose her friends according to her heart's desire, she had let him go, him, the one—whether the same as the Dresden man or another—who belonged to her, perchance, as she to him.
She walked along with half-closed eyes, and conjured up his image. A small, dark, two-cornered beard, so close-cut on his cheeks as to give them a blue sheen. Such beards were seldom to be seen in Berlin. Frenchmen and Italians affected them. Full, firm, tightly compressed lips, lips such as a sculptor chisels. A high, square forehead, on which something like wrath seemed to be imprinted, not ordinary wrath against herself or any poor mortal. It was not of this world, and it really was divine love.
Thus Lilly's enthusiasm fed itself. She forgot the way, and strayed about, finally arriving at a spot in an entirely different direction from that which she should have taken. The most dreadful things might have happened to her in the woods, where solitary ladies are exposed to encounters with tramps at any hour of the day. But she scarcely gave heed to her danger. She reached home two hours too late, tired, but in a glow.
She could not eat. She threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamt.
The bell rang. She heard a man's voice.
It could not be Richard. He never came before half past four.
Adele entered. There was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know whether the lady had lost her card-case. He had found one in the woods.
Lilly jumped to her feet. Actually the little brocade case which she had held in her hand with her silver net purse was gone. In her excitement she had not missed it.
"Like what does the gentleman look?"
Tall and young and handsome, in fact, very handsome.
"A short, dark beard?"
"Yes."
Lilly reeled.
"Let him come in," she stammered. She did not think of beautifying herself. She merely ran her hands over her face and hair in a dazed way.
When he appeared in the doorway she scarcely recognised him, so thick was the red mist before her eyes.
"I beg pardon," she heard him say—it was the serene voice of a man whose ways are not impure—"I would not have disturbed you had your address been on your cards. I found your number in the directory, but I couldn't be certain whether there were not more of the same name in the city."
"You're very kind to have taken all that trouble," she replied, inviting him to be seated.
"My name is Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting behind the back of his chair until she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa. On sitting down he drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
She smiled her thanks; and feeling she must enhance the value of his courtesy, she said the case was a memento she prized highly, the loss of which would have distressed her.
"A memento of my husband," she added.
His face grew a shade more serious.
A little pause ensued, during which his eyes rested steadily on her face, reading, questioning, comparing, and wondering. Nothing of that bold groping of other men's glances. A clean, unconscious joy amounting to devoutness lay in his look.
"Didn't we meet just a little while ago at the edge of the woods?" Lilly asked warily.
"Yes," he replied with animation. "And if I hadn't been so awkward I should have begged your pardon immediately for having unintentionally spied on you. I saw how startled you were. But I myself was so—how shall I say? All I thought was: 'Clear out. You'll be serving the lady best that way.'"
His frank, blithe manner did her good, though it shamed her a little.
"Now you've done me a much greater service," she said, feeling as appreciative as if he had saved her life.
"Oh, don't speak of it. If only I had turned back instantly. But the earth seemed to have swallowed you up. I was worried about you."
She smiled to herself, fearful in her happiness. A little more, and she would have acknowledged where she had stowed herself.
"What did you think of me when you saw me strolling about the woods alone?" she asked.
"That you don't feel alone when you're with nature. Otherwise you'd have had company with you."
"You're right," she replied eagerly. "Besides, my carriage was waiting in the Hundekehlenrestaurant"—after all the carriage would play its part—"but it was imprudent of me. I suppose you are also very fond of nature?"
"Very? I hardly know. I must say in Cordelia's words: I love it 'according to my bond; nor more nor less.' To love nature is really no merit nor peculiarity. It is simply a vital function. Don't you agree with me?"
"Certainly," she faltered, and thought, "Oh, how clever he is? How will I acquit myself?"
"But to be quite frank," he continued, "I am having a strange experience with nature here. I cannot accustom myself to it. Its poverty oppresses me. I am like one who has outgrown his home and reproaches himself for it. I try to get back to my old attitude, and I admire and flatter German nature whenever I possibly can. But first other pictures in my mind must fade. You see I have just returned from Italy, where I spent the last two years."
Heaving a deep sigh Lilly stared at him. She felt as if now he were absolutely unearthly.
"Two whole years?" she asked in astonishment.
"I am working on a large scientific work, on account of which—no, I was really sent to Italy on account of my health. My uncle, who's a father to me, wanted me to go. I didn't think of the work until I got there. Then my own country and my studies, everything, fell into the background."
