PART II

CHAPTER I

She was Lilly Czepanek once more. The divorce suit had been quickly settled. There had been no attempt at defence, and after the colonel's evidence the judges decreed that Lilly had forfeited the right for ever to bear her husband's honourable name.

"There is nothing to rescue from this wreck," wrote Doktor Pieper, "except the jewels which I hope, acting on my advice about looking in at shop-windows, you have industriously accumulated. The pearls which your ex-husband--prompted, I may confess now, by me--put round your neck on the wedding day I will get permission for you to retain, and they alone will keep your head above water for many a long day."

In consequence of this letter, Lilly, who after her flight had found the pearls in one of her trunks among her gala dresses and rare lace, took them to a jeweller's to be carefully packed, and returned them then and there, addressed to Fräulein von Schwertfeger.

The less valuable ornaments she kept, feeling that they might justly be considered her personal property. She had disposed of a good many to start with, and what remained would scarcely keep her for another year. After that she would be destitute. But she did not think of the future. It was hidden from her behind the veil of tears that she had shed. Regret for what she had lost, acute consciousness of her grievous position, occupied her mind to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Oh, how she cried and cried--she understood now what crying meant. She learnt to gulp down her tears as one gulps down seawater; she sucked them back with her lower lip, she shook them off her cheeks as if they were raindrops; but always they gushed forth afresh. After the pain that caused them was deadened they still welled up, from habit. Whether she was asleep or awake, her tears came.

Trembling and stunned, without defending herself, without complaints or reproaches, she had driven away that grey, gusty December evening between the hour of vespers and nightfall. Away, it did not matter where, only away as quickly as possible.

She landed in Berlin, the harbour for all wastrels and wrecks. In that world where oblivion lays its hands in blessing on the heads of righteous and unrighteous alike; where eternal hopes illumine drab days of depression like firework sparks; where grief for the past is soon changed into an eager expectation of coming happiness; where the great god, Luck, holds sway as lord and master--in that world of the unknown and stranded, where only those who are old and poor together sink hopelessly, into that world crept Lilly on her hands and knees. She stayed in pensions for many a dreary month, frequented by guilty divorcées who congregate together in such places like apples rotting in heaps, by Chilian attachés and agents of mysterious businesses in Bucharest and Alexandria, who gave a tone to the roof they sojourned under. As inoffensively as she could she avoided the confidences of companions in tribulation, who wished to console her, and kept at bay the advances of olive-complexioned neighbours at table.

After a time she began to think of finding a situation. It would have to be something quite special--something between a lady-in-waiting and chaperon, which would not be at variance with her former high station and ladylike dignity.

This sort of position seemed remarkably scarce. The only result of all her efforts was to win the tender regard of a few old gentlemen who called on her at dusk and would not go till they were shown the door. So, utterly discouraged, she gave up calling at employment agencies and ringing at front doors, though she could not resign herself yet to joining the ranks of shopgirls and dressmakers' apprentices. The day was still far off when she would have to do that; indeed, she would never sink so low, because she was labelled all over "Generalin," and wherever she went and whatever she did everyone recognised her supreme gentility.

On this seething human ocean she tossed anchorless, without so much as a straw to cling to. Nothing but Walter's letter, which two months after her dismissal and his was forwarded to her by Fräulein von Schwertfeger. In it the poor fellow, whose own prospects were utterly blighted, made an unselfish suggestion of support for her future. It ran:

"Gracious Friend,

"I am broke. He shot me through the arm. A trifling misfortune when it happens to someone else, but, when it falls on yourself, a damning obstacle in the way of founding a career on the other side of the Atlantic as head-waiter.

"Nevertheless, I cannot be grateful enough to fate for having thrown in my path so touchingly virtuous and lamblike a guardian angel as my baronissima. You will readily understand, most dear and too-kind lady, that I now feel an obligation on my side to act as guardian angel to you. How is it to be done? There are difficulties in the way, certainly. Were I to commend you to the care of my former friends and equals, your future, I am afraid, would be settled too easily, 'For, still, leaves and virtues ever fall in hours of tenderness.'

"For this reason I prefer to descend a degree lower, to where citizens crawl on their stomachs before our coronets, even if they be tarnished and dented.

"In Alte Jakobstrasse in Berlin there dwells a highly respectable manufacturer of bronze wares, by name Richard Dehnicke. He was a comrade of the Reserve, and feels himself particularly indebted to me because I borrowed money from him on more than one occasion. I am writing to him by the same mail as this. Go boldly in among his lamps and vases. The former I trust will illumine your nights, and the latter ornament your path through life. He will not, I believe, demand the price from you which others of our compatriots customarily consider their due where pretty women are concerned.

