Transcriber's Note:
Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/3398065

Third Edition.

In 1898 I published a translation of Sudermann's "Der Katzensteg," under the title of "Regina"; in 1906 of "Es War," under the title of "The Undying Past," and in 1908 of "Der Täufer," under the title of "John the Baptist." All these books were translated by Miss Beatrice Marshall, and the translations were received in England, America, and Germany with enthusiasm alike by critics and the public. I was therefore naturally anxious to publish Herr Sudermann's great novel, "Das hohe Lied," on which he had been working for a great number of years, but I found that Mr. B. W. Huebsch of New York, the well-known American publisher, had purchased the world rights in the translation. My only chance therefore was to purchase from him the translation he had had made, and this I acquired in sheet form, as he had already copyrighted the book in this country. My edition of the work appeared here in October, 1910, under the title of "The Song of Songs."

Serious objections were then raised to it in certain quarters, and I should like to place on record here exactly what happened and in proper sequence, by first of all printing a letter which I wrote to Sir Melville Macnaghten. Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard; a circular letter which I sent to the book trade; and a circular letter which I sent to the Incorporated Society of Authors and the following well-known novelists, together with such replies as I received:

London, W.,

December 9th, 1910.

Sir Melville Macnaghten,

Criminal Investigation Department,

New Scotland Yard, S.W.

Dear Sir,

I am told that Inspectors Lawrence and Duggan called at my office to-day to inform me that complaint had been made of "The Song of Songs," by Hermann Sudermann, which was described as an obscene book. Through ill-health I have not been at my office for several weeks, although I happen to be in London to-day on my way to Brighton; but my manager immediately came to me and communicated what had passed. The officers informed him that you do not associate yourself at the present juncture with the opinion that has been expressed upon the book, but that their object was to draw my attention to the fact that complaint had been made.

I very much appreciate your kindness in causing the officers to call upon me, and they were quite right in their assumption that I should be the last person to wish to publish an obscene book. Although I am under doctor's orders, I have delayed my departure for Brighton to write letters to some of the most distinguished novelists of the day and to the Society of Authors, to whom I am sending copies of "The Song of Songs," asking them to acquaint me with their opinion, at the same time informing them of what has occurred. As soon as I receive their views, I shall be guided by them in my action and will inform you of my decision. I presume that this action on my part meets with your approval.

Yours faithfully,

John Lane.

PS.--I enclose a copy of my letter to the authors.

I feel I must add a personal word of thanks to you for your consideration in this matter. You will, I am sure, see my position. I am dealing with the reputation of one of the greatest literary figures in Europe, and it is absurd for me to assume the rôle of judge, especially as you do not associate yourself with the--to me--anonymous accusation. It is all the more difficult from the fact that this same translation has been sold in tens of thousands in the U.S.A., where the reading public is much more prudish than here.

London, W.,

December 9th, 1910.

Dear Sir or Madam,

For some weeks I have been laid up with a serious attack of bronchitis, but I am fortunately in London to-day, although not at my office, on my way to Brighton.

I have just been informed that Inspectors Lawrence and Duggan, from the Criminal Investigation Department, have called to-day at my office, saying that a complaint has been made against Hermann Sudermann's novel, "The Song of Songs," which was published in Germany under the title of "Das hohe Lied." It is described as obscene, but the officers assured my manager that the Chief Commissioner does not at the present juncture associate himself with this expression. They explained that their call is to draw my attention to the fact that a serious complaint has been made, so that if the Public Prosecutor takes action I shall not be able to say that, had I known the book to be objectionable, I should immediately have withdrawn it. The book has been read by the Officers of the C.I.D., for so they told my manager. The translation is by an American, and it was printed in America, where it has been in circulation for many months past, and has been one of the most successful books of the year. I am writing to the Chief Commissioner, informing him that it is my intention to lay the matter before the Society of Authors and the most distinguished novelists of the day, whose advice I am ready to take. I am therefore sending you a copy of the book in the hope that you will find time to read it in the course of the next few days and let me know your opinion, and I shall certainly be guided by the consensus of opinion.

I am,

Yours very truly,

John Lane.

PS.--May I suggest that this is a question for the consideration of the Council of the Society of Authors?

London, W.,

December 10th, 1910.

Dear Sir,

Yesterday morning I received a call from two inspectors from the Criminal Investigation Department, who stated that complaint had been made about Hermann Sudermann's "The Song of Songs," which was described as "an obscene book." The police declined to express any opinion of their own, but warned me of what had occurred.

I immediately wrote and thanked the Chief Commissioner for his courtesy. I then wrote letters to the principal novelists of the day, asking their advice, for I could not myself sit in judgment upon one of Europe's greatest writers. In the meantime I have withdrawn the book from circulation.

It is only fair that I should put the trade in the possession of all the facts of the case. I took the book in good faith. I had seen that it was for months the best-selling book in America, the most puritanical of all countries. I should just as soon have thought of changing the text of Shakespeare, Ibsen, George Meredith, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and Mr. George Moore. I must give the trade the option of returning the book.

John Lane.

7, Chilworth Street,

Paddington, W.

December 14th, 1910.

Dear Mr. Lane,

The book is very outspoken and occasionally nasty, but I shouldn't call it obscene, and the reputation of the author is your justification for publishing it. Personally, I think the first half brilliant and the last half tedious and unpleasant. A great many authors not nearly so famous as Sudermann could write a somewhat bald catalogue or series of risqué episodes. It is a book, in my opinion, for the student of literature and the mature, certainly not for the young person; but the student, I take it, would be able to read it in the original.

I am,

Yours sincerely,

Lucy Clifford.

Windlesham,

Crowborough,

Sussex.

Dear Sir,

Many thanks. I read the book with great interest. To say it is ever "obscene" is an abuse of words. That there are passages which are coarse, and unnecessarily coarse, is on the other hand indisputable. I should not like any woman under forty to read it. And yet it is not written for the purpose of being coarse, and that is the essential point.

Yours very truly,

A. Conan Doyle.

Max Gate,

Dorchester.

December 15th, 1910.

Dear Mr. Lane,

I am sorry to hear that you have been laid up with bronchitis, and hope that you are on the way to health again.

I finished reading last night the translation of Sudermann's novel, "Das hohe Lied," that you sent me a few days back. I am not in a position to advise positively whether or not you should withdraw it, but I think that, viewing it as a practical question merely, which I imagine to be your wish, I should myself withdraw it in the circumstances.

A translation of good literary taste might possibly have made such an unflinching study of a woman's character acceptable in this country, even though the character is one of a somewhat ignoble type, but unfortunately, rendered into the rawest American, the claims that the original (which I have not seen) no doubt had to be considered as literature, are largely reduced, so that I question if there is value enough left in this particular translation to make a stand for.

Believe me,

Yours very truly,

John Lane, Esq.,    Thomas Hardy.

The Bodley Head.

3, Fitzjohn's Mansions,

Netherhall Gardens,

Hampstead, N.W.

December 17th.

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your letter and the copy of "The Song of Songs."

I read the book carefully several months ago. I consider it to be a most wonderful book, and should deeply regret to see the work of so great a master as Sudermann suppressed in England. It is an absorbing psychological and physical study; and I see nothing obscene in its frank presentment of a woman's life, given over, it is true, to passion, and yet with a thread of finer aspiration clearly and continuously to be traced throughout the course of her career.

I am,

Yours very truly,

Beatrice Harraden.

17, Stratton Street, W.

My Dear Lane,

I have now read the "Song of Songs." The translation is obviously an undistinguished piece of work; and possibly it adds here and there a coarseness which the original book is without. As to that I cannot speak. Herr Sudermann is no doubt outspoken to the point of brutality, but with his theme brutality is the better way. Pruriency is the bad way; and with that he has never had anything to do. That the "Song of Songs" might offend some people I can understand. That it would do any harm I cannot.

Yours very sincerely,

A. E. W. Mason.

Riviera Palace Hotel,

Monte Carlo.

December 30th, 1910.

Dear John Lane,

Please pardon the delay. I've been seedy, and have not written a single letter for ten days. I'm all right again, and am sending to tell you briefly what I think of "The Song of Songs."

I can see no reason why it should be banned, tho' to my mind it is lacking in the essentials of that Art which makes all things possible if not expedient. There is no real tragedy in the life of a born prostitute such as Lilly was, and certainly there is no comedy. There was never for an instant a problem for her to solve, and all the effort to present a struggle is vain and empty. She went her accustomed course like the fly-away she was, and that is what the book shows with very remarkable photography and in a light which reaches into every corner. It isn't a sweet book, but Salome isn't a sweet drama, and to attempt to ban the one and let the other go is sheer stupidity and crass prejudice. One divorce case in the grimy Weeklies is more lurid and pornographic to the impressionable eye than all this book of masterly observation and graphic literature. The Public must set the standard, not the Censor, and as one of the Public I resent any attempt to regulate my diet.

Yours truly,

Gilbert Parker.

Torquay.

December 22nd, 1910.

Dear John Lane,

I have read Sudermann's "Das hohe Lied" very carefully, and if I were inclined to be flippant should say the only things obscene therein were the Americanisms of this translation.

But in truth there is more to be said.

I consider that in spirit the book is not obscene, but inasmuch as many of the characters are obscene, because the artist has been making a study of certain obscene-minded human beings, then it follows that, as a true artist, he has created an atmosphere of obscenity for those persons to move and breathe in. You do not ask for a criticism of the book, and I should not presume to offer it if you did (being happily without the least itch ever to criticise anything or anybody); but upon the one point where you invite opinion I would say the book is obscene, as it was artistically bound to be, because it offers a picture of an obscene corner of society--a society entirely preoccupied with the sexual man and woman hunt. It is not obscene in the sense that many lesser novels written in all countries are obscene.

I hope that I make the distinction clear as it exists in my mind.

Very faithfully yours,

Eden Phillpotts.

10, Adelphi Terrace, W.C.

December 20th, 1910.

Dear John Lane,

At your request I have read the American translation of Hermann Sudermann's "Song of Songs." There is no reason why you should not publish it except the risk that you may be prosecuted. But as it is impossible for an English publisher to conduct his business without running that risk daily, I presume you will not allow it to deter you.

The book is a fictitious biography of a femme galante. It is not the sort of book that is given as a prize in a girl's school, though I am by no means sure that it would not be more useful than many of the books that are put to that use. It says what ought to be said about its heroine without any of the sentimental lasciviousness and avoidance of the unpleasant side of clandestine gallantry which makes most of our novels so dangerous to young people. Sudermann is blunt, frank, and contemptuous, where the English hack-writer would be furtive, inferential, discreet, and superficially decent. He strips the romance off Bohemianism ruthlessly, and takes care that if you are curious about the sort of life that is open to a woman who has lost her position in respectable society in Berlin, you shall know the truth about it. Not that he attaches any false consequences to it for the sake of an edifying moral. His heroine does not starve, does not jump over the bridge, and fares better than most ugly, honest, and hard-working women as far as her circumstances are concerned. She is left at the end of the book in a position which many respectable English families would be very glad to see their daughters in. The author makes no attempt to flatter society by denying or hiding the fact that immorality pays a penniless girl who is pretty and amiable better than morality, and that it even leaves her a better chance of being married than the drudgeries and disfigurements of singing The Song of the Shirt. But that it damages her soul cruelly and incurably he brings out mercilessly. He deliberately leads you into all sorts of foolish sentimental sympathies with her, only in the end to bring you the harder up against Dr. Johnson's opinion of her. She is left, as such women often are left, with an adoring husband, a luxurious income, and everything the most virtuous heroine could ask from British fiction, but hopelessly damned all the same. You need not fear that anyone who reads the book will envy her or be tempted to go and do likewise. It is worth adding that what began the mischief with her was having nothing readable within her reach except popular novels which made everything that tempted her seem poetic and delightful and honorable, and were therefore not suppressed by the censorship.

You will understand from the above account why you have been threatened with censorial proceedings for proposing to publish this novel. Instead of baiting the trap, it shows it to you shut, with the victim inside. That, our library censors and their dupes will say, is disgusting. Precisely. Do they ask Sudermann to make it attractive? The attraction of the book lies in the interest of the picture it gives of the phase of contemporary society with which it deals. It is full of vivid character-sketches which not only amuse us as we read but give us a whole social atmosphere to reflect on. If the reflections are bitter and even terrifying, serve us right: it is not Sudermann's business to keep us in a fool's paradise. The suppression of this book would not only be a deliberate protection of vice--which is always best served by turning off the light--but the reduction of every English adult to the condition of a child under tutelage. But even if the book were as false and mischievous as any of the romances which make the same theme agreeable and seductive I should object to its suppression all the same. No harm that the worst book could possibly do even if people could be forced to read it against their wills could be as great as the intellectual suffocation of the whole nation which a censorship effects. If Germany may read Sudermann and we may not, then the free adult German man will presently upset the Englishman's perambulator and leave him to console himself as best he may with the spotlessness of his pinafore.

Yours faithfully,

John Lane, Esq.    G. Bernard Shaw.

The Bodley Head,

Vigo Street, W.

4, Edwardes Square Studios, W.

December 13th, 1910.

Dear Mr. Lane,

I've waited before writing to you till I had finished "The Song of Songs."

I have read every word of it carefully, and I think it would be a national disgrace if so fine a work of so great a master were suppressed.

The book is powerful and sincere and absolutely moral in tendency and intention. Of course it is a terrible subject and there are bound to be terrible things in it, things that I, personally, dislike extremely; but I see that none of these things are insisted on for their own sake. None are unnecessary, except, possibly, the violent scene in Kellermann's studio, and that would not really do anybody any harm.

Judging the book as it ought to be judged--by tendency and intention--I cannot find anything in it to which the adjective used by the complainant could apply. It is a long and elaborate work, and the "terrible things" are comparatively few and far between. They offend my taste, but not my moral sense--that remains appeased by the tragedy of it all, as in "real life."

I would even say that from the point of view of morals and the portentous young girl, the book should do good, should act as a deterrent by its ruthless analysis of "Schwärmerei," by showing where it leads and what it is stripped of its dangerous glamour.

Altogether I see nothing to justify complaint. As for criminal prosecution--we are ridiculous enough, as it is, in the eyes of our neighbours!

Faithfully yours,

May Sinclair.

17, Church Row,

Hampstead.

My Dear Lane,

I have read "The Song of Songs" very carefully. I find it unsympathetic work; there is a harshness and hardness about Sudermann's effects that I do not like and that reminds me of the exaggeration of wrinkles and blemishes one finds in over-focussed photographs. None the less it is a very sincere and able piece of literature, and I cannot understand anyone who is not suffering from some sort of inverted sexual mania wanting to suppress it. It deals with sexual facts very plainly but without a suspicion of pornographic intention, it presents vicious tendencies and their indulgence in an extremely deterrent way, and I cannot imagine anyone not already hopelessly corrupted who could gain any sexual excitement from reading it.

Yours very sincerely,

H. G. Wells.

Exeter.

Dear Mr. Lane,

The morality of a novel depends upon three points:--(1) Subject; (2) Purpose; (3) Treatment as to detail.

(1). The subject of "The Song of Songs" is that of a girl ruined by an old roué and then bandied about from man to man till every trace of soul is gone. She has no existence apart from the lowest passion. The book is a tremendous indictment of the idea, only now beginning to disappear, that a woman should live for the sole purpose of gratifying a man sexually--whether in marriage or otherwise.

(2). In aim it is certainly not impure in the sense that it paints a career of vice as alluring. The girl is living in hell and is at times aware of it. The sordid misery of her life is there, though--and here Sudermann differs from English--writers she never becomes an outcast physically. She has always a certain well-being and even beauty. The ruin and destruction wrought is of brain and soul, a much more terrible matter.

(3). In treatment as to detail the book stands condemned; the pictures given are not only revolting, but painted with entirely unnecessary fulness. There is a cruel gusto, for instance, that places the book on a far lower level of morality than "Madame Bovary." The thought of the novel is feeble compared with its physical atmosphere. But in the matter of detail, on the whole the difference between English fiction and all continental work is one purely of fashion. Our people in English novels sin vaguely: in continental novels they sin garishly. It is the difference between a dream and a cinematograph. But for the law to interfere in England with books touching on vice is supremely ridiculous, since our law, framed entirely for man's convenience and not at all for woman's protection, is one of the greatest means by which vice itself is kept flourishing. The farce of police supervision and the insults of the English law sin against morality fifty times more powerfully than any of Sudermann's novels.

My opinion is that all sane, healthy-minded women ought to read novels like this, because they ought to know the truth, the entirely accursed truth about these things. For the ignorance of women is the chief reason why other women like the heroine of "The Song of Songs" are left to rot in body and mind. It is to men that such books are injurious, for they are so written that the vicious details strike their eye first, and the cruel pleasure taken in them would appeal to the worst in men. It is only women and somewhat exceptional men who would see the horror of degradation that Sudermann depicts the heroine as enduring. It is hell to a woman, but to the average stupid man it would simply appear amusing.

Such books should be labelled "For Women Only." There are comparatively few naturally vicious women, and these "The Song of Songs" won't injure, for they are beyond that. The others will be benefited by its knowledge. As to whether this book should have been published, I think it is six to one and half a dozen to the other: you will enlighten women; you may possibly injure some young men. But at the present moment the essential thing is that women should have their eyes opened. That is, indeed, the task of this century; the next will see the results of it--good ones, I firmly believe.

M. P. Willcocks.

Far End,

East Preston,

Sussex.

December 12th, 1910.

Dear Lane,

I am very sorry to hear of your illness and of the trouble that the police may give you. Unfortunately, I am far too busy at present to spare time to read a book of 640 pages, and unless one read it all one might miss the impugned passages or the other passages which justify them. I readily, however, corroborate your view--although no corroboration is needed--that the high position of Sudermann in European literature must raise any work of his far above the plane of police interference. His motives are sure to be ethical, and he must not for a moment be confounded with those mercenary scribblers who spice their wares for the market. Indeed, if I were a publisher, I would never even read an MS. of Sudermann's beforehand. I should put it into the hands of the printers in blind faith, as no doubt you have done.

With best wishes for your rapid recovery.

Yours sincerely,

Israel Zangwill.

It will be seen that although the consensus of opinion was in favour of the circulation of the book, yet there was a very strong objection to the translation. I therefore wrote to Herr Sudermann as follows, at the same time sending him copies of the correspondence--

To Hermann Sudermann, Esq.,

Berlin.

The Bodley Head,

London, W.

February 8th, 1911.

Dear Sir,

You will probably have heard that I have had difficulties over the publication of "Das hohe Lied," which was translated by an American for Mr. Huebsch, the New York publisher who has the translation rights of your book, and from whom I bought it in sheet form for the British market.

On December 9th, Sir Melville Macnaghten, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, sent two of his representatives to my office, informing my manager, in my absence through illness, that serious complaints had been lodged against the book as being obscene. I immediately wrote letters to Sir Melville Macnaghten, to the Incorporated Society of British Authors, and to our leading novelists; and I am sending you copies of the correspondence, as I am sure that many of the replies will give you great pleasure. I had, however, no satisfactory answer from the Society of Authors, although one would suppose it the duty of a properly constituted society of that nature to defend or at any rate support your case. Had I had the least support from them I should have defended your position with an assurance of victory for the book, but as the matter stood I did not feel justified in allowing your artistic reputation to be at the mercy of a British judge and jury. The verdict might have been an insult to literature. In any case the position would have been most undignified for an author of your eminence.

The failure of the Authors' Society to take up your case must not be confused with the opinions of our leading novelists, for I should explain at once that the only qualifications for membership are the publication of any book or even pamphlet and, of course, the subscription of twenty-one shillings per annum. It is not therefore a society of any distinction, though it happens to include among its thousands of members most of the eminent writers of the day.

Our most distinguished realist novelist, Mr. George Moore, in writing to the president of the Society on this occasion, says--

"I once belonged to the Society of Authors, but I seceded from it because it seemed to me to have entirely dissociated itself from literary interests; but I do think that the opportunity has come at last for the Society of Authors to justify its existence. A better opportunity than Sudermann's book will not be found."

After much consideration I have come to the conclusion that all interests would be best served if you could obtain permission from Mr. Huebsch for me to have the book retranslated by Miss Beatrice Marshall, whose versions of "Der Katzensteg," "Es War," and "Der Täufer" met with your entire approval. The present translation is fraught with Americanisms and has been made without due regard to the genius of the two languages and the prejudices inherent in the English character.

I feel bound to give you all these particulars so that you may appreciate my reasons for withdrawing the book in a manner least calculated to do harm, and for appealing to you now for help to place the book before the English public in a form which will be acceptable to your numerous friends and admirers in this country.

Yours very truly,

John Lane.

His reply was as follows--

Mr. John Lane,

Publisher,

Vigo Street, London, W.

Dear Sir,

Please accept my sincerest thanks for your kind letter and your detailed account of the suppression of my novel "The Song of Songs" (Das hohe Lied). Naturally I can only look forward with pleasure to the possibility that this work, to which I have devoted years of unwearied artistic care, should not be lost to England, and so I gladly follow your advice to persuade Mr. Huebsch, the American publisher, by my own personal intervention to resign the English rights to you. I have at the same time written to him, and I enclose a copy of this letter for your kind consideration.

That I am heartily grateful to my English colleagues for their kind sympathy requires no assurance on my part, but I beg you, dear sir, when you meet one or the other of them to convey to each my feeling of deep appreciation.

In conclusion, permit me to hope, dear sir, that your health, which at the time you wrote was not good, has been completely restored.

With expressions of my highest esteem for your services in this matter.

Believe me,

Yours sincerely,

Hermann Sudermann.

In conclusion, I had better say that on receiving Herr Sudermann's reply and from Mr. Huebsch his consent, I entered into negotiations with Miss Beatrice Marshall for a new translation of the book, which is now offered to the public with every confidence that it will meet with a wide and enthusiastic reception. I should like too to add my thanks to the various writers who responded to my circular letter with such readiness and sympathy.

John Lane.

The Bodley Head,

Vigo Street, London

1st May, 1913.

When Lilly was just fourteen her father, Kilian Czepanek, the music-master, suddenly disappeared. He had been giving lessons all day as usual, cursing the heat--which was terrific--and drinking seltzer water and moselle in the intervals. Now and then he had rushed into the dining-room to snatch a cognac and arrange his disordered tie. He had playfully pulled Lilly's brown, flowing curls, as she sat pondering over her French verbs, and then vanished again into the drawing-room, where pupils came and went and only discords and curses went on for ever.

Contrary to his custom, he had not reappeared in a fury, with a tremendous appetite, after his last unfortunate victim had strapped up his portfolio and slammed the front door behind him. Instead, Czepanek had stayed where he was. He neither whistled nor wept, nor gave vent to his rage on the keys of the piano, as he was sometimes in the habit of doing when the day's work was over. No sounds of any sort, except a deep-drawn groan, proceeded from the other room.

Lilly, who was greatly interested in everything this handsome papa of hers did or did not do, let her French grammar slide from her lap to the floor, and crept to the keyhole. Through it she saw him standing before the long mirror absorbed in self-contemplation. Now and again he raised his left hand and pressed it with a gesture of despair to the silken, dark artist locks, which mamma tended regularly every day with bay-rum and French brilliantine.

There he stood glaring fiercely at his reflection, his cheeks flushed and damp, his eyes rolling wildly, and Lilly's heart went out in admiring love to her idolised papa. This was not the first time she had seen him pose before the glass; she knew the attitude well. It was his way of conjuring up once more the life he had missed and the loves he had lost; that grand vanished world where all the duchesses and prima donnas never ceased to think of their lost favourite with longing and regret. Like an elderly Cupid he stood there, with little bags under his eyes and a budding corpulency apparent in his person. Both mamma and Lilly coddled and spoilt him with unremitting care and never-tiring enthusiasm. They regarded him as some gorgeous bird of paradise, which happy chance had captured between four walls--a bird that it was their duty to exert strenuous efforts to keep in its cage.

Lilly, by rights, should long ago have been seated at the piano; for in the house of Czepanek silent keys were considered a shameful waste of time and an unpardonable sin. She had to practise four or five hours daily. Often, when her father in the throes of creative inspiration forgot the time allotted to his daughter's practising, she did not set to work till nearly midnight. Then she would sit half frozen, with heavy eyes, swaying on the music-stool till dawn. Lilly's mother had found her many a time in the small hours, her head pillowed on her arms, which were stretched out on the keyboard, wrapt in a profound childish slumber. Such hardships gave Lilly a distaste for the career of artist, for which her father's ambition destined her. She preferred, to serious study, getting up on her own account forbidden polkas out of old albums, the brilliant but incorrect performance of which drove her father distracted. But this evening her lesson was to be on the Sonata Pathétique, and that, as everyone knew, was no joke.

For this reason she was thinking of breaking in on her father's introspective meditations, when she heard the door of the other room open. Lilly, with a bound, deserted the keyhole and ran into her mother, who was carrying up the supper things on a tray. The prematurely sunken cheeks of the lady of the house were flushed from the heat of the kitchen fire. She held her lean figure proudly erect, and in the once beautiful eyes, which gnawing connubial disappointments had converted into dull, restless slits, there was something like a gleam of joy and expectancy; for to-day she entertained high hopes that the result of her culinary skill would appeal to her husband's appetite and put him in a good temper.

The sound of plates rattling, as the table was laid, brought papa to the door between the two rooms, and his head, with the sunlight playing round its halo of frizzy dark hair, appeared.

"Heavens! Supper-time already!" he exclaimed, and cast up his eyes with a peculiarly wild expression.

"In ten minutes," replied his wife, and a smile at the thought of the surprise dish that awaited him hovered about her dry chapped lips like a delectable secret.

He now came into the room, and breathing deep and hard he said, with an effort as if speaking hurt him:

"I've just been looking at my portmanteau. The strap is in two."

"Do you want your portmanteau?" asked mamma.

"It should always be ready in case of emergency," he answered, and his eyes wandered round the room. "A man may be summoned at any moment to this place or that, and then it's well to be prepared."

It was true that, the winter before, a Berlin pianist who had agreed to appear on tour in the next town had been detained by the snowing up of his train, and the committee had telegraphed to Czepanek to take his place. But, in the height of summer, the probability of such a thing occurring again was more than remote.

"I'll send Minna to the saddler's with it directly after supper," said his wife, as usual taking care not to contradict her irascible husband.

He nodded a few times, lost in thought; then he went into his bedroom, while mamma hurried to the kitchen to put the finishing touches to the dainty dish.

A few minutes later he reappeared carrying the portmanteau, which seemed rather full. He paused in front of the linen-press.

"I was going to try, Lilly dear," he explained, "whether the score would fit into the bag. You see, if one had to go to rehearsals later----"

The score of "The Song of Songs" was kept in the linen-press, being a handy place for the family to rescue this priceless treasure in case of a fire breaking out when papa chanced to be away.

Lilly looked round for the bunch of keys, but mamma had taken it with her to the kitchen.

"I'll go and ask for the key," she said.

"No, no," he exclaimed hastily, and a slight shudder passed through him.

Lilly had often noticed that he shuddered when the conversation had anything to do with mamma.

"I'll run over to the saddler's myself."

Lilly was horrified at the idea of her famous parent going on his own errands to a common little shop.

"Let me," she cried, reaching out her hand for the bag, with the intention of saving him the trouble. He pushed her away.

"You are getting too old for that sort of thing now, little girl," he said. His eyes rested with satisfaction on her tall, girlish figure, already developing the soft rounded curves of womanhood. "You are quite a signora."

He patted her cheek, and fidgeted a moment with the lock of the linen-press, his lips compressed into a bitter line; then, with a half-alarmed, half-sneering glance towards the kitchen Lilly knew that glance too he went quickly out of the room went never to return.

The night that followed that rosy summer evening was never to fade from Lilly's memory. Her mother sat by the window, in a cotton dressing-jacket, and looked up and down the street with anxious, feverish eyes. Every footfall on the pavement made her start up and exclaim: "Here he comes!"

Lilly knew that it was all over with her Sonata Pathétique for this night at least. A feeling of depression prompted her to appeal to her dear St. Joseph, to whom she had always confided all her small troubles since her confirmation. Many an hour had she passed in St. Ann's before his altar, the second chapel in the right aisle, dreaming and musing, as she gazed up into the kind old bearded face, and sighing without reason. But now his consolation failed her utterly, and she gave up the quest, disappointed and baffled.

The last cab was heard in the streets at midnight. At one the footsteps of passers-by became rarer. Between two and three nothing was heard but the shuffling footsteps of the night-watchmen echoing through the narrow alley. At three, market waggons began to rumble, and it became light. Between three and four Lilly made a cup of boiling hot coffee for her mother, and herself ate up the cold supper, for which waiting and weeping had given her a ravenous appetite.

It was nearly five when a string of belated young revellers went by, kissing their hands to the watching woman at the window, thus forcing her to withdraw. They then started a serenade in their pure clear voices, which Lilly, in the midst of her trouble and anxiety, appreciated. The singing was good, and devoid of the pedantic tricks that her father abhorred. Probably these youths were pupils of his, who had failed to recognise his house.

No sooner had they gone than Lilly's mother resumed her post at the window. Lilly struggled hard not to allow herself to be overcome by sleep. She saw as through a veil her mother's scanty fair hair ruffled by the breeze, her sharp pointed nose--reddened by crying--turning first to the right and then to the left at every sound, her dressing-jacket flapping like a white flag, her thin legs crossing and uncrossing perpetually in nervous excitement. She was told to relate the story of the portmanteau and the linen-press for the fiftieth time, but her eyes would not keep open. Then suddenly she sprang up with a shrill cry. Her mother had slipped down in a dead faint, and lay like a log on the floor.

Kilian Czepanek did not come back. Of course, there were kindly-intentioned friends who said they had always foreseen it would happen; indeed it was a wonder that a man, so divinely gifted, with the brand of genius imprinted on his stormy brow, could have endured the trammels of convention as long as he had. Others called him a scamp and a good-for-nothing, who corrupted innocent girls and led young men astray. They considered Frau Czepanek lucky in being rid of him, and advised Lilly to pluck her father's image from her memory. Worst of all were the people who held their tongues, but sent in bills.

Frau Czepanek pawned or sold all the little articles of luxury belonging to her bourgeois youth, and every present that her husband in moods of sheer wanton extravagance had lavished on her. These soon came to an end, and furniture, dress, and linen--all save absolute necessities--followed. Then at last the duns were satisfied.

The choral society, which Kilian Czepanek had conducted for fifteen years, and which under his régime had won no less than half a dozen prizes, expressed its appreciation of the decamped conductor's services and talents by holding the post open for six months, and paying the widow a half-year's salary. But this gracious grant came to an end also. And then began the heart-sickening begging expeditions to the houses of local magnates and wealthy residents in the town; the timid pulling of front-door bells, and scraping of feet on strangers' door-mats; the long, anxious waiting in shadowy halls and ante-rooms; the sitting down on the extreme edges of chairs; the sighing, stammering petitions, accompanied by wiping of eyes, meant to be sincere yet sounding all the time hypocritically mercenary, and failing to make the intended impression.

Next came the hunt for work in shops and factories where sewing was given out--depôts of sweated industries where cheap lingerie was turned out by the gross, cheap lace sewn on to cheap nightgowns and chemises, and the whole galvanised for use by the addition of buttons and buttonholes, ribbons and tapes.

Now followed the period of eternal grinding at the sewing-machine, fingers covered with needle-pricks; inflamed eyes, swollen knees, vinegar and brown-paper bandages for fevered temples; the stewed tea at four in the morning; the sweet diluted coffee, warmed up three times, the so-called bread-and-butter instead of the midday roast meat, and the evening eggs--in fact, the period of wretchedness and approaching destitution.

And, strange as it may seem, the further the day on which Kilian Czepanek had vanished receded into the past, the more surely did the forsaken wife count on his return. The six months had passed, and a new conductor was appointed to challenge comparisons with the old. For a fortnight the newcomer was annoyed by flattering eulogies of his predecessor in the provincial press. Then these too ceased. Oblivion followed, and the man who had so mysteriously disappeared seemed to be almost entirely forgotten. Only in a restaurant-bar here and there, or a girl's heart, did his image linger. But the wife, who at first had bitten her lips in silent anguish when his name was mentioned, now began to talk of his return as an assured and long-planned future event.

What was more, she became vain again, she who in the course of married life had let her youthful prettiness and sprightly gaiety--all that he had married her for--pass under a cloud, and had fretted and worn herself to a shadow by needless self-reproaches and anxieties. After not having decked her shrunken breast with ribbon or jewel for years, or curled a lock of her straight hair, she screwed and scraped out of her meagre earnings something to spend on powder and cosmetics. When she could hardly stand for tiredness, she would paint her thin lips, and at eight o'clock in the morning come to the sewing-machine from the kitchen hearth with a freshly frizzed fringe covering the forehead that she had before allowed to get higher and balder every day.

Thus she prepared for the moment of reunion. Rouged, and adorned like a bride to meet her bridegroom, she would hold out her arms to meet the repentant profligate. For it was certain he must come back. Where else would he be greeted with a smile of such perfect sympathy as hers, where else find the understanding soul whose silence is consolation and whose prayers bring peace and happiness? Would there be anywhere else one who without complaint or regret slaved for him body and soul, and submitted, as she did, to be taken or left according to his whim?

So it was that she had given herself to him when she was a fair young laughing thing, careless and unsuspecting. Without conditions she had let him take her, simply because it pleased him. She had not regarded it in the light of a just recompense when her father, an honest attorney, had insisted on his leading her to the altar, a measure which had saved him from being ostracised by the whole town as a seducer. She had only cared to know that she was happy, and had not the slightest presentiment of the consequences of her gentle yielding. She accepted what came uncomplainingly, as the natural cost of the gift he had bestowed on her in himself.

He would come back; whether he liked it or not, he must come back. Did she not possess something that linked her to him for all times, something that he was bound to cross her threshold to claim? Not Lilly! No doubt he loved his child, loved her with tenderness, and took delight in her outward and inward charm. Yet she was but a toy to amuse him in his idle hours; in his vagabond heart there was no place for a steady paternal love. Even in hours when he felt most lonely and depressed, he would never have dreamed of seeking solace in the company of a child. The tie was something that bound him closer to her than their child. It was a roll of music in manuscript, and that was all. It would have been easy enough for him to stuff it into the portmanteau on the day that he had started on the memorable journey. He had indeed thought of doing it, but at the last, in his eagerness to seize the moment of escape without again facing his suspicious wife, he had forgotten everything else.

This roll of manuscript contained all that had been his anchor during the fifteen years of stagnation in a narrow middle-class groove, all that had linked his future with the fiery aspirations of his youth and the glorious hopefulness of his adolescence. Slender as it was, this roll of manuscript embraced his whole life's work. It was his "Song of Songs." As long as Lilly could remember, nothing in the world had ever been spoken of with such bated breath, such reverent awe, as this composition, of which no one save Lilly and her mother knew a single note. It was something as yet altogether unknown and undreamed of; it opened out new realms of sound, inaugurated the beginning of a musical development destined to rise to mystic heights and be lost in the clouds of the unattainable. It embodied the Art of the future as represented by oratorio, opera, after reaching its culmination in Wagner, having descended into abysmal depths, and the symphony no longer meeting the demands for regeneration in modern music. Oratorio was to accomplish this, not in the old exploded wooden form which pandered to an outworn ecclesiasticism, but in the new world of harmony introduced by "The Song of Songs." The score had been completed years ago, and laid aside. It would have been sacrilege to entrust its rendering to the tender mercies of provincial performers, so there it lay and rusted, unperformed. It shed beams, unseen but felt, of hope of a golden future into the grey present. It filled a child's heart with such ecstasy, devotion, and love, that it would rather have ceased to beat than be deprived of this source of noble and exquisite dreams on which it nourished itself daily.

For Lilly, those sheets, held together by an india rubber band, lying in the top drawer of the linen-press, were like sacred relics, which radiated and sanctified the household. She reverenced and adored the scrawl of curly-headed black notes, and her earliest recollections were bound up with the melodies they expressed. Lilly's papa, however, objected to his sublime motifs being dragged into the light of common day, and when he caught wife or daughter humming them he would tell them to sing things more on their level. In time there was no need for his remonstrances. Mamma gave up singing altogether, and Lilly withdrew into herself. When she was alone in the house she amused herself by making a kind of drama out of "The Song of Songs," and acting it before the glass. She arrayed herself in sheets and muslin curtains, braided her hair low round her brow, and adorned it with tinsel pins. Then she declaimed, danced, laughed, and cried; went down on her knees and posed in passionate attitudes, acting Solomon's bridal rhapsody, which papa had made live again, after a lapse of twenty-five hundred years, in his great masterpiece.

And now that the master had left his manuscript behind him on his disappearance from the house, it became more than ever the keystone of his family's hopes and longings. It was conceivable that he, Bohemian to the core, might cast off his wife and child, emulating the example of his own parents, who had turned him out into the streets at a tender age. But it was not conceivable that he should do anything so preposterous as weakly abandon the great work of his life, the weapon with which he might conquer the world.

So the manuscript of "The Song of Songs" reposed in the drawer of the linen-press, which had been saved from the wreck when Frau Czepanek and her daughter moved to a humble attic, where the sewing-machine continued to hum and whir day and night. Here, as a symbol of coming reunion, it spread a miraculous influence around it; while the deserted wife became more withered in face and gaunt in form, and paint could no longer conceal her projecting cheekbones or the hollows beneath her haggard eyes.

In these days Lilly bloomed into a tall, well-developed girl, who carried her satchel of books through the streets to school with the air of a princess. She was generally dressed in a green plaid woollen frock much cockled from rain, which, despite perpetual letting down, always remained too short. Her feet were shod in a pair of down-at-heel and worn boots. She wore woollen gloves, which, pull them up as she would, left below her sleeves a hiatus of bare slender red arm.

