Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently passed for a widow of rank in a hall resort on the Baltic sea.

She accepted the homage of several old maids, allowed a young missionary to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and respectfully declined the honourable proposal of a widower, the city treasurer of Pirna. Those were six weeks to her liking.

The following winter went in much the same way as the preceding.

At Christmas Richard presented her with a hired carriage, the door of which, of course, was decorated with the seven-pointed coronet. He had engaged it in order to avoid disagreeable encounters with his mother, who spoke of Lilly with increasing severity, and had frequently demanded the equipage when he was out driving with his mistress.

He also gave Lilly a sable cloak, one of the new-fashioned sort, with countless tails, which cost a small fortune.

Despite Richard's reproaches she made little use of either. That feeling of dread, never to be stilled, told her that such false display would drive her ever on into the world which she wanted to flee.

And while Richard endeavoured with dogged greed to drain the cup of worldly delights to the very dregs, Lilly's desires went out more and more to middle-class respectability. She clung to it as the last hope, which enabled her to drag through her existence, the complete poverty of which tormented her increasingly there amid the lights and music and laughter.

The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she elaborated with a lively fancy.

But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little tales were nowhere to be found.

When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see."

Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula, having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting.

It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date, because it was St. Joseph's day.

A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine.

One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring symphony.

The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation.

Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences, throw herself on the bare earth—no matter what—but get away for a few hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was burdened by the spirit of idleness.

She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the maid—this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to service with single ladies—and without troubling to order her carriage, took the electric tram to the Grunewald.

At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man, Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction.

A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss.

Here nobody was to be seen far or near.

The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through the holes.

Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to extinguish timid spring hopes.

"In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought Lilly.

But the freshness of the wind redolent of moss and pine needles did her good. She battled against its might, taking long strides. Her cheeks tingled, her frozen blood thawed, and sent fresh life pulsating through her fallow body.

And her fallow soul.

Suddenly she shook with a fit of laughter. It was all nonsense, her regret and her yearning, Richard's snobbish ambition, his mother's eternal marriage schemes. Even the respectability she desired was utterly vapid.

What would she do with it? She, Lilly the free, the wild, the ruined? There was something else, something higher. There must be. Not in Dr. Salmoni's sense. No, oh, no. Something as hard and pure and life-bringing as this March wind sweeping through her limbs.

Above her in a pine tree she heard a chipping sound which she had learned to recognise at Lischnitz. It was a call both of fear and invitation, which ended in a snappy "Tshek-tshek."

Lilly stood still, looked up, and whistled.

A pair of squirrels had been chasing about the trunk in corkscrew lines, and now, at her appearance, stood stock still in fright.

"Tshek-tshek," Lilly clucked to incite the little red coats to play. She did not succeed, and picked up a pebble from the ground.

Just as she was about to throw it, she saw, behind a tree trunk, two eyes fastened on her, large, questioning astonished eyes, which narrowed under her gaze, and darkened, and tried to turn away, but could not. She knew those eyes. She had looked into them long, long, long ago.

But, no, she had not; she had never before seen them.

The young man who, like herself, had been watching the squirrels play and was still standing half-concealed behind the trunk, his hat in his hand, was an utter stranger. Impossible that she had ever in her life met him. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.

It was not easy to forget that serious, reserved Greek face, with the nervous nose narrow across the bridge and the shining dreamer's eyes.

His appearance was not extremely elegant. It pleased Lilly better so. He wore a brown, somewhat old-fashioned overcoat, and the suit beneath, of which she caught a glimpse, was of a woolly material sprinkled with little tufts, by no means of German make and certainly not English.

Gradually life came into him. He put on his hat, and stepped from behind the tree.

"Now he'll speak to me," the sickening thought shot through Lilly's mind.

No. He merely raised his hat, glanced at her again for the fraction of a second with an expression of query, astonishment, and, at the same time recognition, walked past her, and took the way she had just come.

Lilly also wanted to leave the spot, but she was unable to; and since she must not be discovered looking after him she hid behind the same tree that had concealed him.

"I wonder whether he will look back."

No. He did not look back either. She felt hurt and neglected.

