The world went its way, calmly, gaily, busily, as if nothing had occurred, as if no lost happiness were tossing about on the sea of life, disappearing farther and farther in the distance; as if no human being had been thrown into a corner to crouch there and stare at the ground helplessly with dimmed eyes.

Mrs. Laue was pasting pressed flowers; the fried potatoes were sizzling in fat, the lamp in the hall was smoking, and the poor people's odour greeted all who entered its realm.

Lilly did not cry her heart out of her body as when she had been expelled from Lischnitz; she did not sink into a state of apathetic brooding, nor wrestle desperately with fate.

All she felt was a dim void stretching endlessly before her, broken now and again by a sharp outcry like that of an animal bereft of its mate; a sense of faint-hearted acquiescence, a consciousness of inevitable imprisonment, of a fearful descent into dark depths, of a dismal death, lacking strength and dignity.

Between the present and the future, the sort of future that beckoned to her from every street, rose the railing of the bridge she had tried to climb after seeing "Rosmersholm." And when she stared into space with tearless eyes, she saw far below the black, purple-patched water rolling idly along, and heard the iron rail clink under her sole.

This clinking became stronger, and turned into an accompaniment of everything that came and went during the uneventful days.

It drilled her brain, hammered at her temples, and tingled in every pore of her body.

There was a text to the miserable melody.

The text was: "To die!"

Well, then, to die!

What could be simpler? And what more compelling?

But not to-day. To-morrow perchance, or day after to-morrow.

Something might still happen. A letter might arrive, or even he himself. Or if neither of these contingencies came to pass—who could tell what miracle fate held in readiness for the morrow?

To let hour after hour of one additional day pass in the same melancholy monotony.

One evening, a week after Konrad's sudden departure, it happened that Mrs. Laue entered the best room at an unusual time with an emphatic manner, and said: "Now, Lilly dear, you cannot go on the same way. If you were to cry, I shouldn't say anything. But this way you'll never come back to reason. There's only one sane and natural thing for you to do, return to your Mr. Dehnicke. If he had an inkling of how things are with you, he would have come to fetch you long ago. So you'll either sit right down and write him a nice letter, or to-morrow morning I'll give up my work and go to see him in his office. I'll get my expenses back."

Lilly felt violently impelled to drive the old woman out of the room, but she had grown too discouraged to do more than turn away in impotent repugnance.

"I haven't much time, I must say," continued Mrs. Laue. "I have to complete the dozen before going to bed. But you can make up your mind to one thing: if he's not here by ten o'clock to-morrow morning, he'll come at twelve at the very latest, because by that time I myself will have gone for him."

Lilly laughed sadly in scorn. So that was the way the miracle looked which fate held in readiness for the morrow.

Should she submit all over again to a man's puny supremacy? Crawl back into the cowardly comfort of perfumed imprisonment? Vegetate among inane festivities, in a sort of doze, or walk the streets when driven by disgust and boredom?

She would not have the force to resist the next day when he came. She knew it well. Richard needed merely to look at her once with that whipped-dog expression which was entirely new to her in him. The very thought of it filled her with humiliating softness. Something was already stirring within her that would compel her to throw her arms about his neck and cry on his shoulder.

It was really not worth while to bide the morrow for so pitiful a reward.

So—she would die—that very day!

That very day.

It came to her like a cup of intoxication.

With clasped hands she ran about the room weeping, rejoicing.

She would be a heroine like Isolde, a martyr to her love.

And the railing of the bridge was waiting. How it would quiver and hum when she climbed on it.

Then the buzzing in her head grew louder. The air was filled with a medley of tones. The walls re-echoed with the refrain—the noise on the streets, the mighty roar of the city—everything sang:

"Die—die—die."

She tore off her gown and dressed to go out.

At first she thought of wearing one of her two ill-fitting dresses, because they had come from Konrad, but she could not prevail upon herself to do so.

"Die in beauty," Hedda Gabler had said.

"Oh, if only I had his picture," thought Lilly, "so that I could take one last look at his eyes."

But all she had from him were his letters and a few poems. They were to accompany her on her last walk.

They were lying at the bottom of the leather trunk which was still hidden in Mrs. Laue's hole of a room, although the need for concealment was past.