No one who saw her swinging down the street, with her easy graceful carriage, a picture of radiant health and youth, with her vivacious small head--too small for her tall figure--set on a long stemlike throat rising from broad shoulders, her white and rather prominent teeth beneath her smiling short upper lip, and with those eyes, afterwards known as "Lilly eyes"--no one noticed the poverty of her dress, or suspected that those erect, delicately formed shoulders stooped for hours over a sewing-machine. Who could guess that this magnificent young frame, with the vigorous blood coursing visibly through it, prone to blushing and paling without cause, was reared on salt potatoes, stale bread, and bad sausage?

The college students went mad about her, and the verses written to her in the lower school were legion. Lilly was not indifferent to their boyish homage. When she saw a batch of students coming towards her in the street, her eyes grew dim from self-consciousness. When they saluted her--for she had made their acquaintance on the ice--she felt dizzy and ready to sink through the earth to hide her blushes. But the sensation felt after such meetings was quite lovely. She recalled for hours with delight the face of the boy who had greeted her most courteously, or the one who had blushed as rosy red as herself. He was her chosen cavalier till next time, when she fell in love with another.

In spite of her numerous admirers, her school-fellows did not torment her as much as might have been expected. There was an innocent defencelessness about her which made it impossible to be her enemy. If her satchel was hidden, she only said, "Please, don't," and when the girls perched her on top of the stove, she sat there and laughed, and in addition to letting them copy her English exercises she did their sums for them. The only trouble was jealousy among her bosom friends, who flew at each other's throats on her account, for she was fickle, and dropped old friendships to take up new with an ease which startled herself. She could not help responding to every fresh overture of friendliness made to her.

With her masters, too, she was popular. The rebuke, "Lilly, you are dreaming again," that came sometimes from the dais, had no sting, but a tone of playfulness in it. And when she was a new-comer, and had sat at the end of the sixth row in Class I, B, more than one hand had stroked her brown head with paternal fondness.

Her nickname was "Lilly of the Eyes." Her school-fellows declared such eyes were uncommon to the point of being uncanny. They had never seen eyes like them. Sometimes they called them "witch's eyes," sometimes "cat's eyes." They said their colour was violet, and some were sure she darkened the lids with a pencil. However that might be, to look at Lilly meant looking at her eyes, and not caring much to look at anything else.

Lilly went into the advanced class, called "Selecta," when she was fifteen and a half, for it had been settled that she was to earn her living as a governess. This was a great change; everything was different--teachers, girls, lessons, and friendship meant a different thing. You were not called by your Christian name. There was no throwing of paper pellets and going home to find blotting-paper in your hair. Much was said about "the sacredness of vocation," of "noble living," and consecration of life to work, and at the same time there was no end of chatter about love affairs and secret engagements.

Lilly felt for the first time in her life a little envious. She was neither engaged nor had she any love affair to boast of. Anonymous presents of flowers, with verses signed "Thine for ever," of course didn't count. But in time it came. Love began to dawn in an imaginary atmosphere of marble statues and pillars, of dusky cypresses and eternally blue skies; it was the adoration of a schoolgirl for a master, and the longing to be a benefactress to the adored one. He was the assistant science-master, and taught in the junior school, where knuckles were rapped with the ruler and tongues thrust out in retort. He did nothing in the higher school, but he gave lectures to the young ladies of the Selecta on the history of Art. The very name of "Art" fills the budding soul of a young girl with ecstasy; how much more intense then was the sentiment when Art was associated with an interesting young man of delicate health, with deep-set burning eyes, and a snow-white brow--a young man who was called Arpad?

Here romance ended. What remained behind it was a poor consumptive young fellow who had painfully accomplished his university career by private tutoring, only to be doomed to an early grave at the moment that he hoped to reap the fruits of his drudgery. The authorities did the best they could for him. They gave him easy work, and when they saw the hectic flush on his cheek they supplied his place and sent him home for a term. But this could not last, and, feeling that he was becoming a burden to the staff, he strove by suicidal efforts to show himself still capable of working. He volunteered to undertake all sorts of duties outside his province, and what men in health shirked he with one foot in the grave cheerfully took on his shoulders.

Lilly never forgot the day on which the principal brought him into the Selecta. It was between three and four, and the last lesson was in progress. The stout figure of the principal was closely followed by the slim, rather handsome young man with a slight stoop, who had stood during prayers in the big hall at Fräulein Hennig's side, and turned down the leaves of his book while the hymn was being sung. He wore a tight-fitting grey frock-coat, which revealed the lines of his emaciated figure, and a fashionable silk waistcoat that gave a false impression of the world to which he belonged. He made a series of abrupt military bows, and appeared shy and embarrassed.

"This is Dr. Mälzer," said the principal, introducing him. "He will initiate you ladies in the art of the Renaissance. I hope you will pay particular attention to the subject, which, though not obligatory, and one you will not be examined in, is of the greatest importance to general culture, and by-and-by will accelerate your progress in the study of Lessing, Goethe, and Winckelmann."

The principal, with these words, retired, leaving the young lecturer nervously tugging at the blond moustache, the thin ends of which drooped on either side of his mouth. A half-sarcastic, half-shy smile hovered about his lips. He looked uncertain whether he should sit or stand on the dais. Meta Jachmann, who was always inclined to be silly, began to giggle, and set half the class giggling too. His transparent face flushed. In a voice which, weak as it was, shook his whole narrow person, he said:

"Yes, ladies, laugh. You can afford to laugh in your position, for life lies before you full of possibilities of endeavour and attainment. I too may laugh over the privilege of being allowed to address you soul to soul. That does not often fall to the lot of a man at the outset of his teaching career. You will soon experience for yourselves what a happiness it is."

The whole class became quiet as mice, and from that moment onwards he held it spellbound.

"But my good fortune does not end there," he went on; "the authorities of this institution have been generous enough to place such confidence in my poor abilities as to entrust me with a theme that is the noblest in existence. Till the Renaissance, every thinker in history, no matter how much a revolutionist and free-lance at heart, has been made by the interpretations of history to play to the gallery in the personal expression of his ideas. The sages have labelled Plato as a mere shield-bearer of Christianity, Horace as a pedant, and Jesus as the Son of God; but no one has attempted to show Michael Angelo, Alexander Borgia, Machiavelli in any other light than that of an ego defying the world and relying on its own power in its lust for creative or destructive activity."

The pupils pricked up their ears and listened. They had never heard anything like this before. They felt that he was talking out his life's blood, and at the same time that this established a tie of protective freemasonry between him and them. He continued in bold, rapid outline to draw vivid pictures of the men and period, making dead bones live. What had long been repressed and dammed up within him poured from him now in passionate eloquence. His hearers realised that this was something more than an ordinary school lesson, more even than the fruits of ripe scholarship. It was a confession of faith, and they hung on his lips with all the abandon of woman's enthusiasm for what she doesn't understand.

Lilly, being a younger pupil, sat close under the dais, and she felt vaguely as if a vast flood of new melody was floating over her head; music having always played the supreme part in her life and imagination, pictures and thoughts came to her first through the world of sound. She grew pale, and gazed up at him in dawning appreciation. Through a mist of tears, her handkerchief crushed into a ball in her hand, she saw the nervous heaving of his chest, the drops on his forehead, the burning excitement that flamed in his cheeks, and she longed to laugh and cry together, to call out "Stop!" But, as she couldn't do this, she sat motionless, listening to the poor, thin voice as it proclaimed the gospel of that ancient yet ever-glorious time, and then she heard another voice deep down in her heart crying jubilantly, "It's coming!"

"But what of the world," he went on, "in which that exalted life developed? Like Moses on the mountain-top, I have only seen it from afar, only lingered in its outer courts; but I have seen enough to know that, as long as breath is left in my body, my soul's yearning for it will never cease. There, gleaming palaces and temples rise like part of the soil, white among dark cypresses and evergreen leafy oaks. All that is clay here is marble there; what is here cribbed and cabined by convention, there flourishes in free creative opulence; here we have barren imitativeness, there spontaneous growth; here laboured culture, there Nature's happy abundance; here the deadening sense of utility, there luxuriant revelling in the beautiful; here, plain hard, matter-of-fact Protestantism, there the joyous naïveté of Catholic paganism."

Lilly's heart bounded at the compliment to her faith. In a Protestant country she had been brought up a Catholic, and though there was not much time, and never had been, for piety in her home, her soul was capable of a fair amount of religious fervour. It warmed her heart to hear her faith praised, but why it should be coupled with heathenism, which she had always been taught was wicked and deplorable, puzzled her. A whirl of chaotic, questioning thoughts distracted her attention; she found herself unable any longer to follow the speaker, and it was only after some time that she woke up to a consciousness that he was painting the South in low, loving tones. Now she took up the threads of his discourse again, and saw a gold and blue summer heaven rising above the Elysian isles, and the sun's blood-red globe drop into a violet sea, ruffled by the sirocco. She saw the shepherds feeding their goats in meadows of shining asphodel, playing on their flutes like Pan--saw the ever-verdant beech-woods stretching up to the snow-clad summits of the Apennines; breathed in the perfume of laurel, arbutus, and olive, and heard the music of the Angelus ascending heavenwards in the glow of eventide; and as she gazed up once more into his face, she was almost frightened at the martyred expression of devouring longing with which his eyes stared beyond the heads of the class into space.

The school-bell sounded; the lecture was over. He looked round him bewildered, like one who had been walking in his sleep, seized his hat, and rushed out of the room. The class-room was silent as the grave. Then the tension was broken by shy whispers and fumbling for school-satchels. Lilly, without speaking a word to anyone, escaped into the street to hide her emotion. Sobbing and singing softly to herself she ran home.

The next morning excitement reigned in the Selecta. No one thought or talked of anything else but what had happened the day before.

Anna Marholz, the daughter of a doctor, had interesting particulars to impart about the young teacher, who was a patient of her father's. She said it was urgently necessary that he should go to the Italian Riviera for the winter, as it was probable he could not live through it in his native climate.

Lilly's heart stood still. The others laid their heads together to think of how he was to be helped. It could only be accomplished in a private way, because he had no money and no official position, and the town would therefore not bear the expenses of his foreign trip.

"We will start a committee," someone proposed, and all the others agreed to the proposal with acclamation.

"Thank God!" Lilly said to herself, and felt that now his life would be prolonged to fifty or sixty, at least. During the ten o'clock break a council of war was held, and Lilly, to her great delight, was appointed secretary of the committee.

The first meeting was held at Klein's, the confectioner's, a few days later. They dared not go to Frangipani's, the resort of young officers and barristers. Fifteen girls consumed fifteen iced meringues and fifteen cups of chocolate, the cost of which they shared, and at the same time brought forward some practical suggestions. Emilie Faber's idea was to get up a Shakespeare reading in the town-hall and to assign the part of Romeo to the leading "star" of the provincial theatre. Everyone approved, because all the girls were crazy about the favourite actor. Not less well received was a scheme of Käthe Vitzing's, whose cousin sang tenor in the college choir, to organise an amateur concert. Rosalie Katz, more businesslike than the rest, thought of getting blank subscription-forms printed and taking them round to all the well-to-do people in the town. This plan was not so popular, but finally it was decided to accept it and to try and put all three plans into execution. Lilly, in her rôle of secretary, made a note of all the suggestions, and kept saying to herself, "Hurrah, it's for him!"

Meanwhile, the lectures on the history of art continued, as well as the sittings of the committee. The bill for refreshments mounted higher and higher, but enthusiasm for the object of the meetings became visibly damped. Not that Dr. Mälzer's lectures were in any degree less fascinating. They still held his listeners in thrall with their rich imagery and flowery language, but serious obstacles arose in the carrying out of the plans to aid him. To begin with: the popular Romeo had to appear in another town during the autumn season, and was not available; secondly, the college chorus could not get leave to join with the Selecta in giving an amateur concert; and the house-to-house collection could not be set on foot without the sanction of the police, and this no one had courage to ask for. So the great scheme of lofty benevolence gradually died out, and Lilly found herself three marks to the bad for confectionery. She knew the way to the pawnshop, alas! too well, and it required comparatively little pluck on her part to sacrifice the small gold cross she wore round her neck--a last relic of more prosperous days. She did it gladly, because it was done for him.

Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, and now and then covered his mouth with his pocket-handkerchief, afterwards examining it with an anxious, furtive eye. And then came the announcement that the lectures on Art would be discontinued till further notice. Anna Marholz brought the news to school that he had broken a blood-vessel. Lilly, without stopping to ask for further details, jumped to the conclusion that he was dying. After dark she found her way stealthily to his house, Anna Marholz having got his address from her father's books. There was a lamp with a green shade burning faintly in the window. Not a shadow stirred. No hand drew down the blind, but the lamp went on burning faintly the whole time that Lilly paced the damp street. Her conscience pricked her for not being at home helping her hard-worked mother; yet the next evening and the next she repeated the pilgrimage. She became more and more distressed, and fancied him lying there in his death-throes with no loving, gentle woman's hand to minister to him. On Saturday her anxiety took her from the work-table at home early in the afternoon. It was impossible to walk up and down before the house in broad daylight, but once there she didn't like to go back. Then suddenly she acted on an heroic impulse. She went to a florist's and spent the two marks fifty that was left over from the pawning of her little gold cross on a bunch of brownish-yellow autumn roses. With these she sprang up the steps of the house and rang at the door of the second floor, whence the light of the green-shaded lamp had proceeded. The door was answered by an old hag in a dirty blue-check apron. Lilly stammered forth his name.

"He lives at the back," said the old woman, and shut the door.

Then the green lamp wasn't his after all; it belonged instead to an old woman who wore dirty aprons and champed with her toothless gums. She had been worshipping at the wrong shrine for more than a week.

Lilly, utterly discouraged, was about to descend the staircase when his name caught her eye on one of the brass plates inside the lobby. Her heart gave a bound, and before she realised what she was doing she had knocked.

A pause ensued and then his head appeared through the half-opened door. The collar of his grey coat was turned up, apparently because he had no collar underneath. His hair was dishevelled, and the ends of his moustache drooped more than ever on either side of his mouth. His eyes seemed to ask in embarrassed surprise, "What have you come here for?"

"Fräulein--Fräulein----" He evidently recognised her, but could not recall her name. Lilly wanted to give him the roses and run away, but she was paralysed with shyness, and remained glued to the spot. "I presume you have been sent by your class?" he asked.

"Yes," assented Lilly eagerly. This saved her.

"I could not invite you to come in otherwise," he said, smiling nervously. "The consequences might be serious for both of us. But if you come as an emissary, that makes all the difference. Please come in."

Lilly had pictured him in a suite of lofty apartments filled with books, curios, instruments, and statues of great men. She was horrified to find that he lived in one small room. The bed was still unmade; besides the bed there was no furniture except a couple of chairs, a folding-table, a clothes-rack and a stand for books containing a few shabbily-bound volumes and paper-covered periodicals.

"This is a worse place than ours," she thought, and felt less shy as she sat down on one of the two chairs. Poverty seemed a bond between them.

"How very kind of the young ladies to think of me!" he said.

Lilly remembered the flowers that she held in her hand. "Will you accept these?" she asked, offering them to him.

He took the bunch of roses and held them against his face without a word of thanks.

"They have no smell," he remarked. "They are the last roses, but my first, so you can imagine how much I appreciate them."

Lilly's eyes grew dim with delight. "Are you still in great pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she stammered forth.

He laughed. "Pain? ... Oh dear no! I am feverish now and then, that's all. It's quite amusing to be feverish. One's soul floats away in an airship far away over cities, land, and sea, over centuries; one is visited by distinguished persons, if not so beautiful as----"

He paused in the middle of his compliment, thinking of their relations as master and pupil. His confusion seemed to clear his vision. He fixed his eyes, which burned like two flames in blue cavities, on her and asked in a voice which sounded higher pitched and hoarser than usual:

"What's your name?"

"I am Lilly--Lilly Czepanek."

The name conveyed nothing to him, because he had not lived long in the town.

"You think of taking up teaching?"

"Yes, doctor."

"Listen to my advice. Don't! Go to Russia and hurl bombs. Go to a hospital and wash feet. Marry a drunken scoundrel who'll ill-treat you and sell the very bed you lie on. Anything rather than being a teacher. You mustn't be a teacher, not you."

"But why shouldn't I?" she asked.

"I'll tell you.... The qualifications for a teacher are a flat chest, weak eyes, poor hair, and a character that can see one side of a question only. People whose nerves and blood are too feeble to live their own lives are good enough to teach others, but those whose blood courses through their veins like molten fire, whose eyes are filled with longing, to whom the problems of life are there for seeing and knowing, not for blind mechanical vivisection, they--but I mustn't go on, though I should like to."

"Oh, please go on--please," Lilly besought him.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"And a woman already!" He looked at her with an expression of tortured admiration.

"Look at me!" he exclaimed. "I too was once a human being, though you'd hardly believe it. I held my arms stretched out to heaven, full of burning desires. I too looked into a girl's eyes with longing, though they were not such a pair of eyes as yours. Let me chatter. You see, I am a dying man, and it'll do you no harm."

"You mustn't die! you shall not die, Dr. Mälzer!" she cried, jumping to her feet.

"Sit down, child," he said with a laugh; "don't excite yourself about me. A friend of mine once broke the backbone of a wild-cat with one blow of a stick. The cat couldn't run away, couldn't cry or do anything till the next blow came. It just crouched on all-fours, coughing and choking. That's like me. There's nothing to be done. You had better go, child. I've made my peace, but when I look at you it becomes difficult again."

She turned her face away not to show her tears.

"Must I?" she asked.

"Must?" he laughed again. "I'll devour greedily every minute of your presence here as the hungry beggar devours the crumbs he turns out of his pockets. You sat, didn't you, at the end of the first form on the left? ... Yes, of course I remember. I said to myself, 'What extraordinary eyes!' They are like the eyes of the magic dog in Andersen's fairy tale, which grew bigger the more they were asked not to."

It was Lilly's turn to laugh.

"There, you see," he said, "I've made you merry again. You shall not carry away from here nothing but the memory of a corpse and death's-head. We enjoyed our lectures, didn't we?"

Lilly answered with a sigh.

"You gasped for sheer longing when I talked of Italy. I used to think: she gasps like yourself, though she has no need to gasp."

"You want to go there very much, doctor?"

"You might as well ask a man on fire whether he'd like a cold bath."

"And it's the only thing that can do you any good?"

He looked at her for a moment with a dark savage expression.

"What are you cross-examining me for? Have you come to find out something? I am very indebted to you and the young ladies of the class for such sympathetic interest but----"

A fit of coughing stifled his voice.

Lilly sprang up to see if she could do anything for him. Involuntarily she snatched up a glass filled with a pale fluid from the table and held it to his lips. He took it eagerly, and after drinking fell back exhausted and gazed at her tenderly with grateful eyes. She returned his gaze with a faint smile, feeling it was infinite happiness to be there.

It was so quiet in the half-dark stuffy little room that she could hear the tick of his watch, which hung on the opposite wall. He made an effort to sit up and go on talking, but appeared not yet quite equal to it. Lilly gave him a look of entreaty and warning; and, smiling, he leaned back again. So they continued in silence.

"Oh, how happy I am!" thought Lilly. "How happy I am to be here!"

Then he held his hands out to her with a weary gesture. She caught them in hers eagerly. His skin felt hot and clammy, and it seemed as if his pulse beat in his fingertips. Hers was beating fast too, but could not keep pace with it.

"Listen to me, my dear child," he murmured. "I want to give you some good advice before you go. You overflow with a superfluity of love; three kinds of love--love emanating from the heart, from the senses, and from compassion. One or other is necessary to everybody who isn't a dried-up fossil, but two are dangerous, and all three are likely to lead to ruin. Be on guard where your power of loving is concerned. Don't squander your love. That is the advice of one on whom you cannot squander it, for God knows he needs it."

"Have you no one to take care of you?" she asked, dreading to hear that anyone but herself was privileged to nurse him.

He shook his head.

"Mayn't I come again?"

He flinched. The fervour of her question was startling. "It depends on whether the class send you."

Lilly now cast off every shred of deception. "That was not true," she stammered. "Not true! The class didn't send me. No one knows I've come."

He bounded to his feet--almost as if he were quite well. His face lengthened with dismay; his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out a trembling hand, as if he would ward her off.

"You must go at once," he whispered; "at once!"

Lilly did not stir.

"If you don't go," he went on excitedly, "your prospects will be ruined. It is not customary for young girls to call on unmarried men in my position, even when the man is their master, and such a wreck as I am. Mention to no one that you have been here, not even to your greatest friend. Remember, your living depends on your reputation, and I should be taking the bread out of your mouth if I let you stay. Go instantly!"

"Am I never to come again?" Her eyes pleaded.

"No!" he thundered in a voice of iron resolve.

The next minute Lilly was pushed out of the room and the key turned in the lock behind her.

She lost no time in disobeying his urgent instructions, and went straight to Rosalie Katz, her chosen friend for the time being, to whom she confided everything, and in whose company she relieved herself by having a good cry. The little brown Jewess was soft-hearted and desperately in love with him too, so they mingled their tears. They forgot to shut the door, however, and it happened that the portly and wealthy Herr Katz, whose waistcoat buttons were always bursting off, came in to ask his daughter to sew one on. Finding the two girls locked in a tearful embrace, he tactfully withdrew; but no sooner had Lilly left the house than he extracted the whole story from Rosalie, of the invalid master, the abortive committee meetings, and wasted iced meringues.

"I dare say we can arrange the matter," he said, twisting the thin gold watch-chain that dangled from the third button of his waistcoat. A thick gold watch-chain was the insignia of being left behind in the social race among the gentlemen of the corn trade.

So it happened that Dr. Mälzer received a few days later a registered letter from two "well-wishers." In it he was told that means had been found to defray the expenses of his foreign tour. All he had to do was to draw a cheque on the firm of Goldbaum, Katz & Co. He started on a chilly October evening, and the staff saw him off at the station. Lilly and Rosalie, who had found out the time his train departed, were there too, but they kept in the background. He passed close by them, muffled in a thick plaid, his eyes aflame, fixed on the distance. After the train had gone, the two girls threw themselves in each other's arms, and wept for joy and pride in what they had done for him. Rosalie stood her friend an éclair on the way home, it being too cold now for iced meringues. Half an hour later they were sitting in the confectioner's, smiling happily over pictures in the illustrated papers.

Spring brought renewed hope and promise of brighter times for Frau Czepanek. So certain was she that in a very short time now her husband would return, that she determined to give up the needlework drudgery and find a pleasanter way of making a living. It would be simple enough to rent a floor consisting of nine rooms, to furnish them on credit, and put up a plate with the inscription "Board and Lodging for Students." Once start the enterprise and the rest would follow. The idea took possession of Frau Czepanek's brain, half dazed as it was from the perpetual maddening whir of the sewing-machine. Lilly, though she liked the prospect of a less strenuous life, entertained doubts as to the scheme working. She remembered, with a shudder, the abusive threats of the duns who had bombarded them after papa's departure, and she failed to see where enough students were to come from to fill nine rooms when the summer term had begun and all had found other accommodation. But her mother would not listen to reason. The attic resounded with her triumphant "I shall do this," and "I shall do that." She announced her intention of calling on the mayor, and going to the council of the college to get them to recommend her.

In these days she set out on mysterious expeditions alone, and when Lilly came in from school she was no longer greeted at the bottom of the stairs by the familiar din of the sewing-machine. She would find the front-door key under the mat. Her mother became more reserved and secretive as the time for the great plunge drew nearer. Her face wore the suppressed smile of parents before a Christmas tree, only that there was a certain defiant contempt in it as well. She painted herself more thickly than ever, and the rouge-pot, which once had been hidden from Lilly's eyes, stood flaunting itself openly on the chest of drawers. Money did not grow more plentiful. Lilly had to devote every minute she could spare from her lessons to make up for mamma's neglect. Frau Czepanek set her feet on the treadles only on rare occasions when Lilly urged her to resume the work, which was delivered more and more irregularly, so that mother and daughter stood in danger of losing the employment on which their existence depended. Lilly, young and vigorous though she was, felt her strength severely taxed, but she took it calmly, assuring herself optimistically that "something would turn up before long." She would not have grudged her mother the intoxication of her new-born hopes so much, if she could have had her proper nights' rest instead of having to lie in her clothes on the outside of the bed from two till six in the morning. In school Lilly sat with heavy red eyes, unable to see or think as she was expected to do, and masters began to complain of her, more and more frequently.

It was high time for the change to come, and fate ordained that it should come on a sultry grey July day, when Lilly, returning home from school, saw two vans standing at the door, crammed with furniture smelling of recently applied varnish, and heard her mother's shrill tones in converse with strangers. With a beating heart she ran up the steps. Two carmen in leather aprons, with amused red faces, one with an open bill in his hand, were demanding payment. Frau Czepanek, running her fingers through the hair which she had just frizzed with the curling-tongs, marched up and down the room and shouted bitter reproaches about broken promises and extortionate rascally conduct. The men simply laughed at her, and reminded her that they wanted to get home that night. Then Frau Czepanek, in a fury, tried to snatch the bill from the carman, and when he declined to give it up she started belabouring him with her fists. Lilly quickly sprang between them, seized her struggling mother's wrists and ordered the men to go, assuring them everything would be arranged. They obeyed, and now her mother's wrath descended on Lilly.

"If you had not interfered," she yelled, "I should have got the receipt out of them, and the furniture would have been unpacked to-night in the new flat. You've spoilt it all, and I shall now have to be at them again to-morrow."

"The new flat!" echoed Lilly. "What new flat?"

Frau Czepanek laughed. How stupid Lilly was! Did she think that she had been doing nothing all this time? And then it all came out. The flat of nine rooms had been taken and they were to move in at once. The plate even was already engraved, and when hung up would have a magical effect. She had made every sacrifice, strained every nerve, that the rooms should be furnished in a way worthy of their exterior. She had bought curtains for twelve windows in a Chinese pattern; six good rugs to bear the tread of students, who wore out cheap carpets like muslin, and large-sized English jugs and basins, in white and gold, to put on the marble washstands. The dinner service, which she had also purchased, was not ready, as it took some time to get a monogram burnt in, but they could make shift with a common set of sixteen pieces for the present. She had expended great care and thrift on her choice of things, and everything would be in perfect taste.

She wandered restlessly, as she talked, round the table in the middle of the room. Her small narrow eyes, that looked as if they hadn't closed in sleep for many a night, glittered, and under the rouge on her hollow cheeks burned the scarlet flush of fever.

Lilly, who began to feel a little uncomfortable, ventured to ask what had been done about paying for the things.

Her question was laughed to scorn. "If you are a lady, you can do anything with the tradespeople. They know that I, as the wife of Kilian Czepanek, musical conductor, am entitled to respect and to credit; or they ought to know it."

"Has all the furniture been taken to the flat?" Lilly queried again.

Frau Czepanek's merriment was renewed. "Before the rooms are ready, you goose? Not likely! Rooms have to be painted, papered, and decorated. I have taken no end of trouble to select artistic papers," she added, with the grand air of a person whose powers of paying are unlimited.

A sickening feeling of perplexity took possession of Lilly. It was like not being sure whether your school-fellows were making a fool of you or not. There was nothing for dinner too, which made matters worse. Lilly set the coffee on the hob to boil and put the rolls on the table. They would have to skip dinner to-day. The Czepanek household had become quite expert in the art of skipping meals.

Lilly's mother said no time must be lost before beginning to pack, and she gulped down her coffee hurriedly. Then suddenly she got into another towering rage.

"If only you hadn't held my hands, you idiot!" she screamed, "we should have got that lovely new furniture into its place by to-morrow. Now we shall have to move in with this rubbish. What will people think when they see it?"

She ran her fingers through her singed locks and brandished the bread-knife with which she was cutting her roll in half. Next she turned up her sleeves, put on her blue working apron, and declared that she would start the packing that very instant. She turned out the wardrobe and piled clothes on the foot of the bed. Underwear and linen out of the linen-press she scattered over the floor in wildest confusion.

The veins stood out in knots on her shrivelled arms, perspiration ran down her face. Lilly, with a feeling of oppression at her heart, looked on. When she saw the score of "The Song of Songs," their dearest treasure, carelessly thrown on the floor, she stooped to pick it up from amongst the litter of sheets and nightgowns.

"What are you doing with 'The Song of Songs'?" cried her mother, rising in haste from her knees.

"Nothing," said Lilly in surprise. "I was merely putting it on the table."

"You're a liar," the woman screeched, "and an abandoned girl! You want to steal the score from me as you stole the receipt. But I'll be even with you!"

Lilly, to her horror, saw a sudden flash of steel before her eyes, felt a sharp pain at her throat and something warm trickling soothingly over her left breast.

It was not till her mother attempted a second thrust that Lilly realised it was the bread-knife that her mother held in her hand. With a piercing scream, she grasped her mother's wrist; but she had developed all at once the strength of a lioness, and Lilly would most probably have been worsted in the struggle if neighbours had not rushed in to see what all the noise was about.

Frau Czepanek was caught from behind and bound with towels, the bread-knife still clenched in her hand with a tenacity that no power on earth could loosen. Not till the doctor, who was called in to give her a soothing draught, came did she let it fall. Lilly's wound was dressed, and she was taken to the hospital, where she was kept because no one knew what to do with her. There she learnt, in due course, that her mother had been removed to the provincial lunatic asylum, of which she was likely to be an inmate for the rest of her days. Lilly was alone in the world.

"Yes, my dear young lady," said the distinguished lawyer, Herr Doktor Pieper, "I have been appointed your guardian, and have accepted the post because I considered it my duty. Ah! you want the papers re Lemke versus Militzky," he went on, interrupting himself to speak to the head clerk. "What was I saying? Oh, to be sure. I considered it my duty, although I am a very busy man, to befriend, as far as lies in my power, the widow and orphan."

He passed his well-manicured left hand over his shining bald pate and straw-coloured beard, which half concealed the mouth of a man of the world and an epicure.

"My wards all do well," he continued. "I am proud of their success. How do they manage it? Well, that's my affair--a secret of business, as it were. I am certain, my child, that you too will fall on your feet eventually. I should hardly be so interested in you if it were not highly probable. The first thing to be considered is a suitable situation. Plain young ladies are the most difficult to suit, unless they happen to be humble and unassuming. It pays them to boast of so-called Christian virtues. You, of course, do not belong to the plain sort. Possibly you are conscious of it, and I only tell you in order that you should learn to assert yourself. The main point in the art of living is to discriminate between self-assertion that is justified, and the reverse. You must, that is to say, gauge your own power according to circumstances. Now, young girls such as you----"

At this moment the head clerk, tall and lank, again appeared at his elbow, with a portfolio.

"At five o'clock the Labischin divorce suit comes on," he said to the man, as he took the documents from his hand, "At quarter past, Reimann and Reimann versus Fassbender. Get everything in readiness and see that someone accompanies this young lady. You will learn where from the papers."

The man vanished.

"Well, my dear young lady," her guardian continued, "the time which I can spare you is at an end. You will not be able to resume your school studies, of course. The means are not forthcoming. Even if they were, I rather doubt its being advisable. Governesses do sometimes make brilliant marriages certainly, though oftenest in the pages of English novels; but they are exposed--excuse my plain speaking--to all sorts of temptation, and are sometimes led astray. I should like to get you a place in a large photographic studio, where your duties would be to receive customers; but you would hardly have enough self-assurance for such a post at present. I have therefore found a position for you in a lending library, more as a trial than a permanency. There your light will not be altogether hidden under a bushel. The salary--I need not emphasise the fact--will be moderate: twenty marks a month with board and lodging. You will have every opportunity of letting your fancy browse among the literature of all people and all ages. So, my dear young lady----Good God! why are you crying?"

Lilly wiped tears from her eyes and cheeks. "I'm only just out of the hospital," she explained. "I feel rather----I am very sorry."

The distinguished lawyer, smiling, shook his head, the baldness of which appeared to be as tended and cared for as the face of a beautiful woman.

"You'll have to give up the habit of crying. Tears are quite out of place till you have a settled career before you.... There's something else I have got to say. Your poor mother's small effects must be sold. The proceeds of the sale will serve as a little competence for your rainy days. It is very important that you should make sure of this capital, such as it is. Now, under the escort of my man, you shall go back to your home--I have the key in my bureau--and select a few articles which you may care to have either for use or as mementoes. Good-bye, my dear.... In six months come to me again."

Lilly felt in hers a cool, flabby hand that seemed incapable of giving or returning pressure. Then she found herself staggering down the dark staircase, conducted by a clerk who had the key and was to take her to her old home. She wanted to ask questions, to protest about what she didn't know. The clerk swung the key in silence, and didn't look round till he opened the door of the room in which she and her mother had lived. It was close and smelt musty; shafts of light came through the blinds, piercing the dusk. As she stood there, Lilly felt as if she were standing on the grave of her childhood and youth, that everything had come to an end, and there was nothing to be done but shut herself up here and die.

The clerk unfastened the shutters and threw open the windows. The clothes were still piled on the bed, the linen strewed the floor, and on the boards were dark brownish stains--the blood which had flown from her throat. The knife, too, still lay there. Lilly was ashamed to cry before the clerk, who stood staring vacantly and whistling to himself, as she threw her things into the basket-trunk which her mother had intended to use for the move to the nine-roomed flat. She chose a few books at random, and put some copybooks on top; then she looked about her for keepsakes. Her head swam; she saw things without recognising them. But there on the table, held together with india rubber bands, splashed with her blood, was the score of "The Song of Songs." No one had touched it because no one knew its value. She caught it up, shut down the lid of the box, and with the roll of music under her arm she stepped out into her new life, thirsting for new experiences.

Frau Asmussen had two daughters, who had run away for the third time. All the neighbours knew it, and Lilly was given full particulars almost directly she set foot in the badly-lighted room, smelling of leather and dustiness, where torn volumes, ranged on shelves of pine, mounted to the ceiling.

Frau Asmussen was a dignified-looking and portly person, who received Lilly at the entrance of the library, and amidst kisses and tears assured her that she had loved her as her own daughter before she saw her, and now that they had met she was perfectly enchanted with her. "Who can ever say that strangers are cold and distant again?" thought Lilly, delighted with her reception.

"Did I say my own daughter? I should have said, ten times more than my own daughters. One's own daughters are vipers who turn and sting; one must pluck them from one's bosom----"

She had to pause, because the lethargic clerk who had come with Lilly in the cab was bringing in her box. When he had gone, Frau Asmussen continued:

"Do you suppose I loved my daughters, or that I did not love them? Haven't I said to them every day: 'Your father was a blackguard, a cur, and may God forgive him!' And what do you think they did? Went off one fine morning--went off on their own hook--leaving a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You bully us more than we can put up with, and we are sick of everlasting milk puddings.' You see what I am, my dear--I am kindness itself. Do I look as if I could hurt a fly, much less my own daughters? And they did it not once, but three times; this is the third time they have exposed me to the scoffs and jeers of the town--the third time they have disgraced me. Twice they came back in rags and misery, and I have taken them to my heart and forgiven them. But just let them try it on again--let them come back a third time! There's a broomstick behind the door ready for them. Directly they show their noses inside, out they shall go into the street. I'll beat them, and then sweep them out at the door like so much waste-paper." And with an air of unspeakable disgust Frau Asmussen swept an invisible something through the hall and gave it a kick over the step.

"Poor, poor woman!" thought Lilly. "How much she must have suffered!" and she vowed inwardly to do her best to make up to the mother for the loss of such unworthy daughters.

At this point a young man came in to change a book. He asked for a volume of Zola, and looked at Lilly as much as to say, "You see what a dog I am."

Frau Asmussen shook her head reproachfully, and fetched down the book required from an upper shelf. He clutched it eagerly, without heeding in the least the glance of warning with which the old lady handed it to him.

"You see, my dear," she said when he had gone, "that's how the young go to perdition, and I am condemned to help them on the way."

"Why?" asked Lilly.

"Do you know how a chemist's shop is arranged?"

Lilly said she had often been in one, but couldn't remember.

"One place is marked 'Poison,'" her employer went on, "and in it are kept the most deadly poisons known to humanity. On that account the door is kept locked, and no one may touch the contents save the chemist and his assistants. Now, just look round; half these books are poison, too. Nearly everything that's written in these days is pernicious trash, and lures the reader on to destruction. Yet I am bound to keep these books, bound to distribute them, though my heart is wrung as I hand them over the counter. My undutiful daughters are an example. They read, read--did nothing but read the whole night through; and when they were stuffed full of impudence and nonsense, they turned up their noses at the food I gave them and the cooking, and went out for walks, till at last they sneaked off to their father--that miserable worm! that swindler and scum! with his face all out in pimples! I warn you, my child, against that man. Should you ever meet him, gather up your skirts as I am doing now, to avoid contamination."

Lilly shuddered at the account of this vile monster in human shape, and was happy that she had found a protectress in his deserving wife.

An hour or so later they sat down to supper, which consisted of milk pudding and slices of bread and dripping. Lilly, unused to anything but the simplest fare, was easily persuaded that no milk puddings in the world were as delicious as Frau Asmussen's, and that the Kaiser himself could not sit down to a more daintily prepared meal than was spread on her table. She missed, it is true, the slice of ham which she had been given every night at the hospital; if this had been added, her supper would have seemed the acme of gastronomic delights.

More enjoyment awaited her when she went to bed. The library was part of a big room with three windows, which was divided into four compartments by two long bookcases running from the wall where the windows were, and by a counter opposite the door that communicated with the entrance, and thus there was only one narrow gangway to connect one compartment with another. At bed-time Frau Asmussen carried into the furthest compartment two forms, on which she laid a mattress and made up a bed. The space was so confined and filled up that Lilly had to jump over a bench at the foot of her improvised bed to get into it, and she thought this great fun. She fell asleep wedged in between two high upright bookcases, the window above her head, a chair beside her on which her things were piled, and "The Song of Songs" clasped in her arms.