The tall figure dwindled in the distance. "Never been in the army," she thought, judging from his rather heavy gait. Then it seemed to her that he stooped, drew himself up again, and looked back. In fact, he spied about a long time as if compelled to discover her.

But she kept herself carefully hidden and did not move.

He walked on and disappeared behind a curve.

"What a pity I didn't take the carriage," thought Lilly.

She might be overtaking him now without appearing to follow him, and the seven-pointed coronet would not have failed of its effect. As it was, he naturally cherished a bad opinion of the lady who walked about alone whistling like a boy and throwing pebbles at poor enamoured squirrels.

Nevertheless, while walking homeward, she felt as if she had been presented with a lovely gift.

Where could she have seen him before?

She recalled a young man of the Dresden days. It was once when she was out walking arm in arm with the colonel along the Prager Strasse. She had seen eyes fixed upon her with the very same sad flash of recognition in them.

Then—she remembered it well—she had wanted to look back and ask him:

"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you want me to belong to you?"

But even the partial turn of her head would have been a crime in her husband's eyes.

And now, now that she was free, free to choose her friends according to her heart's desire, she had let him go, him, the one—whether the same as the Dresden man or another—who belonged to her, perchance, as she to him.

She walked along with half-closed eyes, and conjured up his image. A small, dark, two-cornered beard, so close-cut on his cheeks as to give them a blue sheen. Such beards were seldom to be seen in Berlin. Frenchmen and Italians affected them. Full, firm, tightly compressed lips, lips such as a sculptor chisels. A high, square forehead, on which something like wrath seemed to be imprinted, not ordinary wrath against herself or any poor mortal. It was not of this world, and it really was divine love.

Thus Lilly's enthusiasm fed itself. She forgot the way, and strayed about, finally arriving at a spot in an entirely different direction from that which she should have taken. The most dreadful things might have happened to her in the woods, where solitary ladies are exposed to encounters with tramps at any hour of the day. But she scarcely gave heed to her danger. She reached home two hours too late, tired, but in a glow.

She could not eat. She threw herself on the chaise longue and dreamt.

The bell rang. She heard a man's voice.

It could not be Richard. He never came before half past four.

Adele entered. There was a strange gentleman outside who wished to know whether the lady had lost her card-case. He had found one in the woods.

Lilly jumped to her feet. Actually the little brocade case which she had held in her hand with her silver net purse was gone. In her excitement she had not missed it.

"Like what does the gentleman look?"

Tall and young and handsome, in fact, very handsome.

"A short, dark beard?"

"Yes."

Lilly reeled.

"Let him come in," she stammered. She did not think of beautifying herself. She merely ran her hands over her face and hair in a dazed way.

When he appeared in the doorway she scarcely recognised him, so thick was the red mist before her eyes.

"I beg pardon," she heard him say—it was the serene voice of a man whose ways are not impure—"I would not have disturbed you had your address been on your cards. I found your number in the directory, but I couldn't be certain whether there were not more of the same name in the city."

"You're very kind to have taken all that trouble," she replied, inviting him to be seated.

"My name is Dr. Rennschmidt," he said, waiting behind the back of his chair until she had settled herself in a corner of the sofa. On sitting down he drew the card-case from his pocket and laid it on the table.

She smiled her thanks; and feeling she must enhance the value of his courtesy, she said the case was a memento she prized highly, the loss of which would have distressed her.

"A memento of my husband," she added.

His face grew a shade more serious.

A little pause ensued, during which his eyes rested steadily on her face, reading, questioning, comparing, and wondering. Nothing of that bold groping of other men's glances. A clean, unconscious joy amounting to devoutness lay in his look.

"Didn't we meet just a little while ago at the edge of the woods?" Lilly asked warily.

"Yes," he replied with animation. "And if I hadn't been so awkward I should have begged your pardon immediately for having unintentionally spied on you. I saw how startled you were. But I myself was so—how shall I say? All I thought was: 'Clear out. You'll be serving the lady best that way.'"

His frank, blithe manner did her good, though it shamed her a little.

"Now you've done me a much greater service," she said, feeling as appreciative as if he had saved her life.

