No. It came about differently.

Fate did not lay its clutch upon her with such rude hands.

Lilly was spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and by an act of volition was enabled to prove that she was not unworthy of the great passion that had blessed her life.

After the mention of Dr. Salmoni's name Lilly feared to venture out on the street with Konrad. She imagined that each person coming behind them must be the dreaded man, who had once stolen upon her in front of the house on Alte Jakobstrasse and might be following her now as he had then.

In order to save herself this torture she finally told Konrad that a lady of her acquaintance had visited her the day before and had asked with marked emphasis about the slim young man with whom she had always appeared.

The effect of Lilly's lie was terrifying.

Konrad said nothing and ate nothing. He paced up and down the room with a wild, hunted expression, and went away at the very moment when their happiest hours were wont to begin.

The following day light was thrown upon the situation.

Konrad came at twilight, paler than usual, his eyes shining unnaturally.

"Listen, darling," he said, "I spent the night thinking everything over, and now I know what I ought to do. We can't go on this way."

She thought he meant that he must leave her. An icy numbness spread over her body. She looked at him quietly awaiting the death blow.

"Since we belong to each other," he continued, "we have never spoken of your betrothed. That doesn't mean I didn't think of him. And you have been very reticent about his friend, Mr. Dehnicke. All I know is Mr. Dehnicke is now off on a trip and has left you, so to speak, without a guardian."

She forced herself to smile. Why did he prolong the agony?

"I must confess, in the midst of all my happiness, I have always felt that this exploiting of the situation was nothing more nor less than contemptible so far as I myself am concerned. But I am not the one to be considered. The question is: what will become of you? The thing I dreaded from the very first has come to pass: your friends have begun to notice us together. You can't ask one person not to tell another. That's degrading. So your friend will discover everything. He will call you to account, you will be too proud to deny the truth, and the end of the story will be that you will be left alone, utterly unprotected. Because the way things are now, I haven't even the right to protect you. The thought of it is sickening."

He jumped up, ran his outspread fingers through his imaginary shock of hair, and tramped up and down.

Lilly felt the blood begin to course through her veins again, and with it life and thought.

The dear, noble, unsuspecting boy!

She came near bursting into laughter. But she refrained herself and said:

"You can be perfectly calm, Konni. Mr. Dehnicke won't find out, and even if he does, he won't believe it. Or if he believes it, he will take good care—"

She could not continue. The great innocent eyes troubled her.

"So you still think he will—?"

Konrad also faltered. He, too, was unable to utter the unspeakable.

Lilly regarded the buttons on her skirt, and said nothing.

"When is Mr. Dehnicke coming home again?" he asked.

"He's not certain. He's gone a-wooing," Lilly replied with a little feeling of triumph. She thought she was saying something which raised her above suspicion in the future—there was still a possibility of suspicion.

"Where is he now?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I want to speak to him."

Lilly started. She could not believe her ears.

It could not be. Either she must have lost her reason or Konrad.

"Don't be afraid," he reassured her. "I know quite well what I owe your reputation. But I should like to find out at last what he thinks of your situation. There's a man in the United States whom you are pledged to, yet he doesn't let himself be heard from. He doesn't come for you. He doesn't write. Why doesn't he write? If he's ignorant of your whereabouts, he's perfectly aware that Mr. Dehnicke's business is known in Berlin. You can't be sure he's still alive. At first I tried to explain his silence in various ways. But now I say to myself, he's either dead or as good as dead. And are you to consider yourself bound? Should you make your entire social existence dependent upon a sort of guard of honour, which has nothing more to guard? I'd like to hold all this under Mr. Dehnicke's nose. He'll have to answer me. Don't you think he will?"

"Konrad has less worldly knowledge than is permissible," thought Lilly, pityingly, and replied: "But I don't understand, Konni, what right you have to call a stranger to account."

"That's my affair," he rejoined, tossing his head defiantly. "I must know if he will set you free. I won't brook his playing the slave-master over you."

"And I won't brook your getting yourself into a false position," cried Lilly in reawakened alarm. She already heard blows and pistol shots. "I myself will speak to Mr. Dehnicke. I will free myself, I promise you. But you, if you go to him, what will he think of me? At best you will merely succeed in compromising me."

He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed victoriously.

"If a man loves you and wants you to be his wife, why should that compromise you?"

It was hot and murky when these words were spoken. The canary ran about on the sand of his cage chirping wearily, his wings drooping; the gold fish hung motionless behind their glass walls, and the naked monkey whined in its sleep.