When she rummaged for the little packages among the contents of the trunk she came by chance upon the old score of the Song of Songs.

She tenderly regarded the yellow stained roll.

She was no longer angry with her Song of Songs or scorned it, as she had on that unfortunate morning when she had gone to her former home to break her promise to Konrad.

Once again it became a dear, valuable possession, though neither a monitor, nor worker of miracles, nor a sanctuary. It still was an old remnant, but one to be kissed and petted and cried over, because a part of her own life clung to it.

And some of her blood also.

There were the dark stains.

On the day of her going forth they had fallen upon it and on the day of her coming home, the deep waters would wash them away.

Then her mind glided past the score back into the hazy past.

Mists seemed to be lifting and curtains to be drawn aside, and her way seemed to lie behind her like a sharply defined band.

She had been weak. And stupid. And had never considered her own interests. Every man that had entered her life had done with her what he would. She had never closed the doors of her soul, never shown her teeth, never given free play to the power of her beauty; but had always been ready to serve others, to love them, and make the best of everything.

As thanks she had been persecuted and beaten and dragged in the mud her life long. Even the one man who had esteemed her had gone away without saying good-by.

"But," she thought, "I have never hated a single one of them, and I have always had the right to regard myself as above the common, however I have suffered. However I have sinned. And the end was a heaven-sent gift."

Did it not seem as if this Song of Songs, which lay there debased, stained, decayed, like her own life, had in truth hovered over her, blessing her and granting her absolution from her sins, just as in her early dreams and just as in her rhapsodies to Konrad during that hour of blissful self-surrender?

"Yes, you shall come along!" she said. "You shall die when I die."

She carefully rolled and wrapped up the crumbling sheets.

Then she found the letters in the trunk, read them once, and several times again—but she did not understand what she was reading.

It was nearly twelve o'clock when she softly closed the tall door behind her.

Mrs. Laue was still asleep.

Nobody met her on the stairs, and she managed to leave the house without being seen.

Since her flight to Konrad she had not been alone on the street at midnight.

The two long rows of house fronts dipped in garish light—the trolley poles sparking and flashing between—silent, shadowy figures—it was all as if she were looking upon it for the first time.

An oppressive fear beset her.

Her legs felt numb as if wooden stilts had been screwed to them upon which she must hasten on without hesitating or stopping, whether she would or no. And her heels rapped on the pavement, carrying her on, irresistibly nearer and nearer to her goal.

At the approach of each passerby she was impelled to hide herself, in the belief that her appearance betrayed her intentions.

So she chose dark side streets which were being paved and where withering linden trees scattered rain drops.

Her way led past long rows of brick buildings inhospitably set behind dark garden walls, past barns and factories.

And her heels kept rapping: "Tap—tap—tap," as if she were wearing a pedometer which accurately registered every inch shortening her course.

She began to think of roundabout ways of reaching her bridge.

But she cast the temptation from her.

"If it were done, 'twere well it were done quickly," she had read somewhere.

Forward with clenched teeth!

The Engelbecken lay dark and deserted. Yellow lights glinted on the invisible waters.

"It would be easier here," she thought, breathless from the oppression at her heart, and stepped nearer, on the grassy slope.

But she recoiled with a shudder.

It had to be the bridge on the northwest side—fate had willed it so.

It was still a great distance off, about an hour's walk.

She came to livelier streets.

The lamps in front of the dance halls, where fallen women revelled, sent their garish beams out into the night like tentacles.

On, on she must go!

From the open doors of a basement cafÉ was wafted a hot garlic-laden vapour.

What smelled like that?

Oh, yes! The little sausages Mrs. Redlich had given her son as a farewell dinner.

Directly in front of her a hose as thick as her arm spurted a cleansing stream over the pavement.

What had she heard hiss and gurgle along the ground like that?

Oh, yes! It had sounded just like that when old Haberland had watered the lawn, with the copper sprinkler.

Suddenly the idea shot through her brain: "None of this is true. I am lying in bed between the bookcases of the circulating library, and the lamp I took from the bracket is smoking back of me,—and it is all in the book I am reading on the sly after Mrs. Asmussen's dose of medicine has happily worked."

The city noises swelled and called her back to life.

