Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,Where thou feedest?Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?For why should I appear like a vailed mourner—
Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth,Where thou feedest?Where lettest thou thy flock rest at noon?For why should I appear like a vailed mourner—
She stopped.
"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."
"It is—my—Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.
Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.
"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.
Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.
"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."
Without speaking he laid the oars down.
"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."
He cast a searching glance in all directions.
The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake, upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of danger.
Then he did as she had asked.
They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.
And she told her tale.
Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years, though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil. It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who would some day come to her.
And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment to its creator and herself.
In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.
The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than she had known of herself up to that hour.
He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and hopeful still within her. The other—the lazy, the impure, that which had ruined her heart and life—no longer existed. It no longer concerned her.
While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward him.
She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his feelings as it were in his clenched fists.
Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.
Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the bench.
"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the bench.
His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.
"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.
"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.
So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.
She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:
For, lo, the winter is past,The rain is over and gone;The flowers appear on the earth;The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;The fig putteth forth her green figs,And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past,The rain is over and gone;The flowers appear on the earth;The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land;The fig putteth forth her green figs,And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook his head, and nestled closer.
Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in among the reeds, and night had completely descended.
But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.
There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart" and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:
Come, my friend!Let us go forth into the field,
Come, my friend!Let us go forth into the field,
But when it came to
Let us see if the vine have blossomed,Whether the young grape have opened,
Let us see if the vine have blossomed,Whether the young grape have opened,
she could scarcely go on.
Whether the pomegranates have budded,There will I give my caresses unto thee.
Whether the pomegranates have budded,There will I give my caresses unto thee.
She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.
"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.
A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.
"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."
She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.
A swift end to all bravery.
It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.
Very timidly they rang the bell.
"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the obsequious, smiling hostess.
It would be wide of the truth to aver that no happy star favoured Lilly's ripened love.
In the first place Adele proved to be a circumspect ally, thoroughly accustomed to be uncommunicative and passionately devoted to the cause of Lilly's lover. In the second place Richard, who had gone to his mother in Harzburg that epoch-making Sunday, had remained away the greater part of a week instead of one day. And in the third place, upon visiting her on his return, he was so preoccupied with himself and his own affairs as not to notice in the least Lilly's guilty embarrassed reception of him.
He affected a highly lofty mien and talked through his nose, as always when he pulled his soul together, as it were, and became vividly conscious of having once been a cavalry officer. He even wore his monocle again hanging down over his navy-blue silk waistcoat.
All of which taken in conjunction with the crafty expression with which he blinked his eyes and steadily looked past Lilly and dropped his head on his left shoulder, gave sufficient ground for the welcome assumption that he had delayed the visit to his mother and, instead,—like Lilly herself—had taken a side excursionà deuxinto the blossoming world of spring.
The conjecture, however, proved to be false.
Richard had been in Harzburg the whole time and intended to return the very next day for a longer stay of at least four weeks.
"What's the matter?" he exclaimed in alarm.
Lilly, overwhelmed by the veritable tempest of happiness that burst upon her, had reeled and sunk on the arm of a chair.
She instantly collected her wits again and denied that she had been overcome. Nevertheless, he remained full of solicitude, kissed her on her neck again and again, and would not permit her to go to the trouble of pouring out the tea for him. A guilty conscience peeped from every pore of his being.
"Unfortunately," he said, trying to return to his former lofty manner, "unfortunately there's no longer a chance of our taking a trip together. Anyhow—we've gotten too used to each other. Both of us will have to practise getting along without each other. It's highly desirable we should. We certainly should."
His words sounded like familiar music coming from a great, great distance.
"Confess," she said smiling. "What is it this time?"
Out he came with it, stuttering and choking over his words.
An American heiress—of German extraction—millions and millions—not millions of marks, but millions of dollars—very stylish and chic—a wonderful piece of luck—mama in a quiver to have it go through—her parents favourably disposed—she, too, evidently not disinclined. This time or never.
"Congratulate you," said Lilly, giving him a friendly handshake.
He looked at her with large, astonished, and somewhat reproachful eyes.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"Why—what else?"
"How can you remain so cool? Doesn't the thought that your old friend is about to leave you move you in the least? I took you to be more loving, more sympathetic. I certainly did."
"Please remember," said Lilly, "you reproach me the same way each time you make up your mind to marry because I don't want to be a hindrance to you. You always act as ifIhad dismissed you, and not you me."
He burst into expostulations.
"Dismiss—what language you use! You haven't the least idea of what's going on within me—how I struggle and wrestle with myself. Why, I haven't slept for nights thinking what will become of you. But you behave as if it didn't concern you in the least! Altogether you're—frivolous! You have no feelings—now you know it."
While he spoke, pictures of her approaching freedom danced before her eyes—nights of unshackled, glowing love, days full of sweet, vague dreams.
What followed lay as far off as the end of the world.
Smiling good-humouredly, she listened, and never even responded.
"Though your future doesn't seem to worryyou," he continued to upbraid her, "Imust give it all the more consideration. I must provide for you, and mama quite agrees with me."
The word "mama" tore her from her world of dreams.
Since the terrific encounter in Richard's office, it had scarcely ever passed their lips. They had employed a thousand circumlocutions and substitutes which they understood and which each appreciated in the other.
Now "mama" suddenly rang in her ears, the symbol of her disgraced existence.
"Oh," she cried, "if she's in it, it's bound to be humiliating to me. I'll tell both of you one thing: take good care not to make a proposition to me about money, or support, or anything of the sort. I'd consider it an outrageous insult, for which you couldnevermake amends."