"Oh, don't speak of it. If only I had turned back instantly. But the earth seemed to have swallowed you up. I was worried about you."

She smiled to herself, fearful in her happiness. A little more, and she would have acknowledged where she had stowed herself.

"What did you think of me when you saw me strolling about the woods alone?" she asked.

"That you don't feel alone when you're with nature. Otherwise you'd have had company with you."

"You're right," she replied eagerly. "Besides, my carriage was waiting in the Hundekehlenrestaurant"—after all the carriage would play its part—"but it was imprudent of me. I suppose you are also very fond of nature?"

"Very? I hardly know. I must say in Cordelia's words: I love it 'according to my bond; nor more nor less.' To love nature is really no merit nor peculiarity. It is simply a vital function. Don't you agree with me?"

"Certainly," she faltered, and thought, "Oh, how clever he is? How will I acquit myself?"

"But to be quite frank," he continued, "I am having a strange experience with nature here. I cannot accustom myself to it. Its poverty oppresses me. I am like one who has outgrown his home and reproaches himself for it. I try to get back to my old attitude, and I admire and flatter German nature whenever I possibly can. But first other pictures in my mind must fade. You see I have just returned from Italy, where I spent the last two years."

Heaving a deep sigh Lilly stared at him. She felt as if now he were absolutely unearthly.

"Two whole years?" she asked in astonishment.

"I am working on a large scientific work, on account of which—no, I was really sent to Italy on account of my health. My uncle, who's a father to me, wanted me to go. I didn't think of the work until I got there. Then my own country and my studies, everything, fell into the background."

As he spoke his eyes glowed and stared into space, full of will and enthusiasm. The old, slumbering desire for Italy began to beat its wings again in Lilly's breast.

"Yes," she cried with the same enthusiasm as he, "isn't it so? There all ideas grow, and you feel what you can do, and you become what you wanted to be from the first. Isn't it so? I've never been there, but I feel what I say strongly. There, in the home of everything great and beautiful, you yourself become greater and more beautiful—and—everything—sordid passes away. Isn't it so?"

He listened dumbfounded, and embraced her with a beaming gaze.

"Yes," he replied almost solemnly. "It is so, exactly."

She tingled with delight. Did it not seem that with these words he made an avowal of the inner union between them, the avowal she had hoped for from the very first instant of their meeting? Did it not seem that nothing now separated them?

She looked down helplessly.

Was he really the embodiment of that shade which had so senselessly fastened itself upon her soul since the Dresden days?

"I feel as if we had met before," she said softly without raising her eyes.

"Exactly the way I feel," he rejoined hastily. "But it cannot be, for I should know where and when."

"Were you in Dresden six years ago at about this time?"

"No," he said. "Six years ago I was studying at Bonn. The semester came to an end at this season, but I went directly to my uncle, who was having his castle restored."

"Where is his castle?"

"Near Coblenz."

So they had not met in Dresden.

"But if we both have the same feeling—" said Lilly.

"There are pictures in our souls which seem to be recollections, but in fact are previsions."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that one—that one—walks as on the edge of a knife between the past and the present, and reels and falls into a void the instant—"

"What?"

"The instant—" he broke off—"I beg your pardon, are you an artist?"

"Why?" she asked, unpleasantly taken aback. Did he want to make merry at her expense?

"I read your sign outside."

The sign! "Pressed Flower Studio."

Violently torn out of sweet dreams and plunged into bitter reality!

But now she must be on her guard. She must not lose his esteem.

"In a way," she replied. "A very modest sort of art which I used to pursue. But it made me very happy. I learned it just after I lost my husband"—the fatal "divorce" would not pass her lips—"less for the sake of a livelihood than to lend my life content. But then I had to give it up—because—of a trouble with my eyes."

Three lies in the same breath.

Why not? She was lies within and lies without. Every gesture, every thought was a lie. But the great cry of her soul vibrating through her entire being, "You shall be mine; I will be yours," was not a lie. And for his sake she continued to lie.

"I don't like to speak of it." She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. "It still pains me. And please don't ever again refer to it in the future."

"Again," "in the future," she had said, as if taking it for granted that they would continue to meet. Her words filled her with shame and confusion.