The slimy canal water reflected bluish black clouds; a storm hovered in the atmosphere, and this was the thunder-clap.

Lilly's first sensation was one of surprise—not joyous surprise, indeed not. Then came an unspeakably mournful cry, which no mortal ear heard, though all the more painful in its muteness.

"Too late—a lost chance—nothing to hope for—no more happiness on earth—too late!"

She leaned back on the sofa and studied the ceiling attentively and thoroughly.

He was awaiting his answer.

If she lowered her eyes, she would have to encounter his eyes, which ate into her soul. No salvation from those eyes, no salvation from that which must perforce come.

And he was waiting.

Then she heard her own voice, very clear and very calm, as if Mrs. Jula were speaking in her place, that little artist of life with the iron brow.

"I thought, Konni, you and I had agreed never to marry."

"How can you remind me of it?" he cried violently. "Did I know how things would turn out when I said it? Did I know who you are and what bliss and torture a goddess of a woman like you can bestow on a poor devil? Yes, torture. I must tell you everything to-day. I'm at my wit's end. There's a break in my life. Everything is torn asunder—my work, my thoughts, my belief in you. You want to be my good genius. Instead you're almost my evil genius. Don't be frightened. It's not your fault. I am not reproaching you—only myself, for being so weak. I want to work. I must work. I have assumed a number of new duties. I thought if duty came from the outside, I could force myself into the right path. The very reverse has happened. I'm growing stupid just from wrestling with myself. I must bring peace into our lives, else we're both lost. And I can't have peace unless you belong to me altogether, unless your bed is next to my bed, and the desk is in the next room, and you're always with me."

"I can move to you in the autumn," Lilly interjected timidly.

"No, nothing of that sort any more. No self-reproaches, no secretiveness. Should I have it on my conscience that each additional day on which you sacrifice yourself, you're drawing nearer to ruin? And it's bound to ruin you. It will cling to you like dirt. And why should we create dirt out of what is most sacred to us? Or am I not good enough to be your life-companion? Do you think you will be too poor as my wife?"

She repudiated the idea with a lively exclamation of scorn.

"I don't know, and I don't need to know, how much you have. I am rich enough now. I get three hundred marks a month from my uncle; Dr. Salmoni pays me four hundred—"

Oh, how she started at the name!

"And I can easily earn another three hundred by writing articles—in all a thousand a month, a general's salary. You may be satisfied."

"Keep quiet," she cried, almost beside herself. "It isn't that."

"Then what is it?"

He planted himself in front of her challengingly. Between his brows were those folds of wrath which cut her like a knife. She ducked her head. Never since the colonel's time had she experienced such fear of a human being.

"Tell me what it is. Apparently you don't love me enough. You still cling to the man who forgot you long ago. You probably say to yourself: 'The stupid boy is good enough for a passing love; he's good enough for whiling the time away. But if he shows any intentions of interfering with my life, I must get rid of him with all possible speed.' Am I not right? Tell me. Be brave! What harm can I do you? Just tell me that I'm nothing but a pis aller, the sort of man you wouldn't want as a husband. When I've made a name for myself, then you will be willing to consider marriage, too. Am I not right?—Well, then."

He picked up his hat to go.

"Have pity on me, Konni," she implored. She had glided down from her seat to lay her head on his knees, and now she crouched between the sofa and Konrad's chair, and groped for support.

"I don't need your pity, you don't need mine," he cried. "Until to-day you've been the noblest thing on earth to me. But I won't suffer myself just to be expunged from your life. Tell me why you don't want to marry me—one plausible reason, and I'll never return to the subject again. I promise you."

"Give me until to-morrow," she groaned.

"Why? For what? To-day is as good as to-morrow. I've come to the end of my tether. I can't spend another night of torture."

"I will write to you."

That surprised him.

"What will you write?"

"Whether I may or not. And the reasons and everything."

"During the night I'll manage to find some way out," she thought.

"When will I get the letter?"

"To-morrow morning by the first delivery."

"Very well. I will wait until then. Good-by, Lilly."

When he helped her back on the sofa, and held his hand out in farewell, and she saw his eyes fastened on her with their candid, magnanimous expression, which a lie had never clouded—unsuspicious still—she was suddenly convinced that evasion was no longer possible.

"Truth! Nothing but the truth. Even if it lead to perdition, Konrad must now be told the truth." The thought flooded her soul like a warm, soothing stream.

But she could not tell him the truth face to face. Nobody would have the strength of will for that.