He ran up and down the room wringing his hands.
"What are you talking about again! Quite apart from the fact that I'd be eternally disgraced in the eyes of the world. Woman, don't you know you're ruined if I turn you adrift empty-handed? Don't you know where you'd go to? To the bars and brothels! Don't you know it?"
In blissful absentmindedness Lilly looked past him and his gallant zeal.
"There are other ways," she whispered half to herself.
"What ways?" he cried, "Marriage, forsooth? What decent man would marry you after you've been my mistress for four years?"
"There are other ways than that, too," she repeated still smiling.
She saw a life full of fight and vigour, a tossing hither and thither through storm and stress, a jubilant triumph which led her into the community of those who were as proud and true ashe.
But all that would come later, much, much later. Why think of it now?
Richard put his own construction upon her words. He fixed his eyes upon her suspiciously, and stopping in front of her, asked with a shudder:
"I say—are you going to do something foolish?"
She burst out laughing. Probably he already saw her beautiful corpse taken from the water and stretched on the bier.
"No, I won't do anything foolish. Certainly not for your sake. And even if I intended to, I'd have the good taste not to threaten you with it."
He drew a deep breath of relief, though by no means quite calmed.
"At any rate," he said, "I greatly dislike your poking here alone. You'll simply get the blues and feel irritated at me. I say, while I'm gone, wouldn't you like to take a little trip to a bath—Ahlbeck, or Schreiberbau, or some other place of the sort, where respectable people go?"
Nothing on the surface but a faint twitch of her eyelids betrayed the laugh of scorn that shook her internally.
"You know," she said, "I don't like to make up to people, and so I'd be all the more alone."
He wrinkled his forehead lost in thought.
"Well—then—" He hesitated and chewed his words as people are wont to do when they dread their own bravery, "—then—it would be best if you—come and stay near—"
"Near—near what?"
"Oh, don't act that way. You know what I mean."
"I do, but I cannot believe it."
"What's so awful about it? I could look after you now and then—or talk over matters—different things."
"And show her to me so as to get my opinion and my blessing—eh?"
"Well and supposing it's so? The way we are to each other—the way we haven't done a thing for years without asking each other's advice, what's so monstrous about it?"
Lilly felt a patronising pity arise within her. She stroked his hands and said:
"Dear friend, I don't think I'd furnish the right sort of assistance to you in your courtship."
Her superior tone increased his ill-humour.
"Goodness gracious! 'Assistance,' 'courtship!' You talk as if you were on the stage. Altogether you're so puffed up—so puffed up! Of course you simply want to revenge yourself on me by making me angry. I must say it's not at all noble of you at such a time."
She laughed and stretched herself. How low it all was! How ridiculous! And how indifferent to her! After all did it concern her?
To be alone—alone with him! There was nothing else in the world beside that.
"Then you don't want to?"
She shook her head, "No."
"Very well."
He prepared to leave in anger, but lacked the strength.
"Lilly."
"Hm?"
"I'd like to avoid any misunderstandings. You seem to think I'm not in earnest this time."
"By no means, Richard. I wish you all possible happiness. But really, with the best of intentions, I can be of no service to you in this affair."
"Of service to me! Of service to me! Who's speaking of service to me? Mama was quite right. If I break off this time, there won't be anything else for me any more. So make it quite clear to yourself. In a few weeks all's over between us."
"So much the better," she came near saying. But she saw the tears in the corners of his eyes, and refrained from hurting him.
Four years lived together lay behind them. He was too tightly tied to her apron strings. She felt she ought not to let him go without her advice and encouragement.
So she spoke to him as to a child. She said his mother was right, praised his project, and counted up all the reasons why it absolutely had to be. In order to calm him as to her own attitude, she recalled how it had always been her ambition to let him feel his freedom and never stand in his way. She also assured him she would cherish friendly sentiments for him until the end of her days.
Finally, on parting, they both wept.
Now the way was clear. Now she might consecrate the new life and rejoice in it.
July came and scorched the deserted streets.
The denizens of the aristocratic west side who remained in town with no employer to drive them dreamed away idle days behind drawn shades, hovering between the couch and the bathtub.
Lilly did not awaken to real life until evening came, when the world endeavoured to throw off the heat it had absorbed during the day, when dusty yellow vapours rolled on the turbid water of the canal, and beyond the chestnuts, the leaves of which were already beginning to wither, the red glow of the heavens melted into one with the winking lights of the street lamps.
Then she strolled at Konrad's side in the blue twilight of the streets, always alert to escape the observation of acquaintances.
Staid middle-class families promenaded to the beer gardens, love-couples met at the appointed street corners; and among them surged the mass of those whom life has left solitary with shy passionate yearnings, and who hope to steal from smiling chance that for which they no longer dare implore sterner gods. Over the exhausted city hung a sultry haze of secret desire, in which formal restraint and genuine feeling flickered and went out, leaving no sign of ever having been.
How remote those days when Lilly herself wandered about in the same fashion, hoping for the intervention of fate, yet lacking the courage to compel it. And shuddering at dangers she had escaped, she clung closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
She and Konrad always managed to find a secluded nook where gypsy bands played their fiddles, or Tyrolese strummed their dulcimers, or the host himself, some musician come down in the world acted as orchestra leader. In the ivy-hung corners between laurel trees planted in green painted tubs they had little fear of discovery.
Their intercourse had undergone a change.
There were still instructive discourses upon all sorts of subjects and Lilly intently hung upon Konrad's lips; but her holy ardour for knowledge had cooled down.