She rose and turned her face aside.

"I beg pardon," he said, abashed. "I could not have divined—" He rose to take leave.

"Stay, stay, stay!" her soul cried. But she was unable to speak. She was benumbed.

Perhaps he had seen through her lies, and had instantly realised who she was, and did not care to remain. She felt haughtiness congealing her features.

"It was very kind of you," she said, graciously extending her finger tips.

The moment had come in which to invite him to visit her, but the words froze on her lips.

He had turned very pale and looked straight into her face expectantly.

"I hope we meet some time again," he said finally.

"I hope so," she replied very formally.

He lightly touched her hand with his lips and left.

Over! Over! And her fault!

Happiness had come, had laid its blessing hand on her forehead, and had flown away again, leaving behind nothing but this pain, a wild pain, such as she had never before felt. It fairly tore at her throat and heart like a physical affliction.

During the night she devised a thousand schemes for hunting him up and meeting him again.

He was a scholar and probably frequented the library. She would go there and read and study, and some day she would surely meet him.

Or, simpler still, she would write to him.

"I don't love you," she would say. "Why should I? I scarcely know you. But I am confident that I could be something in your life. Therefore—"

Then, disgusted with her lack of dignity, she rejected every plan.

No, Lilly Czepanek after all would not throw herself away in such fashion.

Once more it became impossible for her to remain at home.

In the daytime she walked along the Potsdamer Strasse and Leipziger Strasse, where the metropolitan bustle is the greatest. In the evenings she did not visit distant districts as formerly, but with a busy air hurried incessantly up and down the lonely banks of the canal near her home.

Despite her strict economy she always kept the light burning in her drawing-room, and did not confess to herself why.

It was about eight o'clock in the evening four days after the meeting. The stars hung like lamps in the heavens. Lilly was pacing along the further bank of the canal, when she noticed the figure of a young man who was looking fixedly in the direction in which her home lay.

She could not distinguish his features, because he kept his back turned. Besides, he had selected a dark spot for his coign of observation.

With a slight throbbing of her heart she continued on her way, though after a while her legs refused to carry her further in the same direction. She had to turn about.

She found the dark figure still standing motionless among the trees. From across the water the light in her drawing-room peered through the bare branches.

This time he heard her tread, and faced about.

She recognised his features and started.

He also thrilled with the shock of surprise. For an instant he foolishly pretended not to see her, but then he drew a deep breath and took off his hat with an abashed smile.

Lilly trembled so, she could not hold out her hand.

"Dr.—Rennschmidt," she managed to say.

He was the first to recover his composure.

"You will wonder," he began, stepping alongside of her, "why I stand here in the dark and look over there. If I were to say it was a mere chance, you wouldn't believe me. So I will frankly confess I could not rid myself of the thought that at our parting something went wrong—there was a misunderstanding—precipitancy—I felt I ought to beg your pardon for something."

"If you felt that way, why didn't you come up to me, and tell me so?"

"Was I permitted to?"

"Why not?"

"You see, we men have no rights with women except such as they give us. No others exist for us. To be sure, we may stand in the dark here, and bite our lips—"

"Did you?"

"Don't ask me."

His voice did not quiver, but a tremour ran through his arm, which grazed hers.

Lilly, alarmed, stopped and helplessly looked back at the dark way she had come.

"That means—I—I must say good-by?" he asked.

In the light of the lamp she saw his eyes clinging to her with a look of fearsome inquiry.

"Oh, no," she replied slowly, as if some one else were speaking in her stead. "Now that we are together, we will remain together."

"I think so, too," he said. The same gravity of an oath lay in his words as she had put into hers.

They walked along in silence.

Then he began in a lighter tone.

"But I must call your attention to something. Your light is burning. If you really do want to favour me with an hour, I'm afraid the thought of the waste will disquiet you."

"Well, we'll put it out!" she replied gaily, and turned on her heels so abruptly that he continued to make two or three steps forward.

As they crossed the slender arch of the HohenzollernbrÜcke, he pointed up to the heavens.

"Jupiter shines on our undertaking. I like him better than Venus, who runs after the sun and needs a rosy flooring for her feet."