"There must be some cranks in the world, I suppose.

"My address in future will be--

"W. v. P.

"Street-loafer and Fortune's aspirant,

"Chicago (first stockyard on the left).

"PS.--Tommy would send his love, only I took care to plant a bullet in his forehead before leaving."

Lilly took this last and only communication from her comrade very calmly. She heard afterwards through Fräulein von Schwertfeger that he had sailed for America with a maimed arm. As he could think of her without bitterness or reproach, so she would try to think of him. Their love deserved honourable burial, even if its raptures had been a sham, and its elevated sentiments dragged through the dirt in shame.

He would like to be her "guardian angel," the dear little man had written. Well, anyhow, his letter offered a certain guarantee of protection in time of trouble, and indicated where a helping hand would be held out to her. But the course he advised she had no thought of adopting. Never would she avail herself of that helping-hand. She was in deadly terror of desirous masculine eyes reading her face, of masculine lips pouring out persuasive and convincing arguments.

She would take her fate in her own hands and go her own way. Whither it would lead her of course was not clear. In truth, grief and anxiety had rendered her so irresolute, that it needed but a breath of wind to drift her in a direction that would have decided her future once for all. The breath of wind, however, did not blow on her.

Month after month went by. Fräulein von Schwertfeger gave up writing. Want of money caused her little hoard of jewels to dwindle rapidly. The pensions she boarded in became more and more modest. Instead of Chilian attaches and Greek merchants, bankrupt auctioneers and clerks out of employment offered to cheer her evenings by forcing their company upon her; and the ladies who paid her visits in soiled tea-gowns glanced covetously at the few bracelets, brooches, and rings which she still had left. Thus she decided to end this mode of living and find a new one.

CHAPTER II

Among highly recommended "best rooms" in Berlin belonging to apartments which had known much-boasted "better days," and now were let for thirty marks a week, including breakfast and attendance, to respectable young gentlewomen, were those of the widow, Klothilde Laue.

The furniture was upholstered in crimson plush, which had been the latest thing in decorations at the time of the Franco-Prussian war. There was a long mirror, the sides of which from top to bottom were fantastically plastered with new years' and birthday cards, and advertisements of soaps and powders. On the walls hung photographs of once famous actors, whose fame had meanwhile faded like the ink in which they had inscribed their autographs. The marble-topped washstand had an embroidered splasher bearing the following cryptic couplet:

There were also endless photograph-albums, card-cases, a sandal-wood windmill meant to clip cigars, a green frosted glass punch-bowl, and a rickety pitch-pine bedstead, behind blue woollen curtains. Finally, to crown all, there hung over the sofa in a gilded glass case a mysterious globular-shaped creation, consisting of six plaited strands of tissue paper radiating from a common centre, and through its covering of gauze an ornamentation of pressed flowers was dimly discernible.

In this best room of 10, Neanderstrasse, situated up four flights of stairs above a china shop, a piano business on the hire system, and a studio for repairs, Lilly landed one day, to look out from the window on the greenish-grey waters of the Engelbecken and a strip of Berlin's smoky sky.

Frau Laue, an overworked, prematurely aged woman of fifty, with a face like a dried apple and great eyes that always looked tearful, revolved round her in incredulous admiration. She seemed unable to grasp that so much brilliance and beauty had positively strayed into her abode.

On the day of her arrival Lilly heard her whole history. Her husband had been cashier and book-keeper at one of the most popular variety theatres in Berlin, but twenty years ago he had died, leaving her pensionless in an unfeeling world where no rosy stage glamour disguises solitary tears, and no comic patter stills the pangs of hunger.

At this juncture that mysterious paper-creation, which on nearer inspection proved to be a lamp-shade, became her salvation. She had once been made a present of it by an artistic friend, and in her need she hit on the happy idea of making others after the same pattern and offering them for sale.

After years of hawking her wares about, after drudgery and disillusionment of all kinds, she had wrung from the public a market for "pressed flower lamp-shades," and a reputation as a specialist in this line of business.

In her back parlour, with one window, which smelt of hay and paste, and where on a long white deal table lay in their hundreds and thousands the skeletons of floral denizens of the Thuringian Forest--she could not, of course, afford the time to gather them herself--she had drudged for nearly two decades, tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, and threading sixteen hours a day, and had earned, thanks to her reputation as a specialist, enough to enable her to let her best room--her treasure-trove and sanctuary--to a stranger for thirty marks a month.