That God does not exist, that Fra Lippo Lippi had been a good-for-nothing, that baroque art has it good points, and that a line gone crazy ought to be sent to the madhouse, even if it poses as ultra-modern, these and many more novel, interesting things Lilly had long known. But they no longer evoked discussion.
Often their eyes would meet and linger with a soft yearning smile in them as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could talk to each other. And often Konrad's thoughts went their own way, returning to Lilly only under compulsion. She would then grow melancholy and jealous, and insist on leaving.
She would not feel thoroughly content until he lay comfortably in her arm, on her heart.
The walls were permeated with the day's heat; the curtains threatened suffocation; a veritable sirocco blew through the cracks of the shutters. But Lilly and Konrad suffered no discomfort. The glow accorded with their mood.
It was the greatest disaster for either of them to fall asleep, and thus shamefully curtail the time they spent together. So they agreed that the one who remained conscious longer should rouse the other.
Lilly was invariably the one to remain awake. Konrad was exhausted by his work, and in the morning he could not doze off again after a cup of tea in bed, or in the afternoon rest on the couch. And when he lay there next to her with twitching limbs, like a thoroughbred hunting dog, she felt much too sorry for him to keep her promise.
She would sit up in bed, and never weary of gazing at him in the dim light of the red-shaded candle.
There was always something in his face to study—the strong-willed fold between his brows, deeper than before and still somewhat intimidating; the muscles of his temples incessantly working; and the curling upper lip, the right end of which every now and then twitched as if he were smiling at her in his sleep. He had grown thin. His skin had lost its firmness, and on his cheeks lay shadows which darkened at his jaws. There was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He looked like a young Christ, created just to be adored.
Sometimes while staring at him, she thought:
"If I were to kill him now, run a hat pin through his heart or something of the sort, he would belong to me, to me alone, forever."
Then she would hollow her hand and place it on the left side of his breast and fancy she held his heart and with his heart his love, which she need never more give up.
Once while she bent over him, he awoke with a start.
"What's the matter? Did I do anything to you?" he asked.
"Why?"
"Your expression is so strange, almost as if you were angry with me."
She resolved not to stare at him any more. But she could not resist; she loved him too dearly.
It was horrible when dread seized her that she might lose him. Many a night it attacked her with such awful force that she felt like screaming and raving and tearing her hair. But it would be wrong to rouse him. So she gently laid her head under his shoulder, one arm under his back, the other across his breast, and pressing close against him told herself she had grown into one with him.
Then gradually she grew calmer and could find comfort in tears, or in picturing to herself how happy she would make him, unspeakably happy. She would envelop him in a mantle of love, so soft and thick as to prevent fate's rude blows from reaching him. She would be his muse, would wear an invisible aureole about her head, enkindle the desire within him for a thousand great deeds; she would give him the devoted care of a Sister of Mercy, would learn to cook and make her own dresses. No—rather attend scientific courses at the university, and study music. Oh, she would do many more things, that he should never weary of her.
For all this, of course, she would first have to be free, with relations between her and Richard entirely broken off.
She often thought of Richard also, but without a shadow of blame. She had long forgiven him for having led her to the brink of the abyss.
"Each person acts according to the law of his own being," Konrad had said.
Besides, Richard had once been her saviour.
So far as the outer world was concerned, the new life was to begin as soon as Richard announced his engagement. He had written that his suit was progressing, and by right her free life with Konrad ought already to have commenced, but Lilly did not feel equal to a crisis. She shuddered at all the lies she would continually have to dish up to Konrad, once a change took place in her household.
She avoided facing the poverty that was bound to come. It was only at night when she had worked herself into a joyous ecstasy on the sleeping man's breast, and her future with him stretched before her in gold and purple, that privation seemed to her the very sum and substance of happiness and plenitude.
At three o'clock in the morning, when the street lamps went out one by one, and the grey of dawn came creeping over the ceiling, Lilly would have to awaken him.
He must not meet any of the tenants of the house. She owed it to his and her own reputation.
While dressing he groped about, drunk with sleep, among Lilly's ivory toilet articles, still resplendent with the seven-pointed coronet, and managed to get himself into shape for a stimulating cup of black coffee at the nearest Vienna café.
For he felt that from Lilly's bed he must go to his desk with all possible speed.
He could not be dissuaded from this madness.
The passionate hours of the night demanded atonement; an idea to which he clung tenaciously, no matter that he spent the early morning hours in vain, wearisome brooding over his papers.
Lilly, on the other hand, fell into a deep sleep, from which Adele roused her at about ten o'clock, when she brought in the breakfast tray, smiling contentedly.
Lilly let Konrad have every other night for himself.
She did not want to suck his lifeblood away. Even so he gave her sufficient cause for worry. His colour was bad, his eyes vacillated, his mood varied abruptly from violent gaiety to vacant-eyed self-absorption.
All that would surely be different when once—what?
To think of nothing, to plan nothing, to wish for nothing. Just to love him and know he was happy.
She spent her days dreaming both pleasant and tremulous dreams. Her intense fervour for mental occupation had departed. Besides, all sorts of new and important things intervened to distract her; especially the need to please him, to hand him daily the draft that intoxicated him and kept him her own.
Hitherto she had taken the beauty of her body as a matter of course, and had paid as little regard to it as to a hidden and useless object. Now she felt she must constantly take thought of the ideal he treasured in his mind, must try to resemble it—she well knew that in reality she approached it a little only when drunken bliss exalted her above herself and the stale and unprofitable flats of her life.
Thus arose an eager cult of her flesh, something she had always despised.