"Which is Jupiter?" asked Lilly standing still.

He eagerly showed her the lord of the heavens and five or six constellations. Lilly clapped her hands like a pleased child.

"Now I'll always feel at home up there when I'm alone evenings and look out of the window." She refrained from saying more of what was in her mind.

While he waited in front of the door, she ran upstairs, turned off the light, put the key in her pocket, and hastily told Adele she would take supper out that evening. She lingered for nothing else and came hurrying down again.

Outside the apartment door she reeled with joy and clung to the post and sobbed.

But by the time she reached the street her bearing had become quite proper.

"If you are willing to entrust yourself to my guidance," he said, "I know a little corner no one would dream of finding us in. It's practically in Italy."

She drew a deep breath.

"If only he wouldn't speak so much of Italy," she thought, though for nothing in the world would she have gone elsewhere than to his Italian restaurant.

They walked along the canal for about five minutes talking nonsense. The medley of lights of the Potsdamer BrÜcke was quite near when he paused in front of a narrow, dimly lighted shop window, where about two dozen wine bottles wreathed with green cotton vines grew like asparagus out of sand.

"Here Signor Battistini serves a Chianti, than which none better is to be had in Florence," he explained.

They entered the shop and crossed a small anteroom, in which the proprietor, black as the ace of spades, was pasting labels behind the bar.

"Sera, padrone," Lilly's friend greeted him.

From the anteroom they passed into a rather long, hall-like room filled with simple tables and chairs. The only decoration consisted of crisscrossed garlands of shiny green paper bits, evidently ambitious of being considered vine leaves, which twined about the bare gas brackets and fell over hooks in the walls. To inform the guests of the occasion for this luxuriant display, a placard hung from the centre wishing them on this March evening a "Happy New Year."

"What do you say to this fairy garden?" asked Lilly's friend, while the waiter, black as his master, with an improbable pair of fiery wheels in his face, beseechingly held out his hands for her cloak.

At the other tables sat young fellows with thick hair, who rolled long, thread-like cigarettes between their teeth and nearly thrust the knuckles of their clenched fists in one another's eyes while spouting Italian with fascinating rapidity.

"Marble cutters," Dr. Rennschmidt explained in a low voice. "Our great sculptors employ them as assistants. They earn a great deal of money, and as soon as they have saved enough they return to Italy to establish a household."

Two women sat apart from the men. Their black, lustreless hair drawn very low on their foreheads gave their eyes the appearance of torches burning in sombre woods. Gold rings hung in their ears, and their dresses, cut too deep at the throat, were held together by roughly made brooches. They looked at Lilly's tall figure in envious admiration, then fell to whispering busily.

Dr. Rennschmidt nodded to them cordially, yet with an indifferent air, as one who has nothing to conceal or reveal.

"Ballad singers belonging to a Neapolitan folk-song troupe. Their leader deserted them, and they're now looking for an engagement."

"Where am I?" thought Lilly.

It was like a dream, as if an Aladdin's lamp had transported her to a strange land. The one thing by which she knew she was in Berlin, Germany, near the Potsdamer BrÜcke, was the placard's complacent "Happy New Year."

"I've been coming here every day since my return," said Dr. Rennschmidt, after they had settled themselves comfortably in a corner. "I cannot cure myself of homesickness for the south. The best German cookery has no charms for me, and I must have my Chianti. But to-day we'll order some other wine, because you have to cultivate a taste for Chianti."

He nodded to the waiter, Francesco by name—Francesco, as if he had just stepped from a romance about knights and brigands. The two held a lively conference, the result of which was a dusty, light-coloured bottle.

The dishes were strange confections of macaroni and meat swimming in yellowish red gravy.

Lilly could not recall ever having eaten anything so delicious. She told him so. But what she did not tell him was that she had never in her life, never since she could remember, felt so good.

The last course was a "giardinetto," a "little garden," of mandarins, dates, and Gorgonzola cheese.

The frothy, yellow wine with an aroma of nutmeg bubbled into the glasses scattering bright drops.

Leaning against the wall, Lilly let her eyes rest dreamily on her new friend's face.