The reaction did not set in until she was left alone. The impulse for self-preservation asserted itself. If Mrs. Jula could do it, she could, too. Mrs. Jula had much worse things to conceal.

Richard, of course, would say nothing; which was the main consideration. Now that he wished to go his own way, it was to his interest for her to vanish decorously from his life. The rest of the "crew" might tattle to their heart's content. Konrad was immune against their poison. The only dangerous person was Dr. Salmoni. But if she went to him soon and begged him, he, too, would maintain silence. He had sufficiently strong motives for hushing his disgraceful attempt upon her. Besides, Mrs. Jula had said: "You must wear a smile on your brow but beneath the smile your brow must be of iron."

Thus Lilly revolved the situation in her mind.

But in the midst of her brooding and planning she was seized with disgust of herself and her intentions, which tore the whole tissue of deceit into ragged bits.

Why, it was sheer folly to think she would always be able to play the false part. If upon the mere mention of Dr. Salmoni's name she dreaded appearing on the street with Konrad, how could she go through a lifetime at his side haunted by that ever-present fear? What repulses and humiliations she would have to undergo whenever Konrad led her into the society in which as his wife she would belong—she, whom the papers had taken up and treated as a rising star in the fashionable demi-monde? And, worst of all, if Konrad should begin to suspect! How he would eat his heart away in shame and abhorrence, he, with his pride and delicate susceptibilities and that unworldly purity which alone accounted for the fact that no surmise as to her real life had ever touched his soul.

What an awaking from a short, torturing dream!

No, she could not do what Mrs. Jula had done.

And she threw far from her the shameful thought with which the stress of the hour had stained her wrestling soul.

An exultant craving for self-annihilation came over her, the desire to tear her breast open and throw her throbbing heart at his feet.

So she sat down and wrote:

"My dear, sweet Konni:—

I have shamefully deceived you. I am a prostitute, or something not much better. The man to whom I told you I was betrothed is a myth. He was a little good-for-nothing lieutenant. I wickedly broke my marriage vows for his sake, and he never thought of marrying me, but turned me over to his rich friend, who made me his mistress. His mistress I still am. I have been living for years in the world of vice and vulgarity. I am an outlaw from decent society. Hired mistresses and their lovers who pay them form my sole associates. I clung to you, because you in your innocence respected me, and because I, down in the mire, clamoured for respect.

Now you know why I may not be your wife. If you desire my kisses, come. I am not fit for anything else.

Lilly."

It was nearly eleven o'clock. Adele had gone to bed. It occurred to Lilly that she would have to go down to mail the letter herself.

But the storm that had been impending the whole afternoon, was just then giving full vent to its fury. The rain was coming down in sheets, and gusts of wind blew through the open window across Lilly's desk.

Once a shower of drops spattered the paper, at which she was staring with hot, dry eyes. It looked as if tears had fallen upon it while she was writing.

"Very good," she thought.

Then she felt ashamed. The time for farce was ended. But when she started to rewrite the letter, she stopped short with a shudder.

What did those monstrous self-accusations signify? Were they the truth?

Perhaps so in the mouth of a backbiting woman who needs facts about her friend in order to twist them into a crime, or in the mouth of one of those social hangmen who hold a halter in readiness for everybody's past.

For herself, who knew how everything had come about, how from inner need and outer compulsion, from trustfulness and defencelessness, link after link of the chain had been forged which now clanked about her body, a burden of sin—for her there was another, a milder truth, which must win pardon and atonement for her in the eyes of every person who understood.

She tore up the sheet, and began anew. She draughted a sketch, and polished it until it thoroughly satisfied her.

"My dearly beloved friend:—

She who writes this letter to you is a most unhappy woman, whom you know only slightly, and who had to deceive you until to-day, because what is most sacred to her, her love of you, was at stake.

And now, with these lines, I am losing that love. I am sacrificing it to your happiness, to the divine fire which sanctified my life.

The world has treated me badly. It robbed me of my belief in man, my ideals, my will power; and so deprived me of the right to go through life at your side.

I began my course full of confidence and hope, pure to the core of my being. Each man who stepped into my existence broke off a piece of my virtue.

I raised my eyes in devotion to my aging husband, who promised to be my hero, master, model, and idol. He converted me into a tool of base desires.

Another man came, who was young like myself and had been left without ties like myself, and whom I wished to save while I sought refuge with him. He took me and tasted me. I was a fascinating adventure to him, and in the course of his adventure he went to perdition.