She took care of her body like a woman in a harem, perfumed her baths, manicured her toe nails, lengthened her eyebrows, and powdered her arms and shoulders. Every day she discovered new blemishes, which discouraged her and for which she sought new remedies.
At the same time she was ever haunted by the fear that through sheer attention to her toilet she would acquire the look of a beautiful prostitute. So she locked away her jewellery and dressed very simply. None but the connoisseur could discern how much artistic care had gone into the creation of this faultless simplicity.
When she was alone what troubled her most was jealousy. Not that she suspected him of relations with another woman. He stood too high in her estimation for that. But she was jealous of everything he did. The thought of his desk fairly tortured her. Each hour he spent away from her seemed traitorous to her love, and she thought of his friends with a hostility of which she had never deemed herself capable.
On the evenings she was left alone, she held watch over his room from the opposite side of the street, where she stood pressed in a doorway exactly as formerly in Alte Jakobstrasse.
When his lamp was lighted she was satisfied, but when she saw him come or go at a late hour, she did not sleep the whole night.
He lived a short distance from her in a third-storey room. It was long before he permitted her to call on him.
In the room next to his, he explained, lay a sick woman who had to be kept from the slightest excitement. The sound of a strange voice might aggravate her condition.
While telling this to Lilly he strangely avoided her eyes and she felt that a hundred chances to one he was keeping something from her. But when upon her insistence he admitted her to his room one afternoon she found nothing to confirm her suspicions. She merely had to speak very low; which she had known beforehand.
His room was just an ordinary student's room. It had two windows, a high ceiling, cheap furniture, and no couch and no carpet. But valuable engravings adorned the walls, and the customary pier-glass was hidden behind an old copy of the Madonna di Foligno, who looked down in serene loftiness upon the poverty of northern philistinism. There were long low bookcases full of books; and more books, for which there was no room on the shelves were piled up high in the corners, protected against dust by pieces of crushed oil-cloth, such as pedlars use for wrapping about their wares.
As was to be expected, the desk was the only article that displayed a certain luxuriousness. Like the pictures, it was Konrad's own property. With its noble carving and broad top, it stood in the centre of the room, solemn as an altar.
Not one woman's picture to be seen on it. Lilly had not given him hers, and evidently others were not deemed worthy of the place of honour.
There was only one photograph, that of an old gentleman, framed with glass, which stood back of the blotting pad and the ink well. A weather-beaten, epicurean face, with fine snow-white hair, and shrewd eyes beneath half-sunken lids, eyes peculiar to old connoisseurs of women.
It was the picture of the uncle who had paid for Konrad's education and supported him.
Lilly felt a dull oppression, as if those eyes were looking her through and through, and needed but a glance to unveil the great secret that she concealed from her lover with a thousand subterfuges.
"I'll be careful never to meet him," she thought.
Konrad took from a drawer his precious treasure, the preliminary work on his great history of human emotions, and showed Lilly the reams of paper closely covered with writing.
This work was his real love, and she, Lilly Czepanek, was nothing but a dark, bloodless shadow, which greedily glided through his nights.
"Put it back again," she said discontentedly, and turned away to take leave.
But even his great work was not enough for Konrad. In addition, he drudged over a number of short articles. As his name become known in professional circles, he received an increasing number of orders, all of which he accepted and tried to fill.
And one day Lilly found out what the important position was of which he had spoken three weeks before on that never-to-be-forgotten excursion.
"I couldn't make up my mind until to-day," said Konrad. "But now I have actually decided to take the position. It is assistant editorship on a magazine. The editor-in-chief called on me himself, and wouldn't let go of me until I said yes. A fascinating fellow. In spite of his great intellectual ability, a man of childlike innocence. And so frank and friendly. You must get to know him immediately, if you don't already."
"What is his name?"
"Dr. Salmoni."
No. It came about differently.
Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.
Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the great passion that had blessed her life.
After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had then.
In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always appeared.
The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.
Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their happiest hours were wont to begin.
The following day light was thrown upon the situation.
Konrad came at twilight, paler than usual, his eyes shining unnaturally.
"Listen, darling," he said, "I spent the night thinking everything over, and now I know what I ought to do. We can't go on this way."
She thought he meant that he must leave her. An icy numbness spread over her body. She looked at him quietly awaiting the death blow.
"Since we belong to each other," he continued, "we have never spoken of your betrothed. That doesn't mean I didn't think of him. And you have been very reticent about his friend, Mr. Dehnicke. All I know is Mr. Dehnicke is now off on a trip and has left you, so to speak, without a guardian."
She forced herself to smile. Why did he prolong the agony?
"I must confess, in the midst of all my happiness, I have always felt that this exploiting of the situation was nothing more nor less than contemptible so far as I myself am concerned. But I am not the one to be considered. The question is: what will become of you? The thing I dreaded from the very first has come to pass: your friends have begun to notice us together. You can't ask one person not to tell another. That's degrading. So your friend will discover everything. He will call you to account, you will be too proud to deny the truth, and the end of the story will be that you will be left alone, utterly unprotected. Because the way things are now,Ihaven't even the right to protect you. The thought of it is sickening."
He jumped up, ran his outspread fingers through his imaginary shock of hair, and tramped up and down.
Lilly felt the blood begin to course through her veins again, and with it life and thought.
The dear, noble, unsuspecting boy!
She came near bursting into laughter. But she refrained herself and said:
"You can be perfectly calm, Konni. Mr. Dehnicke won't find out, and even if he does, he won't believe it. Or if he believes it, he will take good care—"
She could not continue. The great innocent eyes troubled her.
"So you still think he will—?"
Konrad also faltered. He, too, was unable to utter the unspeakable.
