Mr. August Kellermann, though unsuccessful in selling his pictures, enjoyed a fair reputation as a painter. He was a knowing fellow of about thirty-five, seven times washed in the life of the metropolis, who got great amusement from his own astuteness. He had a sandy Rubens beard and small bleared eyes with an eternal yawn in them from the night before.

He lived in an abandoned photographer's studio of enormous dimensions, like a huge glass case. To keep out the glare and the heat he had hung oriental rugs under the skylight, propping them up on long poles, and their fringed ends hung down as in a Beduin's tent.

When Lilly stepped from the dim anteroom into the glare of the diffused light from above—it was so high it seemed a very part of the heaven—she found him in a puce-coloured sack coat and worn green unheeled slippers, over which hung his red-checked stockings. He was squatting on the floor next to an oriental coffee tray poking at a narghile that had gone out.

"Lordy!" he exclaimed without responding to her greeting and without rising. "It's worth receiving such a visit."

Lilly prepared to withdraw. Then he shot to his feet like an arrow, hoisted his trousers with a shrug of his shoulders, and wiped the dust from a bamboo chair with his sleeves.

"Sit down, child. I have given up painting for the present, and have gone in for pottery, and I should not be able to make use of fair Helen herself, but I won't let anything like you escape me, not I."

Lilly handed him her benefactor's letter, which she had received the day before, and enlightened him as to the mistake he had made.

"Now his manner will change," she thought.

Nothing of the sort took place.

"Botheration!" he said, scratching his head. "Noblest of women, why are you so beautiful? Quondam general's wife"—here she was "general's wife" again—"I had imagined spectacles and pimples, and now something like this comes along."

"Then you probably know what my motive is in visiting you?" asked Lilly, who was too faint-hearted to express resentment at his tone.

He clapped his fleshy hand to his forehead.

"One moment, one moment. Mr. Dehnicke, my dry bread-giver—dry referring to bread as well as to giver—did say something to me day before yesterday, but I suffer from congenital defect of my faculties of apprehension, and I hope you will be good enough to—"

When Lilly explained the nature of her desires, he broke out into unrestrained laughter.

"That you shall have, my aristocratic friend. You shall certainly enjoy the benefit of my instruction. Even if you hadn't been foam-born! Such a treat doesn't happen every day. I will charm so many sunsets out of the heavens and set them on glass in hues so roseate you will never be able to look a rose in the face again."

Lilly was by no means ignorant that in her capacity of aristocratic lady, the part she wished to play, she should have left the studio long before. But she was too eager to avail herself of his readiness to instruct; she could not throw away the opportunity so painfully won.

"What would Anna von Schwertfeger do in such a situation?" she asked herself. Then, tossing her head, she said: "But there are certain matters to be settled before we proceed further. In the first place, I should like to know what your charges are, so that I may decide if I can afford to pay for such valuable services—"

He looked somewhat disconcerted, and remarked that Mr. Dehnicke would probably look out for that.

"Mr. Dehnicke has nothing at all to do with my money matters," she replied. "If there should be any misunderstanding as to that—" she grasped her parasol—she had kept her gloves on.

"Tut, tut, don't be so hasty," said Mr. Kellermann. He reflected a few moments, and then mentioned a reasonable charge, five marks a morning.

"The ruby ring," thought Lilly, and nodded.

"I'm curious as to the second condition," he said.

"It is more important to me than the first. It is—I should like to be treated like a lady."

"Oh," he said, "I'm not fine enough for you? We'll fix that. I can be fine as silk, I tell you, I can. In fact I possess six degrees of fineness, and all you need do is choose the one you like best: superfine, extrafine, fine, semifine, impolite, and downright vulgar. Now select."

This joke and a few more similar in quality pleased Lilly so well that for the present she gave up her demand to be respected as a grande dame, and was content if in associating with her he did not pay her court and took her as a "good fellow."

However, her admonition had not failed of effect. The next day when she came he was wearing boots.

He proved to be an intelligent, discreet teacher, who did not essay wild flights with his pupil and manifested kindly, considerate interest in her childish plan.

He devised something of gelatine especially for her purpose, by which colours on a transparency gained in brilliancy. He was untiring in planning new effects.

"I will make six bloody sunsets for you," he said, "with which you will deal a blow to all your competitors in a body, especially that extremely conscienceless lady who perpetrates the most impertinent pranks. I mean, of course, Dame Nature."

While Lilly daubed on a window pane, he stood smoking Turkish tobacco or chewing ginger before one of the modelling stands that took up the centre of the room and "pottered" at his work.