He wrote a treacherous letter to a friend placing me in his care. That friend exploited my spiritual and physical needs for his own advantage, and by a shameful trick made me so dependent upon him that for a long time I lived as his creature while thinking myself free and untouched. Helpless and broken as I was I became his entirely, nor ventured even to feel angry at him, I was so slavishly in his power—until now.

So my destiny was fulfilled. I tried desperately to struggle out of the dull night in which my spirit was enveloped, but nowhere was there a path leading up to the light. With ardour I seized each hand held out to help me, but each thrust me still lower, until my whole being sank into a torpid state of discouragement.

Then you came, my beloved, my saviour, my redeemer! It grew light about me, the world blossomed forth again, the drained sources began to flow afresh, the Song of Songs resounded.

And with pride and rapture I realised that nothing shameful had taken firm root in my character, that the times of ignominy had passed over my head without destroying my inner worth, my desire for purity, my instinct for a great, noble humanity. These had been merely dormant, and you, beloved, awakened them to activity.

Even if I may not be your wife—your wife should be free of stain—I want to be worthy of you, whether by your side or at a distance—wherever you tell me to go.

Long ago I decided to shake off my chains, which, in fact, have been merely external, and with unencumbered limbs climb up to a new life in harmony with the demands of my genuine self. You have pointed the way, and in gratitude I kiss your dear, tender, industrious hands.

Farewell, beloved! If you would chastise me, never come again. If you will and can put up with the love of one who loves you as no other woman on earth will love you, then do not turn me adrift. I have nothing to give you but what I am, though that belongs to you unto death.

Lilly."

She read and reread the letter, and read herself into a state of enthusiasm over it.

Now the truth wore quite a different aspect.

Then suddenly the question arose in her mind:

"Is it the truth?"

Had she not luxuriated in choice words? Had she not smuggled in high-flown emotions foreign to her nature? Phrases like "dull night in which my spirit was enveloped" and "tried desperately to struggle" belonged in sentimental novels. They were inapplicable to her life. She had suffered not so much from despair as from boredom and during that "dull night" she had enjoyed herself greatly on many an occasion. Richard, the good fellow to judge by her insinuations, was a rank despot, and she herself a sorry, subjugated victim, whereas in reality she had been able to do or leave undone whatever her caprice dictated.

It was the truth, and yet it was not. Just as much and as little as in the first, dreadful letter. Each was correct enough in its way, and many another might have been written equally correct; but the truth, the genuine truth, which penetrated and illumined the whole, would appear in none. That truth she herself did not know, nor did anybody else. That truth vanished with the moment in which an event occurred, and no earthly power could summon it back. All that her words reflected were distorted images varying as her mood varied and as her pen travelled over the paper.

"But I don't want to lie," she cried to herself. "I want to be true to-day."

So she tore up the second letter also.

What now? Should she write a third letter?

It was long past midnight. Her eyes burned. Her temples throbbed with over-excitement, and Konrad was to hear from her by the first mail in the morning. She had promised him.

At this point the full force of what had happened suddenly struck her. She realised that in the last four hours she had been face to face with the danger of losing him at once and forever.

She was beset with an anguish of fear that threatened to rob her of her senses. She cried his name aloud, ran about the apartment, reeled, knocked against the walls, and wanted to throw herself from the window.

She must go to him forthwith. That was the one idea she was capable of grasping. She would have the porter open the front door; she would wake Konrad up, force her way into his room and stay with him that night and forever. No matter what the consequences! It was all the same. Only to rid herself of that dread which burned her body like a living flame.

The storm had subsided, but the rain was falling in a steady downpour. Lilly scarcely took the time to put on a cloak.

In low shoes, without hat or umbrella, she dashed out on the street and splashed through the puddles.

Light was shining from the two third-storey windows.

She clapped her hands and cried:

"Konni, Konni, Konni!"

Again and again.

But the windows were closed. He did not hear her.

She saw his figure glide back and forth like a shadow, from one end of the room to the other, to and fro, to and fro, ceaselessly.

And all the time the rain beat down on her, soaking through her clothes, while the cold wet of the pavement crawled up her legs.

"Konni, Konni," she called louder.

Passersby offered her their umbrellas; others taunted her, and cried, "Konni, Konni."

At last the shadow halted. One of the windows went up.

"Lilly—you?" his voice called, hoarse with fright.

"At last—do come, my sweet Konni," a tipsy man, who had persistently held his umbrella over her, answered in her place.