The two did not long remain strangers, however.

Into the back-room existence of this downtrodden being, before whose eyes the pictures of a few bedizened ballet-girls shone and glittered as paragons of unattainable magnificence, Lilly descended from the real aristocracy like a heaven-born divinity. Her landlady idolised her as an emissary from regions that she had believed hitherto were only possible in fiction; where such expressions as "footman," "drawing-room," "pearl necklace"--Lilly took care to tell all about hers--came quite naturally instead of being rolled on the tongue and allowed slowly to melt as with closed eyes one conjured up the surroundings to which such a vocabulary belonged.

Frau Laue became in very early days Lilly's confidante and adviser. She helped her to live down the shame following her divorce, she cheered her when a feeling of desolation overcame her, and painted for her a future in radiant colours.

No one need perish in a great powerful miracle-working city like Berlin. Every day there were dozens of happy chances that might set you on your legs again. There were lonely old ladies dying to find someone to whom they could leave their money; there were aristocratic young ones who yearned to hold out a hand of sympathy and friendship to a poor, beautiful orphaned sister; there were famous artists who would gladly escape from the snares laid for them by female admirers in the arms of a good woman; and there were great poets with whom the post of muse was vacant. In fact, one of the greatest capitals in the world, it would appear, had only been waiting for Lilly's advent to lift her to its throne as conquering heroine.

Again the months passed. Regret for her wasted opportunities became gradually less acute. Her nights were calmer and no longer disturbed by this or that scene from her lost paradise rising before her vision with horrible clearness, when she was in a state between sleeping and waking, to make her start up and cry aloud.

One lesson, however, she had not learnt, and that was to estimate correctly how brief had been her sojourn in high places: she could not accept it as a mere episode that had interrupted the ordinary course of her real life like a capricious dream. In her inner consciousness she continued to be a kind of enchanted princess who, in the disguise of a beggar, went about unknown and unrecognised till such time as Divine dispensation should reinstate her and restore her lawful rights.

With anxious solicitude she clung to everything that reminded her of her vanished splendour. In Frau Lane's wardrobe she hung the festive raiment that the colonel had ordered for her in Dresden, Frau Lane's empty drawers were filled with the snowy fragrance of her coronet-embroidered underclothes, and in front of the big mirror in Frau Lane's best room were ranged the costly ivory and gold toilette articles, which once had proudly graced her dressing-table in the "boudoir." These, too, still bore the seven-pointed coronet, and to think of parting with them would have seemed an outrage to Lilly on her most sacred property. She stood waiting meanwhile for what the future would bring forth. She still studied advertisements and wrote letters applying for vacant situations, but very often forgot to post the letters.

For the sake of having something to do, and craving for companionship of some kind, she began to sit with Frau Laue in the back room and help her with her work. Soon she tapped, cut out, daubed, pasted, and plaited as diligently as her instructress, and as in her cradle she had been endowed with a gift and taste for all things artistic, she speedily excelled Frau Laue, who, when she returned from disposing of the lamp-shades, would relate without envy that the flower pattern Lilly had designed had been singled out for admiration, and that the shades she made were preferred to her own.

Her ambition was aroused. She strove to produce works of art, and never tired of toiling for this end.

"If you didn't waste so much time over every little bunch of flowers," said Frau Laue, who shared honestly with Lilly the proceeds of their joint labours, "you might earn more than I do."

But Lilly was content with the forty or fifty marks a month that her work brought in. Her new craze for lamp-shade making led her on to higher aims. The dried grasses, or grass flowers, as Frau Laue called them, specially took her fancy. Their slender graceful stalks, the delicacy of their veinings, the melancholy charm with which they drooped, reminded her of little forest trees, weeping willows beside brooks, ashes bending over marble tombs, or palms waving yearning fronds on torrid rocks.

She dreamt of starting a new kind of art. She would paint on transparent plaques of glass with dried grass foregrounds. She would paint lamp-shades and window-blinds with woods of flowering grass and ferns, with little cottages in relief, with their doors and windows cut out as if light were shining from inside; fleecy clouds, pink sunsets, lines of misty hills, dark-blue rivers in which the moon was reflected, building across them bridges of light.

The pictures succeeded each other in her brain with inexhaustible fecundity; there seemed no end to them. It was difficult to know where to begin with such a vast wealth of ideas at one's disposal.

