Once more the chestnuts put on their yellow cloaks and the peep holes in the foliage widened. From her window Lilly could see the ducks foraging, and the odorous, fruit-laden barges on their laborious way to market sunk deep in the water under their summer cargo.

Once more the world muffled itself up for winter weather; once more metropolitan amusements turned on their gay lights.

In decent half-mourning the chase began again. Richard objected to remaining like a pickle in a jar.

This time, however, they entirely renounced box seats at dazzling shows and suppers at aristocratic restaurants. Richard no longer had to establish himself triumphantly in the possession of a famous—at the same time cheap—horizontale de grande marque. They quietly remained on a middle-class level, where German champagne reigns supreme and the star Kempinski is in the ascendant.

But here, too, in cabarets and theatres where smoking is allowed, in jolly little nooks and respectable looking back rooms, they passed numberless hours in riotous abandon.

The women, who in the other world had felt somewhat out of place and embarrassed, enjoyed themselves better in these more modest surroundings, and the gentlemen were content that their shirt fronts retained the starch longer.

The personnel remained about the same. Only a few dandies dropped away, who saw no fun in life unless it offered them an occasional opportunity to receive a condescending nod from a few lieutenants of the Guard in citizens' clothes.

Lilly followed the crowd, and thought it had to be so.

For the most part she sat there saying little and smiling a friendly smile. She permitted the gentlemen to pay her court and was moderately responsive. She listened indifferently to the confidences of the ladies, all of whom were well-disposed to her, because as everyone soon realised, Lilly had no desire to poach on another's preserves.

They might have taken her to be limited or phlegmatic, if from time to time the champagne had not relaxed her rigidity and enlivened her with a different spirit. She slowly came out of her state of torpor. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks reddened. She laughed aloud, made madcap remarks, told the colonel's club jokes, and finally fell into a sort of ecstasy, in which she sang comic songs in a tremulous chirp, imitated well-known actors, and even danced the bold dances she had seen on the variety stage.

Her memory was incredibly good. She remembered things she had heard only once, and quite unconsciously, for in her normal state she recalled even less than others. The wine first had to wash away the barriers that always hemmed her being.

Her associates soon became aware of this, and tried to trick her into the condition that promised them a merry entertainment. But she resisted with all her might. She waged constant warfare without even Richard as an ally. It flattered his vanity to have his beautiful mistress admired because of her talents.

The next day Lilly always felt bruised and battered and despondent.

And sometimes when the field of her spiritual vision was completely filled with red, kicking legs and the empty teasing dribble of comic songs, she heard a still small voice in admonition:

"There was a time when you lived otherwise. There was a time when you aspired to the heights."

But Lilly feared to listen to this voice.

She felt she was worthless because she was defenceless.

And because nobody was there who understood her and held out his hand to her.

Frequently, on the evenings she was left to herself, she slipped out of the house as if she were committing an evil deed, and took a seat in the gallery of some good theatre, where she thought no one would recognise her; or at a concert, among the music students, who sat on the steps or leaned against the railings, following the selections with thick scores in their hands. Lilly behaved as if she were one of them.

But concerts no longer touched her. She felt uneasy and out of place, and turned her attention to some young man because of his bold profile or his fine head of hair.

"He is one of those favoured talented persons," she thought, tormented, and looked at him long and languishly, until he returned her dallying with ardour.

Though she burned to have him speak to her, she lacked the courage to grant him additional signs of her favour, having before her eyes Mrs. Jula's appalling example. Besides, the throbbing of her heart was sufficient enjoyment.

Already she was so completely under the spell of an erotic world that every excitement of her mood was immediately transmuted into a desirous love game.

And the longing, that eternal toothache, of which Mrs. Jula had spoken, had begun to drill her nerves.

It had come like a thief in the night. It filled her sleep with flaming pictures and converted her waking hours into a twilight doze.

She waited, but nobody came. Nobody took the trouble to pick up her lost soul from out of the dust.

There was only one man who observed her and seemed to have a suspicion of what was taking place in her soul.

