  The next year Lilly went through two little love affairs which were of no significance in her after life. During a four weeks' stay in the Riesengebirge, she met a novelist whose name was then on everybody's lips. He was airing his newly acquired fame in the Bohemian resorts and plucking what flowers he found by the roadside. He forced himself upon Lilly without much ceremony, and a few days later went his way in search of pastures new. And in Berlin she favoured a handsome, extremely elegant hussar of the Guards, who had flirted with her from his seat at the next table in an aristocratic restaurant. But he wounded her pride by attempting to repay her with a little leather box which came from the jeweler's. She sent back the box and turned him off. She disliked the thought of both adventures, and soon wiped them entirely from her memory. At Christmas a companion came to live with her. She had frequently complained to Richard that her life was empty; she craved something alive and loving to take care of. So he gave her a little naked monkey which could not warm itself even in her bosom. When angry, the monkey spat his scorn of her yearning in her face. Every now and then a marriage scheme was again propounded. Lilly knew the signs perfectly. When Richard paced through all the rooms, taciturn and distraught, wrinkling his forehead; when apropos of nothing he began to philosophise on the futility of all things earthly; when mama required the carriage at unwonted hours, and little packages of concert and opera tickets filled his purse, she knew something was impending. And then it seldom lasted long before Richard broke silence. One had two millions, the other three. Influential relatives, mines, factories, legacies, government contracts, whole blocks of houses, and innumerable building lots nodded in the distance. Sometimes Lilly's drawing-room hummed with so many figures that it might have been a stockbroker's office. One of the prospective brides even was poor. But she was a general's daughter, and mama adored her. "I'm a general's widow," said Lilly. Whether rich or poor, they all disappeared, because none of them was good enough for him. Lilly meditated and schemed; this is the way she should be, and this way, and this way. She must have white, column-like arms such as the Danish girl at the carnival; and she must have an extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible bosom—her own seemed to Lilly to have become too voluptuous—and when she laughed, two dimples must form in her cheeks, because dimples were a sign of peaceableness. Peace she demanded for him above all. She knew he could not bear disputes. As a matter of fact they never did quarrel. But if a little disagreement arose, he went about for days looking miserable, spoke in a woebegone, sick tone, and had to be petted like a child. Which she did with joy, though he by no means deserved it. For, whatever the standpoint from which you viewed such things, he had become an out and out good-for-nothing. He might be pardoned the very respectable sums he lost at the club, but he debauched like a married man, and his experiences were none of the purest. One day a pretty young thing with an eight weeks' old baby on her arm came to Lilly and wept and screamed, and declared Lilly must cede her place to her because she had the child by him and so the greater right. Lilly comforted her and gave her some wine, and, filled with envy, tickled the baby's wet little chin until it laughed. Whereupon the girl left quieted, and even kissed Lilly's hand on parting. That afternoon Richard listened to an eloquent discourse. Lilly felt herself to be entirely free from jealousy. Whenever he appeared looking embarrassed or with a crafty expression in his eyes, his head inclined all the way to the left, and radiating an odour of cheap perfumes, she always received him with an indulgent smile, which he understood very well and feared like a plague. However valiant his resolve to maintain silence, it scarcely lasted half an hour before he sat there hopelessly stranded, making partly veiled confessions and asking for praise and comfort. In a life of this sort, which reflected all the faults and perfidies of marriage without bestowing its sense of dignity and natural rights, it was inevitable that Lilly should withdraw into herself more and more and look forward to her future with increasing gloom. She passed her days as on a swaying bough in momentary expectation of being blown into the depths. Then again her life seemed to her like a straight, bare road, which gave no signs of coming to an end, but ever unrolled hopeless stretches ahead. Always the same pleasures, the same faces, the same aimless drifting from place to place until dawn. Sometimes she felt so weary—as if after a day's hard labour. Sometimes, too, she went on strike, and remained in bed reading the Fliegende BlÄtter, or dreaming of old times with closed eyes. Mrs. Asmussen's sunless hole among the books became a paradise, her mush, food for the gods. Lilly's thoughts stepped cautiously about the pictures of her girlhood loves, as if it were a crime to charm them back into being. From this arose a happy, yet fearful presentiment that one or the other of them would return, and hold out his hand, and say: "Now you have strayed in strange lands long enough. Come back home." Which of them it was she did not venture to say. But one of them it must be. Something, something must happen. It could not go on the same way. Now and then, when her secret disquiet filled her with unrest, she took again to her nocturnal strolls. In the electric tram she would ride to distant districts, where, with a guilty soul, she sauntered along lively streets. Just like Mrs. Jula. Yet she could never bring herself to listen to any of her pursuers. It was on one such excursion in May far out on the