As he spoke his eyes glowed and stared into space, full of will and enthusiasm. The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings again in Lilly's breast.
"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more beautiful—and—everything—sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"
He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze.
"Yes," he replied almost solemnly. "It is so, exactly."
She tingled with delight. Did it not seem that with these words he made an avowal of the inner union between them, the avowal she had hoped for from the very first instant of their meeting? Did it not seem that nothing now separated them?
She looked down helplessly.
Was he really the embodiment of that shade which had so senselessly fastened itself upon her soul since the Dresden days?
"I feel as if we had met before," she said softly without raising her eyes.
"Exactly the way I feel," he rejoined hastily. "But it cannot be, for I should know where and when."
"Were you in Dresden six years ago at about this time?"
"No," he said. "Six years ago I was studying at Bonn. The semester came to an end at this season, but I went directly to my uncle, who was having his castle restored."
"Where is his castle?"
"Near Coblenz."
So they had not met in Dresden.
"But if we both have the same feeling—" said Lilly.
"There are pictures in our souls which seem to be recollections, but in fact are previsions."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that one—that one—walks as on the edge of a knife between the past and the present, and reels and falls into a void the instant—"
"What?"
"The instant—" he broke off—"I beg your pardon, are you an artist?"
"Why?" she asked, unpleasantly taken aback. Did he want to make merry at her expense?
"I read your sign outside."
The sign! "Pressed Flower Studio."
Violently torn out of sweet dreams and plunged into bitter reality!
But now she must be on her guard. She must not lose his esteem.
"In a way," she replied. "A very modest sort of art which I used to pursue. But it made me very happy. I learned it just after I lost my husband"—the fatal "divorce" would not pass her lips—"less for the sake of a livelihood than to lend my life content. But then I had to give it up—because—of a trouble with my eyes."
Three lies in the same breath.
Why not? She was lies within and lies without. Every gesture, every thought was a lie. But the great cry of her soul vibrating through her entire being, "You shall be mine; I will be yours," wasnota lie. And for his sake she continued to lie.
"I don't like to speak of it." She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. "It still pains me. And please don't ever again refer to it in the future."
"Again," "in the future," she had said, as if taking it for granted that they would continue to meet. Her words filled her with shame and confusion.
She rose and turned her face aside.
"I beg pardon," he said, abashed. "I could not have divined—" He rose to take leave.
"Stay, stay, stay!" her soul cried. But she was unable to speak. She was benumbed.
Perhaps he had seen through her lies, and had instantly realised who she was, and did not care to remain. She felt haughtiness congealing her features.
"It was very kind of you," she said, graciously extending her finger tips.
The moment had come in which to invite him to visit her, but the words froze on her lips.
He had turned very pale and looked straight into her face expectantly.
"I hope we meet some time again," he said finally.
"I hope so," she replied very formally.
He lightly touched her hand with his lips and left.
Over! Over! And her fault!
Happiness had come, had laid its blessing hand on her forehead, and had flown away again, leaving behind nothing but this pain, a wild pain, such as she had never before felt. It fairly tore at her throat and heart like a physical affliction.
During the night she devised a thousand schemes for hunting him up and meeting him again.
He was a scholar and probably frequented the library. She would go there and read and study, and some day she would surely meet him.
Or, simpler still, she would write to him.
"I don't love you," she would say. "Why should I? I scarcely know you. But I am confident that I could be something in your life. Therefore—"
Then, disgusted with her lack of dignity, she rejected every plan.
No, Lilly Czepanek after all would not throw herself away in such fashion.
Once more it became impossible for her to remain at home.
In the daytime she walked along the Potsdamer Strasse and Leipziger Strasse, where the metropolitan bustle is the greatest. In the evenings she did not visit distant districts as formerly, but with a busy air hurried incessantly up and down the lonely banks of the canal near her home.
Despite her strict economy she always kept the light burning in her drawing-room, and did not confess to herself why.
It was about eight o'clock in the evening four days after the meeting. The stars hung like lamps in the heavens. Lilly was pacing along the further bank of the canal, when she noticed the figure of a young man who was looking fixedly in the direction in which her home lay.
She could not distinguish his features, because he kept his back turned. Besides, he had selected a dark spot for his coign of observation.
With a slight throbbing of her heart she continued on her way, though after a while her legs refused to carry her further in the same direction. She had to turn about.
She found the dark figure still standing motionless among the trees. From across the water the light in her drawing-room peered through the bare branches.
This time he heard her tread, and faced about.
She recognised his features and started.