Frau Laue, who had been pasting her oil paper in exactly the same way for twenty years, had a horror of innovations, and warned Lilly to stick to her last. But a demon of inventiveness possessed Lilly. One day she made a tremendous coup. She took her arrow-shaped brooch set with six small emeralds to a jeweller, who gave her eighty marks for it--needless to say, the brooch was worth five times as much--and purchased on her way home after the transaction several cut-glass plaques, held together in pairs by screws, so that they could be easily attached to the window-panes. She also invested in a paint-box, and while Frau Laue clasped her hands in dismay to her head, Lilly set to work gallantly. But her practical knowledge of art had no foundation except in the memory of a few water-colour lessons at school, and it failed her utterly. The colours ran into each other, and the woods in the foreground would not look as if they had anything to do with the landscape behind, but remained simply grasses straggling about objectlessly.

For a long time Lilly struggled to gain her effects, then, crying bitterly, she threw the rubbish into a corner, and returned sorrowfully to lamp-shades again.

Frau Laue, who had sulked and scarcely spoken during the weeks of Lilly's apostacy, began once more to make plans and to build castles in the air for her. All the wild schemes that for the last twenty years had taken shape in her poor brain were now, when she had no hope of maturing them for herself, freely poured into Lilly's outstretched palm.

She listened eagerly, yet as her days passed thus a feeling of depression grew--almost imperceptibly. She felt herself sinking into this sordid groove, and a feeling of repulsion took possession of her for the narrow-minded creature in whose great moist red-rimmed eyes still lingered a hope for an unattainable happiness, though her lamp-shade drudgery had brought her nearly to the brink of the grave.

This repulsion was often so powerful that she was compelled to rush out; she didn't care where so long as it was out into the world, into life.

She did not stay long; in an hour or less she was back again. The streets frightened her. The painted women who jostled her, the bold, adventurous youths who followed on her heels, the callous indifference with which everyone elbowed his way through the hurly-burly--all this scared and made a coward of her.

A gloomy foreboding told her that she would never regain her self-reliant joy in combat. When she compared what she was now with the little shopgirl who gave out Frau Asmussen's trashy volumes in sheltered security, confident that she was doing her duty and always in the right, even when beaten for telling lies and obviously in the wrong, she felt she was a helpless straw drifting on the waters.

Then this waiting, waiting; this sleepless, hungry waiting! What for? She did not know herself. But something must happen. She could not exist for ever among these snippets of oiled paper, live and die making lamp-shades. Sometimes the thought of Walter's rich manufacturer of bronze wares cropped up in her mind with a longing which had to be suppressed. She was alarmed to find herself clinging to this shadow, and chased it away.

A year had passed since that letter of introduction was written. It would be far too late to avail herself of it now. So she went on waiting.

Often as she undressed and caught the reflection of herself in the glass, her form consecrated by beauty, round and slender limbed, her long-lashed wistful eyes, her ripe mouth shaped for kisses, she would be seized with glad ecstasy, and say to herself, "Am I like that?" And then she would revel in a sense of her youth and readiness for love. Then the whole world seemed there for no other object than to press her to its heart. Then this dreary round of drudgery was a good thing in disguise, for it was bracing her up for flights of intoxicating enjoyment. When she stretched herself on the sofa at dusk to rest, and she saw the blue flash made by the electric tramcars flit across the ceiling, blissful dreams stole upon her and transformed that burning fever of expectancy into half-fulfilled delights; a feeling of having been saved rose like a thanksgiving in her soul, and what she had been bewailing as lost happiness became nothing but a nightmare from which she was grateful to be relieved. But these moods were rare, and they resembled the mirage of thirsty travellers rather than the refreshing waters.

The winter passed in rain and fog; mild March evenings came when rosy cloudlets floated over the housetops, and then spring was really there. The trim little trees in the squares put forth their brown buds, which by degrees burst into pale green leaves. Lilly saw as little of the riot of blossom out of doors, the white foam of the cherry-trees, the red glory of the hawthorn, as she had done when she swept the golden dust that sprang from Frau Asmussen's bookcases. Frau Laue did not care to take walks and expose herself to temptation. For to see a park and not collect plants, a garden gate, and not thrust your hand through it to pick flowers, was to her an altogether inconceivable act of self-restraint. Lilly would not go out without her, for she dreaded being alone in a crowd.