He was Dr. Salmoni.

Dr. Salmoni was considered a great man, one of the luminaries in Berlin's intellectual life. He was editor of an art magazine, which had once conducted a revolutionary campaign against the great men of the old school, and had fashioned new gods, erected new altars at which the masses might burn incense. But the steady burning of incense was not in Dr. Salmoni's line. He promptly bethought himself that the divinities before whom every Tom, Dick, or Harry was crawling on his knees, were, at bottom, creations of his and of his friends, fetiches to be rejected, just as they had been exalted. And he began a merry war upon them also. People easily endured Dr. Salmoni's hate; his quips sputtered in the air harmless as skyrockets; nobody believed his imputations. The only time he was dangerous was when he showed pitying benevolence. Then somebody's reputation was surely at stake. In certain circles Dr. Salmoni's praise was equivalent to a death sentence.

As in the previous winter, the distinguished Dr. Salmoni condescended every now and then to take part in the innocent sport of the little circle whose forte was not exactly intellectuality. His appearance always caused a flutter of joyous reverence; the company instantly moved closer to make place for him, and as soon as he leaned back gently in his chair, smiled his sad, compassionate smile, and stroked the peak of his light-brown Van Dyke beard, they hung on his lips expectantly awaiting a titillating stream of spiteful sallies.

But the jester's rÔle did not always suit him. He plunged into profound tÊte-À-tÊtes, or dreamed in silence, according to his mood. Sometimes he even showed a naÏve, trusting side of his nature, like a leopard playing with dogs.

He seldom addressed Lilly; but his piercing eyes often glided over her face, as if to spy upon her feelings and grope about in her soul.

One evening he seated himself next to her, and asked her to cut his meat for him—he had strained his wrist throttling a certain celebrity. Waxing more intimate, he next asked her to feed him, though his left hand had by no means been disabled.

So for the first time they entered into a conversation.

Lilly quailed. She feared she might not acquit herself creditably.

"I am surprised," he said. "You've been going about with this loud crew for over a year, and I don't read the slang in your eyes yet."

"Slang in my eyes? What do you mean by slang in a person's eyes?"

"Do me the favour to regard the women here." He pointed furtively at Mrs. Jula, Mrs. Welter, Karla, and a few others. "Look at the way they roll their eyes and exchange glances. It's the lingo of a—well, I won't say vice—I despise words without nuance—I'll say of a thievish fancy. Do you understand?"

"I think so," faltered Lilly.

"But you still have some of the childlike expression you had when you made your dÉbut. Not altogether. A fleck of disdain is in your eyes. Disdain is not the right word. At the edge of deserts there are certain salt seas—dark green and empty. Do you catch the idea? Because the ground is poisonous."

"Possibly," said Lilly, constrained.

"Nevertheless, it's wonderful. Your soul's like a filter. It assimilates nothing but what it wants to. Or have you a secret store to draw on, which gives you the right to mock at us—some constant ideal—some goal in the hazy distance—some great song—a Song of Songs?"

Lilly started up with a faint outcry, but not so faint as to fail to attract general attention.

"I merely stepped on her foot," Dr. Salmoni explained, "and she is still innocent enough not to consider it unintentional."

All laughed.

"A joke exactly suited to their understanding," he whispered, bending toward her shoulder. "I'll pretend not to have heard your involuntary avowal. That alone has value in my estimation which is voluntary. And I will not ask you as I did a year ago: 'What is thy quest here, lovely lady?' I will ask you: 'What hast thou to lose here?' I myself will furnish the answer. Your style—you have your style to lose. You are on the point of becoming styleless; which is always a misfortune and a crime. To me style is virtue, greatness, genuineness, force, religion, a God-ordained quality—all in one and a few things more. Remain bodily and spiritually intangible. Rise to a healthy, gladsome vice—tant mieux. Dress your hair for evening prayers, or let it flow over the pillow like a bacchante—but decide which."