north side, somewhere near the Rosentaler Tor, that she met a young man who paid not the slightest attention to her, who did not look like a gentleman, and yet seemed familiar. So familiar that her heart pained her. She racked her brain, but could not place him. Making up her mind quickly she turned about and followed him. He wore a brown, sweat-soaked hat and a salt and pepper suit with a yellow tinge to it, which had seen better days. His coat collar was shiny, and his knees had worked great bags into his trousers, the bottom of which hung in black fringes over his crooked heels. None of her friends in disguise. Her friends wore different trousers. He stopped in front of various display windows—a cigar shop, a butcher's, and, longest of all, a haberdasher's. From which Lilly concluded his undergarments also required a change. When he turned his profile toward her, she saw a lean, bony face with a prominent nose and a bush of reddish-brown hair on either side of his chin. He did not appear to be sickly; rather seedy or withered. But the lids of his small, slit-like eyes were swollen and inflamed, and before he stepped into the garish illumination of the shop window, he planted dark-blue goggles on his nose. He carried a thin cane, which he pressed into the shape of a bow on the pavement and then let shoot out straight again. The silver handle of this cane, which did not harmonise with the shabbiness of his clothing, recalled something to Lilly connected with chilliness, warm rolls, autumnal glow, and Sunday chimes. She cried aloud. Now she remembered. Fritz Redlich! Yes, it was Fritz Redlich. No doubt of it. Her girlhood love! Her girlhood love! Her great warrior in life's battles! Her St. Joseph's protÉgÉ! Oh, God, her St. Joseph! And the revolver! And the potato soup with sliced sausage! And the three graves at Ottensen! "Mr. Redlich! Mr. Redlich!" Trembling, laughing, she stood behind him and stretched out both hands. He dropped his goggles and blinking his weak eyes, suspiciously scrutinised the tall, elegant lady from behind whose lace veil two great, tear-filled eyes were shining a blissful greeting. Then he awkwardly pulled at the brim of his hat. "Mr. Redlich—I'm Lilly—Lilly Czepanek. Don't you remember me any more?" Yes, now he remembered. "Certainly," he said, "why shouldn't I?" As he spoke he gave a furtive jerk at his waistcoat, as if that were the readiest way of improving the poverty of his appearance. "Dear me, Mr. Redlich! We haven't seen each other for an eternity. I think it must be seven or eight years. No, not quite. But it seems much longer. Everything's gone well with you in the meantime, hasn't it? And I suppose you're dreadfully busy. But if you're not, we might spend a little time together now." He really was quite busy, but if she so desired, they might remain together a while. "How would it be if we went to a restaurant and took a glass of beer?" she suggested, still between laughter and tears. "Well, well, Mr. Redlich, who'd have thought it possible?" He was decidedly opposed to taking a glass of beer. "Restaurants are always so stuffy and full of people, and the beer here is so wretched—unfit to drink." "The poor fellow has no money to pay for it," Lilly thought, and proposed sitting on a bench instead. It made no difference, just so they were together. "That's worth considering," he said, "although—" He looked about warily on all sides to see if anyone was scandalised at the ill-matched couple. They turned into the quieter Weinbersgsweg. Lilly, looking at him sidewise with pride and emotion, as if she had created him out of nothingness, kept murmuring: "Is it possible? Is it possible?" In a dark spot near a church they found a pleasant bench overhung with lilac buds which a love couple had just vacated. "Well, now tell me all about yourself, Mr. Redlich. My, the things we have to say to each other!" "There is a good deal to tell," he replied, hesitating, "but perhaps my lady will begin." "Oh, pshaw, I haven't been a 'my lady' for a long time," cried Lilly, blushing consciously. "Yes, to be sure—I heard something of the sort," he replied. Lilly felt there was a note of blame in his tone, as if his susceptibilities had been offended. "But I'm not in the least sorry," she hastened to add. "All in all I lead a much freer and pleasanter life. And I haven't the slightest cares. I have a charming little home. In fact, I'm in the best of circumstances. And I'd be ever so happy if you were to come and see for yourself. I'm always at home in the middle of the day. And I'd like you to dine with me some time." "Oh," he said, obviously moved by the pleasant prospect. She drew a breath of relief at having steered so smoothly past the rocks of her autobiography. And he asked no questions. On the other hand he seemed as little disposed to be communicative in regard to his own situation past or present. "Life has a sunny and a shady side," he said, "and he who sits on the shady side would do well to reflect whether or not he should speak much of it." "But you can trust an old friend like me," cried Lilly. "Imagine we're sitting here on our porch in Junkerstrasse. Do you recollect? That evening we spoke to each other the first time was an evening just like this, in May." "It was warmer," he rejoined quickly, and drew his coat together at his neck. "Are you chilly?" she asked, laughing, because she was aglow. "I didn't bring—" he paused an instant—"I didn't bring my spring overcoat along to-night." "Then we'd better get up," she said, becoming meditative. "We can tell each other all we have to say just as well walking as sitting." So they strolled about the dark church a number of times, but no autobiographical narrative resulted. She evaded and he evaded, and when forced to speak, they regaled each other with generalities. Lilly praised her happy lot in life, and he