He turned his head now this way, now that, with rapid little movements like a bird's. He seemed constantly alert to observe and absorb. Or perhaps his manner was due to his desire to bestow some additional attention upon her. His eyes gleamed with eagerness and exuberance of life, and the network of wrinkles on his brow rose and fell nervously. The cloud of wrath on his forehead apparently was nothing more than his seething ardour.

He had a dear, droll habit which increased the impression of eagerness. He would raise his outspread fingers to his head as if to run them through a heavy mass of hair. But the mass was no longer there, and his hand clapped against his bare forehead and rested there a second or two.

Everything about him bespoke force and decision—to Lilly's admiration, well-nigh to her dread. Nevertheless, although a golden brown tinge of health from the south still coloured his cheeks, his body was not robust. His throat was delicate, his breath came and went hastily, and sometimes, when a veil fell over his eyes as if he were looking inward, a soft weariness crept over his features which gave him an extremely youthful appearance and evoked motherly feelings.

"So that's what you are," she thought and stretched herself in blissful peace. "At last."

"Why are you closing your eyes?" he asked solicitously. "Aren't you feeling well?"

"Yes, oh, yes," she said caressingly. "But speak to me, tell me about down there where I've always wanted to be and never could be."

Lilly went on to tell him of the great yearning which the consumptive teacher had awakened in her, and how it had continued to smoulder under all the ashes life had cast upon it.

"I in your place would have made a pilgrimage there barefoot."

"Pshaw," she said. "I've had money enough. But I've never been free. Once I got as far as Bozen and had to turn back—as a punishment—because a young man ogled me."

"Oh, dreadful," he laughed, "that was hard luck. Much harder than you divine."

"Oh, I divine it," she sighed. "I need merely look at you."

"Why at me?"

"Because you shine like Moses after he witnessed the glory of the Lord."

He became serious.

"There are glories up here, too. But you're right. I have so much life and light stored up in me from down there, so many sources have been opened up, so many germs have begun to sprout—sometimes I hardly know what to do with all my wealth. I write my fingers bloody, and more keeps coming. I would like ever to give, give, give. But I don't know to whom."

"To me," she implored, holding out her hands palm upward. "I am so miserably poor."

He looked at her with great, severe, clairvoyant eyes.

"You are not poor. They have simply let you starve."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

He shook his head, continuing to keep his gaze fixed upon her rigidly.

"What was your husband?" he asked.

"I—am—the divorced wife—of an army officer of high rank," she replied with downcast eyes.

This time—thank the Lord!—it was not a lie.

Yet, to be accurate, she had lied.

For see what she was now!

He clasped her hand, which lay next to his on the table, and held it an instant.

"If it is difficult for you to speak of your life, don't," he said. "Later, perhaps, when we know each other better, you will tell me. I will tell you about myself—and how I—came to do my work."

"The work of which you spoke that time?" Lilly asked, strangely stirred by the sudden solemnity of his tone.

Drawing a deep breath he stretched out his clenched fists and his eyes stared into space.

"Yes—the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving."

"I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly.

"I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung, painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work."

"Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken.

He smiled and shook his head.

"I'm neither a poet nor a painter, nor a historian, nor a psychologist. Yet I must be something of each, and more to boot. My work requires it."

Then he told his story.

His father had been instructor at a university and an eminent jurist. His mother had died in giving him birth, and his father did not survive her long. He then came under the care of his uncle, a rich, experienced old bachelor, who had passed a lively life in business and pleasure-seeking, and now dwelt in merry singleness in his castle. He had given Dr. Rennschmidt an education and had assured him a small income which enabled him in a modest fashion to indulge his wishes and whims. Dr. Rennschmidt had intended to follow in his father's footsteps and enter an academic career, but the examinations, which he had passed honourably, had tried his health. So, to satisfy his uncle, he had given up the idea of a university career for the time being, and had gone out into the world. He had been drawn to Italy by his studies in the history of art, which he had always pursued with interest, though without considering them his life work. What fascinated him more than the churches and the museums was the free, beautiful humanity in which the lively southern race expressed its personality. He felt as if it had awakened in him a new, free humanity, conscious of its own powers. He felt more and more strongly the original unity of artistic and personal experience, past and present. The heroes of mythology and history, the characters in poetry and painting, and the poets and painters themselves all became so real and familiar that they seemed to be part of his own being. Surrounded by a people saturated with its own history, possessing the skill of a thousand years' exercise of art, always in touch with the spirit of the time, it seemed possible to him to penetrate into the emotional world of past generations. He learned to distinguish monuments of different periods and follow those related to each other step by step along the course of time.