The next morning she was initiated into her duties as librarian. She learnt the system by which the thousands of volumes were arranged on the shelves, and as she knew her alphabet she would have mastered it in five minutes, and been able to fetch any of the popular books from their places, if Frau Asmussen had followed her own system, instead of placing the books anyhow and so courting confusion and muddle. A worse task was to find the names of books and authors in the general catalogue, and entries of customers in the ledger, which were also supposed to be alphabetical; but the carelessness of Frau Asmussen and her daughters had reduced the whole to chaos. Lilly set to work with burning zeal to put things in order, and for several weeks the attainment of this desired goal was her sole object in life.

Frau Asmussen provided her with some surprises, even on the day after her arrival. Lilly saw nothing of her after the morning hours till supper-time; then Lilly found her nodding over a steaming teacup which exhaled an agreeable odour of rum and lemons.

"I suffer from nasal catarrh," Frau Asmussen explained, blinking at Lilly with her rather watery grey eyes, "And one of our most noted physicians has prescribed this medicine."

Lilly ate her milk pudding while Frau Asmussen continued sipping at the contents of her teacup, giving now and then a melancholy groan.

"Have I told you about my daughters?" she asked, after a pause.

"Oh yes," responded Lilly respectfully. All the morning there had been scarcely any other topic of conversation than these two scapegrace daughters and the wicked man they called father.

"But I don't think I can have given you any idea how charming they are," Frau Asmussen went on. "Though I say it that shouldn't, there isn't their match in the world for beauty and talent and lovable qualities. In such young girls, filial devotion, self-sacrificing industry, and touching modesty like theirs is not often found. They are so practical too, so thoroughly reliable in all that relates to business, besides being brimful of affection. You should take example from them, my dear, for you are very far from being anything like those models of perfect girlhood."

Lilly's spoon dropped from her fingers. She could hardly believe her ears, and the old lady maundered on:

"It was heartrending to part with them, and they cried themselves ill for days and nights beforehand. They were obliged to go to their father. Have I mentioned my husband to you? The best and noblest of men, from whom fate has parted me, but who cherishes for me an undying tenderness, and whom I shall love till death.... What a man! Pray, my child, on your knees that you may one day be the wife of such a man, and worthy of him. Alas! I was not--not worthy, no, not at all."

Two tears of unutterable remorse ran down her cheeks. She had a deal further to say about the superlative virtues of her two daughters, her husband's lofty character, and her own abject inferiority, and after several more doses of the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician she sobbed and moaned herself to sleep.

The next morning Frau Asmussen began the day's work by scolding Lilly for sweeping out the library with the broom standing behind the door.

"It's kept there for one purpose only," she said, "and that is to chastise those two hussies when they appear at my door; and if you ever dare to touch it again you will be the first to feel what it's like."

After this, Lilly began to regard her future through less rose-coloured glasses. A worse blow was to come. Frau Asmussen, who seemed deeply concerned about Lilly's spiritual welfare and the purity of her mind, strictly forbade her to read any of the books in her library.

"After what I have experienced with my daughters," she said, "I know the evil results of novel-reading, and I'll take care that you don't go the same way."

While the work of rearranging the catalogue and the ledgers lasted, the temptation to disobey orders did not occur frequently. But when autumn set in, and, in spite of the increase of subscribers, her time became less occupied and the hanging lamp was lighted early over the library table, when Frau Asmussen yielded sooner to the effects of the medicine prescribed by the eminent physician, and fell into a stupor, Lilly was driven by curiosity and boredom to do what she had been forbidden.

She was first put up to it by a girl who came to change the first volume of a novel for the second. The second volume was out, and the girl positively wept for disappointment. She declared that she couldn't wait to know how the story ended. It would kill her. Lilly good-naturedly advised her to go to one of the other circulating libraries, which were said to be larger and superior, and she went so far as to return the girl her three marks deposit. The novel devourer thanked Lilly and departed with renewed hopes.

Lilly scanned the outside of the dirty, torn volume she had left on the counter, then cautiously peeped inside. "Debit and Credit," by Gustav Freytag, was on the title-page. She had heard them raving about this book when she was in the first class at school, but there was no time for novel-reading in the life of a sweated machinist's daughter. She glanced timidly at the first page, then went to the glass door and listened for a few minutes to the peaceful snores that came from the back parlour. Soon afterwards she was launched with full-spread sails on the wide ocean of romance. At four in the morning, when she had finished the first volume, she was in desperation at the thought that she could not go on with the story, and wondered who had the missing volume, and how she was to get hold of it. Then she fell asleep.

The next day she pored over the ledger to try and trace the name and address of the subscriber who had not returned the second volume of "Debit and Credit." But, as the entries were made by the numbers and not by the titles of the books, she missed it over and over again in her excitement. So at last she was compelled to seek an outlet for her newly awakened craving in another book.

Henceforward her life became an orgy of novel-reading. She went about her daily task with heavy lids and aching limbs, burnt a huge amount of midnight oil, and only escaped the suspicions of Frau Asmussen by lies and tricks. Then one dreadful winter morning it all came out. The stove in the library burning low towards midnight, Lilly's feet became cold, and she took to reading in bed with the lamp, which she removed from its hanging socket, on the window-sill above her pillow, where there was plenty of room for it. Though this involved the bitter discomfort of having to get out of bed again in order to put back lamp and book in their places--Frau Asmussen was often now in the library earlier than Lilly--she would have rather gone out in the cold street in her nightgown than have sacrificed those dearly bought extra hours.

So it came about that one morning she awoke in a fright to behold Frau Asmussen, already dressed, dangling a black strap over her white nightgown, while the lamp, which Lilly had secretly refilled at one o'clock, still burned on the window-sill. She had never in her life before been whipped, and at first hardly grasped what was going to happen, when Frau Asmussen leapt as nimbly as her corpulence would permit on to the counterpane over the bedrail, and crouching there like some fat old plucked hen, began to belabour her over the ears with the strap.

A bad time now began for Lilly. What was the good of being sincerely repentant, and swearing to herself and to Frau Asmussen that she would not do it again? The new craze so intoxicated her, she was so absorbed with the new, beautiful imaginary world in which there were no tiresome servants sent by subscribers to change books, no wet umbrellas, no missing volumes, no back numbers of magazines that refused to be found, no insipid milk puddings, and no thrashings, that, had she had a martyr's joy in renunciation, she could not have returned to her former unbroken routine. She was now so completely governed by her imagination that her actual everyday existence, with its deadly monotony and lonely hours, seemed to her an unreal dream, and her life had no reality till she opened a book and turned over its sticky pages. She was too docile and unresisting to attempt to justify this passion even in her own eyes. It was wrong, she knew, to feed her mind on this heaven-sent food; but she could not help it.

Frau Asmussen hit on a fiendish method of humiliating Lilly still further. She regarded religion, like many orthodox Protestants, solely in the light of a penance, and, though hitherto she had not concerned herself in the least about Lilly's creed, she now took to beginning every meal with a long-winded prayer, in which, in face of the steaming soup-tureen, she commended Lilly amidst tears and sighs to the Lord, and begged Him to forgive her sinful depravity.

Woe to Lilly if there was any backsliding! That first chastisement did not by any means remain the only one. She was cuffed and beaten on the slightest provocation, and storms of abuse descended on her unprotected head. In fact, she scarcely dared breathe till the soothing medicine prescribed by the eminent physician began to do its work. Then Lilly seized the first book she came across, and suffered all the agonies of the heroines in the stories about lost wills and broken marriages, about poison, arson, and murder; with them she loved, and conquered, and died, finding in it all a never-ending source of ecstasy.

It was a spring-like evening in March, with bright sunshine. The last grimy heaps of snow lying along the gutters had melted into radiant paddles, and a shower of silvery drops fell from the icicles clinging to the roofs. The glow of sunset lay on the houses facing south like brilliant decorative carpets, sharply divided from the shadows on the opposite side of the street. The window lattices shone as if they themselves were suns reflecting their own light, and sparrows twittered on the dripping eaves. But most welcome feature of all in this early spring of city streets was the peculiar spicy fragrance of the melting snows, rising in vapour from the gutter with promise of meadows growing green and of boughs bursting into bud. Lilly, who had hardly been out more than two or three times during the winter, sat at the counter gazing wistfully into space.

Everywhere windows and doors were wide open. Everywhere lungs thirsty for fresh air inhaled the zephyrs of coming spring. At last she too pushed open the casements, and gave the hall door a kick, which made it swing back and knock down the broom that stood in the corner behind it. She saw through the opening of the door into the rooms of the opposite tenant, who had also thrown his door wide to greet the spring.

There was a cherry-coloured sofa with embroidered chair-backs stretched over its old-fashioned scroll-shaped arms; there were wreaths of dried flowers with inscriptions framed on the walls; the helmet of a cavalry officer with swords crossed; china lions used as cigar-holders; ballet girls supporting tallow candles; photograph groups with peacock's feathers stuck between them; a glass bowl of goldfish; a goatskin rug. In the midst of all this wilderness of knick-knacks a youth paced up and down with a book in his hand, conning something diligently; one minute he vanished from view, only to reappear the next. At the first glance, this young man attracted Lilly's sympathetic notice. His wavy fair hair was brushed carelessly back from his forehead, the carriage of his head was erect and nonchalant, and he wore a mauve and brown striped necktie, which Lilly thought the height of refined taste.

She tried to think which of her favourite heroes he resembled most, and came to the conclusion that it was Finck in "Debit and Credit." The young man did not observe her, so she had every opportunity of studying him. When he was in sight, a warm thrill ran through her, directly he disappeared and remained hidden from view for the fraction of a second she felt a sick sensation as if someone were robbing her of her dearest possession. So it continued till he glanced up from his book, and, seeing the young lady who watched him through the door, withdrew hastily to the invisible part of his room. When he next disclosed himself he had adopted a much stiffer and more self-conscious air. He bent over his book with a studiousness that was hardly natural, moved his lips too obviously, and frowned heavily. Lilly, too, thought it necessary to improve slightly the picture she presented. She smoothed the hair that was parted Madonna fashion on her forehead, and let her arm fall carelessly over the side of the chair. A couple of maid-servants who came to change books for their mistresses put an end to this silent duet by shutting the door as they went out. Lilly did not dare to open it again. But from that evening the new hero became part of her dreams.

It was hopeless to think of asking Frau Asmussen questions so late, because she was now in the habit of preparing her medicine before the evening meal; but the next morning, as she seemed in a fairly good temper, Lilly ventured to make a few inquiries about the neighbour of whose existence till now she had been ignorant.

"What do the neighbours matter to you, you inquisitive thing!" retorted Frau Asmussen, in that tone of polished urbanity with which she had addressed Lilly after the raptures of the first night were over.

Lilly plucked up courage to invent a tale of a regular subscriber who had asked her the day before for information about their neighbours, which she had been unable to give him. Frau Asmussen's esteem for this subscriber was so great that she instantly became communicative.

They were respectable enough people over the way, but of low birth, and she, as a woman of a more highly-cultured mind, could not associate with them. She believed the husband was a pensioned-off sergeant-major, now working as a clerk, and that his wife made cravattes for a living. Lilly flushed, remembering the mauve and brown tie which had so dazzled her eyes the day before. How vulgarly these common people lived might be gathered from the fact that on high-days and festivals they indulged in potato soup with slices of sausage in it, which made anyone with a delicate palate like Frau Asmussen's shudder to think of.

Like the erring daughters, Lilly had long ago got tired of the eternal milk pudding, and found herself unable to agree that potato soup was vulgar. Indeed, her mouth began to water at the mere mention of it, and she changed the subject by asking if anyone else lived next door.

"I believe there's a son," replied Frau Asmussen. "He goes to the Gymnasium, though why people in that class of life should have their sons educated I don't know."

"I know why," Lilly said to herself. "I know why: it is because he is great, and genius looks forth from his eyes, because he must succeed and become a ruler of men."

The same afternoon she pushed open the swing-door again, but the weather was raw and cold, and there was no friendly face opposite to cheer her eyes. After she had gazed longingly for an hour or more at the door-plate bearing the inscription:

L. Redlich,
Kindly ring and knock

she was forced to close the door, her legs feeling like icicles, and with a feeling of humiliation that she had been snubbed. Henceforth she looked out for one o'clock, the hour when the Gymnasium students came home from school. With her nose pressed against the window-panes, she could recognise at an almost incredible distance the blue and white college caps. When he flew up the steps, she slipped behind the curtains, trembling with joy at the bashful glances he cast at her. But if he looked straight in front of him she was extremely unhappy, and hoped that she had done nothing to hurt his feelings.

There were other wearers of blue and white caps who came up the steps to the house, friends who came to cram for their examination with him. Lilly adored them all. She felt that a bond existed between her and the little circle, who had the world all before them, and intended to conquer it. In spirit she sat in their midst.

Some of them passed so quickly that she distinguished them by their caps more than by their faces. There was the forlorn-looking cap, the faded, the smart, the limp. Each of the youths too had his characteristic way of walking and knocking at the door. She could tell, even when she was busy giving out books, and without looking, how many of young Redlich's chums had come or had not come to work with him.

Meanwhile, the days grew longer and spring was advancing. The tenants of the house began to sit on the terrace in front, where there were chairs and tables.

The boys often lingered there chatting with their friend before going in to their studies, and when they were gone he leaned over the balustrade in the twilight alone, dreaming doubtless of his great future.

Then Lilly, with beating heart, stationed herself behind a book-rack, from which she had artfully cleared away enough volumes to form a peep-hole, whence she could admire to her heart's content the leonine brow so full of thought and profound intellect.

The seats on the terrace in front of the library windows were mostly unoccupied, as they belonged to Frau Asmussen, who preferred taking her medicine indoors, and Lilly could not screw up courage to ask permission to sit there.

One May evening, however, when showery spring clouds sailed over the dark blue sky, more alluring than threatening, when it was all so still that you could hear the splashing of the market-place fountain, and the swallows were the only passers-by, Lilly simply could not contain herself any longer in the library atmosphere, smelling of old leather and parchment; and taking her embroidery, more for show than because she was industriously inclined, she went out, determined to sit on the terrace. She knew that he was out, and that he always came in before ten. He would have to pass her whatever happened. Half an hour, another half-hour, than a quarter went by, and she saw a blue and white cap coming jauntily down the street. Her first thought was to run back into the library, but she was ashamed to do this, and sat where she was. He came, saw her, raised his cap, and went in.

"He has at least bowed to me," she thought blissfully.

Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed before he appeared again. He seated himself on a bench belonging to his side of the house, played with pebbles, whistled to himself softly, and seemed altogether oblivious of her presence.

Lilly sat on in her corner rolling and unrolling her embroidery, and now and then giving vent to her tender feelings toward him by a sigh, though she told herself she only sighed because it was so hot. Half an hour sped away thus, and Lilly began to abandon hope of anything more happening, when all of a sudden he addressed her, with his cap in his hand:

"They will soon be closing the front door, Fräulein," he said.

"Not already, surely!" she exclaimed, feigning consternation. Then, reflecting that to act on his hint would be to put an end to their acquaintance making any progress, she added in a more indifferent tone:

"It doesn't matter; the window isn't shut."

"The window!" he repeated.

She could not make out whether in approval or blame. The conversation would have certainly come to a standstill here if she had not made a gigantic effort to keep the ball rolling.

"We are neighbours, I think," she remarked.

He sprang up from his bench, sweeping his cap down as low as his trouser pockets, and answered:

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Fritz Redlich, prefect."

Lilly felt the old thrill of reverence with which the very word "prefect" had inspired her in the Selecta when her class companions had uttered it. Then she burned with shame to think that she was now nothing better than a shopgirl. But she was determined to impress him by alluding to her more distinguished past.

"Up till last autumn," she said, "I was a Selecta pupil. I used to know some of you fellows."

"Which of us?" he asked in excitement.

She mentioned the names of two young men who had once fluttered round her at the skating-rink, and asked if they were friends of his.

"Rather not," he answered with a contempt that didn't seem quite genuine. "They are slackers, and loaf about too much. They intend to join a corps, too, I believe. That's not in our line."

There was a pause. Lilly could only discern the outline of his figure as he leaned against the balustrade, it had grown so dark. Drops of soft rain fell on her hair. She would have liked to stay there for ever, watching the dark young figure before her, and with the gentle moisture of spring anointing her head.

"You are engaged now in the Circulating Library?" he asked.

Lilly assented, and was grateful to him for the nice word "engaged," which seemed a little to ameliorate her lowly position.

"And you are going in for your examination?" she inquired.

"In the autumn--if all goes well," he replied with a sigh.

"And afterwards you will go out into the world," she gushed in copy-book language, "and fight your way in life? Ah, how I wish I were in your shoes."

"Why do you wish that, Fräulein?" he asked in surprise. "You are fighting your way in life now, are you not?"

Lilly laughed shrilly. "Oh, but if only I were you!" she exclaimed. "What wouldn't I--oh!"

She felt exultant; her limbs seemed to stretch, so that she scarcely knew how to sit still; the light of conquest flashed from her eyes, but there was no conquest really, for it remained unseen in the darkness.

She was so overcome, so mad with happiness, that she positively could not stay there, uttering stilted phrases, while within her something shouted: "You standing there with your arms on the balustrade, I love you."

She bade him a hurried good-night, and ran in, bolting the door behind her. She paced up and down the narrow gangways between the books, laughing and sighing. She stretched forth her arms like a high-priestess at prayer, knocking and bruising her elbows against the shelves.

She sang the familiar words in a sweet, uncertain voice, not too subdued to be heard through the window. But when she looked through her peep-hole, to assure herself that he was listening, he had gone. Now she sang louder and leaned out, tearing open her tight-fitting bodice, and letting the raindrops fall on her bare breast.

An unspeakable wretchedness suddenly took possession of her. She could not account for it, but she felt as if she must die. It was she whom the cruel watchmen were seizing; the wounds their rough hands made on her soft skin smarted; she could feel how they tore off the garments which veiled her nakedness from the world. In shameless nakedness, yet weeping tears of blood from bitter shame, she tottered through the streets, seeking and seeking her Soul's Beloved; but he was further off, more unattainable than ever.

She dropped down on her knees at the window, and, burying her face in the sill, wept bitterly out of sweet compassion for that symbol of herself wandering through Jerusalem's streets at night. And, after all, what made her feel like this was happiness--sheer happiness.

She continued to enjoy this happiness. It nestled in the cobwebby corners, perched on the books, spun golden threads from beam to beam, and it rode astride on every shaft of sunlight, which, reflected from the opposite windows, crept along the leather backs of the books. All the time Lilly heard humming within her a wonderful medley of tremulous tones, snatches of melodies, harp-strings vibrating, chirping of crickets, and twittering of birds. Waking or sleeping the concert went on, with now and then a few majestic bars of "The Song of Songs" thrown in.

Nothing was changed meanwhile in the ordinary daily routine. Frau Asmussen was alternately sober and the blissful victim of comforting drugs. Husband and daughters one hour ascended through the scale of all the virtues to the dizzy pinnacle of saints, and the next were plunged into deepest depths of infamy. Now a volume of Tolstoi was hunted for in vain, and then a Spielhagen seemed to have been spirited into space.

Sometimes little gusts of wind wafted showers of powdery gold on to the shelves. Like ordinary dust, it was swept away, yet it was a message from the tossing boughs, in the country, laden with blossom. This was all Lilly saw of the spring, save passing market-carts on which were heaped bunches of lilac and may. Her young hero opposite had made no further advances. She still trembled at the sound of his step, and received with frantically beating heart the two shy daily greetings; but there things ended.

He came no more to the terrace. The poring over books with his chums now lasted far into the night. It was often nearly two o'clock before she heard the last depart. Not till then did she fling herself on her bed, and, staring into the summer twilight, let her fancy roam over vast territories to find a throne worthy of her hero's attainment. She saw him in the gorgeous uniform of a field-marshal winning victories on the battlefield; she saw him a poet being crowned with laurels; an inventor of world renown steering his own airship through the clouds; a founder of some new religion.... But when she came to this point her Pegasus halted in alarm, for she remained a good Catholic at heart, though under the smart of bodily and spiritual castigation she had not dared to take refuge in her religion. The courage to ask Frau Asmussen's leave to go to St. Ann's every morning had soon evaporated, and she had almost forgotten that confessions and masses existed.

Now, however, in an exuberance of emotions never before dreamed of, she longed to unburden her spirit, and resolved to confess to Frau Asmussen that she was a Catholic, and beg to be allowed to visit St. Joseph's altar--kind, smiling St. Joseph, who stood with upraised finger behind his golden-circled candles.

Frau Asmussen found in Lilly's avowal the secret of all her vices, her artfulness, her laziness, her hypocrisy, and her lack of method; and she included in her nightly prayer at table a petition for Lilly's immediate conversion. All the same, she did not refuse Lilly permission to go twice a week to early mass, which was as much as she had dared expect.

Touching was the meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph after such a long estrangement. It was like going home to come back to him. The angels in the coloured glass window over his altar seemed to flutter their wings and greet her like sisters and brothers, assuring her that her penance would not be severe. The yellow and orange carpet invited her hospitably to kneel down, and from the Virgin's shrine not far away came the perfume of flowers.

The saint himself at first seemed a little hurt because she had neglected him for such a long time. But when she had confided to him all her woes, her loneliness, her beatings, her dislike of milk puddings, he became softened at once and forgave her. He had been presented width three new silver hearts since she had last knelt at his shrine. They shot up flames as long as her hand, and she felt she would like to dedicate one to him too: but why, she didn't know, for the miracle in her case was yet to be performed. Maybe it was jealousy or vainglory that prompted her desire, for she did not like the idea of others standing on a nearer footing to him than herself. "But what can I expect," she reasoned, "when I've treated him so badly all this time?"

After confessing everything, except, of course, her love affairs--he had become too much of a stranger for that--she hurried out of the church. It was striking a quarter to eight, and her morning devotions would have been objectless and thrown away had she not met her hero on his way to school.

It was at the corner of Hassertor that she came upon him and his companions. He lifted his cap and passed on with the others, but she stood still, drawing a deep breath, as if she had just escaped a great danger.

Meetings of this kind occurred twice a week from this time onwards. Her dearly cherished secret desire that she would meet him alone one morning, that he would stop and engage in friendly conversation, was never fulfilled. There was not the faintest gleam of pleasure in his face at her approach, the strained anxious expression of his eyes did not relax in the least, though he blushed slightly as he raised his cap and walked on.

She had long ago given up all hopes that he would ever speak to her again, when one wet Sunday evening in July she heard the bell tinkle, the front door being closed on Sundays to subscribers. She opened it and there he was.

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, and nearly shut the door again in her confusion.

He asked if she had Rückert's poems in the library. She knew quite well that she hadn't, but she was afraid that if she said so there would be no further pretext for conversation, so she replied that she would see. Wouldn't he come in?

After a moment's hesitation, he sat down on the chair for subscribers close to the door. Lilly hunted for a long time, for she feared if she didn't that he would go away; rather aimlessly she looked on the shelves, and kept saying half to herself, "I am sure I saw it not long ago." Then she too sat down behind the counter to try and recollect where she had seen the book. But he stimulated her to search further.

"If you saw it a short time ago, it must be there," he said. And when it became clear that it was not there he sighed deeply, and murmuring, "I don't know what I am to do," he departed.

Lilly could only stare aghast at the empty doorway, which a minute ago had encircled his tall figure. She longed to cry out, "Stay, don't go!" but the opposite door banged and it was all no good. She crouched on the window seat, and mapped out in her thoughts what might have happened if he had not gone away. Her heart beat so violently that she felt as if she must faint.

A quarter of an hour later the bell rang again. She bounded up. Could it be he come back? It was; he had left his umbrella. "You shall not get off so easily a second time," she said to herself.

He caught hold of his soaking umbrella, which she had not noticed, although it had made a puddle, which was running along the cracks of the floor, and prepared to go away again.

"What do you want Rückert's poems for?" she asked, seizing the opportunity of opening a conversation.

"Life is so full of difficulties," he lamented. "You've no idea, Fräulein, how full."

Then he told her how they had to deliver extempore orations on subjects sprung on them, with no preparation, whether they knew anything about them or not. This time, however, it had leaked out that to-morrow, in the literature lesson, a comprehensive revue of Rückert's works would be demanded. For this reason he wanted to glance through the poems, because he could not remember exactly who were buried in "The graves at Ottensen."

Lilly was beside herself with joy. She could help him. She, the little lowly sparrow, could be of assistance to him, the big soaring eagle. Timidly she sketched the story of the poor beaten Duke of Brunswick and the pious poet of "The Messiah." The only thing she could not remember was who were the twelve hundred exiles who were buried in the first of the graves.

He appeared incredulous at his unexpected good fortune. Was she positive? He knew from his tables and history of literature it was all right about Klopstock, but he shook his majestic head over the rest in grave doubt. Lilly eagerly set his mind at rest. It was more than a year since she had left school and had learned all these beautiful things, but her memory was good and she wouldn't tell him wrong. At last he seemed convinced. He breathed more freely, and remarked again, turning his mind to more common things: "Yes, Fräulein, life is hard, very hard."

Now that the ice was broken he recounted his likes and dislikes. Mathematics weren't bad, indeed he had got on very well with Euclid and geometry. But there were languages, and history, and, worse still, German composition. Alas! it was a troublesome world, enough to drive one to despair.

Lilly quite agreed with him. She, too, had little reason to be satisfied with the way the world wagged, and she expressed her thoughts about it with passionate eloquence.

"And how you must detest," she concluded, "to be hampered in your high ambition by the narrow limits of school life."

He looked slightly astonished and then said: "Yes, it's beastly."

"If I were in your place," she told him, "I shouldn't bother at all about dry facts and dull lessons. I should just follow my own bent, like the great poets and philosophers."

"That's all very well, my dear Fräulein, but there's the examination," he cried, horrified.

"Oh, never mind stupid examinations. It doesn't matter whether you get through them or not."

He became excited. "You don't in the least understand, Fräulein. Examinations are the entrance to every good position in life, no matter whether you stay at the university, study law, architecture, or go into the Civil Service. Not that I should dream of doing the last."

"I should think not, indeed!" she broke in. "A man like you!"

He smiled, well pleased at the flattery.

"I am not going to take the world by storm," he said, "but I have my dreams, of course. What would a fellow be worth if he hadn't any?"

"Nothing!" she exclaimed, looking up at him delighted, with beaming eyes. She was sure this was the happiest hour she had ever known in all her life.

When he got up to go she felt actual physical pain, as if a limb were being torn from her body. He had almost closed the door when he turned as one feeling his way, and said:

"If it's not giving you too much trouble, Fräulein, I should be glad if you'd have another hunt for the poems." And then once more coming back he added: "You might put them under the door-mat if you find them."

Lilly lit the hanging lamp at once, and obediently began to look for what she knew she could never find.

He passed the long vacation in the country with a friend in misfortune, with whom he crammed. Directly after the beginning of term the written questions were to be set, and in the middle of September came the viva voce.

Lilly's hero looked pale and haggard, and bristles, like red shadows, appeared in the hollows of his cheeks. Lilly could not bear to see his misery without speaking, so one morning on her way from mass, when she met him alone in the empty street, she stopped.

"You must not overwork, Herr Redlich," she blurted out anxiously. "You ought to consider your health for your parents' sake and the sake of all who care for you."

He seemed more embarrassed than gratified, and before he answered cast nervous looks around him.

"It's very kind of you, Fräulein," he stammered, "but we'll discuss it later--later, if you please," and he dashed on, scarcely raising his cap.

It dawned on Lilly that she had done something dreadful. The houses began to dance before her misty eyes; she gnawed her pocket-handkerchief, and thought everyone she met must be laughing and jeering at her. When she was once more in her corner behind the catalogues she felt convinced that by her folly she had lost him for ever. Yes! he would never speak to her again.

The next day he came in without greeting her, and went out again after tea, and didn't look her way as he passed. It was all over, all over! And then someone came and knocked in the twilight; one could hardly call it knocking, it was more like a dog scratching to be let in. Lo, and behold! it was he standing there. He had not the shy yet important manner he had worn on that Sunday evening when "The graves at Ottensen" had been on his mind. His air now was more that of a burglar who has not learnt his trade.

"I say, is Frau Asmussen there?" he whispered.

"No; she never comes in here at this time," she whispered back, trembling with joy.

"Than I may come in for a minute or two, perhaps?"

She drew back and let him in, wondering whether it was possible to feel such bliss and live. He murmured apologies for his conduct at their last meeting. She stammered that he mustn't reproach himself, and that she had not meant to be so stupid. They sat down together on either side of the counter as they had done that Sunday evening. He was the first to lead the way back to their former point of intimacy.

"A fellow would often like to chat with a girl with whom he has something in common," he said a little pompously, "but his time is not his own, and there are so few opportunities."

"As for opportunities," Lilly thought to herself, "they could easily be found."

He went on to say that, owing to her kindly interest in him, he felt an interchange of ideas between them would be salutary, especially as he believed in the emancipation of women.

Here he halted, not knowing how to proceed, but still retaining his dignity. He challenged Lilly with his eyes, as much as to say: "You see how tactfully I am dealing with this delicate situation."

Lilly hadn't a notion what he was driving at, but it did not matter. The one thought that obsessed her was to save him from working himself to death.

"We had a master when we were in the Selecta, Herr Redlich," she began, "whose lectures were simply glorious. I shall never forget them! Like you, he overworked. By this time I am afraid he must have died of consumption, and if you don't take care you may come to the same end."

He nodded dejectedly. "Everything's so deuced hard," he muttered to himself.

"You ought to have more sleep and take walks--plenty of walks----"

"Do you go for walks, Fräulein?"

Lilly couldn't say truthfully that she ever did such a thing. Since she had been incarcerated in this den of books she had not seen a field of white snow or a green tree.

"I!" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders. "Why should I go for walks?" Then, rejoicing inwardly at her own boldness, she suggested: "Couldn't we go together one day?"

He looked amazed. "There would be all sorts of objections," he said, shaking back his forelock. "People might talk. For your sake--especially for your sake--one must be careful."

Lilly had read about gallant young knights who set more store on their lady-love's reputation than their own passion. She glanced up at him full of grateful admiration.

"As far as I'm concerned," she cried, "you needn't be alarmed, I should simply shirk mass."

Though she may have felt a slight stab of conscience as she made this sacrilegious announcement, she was conscious that for the sake of this walk she would cheerfully have sacrificed all the saints, even St. Joseph himself.

"I must wait till after the examination," he explained.

So the matter was allowed to rest. He took his leave, Lilly speeding him with warnings and good wishes, while he glanced uneasily up and down the street, round the terrace and the entrance.

Lilly's life from this time onwards was one enraptured trance of hope and delightful anticipations. She lay awake half the night, and pictured herself wandering at rosy dawn with him through golden meadows, her hand pressed against her side to still her joyously beating heart, her arm brushing his elbow. And each time that she thought of this, a little thrill ran through her, to the tips of her toes. She read nothing but stories of glowing love and passion, pages full of "transports," "intoxicating raptures," and "clinging kisses." But of kisses in connection with herself she did not dream. She checked herself when her thoughts drifted in that direction. He was too exalted a being, too far above mere earthly desire. Now she felt that she had good reason to promise St. Joseph a silver heart.

One Sunday morning she told St. Joseph the whole story of Fritz Redlich's examination throes, of his high ideals, and her anxiety about him. But on the subject of the arranged walk she was silent, for she could not very well mention that she intended to shirk mass.

Lilly had saved during this year about sixty marks, which she carried next her skin in a leather purse. The silver heart would cost at most twenty marks, and there would be more than enough left to buy her friend a present. She vacillated for a long time between purchasing him a gold-embroidered cigar-case, equally ornate slippers, and a revolver. Finally, she decided on a revolver in a case, for she anticipated that in the struggle for existence he would often find himself in perils that he could only be saved from by mad, daring, and swift action. The revolver cost twenty-five marks, the gold thread for embroidering a monogram on the case, five marks. So she thought she had managed very satisfactorily.

The morning of the examination she saw him come out on the terrace with a face as white as the gloves he waved in farewell to his parents. He appeared to have forgotten her. She felt half inclined to run after him and press the revolver into his hand, but she reflected in time that the examiners might not appreciate his being so armed, and was glad when at the last moment he turned round and gave her a timid glance of recognition.

At one o'clock there was quite a little stir outside. They were carrying him home on their shoulders. He looked exhausted, but his friends cheered and shouted with glee. The old pensioner, in ragged slippers, ran to meet his son and embrace him. She saw how he scrubbed his greenish-grey goat's-beard against the hero's cheek. From the kitchen at the bottom of the house came an appetising odour of fried sausages. Lilly ran about between the bookshelves clapping her hands, and crying inwardly: "St. Joseph is a brick!"

The next morning Lilly went to order the silver heart, and with blushes requested that the initials L. C. and F. R., entwined, should be engraved on it. When she came back from this errand she found in the letter-box--among subscriber's slips--an envelope addressed to herself. Inside, written on the back of an old menu card, were the words: "Be on the terrace Sunday morning at five."

Grey dawn pierced the chinks of the library shutters. Lilly jumped out of bed and threw up the window. The street looked like a big bowl of milk, the mist of early autumn rose so densely from the ground. The damp soft vapour cooled her burning cheeks, and she held out her arms as if bathing in it. Her thin summer dress, which she had washed and ironed with her own hands the night before, hung on the whitewashed wall like a blue cloud. She had never made herself so smart as she did to-day; for a picnic so fraught with fate she must be worthily adorned.

The small sum left out of her savings, after the purchase of her gifts, had been spent on a burnt straw picture-hat with pale blue ribbon strings tied under the chin, and did instead of a neckscarf. A pair of long open-work silk gloves, which she had forgotten all about, were unearthed from the depths of her trunk.

She put the heavy revolver in her hand-bag, after kissing it several times first and murmuring over it:

"Protect him, destroy his enemies, and lead him to victory." Thus she consecrated the weapon dedicated to his defence.

Punctually at five she heard the opposite door open and shut. She slipped out at once, and they met on the terrace. He shook hands. His eyes were haggard, yet there was an expression of energy in them. There was something of the dandy almost in his air and apparel. His hat was tilted slightly on one side. He flourished a bamboo cane in his hand with a silver knob.

Lilly murmured shy congratulations. He thanked her with lofty condescension. The examination was now a very small matter, hardly worth mentioning.

"We are playing the fool now to a frightful degree," he added. "I can't say I find it congenial, but a man must know something of the frivolous side of life as well as the serious."

As they passed St. Ann's, a happy thought occurred to Lilly. It would be delightful to enter the church for a few minutes, and by removing the burden of deception win St. Joseph's blessing on their day's outing. She made the suggestion timidly, and found she had put her foot in it.

"I am a Freethinker, Fräulein," he said, "and have the courage of my convictions. Still, all enlightened people should be tolerant, and if you would like to go in I will wait for you outside."

Lilly felt she didn't care about it any more and blushed for shame and vexation. Of course, he didn't know how much St. Joseph had to do with his success, or he would not have been so ungracious.

They walked on in silence through the still deserted streets of the suburbs. The mist lifted a little. Lilly, chilled to the bone, shivered at every step she took. She thought she shivered from excitement, and yet she was much calmer than she had expected to be. Everything was so different. What had disenchanted her? She didn't know. She gazed wistfully before her at the trees that appeared at the far end of the street. "Let us only get out into the country," she thought, and clenched her teeth to prevent them chattering.

The silence began to oppress her. She wanted to begin a conversation, but could think of nothing to say. In front of them a baker's boy started whistling on his round.

"We used always to buy hot rolls after we had worked all night," said young Redlich suddenly. "We might buy some now."

Lilly felt happy again. If he had said "We will steal some," she would have been happier still.

The boy was not allowed to sell his rolls. They were on order, but there was a shop open opposite. When Lilly saw her hero come out of the shop with a big bag of rolls under his arm, she had a nice sort of feeling as if they were setting up housekeeping together.

Now they were passing gardens, and showers of drops fell on their heads from the branches. Lilly bent her shoulders and stamped her feet. She was simply frozen. At last they were out in the open fields. Masses of silvery gossamer cobwebs, weighed down by the heavy dew, hung about the stubble, which had grown high; and the outline of yellowish hilltops bounded the circular landscape on one side, while on the other in the distance rose a wall of dark woods. Lilly struck out her arms like a swimmer and breathed deeply several times.

"Aren't you well?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know! I must make up for all I've missed," she answered. "You see, I haven't really breathed for a whole year."

As she still shivered from cold, she started running. He tried to keep up, but soon was left behind, panting and stumbling. When they reached the first hill the sun began to rise over the fields. The undergrowth seemed aflame and the cobwebs glistened like diamonds; the dewdrops glittered like sparks of fire.

Warmed and excited by her run, Lilly pressed her hands against her throbbing heart, and gazed with dizzy eyes into the sea of glowing light. "Oh, look, look!" she stammered, and then turned an appealing glance of inquiry on him. She had half expected that he would spout odes, sing songs, and, if it had been possible, play the harp. But he stood struggling for breath, and appeared entirely absorbed in himself.

"Do recite something, Herr Redlich," she besought him. "A poem of Klopstock's--anything."

She hadn't got as far as Goethe when she left the Selecta.

He laughed, a short scoffing laugh. "No, thank you," he said. "Now the examination is over, the whole of German literature may go hang for all I care."

Lilly felt snubbed. She had probably done a very ignorant thing in asking him to recite. When she next looked at the view the glow had faded, though the fields still sent up a faint golden haze towards the sun, the face of which had grown hard and indifferent.

They continued their way in the direction of the woods. He swung the paper bag, and Lilly picked blackberries, which hung on the bushes like strings of beads in a filigree of cobwebs. A little further on, close to the outskirts of the wood, they came to a seat; and without discussing whether they should sit down or not they took possession of it. It was just what they wanted. Lilly was a little awed. This was the spot where the soul of a young genius was to be revealed to her, by whose clear vision she was to be guided upwards to the sun. He opened the paper bag, and she laid her handkerchief full of blackberries beside it. The revolver in the bag was put under the seat for the time being. Lilly cut the rolls, scooped out the middle, and filled them with blackberries, and they had a delightful breakfast together.