"I believe a moment ago you were pleading for nuance," said Lilly, the edge of whose wit was sharpened by his, "and now you're advocating a dogma."

"Hear, hear!" he praised her. "Excellent. But no. I'm not preaching a dogma. I'm preaching the exercise of one's will, the will to personality. Do you understand? The result will be rich enough in nuances. Undoubtedly you have the material in you for a grande amoureuse, but alas not the courage."

"Well, then, not the material," she flashed back happily.

He laughed like a child.

"In one's old age one gets lectures on logic from little, virtuous women." He magnanimously allowed her the pleasure of having outdone him in repartee.

Thereafter Lilly reflected much upon the conversation. What a vast deal he knew of her! Was he in alliance with supernatural powers?

"The will to personality," he had said.

She felt blissful. Up to the heights again!

On another occasion, as they were walking behind their companions along Friederichstrasse, still gaily alive at midnight, he adopted a different tone.

"I have a sure feeling that you are afraid of me," he said.

"I?" she queried, confused and drawing a deep breath. "Why should I be?"

"Because you know I have a message for you, a message to which, in the bottom of your heart, you don't feel equal."

"I don't understand," she stammered, though she fully took in his meaning. She knew precisely what rÔle he could play in her life if—

"I am a man who likes tones pianissimo. I don't care to blow my sensations on a comb. Otherwise your ears might have tingled on certain occasions. However, I must say, it's abominable to see a woman like you, a woman created to wander on the heights of thought and enjoyment, seduced by a few Bismarck herrings into cutting capers with them. I won't mention names, but I assure you, you can't get drunk on lukewarm dish water, and intoxication is the great thing in life, at least while our blood runs lively in our veins."

Lilly trembled on his arm.

They were passing a crowd of roysterers, young fellows shouldering their canes, with swimming eyes dreaming into space. One whistled Wagner, another sang a students' song; and sweet little street-walkers cast longing, seductive glances at them. Lilly and Dr. Salmoni passed more people, adults and half-grown girls, men and youths. All seemed under the spell of the same transport. It was like a great dance, at which each offered his neighbour hand and mouth and body and soul.

"What can I do?" she whispered, dropping her chin on her heaving breast.

"I will tell you," he replied with a smile which harboured dark promises. "You must learn to live another life along with this one. One all for yourself, for yourself and a few select. Do you understand? As a Frenchman once said, you must lay out a secret garden, in which you will cultivate in absolute quiet those thoughts and desires that seem dear to you, and above all, those that seem to be forbidden and those that you have stolen by the way, no matter how. Do you understand?"

"Whatever I have stolen has brought me misfortune," said Lilly, hesitatingly.

"Rather the law which calls it stolen. The distinction is a difficult one to make. However, you may believe me in this: so long as we are not permeated with the religion of self-exaltation—do you understand me, child?—so long as we haven't rooted out the words 'attachment' and 'duty' from our thoughts, our road is not perfect. We continue to knock our toes on the crushed stones that the others heap up ahead of us under the pretext that they are levelling the way."

"Sometimes they do," said Lilly, recalling all the good things she had received from Richard.

He smiled at her with compassionate indulgence.

"You seem to be suffering from what I call chain madness."

"What is that?" asked Lilly, suspecting, to her dismay, that he again divined what lay in her innermost being. Could he know of the shameful rÔle that a certain chained beauty had played in her life?

"It is said," he continued, "that if galley slaves who have worn chains for many years are liberated, they cannot endure their freedom. They complain that their arms and legs have been chopped off. They miss the support and weight of their chains. You have such beautiful arms for stretching upward. Just exercise them a little."

"And such long legs for running away," she supplemented with a tortured laugh. "The only question is: Whither?"

"Oh, oh! Why run away immediately?" he asked, stroking her hand, which rested on his arm, and speaking as to a child. "You would simply run into the arms of another so-called duty. First you must be free inwardly. You must first forget to fetch and carry for persons who are themselves meant to fetch and carry."

"Teach me," she burst out.