Warm, oppressive Sunday afternoons followed, when endless troops of townsfolk make pilgrimages to the suburbs and country round, when the streets stretch away in empty desolation, and the sultry skies seem to weigh down suffocatingly on the unfortunate people left at home, panting within four walls. On such afternoons Frau Laue put on a pair of real Rhinestone earrings, a brown velveteen dress with a collar of black sequins on the square-cut neck, and in this festive attire paid Lilly a formal visit in the best room. Then the Dresden evening gowns came out of the wardrobe, and entered into competition with those worn twenty-five years ago by frail ladies in the stage box of the variety theatre. The faded photographs of long-extinguished stars would be brought down from the wall and their charms examined. Apropos of these, thrilling stories would be related of personal adventures, in which, amid much laxity of morals and gay peccadilloes, matrimonial fidelity had maintained its modest value.

The summer Sunday afternoon would wear away, wan and exhausted as a fever patient, a stifling breeze blow in at the window. The varnish on the cheap rosewood furniture would reek, the houses opposite shine as if they were perspiring, and Frau Laue, munching her bread and cheese, would once more repeat the oft-told tale of her virtuous married life.

When at last she took her departure, Lilly would sink groaning on her bed, hide her face in the stuffy pillows, and listen to the shouts of the merry-makers in the street below returning from their trips. The next morning the pressing and pasting of flowers would begin again with renewed vigour.

July came, and she could stand it no longer. One Monday morning, when daylight found her awake and waiting, her pillow soaked with tears, a sudden longing for life so warm and irresistible filled her heart that she bounded out of bed with an exultant cry.

Resolve cried within her, "I'll do it to-day--to-day! Go on a begging expedition to that unknown man." No, it would not be begging. God forbid! Long ago she had settled in her mind what line she would take. She would merely ask for advice such as he, a connoisseur with a wide experience in arts and crafts, would be able to give the inquiring amateur, anxious to learn, in a few minutes.

Where and how she could get good lessons in painting transparencies on glass plaques, was the question she wanted to ask him. And whatever his answer might be, it would be the first step in a new phase of life.

CHAPTER III

Was it the path of fate that she pursued?

The street looked the same as usual. Vans rumbled along, housewives crowded in front of the butchers' doing their marketing, young men hurried by with rolls of music and books under their arms, but were not in too great a hurry to turn round and look after her, causing her, as of old, mingled feelings of satisfaction and annoyance.

The path of fate? Yes, said the throbbing of her heart. She felt almost as if she were on her way to exhibit herself for sale. Herself? How much was there of her left, of her little stock of pride, of her faith in herself as one of the elect, her belief in the great miracle that was to happen to her? How much?

Her walk took over an hour. She lost her way and was put right by policemen. She stopped to look at her reflection in the shop-windows, for she was afraid of not pleasing. But every time she saw the soft curves of her slight tall figure, with its nonchalant dignity of carriage, she breathed a sigh of relief.

At last, when she read the name of the street in which he lived, she started. She had hoped in secret that she would not be able to find it after all, and have to go home. There was nothing remarkable about his house. It was a grey four-storied building, with a wide unadorned entrance, across which a board was erected.

Liebert and Dehnicke,
Bronze Founders and Manufacturers of Metal Wares

was inscribed in gold letters on a massive wrought-iron plate, which extended half the width of the house.

From the opposite side of the street she took in every detail, still asking herself whether she should not turn round and go home. The windows on the first floor were closely hung with delicate primrose-coloured curtains embroidered with gold thread in a broken conventional pattern. Out of snow-white china flower-pots nodded geraniums and pinks, and on the whole everything here looked better kept and more prosperous than its surroundings.

"He lives on that floor, I expect," she thought, feeling slightly awed at the chaste severity of the exterior decorations.

Then she took heart, crossed the street, and made straight for the door of latticed ironwork, which was close to the carriage entrance, and probably led up to that impressive first floor. But this door was fast locked, and before ringing she glanced through the lattice and beheld a stately garden stairway flanked by cypresses and laurels ascending to a landing where a stained-glass window cast ruby and sapphire rays on a fair white statue. It was the bust of Clytie, which she had always admired in the art shops because of its gentle melancholy.