He also thrilled with the shock of surprise. For an instant he foolishly pretended not to see her, but then he drew a deep breath and took off his hat with an abashed smile.
Lilly trembled so, she could not hold out her hand.
"Dr.—Rennschmidt," she managed to say.
He was the first to recover his composure.
"You will wonder," he began, stepping alongside of her, "why I stand here in the dark and look over there. If I were to say it was a mere chance, you wouldn't believe me. So I will frankly confess I could not rid myself of the thought that at our parting something went wrong—there was a misunderstanding—precipitancy—I felt I ought to beg your pardon for something."
"If you felt that way, why didn't you come up to me, and tell me so?"
"Was I permitted to?"
"Why not?"
"You see, we men have no rights with women except such as they give us. No others exist for us. To be sure, we may stand in the dark here, and bite our lips—"
"Did you?"
"Don't ask me."
His voice did not quiver, but a tremour ran through his arm, which grazed hers.
Lilly, alarmed, stopped and helplessly looked back at the dark way she had come.
"That means—I—I must say good-by?" he asked.
In the light of the lamp she saw his eyes clinging to her with a look of fearsome inquiry.
"Oh, no," she replied slowly, as if some one else were speaking in her stead. "Now that we are together, we will remain together."
"I think so, too," he said. The same gravity of an oath lay in his words as she had put into hers.
They walked along in silence.
Then he began in a lighter tone.
"But I must call your attention to something. Your light is burning. If you really do want to favour me with an hour, I'm afraid the thought of the waste will disquiet you."
"Well, we'll put it out!" she replied gaily, and turned on her heels so abruptly that he continued to make two or three steps forward.
As they crossed the slender arch of the Hohenzollernbrücke, he pointed up to the heavens.
"Jupiter shines on our undertaking. I like him better than Venus, who runs after the sun and needs a rosy flooring for her feet."
"Which is Jupiter?" asked Lilly standing still.
He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.
"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her mind.
While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying down again.
Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and sobbed.
But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite proper.
"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's practically in Italy."
She drew a deep breath.
"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian restaurant.
They walked along the canal for about five minutes talking nonsense. The medley of lights of the Potsdamer Brücke was quite near when he paused in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of sand.
"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to be had in Florence," he explained.
They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the bar.
"Sera, padrone," Lilly's friend greeted him.
From the anteroom they passed into a rather long, hall-like room filled with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of crisscrossed garlands of shiny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wishing them on this March evening a "Happy New Year."
"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.
At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long, thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting Italian with fascinating rapidity.
"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great sculptors employ them as assistants. They earn a great deal of money, and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish a household."
Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, lustreless hair drawn very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then fell to whispering busily.
Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air, as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.
"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."
"Where am I?" thought Lilly.
It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin, Germany, near the Potsdamer Brücke, was the placard's complacent "Happy New Year."
"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt, after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."
He nodded to the waiter, Francesco by name—Francesco, as if he had just stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.
The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in yellowish red gravy.
Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her life, never since she could remember, felt so good.
The last course was a "giardinetto," a "little garden," of mandarins, dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.
The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the glasses scattering bright drops.
Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new friend's face.
He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously. The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his seething ardour.
He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness. He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them through a heavy mass of hair. But the mass was no longer there, and his hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.
Everything about him bespoke force and decision—to Lilly's admiration, well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward, a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.
"Sothat'swhat you are," she thought and stretched herself in blissful peace. "At last."
"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you feeling well?"
"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."
Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under all the ashes life had cast upon it.
"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."
"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back—as a punishment—because a young man ogled me."
"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you divine."
"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."
"Why at me?"
"Because you shine like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."
He became serious.
"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout—sometimes I hardly know what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers bloody, and more keeps coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to whom."
"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so miserably poor."
He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.
"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.
"What was your husband?" he asked.
"I—am—the divorced wife—of an army officer of high rank," she replied with downcast eyes.
This time—thank the Lord!—it was not a lie.
Yet, to be accurate, she had lied.
For see what she wasnow!
He clasped her hand, which lay next to his on the table, and held it an instant.
"If it is difficult for you to speak of your life, don't," he said. "Later, perhaps, when we know each other better, you will tell me. I will tell you about myself—and how I—came to do my work."
"The work of which you spoke that time?" Lilly asked, strangely stirred by the sudden solemnity of his tone.
Drawing a deep breath he stretched out his clenched fists and his eyes stared into space.
"Yes—the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving."
"I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly.
"I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung, painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work."
"Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken.
He smiled and shook his head.