Lilly regarded the buttons on her skirt, and said nothing.
"When is Mr. Dehnicke coming home again?" he asked.
"He's not certain. He's gone a-wooing," Lilly replied with a little feeling of triumph. She thought she was saying something which raised her above suspicion in the future—there was still a possibility of suspicion.
"Where is he now?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I want to speak to him."
Lilly started. She could not believe her ears.
Itcouldnot be. Either she must have lost her reason or Konrad.
"Don't be afraid," he reassured her. "I know quite well what I owe your reputation. But I should like to find out at last whathethinks of your situation. There's a man in the United States whom you are pledged to, yet he doesn't let himself be heard from. He doesn't come for you. He doesn't write. Why doesn't he write? If he's ignorant of your whereabouts, he's perfectly aware that Mr. Dehnicke's business is known in Berlin. You can't be sure he's still alive. At first I tried to explain his silence in various ways. But now I say to myself, he's either dead or as good as dead. And are you to consider yourself bound? Should you make your entire social existence dependent upon a sort of guard of honour, which has nothing more to guard? I'd like to hold all this under Mr. Dehnicke's nose. He'll have to answer me. Don't you think he will?"
"Konrad has less worldly knowledge than is permissible," thought Lilly, pityingly, and replied: "But I don't understand, Konni, what right you have to call a stranger to account."
"That's my affair," he rejoined, tossing his head defiantly. "I must know if he will set you free. I won't brook his playing the slave-master over you."
"And I won't brook your getting yourself into a false position," cried Lilly in reawakened alarm. She already heard blows and pistol shots. "I myself will speak to Mr. Dehnicke. I will free myself, I promise you. But you, ifyougo to him, what will he think of me? At best you will merely succeed in compromising me."
He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed victoriously.
"If a man loves you and wants you to be his wife, why should that compromise you?"
It was hot and murky when these words were spoken. The canary ran about on the sand of his cage chirping wearily, his wings drooping; the gold fish hung motionless behind their glass walls, and the naked monkey whined in its sleep.
The slimy canal water reflected bluish black clouds; a storm hovered in the atmosphere, and this was the thunder-clap.
Lilly's first sensation was one of surprise—not joyous surprise, indeed not. Then came an unspeakably mournful cry, which no mortal ear heard, though all the more painful in its muteness.
"Too late—a lost chance—nothing to hope for—no more happiness on earth—too late!"
She leaned back on the sofa and studied the ceiling attentively and thoroughly.
He was awaiting his answer.
If she lowered her eyes, she would have to encounter his eyes, which ate into her soul. No salvation from those eyes, no salvation from that which must perforce come.
And he was waiting.
Then she heard her own voice, very clear and very calm, as if Mrs. Jula were speaking in her place, that little artist of life with the iron brow.
"I thought, Konni, you and I had agreed never to marry."
"How can you remind me of it?" he cried violently. "Did I know how things would turn out when I said it? Did I know who you are and what bliss and torture a goddess of a woman like you can bestow on a poor devil? Yes, torture. I must tell you everything to-day. I'm at my wit's end. There's a break in my life. Everything is torn asunder—my work, my thoughts, my belief in you. You want to be my good genius. Instead you're almost my evil genius. Don't be frightened. It's not your fault. I am not reproaching you—only myself, for being so weak. I want to work. I must work. I have assumed a number ofnewduties. I thought if duty came from the outside, I could force myself into the right path. The very reverse has happened. I'm growing stupid just from wrestling with myself. I must bring peace into our lives, else we're both lost. And I can't have peace unless you belong to mealtogether, unless your bed is next to my bed, and the desk is in the next room, and you're always with me."
"I can move to you in the autumn," Lilly interjected timidly.
"No, nothing of that sort any more. No self-reproaches, no secretiveness. Should I have it on my conscience that each additional day on which you sacrifice yourself, you're drawing nearer to ruin? And it's bound to ruin you. It will cling to you like dirt. And why should we create dirt out of what is most sacred to us? Or am I not good enough to be your life-companion? Do you think you will be too poor as my wife?"
She repudiated the idea with a lively exclamation of scorn.
"I don't know, and I don't need to know, how much you have. I am rich enough now. I get three hundred marks a month from my uncle; Dr. Salmoni pays me four hundred—"
Oh, how she started at the name!
"And I can easily earn another three hundred by writing articles—in all a thousand a month, a general's salary. You may be satisfied."
"Keep quiet," she cried, almost beside herself. "It isn't that."
"Then what is it?"
He planted himself in front of her challengingly. Between his brows were those folds of wrath which cut her like a knife. She ducked her head. Never since the colonel's time had she experienced such fear of a human being.
"Tell me what it is. Apparently you don't love me enough. You still cling to the man who forgot you long ago. You probably say to yourself: 'The stupid boy is good enough for a passing love; he's good enough for whiling the time away. But if he shows any intentions of interfering with my life, I must get rid of him with all possible speed.' Am I not right? Tell me. Be brave! What harm can I do you? Just tell me that I'm nothing but apis aller, the sort of man you wouldn't want as a husband. When I've made a name for myself, then you will be willing to consider marriage, too. Am I not right?—Well, then."
He picked up his hat to go.
"Have pity on me, Konni," she implored. She had glided down from her seat to lay her head on his knees, and now she crouched between the sofa and Konrad's chair, and groped for support.
"I don't needyourpity, you don't needmine," he cried. "Until to-day you've been the noblest thing on earth to me. But I won't suffer myself just to be expunged from your life. Tell me why you don't want to marry me—oneplausible reason, and I'll never return to the subject again. I promise you."