The magic glow of early autumn cast its spell upon them. Lilly's head swam with delight and longing. She could have thrown herself at his feet and pressed her forehead against his knees to find a support in the approaching joy of fulfilment. He had taken off his cap, and a curly forelock fell over his eyebrows, which gave him a sombre, world-challenging air. The lock of genius had been the fashion in the Upper Prima, and was assiduously cultivated by all who didn't aspire to the smartness of a Students' Corps. His gaze rested on the church spires and towers of the old town, which stood up like sleepy sentinels watching over the clustering roofs of the houses stretching in all directions.

"I wish you would tell me your thoughts," Lilly said in a tremor of admiration. The great, crucial moment--had it come?

Again he gave that short rather scoffing laugh.

"I am calculating how many parsons get their living in a hole like that," he said, "and what a comfortable thing it is to go in for theology."

"Why don't you go in for it?" she asked. "All sources of knowledge have a common fountain."

"You don't understand anything about it, my dear Fräulein," he rebuked her gently. "What matters is not knowledge, but conviction. A man must suffer everything for his convictions; he must drudge and starve for his convictions. The town has in its gift six livings for theological students. But I would rather cut off my right hand than accept one. For your convictions' sake you must go out into the world and fight your way. That is what I am going to do. I begin the day after to-morrow."

His small, short-sighted eyes flashed. He pushed back the lock of genius from his forehead with a trembling hand.

Now he was talking according to her expectations. She wondered if this would be the right moment to present him with the revolver. But she deferred the presentation out of respect for the grandeur and significance of his new mood.

Taking up the bag with the weapon in it, she clasped it tightly, and then aired her sentiments with the same enthusiasm as she had done that night on the terrace.

"Oh, Herr Redlich," she cried, "can there be anything more splendid than to fight like that--to plunge into the ocean of life, to wrest happiness from the grim powers of fate, to become ever stronger and more iron in purpose, no matter how things go against us? Oh, it must be sublime!"

But, as before, her appeal failed to wake any response in him.

"Good heavens, Fräulein, when you come to consider it, of what does the much-vaunted battle of life consist?" he said. "Letting yourself be trampled on, sleeping in a cold bed in the winter, and getting nothing for dinner all the year round, I am going to try it, of course, but it's hard all the same. If I had an income I shouldn't feel so bad."

"And is this all the spirit with which you enter the battle?" asked Lilly.

"Dear Fräulein," he replied, "how can a fellow who starts in life with a few darned shirts and socks, and borrowed money, feel any different?"

"He is the very one who should conquer," Lilly urged, eager to inspire him with her own confidence. "You, with your consciousness of being great and different from other people, are bound to carry all before you."

She waved her arm with an impassioned gesture, which took in the whole prospect before them: the plain with its silver streams and its green trees, the city embosomed in its gardens, perched among its meadows like a lark's nest. She would show him a small symbol of the future kingdoms over which he was to reign.

He nodded gloomily, convinced that he knew more about it than she did.

"Life is hard--hard," he repeated.

She still did not despair of infecting him with her own ambition for his future, and in an outburst of eloquence she went on:

"If only I could express what I feel and know is true--if only I could make you courageous and hopeful.... Look what a pitiable creature I am. I have neither father nor mother nor friends.... I hadn't even the chance of staying at school and finishing my education. Here I am, without position, money, or even winter clothes.... Look at my feet." She thrust out her shabby boots, which till now she had been careful to hide beneath her skirt. "I never have enough to eat, and if I am late home to-day I shall be thrashed. Yet I am certain that somewhere happiness is waiting for me.... It is there, in every little breeze that blows in my face--though invisible--in every sunbeam that greets me. The whole world is made up of happiness, really, and of music.... Everything is a Song of Songs--a Song of Songs is everything."

She turned away from him sharply so that he should not see how moved she was.

Below in the town the bells began to chime. St. Mary's, which once had been the Catholic cathedral and was now the chief Protestant church, led off with its deep triple clang. St. George's, once the Church of the Order, gave out a clear E G third; on feast-days it added a C. More bells sounded, and among them the modest tinkle of St. Ann's, unmistakable and insistent, making itself clearly heard in the chorus. To Lilly's ears it whispered, "We know and love each other, and St. Joseph greets us."

Her friend meanwhile had been recovering his mental equilibrium. He assumed his little air of pedantic dignity, feeling that he had got the best of the argument.

"I don't think you and I altogether understand one another," he said. "I have made a deep study of the problems of life, and so see things rather differently from you. I call a spade a spade, and am not taken in by the so-called illusions of youth. I know what men are, and should advise you to be a little more careful in what you do and say."

"What on earth do you mean?" Lilly asked in astonishment.

He smiled with a half-embarrassed and half-superior air as he glanced askance at her.

"Well, you know, beauty has certain dangers connected with it."

"Beauty!" Lilly cried, burning all over. "What nonsense!"

"Those on whom nature has conferred this gift have special reasons to be more cautious than others less favoured. For instance, it is lucky for you that you have fallen in with anyone so correct, old-fashioned, and honourable in his ideas as I am. Another, less steady, more frivolously inclined, might easily, you know, have taken advantage of such a walk as this. You may indeed be quite sure that he would."

Lilly stared at him in dismay. She was overwhelmed in a whirl of far from agreeable reflections. What did he want her to do? Was he reproaching her, or making fun of her most sacred sentiments?

"Oh, good heavens!" she exclaimed, completely losing her composure. "I wish we were at home."

"You mustn't misunderstand me, Fräulein," he began again. "I am not a saint. I am fully acquainted with the weaknesses and failings of human nature. I am only offering you a word of counsel, for which you will one day be grateful to me. Principles count for something, and in after-life, if we meet again, you will, it is to be hoped, have no reason to be ashamed of the acquaintance made in your youth."

"Ashamed," thought Lilly. "I ought to feel ashamed of myself now."

She felt all at once that it had been fast, undignified, almost common of her to have proposed this morning walk. Before it had not seemed wrong, why did it now suddenly seem so awful?

The chimes still sent forth their melody; the sun still spun a network of gold around them. She saw nothing, heard nothing, so deeply hurt and ashamed was she. She would have preferred to run away there and then, but dared not stir a finger.

He for his part no longer seemed a person in need of sympathy and consolation, but very self-satisfied and proud of what he had done. He removed a blackberry stuck in the lattice-work of the seat, and put it in his mouth.

"It would be a pity to get our clothes in a mess," he said, as he crunched the seeds slowly between his teeth.

Lilly grew more composed and stooped to pick up the bag.

"What is in that?" he inquired. "It looks a heavy thing to carry."

In alarm Lilly clutched it to her heart.

"It's only the door-key," she faltered.

Then they set out homewards.

"If only I could make him change his opinion," she thought, "and think better of me again!"

The only thing that occurred to her was to gather a nosegay of all the most beautiful wild-flowers she could reach.

With downcast eyes, she offered him the nosgay as a parting souvenir instead of that other gift of which she now could not think without feeling a fool.

He thanked her with a courtly bow and a flourish of the bamboo cane with the silver knob, an heirloom, of which he had only just come into possession.

Lilly was too depressed and humiliated to utter a word.

"Doesn't something tell you," he asked, "that we shall meet again sometime in the future?"

She turned aside; it was all she could do to suppress the tears that rose to her eyes.

"If we do," he went on, "I hope I shall prove to you what incessant work and unwavering loyalty to one's convictions can accomplish, even without money."

His voice now vibrated with gleeful self-confidence and importance.

It seemed almost as if, in reducing her to a state of insignificance and despair, he had imbibed something of her former gay courage. When, however, they drew near the old market-place, he became exceedingly uneasy again, as he looked up and down the streets. They were very full now, he remarked; it would be better if they parted here, and pursued their way home by different roads.

He said "pursued," to show that his studies in German literature had not entirely been wasted.

A few days later he left on his travels. The atmosphere was long heavy with the odour of the garlic in the sausage with which Frau Redlich had flavoured her son's soup at parting.

Poor Lilly crouched behind the window curtains with a sore heart, and wished that she had never set eyes on him.

One grey, hazy October morning, when winter's approach was tempered by a muggy warmth, a wonderful thing happened. Frau Asmussen's runaway daughters returned.

Without giving a hint of their coming beforehand, they suddenly appeared in the library, gave Lilly an astonished stare, and asked her to pay their cab as they had no change. Lilly's heart beat with excitement. Directly she saw the two imposing figures of the girls, who, though somewhat travel-stained and jaded, victoriously took possession of the field, she had no doubt who they were. She gave a scared glance at their pretty little snub-nosed faces, out of which their bright grey eyes looked inquiringly from the door of the back room to the door behind which the broom of welcome stood. Its hour had now come, and Lilly ran out in a panic to escape the painful scene that would inevitably follow on the opening of Frau Asmussen's door.

She gathered up from the floor of the cab two faded bouquets of stephanotis, a tartan shawl rolled up in a hold-all, from which two bizarre umbrella-handles, topped with blue glass balls, projected in company with two soiled embroidered cushions and a flask. Besides these, there were a tin box of acid drops without a cover, a cardboard box falling to pieces, and disclosing not only hats, but such miscellaneous articles as a comb and pieces of bread-and-butter.

Lilly, with the things in her arms, paused in the entrance, listening in terror for the sound of cries. But all was quiet, and when she ventured into the room she saw mother and daughters locked in each other's arms, hugging and kissing.

As there was no time before the midday meal to kill the fatted calf, in addition to the ordinary cabbage a huge pile of cakes from the confectioner's was provided as a second course. The daughters helped themselves to these before the meal began, laying them aside for a rainy day, Frau Asmussen beamed with maternal tenderness and pride.

"Well, did I exaggerate?" she asked Lilly. "Aren't they a splendid pair? Isn't it a wonder that I could do without them for so long? But I mustn't be too greedy; I am only thankful to get as much of them as I do, for I know their filial hearts are torn between their father and me. They cannot bear to pain either of us by absenting themselves," And she seized and patted the hands of the girls sitting on either side of her, and all three exchanged looks of rapturous affection.

The absent husband and father was also touchingly alluded to. The girls said that the lively, talented darling was on the point of giving up his business to manage vast estates in south Russia, where he had been urgently summoned. Later, in a gloomier hour, Frau Asmussen interpreted this announcement as meaning that the spotted scoundrel had to hide himself in the fastnesses of Odessa till the air cleared, owing to some shady transactions of his about bonds.

At first, to Lilly's unpractised eyes, the two home-flown birds appeared as like as two sparrows. Both of them were pert, quarrelsome, fickle, and flirtatious. After a time she learned to distinguish between them. Lona, the elder, she discovered to be the best-looking in a coarse, barmaidish sort of way. Her hard commercial character was also the stronger. She led Mi, who set up for being a wit, by the nose. For the time being their attitude towards Lilly was one of friendly neutrality. So far she gave them no cause to adopt a hostile line, though hints were dropped that if a certain young lady dared to usurp their position she would be taught her place and war to the knife would follow.

When, however, they had satisfied themselves that Lilly was tractable and inoffensive, they made her the recipient of their confidences, which they poured forth late at night as all three girls sat together on the bed, undressing and brushing each others' hair. They sucked contraband bonbons and discussed different styles of coiffure. Now Lilly, whose mind had hitherto remained pure and innocent, was enlightened on subjects she had never dreamed of. They whispered mysteriously of love intrigues and man-hunting, revealed sexual secrets in a stream of sordid chatter.

What they cared for more than anything, it would seem, was to have their figures admired.

"When I turn my shoulder like this, am I not like a Greek statue?" one would ask.

"Isn't my bust like marble?" was another question.

"If I were not so modest, I should like to let down my night gown and show you my hips. They are divine."

Much more rarely did they challenge Lilly's criticism of their features.

"We know we are good-looking; we've been told so hundreds of times. There can be no doubt about it," they would say.

All the same, when the draughts of a chilly autumn necessitated their throwing scarves over their heads in the house, they did not fail to draw attention to the classic way in which their hair grew on their foreheads, and to the fascinating curve of their profiles.

Sometimes they were even severe critics of themselves.

"We haven't fine eyes, we know--yours, for instance, are, strictly speaking, finer. But if you were to make eyes at anyone it wouldn't have any effect, whereas if we so much as cast a sidelong glance out of the corner of ours, the men are after us like lightning."

Their small cat's eyes would sparkle with satisfaction in their sense of limitless sway and triumph over the weaknesses of masculine strength.

The advice they generously gave Lilly was summed up in the phrase: "Go as far as you like, so long as you don't make a present of yourself to any man."

They told, without stint, piquant stories, describing exciting and thrilling situations in which they themselves had been true to this motto. There was patent in everything they said a strong vein of coarse sensuality. Once, when one of them remarked, "I should like to be a Queen of the Bees, but have no children," the other, whose temperament appeared to be more given to ethical contemplation, quickly retorted, "I would rather be a nun, only with no morals."

She pursued the topic, shocking Lilly's pious reverence with Boccaccio-like details. In spite of their latitude of thought, all their hopes and dreams were really centred on marriage. Marriage, the speediest and most advantageous possible, appeared to them in the light of a career and salvation from all earthly troubles, the consummation of all heavenly bliss. That was to say, the bridegroom must be old, he must be rich, and he must be a fool.

They demanded this triple qualification of fate. In the same way as others invested their intended husband with a halo of all the virtues, these maidens revelled in depicting his infirmities, and showing him as the miserable dupe of their abounding power and superior strategy.

They were not always at one on the point as to how this valuable acquisition so indispensable to their happiness was to be obtained, and a favourite bone of contention between them was the question of whether it was expedient or not to compromise oneself before marriage.

Lona, whose daring in dealing with problems of conduct knew no bounds, was of opinion that it was expedient. Mi, who was more cautious and liked to feel her ground, took the opposite view.

"If you knew what men are as well as I do," Lona snapped at her sister, "you'd know that the best way to get hold of them is to make them afraid.... Let them sin, and then make their sin a halter to hang them with. Then you've got them fast."

Mi ventured to wonder that Lona had not tried to put the theory into practice; if she had she would certainly long ago have----

Here she discreetly came to a pause, for her sister's fingers looked like scratching.

And, in fact, only eight days after their return, these two did come to blows, and the air was thick with flying hair-pads and petticoat-strings. Mi emerged from the fray with a wound, which Lilly spent the night in bathing with vinegar and water.

The cause of the quarrel was a "swell" who had followed them during their afternoon walk, and who, according to Mi's account, had been put off from making further advances by her sister's discouraging reception of him.

Lona maintained that it was a dangerous principle to take up with "swells," while Mi asserted that he might, at any rate, have been good enough for a husband.

The chief and all-engrossing occupation of their daily routine was parading the streets and getting spoken to by men. Lilly's fears that they might take the reins of management into their own hands she soon discovered were groundless. They lay in bed till nine, took two hours to dress, and then started for their morning walk, to take stock of the garrison officers who at this time were promenading the town in groups.

The first half of the day being thus devoted to the military, the second half was given up to civilians. Afternoon coffee was, as a matter of course, ordered and partaken of at Frangipani's, where a handful of lieutenants joined city magnates and young barristers at chess or bridge, and where perhaps a solitary schoolmaster, priding himself on his smartness, would put in an appearance and attempt to cut a dash with the rest.

After an hour spent in devouring all sorts of sweets came the twilight stroll, very favourable for making chance acquaintances, and serving as a subject of conversation afterwards in the house.

It cannot truthfully be stated that Frau Asmussen had given this mode of life her sympathy and blessing. It was scarcely likely, considering that the first spell of seraphic calm that succeeded the homecoming of her prodigal daughters had given place to mutterings of a storm, and the storm itself had soon burst. Rows took place in rapid succession and became such a matter of course that Lilly, who had at first wept and howled with the combatants, began to accept them as part of the normal family life. Abusive epithets of extraordinary vigour flew hither and thither, boxes on the ear resounded through the library, and even the broom, the existence of which at first had been ignored, was now introduced into its limited sphere of activity.

Not till the evening, when Frau Asmussen's soothing medicine claimed her attention, was peace restored. The sisters were now at liberty to take more walks, only their sense of propriety forbade them to go out at so late an hour.

"Anyone who met us now would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then it would be all up with marrying."

Indeed, it was hardly credible how many were the rules and restrictions by which these young ladies ordered their apparently unlicensed method of life.

You might be kissed, but on no account must you return kisses. Men might address you by your Christian name and call you "du" in conversation, but to write in the same familiar strain would be an unpardonable insult. You would allow a man to pay for your coffee and cakes, but not for your bread-and-butter. A stranger might press your foot under the table, but should he squeeze your hand you must instantly rise, and so forth.

Lilly had not the slightest comprehension what all these pros and cons meant. Man in the abstract for her, up till now, had been merely a part of existence that had no separate individuality--that passed her in the streets without attracting her notice in the least. The only men she had admired were those who existed in her dreams, in her novels, and imagination. The creature that stared at her from the pavement, that came to get books and found ridiculous excuses for starting conversations with her, that held aside the baize curtain at the church door for her to go out, that smiled over the counter in shops--this creature was something stupid, contemptible, scarcely tolerable, to whom she was utterly indifferent, and to give a thought to whom would be degrading.

She was now to learn that a girl could exist solely for the sake of that gross, coarse thing called "man," that she could think of nothing but him from the moment she got up till the time she went to bed, as if she were created for him, and must put him before her work and faith and God.

Though Lilly knew that she was far above being influenced by the two girls' example and precepts, she could not help feeling a slight curiosity awake within her to learn more of what these creatures were like who caused such a flutter in the dovecot of feminine emotions, whose approval was so keenly to be sought, and whose coldness meant absolute annihilation.

A nervous dread began to torment her about that unknown vortex of wickedness outside, from which dirt was now brought every day and laid at her threshold, and about the timid curiosity that it aroused within her. Whether she would or not, her thoughts were always recurring to the panorama of pictures, painted in vivid poisonous colours and unrolled before her nightly by the two degenerate sisters. It was quite a relief when the hot friendship, after a month's duration, began to cool.

The coolness was caused by an unaccountable deficit, which occurred not once, but many times, in the cash-box, and became a standing mystery. Lilly, in a fever, added up the figures. She counted every pfennig over and over again; at last she was forced to conclude that someone had taken advantage of her absence for a moment to open the drawer and dip into the cash-box.

She knew that she would be accused of the theft when it was discovered, so, in order to save herself, she took the key of the drawer with her when she left the room, as if by accident. She repeated the ruse several times till she was certain that she was on the right track, by the change of manner in the girls, who regarded her with increasing scorn and displeasure.

At last they could no longer contain themselves for wrath and disappointment. Did she, miserable interloper, imagine that she was mistress of the business? they burst forth. She should have both books and keys taken out of her hands if they chose. In her terror, Lilly ran to their mother, and threatened to leave the house on the spot if she was not allowed to have a free hand in the control of the shop as hitherto.

Frau Asmussen, knowing too well her daughters' character, took Lilly's part and the storm blew over. The girls resumed their intimacy with Lilly, and again confided to her the secret depths of their soul. Did she think that they wanted money to spend on ices and meringues at Frangipani's? She was very mistaken. They were cute enough to lay up for the future. It was impossible to stay for ever with the old tippler, especially as the place had turned out a barren wilderness as far as the prospect of making a good match was concerned. How could Lilly, with her petty ambitions, have any conception of theirs, and of what they suffered, struggling against the temptations of meringues and chocolate cakes at the confectioner's? They had been saving up for a long time for another journey. They were literally starving themselves for this praiseworthy object.

Lilly remained unmoved. She refused to be wheedled or talked over again, and black looks were turned on her. They began to regard her with an offended air of hauteur without speaking, and approaching events were to fan their smouldering wrath into a blaze.

It was in the twilight of a rainy November day. Every roof dripped, and grey drops slid down the iron railings of the terrace in endless succession to splash into the pools on the pavement below.

It was poor sport to watch them, but there seemed nothing better to be done.

Then the door opened--the bell ringing loudly--and a fair, dapper little man came in, with his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled low over his eyes. He stamped and shook the raindrops off the brim of his hat. His glossy, fair hair shone like satin, and he brought into the atmosphere an aroma of Russia leather and Parma violets. He glanced at Lilly with narrow, arrogant eyes, feigning disillusionment, said good-evening brusquely, and then stared beyond her, as if he awaited a greeting from someone behind the book-shelves.

Lilly asked him what he wanted.

"Ah, I suppose you are the young lady in charge of the library?" he answered, and seemed to find in her existence a subject for careless levity.

Lilly assented, and he exclaimed, "Capital! That's capital!" and from under his blinking light-lashed lids scintillated a thousand little shafts of merriment.

Lilly next asked what book he wanted.

"Do you know, my much-respected and learned young lady, I am not exactly at home in German literature and the other sciences, but since yesterday evening I have been fired with a fabulous, positively student-like thirst for culture. Now, if you would give me your valuable assistance----"

He stopped suddenly, stuck an eyeglass in his eye, looked her up and down, first from the left side, then from the right, as one judges the points of a high-stepping horse before purchase; then he murmured, "Damn!" and asked her to light up.

There was no reason why Lilly should not obey, as it was so dark she couldn't read the numbers on the backs of the books.

As she stretched up to lift the shade from the hanging lamp, disclosing the splendour of her outline, he said "Damn" a second time. When the light shone on her and she looked at him with a questioning shyness in her enigmatic eyes--those "Lilly eyes," whose brilliancy had so long been under eclipse--he sank, quite overcome, on to the chair set for customers, folded his hands and asked to be forgiven.

A hot feeling of resentment burned in Lilly: so contemptible was her position in the eyes of this young aristocrat--the first who had found his way here during a year and a half--that she was not deemed worthy of being treated with ordinary courtesy.

"Unless you wish to borrow a book, sir," she said with a lofty air, "I must ask you to leave this room."

"A book? What?" he repeated, outraged. "One solitary book, one beastly book? No, thank you. Every five minutes I am allowed to stay here, I will take out new books, a whole shelf--a whole case of books, if you like; but on condition that I may return them to-morrow. I will make a contract with a van proprietor to cart the cases of books backwards and forwards. But wait a moment! Haven't you to plank down a three mark deposit if you take out a book?"

Lilly, with a stare of astonishment, said "Yes."

"Well, as I don't happen to have that amount with me just now, you must keep me as a deposit. You see, I give myself up as a sort of prisoner. Awkward for both of us--eh? But what's to be done?"

Lilly could not help being amused, in spite of herself. She laughed out loud.

"Ah! now she has forgiven me!" he exclaimed in triumph. "Her gracious young majesty smiles on me. Now let us chat together like real friends. Just look at me a moment, my Fräulein. Do I appear to you like a fellow who reads much? The only books I care about are Schlicht's, Roda-Roda's, and Winterfeld's authors who are supposed to know the humours of military life. My object in coming here is not books. May I take you into my confidence?"

"If you must, yes," stammered Lilly, her eyes dazzled by the glint of gold from under the sleeve of his tan overcoat. It was a revelation to her that men wore gold bangles.

"I like to change into mufti of an evening," he went on; "by day, you know, I wear uniform ... but it won't be for much longer. In a week or two I shall be at a loose end. Debts ... I say, you don't know what debts are? Happy you! Debts are the bitter dregs in the lemonade of human existence, and this lemonade isn't oversweet at the best. But what was I going to say? Oh, I know! Of an evening I play the part of a Harum al Raschid in order to win the favour of the common herd, by paying a little attention to the daughters of the people. Do you understand me? Yesterday, sauntering in a remote wilderness of wild hedges and new villas, I followed up two young women, ogling over their shoulders, and swinging their skirts, behaving, in fact, as all nice, well-brought-up girls are wont to do----"

"I do not care to continue this conversation," said Lilly, colouring deeply from shame.

"Why not? You, my dear Fräulein, of course, are a perfect lady, and would not descend to anything of the kind. I was only confessing to you in order to gain your absolution."

Instantly Lilly was pacified, and she let him babble on.

"The two young women in question walked in front of me arm-in-arm, but directly I got up to them I slipped between like the sausage between two slices of buttered bread. They became very sociable, and told me that they were the owners of a large circulating library, and intended shortly to open a fancy art business in Berlin, etc. They did not tell me their address, and, as I am ashamed to say that till a few minutes ago I thought they were worth cultivating, I looked up all the circulating libraries in the directory. I find that there are only three besides the leading bookshops, so I have been to two, and now I am at the third. I swear the future proprietresses of the fancy art business may go to the deuce, as far as I am concerned."

Lilly could not suppress a feeling of rising scorn and malicious joy, but she took care not to betray the whereabouts of the two sisters.

Then, to show how completely in the presence of her majestic beauty his desire for a vulgar flirtation had evaporated, he formally introduced himself.

"I am Lieutenant von Prell," he said, "soon to be ex-Lieutenant von Prell!"

She gave him an inquiring glance, and he added:

"As I hinted to you just now, Fräulein, my days in the regiment are numbered. This umbrella, which now serves one purpose only, will probably before long be held over my head as a sunshade."

Did he not care for an officer's life any longer? Lilly asked.

"I don't know that there's any kind of life that I couldn't enjoy," he answered, with mirth dancing in his light-grey eyes; "but the paternal exchequer is low, and my pay as a slave in the army is about sufficient to keep me in radishes, and even radishes are dear at Christmas. The best thing I can do is to charter an old herring-cask and get myself pickled. If you can tell me where one is to be got cheap, I'll pay the damage."

Lilly laughed gaily in his face, and he laughed with her, putting his arms akimbo and emitting a thin, soft giggle in an almost inaudible treble, which nevertheless convulsed his too spare figure with hilarious merriment.

They sat down opposite each other, like two good comrades, on either side of the counter; and Lilly devoutly wished this hour could last for ever.

When a maid-servant came in to change a novel for her mistress, he settled himself for a stay by examining the titles of the books and acting as if he were perfectly at home. He held open the door for the little maid-servant when she went out, as if she were a duchess.

Lilly grew more and more amused, and couldn't restrain her laughter.

"Before another subscriber comes in, you must go," she said, "or people will talk."

"Why? let them talk!"

But Lilly was firm, and he began to plead earnestly with her.

"You know, gracious Fräulein, I enjoy the reputation of having no moral sense whatever. I want you to be my support and anchor through life, at any rate till the door opens next time. While I sit here I am safe from playing the fool, and this fact I am sure must be cheering to your benevolent heart."

So it was agreed that he might stay till the bell went again.

He sat back comfortably in his chair, and regarded Lilly with an air of possession.

"All earthly troubles can be traced to talking too much," he began. "If Columbus had kept the secret of the discovery of America to himself, no unpleasantness would have arisen. I intend to be cleverer, and to keep my discovery a sacred family secret between you and me. It would be nuts to other fellows. But let them stick to twilight moths, like the two future art-shop proprietresses to whom I am indebted for my budding friendship with you."

The sisters had been forgotten by Lilly. It was about their time for coming in. What if they were to open the door at this minute!

The bell tinkled. It was not they, however, but an old maid who devoured every day a volume full of strong "love interest," and came in the evening for more.

The volatile lieutenant remembered his compact. He started up from his seat and composed himself to speak with a business-like air:

"Will you kindly let me have the last new book of----" he hesitated, evidently at a loss to think of the name of a popular German author; then, after racking his brain a moment, he added, "by Gerstäcker?"

Lilly fetched him this newest of new novels, bearing the date 1849, and he counted out his three marks deposit, made an exaggerated bow, and took his leave with little devils dancing between his light lashes.

A little later the sisters came in. They glanced suspiciously at Lilly's flushed cheeks, and passed on without saying anything.

Nothing happened for the greater part of the next day, but Lilly was full of excited premonitions, like a child before its birthday. She felt on the threshold of new experiences. She was scarcely surprised when at last the door opened and two slim and elegant youths entered. They lisped "Good-evening," and asked her to recommend them a book to read, in a tone of mingled diffidence and self-assurance, while they measured her with the stare of expert judges.

Lilly's limbs grew numb, as they usually did, when she was conscious of being observed and admired. Yet she retained her dignified manner, and when the visitors had selected their trash without looking at it, and attempted to engage her in jocular converse, she drew herself up and took refuge behind the bookcase L to N, which was her shelter when she sat in the window busy with her accounts and ledgers.

The young gentlemen, after a whispered consultation, took their departure in silence.

He had betrayed her then--her lively new comrade. And henceforward Frau Asmussen's shabby library became the crowded resort of tall, slender young men of fashion, all animated by a passion for reading and a desire to exchange one trumpery old novel after another.

Only a few dared come in uniform, but they did not shrink from signing their names in full in the subscribers' book, which took on the appearance of a veritable Almanach de Gotha.

Some assumed the cloak of business-like severity, others came in careless certainty of victory. One began love-making on the spot, another had the impertinence to bandy risqué jests over the counter, the most ingenuous of them went the length of asking on what day he was to be honoured by a visit.

Lilly soon saw that there was nothing particularly injurious or flattering to her in these attentions. She chatted innocently with those who treated her politely, took no notice of the impertinent, and directly a conversation seemed to be drawing out to too great a length, she retired behind the bookcase L to N.

It did not take the Asmussen sisters many days to discover the aristocratic intruders. Their jealous fury exceeded all the bounds of decency. Every possible insult was hurled at Lilly, and she was abused like a pickpocket. Unheard-of expletives were poured on her head in a filthy stream.

The daughters demanded of their mother that Lilly should resign her place at the counter to them. When this concession was refused, they resorted to physical violence. Frau Asmussen came to Lilly's rescue in her extremity. The broom rained heavy blows on the white night-jackets of the furious mænads, and drove them into the back parlour, where the battle ended in torrents of tears. But hostilities continued, and, if a curb was put on emotions during the hours the library was open to subscribers, all the more unbridled was their rancour in the evening. Lilly's life became a hell on earth. Her soul grew encrusted with a hardness and bitterness that filled her with both dismay and satisfaction. Only at night, when she buried her face in the pillow, did her defiance melt and her wretchedness find relief in silent weeping.

The merry comrade with the light eyelashes, who had caused the whole uproar, kept away. Not till a fortnight after his first visit did he turn up again. He came in with rather a halting gait, and his eyes were swollen and watery.

"These are picotees or clove carnations," he said, undoing a tissue paper parcel in his hand, "which last longer than any parting pangs."

The sight of him brought a little comfort to Lilly, and she took the bouquet as if it was something to which she had a right. Then she reproached him for not having held his tongue.

"Didn't I tell you," he explained serenely, "that I haven't a vestige of moral sense?"

He went on to tell her that he had finally left the regiment and been fêted by his fellow officers at a farewell dinner, and now there was nothing to be done but to take his passage somewhere. The question was, where? "Still, we needn't bother our heads about that yet," he went on; "brilliant folks such as you and myself are bound to have brilliant careers. My path in life will lead me by cool streams of champagne through streets paved with pâté de fois gras. That is Kismet, and should it end in a fruit farm in Louisiana, I don't mind. Something new is always interesting. In the meantime the old colonel is dead nuts on me, and wants me on his estate as a sort of Fritz Triddelfitz."

He laughed his curious, almost inaudible laugh, which convulsed his slight form.

Lilly asked who "the old colonel" was.

That she shouldn't know seemed to him inconceivable.

"Is it possible that you live in this world and have never heard of the old colonel?" he asked. "The old colonel is the almighty; the old colonel decides what is good and what is evil on this earth; he ruins one man and pays another's debts with equal ease. He is the great receptacle for all our virtues and all our sins. Above all, the old colonel is eternally a boy. If he were to see you he would say, 'Come along, little girl. I am a hoary-headed old monster, but I want you'; and then your courage will only permit of your saying, 'When do you want me, your high and mightiness?' You see, my dear child, that is the old colonel. They have put him on your track long ago, and if he finds his way here, Lord have mercy on you! It will be all up then with my beautiful young queen."

"But I still don't know who the old colonel is," interjected Lilly, feeling a little uncomfortable at his mysterious prognostications.

"Then don't ask," he answered, and held out his freckled hand in farewell. "It's really a pity," he added, blinking at her through his half-closed light eyelashes with tender compassion. "We might have given history another famous pair of lovers."

He leant over the counter. "As I am a man totally devoid of any moral sense, may I borrow a kiss before I go?"

Lilly laughed and held up her mouth in reply.

He kissed her, and then dragged himself stiffly to the door.

"I can't run," he said. "Last night's banquet has made me a bit lazy," and he was gone.

The same feeling of uneasiness, which Lilly had felt after her lively comrade's first visit, took possession of her again. She felt as if someone was playfully lashing her with switches. Her anxiety caused her torment mingled with pleasure. It was as if behind a closed golden door her unknown fate crouched ready to spring on her--its prey.

The midday December sunlight made the hilt of a sword and the buttons of a uniform glitter in the street outside.

"Some one fresh," Lilly thought, for the upright bull-necked figure of the man clanking up the terrace steps was unfamiliar to her.

An imperious stamping before the door, and the bell sounded more sharply than usual. No, she had not seen this person before. Here was no frivolous young lieutenant, nor one of the maturer officers, who were on their dignity till the first shy smile told them how far they might go. Here was a piercing falcon eye, set in a circle of crow's-feet, an aquiline high-bred nose, prominent cheek-bones with a fixed red colour; a small hard firmly closed mouth, which smiled with cynical benevolence under a bristling moustache, a chin--highly polished from shaving--retreating in two baggy folds behind a high military collar.

She saw these details with a heart throbbing so violently that she had to lean against a bookcase for support.

"This must be what I have been feeling so frightened about," she said to herself. "This is the dreadful old colonel."

He raised his hand to his cap in careless salute without taking it off.

"Colonel von Mertzbach," he said in a voice the harsh sound of which suggested unlimited authority and power. "I must speak to you for a few minutes, my Fräulein. There are reasons that compel me to make your acquaintance."

Lilly felt that she was to be subjected to a humiliating cross-examination, which she was not in the least bound to tolerate. But never in her life had she seemed to herself so utterly defenceless as at this moment. She was standing before a judge who had taken on himself the right to pardon or condemn her according to his pleasure.

She murmured something like consent with trembling lips.

"You appear to be a most dangerous young woman," he said. "You have turned the heads of all my staff; that is to say, the juniors among them. They are simply crazy about you."

"I don't understand your meaning," answered Lilly, gathering courage as well as she could.

"Humph!" he ejaculated, and glued his eyeglass into his eye, to look her up and down as far as the point where her figure was cut in two by the counter. "Humph!" he repeated. Then he continued: "In these cases it is easy enough to play the innocent. Nevertheless, I can fully sympathise with my young men. In their place I should probably have done the same. But it looks, Fräulein, as if, in spite of your youth and inexperience, you have a fair share of feminine wiles at your command, otherwise you would scarcely have drawn these somewhat fastidious young men here so often with that immaculately reserved manner of yours; but, after all, perhaps it's the manner that's done it."

Tears rose to Lilly's eyes. She could easily have flung back his insults, but the man's personality mastered her. She searched in vain for words to oppose him; his piercing eyes seemed to go through and through her and deprive her of speech; his cynical smile held her in thrall. So she merely sat down and cried. He on his side rose and came nearer the counter.

"How much you have reason to feel hurt, Fräulein, in your amour propre, I cannot say. It's not my intention to make you cry. On the contrary, I want you as calmly as possible to give me a little information about yourself. It may be of importance to your future."

Lilly felt the necessity of pulling herself together, because this man desired it.

She wiped her eyes and looked at him penitently, sniffling a little as she used to do when a child after being scolded.

He inquired her name, her antecedents, whether she had a father and a mother, what school she had been at, and what she was doing there. On her mentioning her guardian's name a mocking smile flitted over his face.

"I am acquainted with that gentleman's philosophy of life," he said. "You are, then, utterly alone in the world?"

Lilly said "Yes."

"And you would not object to have a helping-hand extended to you by someone to whom you could turn in time of trouble?"

Lilly did not think there was any likelihood of such a person turning up.

"I will think it over," he said, frowning. "Anyhow, you cannot stay for ever in this hole. Do they treat you well?"

"Pretty well," Lilly answered; and half laughing, half crying, she added, "I don't get enough to eat, and sometimes I am----" she was going to say thrashed, but stopped in shame, and said "punished," which hardly stated the case.

The colonel burst into a laugh, which sounded like the cracking of a whip.

"Greatly to your credit to be able to take a humorous view of the matter," he said, and he rose to go. "I have ascertained what I wanted to know, Fräulein. My young men may continue to come here as much as they like. In the whole town they could not find more irreproachable society. Should any of them forget themselves, and not treat you with proper respect, just communicate with me. But I am sure there will be no necessity. I wish you good-day, my Fräulein."

Lilly looked after him, and watched the heavy cavalry swagger with which he crossed the paved terrace. The winter sun seemed to be shining with the sole object of illuminating his figure and dancing on his accoutrements.

He looked back at her window when he reached the street, and saluted courteously, giving her as he did so a searching, almost threatening, glance from beneath his knitted brows. Then he vanished.

Lilly's mind was now besieged by the following questions: "What did it mean? What did they want her to do? Why couldn't they leave her in peace?" She would have liked to cry and lament and be pitied. But, deep down, there was a festive note, almost a note of vanity in her feelings. She congratulated herself on her new hopes. Had he meant when he asked her if she would like a helping hand, a prop and stay in trouble, that he would be that prop and stay? It soothed and did her heart good to think of it. Perhaps he was to be the guide and protector so bitterly needed in her stumbling young life? He might perhaps relieve Herr Pieper, who didn't trouble himself about her, of his guardianship. Perhaps he wanted to adopt her himself? There was no knowing. If only his eyes hadn't pierced like daggers, if he hadn't laughed so mockingly and given her that evil look at the last! And then she remembered the warning of her lively comrade: "If he finds his way here, the Lord have mercy on you."