"I will bring you some books," he said, as if deliberating, "books which will lead you back to yourself. To-morrow at noon, I will—"

At that moment they were separated.

In bed Lilly lay with clasped hands smiling up at the ceiling.

She was again aspiring to the heights.

But the next day when he was to come, dread fell upon her again, dread of him, of Richard, of herself.

It was the first secret visit, the first to knock a breach in the peace of her home.

When she saw him step from the cab with several volumes in his arm, she flew into the kitchen and told the maid to say she was not at home.

But the instant he left she seized the books which he had brought.

Some were printed in Roman type and looked dreadfully scientific. However, they were intelligible, and Lilly took up one after the other. What she read sent the blood coursing turbulently through her veins, and mounted to her head like sweet wine.

All the books spoke of the "will to power," "the free man," "the right to live one's life," "the religion of passion," and similar things. In each pure beauty was extolled as the goal of human endeavours; in each the word "individuality" recurred numberless times in numberless connections. Each taught you to look down upon your fellow-beings with vigorous pride, and despise them as a blunted, debased, tortured and enslaved mass. In each you wandered along in blessed solitude—or in the company of a very few like-minded, noble souls—on free wind-swept mountain heights surrounded by an eternally bright ether.

It was a constant offering of incense, an insatiable lashing of oneself into satiety, pleasant murder, hymn-singing rape. The main subjects invariably were intoxication, dreams, life's festivals, and ecstasy.

Thus, a veil of intoxication and dreams was spread over Lilly's soul. She felt she was enveloped in a sapphire haze shot with the purple of a distant glow. She heard hot, wrathful music storming onward in discords like mÆnads tearing down every hindrance in their way. She felt she was climbing up perpendicular rocks, ever higher, ever higher, fighting the whole time against the dizziness which threatened to cast her back into the abyss. But she did not sink. She clung to the edge, which bruised her hands, and laughed down—laughed—laughed—at the sorry wretches there below crawling along in flocks, permitting themselves to be ground to death for their bit of daily bread.

Then she felt sorry that she alone had scaled such heights, that she alone should be up there enjoying the wild, golden sunlight, while all the others little conceived that deliverance was at hand. She wanted to hold out her hand to her poor, starving brothers and sisters and draw them up after her. But they could not understand her message of salvation—he had said "message of salvation." She saw wasting faces, dank with the sweat of death; glassy eyes unable to turn from the gleaming penny, their pay. She saw pregnant bodies, swollen yet emaciated.

The working woman in Richard's wrapping room recurred to her. She recalled her hands flying in feverish haste about the swaying doll. She and others recurred to Lilly, with the timid hate and the hopeless yearning in their weary eyes.

Her unhappy love for the factory, which she thought had been extinguished forever on that day of shame, awoke within her again, as a quiet, painful tenderness, like the spring anticipations that tremble in us when the February snows begin to melt.

This, to be sure, was hardly the sense or purpose of Dr. Salmoni's books. But they served another purpose most admirably. Her faint toothache rose to a veritable anguish. The desire for a man, any man not Richard, who understood her and swept her along with him, overwhelmed her with such force that she could only twist this way and that and feel she would perish under the lash.

Somewhere the "one" was surely to be found. Was it not possible for a favouring wave in this sea of humanity to toss him to her feet?

One evening she put on simple, dark clothes—she might have been taken for a seamstress returning from work—and slipped down the street, as she used to when Richard's house drew her to it with a thousand secret threads.

Since she was unskilled in strolling about aimlessly and needed a goal, she listened to the voice of her newly awakened love, and took the accustomed route to Alte Jakobstrasse. On the way she shudderingly avoided two old beaux and a fresh clerk.

The latticed gates of the famous marble-columned portal cried an iron "Halt!"

She stood a long time pressed up against her old door on the opposite side of the street, and stared at the house to which fate had anchored her.

Lights were burning in his mother's room.

The two gas jets of the chandelier resembled her cold, clear eyes. The rest of the jets were not turned on, probably from motives of economy.

Of the factory nothing was to be seen save the dark top of the chimney towering above the roof of the house in front.