"Give me until to-morrow," she groaned.
"Why? For what? To-day is as good as to-morrow. I've come to the end of my tether. I can't spend another night of torture."
"I will write to you."
That surprised him.
"What will you write?"
"Whether I may or not. And the reasons and everything."
"During the night I'll manage to find some way out," she thought.
"When will I get the letter?"
"To-morrow morning by the first delivery."
"Very well. I will wait until then. Good-by, Lilly."
When he helped her back on the sofa, and held his hand out in farewell, and she saw his eyes fastened on her with their candid, magnanimous expression, which a lie had never clouded—unsuspicious still—she was suddenly convinced that evasion was no longer possible.
"Truth! Nothing but the truth. Even if it lead to perdition, Konrad must now be told the truth." The thought flooded her soul like a warm, soothing stream.
But she could not tell him the truth face to face. Nobody would have the strength of will for that.
The reaction did not set in until she was left alone. The impulse for self-preservation asserted itself. If Mrs. Jula could do it, she could, too. Mrs. Jula had much worse things to conceal.
Richard, of course, would say nothing; which was the main consideration. Now that he wished to go his own way, it was to his interest for her to vanish decorously from his life. The rest of the "crew" might tattle to their heart's content. Konrad was immune against their poison. The only dangerous person was Dr. Salmoni. But if she went to him soon and begged him, he, too, would maintain silence. He had sufficiently strong motives for hushing his disgraceful attempt upon her. Besides, Mrs. Jula had said: "You must wear a smile on your brow but beneath the smile your brow must be of iron."
Thus Lilly revolved the situation in her mind.
But in the midst of her brooding and planning she was seized with disgust of herself and her intentions, which tore the whole tissue of deceit into ragged bits.
Why, it was sheer folly to think she would always be able to play the false part. If upon the mere mention of Dr. Salmoni's name she dreaded appearing on the street with Konrad, how could she go through a lifetime at his side haunted by that ever-present fear? What repulses and humiliations she would have to undergo whenever Konrad led her into the society in which as his wife she would belong—she, whom the papers had taken up and treated as a rising star in the fashionable demi-monde? And, worst of all, if Konrad should begin to suspect! How he would eat his heart away in shame and abhorrence, he, with his pride and delicate susceptibilities and that unworldly purity which alone accounted for the fact that no surmise as to her real life had ever touched his soul.
What an awaking from a short, torturing dream!
No, she could not do what Mrs. Jula had done.
And she threw far from her the shameful thought with which the stress of the hour had stained her wrestling soul.
An exultant craving for self-annihilation came over her, the desire to tear her breast open and throw her throbbing heart at his feet.
So she sat down and wrote:
"My dear, sweet Konni:—I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire, clamoured for respect.Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.Lilly."
"My dear, sweet Konni:—
I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire, clamoured for respect.
Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.
Lilly."
It was nearly eleven o'clock. Adele had gone to bed. It occurred to Lilly that she would have to go down to mail the letter herself.
But the storm that had been impending the whole afternoon, was just then giving full vent to its fury. The rain was coming down in sheets, and gusts of wind blew through the open window across Lilly's desk.
Once a shower of drops spattered the paper, at which she was staring with hot, dry eyes. It looked as if tears had fallen upon it while she was writing.
"Very good," she thought.
Then she felt ashamed. The time for farce was ended. But when she started to rewrite the letter, she stopped short with a shudder.
What did those monstrous self-accusations signify? Were they the truth?
Perhaps so in the mouth of a backbiting woman who needs facts about her friend in order to twist them into a crime, or in the mouth of one of those social hangmen who hold a halter in readiness for everybody's past.
For herself, who knew how everything had come about, how from inner need and outer compulsion, from trustfulness and defencelessness, link after link of the chain had been forged which now clanked about her body, a burden of sin—for her there was another, a milder truth, which must win pardon and atonement for her in the eyes of every person who understood.
She tore up the sheet, and began anew. She draughted a sketch, and polished it until it thoroughly satisfied her.
"My dearly beloved friend:—She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you, was at stake.And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which sanctified my life.The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right to go through life at your side.I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a piece of my virtue.I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a tool of base desires.Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his adventure he went to perdition.He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at him, I was so slavishly in his power—until now.So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of discouragement.Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity. These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them to activity.Even if I may not be your wife—your wife should be free of stain—I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a distance—wherever you tell me to go.Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear, tender, industrious hands.Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again. If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that belongs to you unto death.Lilly."
"My dearly beloved friend:—
She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you, was at stake.
And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which sanctified my life.
The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right to go through life at your side.
I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a piece of my virtue.
I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a tool of base desires.
Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his adventure he went to perdition.
He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at him, I was so slavishly in his power—until now.
So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of discouragement.
Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.
And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity. These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them to activity.
Even if I may not be your wife—your wife should be free of stain—I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a distance—wherever you tell me to go.
Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear, tender, industrious hands.
Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again. If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that belongs to you unto death.
Lilly."
She read and reread the letter, and read herself into a state of enthusiasm over it.
Now the truth wore quite a different aspect.
Then suddenly the question arose in her mind:
"Isit the truth?"
Had she not luxuriated in choice words? Had she not smuggled in high-flown emotions foreign to her nature? Phrases like "dull night in which my spirit was enveloped" and "tried desperately to struggle" belonged in sentimental novels. They were inapplicable to her life. She had suffered not so much from despair as from boredom and during that "dull night" she had enjoyed herself greatly on many an occasion. Richard, the good fellow to judge by her insinuations, was a rank despot, and she herself a sorry, subjugated victim, whereas in reality she had been able to do or leave undone whatever her caprice dictated.