What nonsense! As if anything could happen to her behind her counter, of which no one had ever dared to raise the flap and come on the other side; and how safe she was behind the bookcase L to N, where she couldn't even be seen.

The visit of their colonel to the library seemed to have damped his young men's ardour; in spite of the permission given them, perhaps because of it, none of them put in an appearance during the next few days. Lilly asked herself if this was a sign of the protection he had promised to exercise over her. But something was the matter with her; she scarcely knew what.

One morning, a week later, the younger of the sisters, who, in expectation of some love-letter, kept watch for the postman, threw an envelope on the floor at Lilly's feet, with the exclamation, "A 'coronet' for you, you officers' hack!"

This, coming from the sisters, was quite a mild form of address.

Lilly opened her letter and read the following:

"My Fräulein,

"Will you allow me on the strength of our recent interview to make the following suggestion? I want a private secretary and reader. Are you open to accept the post? As I am not a married man, you could not of course reside in my house, but I would undertake to find a home for you in a respectable and suitable family. I have consulted your guardian, and the plan has his approval.

"Yours truly,

"Von Mertzbach.

"Colonel commanding the ---- Regiment of Uhlans."

Ah, here it was at last! Happiness--happiness standing on the other side of the snowy street, beckoning and calling to her: "Come out of your vault, out into the world. I will show you life, and something new." "Something new is always interesting;" had not her lively comrade said so?

Then she pictured herself seated at the colonel's big writing-table. The colonel dictated to her, and all the time his eyes pierced her through and through, and searched, always searched, and her pen fell from her hand. She wanted to jump up and run away, but she could not; his eyes held her in thrall.

She sat down and wrote a correct little note declining the offer. Though she appreciated the honour he did her, she felt she was not qualified for so onerous a post, and that it would be wiser to remain in her present position, which, though not altogether happy, was one of which she was capable of discharging the duties. She signed herself, "Yours in grateful esteem, Lilly Czepanek."

So that was over. Now things must go on in their old groove, peacefully, if the wicked sisters would allow peace.

Christmas was approaching, but it cannot truthfully be said that the preparations for the festival at Frau Asmussen's were marked by much rejoicing and goodwill. She grumbled at the bad times, and the ridiculous custom of giving all the world presents. Her daughters argued shrilly, and at every opportunity, the question as to whether refined and superior girls like themselves were called upon to gather round a Christmas tree in the company of common minxes! There were none of those treasured little mysteries on foot, which at such a time bring joy and gladness into even the saddest and most poverty-stricken of homes.

Lilly knitted her mother a brown woollen cross-over, bought her two picture puzzles and a wooden flower vase--china being forbidden--and sent them with a box of chocolates to the lunatic asylum.

Her thoughts just now often wandered from her mother to her father, who had now absented himself for more than four and a half years, and had given no sign of his existence.

In her loneliness Lilly clung to a hope of his reappearance. On Christmas Eve, between six and seven, he would be sure to come in, his great-coat covered with snow, and embrace her with the demonstrative affection peculiar to him. She could almost smell the perfume from his burnished locks. Or, if he didn't come himself, he would send a messenger-boy with a preliminary greeting and a mysterious parcel full of costly silks. And a winter hat, too; for that was what she wanted more than anything.

When the others had gone to bed she took from the bottom of her trunk the score of "The Song of Songs," and hummed over to herself her favourite airs. There were many passages in it that she could never sing without tears. In these days she was constantly in tears, notwithstanding that there was all the time a hesitating earnest of happiness dawning faintly on her horizon.

It was an exquisite vague sense of being lifted up, a growing of wings, a listening in wonder to inner voices, which sounded as familiar and gentle as a mother's, yet strangely prophetic and solemn.

Sometimes she found herself on her knees, not praying but dreaming, with arms outstretched and fascinated eyes lifted to the lamp, as if from that region of light the foreshadowed miracle was to come.

Thus she celebrated her Christmas feast in the sanctuary of her soul, and the actual Christmas Eve drew nearer and nearer.

At the last minute, with groans and moans, a few presents were mustered. Lona and Mi ran about wildly from shop to shop making their purchases. They even bestowed a few civil words on Lilly, who recognised their kindness by looking the other way when Lona hovered round the cash-box. She knew exactly how much, or rather how little, was inside, and that if there was anything missing it wouldn't ruin her to replace it out of her own purse.

Before supper she was called into the back parlour, where the Christmas tree stood alight on the table--apparently shy of itself.

The sisters shook hands with Lilly, and Frau Asmussen, sitting already over her medicinal glass, delivered a few platitudes on the significance of Christmas, and expressed her regret at not being able to spend it with her excellent husband. Then everyone apologised because the presents were not handsomer. At first it was the feeling that you were expected to give something, that it was your duty to give, which had disgusted these generous souls who thought giving should be spontaneous; then, when they had got over this feeling, it was too late to buy anything worth having, not that the red check overall apron wasn't decent enough, and the penwiper was not so bad either--considering business was slow.

"I am ashamed to say I have nothing at all to give," Lilly answered. But what she was most ashamed of was that she was once more on friendly terms with the Asmussen sisters.

"I have no strength of character, not a scrap," she told herself as she crunched a piece of marzipan, which the elder and worst of the sisters had given her.

The library bell rang loudly, and a man, loaded with parcels, was asking if Fräulein Czepanek lived there.

Lilly's heart bounded. "From papa--it must be from papa!" she murmured in jubilation.

For a few minutes she scarcely dared trust herself to touch the parcels. She skipped round them aimlessly tidying her hair. Only on the sisters' exhortation did she undo the strings. With what envious eyes the two girls looked on!

Such beautiful things came to light. A faced-cloth dress, lace-trimmed, a delicate blue foulard, a pink silk petticoat, shoes of glossy patent leather and tan suède, six pairs of gloves, three pair elbow-length, all sorts of jabots and cravats, a fichu of Brussels lace to wear with Empire frocks, pocket-books, stationery, bonbons--more and still more things; even the sorely needed winter hat was included, a soft fluffy grey beaver in a picture-shape, that always had suited her noble style of features. It was trimmed with ribbon and ostrich feathers.

Altogether it was quite a trousseau.

The faces of the two sisters grew longer and longer. Lilly herself ceased to be delighted. She began rummaging in wild anxiety through the boxes for a clue to the sender, a letter or card. She had long ago abandoned the idea of her father having come back to heap on her such generous gifts. Yet an instinct of self-preservation made her keep up the deception.

At last, at the bottom of the glove-box, she found a card. She ran away to read it in the library. Under the hanging lamp she scanned, blanching with fright, the visiting-card of "Baron von Mertzbach, Colonel in Command of the ---- Regiment of Uhlans." Beneath his name he had written in the thick stiff handwriting she knew already, "With good wishes to his lonely little friend from his own lonely hearth."

She went back to the parlour where the sisters, green with envy, received her with a chilly smile, while Frau Asmussen muttered enigmatical phrases over her steaming glass.

"They really are from papa," Lilly said, and wondered why her own voice sounded so toneless.

The Asmussen sisters laughed jeeringly, and began putting the things away in the boxes.

Lilly held in her hand a little china bonbon box, filled to the brim with curious, rich-looking and fragrant-smelling sweets. She glanced from one sister to the other, uncertain as to whether she might dare offer them some of the sweets. She was afraid they might refuse with an abusive epithet, so she let fall the lid, which represented a cupid in a garland of roses, and buried the bonbonnière in the depths of one of the boxes. Then she crept away to bed in her corner and cried bitterly.

The sisters went on whispering together for a long time. They built the boxes up into a tower on the library counter, and then haughtily made a détour so as not to come in contact with them.

The next morning Lilly called a passing messenger, and sent back the whole pile of packages to the donor without a word. Afterwards she went to the sisters and said:

"It wasn't true what I told you last night. Papa didn't send the things, and I have returned them."

The two girls, who had intended to make themselves agreeable to her in a malicious sort of way, could not conceal their disappointment.

"I should never have taken her for such a ninny," said the younger.

"She is not so simple as you think," scoffed the elder, true to her character of scenting out ulterior motives, "only very designing. She wants to drive her admirer still more distracted, but she'd better take care she doesn't outwit herself. The stupidest man can soon distinguish between what is genuine and what is put on." As if to illustrate what genuine simplicity was like, Lona drew her petticoat tightly round her limbs with one hand, drew her night-jacket decorously together over her bosom with the other, and, tossing her head, cast a look of withering scorn over her shoulder at Lilly, displaying all the virtuous indignation that exalted natures sometimes betray.

In spite of this, Lilly noticed that the sisters' manner towards her had changed somewhat. She was evidently of more importance to them than she had been before, and they refrained from offending her.

Nothing much happened during the next few days, with the exception of a few of the young officers resuming their visits to the library. They exchanged their books hurriedly, and were extremely correct in their behaviour. None of them seemed inclined now to sit on the counter or on the back of a chair in a free-and-easy attitude.

On New Year's Eve, Lilly was the recipient of a second note. It ran thus:

"My Fräulein,

"You have grossly misconstrued my motives in sending you a small remembrance at Christmas-time. Matters must be cleared up between us. I would rather divulge the plans I have in mind for you verbally. But, owing to my position, I cannot very well call on you again. If you have your future at heart, come and see me to-morrow sometime in the evening. I will expect you up till eight o'clock. I give you my word of honour that you shall return home in safety.

"Yours,

"Mertzbach."

Should she go or not go? The question kept Lilly awake the whole night. If only she could rid herself of that feeling of dread, the fear that robbed her almost of breath at the very thought of him. What might not happen if she stood face to face with him again? She decided not to go, knowing all the time that she would go.

She lived through the day in a kind of stupor. Towards evening she asked Frau Asmussen's leave to go to New Year's Eve Benediction. The two sisters exchanged significant glances, but to-day they were too occupied with their own affairs to pay much attention to Lilly's.

She put on her old felt hat, battered and discoloured by exposure to many a shower, and her winter coat, which was so shrunk it made her look narrow-chested. Pull the sleeves down as she would, nothing could make them reach to her wrists.

If she had thought of the matter at all, she would have thought twice about going so shabbily clad to call at a grand house. But she didn't think. She felt as if she was doing nothing of her own accord. Strange, mysterious powers were pushing her hither and thither, like a pawn on a chessboard. Unseen hands helped her to dress. They loosened the plaits on her neck, unfastened the tight buttons of her coat so that her contracted chest should have room to show its young contour, and painted her cheeks, wan from want of sleep, with a rich glow of excitement and triumph.

Not till she stepped out into the frosty air did she feel properly awake.

"Where do you want to go?" a voice asked within her, "I might go and see St. Joseph," she answered herself.

But she did not go to St. Joseph. She made a wide circuit round St. Ann's, crossed the market-place, where she saw the Asmussen sisters sitting in Frangipani's with two admirers, escaped a gallant follower with difficulty, and then suddenly found herself in front of the latticed shutters of the house where, up four flights of stairs, the whirring sewing-machine had ground the last shred of reason out of her poor, ruined mother's head.

There was a light in the windows of the attic where she had once lived. Probably someone else sat there now, slaving day and night, night and day, at the drudgery of making cheap underclothes. Perhaps one day she too would sit there, regretting bitterly her lost youth, as if it had been a crime.

"If you have your future at heart," he had written.

And now she turned and ran--ran for her life, and didn't stop till she stood on the threshold of a brilliantly lighted house, before which a freezing sentinel with drawn sabre paced up and down, as he kept guard over the most important dignitary of the town.

"Where are you going?" asked the voice again. For answer she sprang up the wide carpeted stairway and ran into a lackey with silver braid on his knee-breeches. Without speaking, he quietly took her umbrella, while a slight malicious smile flitted over his imperturbable countenance.

Softly, white doors flew back before her, lights with rosy shades like magic flowers shed soft radiance, lovely barenecked ladies with diamond tiaras looked down smiling on her from gilded oval frames.

How quiet and beautifully warm it was in these spacious rooms; on that thick soft carpet one might lie down and go to sleep.... If only that feeling of fear would not clutch at her throat, her brain, her temples, gripping them as in a vice.

Another door flew open. Green duskiness lay beyond, like the interior of a dense forest on a summer day, and out of the dusk his figure came towards her, broad, imposing, clanking.... Her hand was taken in his and she was drawn into the green twilight. Dark walls of books rose on all sides, and from somewhere came the flash of deadly weapons, helmets, and coats of mail.

She could not trust herself to look at him. Even after she had been seated some minutes in a high-backed carved oak chair, which projected over her head like a canopy, she had not given him a glance. She heard his voice, the reverberating harshness of which seemed mellowed now to the rolling notes of an organ.

Nothing that she saw, felt, and heard smacked of the earth, yet neither was it heaven nor hell. It was like a terrifying phantasmagoria where human souls floated, vacillating dully between misery and happiness.

At last the sense of the words he was speaking penetrated to her understanding. There was nothing at all unearthly about them; on the contrary, they dealt in a practical way with the return of his Christmas presents, which he still considered hers, and had stored in a cupboard to await her gracious acceptance.

Lilly shook her head with a mechanical smile. She could not find courage to utter a protest.

"And now, my dear child," he began again, "you may ask what induces me, a man getting on in years, to pursue you with all the ardour of a youthful lover?"

When he said "getting on in years," she involuntarily looked up. There he sat, with the light of the green-shaded reading-lamp full upon him, with the orders on his breast giving forth a golden radiance. The silver fringes of his epaulettes quivered at every movement like small snakes. He radiated the same glory as those haloed figures of saints in churches, tricked out in their draperies of gold and brocade.

Lilly's eyes dropped in shame and confusion before so much splendour.

"My object in looking you up that day," he continued, "was to inquire into the cause of a dispute that had arisen among some of my younger officers. It promised to be rather a serious affair, and I was compelled to take steps. I expected to find a little flirty shopgirl, and I found--well, to put it shortly--I found you. You will perhaps go on to ask, 'What of that?' for you cannot yet be aware of what your power is, or rather what your potentialities are, for with you, my dear Fräulein, all is in process of development. I am what is called a judge of women, and I can see in what you are to-day what you may become to-morrow if--and remember a great deal depends on this 'if'--if your development is directed into the right channel. To stay where you are now would simply be your ruin. Have the courage to entrust your fate to me, and I can guarantee all will be well with you."

His tone was calm and paternal, at least so it sounded to Lilly. Feeling a little reassured, and with a hope for her future leaping up within her, she ventured once more to look at him. This time, through the shimmer of gold and silver, she beheld a pair of penetrating glassy eyes fixed on her full of eager inquiry.

Again she became a prey to paralysing terror. She sat speechless and shuddering.

"Whatever I do," she thought to herself, "it will be no good. He will get his way."

"I have a fine old place," he went on: "Lischnitz in West Prussia, not far from the Vistula, where military duties do not allow of my going often. A well-bred middle-aged lady, a Fräulein von Schwertfeger, keeps house for me there. If you paid Lischnitz a visit, I can promise you beforehand that she would welcome you with open arms. Under her chaperonage you would have excellent opportunities of developing into what I foresee you will be in the future. In this way you would be provided for, and I should have the great satisfaction, when I come backwards and forwards, of finding my home brightened by youth and beauty."

He had risen, and in the excitement of conversation walked about the room with short swaggering steps, and at every step his medal and his epaulettes tinkled and jingled like sleigh-bells. At last Lilly heard nothing but this metallic clinking, and ceased to grasp what he was saying.

When he had finished speaking, he paused in front of her, so near that she could smell the scent of the hairwash he used.

She leant back in her chair feeling somehow as if she were going to be bound hand and foot and carried away beyond the reach of help. She knew that she would neither scream nor resist, so completely was she in his power.

"Look at me," he said.

She tried to, she was so obedient, but she could not.

He put his hand under her chin and gave her head a backward tilt, but she kept her eyes almost shut, and saw only the scarlet border of his military coat.

And then she felt herself suddenly begin to sink; the red border went up to the skies ... all round was the buzzing of bees ... and then nothing more.

When she came to herself, there was something wet and cold on her breast, and a woman's print skirt, with a smoky smell, brushed her face.

It was still green twilight. A breastplate hung opposite her, reminding her of a scoured and brightly polished kettle. She felt so comfortable, she didn't want to stir.

A rough, bony hand stroked her forehead and a kindly voice murmured over and over again: "Poor young thing! poor child!"

Lilly, thinking it was time to give a sign of returning consciousness, moved, and the strong hand slid under the back of her neck and propped her up, and the kindly voice asked what she would like to do.

"I want to go home," said Lilly.

"That can't be done this minute," said the voice, "because he gave orders that he must speak to you again before he goes. But take my advice: just say 'Thank you' and 'Good-bye,' and be off as fast as you can. This is no place for a young girl like you."

Lilly sat up and arranged her collar. It was the cook bending over her, with her rugged, weather-beaten, thick-lipped face full of compassion.

She asked Lilly, as she patted her shoulder, what she should bring her as a pick-me-up--egg and wine, or a liqueur.

"Nothing, thank you," Lilly answered. "Let me go home."

"You shall, my dearie, but I must call him in first."

She shuffled to the door, and Lilly reached for her hat, on which she must have beep lying, for it was more out of shape than ever.

"I shall have to get a new one now," and she tried to calculate how much she could afford to give out of her narrow means.

The door opened and he came in, followed by the old cook.

Lilly was no longer frightened.... Everything seemed far, far off--he too. Nothing seemed to matter.

"Now she's ready to be put into a cab," suggested the cook.

"Your presence here is not required any more!" he thundered at her.

The cook ventured to mumble an objection.

"Go!" he roared. And she scuffled out.

Lilly's sensations were now only those of languid fear.

"I wonder what he means to do with me?" she thought. Her own fate scarcely interested her at all.

He paced up and down, the silver spurs on his heels clanking.

"We must have some light," he said. "Clearness is essential to the matter in hand."

He rang for the man-servant who had smiled in that sly, mocking way. The man lighted the jets of the chandelier and retired, with a sidelong inquisitive glance at Lilly--but no smile this time.

She was still sitting on the couch where she had been when she regained consciousness. Her mind seemed a blank as she twirled her old felt hat round and round.

In the brilliant light cast from the ceiling she saw the colonel in all his resplendence, still silently brooding, as he paced up and down.

She could look him quite calmly in the face now. "It's useless to try and defend myself," she thought, "so I don't care what he does."

Next he seized a chair and planted it in front of her, so close that when he sat down his knees nearly touched hers.

"Listen to me, child," he began, his words ringing out clear and incisive, like words of command. "While you lay here in your swoon I was thinking over in the next room very earnestly what's to be done. I came to a decision about your future; but of that later. You, of course, must have observed by this time that my sentiments with regard to you are not exactly paternal. The older I grow the less am I able to understand what so-called paternal feelings are. To cut the matter short, I have conceived a passion for you which astonishes myself.... If I were ten years older--I am fifty-four--I should attribute it to senility. Do you know what that means?"

Lilly shook her head. She could see his face now so clearly that to her dying day she could never have forgotten what it was like.

His eyes flamed in their red sockets and pierced her with the rapier-like sharpness that had at first filled her with terror. In grey bristling strands his hair was brushed back from the temples; but his moustache, on the other hand, was coal-black, and shadowed his gloomy mouth like a patch of ink through which his teeth made a white line of demarcation. From the corners of his mouth the heavy folds of flesh descended into the collar of his uniform.

"How funny it is," reflected Lilly, "that I am doomed to be the love of this bad old man!"

Well, if it was his will, she was powerless to resist.

"The world could tell you that I am reputed to be, in spite of my years, a subduer of women; it may be because I have never had much respect for them. But now comes a case which ... how shall I express it? ... a case that is somewhat unique. I have decided that before the old year dies I must make up my mind one way or the other." He looked at the clock. "I have still half an hour to give you, then I am due at a reception. Well, not to waste time, I may as well confess ... my intentions towards you in the first place were not honourable. To say that I wanted to seduce you would hardly be correct, considering how little there can be of a seductive nature about a man of my years. It wouldn't have been here, and not to-day, as I gave you my word of honour in my letter; but you would have been mine sooner or later, of that you may rest assured."

"I've no doubt of it," thought Lilly, who listened as calmly as if she were reading an exciting novel. Still, her old horror of him did not return; and still she waited with dull curiosity to see what would happen next.

"If you had resisted and shown fight, all the more certainly would you have been overcome. I am an old hand, you know. Then came your fainting fit, which gave me some insight into your disposition. I was forced to admit to myself that a conquest by force in your case would give me no satisfaction. You are made of noble stuff, and I do not require a languishing companion.... Whimpering mistresses have always been my abhorrence. I don't care to have my comfort disturbed by scenes. I have had experiences of the kind, which I am unwilling to repeat. So while you lay here being tended by my cook, I came to the conclusion I had been on the wrong tack. I resolved to adopt another course."

Lilly was overcome with a pleasing sense of gratitude, as if she had been the recipient of an enormous benefaction. "How splendid of him, how kind," she thought, "to let off a poor stupid thing like me!"

She cast a stealthy glance at his hands, which, long and yellow, hung listlessly between his knees. She would have liked to imprint a kiss on them to show how grateful she was, but shame deterred her; she was almost sorry that so glorious a man didn't want to have anything more to do with her.

"Well, I took further counsel with myself," he continued, and his voice sounded sterner, as if steeled by the force of his resolution. "It was not altogether a new idea; I had often, indeed, thought of it. But it seemed ridiculous at first, and only to be resorted to as an extreme measure--a way of escape which I am now cutting off. Finally, I asked myself, why shouldn't I? I am not ambitious. I know too well the rotten machinery of diplomatic and military service; it's not worth while to give one's sweat and blood to oil the wheels. So the idea of resignation doesn't displease me. Of course, I should have to retire in the circumstances, perhaps anyhow, because there are mornings when I can hardly sit on my horse from the pain caused by that cursed sciatica."

"I wonder why he is telling me all this?" thought Lilly, and felt flattered that so distinguished a man should discuss such important matters with her.

"What is more fatal still for me is that I foresee the rising of a whole generation, thirsting to be revenged on the robbery that has been perpetrated at its expense. Naturally, the unflinching eye and the firm hand can accomplish much.... In either case, one must dare something. Well, my dear child, what do you say?"

Lilly was silent, ashamed of being so stupid that she was not in the least able to follow him. It all sounded to her like double Dutch.

"Well, will you ... or not?"

"Will I what?" stammered Lilly.

"Good God! All this time I have been asking you to be my wife," the colonel replied.

This was the moment in which Lilly's hopes and wondering astonishment reached their climax. Could it be Lilly Czepanek to whom all this was happening, or had she changed places with someone else--some heroine who only lived inside those old brown-covered books, and who would cease to exist directly the last page was turned? He did not urge her to consent at once. As she sank back in a helpless heap, incapable of speaking, he took her hands tenderly in his, and with the smile of a beneficent deity, reasoned with her more gently than she could have believed possible. She might think it over, he said, for three days, or he would even allow her ten. So long he could be patient, but she must promise in the meantime to say nothing about it to anyone.

She gladly acceded, still too terribly ashamed to look him in the face.

Then she ran home and cried and cried without knowing why she cried, whether for joy or for grief. She was still sobbing when towards four in the morning the sisters, who had relaxed their strict etiquette in honour of the New Year, crept in and passed through the room.

When she got up in the morning she was sure that he could not have been in earnest, and that before the day was over he would send to say that he had changed his mind. She wouldn't care much if he did. Indeed, she would breathe more freely and thank God to be relieved from a haunting burden of perplexities.

At ten o'clock there was a ring, and a basket of roses was handed in. The size and costliness of the blooms filled the sisters with astounded disapproval. They knew the price of roses in winter, and calculated that these had cost a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages for a month.

"Really," remarked the elder, "I cannot see why you shouldn't give in to such a gorgeous admirer. If it was one of us, it would be different, of course. We are in society, and could not afford to lose caste. But you, a mere shopgirl without any family to disgrace, why shouldn't you? Besides, such a life has its charms and advantages. If I were you, I should certainly try it."

The younger and more sentimental of the two protested. "The first step," she said, "should only be taken for love. That is what is due to yourself, even if you are nothing but a shopgirl."

They were still debating this knotty question when they went off to New Year's parade. They wanted to see Colonel von Mertzbach in command of the guard. They had heard he was "awfully handsome," and that all the fashionable girls in the town were setting their cap at him.

Lilly caressed her roses and would have kissed them all, only there were too many.

Then she took courage, locked up, and went out to St. Ann's to consult St. Joseph. She would have met the officers riding to parade if she had not turned down a back street in the nick of time.

High-mass was over, and had left an odour of incense and poor people lingering in the aisles. A few worshippers remained praying at the side altars. Lilly knelt down before her dear saint, pressed her forehead against the velvet padding of the altar ratings, and tried to pour out her torn heart to him, begging for advice and consolation.

"Ought I to ... May I? Can I?" Oh! She hoped she might so very much. Such a chance was not likely to come more than once in a lifetime. She would be rich, a baroness, with the world and all its splendours at her feet. When did such things happen outside fairy-tales?

If only one thing about him had been different. For the first time it struck her clearly what that one thing was.

It was not his eyes, whose glance was a dagger-thrust. It was not the grey bristly hair on his temples, nor the harsh commanding voice of the martinet. No; now she knew that it was none of these, but the folds of skin hanging down from his chin to his throat. It was these that must always form a barrier between him and her. They couldn't be got over, nothing could conceal them. She shuddered at the thought of them. And yet the Asmussen sisters had talked of him as a handsome man. The daughters of wealthy and distinguished people were said to run after him.

It would have been folly on her part to refuse him. Wasn't he the best and noblest and most high-principled of men? Wasn't he nearly as good and kind as God Himself? Then she mapped out a future in which she was to live and breathe only for him; to sit at his feet as a disciple. She would flutter about him in gayer moments like a dove, though she could not exactly picture herself being ever lively in his presence. But she might be poetic; she might gaze at the stars in the distant firmament and the evening clouds, and look the image of a pale, noble, saintly creature to whom young strangers would lift their eyes in devouring longing without being rewarded by a single glance from her. All this would be possible, because her life would be consecrated to him, who was her friend, protector, and father, to whom she looked up on the heights whence no gleam had ever descended to her before.

"Yes, I will--I will!" an eager voice cried within her. "Yes, dear St. Joseph, I will!"

For answer St. Joseph held up a warning forefinger. Of course, he would have done it in any case. He couldn't help himself, for his artist had presented him thus. And yet there was something disconcerting about that raised forefinger. It didn't somehow help a poor distraught human being on its way through this troublesome world.

The next day Lilly got a letter from Herr Doktor Pieper, making an appointment with her at his office.

She turned hot and cold. "He knows," she said to herself.

When she asked leave to go, Frau Asmussen remonstrated severely with her.

"You receive costly presents and flowers, and you are always wanting to go out; if you continue like this, I am afraid I shall have to offer up daily prayers for you again."

But when Lilly showed her guardian's letter, Frau Asmussen gave her permission. Lilly had not seen him since that day, a year and a half ago, when she had come out of the hospital, so weak she could hardly stand. She had been too shy to accept his invitation to call on him again. Besides, there had been no reason why she should. From time to time a lanky, dried-up looking person, whom Lilly recognised as the head clerk, had come to Frau Asmussen's, and after a brief conversation conducted in an undertone, departed. This was the only sign that the man under whose guardianship she had been placed ever thought of her existence.

"Herr Doktor Pieper will see you now," said the head clerk.

As Lilly entered, the distinguished lawyer was sitting at his writing-table in the same position as she had last seen him. He raised his head and contemplated her with a long scrutinising gaze. Then he smiled and rubbed the mirrorlike surface of his bald patch. "Ah! So it's you!" he drawled.

Lilly's respect for this man deprived her of breath. While he studied her from head to foot as if she had been a marketable object, she made an awkward movement, which was a cross between a nod and a bow, and tugged at the short sleeves of her coat.

"Ah! I perceive, my child, that you have developed into something that makes masculine folly, not of course justifiable, because we are endowed with masculine intellect to restrain the tendency, but, at any rate, excusable.... But I haven't wished you good-morning."

He rose and offered her his cool flabby hand, which felt as if it had no bones in it.

"Please let me look at your gloves," he said next.

Lilly trembled, and drew back her elbows like a thief caught in the act. She stammered out, growing very red, "I was going to buy a new pair to-day."

"Don't, dear Fräulein," he answered, smacking his lips with satisfaction; "those holes are touching, and awake sympathy. Your winter coat, too, awakes sympathy. These are mere matters of detail, which contrast piquantly with the main features of your appearance. Anyone sentimentally inclined, even if he were not born a poet, might easily be inspired to an outburst of lyrical verse by such a pathetic appeal."

As he spoke, he put his arm familiarly through hers and led her to an easy-chair, upholstered with many springs and cushions.

"Sit down in this victims' chair," he said, "though I promise you there will be no drawing of teeth to-day. Altogether, you've done very well for yourself, my child. I am perfectly satisfied with you."

He smoothed his well-kept fair beard and showed his teeth in a satisfied smile, like a conjurer after performing a specially clever trick.

"When do you intend the wedding to come off?"

"It's not even an engagement yet," murmured Lilly.

"Oh, as far as that goes, there will, of course, be no engagement, properly speaking--that is to say, no formal announcements to friends, cards, visits, and other courtesies. Have everything done as quickly as possible--as quietly as possible; that is my advice to you, Fräulein. You see, in the very delicate situation of affairs in which we find ourselves, adverse influences are always to be feared."

"But I haven't so much as said 'Yes,' yet," Lilly ventured to put in.

This seemed vastly to amuse him.

"Ho! ho! We're assuming the possibility of a refusal, are we? A refusal! Very clever! I shouldn't have credited you with so much capacity for business, dear Fräulein."

"I am sure I don't know what you mean," said Lilly, a flush of indignation rising to her face--she knew not why.

He thrust his hands against his sides and continued to be amused.

"Yes, yes; that's all very well and practical, but a joke can be carried too far, you know. I advise you to leave it in my hands for the time being.... I understand these matters, though I must confess I haven't often handled so important a case. I will do my utmost to hurry on the wedding.... For reasons already stated, I must demand absolute secrecy till his resignation is a fait accompli. When the banns are once put up, providing you with a trousseau will be a minor consideration. My advice to you, young lady, is to behave for the present in as maidenly and ingenuous a manner as you can. A rosebud unfolding with the freshness of the dew upon it should be your example. But I would suggest the use of a better soap.... I think there's no room for improvement in anything else. The necessity may arise for you to take up your abode with another family, in which case the sum realised from the sale of your mother's effects--one moment, please." He opened a big ledger which he took from a rack by the writing-table. "A, B, C--ah, here we are--Czepanek. Sums amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks will come in very usefully just now. My purse, too, out of a purely aesthetic enjoyment of the romance, is at your disposal. So much for the period before the wedding. As for the time to follow, which is of infinitely greater importance, I should not like you to go away from here without my giving you a few gentle hints, though, unfortunately, I am not in a position to"--he paused for a moment, and a satyr-like grin widened his loose-skinned cheeks--"take a mother's place and impart to you the precepts with which she would speed you on your way as a bride."

Lilly understood this time well enough what he would imply, and redhot shame wove a fiery mist before her eyes.

"In all matters connected with arrangements for your future, such as insurance, settlements, alimony in case of divorce, provided you are the guiltless party--or even if you were guilty--you may implicitly trust me. I was not made your guardian for nothing. But there is one contingency, very common in marriages such as yours, in which my professional help can give you no security. You must keep your eyes open for yourself.... We are placed in this world, my dear child, to do what we like; anyone who says the contrary would rob your heaven of its sun. But I give you a threefold warning: first, don't exchange superfluous glances; second, don't demand superfluous rendering of accounts; thirdly and lastly, don't make superfluous confessions. You cannot be expected to-day, perhaps, to understand clearly what all this signifies"--as a matter of fact, Lilly understood nothing at all--"but think of my words when occasion arises. They may be of use to you. Let me see. Another thing! Are you fond of jewels?"

"I have hardly ever seen any," said Lilly.

"Not at the jewellers' in the market-place?"

"At school we weren't allowed to look in at the shop-windows," Lilly answered.

He smiled his most unpleasant smile. "Then I venture to advise that every time you and your husband go out together you stop and look in at every shop-window. Such little hints are seldom ignored. Be specially charmed with pearls, my dear young lady. You will in this wise lay up for yourself treasures which, when your time of trouble comes--and, remember, it will come--will be of invaluable assistance to you."

Lilly nodded, and thought to herself, "I shall certainly do nothing of the kind."

Heir Doktor Pieper passed his soft plump well-kept hand over his glossy bald patch several times, and continued:

"Well, what more have I got to say to you? A good deal, but I am rather afraid of being misunderstood. There is one thing, however, which must not be omitted. The early days of married life, no matter what its nature may be, are apt to have a disturbing effect on the nervous system. When you first feel depressed, take bromide. In fact, take a good deal of it. Draw a protective cap of indifference over your head in moments of strong excitement, whether caused by love or antipathy, so that you will not see, hear, or feel anything. You must deaden your perceptions and be unconscious of your will-power. In time you will become used to the oppressive hot-house atmosphere, probably in a few months; and afterward you will again breathe the fresh air, and then, instead of the bed-canopy above you, there will stretch again before you the heaven of your girlhood. When one's nerves are over-strained it is dangerous to think too much of one's immediate surroundings and to seek compensation there. Dream rather of the distant blue mountains. Let your happiness linger afar off. You are young, and it will certainly draw nearer as years pass. Give it time to grow up.... I expect you do not understand the very least bit what I am saying?"

"Yes, of course I understand," Lilly stammered.

She didn't wish to be thought stupid. But he was right. His words rained on her like hailstones of which she could only gather a few here and there--except the blue mountains. She had caught that, and liked the expression.

"Never mind," he went on. "Something of what I have said will occur to you, I've no doubt, at times. Now I come to the last and most delicate point of all, because it deals, as it were, with spiritual conditions. Don't fret if your environment does not respond to you and echo your ideas. You must leave it, and not try to make things different. Bells that are cracked can never be made to ring in tune again. Rather provide music for yourself. I shouldn't be surprised if you have a whole orchestra at your command."

"I have 'The Song of Songs,'" Lilly thought with pride.

"You have no conception, my child, how essential it is, when you live in harness with another human being, not to lose touch with yourself. To hold a private court of your own flattering thoughts is an excellent diversion. Anyone who wants to eat fresh eggs must keep poultry; never forget that. But don't let anyone suspect. Display no unnecessary opposition, no obstinacy. You must arrange to run your life from the start on double paths, so that you can travel in both directions as your needs require. I shouldn't wonder if in these circumstances your marriage were to turn out happily, apart from its exceptional worldly advantages, the duration of which depend mainly on good luck and the exercise of tact and powers of adaptation. I shall send you the marriage contract sealed. Till your coming of age in two years' time I shall always be at your service. If you feel in after years that your temper is permanently tried, break the seal by all means. A good lawyer can interpret a contract very differently from a layman, and read all sorts of things into it. As I indicated, there is one case in which he is impotent to do this. Be on your guard against it. Technically, it is called in flagrante.... Sometime or other you will doubtless acquire information as to what the word means. Now, may I give the colonel your final consent?"

The train rumbled on through the night, showers of sparks flew up from the engine. When it was fed by the stoker, clouds of fire illuminated the darkness, and you saw in a flash purple pines, snow-covered gables, and wide-stretching golden spaces appearing out of black nothingness. How beautiful, how strange it all was!

Lilly leaned her head, drowsy from champagne, against the red velvet cushions. It was over, and everything had gone off well. A kaleidoscope of confused pictures, half real, half imaginary, whirled through her brain. She saw a great black inkstand with a small grey-bearded man behind it asking lots of useless questions; a white lace veil with myrtle-leaves attached thrown over her head by the adjutant's wife, who went from one rapture into another; a hateful Protestant minister, with two ridiculous white bibs under his chin. He looked like a grave-digger, but at the end he gave such an exquisite address that Lilly would have liked to cry on his bosom. Two gentlemen in black, two in gay uniforms. One of the gentlemen in black was Herr Pieper, one of those in uniform the colonel. And she was the colonel's wife the colonel's wife! How the wheels seemed to murmur the words: "Colonel's wife!" But if you listened more attentively they also said--what the gentlemen at the wedding had said--"Most gracious baroness; most gracious baroness," always in time.

The ice-cream had been so wonderful--a positive chain of mountains with peaks, and pinnacles, and little lights that shone through the crystals. She could have sat admiring it for ever, only she had to dig into it with a big golden spoon, and so overturn a whole mountain. She had asked him if she might have ice-cream every day in the future, and he had laughingly answered, "Yes, if you like." She must have been rather tipsy, or she couldn't have had the courage to ask such a question. She would find an opportunity of begging his pardon later.

Now he sat opposite her looking her through and through with his piercing eyes. That was the only thing that embarrassed her, and if she hadn't been such a coward, she would have asked him to look the other way for a change. Not that she felt her old fear of him to-day. Of late she had gradually become more at home with him; how could it be otherwise when he was so kind, and she had only to express a wish to have it fulfilled instantly?

Then there was something she had noticed that she would never dare breathe to anyone. He was bow-legged. They were the heavy cavalry legs all over, rather too short for the imposing figure they supported. They made him sway in his gait from side to side as if he were trying to walk on a tight-rope. You noticed it even more when he wore mufti and stuck his hands in his pockets as he was doing now.

Every now and then he leant forward and asked, "Are you all right, little woman?"

She should think she was "all right" indeed! All her life she would like to sit there leaning back against the red velvet cushions, looking at her new soft suède gloves, and the shiny toes of her patent-leather boots peeping out from the hem of her travelling dress.