A sorry greeting. Nevertheless a greeting. She would have liked to say "How do you do?" to the beloved staircase also. But she no longer dared to cross the street.

Then, as if after a good deed accomplished, she turned homeward feeling at ease.

She repeated the visit three times in the course of the week. She began to feel that the aimless journeys were a life necessity.

Once, just as she was disposing herself comfortably in her protecting doorway, an elegant slim gentleman, who evidently had come the same way behind her, stopped and raised his hat.

Dr. Salmoni.

Lilly in her fright nearly forgot to return his greeting.

If he were to betray her to Richard! Richard would assume that jealousy, or even worse, had driven her there.

"Well, well," began Dr. Salmoni, complacently rolling the words in his mouth. "It strikes me as somewhat touching that we should meet directly opposite Liebert & Dehnicke. As you know, I'm a gentle nature, a soul in socks, as it were. So I refrain from asking you what stirrings of your heart prompted you to come here. You know the fairy-tale of the queen who sallied forth to find her king, and ended in finding a swineherd. Thus a pearl may stray into a bronze ware factory. I should not have permitted myself to follow you intentionally. I was seduced by a certain play of lines and curves. Perhaps a certain suspicion of brilliance shone through—but a young pheasant should not be shot out of season. Let your fruit ripen, is a very sound motto, and not only with respect to soi-disant love. But it's questionable whether mottoes are worth the while. They smack of respectability, and respectability smacks of Virginia tobacco, and Virginia tobacco smells, and is celebrated far and wide because it smells. Do you get my profound meaning?"

"I should like to leave this spot," said Lilly. "If we were to be seen here!"

"Oh, here of all places we may be seen together," he rejoined, laughing with childlike glee. "It would take a perverse imagination to assume that we selected this very house for a secret rendezvous. But as you wish."

He offered her his arm. She declined.

They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther west side.

He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and her sorry existence.

But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He merely gave too much, and her brain lacked space to receive all of it.

He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked. Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that she was being stroked tenderly.

When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always thought the same, it seemed to her.

He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from country life, extolled discreet horseback rides À deux, and the transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been present at all the events of her life.

"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation. "I know it all."

Oh, if his past had been similar!

So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.

When he began to speak of the books he had brought her—he considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had called—she ventured a languid resistance.

"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.

"Why not?"

"The books confuse and sicken me—I don't know. You said they would lead me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.

"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing. "Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death—on account of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral exactions."

Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.

Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to withdraw it.

They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark masses a lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.

"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.

"We're going out of the way of society. And if I wanted to exploit the present conjuncture of circumstances I should profit by your being lost, your feeling that you need protection. But I'm not a calculating nature. In matters of emotion I'm like a child. I take whatever the heavens rain down on me. Aren't you the same way?"

"I'm too heavy," replied Lilly, ready to bare her soul to him. "I'm full of scruples. I think a lot over everything."

"The question is what you think," he said gaily.

She wanted to reply and talk to him—tell him all her thoughts. She felt like holding out her heart on her open palm, so that nothing should remain concealed from him. But shame before his great wisdom sealed her lips.

"Why do you take the trouble to bother with a stupid thing like me?" she asked, to show him her humility at least.

"Perhaps because I have a mission to fulfil in your life. 'Perhaps,' I say, because one can never be sure whether there is such a thing as reflex action of the emotions. Certain moments psychologiques will teach us."

Though his meaning was not at all clear to Lilly, a hesitating sense of happiness stole over her that so mighty a man should actually concern himself with her.

"You are entirely in his power," she thought, "and you will be whatever he wants you to be."

At that moment he drew her arm a little closer, and her pressure in response brought his hand for an instant on her breast.

She was overwhelmed with fright. He might think she was offering herself to him. If he were to take her home, were to ask—

"I'd like to get into a tram," she faltered. "I'm very tired."

He whistled for a cab, which just then came swaying out of the fog.