Itwasthe truth, and yet it was not. Just as much and as little as in the first, dreadful letter. Each was correct enough in its way, and many another might have been written equally correct; but the truth, the genuine truth, which penetrated and illumined the whole, would appear in none. That truth she herself did not know, nor did anybody else. That truth vanished with the moment in which an event occurred, and no earthly power could summon it back. All that her words reflected were distorted images varying as her mood varied and as her pen travelled over the paper.
"But I don't want to lie," she cried to herself. "I want to be true to-day."
So she tore up the second letter also.
What now? Should she write a third letter?
It was long past midnight. Her eyes burned. Her temples throbbed with over-excitement, and Konrad was to hear from her by the first mail in the morning. She had promised him.
At this point the full force of what had happened suddenly struck her. She realised that in the last four hours she had been face to face with the danger of losing him at once and forever.
She was beset with an anguish of fear that threatened to rob her of her senses. She cried his name aloud, ran about the apartment, reeled, knocked against the walls, and wanted to throw herself from the window.
She must go to him forthwith. That was the one idea she was capable of grasping. She would have the porter open the front door; she would wake Konrad up, force her way into his room and stay with him that night and forever. No matter what the consequences! It was all the same. Only to rid herself of that dread which burned her body like a living flame.
The storm had subsided, but the rain was falling in a steady downpour. Lilly scarcely took the time to put on a cloak.
In low shoes, without hat or umbrella, she dashed out on the street and splashed through the puddles.
Light was shining from the two third-storey windows.
She clapped her hands and cried:
"Konni, Konni, Konni!"
Again and again.
But the windows were closed. He did not hear her.
She saw his figure glide back and forth like a shadow, from one end of the room to the other, to and fro, to and fro, ceaselessly.
And all the time the rain beat down on her, soaking through her clothes, while the cold wet of the pavement crawled up her legs.
"Konni, Konni," she called louder.
Passersby offered her their umbrellas; others taunted her, and cried, "Konni, Konni."
At last the shadow halted. One of the windows went up.
"Lilly—you?" his voice called, hoarse with fright.
"At last—do come, my sweet Konni," a tipsy man, who had persistently held his umbrella over her, answered in her place.
"For God's sake!"
The light disappeared from the windows, and a few moments later Konrad appeared in the doorway with the front-door key and his lamp in his hand.
The tipsy gentleman said good-by, bowing and scraping.
"Lilly—what has happened? What are you doing here?"
She pressed against the doorpost trembling. She was unable to speak.
"I am with him," was her one thought. "So all's well."
He passed his hand over her clothes.
"Why, you're dripping wet. You're in house slippers. For God's sake, Lilly!"
She wanted to say something, but was ashamed to let him see how her teeth were chattering.
"And I can't even take you to my room. You know why. But I must. If I were to let you go back home again in the state you're in, you might catch your death of cold. We will be very careful—just as we were that time. We can't speak above a whisper. The girl's not out of danger yet. Give me your hand. Come on."
With half-closed eyes she let herself be led up the stairs. Her wet dress flapped against the balusters. She felt she would have to crouch down on one of the steps and lie there until the porter came to sweep the dust and dirt away. But each step only took her nearer to the fate awaiting her up there in the third storey.
Then with bent head she crept along the corridor into his room, where the imprisoned sultriness of the summer day suffocated her.
Konrad pressed her into his desk chair. He drew off the soggy velvet rags from her feet, and brought her dry stockings; and after peeling her wet dress from her body he wrapped her in his great coat and blankets.
She sat there accepting his service without a will of her own. She wanted to taste the delicious sensation of his loving care of her until the last moment.
She had not said a word.
When she had attempted to thank him, he pointed to the door leading to the next room.
"Speak very low," he said, his mouth close to her ear. "The poor thing, it seems, is having a good night for the first time."
Languid pity awoke in Lilly.
But she had to talk.
"What's the matter with her? Tell me," she breathed.
He hesitated.
"My landlady swore me to silence. But you're mine now. You will keep the secret. Her daughter, her one child, ran away four months ago and gave birth to a baby. The mother went to fetch her back home. She's been hovering between life and death for six weeks. She's at last getting better."
"Poor thing," said Lilly. And then the consciousness of her own misery came upon her with redoubled force.
"Konni, Konni," she moaned on his neck. "Now it's all over. I was willing to starve with you, go begging with you. But what's the use? When once you know everything—"
"That can't be so very bad, darling."
"About me. About my life—my past."
With a little jerk he freed himself and sat down opposite her.
The look of questioning and terrified presentiment that congealed his pale face, seeming to turn it into a mask, filled her with fright, such fright as she had never experienced, because it was not on her own behalf; she was afraid of converting her own pain into his pain.
"I wanted to write it to you—just the way it was, but I couldn't. It turned out wrong while I wrote. So I came to you before morning. If you want, I will tell you now—everything—"
She could not continue. She turned her face aside and buried it on the desk.
"Why don't you speak?"
Konrad had quite forgotten the need for quiet, and both of them shrank at the sudden sound of his voice. "She's probably asleep," he said lowering his voice again. "Now tell me! What can it be?"
He breathed heavily under the growing oppression of his soul.
She began to speak. In a whisper, her upper body inclined toward him, she tried to tell him the things for which she had not been able to find words in her own home.
The truth did not come out this time either. She felt it.
Less, much less of it, than her letters would have given him. To distress him with every detail—never! No power in the world could have driven her to that.