There had been quite a crowd at the station. No uniforms, because he had dispensed with a military escort, but plenty of ladies had been there, thickly veiled, trying to appear unconscious, as if their errand at the station was an ordinary one. As she passed them on the colonel's arm and got into the coupé, she had caught two or three admiring remarks--and not from too friendly lips. It came back to her now with heart-felt satisfaction. At the very last moment two bouquets had flown in through the window, and she had looked out again. There stood the Asmussen sisters, bowing reverentially and crying buckets full. Her colossal good fortune had disarmed their envy and changed ill-feeling into a sort of melancholy rejoicing.

And, opposite, sat the man who had worked the extraordinary revolution in her lot. For a moment she was so overwhelmed with a feeling of well-being and gratitude that she went down on her knees before him, and, clasping his hands in hers, gazed up at him in adoration.

But when he caught her to him with one arm, and with the other caressed her, she became frightened again and retreated to her place. He let her be with a smile, conscious that his hour was not far off.

And it came sooner than she had expected. "Get ready," he said abruptly; "we shall be getting out directly."

"Where?" she asked, startled.

"At the junction, from where there's a loop line to Lischnitz."

"Are we going to your estate, then?" she inquired anxiously. He had talked of going to Dresden.

"No," he replied shortly; "we shall stay here."

Then they stood on a dark platform with their trunks and bags. The frosty haze cast rainbow halos round the few dim gas-lamps, and shadowy forms were enveloped in clouds of their own frozen breath as they emerged into the light. The train steamed out of the station.

There they stood and no one heeded them. Then the colonel uttered one oath after another. He had acquired the habit of swearing violently at drill, when irritated. His fury fell on Lilly like a thunderclap, and made her tremble, as if she were the culprit. At last the colonel's oaths reached the ears of the station officials, who associated them with something familiar in the past, and they began contritely to make amends for their negligence by loading themselves with the luggage. They got into the hotel omnibus which was waiting, and Lilly squeezed herself into the furthest corner of it. Weird shadows flickered from the miserable little oil carriage-lamps, on his sharply defined features, giving him a new aspect, beneath which his long-slumbering wrath still seethed.

"What has this dreadful old man to do with you, or you with him," Lilly asked herself, a shiver running through her, "that you should be at his mercy so completely? Why not rush past him, tear open the door, and leap out into the night?"

She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch asleep, perhaps frozen to death.

At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight.

"I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come back."

She was already ascending the stairs on his arm.

A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.

The colonel made himself perfectly at home. He grumbled, turned up the lights, and tossed his overcoat into a corner. Then he lit a cigarette and threw himself down on the sofa, whence he watched with the eye of a connoisseur her movements as she reluctantly took off her coat and drew the pins out of her hat.

There was a knock, and a waiter came in with cold refreshments and a silver-necked bottle on a tray.

"More champagne?" questioned Lilly in alarm. She had not yet recovered from the amount that she had imbibed at midday.

"Nothing like champagne," he said, "to give a little woman courage to consecrate the pretty blue silk négligé waiting in her box to be unpacked."

He poured out the foaming liquid into the two glasses. She clinked glasses with him obediently, but scarcely touched a drop of her wine.

When he rallied her on her abstinence, she answered pleadingly, "I don't want to be tipsy on such a sacred night as this!"

Her reply seemed to entertain him immensely. He burst into hilarious laughter, and exclaimed: "All the better! All the better!"

He would have drawn her to him, but, as every touch of his caused her acute discomfort, she evaded him quickly and said, "I must look for my négligé."

She knelt before the box, which she herself had packed the night before, lifting out the trays, and produced from the depth a garment of filmy lace and washing silk, which he, with all the other beautiful clothes, had bought for her before the wedding.

She looked round in search of a sheltering alcove into which she could retire to change, but there was none no escape from those eyes, almost softened by their desire for her, watching everything she did. Shuddering, she stood there, clinging helplessly to the collar of her dress, which she hadn't the courage to unhook.

He grew impatient and sprang to his feet. He nearly caught her in his arms, but the imploring look she gave him was so full of pathos that he chivalrously desisted, and stooped instead to pick up something which, in her search for the négligé, she had turned out of the box on to the floor. The next minute Lilly saw a white roll between his dark fingers.

"It's 'The Song of Songs,'" shot through her brain.

With a cry she hurled herself upon him, and tried to snatch the roll of music from his grasp, but his fingers were like iron. He defended himself and repulsed her attack with ease, laughing all the time. She was beside herself at the thought that her life's secret should be tampered with by strange hands, and she cried, implored, and beat him with her fists.

Now the matter began to appear to him in a suspicious light. Doubts began to rise within him as to the unblemished purity of her soul, and even of her body.

"Be careful, my little girl," he said. "Prevarication and deceit are out of the question now. You will kindly let me see what this is without delay, or I'll pin you down so that you can't stir a limb."

"Oh, please, dear colonel," she begged and prayed, "give them up. They are only two or three sheets of paper covered with music, the music of songs--nothing else, I swear. Please let me have them, dear colonel."

Her innocent pleading touched him, and the comical unconscious humility of her "dear colonel" made him laugh again. Besides, as the daughter of a professional, she might cherish musical ambitions.

"Do you compose yourself?" he asked.

"No, no, no! It's not my composition, but don't look at it," she entreated, "or I'll jump out of the window. I swear I will by all the saints."

He was so delighted with the picture she made, her eyes wide with alarm, her hair loosened and dishevelled, the tragic mute expression on her sweet childlike face with its clear-cut features, that he wanted to prolong the struggle for a few minutes. So he looked very black and pretended to be what he really had been a little while ago--full of jealous suspicion.

Then she fell on her knees, and, clasping his legs, she whispered in a voice half suffocated by her emotions of shame and distress:

"If only you give it back to me, I won't mind what you do. I won't attempt to defend myself."

The bargain struck him as advantageous.

"Your hand on it," he said.

"Yes, here is my hand on it," she replied. "And you'll never ask any questions? Promise."

"Not if you swear by your blessed St. Joseph that it's really nothing but music."

"Yes, nothing but music and the libretto, I swear."

He gave her the roll, and she yielded herself entirely to him ... sold herself at the price of "The Song of Songs" to the man to whom she already belonged.

The early morning sunlight, shining straight in her eyes through the yellow striped curtains, awoke her. She felt herself resting on a sort warm pillow, and was conscious of having slept splendidly. Slowly it dawned on her what had happened. She leaned over to him with the intention of giving him a kiss. He lay with his head thrown back and his mouth open, and the light from the window played on his shining bristled chin. Over his haggard cheeks little red and blue veins ran in all directions like rivers on a map. His ink-black moustache glistened with pomade, and his eyelids were so wrinkled into folds that they must, it seemed, have reached down to the top of his nose if they had been ironed out.

"He's not so bad-looking," Lilly thought to herself; but she omitted the kiss.

She got up noiselessly and dressed herself without his moving. The old cavalry officer was a sound and heavy sleeper.

Lilly scribbled on a sheet of notepaper which she found in the hotel blotter: "I am gone to church," laid the note on his pillow, and slipped down the stairs, past the porter, who was so astonished he forgot to say "Good-morning."

The streets of the little town still slept in the peace of the late winter dawn. The snow had been swept from the middle of the road into heaps along the gutter. A party of crows sat in a circle round the frozen fountain in the market-place. From the distance came the faint music of sleigh-bells. Down the main street boys with satchels were loitering to school. In some of the smaller shops lights still burned and apprentices were sweeping and cleaning the steps, their faces blue with cold. As Lilly went by they stared hard, or called to others inside to come out and gape after her.

The swinging tread of marching footsteps was behind her. A long train of infantry, wearing gloves but without cloaks, came tramping along in the middle of the road. They puffed, in regular time, clouds of frozen breath before them. Their eyes with one accord turned to the left in Lilly's direction as if by word of command. The officers, walking beside their men, exchanged significant glances and shrugged their shoulders.

She had not far to look for the Catholic church of the parish. The clumsy stone fabric, with its remnants of Gothic bricked over, stood high above the roofs of the town. The side aisles were crammed with altars in barbaric colours, much gilded and adorned with paper roses in cheap vases. She could not find St. Joseph anywhere, and had to be content instead with Our Lady of Sorrows, between whom and herself relations seemed strained.

A feeling of oppression and emptiness, which she could not explain, took possession of her soul. It was as if she had done something wrong and didn't know what. She kneeled down and gabbled her prayers so thoughtlessly that she felt ashamed, then she caught herself absently eyeing with contentment her suède gloves, which moulded her fingers with such perfect ease and distinction. Every now and then a shudder ran through her, which made her shut her eyes and clench her teeth, and then she felt ashamed again.

Soon she gave up attempting to pray, and gazed up at the Mother of God, with her tearful face, who appeared to be saying, "Please take these things out of me." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart were set at the hilt with pearls and precious stones.

"If only I was really unhappy, I should have some excuse," thought Lilly. "Then I might talk with her as I used to with St. Joseph, and the swords in my heart would be costly to behold." As costly as the pearl necklace he had put round her neck just before the wedding.

She saw herself as she had been two months ago, when she had stolen out in the grey dawn to lay her poor distraught heart at the feet of her favourite saint; how soon, with the reaction of youth, she had walked on air again, intoxicated at the thought of what was coming to her in the fair future. And all the time she had been actually steeped in poverty and wretchedness, forsaken and friendless.

"Happiness takes on strange aspects," she thought, and she gave her shoulders a petulant little shrug.

Then suddenly a great dread came over her that those times would never come back, that she must go on like this eternally, barren in soul, disturbed in spirit, persecuted by gloomy, inexpressible fears.

"It must all come of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.

Now she knew what she had to petition of the Virgin Mary. She bowed her face in both hands and prayed long and fervidly--prayed that she might learn to love him with as much passion as she had blood in her veins; with as much devotion as she had hopes of her soul; with as much joyousness as there was laughter in her heart. And, lo! her prayer was answered.

She rose from her knees with shining eyes, a burden lifted from her soul, and hurried away, back to him to whom she belonged, to serve him with all humbleness and confidence, either as his daughter, his handmaiden, his mistress--in any capacity he wished.

They passed Berlin without stopping, because the colonel had no desire to encounter his military friends so soon after his mésalliance. From here in three hours they reached Dresden, and took up their quarters at Sendig's, where the hotel proprietors had arranged to provide the newly-married pair with the comforts and privacy of a home. Drawing-room, bedroom, and dressing-room were all they needed, for the closer their outer intimacy the nearer would their inward relations approximate. And, indeed, the colonel had every reason to be satisfied with his honeymoon. He, who in the course of his not too short life had held hundreds of girls on his knee, who thought he knew every type through and through, the sweetly clinging, the coyly coquettish, the brazenly bold, the sham and the true, and all their different kinds of kisses--this old amorous hand, who ought to have been surprised at nothing, was simply full of incredulous amazement at his last lovely find. In his whole carefully cultivated career as a roué he had never come across so much yielding and so much pride, so much fire, ready wit, and quick understanding, so much naïve simplicity, as were comprised in this one dreamily smiling Madonna-faced child.

Perhaps he was most taken aback and puzzled by her utter unpretentiousness. When they dined à la carte, she invariably selected for herself the very cheapest items on the menu, and would ask if she might have lemonade to drink with as much shy modesty as if she were making a love confession.

Once, on their way back from the public gardens, when they wandered home through queer little back streets, Lilly, who resolutely declined as a rule to look in at shop-windows, stood transfixed before a small greengrocer's. The colonel, on inquiring what interested her, elicited gradually that she loved eating sunflower seeds, and would he mind very much if she bought some?

The mote he loaded her with presents, the less able did she seem to realise that money was being spent on her account. So long had been the dearth of money in her life, that now she had no discrimination as to the value of it. However big the sum he placed in her purse, she did not hesitate to hand it out to the first beggar they met. But when he paid a flower-girl two marks for a rose she thought it wicked extravagance.

Once when she had tickled his fastidious palate beyond belief by her naïveté, he asked in sudden distrust, "I say, little woman, are you acting?"

She didn't know what he meant, and with the wide melancholy eyes of childlike innocence, which she used to turn on him at such questions, she replied, "Acting indeed! Since papa went away I haven't seen any acting, or been inside a theatre once."

The same day he took a box for the play, and she danced about the room with the little blue tickets in her hand, half mad with delight. But her joyous enthusiasm was somewhat damped by being told that the occasion demanded evening dress. It was incomprehensible to her that to appreciate Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" you should be obliged to bare your neck and shoulders. The evening gowns, besides, seemed far too grand for her. In selecting one to wear, she hovered round them with their glittering, jewelled trimmings and exquisite lace as gingerly as if they were a bed of nettles. In a generous mood the colonel had ordered the gowns, for no particular reason, for to take Lilly into society as yet was not to be thought of.

When she came to him dressed, stiff and stern-eyed from embarrassment, yet glowing with a feverish joy in her finery, taller and more of a budding Venus than ever, her delicate rounded breast half hidden in a mass of soft lace, the fabulously beautiful chain of pearls on her swan-like throat, the elderly robber went into such ecstasies over his booty that he was near ordering the finery back into the wardrobe, and throwing the theatre tickets into the waste-paper basket; but she implored him so fervently to keep his promise that he thought better of it and got into the carriage with her.

Then, he, who imagined he had long ago outlived the commonplace vanity of delighting to show off his possessions in public, experienced a triumph. The blasé old bachelor found himself enjoying the sensation of being envied, and, though he accepted it disdainfully as a matter of course, he was tremendously flattered.

Directly Lilly entered the box she was the cynosure of all eyes. Everyone speculated as to what the relationship could be between this extraordinarily handsome and distinguished pair, and when after the first act a thousand tongues of light leapt out again from the ceiling, opera-glasses were levelled at them, and a hubbub of questioning comment passed from mouth to mouth.

It was the first time Lilly had ever witnessed a play from a box, and her first instinct was to hide herself at the back, but she had already learnt blind obedience to his commands, and when he pointed to the chair beside him she meekly subsided into it. Then, as she became aware of the universal notice she attracted, that strange numbness and feeling of detachment came over her. It seemed to her when she moved, smiled, or spoke, someone else was doing it all--another person with whom she herself had only a chance connection.

Not till the lights were lowered and the curtain went up again did she awake from her lethargy. Then she followed the poet into his enchanted realms with breathless excitement and delicate thrills of suspense. After this two Lillies sat in the box--one Lilly in blissful self-oblivion flitted through heaven and hell on the rainbow wings of her childhood's phantasy; the other, like a wound-up doll, made stilted gestures and strove unconsciously to imitate the manners of the well-bred, feeling all the time a hot sweet torturing sensation creeping over her, the intoxication of vanity.

Afterwards the colonel, not satisfied with his triumph at the theatre, instead of having supper as usual served upstairs, went with Lilly on his arm into the public dining-room where an Hungarian band was playing, and elegant people supped and displayed their fine feathers. Here the little drama of the box was enacted over again, save that Lilly, carried away by the wild dreamy melodies of the violins, let her awkward shyness drop from her, and expanding a little, with flaming cheeks and shining eyes, dared to play her small part.

Opposite them, two tables further on, sat a fair young man, with expansive white shirt-front and black tie, like all the others. He stared at her with unflinching persistence, as if she were some rare wild animal.

She writhed under the fire of this gaze, that caressed and hurt her at the same time and spoke a foreign language to her with the violins, the notes of which quivered down her spine and throbbed feverishly through her being.

Suddenly her husband turned round and caught the admirer in the act of staring. He pierced him with his dagger-like glance to such effect that the fair-haired man speedily rose and disappeared. But the colonel's pleasure seemed spoilt. "Come, it's late," he said, and led her away.

As soon as he had her to himself again his pride in his treasure broke out anew. It became a sort of unbridled frenzy. Lilly had to undress, as she had often done before, and pose in numerous attitudes, both classical and the reverse. Then, to wind up, she was compelled to don the silver-spangled gauze garment, which he had bought for her during their first days in Dresden, arrayed in which he liked her to dance to him before going to bed. The metal threads sent ice-cold shivers down her limbs, and pricked her skin like needles, but as it was his wish, and his wish was law, she made no demur.

In bed he lit another cigarette, and while she sat on the edge of the bed he amused himself by telling her risqué anecdotes, which he described as "his little girl's lullaby."

After this, the colonel preferred to take meals regularly in the dining-room. He wished to enjoy to the full the piquant pleasure of seeing his young wife openly admired and unblushingly desired. The value of his property seemed to rise in proportion to the extent that he was envied by others for its possession.

And Lilly, for her part, could watch for the intoxicated sensations of that evening to awake in her ever anew. She might under drooping lids see and feel all those young, hot pairs of eyes around her hang burningly on hers, full of hopeless passion and desire; might, accompanied by the sad wail of the violins and the clash of the cymbals, take flight into those Elysian fields whither her road had been barred--she knew not how or why--since her great good fortune had come to her.

Never did she dream of permitting herself, even by the quiver of an eyelash, to return any of those ardent glances. The young men who gazed at her were only accessories to the scene, as indispensable as the lights, the band, the flowers, the white tablecloths, and the cigarette smoke which rose to the ceiling in little blue columns.

Nevertheless, one day, as she was walking arm-in-arm with her husband in the street, one of those glances shot her through the heart like an arrow. It proceeded from a pair of dark eyes, which even from a distance were fixed on her inquiringly, and flared up as they came nearer into a flash of melancholy fire and recognition.

She felt as if she must run after him as he walked on, and ask, "Who are you? Do you belong to me? ... Do you want me to belong to you?"

Then she committed the indiscretion of turning round to look at him. It was only for the fraction of a second, but her husband had remarked it, for when she again looked in front of her, she felt his vigilant eye was upon her, full of threatening suspicion. He nodded two or three times as if to say, "So it's come to this already." For the rest of the day he was preoccupied and bad-tempered.

The incident was but the first of a series for Lilly. Not that she ever met that identical youth again, though she kept on the lookout for him. He was succeeded by innumerable others. Those she met, from this time, were no longer unsubstantial shadows of a vision she saw as if they were not there. Now, when she beheld a slight youthful figure coming towards them, she wondered what he would be like near, and if he would look at her. And should his aspect please her, and his gaze without being impertinent express admiring astonishment and longing, she would often feel a pang at her heart and say to herself, "You are far more suited to him than to the old man on whose arm you are leaning." And every time it happened she felt very sad.

Still sadder did she feel when someone, whose appearance she liked, took no notice of her. "I am not good enough for him," she would think. "He despises me. I wonder why he despises me?"

In fashionable resorts, such as the dining-room of the Brühlische Terrace, where there was a perpetual crossfire of covert glances, her attitude towards the outside world began gradually to alter. She would acknowledge the incense burnt at her shrine by an ever so slight grateful uplifting of her eyes. She returned without shyness the scrutiny of ladies, and in spite of being blessed with sight as keen as a falcon's, she would dearly have loved to possess a lorgnette like theirs.

She was often tormented with a desire to look deep into eyes that rested on her without reserve, fear or restraint. It would have been a mystical union of souls, which would have done her infinite good; for she could not disguise the fact from herself any longer--she was hungering for something, hungering as she had never hungered in her life before.

The colonel appeared perfectly oblivious of what was passing within her. But he waged bitter warfare with all who laid siege to her with their glances. The old Uhlan was incessantly on the watch, and was ready to stab on the instant with his eye's deadly darts the too persistent and ardent adorers. But there were some who were not in the least discomposed by his threatening demeanour, and who even had the audacity to return the compliment and look daggers at him. This made him uneasy, and he would fidget with his card-case, look as if he were going to write something, then put the pencil away; and generally he ended by saying, "We seem in undesirable company here. Come, let us go!" Yet, despite these uncomfortable experiences out of doors, he found it less and less possible to live at home completely a deux with his young wife. From his youth upwards he had been accustomed to gay society, and he liked noise, laughter, and light around him. Nevertheless, his suspicions grew and centred on Lilly.

One day he put a stop to her early church-going, in which she found her greatest solace. The impulse she had followed on the first morning that she awakened by his side had become by degrees a habit. While he slept on in profound slumber, she softly rose and dressed herself and glided out in the freshness of the dawn. It is true that her church-going consisted often of merely dipping her fingers in the holy water and curtseying three times. Now and then she contented herself by passing the church door with an untroubled conscience and not going in at all.

This was her hour of freedom, precious to her as gold, the only one that she had entirely to herself in the course of the whole day. She hurried first to the Augustus Bridge, offered her face to the breezes that blew there from every point of the compass, and watched the water rolling under her feet. Next she flew along the bank, like a whirlwind, for she wanted to take in as many fresh impressions and pictures as she could, before creeping back into the connubial yoke. Everything that happened in this blessed hour was fraught with significance.

It was all experience, all happiness--the rosy early morning mist hanging over the hills and descending in golden shafts on to the river; the jangle of bells from the Altstadt; the first coy bursting of the buds on the russet boughs; the big waggons rumbling to market; the hissing of the swaying electric wires overhead when a tramcar passed. On these excursions she might even indulge in shop-gazing, as there was no fear of Nemesis in the shape of a present. How greedily she gloated over pictures and objets d'art!

And now all this was to end. It was over. The gates through which she escaped for one single hour from the perfumed idleness and hothouse closeness of her gilded prison clanged behind her. But so pliable and yielding was her nature that not once in the secret depths of her heart did she complain. He wished it, and that was enough. Such powers of love lay idle within her, crying out for employment, that at this period of inward struggle she was obliged, whether she liked it or not, to give him a double share of tenderness, even whether her thoughts were with him or cantering off on a secret path of dreams.

She was his slave, his plaything, his attentive audience. She valeted him, praised his personal beauty, massaged his thighs with salves, arranged the hare-skin on his loins to charm away his gout, gave him his carbonate of soda to correct indiscretions in diet, dressed his grizzled locks with a hairwash, the pungent odour of which turned her sick, and looked on, giving him the benefit of her artistic taste and advice, while he tinted his moustache. And she did it all with eager zeal and naïve self-reliance, as if in tending and coaxing him she had found the very aim and end of her existence.

In the process, however, he became divested for her of every rag of his godlike attributes, so that nothing was left but a once soldierly, though now vain, and capricious man--mentally effete, for all his vaunted intellect; brutal, for all his refined tastes, with his appetites prematurely sated and enervated.

Not that she was really clear in her mind with regard to these defects of his qualities. If she had been, it is possible that she might have loathed and despised him. She was too young and ignorant of the world to know that life is like a witch's cauldron, which brews out of the souls of all men much the same mess, when ideals bleach with their hair and they have no altar on which to gain salvation through sacrifice.

The pictures her imagination painted of him faded and shifted from day to day, first in one direction, then in another, until something like pity mingled with her childlike respectful awe of him, and a certain motherliness that would have been unnatural, had it not had its foundations in the goodness of heart that found in the weaknesses of others an object for its fostering care.

Ah! if only she did not long for so much. Every day she sat at a sumptuously spread table and longed for more!

She read eagerly every morning the notices posted up in the vestibule of the hotel, giving a list of the evening's amusements. But the colonel would hurry her on--in the narrow groove of his small garrison he and the arts had become estranged. The organs necessary for the enjoyment of such things from long disuse had become decayed, and he shrank from the mental exertion required to galvanise them into activity once more.

The music-hall variety performances, boxing matches, ballets, and garish living-pictures, in which he took pleasure, were abhorrent to Lilly after she had once witnessed them out of curiosity. He declared that wild horses should not drag him again to Shakespeare or Wagner, nor to the concert-room, where Lilly longed to go.

One day Beethoven's Symphony in C Minor was among the announcements--the great work which was associated by a thousand tender ties with her childhood. She said nothing at the time, but afterwards she threw herself on her bed and cried bitterly. When he asked the cause of her grief she told him, and with a laugh he consented to be bored for once, and took her to the concert.

She had not been into a concert-room since her father's last pianoforte recital. She trembled as they took their places, fought back her tears and drew in the atmosphere in deep-drawn draughts.

"You are snorting like a horse when he smells oats," the colonel said jocularly.

"Haven't you noticed that it always smells the same in concert-rooms?" she asked in joyous excitement. "It was just like this in ours at home."

He couldn't remember what the concert-hall atmosphere was like, nor could he remember anything about the Symphony in C Minor.

"It's all rot," he said.

The part of the programme that preceded the Symphony was of no interest to her. She only wanted to listen to the trumpet-blast of fate--the call that she had heard first as she stood on the threshold of womanhood, and had been shaken to the foundations of her soul by a feeling of presentiment. And it came--came and thundered at every heart, and set trembling the knees of all those who were bound up together as fellow-combatants in the struggle against the mighty strokes of fate, and set them writhing as impotently as worms under the spell of a great power and a common fear.

Her husband hummed to himself, half-amused, "Ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all it meant to him: "Ti-ti-ti-tum."

As she turned to rebuke him softly into being quiet, she observed a tuft of yellowish-grey hair sprouting out of the cavity of his ear. She had never noticed it before, and it revolted her.

"What can you expect, when he has hair growing out of his ears?" she thought, as if this physical defect accounted for his lack of an ear for music. A profound feeling of dejection came over her. Never again would she be able to rejoice in the beautiful; never again stretch out her arms in worship of great heroic deeds; never again slack her thirst for higher and purer things at the fountains of inspiration.

The man who hummed "Ti-ti-ti-tum" and had hair growing out of his ears would be a barrier for evermore between her and all lofty living. The soothing sound of the violins did not console, the melancholy self-surrender of the Andante awoke no responsive echoes within her, the victorious jubilation of the Finale brought her no victory.

She left the hall with her yawning husband, humiliated, miserable, and disgusted with herself. But her joy in life was of too robust a growth, her faith in the sunny side of human nature too unwavering, for such moods of depression to be of long duration. Soon after the concert something happened, which gave her hopes new wings and raised her again to giddy heights.

Without having made any definite plans, it had seemed to be an understood thing that they were to stay in Dresden, or some other large town, till May, when they would proceed to Lischnitz, where, in the absence of the master of the castle, the often talked of Fräulein von Schwertfeger held the reins of management. One evening, however, the colonel, who was eternally vacillating between confidence in and distrust of his girl-wife, was seized with a panic of doubt, and in order to lay bare the innermost secrets of her soul he began to cross-examine her on her previous love affairs.

Lilly, as usual, unsuspecting, related glibly first the story of Fritz Redlich, because he was the more important love, and, secondly, that of the poor consumptive assistant master.

Her husband, in spite of his jealous misgivings, had retained his clearness of judgment sufficiently to appreciate the guilelessness of Lilly's conscience, and he now threw his suspicions to the wind with a laugh that he generally reserved for his broadest jokes.

Lilly, having begun, was anxious to play further on her husband's emotions, so she went on to describe the wonderful lectures on the history of art, and how the poor invalid lecturer had infected her with his own burning yearnings to see Italy.

Her cheeks flamed, her eyes swam under her heavily drooping lids, as she went on giving voice to her dreams and drawing word-pictures, almost forgetful that she had a listener.

Suddenly he asked, "Shall we go there?"

She couldn't answer. The very proposal seemed too much bliss. Then he began to think it over seriously. A man might just as well get into the train and be landed at Milan or Verona as mope in one place and be worried to death by stupid fools dogging your footsteps. Lilly flung her arms round his neck, then threw herself at his feet. This was indeed too much happiness.

Her life now became an alternate dream of ecstasy and a fever of anxiety, for something might always happen to prevent their going. First, they had to wait for the knickerbocker suit, which he ordered at a tailor's as the correct get-up for travelling, and then there were a dozen other delays. The truth may have been that he was pondering whether he could command enough youthful agility to keep pace with her excessive élan and capacity for enjoyment.

Then a certain incident hurried on their departure. For several days they had been shadowed by a fair-haired, bull-necked young man, six feet in height, who with stubborn pertinacity tried to attract Lilly's attention. Judging by his appearance he was probably an Anglo-Saxon tourist. There was in his manner a lofty nonchalance which rendered him absolutely indifferent to the threatening darts of the colonel's eyes.

For the first time Lilly saw her husband plunged in deep thought. He paced the room, muttering to himself repeatedly, "I shall have to box his ears"; or, "I must find a second."

The next day, when this irrepressible person followed them at a few yards' distance across the Schlossplatz, the colonel wheeled round and confronted him.

The fair giant measured him from top to toe without removing his short pipe from between his lips.

"I may look at anyone I choose to," he said in broken German, "and I may go anywhere I choose to."

He made a gesture as if he meant to turn up his coat-sleeves and struck an extremely pugilistic attitude, which discouraged all idea of inflicting on him a chivalrous correction.

The colonel, with a final attempt to bring the matter to an honourable issue, handed him his visiting-card, which the stranger put in his pocket with a friendly "Thank you, sir," without evidently the least notion of what this formality portended. A little crowd began to collect, and there was nothing left for the colonel but to turn his back on him.

The result of this passage of arms was, that in future the Englishman considered it his right to bestow on Lilly and her husband a greeting when they met. And the colonel, who tried unsuccessfully to stifle his consciousness of having made himself ridiculous in a torrent of oaths, resolved to leave Dresden on the spot.

In Munich, where they stopped a few days, it being the middle of April, to pay their respects at the Hofbräuhaus, nothing happened of a ruffling nature. But the colonel had become nervous. He cast furious and intimidating glances at the most harmless admirers, and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's head. It seemed as if everyone at a first glance, he said, could divine she was not a lady, otherwise she would not attract so much vulgar notice. At another time Lilly would have been bitterly grieved, but now she was unmoved. She only smiled absently, for her spirit was far away, and already she fancied that she breathed the air of the promised land, on whose threshold she believed she was standing. One night more in the train, a short day in Bozen, and then the magic gates would swing back. Nothing now could prevent the fulfilment of bliss.

They were in a compartment of the express, which leaves Munich late in the evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the gloom of early morning. Lilly and her husband sat in the corner seats by the windows. Not far from them, on the corridor side, a young man had taken his place with a pleasant smile, and then, without heeding his fellow-travellers, had soon become deep in a book that appeared to be written in Italian. Probably he was Italian too, an ambassador from that earthly paradise come to bid her welcome. Her interest in him was thus instantly arrested. From under her lowered lids, apparently asleep, she studied him. His severely cut even features were of a peculiar milky ivory colour. There was not a line or wrinkle in his clear skin, which looked as smooth as enamel. A small, dark, slightly curled moustache adorned his upper lip. The crisp hair on his temples was so closely cropped that the skin underneath gleamed through. She wanted to see what his eyes were like, but these were kept obstinately bent on his book, though he seemed to be only skimming the pages.

What excited her admiring wonder about him most was the finished grace of his movements. It was almost as if a young woman were disguised in that black and white check suit, which charmed her eye with its distingué cut. His throat disclosed a peep of a violet and dark-red striped silk shirt, under the soft collar of which a green tie was carelessly knotted.

All this was not in the least bizarre in effect, but harmonised perfectly. The costume apparently had been chosen with care and taste, and, together with his total disregard of herself, it exercised a fascination on Lilly. She could almost believe that this young stranger, by his dress, bearing, and especially by his disregard of her presence, was compelling her notice.

Absurd as it was, she felt quite nervous. When they reached the Austrian frontier and the custom-house officials entered the carriage, he said a few foreign words in a low tone, which the officials evidently understood, for they turned away from him with low bows.

At the same moment he raised his eyes and let them wander round the carriage, and while the colonel was opening his bag, they rested for a second on her. What curious eyes they were! A dark, diamond-like radiance shot from them, yet they caressed, yes, caressed with a wicked confident tenderness, full of impatient questions--questions that made you blush.

The next minute it was as if nothing had happened. He bent over his book as before, and appeared not to have seen her.

Her husband gave her a look of watchful cunning as if he had discovered something in her face for which he had long been searching. Then, when the train went on again, he settled himself to sleep. For greater comfort he moved to the unoccupied seat next to the corridor. The stranger, wishing to avoid being opposite him, involuntarily shifted his position more towards the middle, so that the distance between himself and Lilly was appreciably diminished. A little more, and he would have been sitting directly opposite her.

Had Lilly been on her guard she would have paid more attention to her husband's sleep. But all her senses were centred on a desire to elude the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a thousand needles.

She drew far back into her corner and looked intermittently out of the window, on the dark background of which the interior of the carriage was reflected as in a mirror. In this way she could contemplate him in peace, untroubled by a fear of his looking up and catching her. The light from the lamp in the ceiling sharply illumined his smooth, soft cheeks, with their polished surface merging into blue shadows on the temples. Such cheeks were surely made to be stroked and pressed against yours; to pass your hand over them would be a joy. And how long his eyelashes were--longer than her own--their shadow cast dark semi-circles as far down as his finely chiselled nostrils.

Suddenly he raised his eyes again and looked at her. There it was again, that dark caressing glance--cold, and yet how seductive!

She shrank back frightened, and was more frightened still at the thought that he might have seen her shrinking away from him.

He gave a scarcely perceptible smile, and went on again with his book; and still she continued to weave anxious and flattering thoughts around him--thoughts that were criminal in themselves, which descended on her like an avalanche that she hadn't the power to ward off. And then, all at once, with an icy chill at her heart, she felt a soft, tender pressure on her left foot, which she must by accident have thrust towards the centre of the gangway, for a moment before it had been resting on her right foot, which was still pressed close to the door of the compartment.

What was to be done? An indignant "I beg your pardon," an angry rising from her seat, would have awakened the colonel, and given cause for fresh suspicion and perhaps a duel. So she slowly, with extreme caution, withdrew her foot from under his and pressed it against the cushions, to be quite sure that she had rescued it. But she felt that the moment of hesitation had made her a participator in the crime, and this conviction oppressed and weighed on her more than her train of sinful thoughts had a few minutes before tormented her.

In her own eyes she appeared dishonoured, polluted, a prey to any and every licentious man who crossed her path. But why blame him? Was not his impertinently expressed desire merely the fulfilment of her own impure wishes? The reflection half suffocated her. She wanted to spring up, cry aloud, and ask to be forgiven. The stranger, however, went on reading calmly, as if nothing at all had occurred.

There was a glimmer of grey dawn when Lilly started up out of a half-waking doze. She saw a waterfall tossing its white foam beneath her; beyond towered huge moss-crowned rocks against the sky. It was a picture she had dreamed of, but never seen, appealing and impressive in its rugged grandeur and massive strength. All that had passed before she fell asleep seemed now a grotesque phantasmagoria devoid of reality. She glanced round the carriage nervously, and saw the stranger stretched out at full length, repulsive in sleep, his cheeks inflated and puffy as his breath came and went in heavy gasps. He looked to her now pasty and effeminate, and she loathed him.

She turned away in disgust and caught her husband's eyes wide open, fixed on her in severe reproof. She started guiltily.

"Can't you sleep any longer?" she asked, with a forced smile.

"I have not slept at all," he answered.

There was something in his voice that set her trembling anew. It accused and condemned at the same time. And how angrily he looked at her!

The journey was continued in silence, and she paid no further heed to the stranger.

After taking rooms at Bozen, the colonel came to Lilly and said: "Look here, my dear girl, this can't go on. I am tired of the unpleasantness to which I am subjected day after day. How far your appearance and behaviour or my age are accountable, I cannot say. We will not discuss the point. I have no charge of glaring misconduct and bad taste to bring against you. One does not expect the manners of a grande dame from anyone who a few months ago was serving behind a counter. It requires time to instruct you in such, and I can with confidence hand over your further education to our excellent Fräulein von Schwertfeger. So, if you please, we will change our plans and return to Germany by the midday train. On the evening of the day after to-morrow, perhaps earlier, we shall reach my estate."

Lily was too crushed and miserable to make any objection. And the land of promise, the goal of her dreams, sank beneath the waves.

They arrived at Lischnitz in the small hours of Sunday morning. The colonel had forbidden any ceremonious reception, so that there was nothing to be seen in the faint moonlight as they drove up but the dark mass of shadows cast by the castle and its outbuildings. A couple of maid-servants stood on the steps with lanterns in their hands, and a tall lady, with a too slight figure, a wasp-like waist and a flaming aureole of red-gold hair sprinkled with grey, threw two thin arms round Lilly's neck, and in a plaintive, discordant voice spoke motherly words of welcome, which instead of warming Lilly's heart filled it with shyness and dread.

Worn out, Lilly sank on to a billowy white bed, on the gilded posts of which pale-blue satin bows were perched like strange and wonderful butterflies. On the wings of these butterflies Lilly was carried out of a restless sleep into the new day of a new life.

A gold lamp, with opalescent glass and pale-blue silk shade, hung from the ceiling. The walls were wainscoted with white enamelled woodwork, and between were panels of brocade in the same shade of pale blue as the counterpane, hangings, and lamp-shade. Through the heavy curtains a ray of sunlight revealed all this on its way over the old-gold Persian carpet, patterned with pale-blue wreaths.

Lilly, with an ecstatic exclamation, jumped out of bed and tripped about on the soft carpet, the pile rising like waves of velvet over her feet.

Nothing was to be seen or heard of the colonel. He had told her long ago that they would have separate rooms, but his must be somewhere near, perhaps on the other side of that glossy white carved door.

She opened it cautiously and peeped in. The window curtains were hardly drawn back, the monster dark mahogany bed, with its tumbled pillows, was empty. There were prints of race-horses on the walls, hunting-crops, pistols, and military accoutrements. On the round table by the sofa was a pipe-rack and tobacco-jar, and close to the bed lay the familiar tube of gout ointment. Last night, then, he must have massaged himself, and had thus deprived her of her sacred duty. In the midst of her wounded feelings a shiver ran through her. Everything here was so strangely hard and relentless; threats seemed to be lurking in the corners. Hastily she shut the door again and withdrew into her pale blue kingdom.

The room boasted two more doors; one led into the corridor, for through it Fräulein von Schwertfeger had brought her the night before. And once more she shivered. Without any preliminaries, as a matter of course, the thin melancholy person with lustreless eyes and imperious manner had yesterday taken possession of her. She and the colonel had exchanged a glance--a brief glance of understanding which meant, "I hand her over to you," on one side, "And I am ready to do my best," on the other; she was therefore at the spinster's mercy. Certainly she had made an attempt to cajole Lilly by petting and addressing her by endearing names, and bringing tea with her own hands to her bedside; yet the girl, who was ordinarily so frankly responsive and trustful of everyone, whether man or woman, felt conscious of an inward voice where this woman was concerned calling aloud, "Beware!"