"No, no," she burst out, thinking of nothing but that she must not lightly forego the joy of his friendship. "Not with you—I must go home alone—on account—"

She tore her arm from his and ran to the next stopping place so quickly that he was just about able to reach her before she jumped on the first tram that came along. She scarcely said good-by.

The smile with which he looked after her was by no means melancholy.

He might, he should triumph.

She, Lilly Czepanek, was once again aspiring to the heights.

Three days later they met again; this time in a large company which had visited a cafÉ chantant, and was to wind up the evening at a respectable bodega.

Unluckily somebody else took the seat at her side, which she had carefully reserved for him.

That upset her.

The champagne heated up everybody's spirits.

Lilly, out of spite and boredom, drank more than was good for her.

Provocative merriness burned in her eyes. Her cheeks took on the Baldwin apple hue that they all dearly loved. Her laughter rang out clear, her body moved more nonchalantly.

Suddenly she heard a general outcry: "Lilly! Lilly! We want Lilly!"

Terror stopped her pulse.

She had never ventured to perform in his presence. In fact, she had not been asked to when he had been there, for then he formed the centre of attraction.

But she felt:

"I can do it to-day. To-day I will show him what I am."

She rose, brushed her hair from her forehead, and gave herself a little shake, as was her wont when she jerked aside the everyday Lilly, the craven-hearted Lilly, the Lilly of the oppressed feelings, the Lilly who feared to face her fellow-beings, the stiff-jointed Lilly.

She made a dash and began.

First she imitated the beautiful OtÉro, and crowed and cuckooed. Her auditors rolled with laughter. Then she hit off certain cabaret stars. Sucking her fingers like an innocent babe, she sang in flute tones: "Please let me in your room."

She croaked in a droll, bull-frog bass: "Once I was ambassador," and peeping from behind the clothes rack she cooed the song of the passionate dove: "Coo—coo—coo—kiek!"

They insisted on her concluding with a fandango. She protested. In vain.

They shoved the tables against the wall, and Lilly, making her own music through her teeth, whirled about the room more madly than ever before, and finally collapsed in a corner almost swooning.

The tumult of applause promised never to subside.

The women kissed her again and again, the men stroked her hair and arms, the stiff district attorney sounded a trumpet blast, and Richard, quite pale with pride, stood there in his Napoleon attitude, tugging at his moustache.

But Dr. Salmoni remained at a distance, sad and modest, as if it all concerned him not in the least.

The only sign by which she knew he realised it was all meant for him was a rapid glance of understanding which he threw to her like a laurel wreath.

She was still rocking in the tempest when the company prepared to break up.

That had been intoxication, the sort of which he had spoken. It hissed like a flame through her heart and limbs.

Dr. Salmoni himself helped her on with her fur coat—Richard was busy paying the waiter—and while he deliberately laid the sable scarf about her shoulders, he whispered close to her ear:

"May I come to-morrow?"

"Yes," she screamed, alarmed at herself.

Then in defiance of her own cowardice, she turned abruptly on her heels and shouted sharply, as in anger, directly in his face:

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"

"What's the matter?" everybody asked.

She merely laughed shortly. What did she care for the others? Wasn't she aspiring to the heights again?

The next morning it was all a spectral dream. The one clear point was: "He's coming."

With the applause still ringing in her ears she had stretched herself and thought:

"Now he knows what I am. Now he knows I'm no dull, shrivelled, half-way creature for the valleys, no slave nature, no sheep that runs with the flock, no Mrs. Grundy-made fool, who voluntarily conforms to each and every convention. Now he knows I'm a free, proud woman, who, like himself, drinks in the light on the heights, one of those complete women, those mÆnads who dance a wild dance over abysms and mock at death even when he has them in his clutches."

Then her faintheartedness crept over her again. What after all had she done besides drink herself into a champagne mood, sing a few comic songs, and dance an abandoned dance? She had behaved like a music-hall danseuse, and had harvested the very doubtful approval of a semi-intoxicated audience.

If that alone was required for belonging to the elect, to the mighty, laughing, chosen ones, of whom Dr. Salmoni's books spoke!