sighed repeatedly. "Yes, it's hard, very hard!" Exactly as once during examinations. The rhythm of it still sounded in her ears, as if she had heard it the day before. "How are your father and mother?" she asked to change the subject. His father had died two years before after a short sickness, and his mother still sewed neckties. He adjusted something invisible under his raised coat collar, probably a gayly patterned testimony of maternal skill and goodness. After Lilly had expressed her sympathy she ventured with throbbing heart to inquire after Mrs. Asmussen and her daughters. Mr. Redlich smacked his lips audibly. "Very unpleasant neighbours. The elder girl married a paymaster, who will probably be dismissed soon on account of his irregularities. The younger has charge of the library, the mother is completely in the clutches of drink." He spoke with the same offended air as when Lilly had referred to her divorce. "He must be extremely moral still!" she thought, with a sense of her own guilt and unworthiness. But he was unhappy. That was certain. And poor, very poor. Poorer than she had ever been in her life. Perhaps he was suffering the pangs of hunger while he walked at her side shivering in his thin, shabby jacket. "How would it be, Mr. Redlich, provided your business permits you to, if you were to come to dinner to-morrow?" His business, as a matter of fact, made it practically impossible for him to get off in the middle of the day, and he hadn't a moment's time for changing his clothes; but if she would receive him in the suit he was wearing— "Oh of course," she laughed. "I'll even serve you with your mother's potato soup." With that she pressed both his hands and slipped into a street car. Oh, what a piece of good fortune! Now she had the thing she had so long been seeking. Some one whom she could care for and pet and spoil; some one to whom she meant more than a toy or a show piece, who needed her as he needed bread and air, who languished for a gentle hand to lead him back to hope and joy. Some one all to herself, all to herself! Out of the grave of her youth he had risen exactly as she had dreamed in her dreams. Life would again become rich—and happy—and full of secrets, tiny, gay, absolutely innocent secrets. That night she slept little, wakeful as a child the night before Christmas. The next morning, to the vast astonishment of the maid, a buxom wench from the country, who had rapidly fallen into city ways, Lilly rose early—the maid knew her to be a bit lazy—and went off to market. "A friend is coming to dinner," Lilly laughingly explained. She had to buy everything herself, the meat, the radishes, and above all the sausage that had once been the pride of his mother's potato soup. She even attended to the cooking herself. She set the table and removed the palm from beside the aquarium to have something green in the dining-room in place of flowers, which she had forgotten to buy. He was the first dinner guest she had had for two and a half years, and such a dear one—the dearest, perhaps that life could present her with. At half past twelve the maid, turning up her nose, announced a young fellow who insisted upon speaking to the lady. "Why, that's he!" cried Lilly. "He doesn't look it," observed the maid with a haughty upward inflection in her voice. Shrugging her shoulders she dawdled behind her mistress, who ran to meet the guest. At first he shyly hesitated to step into the lighter part of the room, and hugged the door post and pulled at his suit, which really looked dreadfully frayed, even more so than the night before. His inflamed eyes, two red rifts, blinking behind his round glasses, gave him a sheepish, groping, helpless appearance. The bold thinker's forehead had acquired an unpleasant backward slope because the genius lock no longer fell over it. And the triumphant blond mane had turned into a strawy, matted mass, apparently untouched by a comb this many a day. He was unable to say much. He swallowed the potato soup with tremulous devoutness, leaving the slices of sausage for the last. When his plate was quite dry he spitted them on his fork one at a time, and on conveying each bit to his mouth cast suspicious glances to right and left as if somebody were standing nearby to snatch it away. The roast he received with greater composure. He heaped his plate high without paying the least attention to the maid, who grinned villainously. He drank Richard's good claret in long draughts. A mottled red flecked his cheeks; he laughed and felt he was himself again. At first Lilly had been somewhat depressed; but as he gradually thawed out, she began to hope he might be made to pass muster after all. Then it suddenly occurred to her that now at last an opportunity presented itself for the genuine salvation of a human being, not merely a game of enamoured self-deception as with Walter von Prell. The thought filled her with blissful, confident hope. After the meal they went into the drawing-room. With masterful ease of manner born of the unwonted drink, he promptly seated himself in the rocking chair and tickled the snarling monkey. He sat leaning back in the chair with his legs stretched out. The fringed ends of his trousers slipped into the expanded tops of his boots, exposing the tattered rubber drawing loops. It was an appalling sight. "I'll have to do something," thought Lilly, and cogitated on the best way to help him. As for Mr. Redlich, now that his spirits were in turmoil, he turned his innermost being outward and aired his views of life. Oh, what a display of gall and poison! He had become so embittered by long privation and eternal envy of those who seemed gay, happy, and favoured by fortune, that no values, no attainments, no prosperous undertakings could withstand his onslaught. Everybody was hollow, corrupt and hypocritical. Everything depended on