Now, as she gazed at the door which the claw-like fingers had thrown open for her, and recalled some of the chilling incidents of her arrival, a great loneliness and despondency oppressed her heart in spite of her newly acquired splendour.

With impetuous hands she flung on the morning wrapper, which Fräulein von Schwertfeger must have unpacked, for it was hanging beside the bed. The third door remained to be explored, and Lilly hoped that it would lead her into the open air. She raised the latch softly, inquisitively, and with a little cry recoiled. Her eyes were dazzled at what she saw.

A small room, flooded with sunshine and filled with flowers, laughed at her like a garden from paradise. Azaleas, as tall as a man, spread their coronets of pink blossoms over a lounge piled with cushions; a sweet little escritoire stood near it, inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl, and above waved the fronds of a feathery palm. But that was not the most beautiful thing; the most beautiful and surprising thing of all was the toilette-table. Veiled in white lace, it greeted her modestly from a corner. The top was a sheet of thick crystal glass polished at the edges, and on it stood a tall three-sided swing-mirror, in which you could see every part of yourself at once--your back hair, profile, dress fastening and all. Long had she wished for a mirror like this, but would never have dared to ask for it.

This enchanting little room was, of course, the boudoir. Lilly Czepanek with a boudoir! Was such a miracle to be believed? An array of articles was laid out on the glass top of the dressing-table. You could not take them all in at a first glance, however wide you opened your eyes: ivory-backed hairbrushes, a set of four, hard and soft, a hand-glass with a daintily carved handle, a powder-puff in a round ivory box, a glove-buttoner and shoe-horn--all silver and ivory. And more, still more! Whoever saw such things? Only by degrees could you learn for what mysteries of the toilette they were designed, and on every single one flaunted in glistening gold the monogram "L. M." under the coronet with seven points.

It was enough to drive you crazy with delight! Having gloried in everything to her heart's content, she proceeded on her triumphal march through her new territory. The room she was in had only one window, or rather a glass door. This opened on to a balcony, where a rocking-chair was placed, and where over a high iron trellis-work young creepers rambled. Later in the year, when the leaves were fully out, you would be quite shut in by high green walls; but now, in early spring, you could easily be seen through the spaces in the leaves from below.

She slipped cautiously out through the glass door into the open air. The stables and barns were seen on her left above the kitchen-garden wall, forming a quadrangle round the yard; to the right were gigantic trees, their trunks green with moss, their tangle of boughs only thinly covered as yet with tender young leaves and buds. In them the birds were making a vociferous riot, almost deafening to hear. Straight opposite, at a few yards' distance, a gabled roof rose among the trees, belonging to an ancient one-storeyed shooting lodge that abutted on the park, and apparently had its entrance in the yard. Here at last some human creatures were visible. Two gentlemen, one with a short grey beard, the other middle-aged, stout, and as brown as a berry, walked up and down together smoking, and deep in conversation. And a third----

Why! what did this mean? That slim, muscular youth with the high collar and light yellow gaiters, sitting on the outside of one of the windows at the gable end, while he coaxed a red puppy on a leash to climb his knee--who was he? No other than Walter von Prell! Yes, there could be no doubt about it! It was her lively comrade, the dear little ex-lieutenant who boasted that he was unblessed with any sort of moral sense, the only man in all the world who had kissed her lips ... except the colonel, who didn't count.

Yes, she recognised the light eyelashes, and the jingling gold bangle and the light almost inaudible laugh, which every time the red dog with pricked ears fell off his knee convulsed him like an earthquake. The one thing different about him was that his hair, close cropped of old, like yellow velvet, was now rather long and straggling.

Lilly stretched out her arms toward him playfully, with a light-hearted laugh.

"Herr von Prell! Herr von Prell!" she would have liked to call out, but fortunately stopped herself in time.

Well, at any rate, she was no longer quite alone in this strange world. Her merry comrade was here to be her knight and playmate; she owed all her good fortune to him.

Then it came back to her how he had said that the old colonel was "dead nuts" on him, and wanted him to come and play "Fritz Triddelfitz"--she knew her "Stromtid"--on his estate.

Only, it was funny that the colonel had in all these weeks never mentioned that he was there. He did not talk much about his home, however, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger was alone alluded to when his young wife needed a reprimand.

Did he suspect that it was no other than Prell who had discovered her and brought her into the light of day? Anyhow, she would certainly not let the morning pass without telling the colonel and Fräulein von Schwertfeger that they were old acquaintances. It would not be necessary to say anything about the kiss. After all, it had meant nothing more than a kiss in a game of kiss-in-the-ring.

No sooner had she got back to her bedroom and pulled back the curtains than someone knocked at the door, three short, impatient taps which seemed to freeze the marrow in her bones. It was Fräulein von Schwertfeger, of course. Who else could make her tremble so with fright? Her forehead was kissed, her cheeks stroked with every sign of approval and liking. But the glance of the great colourless eyes measured her from head to foot; a sour suppressed smile hovered about the hard-cut mouth, round which the skin was red and baggy, as is often the case when women with once good complexions age prematurely.

Over her arm was thrown a pile of clothes, which Lilly recognised as her own.

"I have brought you what you will require, my dear child," she said, "so that you may dress properly for the morning. In the country it is not customary to fly about the house in a morning wrapper. Meanwhile, after breakfast, we are to make a little tour of the estate, so that you can become acquainted with the people and see how the household works."

"Shall I do the housekeeping?" asked Lilly, shyly.

"If you understand how," said Fräulein Schwertfeger, and bit her lips while her half-closed eyes squinted askance.

Lilly dimly apprehended that her harmless question had been taken as a suggestion of infringing rights. So to make amends for her want of tact the added haltingly, "At least, I should like to do it if I----" She was going to add, "am allowed," but Fräulein Schwertfeger interrupted.

"My dear," she said, drawing herself up, "you have come here as mistress, and I am perfectly aware of the fact. But, if I may venture to advise, I should make no demands in your place to begin with; you will have enough to do in attending to your own behaviour. On this will depend your ever becoming in reality what you are now in name only."

Lilly felt too snubbed and depressed to answer.

The duenna was showing her hand already.

"I should advise you further," she went on, "to feel very carefully the ground on which you will afterwards have to move. For this you will need a guide who is more familiar with it than yourself. Otherwise you may be landed in difficulties from which you can never be rescued, and that, considering your relations to the colonel, would be a great pity."

Tears began to rise in Lilly's eyes. The old feeling of impotence, which she considered her greatest fault, overcame her.

"Oh, please, don't you be my enemy," she implored, clasping her hands.

There was a sudden ray of light in Fräulein von Schwertfeger's eyes, which lay usually like extinct volcanoes beneath their heavy lids, and whether it meant inquiry, astonishment, or compassion was not quite clear. For a moment she continued to stare before her into space, and Lilly beheld a grand noble profile that looked as if it had been chiselled out of marble and seemed to belong to someone quite different.

Then she found herself being encircled by two long thin arms, and held in an embrace warmer and sincerer than any of the endearments Fräulein von Schwertfeger had previously lavished on her.

"My dear child!" she exclaimed, "you really are a dear child," and she departed.

Half an hour later Lilly, attired in the clothes Fräulein von Schwertfeger had chosen for her, entered the dining-room, where old Ferdinand, a withered, spindle-legged specimen of the ancient retainer, was laying the breakfast. The impudent footman with the significant smile was not there, Lilly was thankful to see.

The colonel came in from his early morning ride. His eyes sparkled with the landlord's pride in his property. His thin cheeks glowed and dewdrops hung on the grey bristles on his temples. His tweed jacket became him, and his bowlegs were hidden beneath the table. Altogether he looked a fine old Nimrod, both wicked and pleasing. Lilly flew into his arms, and with a glance round he asked:

"Well? How do you like your home?"

Lilly kissed his hand for calling it her home.

The dining-room was long and lofty, vaulted at each end, and filled with dark carved-oak furniture. In spite of three bay windows opening on the terrace the room was dimly lighted. From the terrace, railed flights of steps led down into the park, where the sunbeams, playing on the young foliage, made a lacework of green.

At breakfast they discussed the circular route which was to be taken to show the young mistress her new domain. The colonel had no idea of presenting her formally to the tenants. She was to take them as she found them in their Sunday best, and they might gaze their fill at her as she passed.

The head men on the estate, who from time immemorial had dined at the castle on Sundays, would pay their respects to her later at dinner.

"The latest addition to them was once one of my officers, a Herr von Prell," the colonel remarked, giving Lilly a reflective look. "He left the army before I did, and has come here to learn farming," he added quickly.

Here was Lilly's golden opportunity of telling her husband that she knew him, but the confession died in her throat. She couldn't tell him; it wouldn't do. She would at once involve herself in a mesh of suspicions.

The great pale eyes of Fräulein von Schwertfeger were already fixed on her face full of searching scrutiny.

Anyhow, one thing was clear, the colonel knew nothing. He had not mentioned the young reprobate's presence on the estate before, evidently because he didn't think him worth it.

"How is he behaving?" he asked, turning to Fräulein von Schwertfeger.

"Good gracious, colonel, don't ask me!" she exclaimed, regarding the nails of her long thin fingers, which shone like mother-of-pearl. "You know I never find fault till I am obliged."

"Damned young scoundrel!" the colonel laughed, and Lilly, who involuntarily took her comrade's part, felt that was fault-finding enough.

After breakfast the tour began. Lilly walked between the colonel and Fräulein von Schwertfeger. They were joined by a pack of dogs, with whom she was instantly on friendly terms. First they went to the kitchen. It was a simply wonderful kitchen. It had walls of Dutch tiles, copper taps out of which streams of hot and cold water gushed, and a hearth of solid porcelain. Everything was so astonishing you hardly knew what to look at first. And there was a face, an old rugged, weather-beaten, thick-lipped face that looked up with moist eyes, dumbly inquiring, "Don't you remember me, then?" And Lilly's eyes answered, "Yes, I remember you." But she dared not speak with her lips as well as her eyes, in case Fräulein von Schwertfeger should be started on investigations of the most crucial hour of her life, and have a greater contempt for her than she had already. So she gave the old cook her hand in silence, which renewed their bond of friendship. Next they wait to the farm-servants' kitchen, where the Sunday soup was boiling and bubbling in a huge copper cauldron like a stormy sea. Then to the laundry, where the wringers and mangles shone like plated dreadnoughts and the fragrance of soap lingered pleasantly in every corner and cranny. The dairy and storerooms came next. Great hams hung from the rafters like giant bats, wrapped in grey muslin; sausages, too, like brown polished bolsters; and on straw there lay, even now in April, piles of winter apples, golden pippins, and other rare kinds. Rows of wide-lipped jars stood on the store-closet shelves. They contained the preserves and dried fruits, to which one might help oneself. Now the trio crossed the paved yard, where the waggons and threshing-machines stood in line like soldiers on parade, to the barns and stables. The saddle-horse stable! Heavens! what a palace! Wicker chairs with cushions and footstools in front of them were scattered about inviting you to rest. Over the stalls ran a matting frieze, with porcelain plates on which the names of the thoroughbreds who dwelt inside were engraved. Glossy slender necks and silken manes were thrust forth to greet the beautiful young mistress, and intelligent human eyes looked at her beseechingly.

"You must choose one of these to ride," said the colonel.

"But I can't ride," replied Lilly, embarrassed.

The grooms in red coats, who stood about with their caps in their hands, grinned incredulously. A "gracious" lady who couldn't ride had never come their way before.

Then they visited the stalls of the cart-horses. These were less interesting. Some of them were dirty and not sweet-smelling. As for the cowsheds, they made you feel nearly ill. But she took care not to show what she felt, and, eager to learn, listened attentively to all the colonel's and Fräulein von Schwertfeger's explanations.

The severest ordeal was yet to come--the progress through the labourers' quarters. The people had just come home from church, and stood in little expectant groups before their doors. The worthiest and most venerable were the first to be introduced. There were many names difficult to master, dirty hands and faces that stared at her awed, but with a subdued "Who are you?" expression.

Lilly, nevertheless, acquitted herself of her task as if born to it. She had little kind speeches ready that went straight to the hearts of the sick and aged, and when she fell on her knees to draw a toddling baby into her arms and kiss it, a murmur of approval cheered her on her way. At the further end of the settlement were two or three barnlike buildings that seemed to have been made into dwelling-houses as an afterthought. They had irregular windows with casements painted red and blue, and the single doorway had been partially bricked up. Here the Polish immigrants were housed. They came originally as hirelings from distant provinces to help with the harvest, and had never returned.

The district in which the castle was situated had always, from ancient times, been Teuton, and staunchly Teuton it had remained through the Slav invasion. It was necessary, therefore, Fräulein von Schwertfeger said, to uphold the banner of Teutonism. She spoke in so warning a tone that Lilly felt ashamed, as if she had done something to pull it down.

Scarlet head-kerchiefs prevailed here, and great blue hunted-looking eyes gazed at her, imploring sympathy. Here and there an obeisance was made to the very hem of her skirts, a shy kiss was pressed on her sleeve. "Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus" fell fluently on her ear, and she responded instinctively: "Na wieki wiekow! Amen." For she, the Catholic, knew from childhood that this was the correct answer to the Polish greeting.

There arose a joyous hum and glad whispering among the little herd as they huddled cringingly together. This fair young Pana had spoken to them in their own language and the language of their God.

"I never knew that you spoke Polish," remarked the colonel, with a jarring note of blame in his voice; and Lilly, laughing nervously, explained how she came by the phrase.

They did not linger long at the next building, where a group of youths in gray blouses stood awkwardly bowing and twirling their caps. She was scarcely given time to bestow on them a kindly smile and nod, and even this was evidently not approved. Though she said nothing, Fräulein von Schwertfeger's aristocratic nose held Teutonism aloft by sniffing in the air.

"Now, darling," she said, when they were on the castle steps again, "you will change into your dark-blue cloth gown. I have had it unpacked and pressed out, and you will find it in your dressing-room with a lace collar. It is the fitting costume for Sunday dinner."

Lilly arrayed herself obediently in the dark-blue cloth, in which she looked extra slight, and her heart beat in trepidation at the thought of meeting her merry friend, who could not be supposed to know that she had disowned him, and who might betray both of them at the outset by some careless allusion to their former friendship.

The dinner-gong sounded through the house, and the next minute came those three quick, incisive taps on the door.

She started back from the mirror, for on no account must Fräulein von Schwertfeger guess she was vain. The latter regarded her silently for a moment from head to toe, then, seizing both her hands while her pale-blue eyes burned into her, she said, "God grant that you don't work too much mischief in this world, my child."

"Why should I do mischief?" stammered Lilly, once more humiliated. "I have never done anyone any harm."

Fräulein von Schwertfeger smiled. "The one good thing about you is that you are ignorant of what you are," she said, and drew her by the arm out into the corridor and down the creaking old staircase to the dining-room.

There, with the colonel, drawn up in line, stood four dark manly figures ready to greet her. He of the pointed grey beard was introduced as "Herr Leichtweg, our head steward." He of the stout form and sunburnt coppery skin as "Herr Messner, our book-keeper"; and then another, and then--"Lieutenant von Prell, agricultural pupil," said the colonel.

A slight inclination of her head to him as to the others. She dared not let it be more.

"But, oh!" she thought, "my poor merry comrade, what have you done to yourself?"

A long frock-coat fell to his knees, his small pointed head was lost in the high collar. All was correct to a fold. His expression, gestures, bearing, everything about him was marked by obsequious formality and rigid propriety.

Lost in pitying amazement, she contemplated him. Had she not seen him that very morning so different!

"You should shake hands with them," the Schwertfeger voice prompted behind her.

She collected herself, and returned the pressure of the two honest countrymen's sun-tanned palms with more warmth, perhaps, than became a stately young chatelaine; but from Prell's freckled but still carefully kept hand she withdrew hers quickly.

"What a blessing! I needn't be afraid of his giving me away," she reflected.

Then came grace.

The finches were the worst behaved, though the tomtits and the nuthatches ran them very close in the noise they made. As for the blackbirds and thrushes, they seemed to think the place belonged to them; much more so than the starlings, who kept to themselves, and apparently cared for nothing in earth or heaven. The wrens and hedge-robins contributed their fair share to the chorus, but nothing could beat the fanfare of the finches, which was almost more than ears only accustomed hitherto to the tiny song of a caged cock-canary could endure.

The aged Haberland in his felt slippers knew them all apart. The old gardener's office had become a sinecure, as he was too infirm now to do anything more than sprinkle the lawn with the hose. Old Haberland knew exactly which birds built their nests in the trees and which on the ground, at what hour they began to sing, and the best post of observation to take up if you wanted to study their habits and plumage.

It was horrible that the squirrels must be shot. She could almost have hated the old fellow when she saw him going out with his rifle under his coat to wage war against those jolly little beasts. For he declared that the artful little robbers knew the gun when they saw it, and scurried off and outwitted him if they caught sight of it. He wasn't on friendly terms either with the jays and magpies. His favourite was the shy green woodpecker, which he had coaxed to nest in the park. Then there was that curiosity, the parti-coloured hoopoe, so tame that it came fearlessly at all hours of the day close up to the castle, sang its "Hu-tu-tu," and then with his crooked sabre of a bill cut the worms out of the grass.

Since the world began there could not have been such radiant glorious mornings as these. When you put your head out of doors at five o'clock, the cool purple mist wrapped you about like a royal mantle. Over the pond, where the reeds and rushes seemed to grow up in a night, forced by invisible hands, lay sunlit vapours which lifted gradually and rose into the sky in luminous columns. Vapour arose everywhere. Often it looked as if white fires had been kindled on the slopes of the lawn; clouds of light rolled heavily from the glittering fronds as if satiated with the dew they had absorbed. Oh, what mornings!

Then, when things burst into flower, you never grew tired of wandering about, filling apron and basket with great sprays of snowy and purple lilac and trails of golden chain, till you were almost drowned in a sea of blossom. The mad joy of the dogs was indescribable, when their lovely young mistress appeared smiling on the garden steps in her white blouse and short skirt, armed with scissors and shears. Patiently they waited for her, whining and yelping if she came later than they expected; for they had given her without hesitation their canine allegiance, regardless of pitying, benevolent smiles from Fräulein von Schwertfeger, whom they abhorred.

The cleverest of them all, Bevel the terrier, was not numbered among her admiring bodyguard, as he never failed to attend at the colonel's heels when he took his early morning survey of his acres. But there was Pluto, the long-eared setter, who now in the spring was out of employment, and went on his own account hunting rabbits in the park. There were Schnauzl the poodle and Bobbi the dachshund, who lived in constant state of jealous feud with each other because of her. But most beautiful of all was Regina, the huge panther-like Dane, whose left foreleg had been injured by a stone, and who, ashamed of her lameness in the daytime, always slunk out of the sight of strangers, though at night she made up for it by keeping indefatigable guard and terrifying the neighbourhood by her bay.

Indescribable, too, were the gambols of the colts in the paddock beyond the rose garden, the craving for caresses of the two-year-olds, when their sugar-squandering mistress pulled back the hurdles and stretched out her arms, to pillow on them the slender heads of her young pets.

Nothing, too, could equal the fury of the turkey-cock when the pheasants stole a march on him and got the first crumbs; though he surpassed himself in jealous rage when those idiotic ducks dared to squat on Lilly's feet as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do. So bristling with anger was he that he would sometimes peck at Pluto's drooping ears, an attention which the setter declined with a contemptuous shake of the head.

Oh! those were mornings worth living!

After the early stroll round the estate came breakfast, at which she arrived so brimming over with happiness and affection that it didn't matter whether she threw her arms first round the colonel's neck or Anna's; for now in confidential moments she was permitted to call her by her Christian name, and felt more drawn to her, though still full of fear of her displeasure and harsh judgment. For indeed she found in her a severe schoolmistress. No word, gesture, or movement of Lilly's escaped observation, or if necessary, reproof. There was a right and a wrong way of sitting at table, or in an arm-chair, pouring out tea, of asking someone to sit down, of beginning a conversation, and making visitors known to each other. Lilly learnt to glide over the difficulty of forgotten names and to show each one the proper degree of friendship. These and a hundred other little matters Lilly was enlightened upon. There seemed no end to them.

This was only practising in the small compass of the castle and on its occasional guests. The real thing was to come later, in the autumn, when Lilly was to call on the wives of the proprietors of the neighbouring estates. Till then the colonel desired to live quietly at home with as little outward social intercourse as possible. It was easy for him to find an excuse, as, after his many years of bachelorhood, it was not unnatural that he should wish to prolong his honeymoon. By the autumn Lilly's education would be complete, and she would emerge into society a grande dame capable of holding her own at the functions of the landed nobility and in the casino with a tact that would not disgrace her husband's name and rank; and Fräulein von Schwertfeger kept this ideal, as the highest attainable, before Lilly's eyes every hour of the day. It was like preparing for an examination in the Selecta, Lilly thought, as she anxiously modelled herself after the prescribed pattern, and dreamed day and night of her début.

In reality, she was only at ease when wandering about out of doors or shut up in her boudoir. "Boudoir!" No, she mustn't call it that. Fräulein von Schwertfeger said that it was a sitting-room, and only very rich butchers' and bankers' wives--according to Fräulein von Schwertfeger they were the same--owned boudoirs.

Thus Lilly stumbled at every step. Sometimes, as if to put her social development to the test, the colonel permitted Lilly, under Fräulein von Schwertfeger's wing, to do the honours of his table when he chanced to entertain fellow-officers who turned up from neighbouring barracks. On these occasions the same thing always happened. At first she would be as stiff as a wound-up doll, incapable of making a spontaneous remark to the military guests in their resplendent uniforms; but in a few glasses of wine she found courage and became by degrees more lively, not to say merry, till at last she simply bubbled over with innocent little jokes--how they came into her head she didn't know--and so charmed these men, who had mostly passed their prime, that they paid her court in every word they said, and kept their gaze fixed on her face in delight and desire. The colonel would become uneasy, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger, who generally stared at her plate with a scoffing little smile, received a sign from him; whereupon the ladies instantly rose and retired, deaf to all the loudly expressed regrets at their going on the part of the men.

The ecstasy, however, that she had awakened in her husband's guests recoiled on herself: made her exultant and sorry together, and compelled her to sit till past midnight, with wet cheeks, beating heart, and strained nerves staring out into the blue twilight of the park.

Foreshadowings of undisciplined madness and uncontrolled self-abandon swept like lightning flashes through her brain. A consuming fever within her relaxed her limbs. It made the dress she wore, the room she was in, the park, the world seem too small for her, and filled her soul with a crowd of dancing fiery shapes, a whirl of reflected masculine passions.

On such nights as these the colonel would come to her, in a more or less intoxicated condition, when the guests were gone, and reproach her mildly for not being "ladylike" enough; then, when she tried to defend herself, he would kiss her tears away and throw himself beside her on the bed. Shivering with disgust at his drunkenness, her conscience a prey to groundless pangs, yet for all that happy and relieved to feel herself released from a torturing anxiety, she fell asleep in his arms.

There were other nights when she felt restless and lonely and would have been glad of his company, when she longed in soul as well as body to cling humbly to him; but he did not come, and locked his door. On the whole, he treated her kindly. To him she was a light fragile toy, not to be played with too often in case of damage, but to be put away carefully after use till next time--and this suited her well enough. At least she personally was spared the terror of his outbursts of fury, which two or three times a day threatened to shiver the walls of the castle to atoms. Even Fräulein Von Schwertfeger hardly knew how to meet them, and bowed her head and bit her lips as to an inevitable fate when the storms burst.

Lilly could never quite make up her mind as to what were the relations between these two. Generally, it seemed as if, during long years, mutual sympathy and understanding had bound them together by indissoluble ties, though at other times they appeared to have nothing in common and to avoid each other, he with frigid hauteur, she with scorn in her squinting sidelong glances. It had often occurred to Lilly, too, that when Fräulein von Schwertfeger was young and fair to look upon, she and the colonel might have had a love affair. But gradually she abandoned this idea, for if anything of the kind had ever existed, Fräulein von Schwertfeger would have been far too proud to endure their present companionship, and he was too domineering to tolerate the presence of any such uncomfortable reminder of a dead amour. All Lilly could gather of the aristocratic spinster's past was that as the orphan of a poor officer she had been forced to earn her own living almost since her confirmation. She had presided over the colonel's house for nearly twenty years. That she, like herself, was without resources and dependent on the whims of the same old man seemed to Lilly to form a bond of sympathy between herself and Fräulein von Schwertfeger, yet she never could get rid of the undefinable dread she had been inspired with at the outset. She really was indebted to her for many things. Without the spinster's untiring surveillance she must have fallen innumerable times from the straight road, which was to lead to her apotheosis as noblewoman and Lady Bountiful. When she was disposed to err on the side of over-humility, there would have been scoffers to take base advantage of it; and her easy-going manner with those who were not her equals might, if uncorrected, have got her into serious trouble. As it was, she was popular with everyone. In the kitchens and the stables, the villages and the agents' offices, everywhere she was greeted respectfully with beaming smiles. But it was in the Polish quarters, where the women dried their washing behind great fires of brushwood, that she was simply idolised. It may have been that they had got wind of her Slavonic name and her Catholicism. Anyhow, by all those poor despised foreign folk, who drifted about among the proud stolid Germans, with humility in their downcast childlike eyes and snatches of their native song on their lips, Lilly was regarded in the light of a saviour and patron saint. She loved to visit and busy herself with these gentle grateful people. She tended the sick and took compassion on the forsaken. The girls were to her like her own sisters, who needed a watchful eye over them; and as for the boys, they were a sacred trust whose welfare she would always have at heart.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger grimly disapproved of this attachment between Lilly and the Poles.

"The people on the estate are beginning to complain," she said, "that you prefer the aliens to themselves. If I were you I should take my walks in another direction."

Lilly objected to doing this, and so Fräulein von Schwertfeger bore her company when she went in the direction of the barn dwellings, in case they should exercise too great a fascination over her. She succeeded, too, in converting Lilly to Protestantism--only outwardly, of course.

"You may worship your Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph as much as you like," she said, "but do remove those images and relics from your bedside. And then with regard to going to church, certainly if you like you can drive five miles in to Krammen to attend mass. The colonel will allow you, but, all the same, I would like you, my sweet, to come to church with us and sit in the ancestral pew; do, to please me. You won't regret it."

And when Lilly unresisting had given in, Fräulein von Schwertfeger presented her as a reward with a tiny folding domestic altar. The outside looked like a dainty jewel-box, but when you opened it--oh, joy!--there was the Holy Child in the arms of the Virgin painted on glass, with St. Anne on the left panel and St. Joseph on the right.

Lilly almost wept, she was so pleased with it. Still, she could not bring herself to love the giver as she ought. Often when they sat together chatting confidentially, Lilly felt solitary and--frightened. She even dared not satisfy her hunger. Since the days of Frau Asmussen's milk puddings, Lilly had developed an enormous, well-nigh indecent appetite, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger's aghast expression at her piled-up plate often was the cause of her rising from table still unsatisfied, and falling back on raids on the storeroom cupboard between meals. The dear old cook, her fast ally, guaranteed to guard Lilly from surprises on the part of Fräulein von Schwertfeger, and when she came into the kitchen Lilly accounted for her presence there on the plea that she was learning to cook, an announcement which was received with patronising merriment.

If it had not been for old Grete the cook, she would have known nothing at all about the conduct of the household, for, either from caution or greed of power, Fräulein von Schwertfeger chose to conceal everything that might have led to a practical and intelligent comprehension of the ménage. When she offered to help she was told help was not wanted, and she must take care of her hands and not tire herself. So it went on day after day.

She would have given anything to learn riding, but there again Schwertfeger interference prevented her by discovering signs of motherhood, which invariably proved later to be a false alarm. She might not so much as cultivate her musical talent. The old tin-kettle of a piano, the rattling yellow keys of which looked like a set of teeth decayed from tobacco smoke--just as the colonel's were--was not to be replaced by a new one till they went to Danzig for the day in the autumn.

So her life dragged on, half in bliss, half in regret. She felt like a pilgrim who against her will had strayed into paradise. She looked back on the time before her marriage as on a long, long vanished youth, and would have laughed at anyone who had pointed out to her that at barely nineteen most of her youth lay before her. It was well that opposite, in the bailiff's lodge, there was at least one person who could testify to her having been a girl once; otherwise she might have told herself that her girlhood was a dream, and she had been a full-fledged married woman and the colonel's wife before she was out of her cradle.

All this time she had only met her merry comrade at dinner on Sunday, when, in his long frock-coat, with his reverential awed manner, he cut a rather comical figure. Neither of them by a single word or glance recalled the past. Often from her balcony, now completely secluded by its growth of rambling vines, she looked across to the gabled house and saw him gambolling with the red little fox of a puppy. Then it seemed to her that this blond-haired good-for-nothing, who flirted with all the pretty girls on the estate, so old Grete said, was the only creature with whom she had anything in common in this cold world. Grete told how he nearly rode the horses to death to get back from his secret outings before dawn; and then sometimes behind the closed shutters of his den---- Here old Grete could not proceed, and Lilly concluded that things too dreadful for words went on behind those closed shutters.

One hot August morning Lilly, with her arms full of dewy roses, herself besprinkled with dew from head to toe, entered the dining-room where Anna was making tea, looking lean and tall in her simple blue-grey linen gown. Her manner and greeting were the same as usual, yet Lilly divined instantly that something out of the ordinary had happened. She also noticed that Käte, the maid who helped old Ferdinand with the waiting, had red eyes, and was biting her lips till they bled almost as she laid the table. Käte was pretty and superior to the average servant-girl, also better educated, her father having been a schoolmaster. For this reason Fräulein von Schwertfeger had chosen her from among the other maids to help Lilly with her toilette.

When she had gone out of the room, Lilly began to ask questions.

Anna von Schwertfeger kissed her with redoubled tenderness and affection.

"My darling," she said, "why sully your pure mind with disagreeable matters? When people are bent on breaking their necks, what is the good of trying to prevent them?"

"If it's a question of breaking necks," thought Lilly, "Walter von Prell must have something to do with it."

Then she said aloud that she thought as mistress of the house she ought to know what was going on, especially as in future she intended to do the housekeeping herself.

The modesty of her "in future" impressed Fräulein von Schwertfeger favourably, and she yielded.

"I am sure it will give you pain," she said, "because I know you like him."

"Him!" echoed Lilly; and she was conscious that she blushed.

"Indeed, we all like him," she went on in an excusing tone; "the colonel is extremely fond of him. So long as he carried on his little games at a distance I kept my eyes shut and refused to listen to gossip; but when it comes to his breaking into the castle, it's a little too much, and time to stop it."

"What has he done, then?" Lilly asked, shocked.

"There has been a great deal to excite suspicion lately. At several places the creepers on your balcony appear broken off and withered."

"On my balcony?" She drew a step nearer the speaker, overwhelmed by an unutterable fear, and taking hold of her arm said, "What can my balcony have to do with Herr von Prell, Anna?"

"Calm yourself, dearest," said the speaker, unable to meet her eyes. "People in my position are bound to keep their eyes open; it is part of their duties. And what I have done has been solely for your sake.... Then, how easily could anyone who doesn't know you as I know you misinterpret this climbing on to your balcony----"

Lilly began to cry. "Oh! it's too low--too low!" she sobbed.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger drew her down into the corner of the sofa and stroked her forehead.

"I have experienced worse things than that, dear," she said. "Anyhow, I was determined to get on the right scent, and although it is needless to say I didn't suspect you"--again she averted her eyes--"I took the precaution of watching in the dark outside your door for several nights."

Lilly bounded up. While she had been sleeping innocently unsuspicious, close by, someone had been lurking and keeping watch on her. So much was she a prisoner.

"And this morning at about one o'clock I caught him red-handed. To think of his dare-devilry! He had the audacity to place one of Haberland's ladders against your balcony--that accounts for the broken vine-shoots--and to get in through the glass door of your sitting-room. By the way, dearest, glass doors should never be left open at night. He slunk past your bedroom door into the corridor, without seeing me, of course, Käte is the only one who sleeps anywhere near, and this morning, early, when I taxed her with it she denied nothing.... I acted, as I always do in these cases, with every kindness and consideration. I told Käte that she might be the first to give warning, and that nothing would be said.... But what is to be done about the young man? This is his only chance for the future. If the colonel sacks him it will be his ruin. On the other hand, I cannot very well keep silence to the colonel on a point that concerns, in a way, his wife's honour----"

"How do Herr von Prell's intrigues with the housemaids concern my honour?" Lilly ventured to interrupt, hoping, by playing the innocent a little, to gain time for thought as to how her friend was to be helped out of this scrape.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger was beginning to enlighten her on what all the disastrous results might be of such profligate conduct, when the tea-things rattled at the approaching footsteps of the colonel.

"Say nothing ... yet," implored Lilly; and to hide her fears and confusion she rushed into his arms.

He did not notice that anything was wrong. His once ever-wakeful and easily irritated suspicion had slumbered since he had confided his young wife to the vigilant care of the duenna.

In these days he was no longer the zealous lover, aping the gallantry of youth, who had wished to be master of her every look and word. The playful patronage with which he now regarded the antics of this lovely, gentle-souled child gave him quite a paternal air that became him well. His expeditions to the casino in the nearest garrison town, at first rare, had become more and more frequent. He often went by the afternoon train, but as a rule started after the evening meal, when he did not come home till two or three in the morning, as there were no trains back earlier.

To-day he told them good-humouredly at breakfast that he had to go to town on business, to get rid of the barley crop to the Jews.

A happy thought struck Lilly, filling her with infinite satisfaction. The colonel's absence must be utilised to save him. How it was to be done she didn't know. But save him she would. If she did not intervene on his behalf, who else was there to steer this stormy petrel into safe harbour?

When the colonel had retired to his room, she took heart and made her cautious plea to Anna, who, however, declined to relent.

"He will only be worse next time," she said, "and then the disgrace will be greater for all of us."

"Oh no!" said Lilly, "he will not get worse; he will reform. Just give him a lecture."

"I am of an age to do it, certainly," said Fräulein von Schwertfeger, with a sour old-maidish smile, "and I have the authority; but, to speak frankly, the subject is too delicate. I would rather not be mixed up any more in such unpleasant affairs."

The pale eyes, almost hidden under their heavy lids, gazed with that sphinx-like fixity which Lilly had often noticed before--it seemed like the resurrection within her of an old and bitter hate. But she returned to the topic voluntarily. All she would commit herself to was that, if he came of his own free will and apologised, she might listen to him. That was the most she could do without playing a double part.

"But how can he apologise when he has no idea that he has been discovered?" put in Lilly timidly.

"I wouldn't mind betting," replied Fräulein von Schwertfeger, "that Käte will run over to him the first moment she is free."

"But if she doesn't, what then?" asked Lilly, unable to control her eagerness.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger took her face between her hands.

"If I didn't know, my pet, what a dear, ingenuous young creature you were, I might think there was something rather suspicious in your being so keenly interested in this young rake. No, no; you needn't blush. Of course I know there is nothing behind, and, at all events, I will wait till to-morrow afternoon before taking steps--simply because you intercede for him, darling."

Thereupon the conversation ended. Nothing more was to be hoped for from that quarter.

"If I don't save him, he'll be dismissed; and if he is dismissed, he'll inevitably go to the dogs; and if he goes to the dogs, I shall be to blame."

Lilly's thoughts thus revolved in a circle till she felt quite exhausted and giddy.

The most straightforward course would have been to interview Käte, but that would have been beneath her dignity. Besides, it was evident that the poor girl had no thought of running over to warn him. She glided about in a spiritless fashion, and finally had to be put to bed with an attack of colic.

At four o'clock the colonel drove off to the station. He had stuffed a packet of blue banknotes in his pocket-book first, a sign that he would not be coming back till dawn.

Evening approached. The wheels of the returning manure carts rang on the flags of the yard. The bellow of oxen and the cracking of whips announced that the days' work was over.

Lilly crouched in ambush behind her creeper-covered trellis and watched the bailiff's lodge. At last the ne'er-do-well appeared from his gable end, dragging the unfortunate red foxy dog at the end of a taut chain. He had on a greenish-grey tweed jacket with innumerable pockets, each of which seemed to have something sticking out of it. He looked quite bulky. But, all the same, he was a dear smart little fellow, worth taking some trouble for.

Should she make him a sign, and throw down a note which later he could pick up unobserved? She went into her rooms and scribbled in pencil the following lines.

"Everything is discovered. Fräulein von S---- promises to say nothing provided you----"

Here she paused. This would never do. The stupidest fool who chanced to get hold of the note could only interpret it in one way, i.e., as a confession of guilt.

"I'll speak to him instead," she decided, as the bell sounded for supper.

How curiously the Schwertfeger eyes regarded her, just as if they could read at the bottom of her soul what her bold intention was. But no reference whatever was made to the miscreant, and when they rose from the table she put her arm into Lilly's arm, just as she did when she wanted to keep Lilly from visiting her Polish friends.

"She won't let go the whole evening," thought Lilly, gnashing her teeth inwardly.

At that moment someone came to say Käte was much worse, and should they send for the doctor?

Fräulein von Schwertfeger left the room reluctantly, saying as she went, "I shall be back before long."

In the flash of a moment Lilly had opened the verandah door and was slipping down the terrace steps into the dusky park. The intense silence was only broken by a faint splashing from behind the cypresses, where old Haberland was filling his cans, as he had not finished watering the rose-trees. She walked straight towards the gable end of the lodge, wondering how she should attract his attention and bring him to the window. She was spared the trouble, however, for he was lying full length on the green bench outside the house, puffing serenely at the end of a cigarette. The red dog, whose chain he had twisted round his wrist, was asleep at his feet. None of his colleagues were to be seen. She could scarcely breathe, her heart beat so violently.