The artistic creations that he "fetched out of the depths of his soul" were usually human figures half or third life size: knights in armour bearing banners, maidens in old German costumes aimlessly stretching out their hands, allegoric women's figures doing the same, heralds blowing trumpets, and now and then secession shapes, long, slim, swirly limbs which trailed off like a nixy's body into a fish's tail into ash trays, finger bowls, or other such pleasing and useful objects.

And all the while that he was turning out factory models, dusty, half-completed paintings and sketches hung on the walls, or stood on the floor leaning against the walls. They showed a bold inventiveness, a riotous joy in colour. Each seemed to bear the mark of a reckless conception and a laughing ability to execute.

One was a picture of a half-ruined church in a tropical forest with a pack of monkeys chasing over the altar; another, a group of stupid camels in a depressing desert scene snuffling at the corpse of a dead lion. The best was a painting of a naked woman weighed down by heavy chains, which bound her blooming, lustrous body to a parched rock, while a flock of black, red-eyed vultures hovered about her head.

There was much else which testified to force and originality, but the woman in chains remained Lilly's favourite.

One day she ventured to ask her teacher why he permitted all these paintings to go to ruin instead of finishing them and placing them on exhibit.

"Because I have to produce pot-boilers, you innocent angel, you," he replied, and splashed a clod of clay against the leg of the allegoric lady he was working on. "Because the world requires lamps and vases, but not an eternal beauty with mother-wit inside her lovely body. Because there are 'manufacturers of imitation bronze ware,' who keep you from dropping by the roadside. And because I'm a fellow with sound teeth who must have a few morsels of life to crunch, and, after starving for twenty years, would like to join the great band of Dionysus worshippers. Do you understand, you afternoon-tea-soul, you?"

"But the woman with the chains, why don't you finish her at least?"

He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large glass-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.

She declined, and pressed him for an answer.

"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my manacles. Or else the goddess herself would have to come down, lay her corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here is the foam-born body. Begin—look and paint to your heart's content.'"

Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his clasped hands up to her.

"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have I to do with all that!"

"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible respect to—. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for freedom long enough—she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I can't sleep—then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady, who is now blushing even unto her eyeballs, will come and—"

"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.

After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly had to forbid his ever referring to it.

Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on the glass plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's opinion, was highly commendable.

In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark and silent, of grass and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jurassic and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within, constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an extremely early period in the world's history.

Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had visited him.

Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.

But one day Mr. Kellermann said:

"What the devil—the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up here every day to see how things are progressing."

Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a degree of satisfaction.

At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden, seven-pointed coronet—she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.

His reply arrived without delay.

Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her wishes.

And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.

Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and scraping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady, who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than gotten.

Her benefactor seemed all the more embarrassed.

He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and in general acted as if he were trespassing on forbidden territory.

How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him permission—he hadn't wished to appear intrusive—he would have waited even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty manner.

Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the rÔle of the "general's wife"—partly against her will—who does the honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.

Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the transparencies at the windows.

Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarrassed way.

Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.

"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.

Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I ought to show them to you first."

He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:

"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by inordinate professional conceit, and it might be—"

Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.

Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.

Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:

"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the buyers. If I set the glass in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I might even dispose of them as goods of my own."

Lilly flushed with gratitude.

"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have found customers for myself?"

The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.

"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home worthy of yourself."

"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the wherewithal."

"That may mean years."

"I will wait years."

"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified—"

Lilly drew herself up.

"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would merely humiliate me."

She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of insult.

Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.

When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent friend. It was his only opportunity—

"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak about my betrothed."

"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat stirred when she uttered it.

The chance that Mr. Dehnicke might prolong his visit had been foreseen and provided for. Lilly needed only to ring and Mrs. Laue appeared in the famous brown velvet dress with one of Lilly's white fichus modestly tucked in the square-cut neck, and carrying a tea tray with two very dainty coffee cups. On being presented to Mr. Dehnicke she made a courtesy, than which none more aristocratic was to be seen at the balls of Prince Orloffski. After saying a few suitable words about the great actors of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their signatures especially for her, she took leave, as was proper.

Lilly displayed style as a hostess; and like the aroma of the coffee, the spirit of "better days" hovered over all.

About four days later the mail brought Mrs. Lilly Czepanek a money-order for 210 marks. Sender, Richard Dehnicke, of Liebert & Dehnicke, Mfrs. of Metal Wares. And on the left side was the remark: "Seven transparency-paintings with pressed flowers, sold at 30 mks. a piece."

The foundations of a livelihood had been laid.