Her heart sank again at all this splendour. She seemed unworthy of breaking in on such decorous calm, so she sprang down the steps again and preferred to enter by the general entrance, where some workmen were busy facing the bare bricks with ornamental stucco. In the yard men were at work, too. The cobble-stones, with which it had evidently been hitherto covered, were piled in clumsy heaps, and mosaic tiles with white circles on a grey ground, such as one sees in churches, were being laid. At the back of the yard rose the red bald brick walls of the factory itself. But this too appeared to be included in the universal beautifying scheme, and was undergoing alterations. As far as the second story the walls were being inlaid with a dado of yellow and blue, which looked very gay. In fact, the old dingy aspect of the yard was being gradually converted into the elegance of a room.

"They are doing things artistically here," Lilly thought, and felt still more nervous.

On her left she saw a corner building that so far had escaped a drop of renovating paint or varnish. In contrast to the rest, its bare plaster walls presented a dirty, chalky, and almost forlorn appearance. At the top of its plain iron steps was a brass tablet bearing the words "Office" on its face. Lilly ascended the steps and entered an ill-lighted dusty apartment divided into two parts by a wooden railing. In the farther division half a dozen young men sat at desks covered with shabby green baize. At her entrance they riveted their eyes on her in gaping astonishment, and it did not apparently occur to any of them to ask what she wanted. It was evident that such a dazzling apparition as herself had never been seen in the office within the memory of man. Not till she had taken a card from her brocaded wrist-bag and laid it silently on the table did the petrified company show signs of life. Then they all jumped up with one accord and scuffled for the card. It was almost a free fight.

A lank, pasty, overgrown youth, who seemed to have authority over the rest, finally sent the others back to their places, and bowing and scraping to Lilly, murmured that he would inform "the Chief" of her presence, and he disappeared with the card in his hand into a back room.

A few moments elapsed. Lilly heard through the half-open door a lowered voice say, "Czepanek? Don't know the name. Ask her what she wants. What's she like?"

The answer, which was inaudible, lasted several seconds and evidently was satisfactory, for the clerk came out, and without further inquiry let Lilly through, and ushered her into the private room at the back of the office.

Now she saw him in the flesh. He was a thick-set man, of middle height--shorter than she was--inclined to corpulency, with a round fresh-complexioned face, nice greyish-blue eyes, without any expression, a high forehead, and arched eyebrows. His hair was light brown, brushed smoothly back from his temples, and his moustache turned up abruptly at the ends to mark the Lieutenant. He had remarkably small ears and small hands. His whole person breathed scrupulous neatness and cleanliness, and, if anything, he was too well groomed.

He was clearly taken aback when he saw Lilly. His eyes widened with polite amazement.

Consciousness that she had made an impression gave her back her self-assurance and sang-froid. Not in vain had she gone through Fräulein von Schwertfeger's training.

"The introduction of a mutual friend, who has, I think, prepared you for my visit, brings me to you," she began, inwardly rejoiced to have a chance once more of playing the great lady.

In a mirror hanging opposite Lilly saw with satisfaction the reflection of her heliotrope toque, with its wreath of violets and swathing of tulle, her heliotrope tailor-made costume, with its correctly cut long coat, and felt as if she had stepped out of the picture of a society portrait-painter.

In silence he offered her a chair. The surprise that his manner had at first shown was succeeded by an air of distrustful perplexity. Apparently he was puzzled as to her social rank.

His head was inclined slightly to the left, as if it were stiff from a recent attack of rheumatism. This pose increased Lilly's suspicion that he did not altogether trust her.

She looked down at her brocaded wrist-bag and pretended to be suppressing a smile.

He grew more embarrassed. "May I ask," he stammered, "who the mutual friend ... er ... is? I don't seem to ... recollect."

He turned over the visiting-card, which his clerk had handed to him, in desperation.

She shrank from being forced into mentioning the name of her former lover, and so exposing her shame to this man who lived behind china flower-pots.

"Is it possible that you don't remember," she answered hesitatingly, "receiving a letter from a comrade in your regiment, asking you to interest yourself in a ... a lady----?"

He jumped to his feet and flushed to the roots of his hair. His pupils dilated so visibly between his wide-stretched lids that she thought his eyes were going to start out of his head.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "You refer to a letter which I had nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"

"Yes," Lilly said.

"But, gracious baroness," he exclaimed, completely losing his self-possession, "if I had suspected ... could have had the least idea that the gracious baroness ..." And his face depicted so much grovelling reverence that Lilly's feeling of innate aristocracy again came to the surface, but he had to be undeceived.

"I call myself Lilly Czepanek now," she murmured, congratulating herself on the happy phrase, "I call myself," which left it open for him to suppose that she had chosen voluntarily to resume her maiden name.

Alarm at the blunder he imaged himself to have committed was to be read on his features.