"Herr von Prell!"

He started up, the dog with him.

"Herr von Prell, I've something to say to you."

He grabbed at his head to take off the cap which wasn't there.

"At your service, gracious baroness."

"Will you come and take a little stroll with me?"

"If the gracious baroness wishes, certainly."

He threw away the end of his cigarette, cast a rapid look round for his missing cap, and then walked beside her, bareheaded, as stiff and correct in his bearing as an automaton.

Lilly led the way into the middle of the park, where groups of trees and grassy clearings melted into purple-fringed darkness. She had recovered her calmness. The desire to save him endowed her with a strength of will of which she had never dreamed herself capable.

"You must not misunderstand what I am doing," she began.

"Oh, of course not, gracious baroness," he answered with a polite bow. "It is such a charming evening, and old acquaintances enjoy a chat."

"If that was my object in wishing to see you," Lilly said, unable to conceal that she was hurt, "I should have asked you to the castle. You may conclude from my coming that the matter is something of importance."

"What could be of more importance to me, baroness, than walking here with you?" he replied.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, Herr von Prell, if only you knew the scrape you were in, you would hardly use such empty figures of speech!"

Lilly was amazed at her own haughty tone.

"A scrape, gracious baroness, more or less, what can it matter?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "To be doomed to live so near and yet so far from a certain fair lady is all that matters. The question is whether Tommy and I have enough moral fibre to endure such a trial with patience--Tommy, don't be an ass! Our gracious baroness has no objection to you as long as you don't chew her train." And he began tugging the wilful little dog off his forelegs as if he were some mechanical toy.

"You'll throttle the poor animal if you don't take care," said Lilly, glad to revert momentarily to less personal topics.

"Then he will suffer like his master," he retorted, catching at his throat to illustrate his meaning and gasping horribly.

Such conduct must not be tolerated a moment longer. She owed it to herself and her position.

"I suppose that you are quite unaware, Herr von Prell, that probably by this time to-morrow you will have been dismissed?" she said loftily.

At last he seemed impressed. He scowled and twirled the fine ends of his young moustache. Then, knitting his brows, he said:

"However bad things may be going, there is some satisfaction to be derived from the fact that the gracious baroness seems to take not a little interest in my affairs."

Now Lilly was really angry. "I wonder you are not ashamed, Herr von Prell!" she exclaimed. "Here am I running great risks to help you, and giving myself a lot of trouble, and yet you persist in talking nonsense."

"We must be careful, Tommy--careful," he said, lifting the fox-like dog in his arms. "First, we are flayed alive, then kicked. But we ought to find comfort in the consciousness that we are innocent, my poor Tommy."

"Please don't try to excuse yourself," she scolded. "Fräulein von Schwertfeger has found out everything ... about your connection with ... you know--your nocturnal excursions to my balcony and entrance through my sitting-room. Everything! Do you suppose that it is any pleasure to me to have to treat you, whom I have always liked, as a criminal? Do you suppose I wouldn't much rather have reason to be proud of you than to see you sent away in disgrace? If you can say anything in your own defence so much the better. I shall be pleased to hear it."

She had worked herself up into such a fever of righteous indignation that she quite overlooked the impropriety of her present proceedings.

Now she was enacting a rôle that enchanted her. She was the benevolent chatelaine, doing her best to rescue an inferior, and her breast swelled with a sense of her exalted virtue. They had emerged from the dusky shadows of the ancient avenue of limes, a ray of light from the afterglow in the west pierced the boughs and suffused his thin freckled face with a deep flush. He appeared to be absolutely crushed and penitent, and Lilly was already regretting that she had been too hard on him.

"I quite see," he began after a pause, and his voice trembled with suppressed emotion, "that I ought to clear myself from such a grave imputation. I am asked to set up a defence, and I can; but in so doing I am forced to reveal a secret ... and I am not sure whether it would be fair to your gracious baroness to enlighten you on the awful failing that has shipwrecked my whole life."

"Tell me at once what it is," urged Lilly, burning with curiosity.

"Well, if you must know, it is this. From childhood I have been pursued by a ghastly fate, which overcomes me at moments when I am most powerless, and fastens on me the responsibility for crimes of which I am utterly innocent. Be prepared, therefore, to hear something terrible. I am--I am a somnambulist."

As he glanced sideways at Lilly, there was such a droll, wicked twinkle playing under the light lashes that she burst into a fit of light laughter. He joined in with his dear old noiseless giggle that shook him like an earthquake. So they stood still and both laughed till they cried; and Lilly forgot all about her exalted duties as chatelaine and her mission of salvation. Then, instinctively, their footsteps turned together into the most deserted and overgrown part of the park, where its bounds were lost in a dense thicket of birches. It grew darker at every step. The foxy little dog had abandoned himself to his fate and trotted obediently after his master.

"The truth is, my dear friend," said he, when they had recovered partially from their levity--"why should I make any false pretences?--I am a poor fish here floundering out of water. Can you imagine what it is to have to lead a vegetable existence in the society of plebeians, and from morning to night practise the arts of virtue and seriousness? I can assure you it's often as bitter as a dose of aloes. Tommy helps me over the worst hours, but even Tommy is sometimes a disappointment.... May I take this opportunity, by-the-by, of asking you a very interesting question, my gracious baroness?"

Delighted at his returning gravity Lilly assented.

"Can you move your ears up and down?"

She was again seized with laughter as with an illness. She leaned against the trunk of a tree, and struggled in vain with her merriment, while he continued in a tone of profound despondency.

"I mastered this modest accomplishment, of which I am not in the least proud, when I was in the Quinta at school. There it was considered the very acme of attainments, and I thought it would be a nice trick to teach my Tommy, who, however, declined to be taught it, though I have wasted hours and expended a lot of mental effort in trying to make him. But one day, by accident, I found out that he could do it much better than I ever could. I came to the conclusion, too, that he had been able to do it all along when he liked, but not when I liked. Is that not very depressing, a symbol of the utter fruitlessness of all human endeavour? Indeed, my dearest baroness, I believe I shall be compelled to become philosopher, out of sheer unutterable boredom."

Lilly could see nothing now but the outline of his figure, behind which the eyes of the foxy one glowed like balls of fire. Not since her schooldays had she enjoyed such a bout of pure fun, and she had to wait for a break in her laughter to remind him that it was time to be going home. He turned obediently, changing Tommy's chain from one hand to the other.

The danger that threatened him seemed to be totally forgotten. As time was precious, Lilly took the bull by the horns and told him what Fräulein von Schwertfeger's conditions were for keeping silence. But she could not regain the dignified pose of a Lady Bountiful holding out the rescuing hand with an air of sublime superiority, and every now and then she broke off in what she was saying to giggle.

"I know that good lady's unquenchable penchant for treading on other people's toes," he said; "but since we have got into her bad graces, dear little Tommy and I will have to wriggle out. I am grateful to you, my dear and gracious friend. I will take your hint and put myself on the right road to absolution. I'll polish up my vocabulary of repentance. I'll be more than repentant. I'll be cheeky. That works on these respectable spinsters like magic; and I'll kill two birds with one stone, and take care, while I am about it, to improve our future chances of intercourse--always supposing that your majesty is agreeable."

Oh, how very agreeable she was! "But how will you manage it?" she asked anxiously.

"Leave it to me," he answered. "Your duenna is a clever old girl, but I am even cleverer. I shan't be surprised if after to-morrow I am honoured with warm invitations to supper at the castle, which will be very convenient; and I shall, I warrant, succeed in looking into the eyes of my queen unobserved by the two mighty watchdogs."

There was much in this speech that jarred on her. He might make fun of Fräulein von Schwertfeger if he liked--she was fair game; but of the colonel he ought to speak with respect. And now that she had satisfied herself that he was out of danger did she first fully realise how atrocious his conduct had been, and how weak it was of her to be strolling about with him in the dark, tolerating his silly jokes.

"Allow me to remind you, Herr von Prell," she said, "that it is only owing to our former friendship I have warned you. Having done it, we had better be strangers in future. I must go now. Good-night."

Whereupon she began to run away from him. But, as she sprang along the dark woodland path without looking round, suddenly something warm, soft, and alive slipped between her feet. She cried out shrilly, and turned back to seek Prell's help; at the same moment the chain got twisted round her ankle and held her fast.

The foxy little dog in his eager desire to get home had taken her flight as a signal to break loose from his master's restraining hold, and had run under her skirts. The more she pressed forward the more painfully did the chain cut into her flesh. It was all over now with her anger.

Herr von Prell had to kneel down and hold the little rascal in his arms till she had released her foot from its chain trap.

"Tommy, Tommy, what mischief have we done? We have hurt our mistress's august foot. That comes of straining on our chains and getting under ladies' skirts. A grave offence. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, you scoundrel?"

And then he imprinted a kiss on the dog's sharp-pointed little nose.

"Doesn't he ever bite you?" she asked, interested.

"He has had the advantage of a rigorous military training," he replied, "and consequently he is used to kisses."

She burst out into a new fit of merriment, and he held out to her the struggling woolly little animal, asking her if she would like to kiss Tommy too.

Laughing, she declined; laughing, she walked on in his company. "Weak as ever," she told herself.

Still in fits of silvery laughter, she came into the lighted hall, where Fräulein von Schwertfeger met her, with large reproachful eyes.

"Where have you been, child?" she asked, prepared on the spot to subject her to a calm and judicial cross-questioning.

"Oh, he's such fun!" was all Lilly could gurgle forth as she buried her face, flushed from laughing, on her duenna's shoulder. "Such fun!"

"You don't mean to say----?"

"Yes, I do. Do you think I would leave him in the lurch, my charming little old pal?"

The Schwertfeger countenance froze into rigidity.

Lilly, with a whoop of joy, freed herself from the elder woman's arm, flew to her room, nestled her head in the pillows, and laughed herself to sleep.

It was begun in laughter--and with laughter it continued. The next morning when Lilly awoke the objects round her--the lamp, the washstand, the sentimental pictures on the wall--seemed to have taken on a different aspect, and the sun shone in at the windows with redoubled brilliance.

In her night clothes she stood before the glass and smiled again at the reflection she saw there; it was the face of a gamin, with eyes roguish and sparkling, and a tipped-up saucy nose.

At breakfast she scintillated with small witticisms, chased the stiff-kneed colonel round the table, and cherished sentiments of glowing gratitude towards Fräulein von Schwertfeger. She on her side smiled eloquently to herself, and when the colonel had retired, chucked Lilly under the chin, and said, "What a child you are!"

She made no allusion to the confession that had escaped Lilly the night before. It almost seemed that it had not been heard.

Lilly ran up to her balcony, pushed apart the creepers, and gave him a nod to come in as he walked up and down uncertainly between the castle and the bailiff's office. He understood her signal, bowed low, and disappeared in the direction of the terrace steps.

What passed between him and Fräulein von Schwertfeger remained a secret. There was no finding out whether she interrogated him on his previous relations with the young baroness. But that the result of the interview as a whole was successful there could be no question. Instead of the colonel giving him his congé, the colonel himself brought him in to supper that evening. He wore his best coat, white waistcoat, his most respectful expression, and looked as if he was going to sink into his collar.

"A little bird tells me," said the colonel to Lilly, "that Herr von Prell is rather dull and lonely over there sometimes. So, if you have no objection, we will ask him in oftener than we have done."

She hadn't the very least objection, only the thought that Käte might appear any moment in the doorway prevented her from speaking.

Instead of Käte another maid handed old Ferdinand the plates and dishes. Lilly's eyes turned inquiringly to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, who said, in an undertone so that the men should not hear, "The poor girl, owing to her illness, has gone home, and probably will not come back."

Lilly squeezed her hand under the table from sheer relief. She had a dim notion that Käte had been sent away to spare her unpleasantness.

The other two were deep in cavalry talk, much interlarded by technical terms and dry names.

Herr von Prell leaned towards his old superior officer, blinking his lids with reverential and eager attention. The colonel laid down the law like a wrathful deity, spoke in gruff, fierce tones, and shot about him dagger-like glances, as if there were enemies all round to mow down, which of course was mere professional vainglory.

Lilly listened, and would have liked to join in. But apparently both men had forgotten her existence, and she became depressed and jealous without being exactly sure which of them she was most angry with.

When Prell rose to take his leave, the colonel laid his hand on his shoulder, and asked:

"Why haven't we done this before, my boy?" And the look he gave Lilly seemed to add, "There has really been no necessity for so much caution." After this, Prell's invitations to supper became more frequent as the September days grew chillier, and the colonel's gout made his visits to the town rarer. Groaning and swearing he mounted his horse with difficulty, but he would not listen to Lilly's entreaties to him to give up the early morning ride.

"I might ride round the place instead of you," she said, "if you weren't so ridiculously nervous about my having an accident."

The colonel and Anna exchanged glances.

"It certainly is a disgrace," he remarked, "that the girl hasn't learnt yet to sit on a horse. She ought to be taught. What do you say, Anna? Can we trust that scamp Prell to give her riding lessons?"

Lilly's face beamed with delight.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger's lids were lowered meditatively. After a few moments' silence she raised them, and said very slowly and emphatically:

"If the harum-scarum young man brought our pet home one day with a broken arm or leg, what should we do? I think the proposal, at any rate, needs to be further considered."

Lilly forbore from expressing her longing, and did not contradict Anna, who, however, must have divined her thoughts, for when they were alone together she suddenly said, taking Lilly's face between her hands:

"Dismiss the idea from your mind, darling. Take my word for it, it will be best."

It was about this time that Lilly, who loved to explore the spacious and only partly inhabited old castle, made a remarkable discovery that excited her curiosity not a little. In one of the guest chambers on the third floor, which was hardly ever used, she was rummaging one day in the drawers of a bureau when she came across a transparent garment of silver net, fringed with spangles and fastened at the shoulder by curious barbaric clasps. It resembled the one in which, in the Dresden days, she had danced at bedtime, and which now lay at the bottom of her wardrobe enjoying undisturbed repose. She had never shown it to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, being somewhat ashamed of it. But this duplicate she folded up and took downstairs to her friend, for she was anxious to learn its history.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger looked up from her account-books abstractedly till she saw the glitter of spangles in the sun, and then a shudder convulsed her whole frame, her eyes became distended, and she seemed as paralysed with horror as if she had seen a ghost.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly.

"I thought I had thrown away all the rubbish," she said, and gave herself a little shake.

She snatched the flimsy thing out of Lilly's hands, rolled it in a sheet of paper, and took it to the kitchen. Lilly, who followed, saw a thin cloud of smoke rise from the hearth, carrying with it a whirl of charred tinsel rags. Old Grete stood by, glancing first at Anna and then at Lilly in perturbed surprise.

She appeared to know of what transactions the discovery was evidence, but when asked by Lilly to explain she held her tongue.

"I was not much here, but away in the town," she excused herself, "when the colonel was there with the regiment, you know. Ask the Fräulein; she will tell you."

The Fräulein would not tell. With grimly compressed lips and vacant gaze she avoided the subject, and for three days or more scarcely answered when Lilly spoke to her.

Then suddenly, as they sat at supper, without any apparent cause, her whole manner changed. She became facetious and talkative, and sympathetic towards her employer, suggesting remedies for his gout and wringing from him a promise to give up the injurious morning ride.

"I have been thinking over Lilly's riding lessons," she went on. "I really don't think there can be any danger after all in entrusting her to the boy, if one of us is present to see that all is right--anyhow at the start."

Lilly gave a sigh of joy, but neither by her eyes nor facial expression did she betray the smallest sign of pleasure, so severely in the meantime had she learned to school herself.

The next morning the lesson began.

Walter von Prell appeared in riding get-up. His body was bent forward as much as to say, "I await orders," and his whole bearing bespoke submissive respect as he stood first on one foot, then on the other.

A quiet grey mare, with narrow flanks and somewhat overstrained forelegs, but a smart, well-groomed little mount, had been chosen for the first ride. Her instructor explained to her the principle on which bridle and bit were constructed, showed her how the girths were buckled, how the snaffle and curb-reins were to be held, and how to prevent the curb throttling the horse.

Then came learning to mount. When Lilly planted her foot in his joined hands she felt a warm thrill creep up her spine to the back of her neck, as if this contact were a sign of the secret understanding between them.

He counted "One, two, three," and, presto! there she was in the saddle.

The colonel clapped and applauded, and Walter blushed to the roots of his fair hair with delight.

Henceforth he had the game in his hands.

"Who would have thought that jackanapes had so much of the pedagogue in him?" the colonel remarked to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, who nodded silently and drew a deep breath as if something weighed on her mind.

When Lilly dismounted she had learnt how to draw in the reins and slacken them, and to turn to right and left. She had even got as far as a trot round the yard. The colonel said good-humouredly she promised to be the most dashing horsewoman in the army.

One lesson followed another. Either the colonel or Anna was always present, so there was little opportunity for a confidential conversation. Walter did not drop his stiff and obsequious manner, though Lilly longed for a flash of the old devilry that she alone understood.

Then came a day when it happened that both sentinels were absent from duty. The colonel was busy giving directions for the making of a covered riding-way where his gouty limbs would not be exposed to chills, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger was nowhere to be found.

Lilly's heart beat fast as she and her merry friend met, and she gave him her hand with a smile of suppressed triumph. He responded with a sly wink in the direction of the terrace, where her duenna was wont to stand.

"She's nowhere to be seen," whispered Lilly.

"What are we to do, then," he said, wringing his hands in mock lamentation, "without the protecting eye of the illustrious Fräulein? How are we to mount?"

The September sky was very blue; a crisp breeze, heavy with the perfume of damp freshly turned sods, blew across the courtyard. He pointed with his whip to the open gate. She laughed and nodded assent. The next moment she cantered beside him along the grassy road, whither no Argus eye could follow them, inwardly rejoicing and exultantly scenting all sorts of mad pranks. But he seemed unwilling to make the most of their unexpected freedom. He kept his eyes fixed in front of him; every now and then he caught at her rein, altered her stirrups or corrected her seat in the saddle. He was the riding-master and nothing more.

"What's Tommy doing?" she asked, finding things dull.

"Tommy sends his love," he answered with his gaze still fastened on the road, "and wishes to say that to-day we had better attend to the horses, for if anything happens we shall not be allowed out again."

"My love to Tommy," she retorted, "and tell him he's a little goose."

"I'll not forget," he said, and bowed over the saddle.

They came to a coppice of larch-trees where the ground was slightly boggy and required careful crossing. But she saw nothing but the silver sheen of the trunks, and the golden mist made by the delicate leaves dancing in the breeze and nearly brushing her cheek.

"Oh, look, how lovely!" she said with a sigh of satisfaction.

Then a demon within her prompted her to an act of madness. She touched the mare with her whip and started off on a wild gallop, regardless of all the rules and regulations laid down by her riding-master.

In a few seconds he came up with her, seized her bridle, and with a dexterous jerk brought both horses to a standstill.

Their eyes flashed into each other. She felt as if she must throw herself on to his saddle to be nearer him at any cost.

"What do you mean by that, dear little comrade?" he roared.

"And what do you mean by calling me 'dear little comrade'?" she retorted.

Then they turned their horses and walked them slowly and in silence homewards.

For a long time the threshing-machine had been in tune for its autumn song. Far beyond the courtyard, penetrating every wall and hedge, its melancholy hum was now heard. There was no suggestion in it of golden harvest blessings and consolidated sunshine. Like an Æolian harp it moaned and howled from morn to eve in the storm-tossed branches. Sometimes it seemed to shriek as if the sheaves of grain it tore and tortured had found a voice wherewith to express their agony.

Once more Lilly's soul was so full of dreamy bliss that she heard in this music nothing but a seductive yearning. It impregnated her morning slumber, and often she lay with closed eyes half awake so as to listen the better to the monotonous singsong. And all the time he was in her thoughts. What she had always wanted was now hers--a playmate, a comrade; someone to rejoice and grumble with; someone who confessed all his sins to her, the very blackest, and then received a laughing absolution. Then whatever he did, he himself was not guilty; it was the youth in him that sinned, the same sweet, wicked youth that charged her own soul with melancholy and filled her body with thrills, which dominated them both like a tormenting deity, smiling on one and frowning on the other.

Yes, he must be saved; saved from his own folly, from that fatal cynicism of his which threatened to enmesh him in a network of vulgar intrigues. There was no silencing the rumours of the sort of life he was leading. She had only to set foot in the servants' quarters to hear the stream of unsavoury gossip of which he was the subject. All that must be ended. Her first interference was to be but the beginning of the great mission she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, standing in his path with raised hands to ward off all horrid temptations, so that he should become as pure and devoid of evil desires as herself.

So she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing-machine's melody.

The first ride outside the castle gates, though taken without leave, was praised and approved; permission was given for others to follow. But Lilly hesitated. She would like to be sure of her cantering powers, she said, before venturing on unknown ground. The truth was, she was dying for another such hour, and only lacked the courage to hurry it on.

The very next morning he had been the stern unbending riding-master again, treating her with extravagant courtesy. She had thought he would be certain to whisper tenderly, "little comrade," or some other familiar greeting--he could have found the opportunity if he had liked--but nothing of the sort came to pass either this time or the next.

They had no thought indeed of riding beyond the courtyard for several lessons after, till one day the colonel himself issued the command.

"Enough of this ambling about round the yard. Go out and let the wind of the fields blow through you," he said.

"As the colonel wishes," replied Walter, with his hand raised to his cap in salute, and he turned her horse with his own towards the open gates.

Her heart stood still, and she forgot to send back a farewell greeting over her shoulder, so occupied was she with the contemplation of coming delights.

In a minute they were riding in the same direction as they had followed ten days ago, when the great event had taken place. The weeping willows dripped with dew, and at the slightest movement showered down drops upon her. Lilly laughed and shook them off. Instead of joining in the sport, he tried to make her keep to the middle of the road.

"But I love getting wet," she protested.

"Very well, if the gracious baroness pleases," he answered with his stupid exaggerated formality.

They rode on in silence. When they came to the place where ten days before the great event had happened to which all his conduct to-day gave the lie, she dared to shoot a reminiscent side glance at him. But he made no response, and appeared not to see. His cap pulled down over the back of his head as far as his neck, his thin smooth face sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish figure all muscle and sinews, he sat his horse as if he and the animal were one.

"How fond I am of him, in spite of everything, dear little fellow!" she thought, and pictured what her desolation would be if one day he were suddenly to vanish from the scene. And then she realised all at once that her equable gaiety of soul, the feeling of living her life to the full, were all due to his nearness to her day after day.

They rode along even ground steadily. The chain of brown ridges on the far side of the river came nearer, and he seemed to be steering for these; but this did not serve her purpose, for the hour of serious converse had sounded. To-day or never! And with a laborious effort of thought she began to calculate all the things she had to say to him. But she could not arrange them methodically in her mind, especially as her attention was half taken up by her horse. In the saddle she was too completely at his mercy, so plucking up courage she proposed that they should dismount. While he paused to consider she sprang to the ground, and he had to be quick to catch the mare's snaffle.

He scolded her a little, but finally had to do as she wished. They proceeded on foot, and he led the horses.

The road lay through a marshy declivity where there was a scanty growth of alders and oaks. Yellow marigold buds starred the damp ground and burr reed spread out its prickly fruit on distorted branches. Red-dock leaves swayed on their withered stalks, and sedgy grass curled itself up in anticipation of autumn frosts. A mountain ash felled by a recent storm bridged the ditch at the side of the road. Its scarlet berries, which should have been dead, still glowed like fire, as if deriving life from some mysterious source of their own.

"I should like to sit down here," she said.

He bowed acquiescence.

"But you must sit down too."

"I must hold the horses, gracious baroness."

"You can tie them to a tree."

He reflected a moment. "So I can," he said, and knotted the reins to the fallen trunk.

Then when he came to sit beside her she shifted her position more towards the middle to make room. Her feet hung in the air over the ditch-water. He pushed himself after her along the tree, hand over hand.

"That's far enough," she said; for she did not want him too close.

"Very well, gracious baroness," he answered, and swung his legs.

The formality of his address caused her fresh annoyance.

"Don't you think when we are alone together you might drop titles?" she asked, looking him straight in the eyes.

"I might ... but I mustn't."

"But how about the other day?"

"Oh, the other day was my birthday," he answered, "and as I wanted a pretty little present I gave myself that!"

"And to-day is my birthday," she jested. "What present am I to be given?"

"Anything the gracious baroness likes."

"Then I like you to call me 'Comrade.'"

"Always, or just once in a way?"

"Always."

"Shall I call you comrade, or be comrade?"

"Be comrade; be--be comrade. That's the chief thing!" she cried.

"A bargain," he said, and cautiously crept a little nearer along the wobbling trunk to give her his right hand.

"A bargain," she said, and shook hands.

"But there are other items to be settled in connection with this," he said, clearing his throat.

"What are they?"

"Well, for one thing, does a comradeship mean Christian names?"

"Certainly not," Lilly replied, feeling that she was making a great sacrifice.

He accepted the condition as final, and said submissively, "Just as you like, comrade."

Now was her chance to speak out. She drew a deep breath and said:

"You know I want to talk seriously to you, Herr von Prell."

"Ugh!" he ejaculated, prepared for a bad quarter of an hour, as he gnawed his gloved thumbs.

Lilly plunged off at a tangent. She would not say anything about his last misdemeanour, for bad as it was, it was all over, and what was forgiven ought also to be forgotten. But if he imagined that the loose life he had been leading was a secret in the castle household, he was very much mistaken. It was an open scandal, and even the laundry and scullery-maids sniggered about it; but how could he expect anything else after ... Here she enumerated the sum total of his misdoings, as she had gleaned them from remarks the servants had let fall.

She was ashamed to retail them. This was not what she had intended to say at all.... She had wanted to speak grandly of the high purpose of human existence, the nobility of self-renunciation, the glory of pure and lofty ideals, of the spiritual tie uniting the elect on earth, and so on. But inspiration failed her when she saw him sitting there with bent shoulders and turning his big toes inwards so that under the soft leather of his riding-boots they looked like excrescences, and she could think of nothing better.

He did not interrupt her. Even when she had done he was silent, absorbed in watching an insect wriggling in circles on the surface of the water.

"Have you no answer," she asked, "after all the disgraceful things I have accused you of?"

"What should I answer, most learned judge?" he retorted. "My one claim to distinction is that I am absolutely devoid of moral sense. Do you want me to lose it?"

"If you are so weak and have no reliance on yourself," she exclaimed in growing zeal, "let me be your mainstay and support. Lean on me, your friend, adviser, your----"

"Foster-father," he suggested, and stirred the slime in the ditch with his whip.

She awakened to the fact that what she had said had not made the least impression; he was laughing at her all the time.

"Get up and let me pass," she said. "Why should I try to do my best for someone who is not worth it?"

He made no sign of moving from his place.

"Now, look here, comrade," he said, pointing down at the black mirror of ditch-water. "There goes a water-spider with its legs in the air and its head downwards. If you were to ask it why it swims like that, it would say because it knows no other way. That's its nature. Well, do you see, it's my nature. What's to be done? You can't alter it."

"Anyone can restrain his evil passions," she exclaimed, flaring up in indignation. "Anyone can, if he likes, keep his eyes fixed on a high ideal and struggle to attain it--can listen to a friend when she would help, and say to him----"

"Well, what would the friend say?" he asked ingratiatingly, swinging himself nearer.

She did not answer. She had put her hands before her face and was crying--crying till her sobs convulsed her body.

"For God's sake, sit still!" he exclaimed, circling his arms towards her, for on the wobbling trunk of the mountain ash she might at any moment lose her balance. "Child, dear little comrade, sit still."

She quivered all over. She heard nothing but the sweet, caressing, criminal "dear little comrade," which her soul had been yearning to hear.

And then he promised her to turn over a new leaf. He would not flirt any more. He would give up tippling with the bailiffs; he would read stiff agricultural literature; he would do anything--oh, what wouldn't he do?--if she would only stop crying.

"Give me your word of honour?" she asked, raising her wet, reddened eyes to his.

He gave it without hesitation.

Comforted and grateful, she smiled at him.

"You'll never repent it," she said. "I'll stand by you. I'll be a true friend, and do all I can for you."

"All that the two watch-dogs permit," he added.

To-day she didn't mind his saying "two watch-dogs." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yes, of course, what they permit."

Then they both laughed so heartily that they narrowly escaped falling into the ditch, after all.

Then came a delightful time in which she played hide-and-seek with her emotions: drank long draughts from the never-exhausted fount of pleasures anticipated and rehearsed, fulfilled and enjoyed, which left behind them a delightful after-taste and a glow of memories. Every day brought new happiness and a boundless wealth of experience.

Often when Lilly opened the shutters and the rosy September dawn greeted her, she felt as if the Creator had spread a mantle spun out of golden sunbeams across the sky on purpose to wrap them in cosy seclusion, so that the whole of the world beneath vanished, leaving them alone, clinging to one another intoxicated with laughter and light.

She felt that she grew lovelier from day to day, that there was a sort of radiance surrounding her that made everyone she met gaze at her with admiring wonder, and with a little sadness too, as one looks at a flower unfolding too proudly, too gloriously, for its miracle of blossom to endure.

The two watch-dogs were not blind to the change in her.

The colonel, who was full of craft and guile, failed to diagnose in this case the symptoms. His suspicions would have been aroused directly if she had been melancholy and absentminded, had hung about him nervously, in alternate moods of fervid affection and cold estrangement. Then he would have subjected her to a severe espionage. But her yielding tenderness and happy serenity was a riddle to which he could find no solution; so he gave it up, and tolerated with paternal equanimity his young wife's rollicking gaiety and the embraces she lavished on him to give vent to the ecstasy within her.

Anna von Schwertfeger was also apparently well satisfied with Lilly's happy state of mind and radiant spirits. She seemed as little as the colonel to think it suspicious, or to associate it with the influence of a third person, otherwise she would scarcely have countenanced so willingly the frequent meetings of the two young people.

Lilly now did her best to return the worthy Anna's warm affection, the display of which at first had worried her and left her cold. Fräulein von Schwertfeger often drew her in the evening into her own private room, where she sat with her account-books. It was quite an old-maids' paradise, with its canaries in cages, plants and flower-pots, and faded photographs of family groups and friends. It was full of old bits of china and gilded knick-knacks, such as one meets in ancient and impoverished houses as relics of former grandeur. Or she would come at an incredibly late hour stealing into Lilly's bedroom, seat herself on the bed, and not move till the wheels of the colonel's returning carriage were heard on the gravel. Then there would be discussions on such profound topics as life and death, the loneliness of old age, and the exuberance of youth, which caused grief and trouble when indulged in to excess. She asked no questions, she gave no warnings, yet the astonishing irrelevance with which she jumped from one subject to another, often contradicting flatly her own opinions, indicated that her thoughts were really far, far away.

While her voice droned on monotonously, Lilly sometimes looked up and caught her eyes fastened on her with a expression of melancholy compassion that she was at a loss to understand. Then she was kissed and stroked with such heartfelt, pitying tenderness that she felt touched, and when left alone in the dark began to be afraid of something, as if an avenging fate crouched at the foot of her bed ready to spring on her and devour her.

What misfortune could possibly fall upon her? Was she not securer and more sheltered than she had ever been? Whom did she deceive? What was her offence? And even if her innocent relations with Walter should come to light, would she merit any severer punishment than a lecture such as children get when they have been careless?

These reflections consoled her even before the after-taste of those nocturnal visitations had been lost in blissful dreams.

September wore to a close. Nearly every day brought a ride or an apparently chance meeting at twilight in a deserted part of the park. They would discern each other from afar lingering at some appointed rendezvous, and if a previous arrangement for meeting were frustrated, they resorted to the pea-shooter.

By means of this accommodating instrument, which he had brought back one day from the town--and in a corner of her balcony passed as a superfluous curtain-rod--she was able to blow her messages through the vine tendrils straight in at his open window. Sometimes it was a simple "Good-morning, comrade," at others an appointment to meet, or a harmless joke born on the spur of the moment's gaiety.

On the evenings that the colonel was at home he was usually invited to join them. Then, of course, he assumed his most correct and formal manner, though there was often opportunity for a little by-play between them, so skilfully managed that the watch-dogs remained quite unsuspicious.

Nevertheless, Lilly had a rival on these occasions, which she feared and hated, because it deprived her of the "comrade's" attention for hours. Its very mention was enough to reduce Lilly to a mere cipher. This rival was the Regiment. It was the time of the autumn manœuvres, and both men followed with feverish interest the tactical movements of their old division as reported in the newspapers.

One evening they despatched a joint picture-postcard congratulating the Regiment, and a day or two later the compliment was returned, a card arriving through the post scribbled over with numerous signatures, which it was the work of the world to make out. Two or three were abandoned as hopeless, till at last Walter hit on a solution. They belonged to three outside lieutenants who had joined the regiment for the manœuvres, and had signed their names with the other officers--von Holten, Dehnicke, von Berg. They made no impression on Lilly, except that "Dehnicke" struck her as sounding a little bourgeois and discordant amongst the music of the old patrician "vons."

This greeting from his active past seemed to affect the colonel unpleasantly. He became moody and cantankerous, and Lilly felt his eye upon her now and then full of a grim savage reproach that made her jump with terror. Henceforth his expeditions to the neighbouring garrison town became more frequent than ever, and when an invitation to join a shooting party arrived, he didn't refuse, in spite of his gout.

The first Sunday in October came. The colonel started off early to visit a neighbour, and was not expected to return till late at night.

A soft grey mist, shot with violet and gold, as a promise of sunshine later, enveloped the world, when Lilly, arm-in-arm with Fräulein von Schwertfeger, came out of church, almost groaning--she had been so bored.

The sunflowers in the labourers' cottage gardens were already drooping their scorched heads, and the asters showed signs of having suffered from the first severe nip of frost. Yet the air was balmy and sweet-scented as spring, and larks made a babel in the fields.

"To-day, to-day!" thought Lilly, and stretched herself in a vague longing for private talk and jubilant pranks.

It seemed as if her thoughts had been heard, for Anna von Schwertfeger asked suddenly, "What is the matter with you to-day?"

"I hardly know myself," Lilly answered, blushing. "I just feel as if to-day were a festival."

Anna looked at her sideways, then, clearly emphasising every word, she said, "I really might make a festival of it, and visit a friend in the town. But the colonel being away, I don't know whether ..."

Lilly started so violently that for a moment she could not recover her breath. Then she pulled herself together tactfully, and urged her companion to go. She had not had a day off all the summer. She lived like a prisoner, and must sorely need a holiday.

Anna nodded meditatively, and the fixed glassy stare that Lilly did not like came into her eyes.

At the midday meal, which the two ladies took alone to-day, she was still undecided, but directly it was over she ordered the carriage and drove off without a word. Lilly, who, instead of resting, had been watching from the upstairs landing, now flew to the pea-shooter. The dense foliage of the Virginian creeper still so completely shut her in that he could not catch a glimpse of her. But she saw him as he sat at the open window frowning over his book.

"My good influence!" she thought triumphantly; and it seemed almost a pity to decoy him away from his improving occupation.

The steward and book-keeper were pacing up and down, not far from the house, smoking their Sunday afternoon cigar; so it was necessary to be more cautious than usual.

The paper pellet that conveyed her message hit him on the forehead and rebounded on to the grass outside. So well had he himself in hand that he did not so much as raise his eyes to show he understood, but a few minutes later he let his book fall out of the window, as if by accident, and rose indifferently to pick it up.

Half an hour afterwards they met behind the carp-pond. He had on a new black-and-white check suit similar to the fateful one worn by the foreigner that night in the railway carriage.

"You are much too fine for me to-day," joked Lilly. "I would rather not be seen with you."

"That would be an awful shame," he remarked, "for I ordered these things on purpose for this day's outing."

"Why?"

"Because it's to be our festival."

"What has put that into your head?" stammered Lilly, shocked to think of the communion of ideas it testified to.

"A fellow has his presentiments," he replied, smiling significantly.

Simultaneously they turned their footsteps to the secluded beech-wood, whither they had wandered in the deepening dusk on the evening they had renewed their friendship.

"Where's Tommy?" she asked, thinking of the third member of their alliance.

"He's biting a hole in the boards," was the answer, "and making himself a kennel to his own mind. He roosts in it like a screech-owl. I shouldn't advise you to put the finger you wear your rings on into it; you'd lose the rings and possibly the finger too."

"Why do you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.

"Why do I let myself get so wild?" he asked in turn.

"Oh, you--you know you are becoming quite tame and gentle," she replied, regarding him affectionately because it was all her doing.

"You really think so?" he asked; and his aspect assumed the masterfulness of his lieutenant days.

"Of course I do. Didn't you give me your word of honour?" she boasted.

"Rot!"

Still Lilly gloried in the success of her work of salvation.

"You may underrate my influence if you like," she replied, "but I can assure you everyone else notices the change in you. Herr Leichtweg says you are always punctual now; and then you borrowed that great agricultural encyclopædia from the colonel--that greatly impressed him--and Fräulein von Schwertfeger declares you look quite 'delicious' in these days!"

"Come, baronissima, shall we have a game of catch?" he asked. "It will be good for the circulation of your noble blood."

At once with a shout of joy she started off running at a mad pace up the slope, which was veiled in the purple autumnal haze. But she didn't go far. She caught her foot in the plaid that she had refused to let him carry for her, and fell full length on the ground. He was there in a moment to help her up, yet the fall had cured her of her desire to run.

They walked on at a sedate pace and climbed the heights on the other side, whence their eyes could wander over a sea of waving foliage right away to the open country. The beeches glowed pure red, the maples danced in all the colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered like slender flames of fire, the elm let fall coins of gold, while the oak alone retained the sombre green of his late summer dress. With folded hands she gazed at the distance, which was lost in a veil of violet.