No, oh, no! After last night's performance he could feel nothing but contempt for her, or, at most, pity. It was to tell her this to her face that he would come to visit her, if at all. He would let her feel her lowness and then go his own way, benevolent but untouched.

She would not suffer him to go. She would cling to him and cry:

"You promised to lead me up to the heights out of these depths of distress, out of this insipid existence, out of this void! Be true to your word. Do not desert me. I will do whatever you wish. I will be your thing, your creature. But don't desert me."

In feverish expectancy she dressed, waved her hair, and rouged her lips, pale from nights of pleasure. She made herself as beautiful as she could.

A little before twelve the bell rang.

He?

No. Mrs. Jula.

As if by mutual agreement she and Mrs. Jula had avoided each other since that evening of confidences. And now, without having announced her visit, here she stood, wearing her most cordial expression, and asking for a brief interview.

Lilly hesitated.

"Really I shan't keep you long, my dear. I understand—you're expecting some one."

"Not that I know of," replied Lilly, aware she was blushing.

"Don't deny it. Dr. Salmoni is coming. I know the joke. I once stood the same way, pale one instant, the next instant red, and waited for him. The only difference is, my house gown wasn't such an angelic red. I was plain Bordeaux red. All the same to him. He takes us in Bordeaux red, too."'

"What do you mean?" Lilly faltered.

"What do I mean? Do you know what our circle with all our pretty legÈres women is to Dr. Salmoni? It's a sort of fishing pool, where he angles from time to time to land something for which he just then happens to have an appetite. There you have it, my dear!"

"That's slander!" cried Lilly, flaring up. "He's never made approaches to me. We've never so much as mentioned the word love to each other."

"No need," replied Mrs. Jula, and laughed exultingly. "He doesn't bother with such petty things. He knows when the time comes we shall swim into his net without it."

Lilly felt herself getting still angrier.

"We've always spoken of pure, noble things, of a proud humanity. And if you and your like cannot understand his language, if you insist—"

"One moment, my dear," Mrs. Jula interrupted her. "No need to be insulting. I came to you out of good motives. As for the others—it was toute mÊme chose to me. I even licked my chops. But you, I love you, even if you don't want to have anything to do with me. You he's to leave as you are. And last night, when I saw how far things had gone, I couldn't quiet down. I had to come to you before he—"

"Really, you're mistaken," said Lilly, though unable to refrain from a furtive glance at the clock.

Mrs. Jula, upon whom the glance was not lost, made a little grimace.

"Never mind. When the bell rings I'll slide out through the guest room. But before then I am in hopes of having completed my work. See here, child"—she seated herself at one end of the sofa and drew Lilly down beside her—"why, all of us poor women crave to rise again, or once did, when like you we were tolerably faithful to the one. At the psychological moment, enter Dr. Salmoni. He doesn't have to work so hard for some of us, but he seems to like it. He must first salivate on us like an adder on a sparrow. He has various methods. With a cold mug like Karla, of course, he behaves very differently from the way he behaves with such as you or me. To us he says in the beginning: 'I cannot get over my astonishment at seeing you in these surroundings. Tell me, what seek you here?'"

Lilly started.

"Well, did he, or didn't he?"

"Yes—but—"

"Very well, yes. That's all I want to know. Then he describes the dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it went?"

"Yes—but—" stammered Lilly.

"Good. Then he will deliver us. He will guide us. He's the mountain guide ordained. 'Upward—up to the heights!' N'est-ce pas?"

Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame.

"Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we're such sheep, and he's so clever—so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give the devil his due."

"But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our entire past with us?"

"Yes, child. People in similar circumstances usually have similar experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past—of those of us who came from the country. I'm a landed proprietor's daughter. Didn't he tell you in a by-the-way that he had passed a great part of his youth in castles?"

Lilly assented.

"Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was saucy."

In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing.

"Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because afterwards, oh, how it hurts!"

"Yes, tell me, how is it—afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly.