"I am sorry," he said; "I ought to have remembered that the gracious baroness must have gone through many trials." Then he blurted out: "Why didn't you come sooner? I waited, waited, and waited a month, six months.... Then I started searching for you, with no results; but I half thought of employing a detective, only I feared to transgress the bounds of delicacy ..."

Lilly nodded encouragingly. She appreciated his scruples.

"Unfortunately, it never struck me to search for you under another name.... So I had to abandon the hope of ever having the great pleasure ..."

Here, in the intensity of his emotions of delight, he would have grasped her hand, but he had the tact to resist the impulse when he saw that she did not respond.

Lilly was conscious of being mistress of the situation. She felt so saturated with the romance of martyrdom, so surrounded by the delicious incense of lofty aloofness, that it was as if she had stepped out of the pages of one of Frau Asmussen's novels into the light of day.

"I am grateful to you, Herr--Lieutenant." She could not bring the plebeian name of Dehnicke over her lips. "Now I fed that I have not knocked at your door in vain."

"I can assure you," he replied, cocking his head still more to the left as a sign of his good-will, "that I place myself entirely at your service, all I am and all I----" He was going to say "have," but as an astute man of business he hesitated to commit himself so lightly.

"Of course, I shall not impose on you too much," she replied airily, in order to damp his ardour a little. "I simply wish to be put in the way of earning my living, and to have someone who will advise me, and, as Herr von Prell"--now his name was spoken--"said that I might have absolute confidence in you----"

"Indeed, you may rely on me as on yourself," he could not forbear from assuring her.

"That would not mean much," she thought, but took care not to betray what passed through her mind by even a smile.

"Have you, by-the-by, heard anything from him lately?" he asked.

She blushed. To admit that she hadn't would expose his treatment of her. So, not to appear in the light of being neglected and cast off, she said:

"We promised each other at parting not to write. We thought it would be best in the struggle that lay before us not to be always looking out for letters, and expecting to hear from one another. But you probably have heard from him, have you not?"

He started and reflected a moment. "Yes ... that is to say ... not recently.... Some time back he wrote that he was getting on all right. He was starting a career. He made urgent inquiries after the gracious baroness's whereabouts, and I, of course, was not fortunate enough to be able to enlighten him."

This sounded scarcely likely. A moment before he had asked her for news of Walter, and now when she asked him what Walter's address was, he was compelled to confess that his letter had given no address.

It was plain that he had lied.

It may have been that he hoped to raise her opinion of him by representing himself to be still on terms of friendship with her lover, and, as she for a similar motive had not strictly adhered to the truth, she could not very well blame him.

She now went on to explain the purpose of her visit. She told him of her difficulties with the delicate art which she had taken up a few months ago, of her desire to improve and perfect herself. Would he be so kind as to put her on the right road by recommending some artist who would give her lessons? This was really the only reason why she had called on him.

He listened with close attention, as if he took a professional interest in her future. But behind his gravity there lay something that disquieted her. It was certainly not pity, rather was it a sort of restraint, a concealment of the fact that the more she revealed the helplessness of her position the more he felt he was gaining some advantage.

"A perfectly simple matter, gracious Frau," he replied, and his manner was more natural than heretofore. "I have several good painters among the artists who supply models for my business. One of them," he turned over the pages of an address-book, "Kellermann ... is the very man ... but of that we can talk later. What seems to me of the first importance in the art you have chosen are other things. So you will pardon my indiscretion, I hope, if I ask you a few questions?"

She nodded assent.

"What training have you had in Art?"

"That is just it," she replied, struggling with her embarrassment; "it is because I have had no training that I want to learn."

He did not move a muscle.

"What are your means of support?" he asked next.

She was silent. She began to feel as if she were being stripped of every rag she had on.

"You understand, of course," he added, "that I haven't the least intention of prying into your private affairs, but as you did me the honour of asking my advice ..."

"I have a few ornaments," she said, looking him straight in the eyes with proud defiance. "When they come to an end I shall have nothing."

He inclined his head as much as to say, "I thought so."

"And one more question: Where are you living at present?"

"I am living, as befits my means, up four flights of stairs with a poor woman who has taught me how to press flowers."

As she said this she caught sight, in the glass opposite, of the elegant woman of the world who had condescended to pay Herr Dehnicke, "comrade of the Reserves," a visit in his gloomy hole of an office.