His guide always had been and remained art. Art was best able to wring speech from the silence of death and bid the dust add new forms to the old. Only one thing was still missing, knowledge of the sources of its convincing might, the A B C's of the language in which it expressed its thoughts.

Lilly strained herself to follow him. She had never before listened to such language; yet it was not strange. Remnants from of old, from long-forgotten times seemed to cling to the bottom of her soul, which harmonised with what he said.

"One day," he continued, "while I was staying in Venice, I went off on a short excursion to Padua. By railroad it's about the same as going from Berlin to Potsdam. I wasn't keen about seeing the art there, because I was still in the honeymoon intoxication of my love for the early Venetians. It was only for the sake of completeness. I got into a little church in which there are frescoes by Giotto. Do you know who he was?"

"Certainly—Giotto and Cimabue," she said proudly.

"Then I needn't say more. I really had little left in me for him and his people, because, as I said, the quattrocentists had heated my imagination. Now just conceive a Roman amphitheatre completely ruined and overgrown with ivy, nothing but the outer walls still standing, like the walls of a garden. In the enclosure is the little church built of brick, as sober and prosaic as a Prussian Protestant praying barn."

Lilly smiled gratefully. A side-thrust at Protestantism was still a personal favour to her.

"Services are no longer held there. It has been set aside as a national monument. When I entered I saw nothing at first but a blue radiance from the walls, a sort of modest background, with long rows of pictures on it, the story of Christ told quite simply, the way a preacher speaking to poor people would tell it on Good Friday, provided he is the right preacher for poor people."

"But aren't we all poor people in the presence of Christ?" Lilly ventured to interpose.

He paused, looked at her with large eyes, then assented eagerly.

"Certainly. But not only in the presence of Christ, in the presence also of every great personality, of every great truth. But it isn't easy for us to cultivate that feeling—to make it clear to ourselves that we must be poor when what is given to us ought to enrich us. Religion is best able to inspire us with the feeling, if it finds the correct means of expression. And the Italians did. A poor man spoke to poor men. Therein lay the wealth of Giotto's gift. For what moves us to tears is not his vast competence, it is his incompetence. Do you get what I mean?"

"I think I do," said Lilly, her face lighting up. "If a man desires something of us, and can merely stammer and stutter his desire, he affects us more than if he says it in a prepared discourse."

"Exactly!" he cried joyously. "That's why Giotto's scant speech, his stammering created the whole language of art. Everything before him had simply been learned by heart from dead, Byzantine models. For the first time a man read life with simple eyes and a simple heart, and extracted from it what he had to say. That is why he became the universal master. To this very day if anyone succeeds in portraying supreme suffering and supreme delight with his brush, he owes his skill to that little church."

"I can conceive," cried Lilly, "that if the ocean had a source and a man were suddenly to come upon it, he would feel as you do."

In the exuberance of his emotion Dr. Rennschmidt seized Lilly's arm with both hands.

"That's the missing figure. It's strong enough to express what took place in me. But I came upon another source. While I walked along those frescoed walls, something suddenly stood before me clearly—and my work was there, sprung from nothing: the history of emotions. Emotions, you know, as art has seen and portrayed them in all generations. Not only the pictorial and plastic arts. They are only a fraction. Literature also. Poetry as well as painting, sculpture as well as music. I thought in that way I might succeed in creating a true, genuine history of the development of the human heart, which no moralist, no historian, no psychologist has yet attempted. Why not? The documents are at hand; just as fossils lie embedded in rocks for the guidance of zoÖlogists. They need merely be cut out. What do you think? Isn't it a work worth spending a lifetime on?"

"It is," said Lilly, with the same solemnity.