"For God's sake!"

The light disappeared from the windows, and a few moments later Konrad appeared in the doorway with the front-door key and his lamp in his hand.

The tipsy gentleman said good-by, bowing and scraping.

"Lilly—what has happened? What are you doing here?"

She pressed against the doorpost trembling. She was unable to speak.

"I am with him," was her one thought. "So all's well."

He passed his hand over her clothes.

"Why, you're dripping wet. You're in house slippers. For God's sake, Lilly!"

She wanted to say something, but was ashamed to let him see how her teeth were chattering.

"And I can't even take you to my room. You know why. But I must. If I were to let you go back home again in the state you're in, you might catch your death of cold. We will be very careful—just as we were that time. We can't speak above a whisper. The girl's not out of danger yet. Give me your hand. Come on."

With half-closed eyes she let herself be led up the stairs. Her wet dress flapped against the balusters. She felt she would have to crouch down on one of the steps and lie there until the porter came to sweep the dust and dirt away. But each step only took her nearer to the fate awaiting her up there in the third storey.

Then with bent head she crept along the corridor into his room, where the imprisoned sultriness of the summer day suffocated her.

Konrad pressed her into his desk chair. He drew off the soggy velvet rags from her feet, and brought her dry stockings; and after peeling her wet dress from her body he wrapped her in his great coat and blankets.

She sat there accepting his service without a will of her own. She wanted to taste the delicious sensation of his loving care of her until the last moment.

She had not said a word.

When she had attempted to thank him, he pointed to the door leading to the next room.

"Speak very low," he said, his mouth close to her ear. "The poor thing, it seems, is having a good night for the first time."

Languid pity awoke in Lilly.

But she had to talk.

"What's the matter with her? Tell me," she breathed.

He hesitated.

"My landlady swore me to silence. But you're mine now. You will keep the secret. Her daughter, her one child, ran away four months ago and gave birth to a baby. The mother went to fetch her back home. She's been hovering between life and death for six weeks. She's at last getting better."

"Poor thing," said Lilly. And then the consciousness of her own misery came upon her with redoubled force.

"Konni, Konni," she moaned on his neck. "Now it's all over. I was willing to starve with you, go begging with you. But what's the use? When once you know everything—"

"That can't be so very bad, darling."

"About me. About my life—my past."

With a little jerk he freed himself and sat down opposite her.

The look of questioning and terrified presentiment that congealed his pale face, seeming to turn it into a mask, filled her with fright, such fright as she had never experienced, because it was not on her own behalf; she was afraid of converting her own pain into his pain.

"I wanted to write it to you—just the way it was, but I couldn't. It turned out wrong while I wrote. So I came to you before morning. If you want, I will tell you now—everything—"

She could not continue. She turned her face aside and buried it on the desk.

"Why don't you speak?"

Konrad had quite forgotten the need for quiet, and both of them shrank at the sudden sound of his voice. "She's probably asleep," he said lowering his voice again. "Now tell me! What can it be?"

He breathed heavily under the growing oppression of his soul.

She began to speak. In a whisper, her upper body inclined toward him, she tried to tell him the things for which she had not been able to find words in her own home.

The truth did not come out this time either. She felt it.

Less, much less of it, than her letters would have given him. To distress him with every detail—never! No power in the world could have driven her to that.

Her life became a long list of martyrdoms—a funeral procession draped in black—insults, humiliations, mortifications—an imprisonment without a ray of light or mercy—and all the time a constant struggle for deliverance—a noble withdrawal into herself—a dismal sacrifice for nothing.

She talked and talked.

He listened, with wide-open eyes. But when she uttered the name she had no right to omit, "Dr. Salmoni," he started and shrank back.

Both of them had completely forgotten the sick girl in the next room.

Sometimes Lilly had to wipe tears away, sometimes she grew indignant; now she ventured to glide by difficult points, now she lingered over touching self-reproaches.

"It is the truth after all," she said to herself defiantly, yet in fear, as she drew near the end of her narrative.

It was the truth in so far as it was a rÉsumÉ of the good in her, the truth as it might take shape in his troubled mind, regardless of fact—and this truth, too, had its rights.

Silence ensued.

Her guilty look glided past him and rested on the photograph on the desk, which leered at her with its crafty, worldly eyes, as if to say:

"My child, I know you much better than you do yourself."

Something familiar and confidential lay in them, like a reflection of the merry world which a moment ago had seemed to her the abode of torture.