Her life became a long list of martyrdoms—a funeral procession draped in black—insults, humiliations, mortifications—an imprisonment without a ray of light or mercy—and all the time a constant struggle for deliverance—a noble withdrawal into herself—a dismal sacrifice for nothing.
She talked and talked.
He listened, with wide-open eyes. But when she uttered the name she had no right to omit, "Dr. Salmoni," he started and shrank back.
Both of them had completely forgotten the sick girl in the next room.
Sometimes Lilly had to wipe tears away, sometimes she grew indignant; now she ventured to glide by difficult points, now she lingered over touching self-reproaches.
"Itisthe truth after all," she said to herself defiantly, yet in fear, as she drew near the end of her narrative.
It was the truth in so far as it was a résumé of the good in her, the truth as it might take shape in his troubled mind, regardless of fact—and this truth, too, had its rights.
Silence ensued.
Her guilty look glided past him and rested on the photograph on the desk, which leered at her with its crafty, worldly eyes, as if to say:
"My child, I know you much better than you do yourself."
Something familiar and confidential lay in them, like a reflection of the merry world which a moment ago had seemed to her the abode of torture.
She did not venture to remove her gaze from those omniscient eyes, which smilingly examined and disrobed her, and killed her last shy hope.
The unbroken silence in the room became a burden.
Suddenly Konrad and Lilly heard a low moan. It came from the next room, where the sick girl lay, who, because of her secret sin, had been wrestling with her poor life for weeks. The next instant the sound was partially stifled, as if she had stuck a handkerchief into her mouth. Then it broke out again all the more violently. Anxious words of comfort mingled with the groans. They came from the mother, who probably slept in the farther room, and had come in to find out the cause of her daughter's outburst of grief.
Konrad's and Lilly's eyes met.
"She heard everything," their look said.
For a brief instant the stranger's unhappiness caused them to forget their own. The great flood of the world's suffering poured over them easing the sting of guilt and drowning their personal pain.
The sobbing in the next room was muffled under pillows.
"My own darling," the comforting voice implored, and each tone swelled with love. "Don't worry. It isn't so bad. We will take the little baby. Even if he doesn't marry you, what difference does it make? Think of it, we have the baby! And then it will smile at you and say mama. You see, it isn't so dreadful."
The sobbing quieted down, and turned into a heavy breathing, the first earnest of peace.
"Oh," thought Lilly, "it must be good to have someone say: 'It's not so dreadful.'"
Nobody would say that to her.
A burning desire to be petted and comforted, like the young sinner next door, arose in her.
"She has her mother," she groaned, bursting into tears, "but whom have I?"
Konrad leaned over and took her hands from her face. His troubled eyes shone with such infinite loving kindness that they seemed not to be of this world.
"Am I not here?" he asked.
"What can you do for me?" she complained. "How can you bear me?"
There were no sounds from the other room any more.
Now the mother also knew that Konrad had a visitor at that late hour.
"Listen," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear again. "We mustn't talk much more. Besides, my head's in a whirl. But there's one thing I see clearly: how ridiculous everything called guilt is when two people love each other, and when one has suffered like you. You have always been a saint to me, and you shall—continue to be in the future."
"Future," Lilly faltered, starting up anxiously, "what sort of a future?"
He wiped his forehead, yellow and dank with sweat.
"I don't know," he said. "All I know is I can't live without you."
She closed her eyes. She wanted to dream longer.
"To be sure, it cannot be what we wanted." She noticed the hesitating, dragging gait of his speech. "Everything, of course—will have to be different."
"Your life must not be different—it ought not to be different."
"You can't blink facts, darling. Of course, I don't knowwherewe will live. But we'll manage to find some spot on the globe where nobody knows us."
Now she understood.
And forgetting herself and the sick girl and everything around she sank down at his feet with a cry and sobbed:
"I don't want you to—you mustn't. You're entirely too young. You don't know the world. You don't know what you're doing. I don't want the sacrifice. I don't want to ruin you. I love you too much for that."
He bent her head back and stroked her hair from her forehead.
If only his eyes had not shone with that suffering loving kindness.
The unhappiness of a lifetime already glowed in them.
"If the question of sacrifice enters," he said, "thenImust ask a sacrifice ofyou. Will you make it for my sake?"
"Everything, everything! Shall I die? Tell me."
"I want only one thing of you. Come to me as you are. Don't bring a single possession of yours with you. Never return, not once, to your—to that apartment. From this moment on nothing of all that is to be. Will you promise me?"
Lilly battled against violent alarm.
Not to return home! Never to see her dear drawing-room again; never to feed the little canary or Peter—never!
An ugly feeling, that such a sacrifice was rank folly, came and went again, as if a daub of dirt had been flung upon her, and immediately been wiped away. Then she decided hastily, and replied:
"Yes, I promise."
He drew a deep breath.
"Now we will be perfectly quiet," he said. "The patient ought to sleep, and to-morrow morning I'll explain the matter to my landlady."
"But what is to become of your great work?" Lilly asked, self-reproach rising up in her again.
A melancholy smile passed over his face.
"Who knows? That will depend upon my uncle. If he gives his consent, we can live as we please. Everything will be all right."
"But if he doesn't?"
Konrad's right hand, which had been gliding ceaselessly from her forehead to the nape of her neck, for an instant pressed her head painfully as if to fetch strength for the approaching life struggle from closer contact.
"That will be all right, too," he said and smiled again.
A little while later she lay at his side in the narrow bed, the edge of which cut her body. She put her head under his shoulder, and with both arms clasped his body, as always in her distress when she sought protection with him.
But this time she slept, and he kept watch.