birth, cliqueism, "pull." Success, no matter in what line, was an ineradicable stain. But this time also he said little of his personal experiences. Lilly could not even discover if he was still a student. He acknowledged only one thing, with bitter resentment, that his deepest feelings had been badly damaged in his constant struggle for existence. While he spoke and laughed spasmodically, two lugubrious, sarcastic folds cut a deep semicircle in each emaciated cheek. Lilly dimly recalled that a tendency to those folds had existed in the times long ago. "Oh, you poor, poor fellow!" she thought, and vowed soon to make a man of him again, both outwardly and inwardly. But his visit left her feeling sad and depressed. "After all—am I better off?" she thought. "Where is the confidence in life I used to have? Where is my joy of life? Where is my Song of Songs?" The next afternoon, before Richard came, she devised a plan by which she could give Fritz Redlich new clothes without damage to Richard's purse or Fritz Redlich's feelings. "Think of it," she said to Richard while they were drinking tea together, "two great events occurred to me yesterday, one a very happy one, the other very sad. The first is, I met a dear old friend I used to know when I was a girl. Before he went to the university he lived on the same floor as I did. And this morning a poor student was here. He looked simply wretched, and he asked for something to eat. In case he comes again, have you any old clothes to give him? No matter what. He needs everything." "With pleasure," said Richard. "I don't know what to do with all the stuff I have at any rate." But the other one, the friend of her girlhood, made Richard thoughtful. "What's he like?" he asked. In her endeavour to keep the two mythical beings quite distinct, she began to sing the "other one's" praises much too emphatically. He was a highly endowed and quite prominent scholar, who had just completed his university course, and now stood at the entrance to a brilliant career—a paragon of knowledge and intellect and heaven knows what else. What was his specialty? She really did not know. Something awfully erudite, at any rate. And he would surely choose an academic career. Nothing else was worth while for him. Lilly talked herself into such a tangle of lies that finally she scarcely knew what she was saying. Richard, who in the consciousness of his intellectual poverty, felt a tremendous respect for a great mind, grew red in the face and looked uneasy and nettled. "I suppose he'll be wanting to visit you?" he asked. "Certainly," she replied, rejoiced at having steered in this direction so smoothly. "Congratulate you on your affinity," he said with a mocking bow, and added, laughing: "Provided I needn't meet him." Perfect. The next morning a man employed in the factory brought Lilly a huge bundle from Mr. Dehnicke. It contained a fine summer suit in the latest style looking almost new; shirts, a pair of boots, and blue, silky underwear. Richard seemed to want to prove his magnanimity in a particularly striking way, because prodigality toward the poor was not in his line. The next difficulty was to turn the garments over to Fritz Redlich without offending him and having him refuse them. When he visited her three days later she took occasion, after dinner, to show him through the rooms. He must see how she lived, she said. When she came to the door of a lumber room she opened it quite naturally as she had the others. There among discarded waists, broken vases, withered plants, and similar litter, hung the suit. "I brought it along by mistake, and some more men's clothes, when I left the general's house," she explained. "It's getting worn just hanging here." Mr. Redlich's small, sickly eyes became bright and greedy. Perhaps he knew some one who could make use of them? "Not that I know of," he replied disdainfully, though unable to withhold a glance at his own trousers. Perhaps he had met some one to whom he would be doing a favour if he gave him the suit? No, he could think of no one. Despite her fear of hurting him, Lilly said straight out, she didn't believe she was mistaken—a remarkable similarity of figure—though the general had measured a bit more about the waist—and if he wanted to entrust the suit to an inexpensive tailor— The suggestion angered him. Did she think he was a charity case? Nobody could class him so low as that. He was a man of firm principles, and his principles would never permit him to wear a person's cast-off clothes. With a sigh Lilly desisted from her project. But he could not make up his mind to take leave. He sat in the drawing-room an interminable time. Finally she had to hint to him to go, because Richard might enter any moment. At the head of the stairs outside her door, he turned and asked, stuttering, whether the next time he might come in the evening. "Haven't you leisure any more in the middle of the day?" she demanded, taken aback. For Richard's sake she did not care to receive visitors late in the day. No, not that. So far as leisure was concerned, it was—it was—. He hung on, and Lilly listened fearfully for sounds on the staircase below. "Then what is it?" "I should like to think the matter over very carefully, and—and—" "Well, and?" "And if it's dark, perhaps I could take the package right along with me." With that he jumped down the steps. "The poor fellow, how he must choke down his pride!" she thought, looking after him. The same evening she sent him all the clothes by express, and pinned a letter inside, in which she excused herself again and again for enclosing a twenty mark note, in the first place, for a hat, in the second place, to spare him difficulties with the tailor. When he reappeared a few days later, he was scarcely recognisable. The suit fitted him to perfection, and in order to keep the tips of his boots from turning up—they were too long for him—he had stuffed them with cotton wads. Even the maid sent him friendlier glances. A pity he would not part with his beard and the tousled shock of hair. But for that disfigurement you might even appear on the street with him. His cheeks had filled out, and his eyes had improved, thanks to the help of the physician to whom Lilly had dragged him by main force; and gradually his manners softened down. He no longer gulped his food, or picked his teeth with his finger nails; and he learned how to drink claret. His inner being, like his external appearance, also began to reflect the peaceful comfort of the hospitable home. He abused with discrimination, and sometimes even the crime of happiness seemed pardonable in his eyes. He displayed delightful tact in never probing into Lilly's situation, and she was grateful to him. Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture of his unsuccessful career. After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and, consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships. "After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the green valley. But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not explicit. "Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do." He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate ambition. To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried to find out what lot in life he desired for himself. He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to breathe pure air. "All of us want something lovely like that," she thought. It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country, preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself. "And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to water." She nearly cried with envy. From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire. She gave him money to insert advertisements in the Kreuzzeitung, wrote letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little circle of friends to do what they could for him. All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him these days. He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word. "That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease. One day the bomb exploded. Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown of revenge puckered his brow. Lilly jumped from her seat, paling. As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from his buttonhole into his soup plate. For a moment silence prevailed. Nothing but the tittering of the maid in the kitchen was to be heard. "I beg pardon," said Richard in the same threatening manner. "I merely wanted to make sure how you are really getting along." "Mr. Dehnicke, a good friend of mine—Mr. Redlich, my old friend," said Lilly. Now Richard scrutinised his dread rival more closely—looked in amazement and disapproval at the rank growth of his beard and shaggy mane—his gaze travelled downwards—and brightened—a nonplussed look, but also a joyous look of recognition, betrayed itself in his features. Wasn't that his suit and his shirt? His eyes dropped lower without halting at the napkin in the soup plate. Weren't those his trousers? Weren't those his discarded boots which the brilliant intellectual scholar was wearing? "Oh, that's it," he said. "Nothing more." With a wicked grin of scorn he turned to Lilly, who could scarcely keep on her feet. "May I speak to you alone for an instant?" "Will you excuse me, Mr. Redlich?" she said, and in her confusion and from force of habit, she opened the door to—the bedroom, as if that were the prescribed place for single ladies to receive their gentlemen friends. Richard, who was as accustomed to the way as she, followed her, unconscious of the exposure of intimacy. "Listen," he said upon shutting the door. "I was a donkey for having been jealous of your affinity. But now I swear to you, your friends may come and go, morning or evening, any time you wish. I'll always keep old suits on hand for them. Good-by—goosie!" He left. She could hear him laughing even after the door fell shut behind him. She was frightfully ashamed. How would she ever summon the courage to appear before her girlhood friend again, before that moral person who had shrunk at the mere mention of her divorce? Then she realised she was standing in the bedroom. Everything was revealed, all the disgrace of her existence, all, all. No matter how unworldly he might be, the rÔle of the man who had so suddenly intruded in the apartment and as suddenly disappeared, must be patent. A long time she hesitated, the knob in her hand, listening to what Fritz Redlich was doing. She feared his tread, the clearing of his throat. His very silence boded evil. At last, trembling, ready to confess everything amid tears of contrition, she stepped into the dining-room. Lo and behold! He sat quietly at his accustomed place rubbing at the spot the wet napkin had made on his waistcoat. The blue goggles lay next to his plate, and he blinked at her amiably with no air of constraint. "Has the gentleman left already?" he asked innocently. At that moment the roast was brought in, and he fell to with avidity, making no further mention of the interlude. Actually—so pure was his conscience that he did not detect the impure even if thrust under his very nose. Oh, how grateful she was to him! To prove her gratitude she told him he might come evenings also—Richard permitted it—without waiting to be invited. If she should happen to be out, the maid would prepare supper for him, and see to it that he lacked nothing, absolutely nothing. And mindful of the wry face the maid had cut the first day he came, she enjoined her emphatically: "Now be real pleasant and friendly to him, so that he always feels at home here." The buxom wench turned down the corners of her mouth and said nothing. Lilly now went to