She had reached the heart of the city, the vortex of Berlin's unwearying night life.

She passed the Spittelmarkt. Leipziger Strasse unrolled before her, a stupendous scene, with its endless chain of street lamps. A silvery mist enveloped it, or, rather, it resembled a gay picture lightly covered by a layer of mould, dotted with the lights of cafÉs and cabarets glimmering red.

The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She moved them without realising that she was moving them.

She felt nothing but the throbbing of her heart, which shook her whole body like the vibrations of a mill.

On Friedrichstrasse the people thronged as in the daytime.

Young men rejoicing in the chase followed close upon the heels of their laughing quarry.

The lamplight shone on the silk stockings of damsels as they tripped along.

"Those who have once been completely submerged in this world," thought Lilly, with a shudder of envy, "no longer trouble themselves with questions of honour and death."

Alas, beyond that brilliant whirl came quiet and darkness again, in whose shelter a person may die as he will.

And her heels kept beating: "Tap—tap—tap." She could hear them even in all that noise.

"Couldn't I go to some cafÉ?" she asked herself. "What harm if some one were to see me? I should gain a paltry quarter of an hour."

Lights—mirrors—upholstery—curling blue cigarette smoke—a tingling in her parched throat.

Once—once again! Not a quarter of an hour—a whole hour—and still longer if she wished it—a poor bit of life which would do nobody any harm.

But she could find no justification for such cowardice and she did not want to be ashamed of herself at the very last.

So on—on.

The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind—the dagger-like lights no longer pricked her.

Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.

She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to the northwest side.

The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.

Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.

She passed a florist's shop, where the blinds of the show window had not been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the prickly foliage of laurels and cypresses.

What had gleamed like that?

Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase of the house of Liebert & Dehnicke.

Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.

She reached a bridge.

She crossed it quickly.

That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker silence.

"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity. One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to ruin."

Who had that been?

Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never entered.

He had spoken of blue olive vapours—the sea blackened by the breath of the sirocco—and shining meadows of asphodel.

"What kind of meadows could they be—meadows of asphodel?"

How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.

But her heels said: "Tap—tap—tap," and the railing of the bridge called to her.

A man spoke to her. Wouldn't she—?

She shook him off like a worm.

She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.

By whom?

Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.

She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:

"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."

"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had not made superfluous confessions—"

What then?

"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.

She walked on reeling.

More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a grass plot with a hedge about it.

What sort of meadows could they be—meadows of asphodel?

Suddenly she stood at the bridge.

Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide, silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled into tiny sparks.

A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed by the darkness.

Half-past one o'clock.

Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.

She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.

"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.

"Yet—I will," she answered.

She tried to go on—straight ahead—on the bridge, where the rail awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.

The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary bank wavering.

She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger than she.

Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on—on—whether she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail awaiting her.

Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.

All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even the lamps were reflected in it.

Now, one leap—and the thing was done.

"Yes, I'll do it, I'll do it," a voice within her called.

But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to her as she climbed over.

She threw it—a bit of white flitted by—a splash below—sharp and distinct, which made her tingle all over like a slap in the face.

When she heard the sound, she knew she would never do it.

No! Lilly Czepanek was not a heroine; she was not martyr to her love; she was no Isolde, who finds the strongest affirmation of herself in the desire not to be.

She was nothing but a poor thing who had been crushed and exploited, and would drag along through life as best she could.

At the same time she began to array all the possibilities of a livelihood remaining open to her.

She would not return to the old life of dissipation. That was certain. No matter how much Richard's whipped-dog look might plead and beg.

Anything else would do.

To be sure, she had been completely robbed of her desire to work, and it seemed very doubtful whether it would ever come back to her again.

But after all: something would present itself which would enable her to live in peace and virtue.

Millions of human beings ask for nothing better and call it "happiness!"

She sent one more searching look at the lazy waters, in which the Song of Songs had just disappeared.

Then she turned and went back.

In the spring of the next year the business world of Berlin was surprised to read in the papers that Mr. Richard Dehnicke, senior member of the old, well-known firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, manufacturers of art bronzes, had married the much-talked-of beauty, Lilly Czepanek, and had gone to Italy to live there temporarily.

Those who knew her were not surprised.

She had always been a dangerous woman, they said.