She did not venture to remove her gaze from those omniscient eyes, which smilingly examined and disrobed her, and killed her last shy hope.

The unbroken silence in the room became a burden.

Suddenly Konrad and Lilly heard a low moan. It came from the next room, where the sick girl lay, who, because of her secret sin, had been wrestling with her poor life for weeks. The next instant the sound was partially stifled, as if she had stuck a handkerchief into her mouth. Then it broke out again all the more violently. Anxious words of comfort mingled with the groans. They came from the mother, who probably slept in the farther room, and had come in to find out the cause of her daughter's outburst of grief.

Konrad's and Lilly's eyes met.

"She heard everything," their look said.

For a brief instant the stranger's unhappiness caused them to forget their own. The great flood of the world's suffering poured over them easing the sting of guilt and drowning their personal pain.

The sobbing in the next room was muffled under pillows.

"My own darling," the comforting voice implored, and each tone swelled with love. "Don't worry. It isn't so bad. We will take the little baby. Even if he doesn't marry you, what difference does it make? Think of it, we have the baby! And then it will smile at you and say mama. You see, it isn't so dreadful."

The sobbing quieted down, and turned into a heavy breathing, the first earnest of peace.

"Oh," thought Lilly, "it must be good to have someone say: 'It's not so dreadful.'"

Nobody would say that to her.

A burning desire to be petted and comforted, like the young sinner next door, arose in her.

"She has her mother," she groaned, bursting into tears, "but whom have I?"

Konrad leaned over and took her hands from her face. His troubled eyes shone with such infinite loving kindness that they seemed not to be of this world.

"Am I not here?" he asked.

"What can you do for me?" she complained. "How can you bear me?"

There were no sounds from the other room any more.

Now the mother also knew that Konrad had a visitor at that late hour.

"Listen," he whispered, his mouth close to her ear again. "We mustn't talk much more. Besides, my head's in a whirl. But there's one thing I see clearly: how ridiculous everything called guilt is when two people love each other, and when one has suffered like you. You have always been a saint to me, and you shall—continue to be in the future."

"Future," Lilly faltered, starting up anxiously, "what sort of a future?"

He wiped his forehead, yellow and dank with sweat.

"I don't know," he said. "All I know is I can't live without you."

She closed her eyes. She wanted to dream longer.

"To be sure, it cannot be what we wanted." She noticed the hesitating, dragging gait of his speech. "Everything, of course—will have to be different."

"Your life must not be different—it ought not to be different."

"You can't blink facts, darling. Of course, I don't know where we will live. But we'll manage to find some spot on the globe where nobody knows us."

Now she understood.

And forgetting herself and the sick girl and everything around she sank down at his feet with a cry and sobbed:

"I don't want you to—you mustn't. You're entirely too young. You don't know the world. You don't know what you're doing. I don't want the sacrifice. I don't want to ruin you. I love you too much for that."

He bent her head back and stroked her hair from her forehead.

If only his eyes had not shone with that suffering loving kindness.

The unhappiness of a lifetime already glowed in them.

"If the question of sacrifice enters," he said, "then I must ask a sacrifice of you. Will you make it for my sake?"

"Everything, everything! Shall I die? Tell me."

"I want only one thing of you. Come to me as you are. Don't bring a single possession of yours with you. Never return, not once, to your—to that apartment. From this moment on nothing of all that is to be. Will you promise me?"

Lilly battled against violent alarm.

Not to return home! Never to see her dear drawing-room again; never to feed the little canary or Peter—never!

An ugly feeling, that such a sacrifice was rank folly, came and went again, as if a daub of dirt had been flung upon her, and immediately been wiped away. Then she decided hastily, and replied:

"Yes, I promise."

He drew a deep breath.

"Now we will be perfectly quiet," he said. "The patient ought to sleep, and to-morrow morning I'll explain the matter to my landlady."

"But what is to become of your great work?" Lilly asked, self-reproach rising up in her again.

A melancholy smile passed over his face.

"Who knows? That will depend upon my uncle. If he gives his consent, we can live as we please. Everything will be all right."

"But if he doesn't?"

Konrad's right hand, which had been gliding ceaselessly from her forehead to the nape of her neck, for an instant pressed her head painfully as if to fetch strength for the approaching life struggle from closer contact.

"That will be all right, too," he said and smiled again.

A little while later she lay at his side in the narrow bed, the edge of which cut her body. She put her head under his shoulder, and with both arms clasped his body, as always in her distress when she sought protection with him.

But this time she slept, and he kept watch.