"Very simple. After he's gotten what he wants, finis. He buttons up his coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, 'au revoir,' but there never is a revoir. You never see him again."

"Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can't treat a woman so currishly."

"You—never—see—him—again, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore—not a line in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later in company, you don't read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the very most he 'jollies' you like the rest."

Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later" encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.

She hid her face on the sofa arm shaken with a storm of shame and guilt.

"Never mind," Mrs. Jula comforted her. "Nothing has happened yet."

The bell rang.

Lilly hurried to the kitchen to tell the maid to dismiss the visitor, but Mrs. Jula restrained her.

"What's gotten into your head?" she whispered. "Would you have him think you're afraid of him? That way you'll never be rid of him. Laugh at him. Do you understand? Laugh at him—long and hard."

Lilly wanted to run after her and beg her to remain. Was she, Lilly, his match? He was already entering the room.

Drawn to her full height she looked at him as at a dead enemy.

"My dear child," he said, kissing her hand, which she quickly withdrew.

He had exercised great care in dressing. He wore straw-coloured gloves, and held his silk hat pressed to his breast. His monocle danced on his white waistcoat. An air of smug self-confidence, of unpretentious mastery enveloped his being like a mild glory. The way he settled himself comfortably in his chair, the way he amiably crossed his legs indicated that of course she had been subjugated.

Lilly was no longer fearful or timid, nor did she experience the pangs of disillusionment. She was simply possessed of cool, conscious curiosity.

She followed each of his movements with astonished eyes, as he passed his hand over his shining hair cut brush fashion, and pulled his trousers up and exposed the red-dotted stockings on his ankles.

She kept saying to herself:

"So that's what you are, that's what you are."

He began to speak in a soft, compassionate, caressing voice, while his peering eyes glided up and down her body.

"You're excited, dear child. I understand. When two people like us are brought alone together for the first time in their lives, their feelings run away with them. Don't be ashamed. What led us to each other is such a delicate, subtle understanding—the fluid between us is of such a rare, fleeting quality—"

"Yes—fleeting, especially," thought Lilly, "—that it would really be a shame if we did not taste every drop of it. And a superabundance of feelings would simply be a hindrance to the spiritual epicureanism in both of us, particularly in me."

As he spoke, slightly smacking his lips and swaying back and forth, the refrain of a Viennese ditty in her repertoire occurred to her: "I have much too much sentiment."

"He has much too much sentiment," she said to herself, and smiled involuntarily.

He saw the smile, which she tried to conceal by lowering her face, but he misinterpreted it.

"There is a coy virginity about you," he said with an admiring shake of his head, "which always fills me with astonishment."

"Oh, you jackanapes," thought Lilly, and smiled again.

Now he hesitated a bit. He had not had all his experience for nothing, and a flash of greed and suspicion darted from between his lids.

"Oh," he continued, "has some of the delightful humour that you surprised us with last night remained over for to-day?"

"Perhaps," she replied with an upward glance which was almost coquettish.

"Oh, splendid!" he cried. His face now brightened into a mischievous smile, in which gaiety and devilishness counterbalanced each other. "Are you one of those who can laugh in her sleeve at—at—how shall I say?—at the whole humbuggery of it all—and at yourself? At yourself, my child, that's the main thing. Then you and I are one—nothing divides us. Then—"

"May God forgive me," she thought, and held her handkerchief to her mouth to suppress her tittering.

"Laugh at him," Mrs. Jula had said.

But he seemed to take it as an invitation, as a delicate, friendly hint to cut the preamble short; for he sprang toward her and clasped her body.

She pushed him back—she wrestled with him.

Tears of shame and indignation welled up in her eyes.

"What sort of a thing have I become?" a voice within her cried, while she struck at him with her fists.

In the midst of the struggle she succeeded in reaching the bell.

The maid appeared.

He picked up his hat from the carpet, murmured something like "riffraff," and disappeared.

Disappeared also from the little circle that he had sometimes honoured with his presence.

Henceforth Lilly ceased to aspire to the heights.