He rose and paced up and down a few seconds between the writing-table and door. His clothes were so tight and new that he crackled and creaked at every movement. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox, he was so polished and rotund. He was a little bit bald too, already. His face remained very serious, almost careworn. It seemed as if her hard lot weighed him to the earth.

"My dear madam," he began, pausing in front of her, and his voice trembled a little, "what I am going to say to you is only prompted by the memory of the many years of sincere friendship that have existed between Herr von Prell and me ..."

The scornful, patronising way in which Walter had referred to him in his letter came back to Lilly.

"I have had so many happy, jolly hours in his society. I am indebted to him for so much kindness ..." He stopped. He could not, indebted as he was, name the kindness.... "All my life long I shall be grateful to him."

Lilly recalled Walter's words: "He feels himself particularly indebted to me because I borrowed money from him on more than one occasion."

It was really refreshing to meet with such touching loyalty.

"But what I am most grateful to him for is that he should place such confidence in me as to entrust his fiancée to my care."

"Fiancée!" Her ears had not deceived her; he had actually pronounced the word. She was startled, but did not contradict him. Until that moment it had never entered her head to consider that there was any binding tie between her and Walter--the poor little irresponsible fellow who could not be expected to look after himself, much less a wife and child. But in the eyes of this man of middle-class morals, and perhaps not only in his but in the eyes of the world, and in her own, the only excuse for her irregular, bungled existence lay in this contingency. If she centred all her hopes and wishes on the absent one whom she never imagined she would see again, she would have a new anchor to cling to. She might even justify herself before God and hope for absolution.

This all flashed through her mind while Herr Dehnicke continued to assure her of his friendship for Walter, and fasten on her round eyes of disinterested adoration.

"As his representative, and for his sake," he said, coming to the point, "I would urge you most seriously, dear madam, to quit surroundings that are not congenial to you, and find others more fitting to your former rank. It is absolutely necessary if you wish to put your plans into execution."

"What have my surroundings to do with my art?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders.

"Well, to begin with, you certainly must have a studio in which you can receive your customers, ... where you can show them who you are, and what you can do, and how far you are capable of carrying out your designs. This is the only method of ensuring those who give you orders treating you as a crafts-woman and not a mere ordinary work-woman."

"But they won't come to me to give their orders," she interposed.

"They should do so, undoubtedly," he exclaimed, working himself up into a decorous enthusiasm. "An artist who has any self-respect ought never to step outside his door to offer his wares to the public, and I advise you to act on this principle."

She mentally calculated the number of rings, pendants, and bracelets that she had left, and replied, smiling:

"It's more easily said than done."

He grew bold. "My old and intimate friendship with Walter"--he used his Christian name for the first time--"entitles me to the privilege of--how shall I put it?--making provision ..."

She foresaw what was coming and choked him off.

"I am quite content where I am," she declared. "And till I am able, out of my own resources, to provide myself with the surroundings you are kind enough to wish for me, I do not feel justified in making a change."

He bowed, his zeal perceptibly cooled. He asked her at least to leave her present address, so that he might send her the desired information.

Hesitating, she gave the number and name of the street where she lodged, and added the request that he would not think of calling on her.

He bowed again stiffly. His coolness increased and he became almost rigid.

She felt glad that she had understood so well how to keep him at a distance. No one could say she was a beggar after this.

She took leave graciously, for it was not her intention to snub him too mercilessly.

He was quick to take advantage of her warmer tone, and became ardent again.

"Was there anything else that he could do for her?... Did she feel lonely? Did she wish for society?"

She glanced at his right hand, on which there was no wedding-ring, and shook her head, smiling.

He had perfectly understood both glance and smile, and, struggling with a fresh attack of embarrassment, he cleared his throat and said:

"I live alone with my mother, but, unfortunately, I cannot ask you to come and see her, as she is in very poor health, and since my father's death sees nobody. But I might introduce you to a few people of irreproachable position, of course if you cared to know them."

"Thank you very much," Lilly replied patronisingly. "Naturally, I should take for granted that you would only introduce me to nice people. But, in spite of that, I think I would rather not. It will be best, at present, for me to do without society."

With this she made a regal inclination of her head, held out her hand, and departed.

He followed her deferentially to the door, and the six young gentlemen stood up with one accord in a row and bowed like their master.

She passed out through the unfinished alterations in the courtyard, with flushed cheeks. When she was out in the street her mood was one of mingled triumph and disappointment. "No, that was not my path of fate," she said to herself.

But she had unexpectedly acquired a fiancé, and that was something.