work in behalf of Fritz Redlich with redoubled zeal. She again found a ready assistant in Mrs. Jula. "Leave the thing to me," said Mrs. Jula one day "There's somebody up there I've known a long time"—she hesitated a bit—"he's all-powerful, and has taken the Good Lord's place in many a minister's family. If I were to write to him—but, of course my name must be kept out, it's still a red rag to the bull up there." The next day Lilly sent her one of the advertisements that Fritz Redlich had inserted in the paper. Mrs. Jula was to forward it to a certain person, and the response would then go directly to Fritz Redlich without the intermediation of a third party. Lilly preferred that his future fortune should appear to be due entirely to his own efforts. And behold! Mrs. Jula was successful. One evening the next week Fritz Redlich appeared at Lilly's unexpectedly—a frequent occurrence now, whether she was at home or not—and complacently informed her his advertisement had been so convincing that he had immediately received an invitation from a minister in Further Pomerania to send his references and be ready to leave Berlin at short notice. The minister seemed to be quite keen for him. Lilly's heart throbbed with pride. Nothing in the world would have induced her to betray that she was at the bottom of his good luck. His happiness was her work! He himself, therefore, was her possession, more absolutely her possession than anything in the world. During the meal an exalted, blissful silence prevailed. Since he had not announced his coming, there was no potato soup, the usual first course. She excused herself for the omission, and added with a little pang: "At any rate you won't take many more meals with me." "Probably," he said with an embarrassed glance at the maid, whose presence evidently troubled him. Had she not been there, he would very likely have given warmer expression to his feelings. After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room. It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to which he submitted, snarling all the while. The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell. Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly. "Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as before." Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune! She told him so for about the hundredth time. "Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard, very hard." "Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out. We're old friends." "I will gladly if you wish it." Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer hesitatingly, like a light in the distance. "Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have you ever been in love?" He started as if he had been hit. "In love? What do you mean?" "Well—what do you think—I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of the rocking chair with her thumb nail. He seemed to breathe more easily. "For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the desire." "And hasn't any woman ever loved you?" "Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders. His embittered dejection annoyed her. "Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little teasing. He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled him with dread. Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman. An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago, which would prove to him how mistaken he was. She choked it down. Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving Berlin. Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the little canary also slept. Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she passed the rocking chair. She halted in front of him again. There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow. Poor, poor fellow! "You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women." With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank under the light touch like a cushion. He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and coughed a little. "Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That's good advice. If I want to make a pleasant impression in my new position—" As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on his neck. Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave. She was too embarrassed to invite him to remain. The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down the stairs. "Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window. He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark. Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him. The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused thoughts. "I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself. Nevertheless she was glad she had. The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly's protÉgÉ was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling expenses had already been forwarded to him. Lilly wept tears of joy. Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him her own. And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl—everything. And once again—before parting—she would lay her hand on his mass of hair. Then what would might follow. The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him—he no longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in the saucepan. The clock struck eight. He had not come. "He's busy packing," she comforted herself. The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard sometimes did. Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven. Then she went to bed sad and weary. The next morning she received the following letter:
Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience. It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the incident had its humorous aspect. |
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