"Oh, but there's much to be thought over first," he went on. "You cannot make an impetuous onslaught like a bull on a red rag. Often art leads us astray because it strove to reproduce something entirely different from the emotional life of its time. Whether it succeeded or not is another question. And often it was wanting in the necessary means of expression. Oh, you and I will speak of this many more times. Don't look so frightened. I need you. After this evening I could not get along without you. Nobody before you ever listened with such faith and understanding. Besides, I've grown to be an utter stranger here. The people I know are full of their own interests, and scarcely listen to me. Then, too, there's a bit of madness in my undertaking, of which I really ought to be ashamed. But one thing comforts me: a bit of madness has underlain every great work until that work was completed and had compassed its end. Of course everybody has the same idea of his own work. So some time I'll rise above that feeling. But now, while I'm wrestling, and every day I think I have discovered a new vein of gold and then am compelled to throw a good deal away because it's pinchbeck, if I have nobody on whom I can pour out what oppresses and torments me, why the jumble fairly chokes me. So fate sent me to you. It was like an inner voice, which would not let me rest at my desk, but sent me out to watch your light. Now I have you, and I won't let you go. God knows, I shouldn't be so bold in my own behalf, but it's for my work. It is clamouring for you. For heaven's sake, why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying," said Lilly, and smiled at him.

But the tears kept rising, and veiled his lovely picture.

"I know what it is," he said sadly. "I wasn't considerate. You are regretting your lost art, because I spoke so happily of my own work." Lilly started back as if she had seen a ghost, and made vehement denial.

"No, no, it isn't that! Really not!"

But he persisted in his belief; which drove the thorn of her own unworthiness all the deeper into her soul.

"Let us go," she requested. "There is so much assailing me—happiness and unhappiness and all sorts of things—outside I'll be calmer."

It was long after midnight. A cold wind swept across the water and soughed in the bare branches.

He offered her his arm, and Lilly nestled in it as if she had been at home there from times immemorial.

For a while they were both silent

"In five minutes he'll leave me," she thought. She could not bear the grief of impending loss.

"One thing is lying heavy on my conscience," he began. "You might think me overweening because I make so much of myself. But I don't wish to appear more important than others. I know every vigorous young fellow must have a similar work to bring purpose into his life. One has a book to write, another a business to carry on, another a dependent to support. For some it's enough if they keep their heads above water. It doesn't matter what. If you let yourself go, you're lost. And none of us want to be lost, do we?"

"I think I lost myself long ago," whispered Lilly, shuddering and crouching like a whipped dog.

He burst out laughing.

"You, the best, the finest, the noblest."

She knew how undeserved his praise was. Yet how delicious, oh, how delicious.

They were now walking so closely pressed against each other that their cheeks almost touched. She closed her eyes and ardently drank in the warm breath of his life. She felt she was being wafted to unknown blessed distances.

She did not come to herself until they reached her home.

"When?" he asked her.

She had no time the next day. She was invited out. But the day after. Yes, the day after, she had the whole evening free. He need only call for her.

For fear she might after all ask him to come the very next day, she hurried into the house, ran up the steps, and concealed her happiness in the hushed apartment.

She did not turn on the lights. The street lamps, shining on the walls of the drawing-room and touching rainbow colours on the chandelier prisms, provided sufficient illumination.

She began to wander through the open doors from room to room, into the corner where the bed stood, around the dining table, across the drawing-room, into the cold guest room, which had never received a guest, up and down, back and forth, singing, crying, exulting.

And from amid her tears and singing and exultation suddenly arose—how did it go?

No, not quite—a little different. But she would surely get it.

Impetuously she raised the lid of the piano, which had long remained closed. As if the neglected instrument, unforced into silence, had suddenly acquired a life of its own, a flood of sound rushed toward her, of which she had deemed neither the piano nor herself capable.

Yes, that was the way it went. Exactly. She had found each note again.

Where had it kept itself hidden all those long years?

It seemed as if the last time she had sung it had been the very day before.

Yet worlds of suffering lay between.

No, not suffering.

"If only it had been suffering," thought Lilly, "the Song of Songs would never have become mute."