A laugh, a hoa.r.s.e, guilty laugh, interrupted her. He had folded his hands across his knees, and he laughed and drew a deep breath and laughed again, as one who has rid himself of a wearisome burden.

A horrid certainty faced her.

"Then all that wasn't true?" she faltered, staring at him.

"Nonsense, perfect nonsense," he cried. "He wrote me _once_, before he left for the United States. 'Look out for her. Don't let her go to the dogs. She's too good for them.' Nothing else and never again. There! Now you know it. Now I'm rid of it. I've had a hard enough time over it. But what could I do? I had begun so I had to go on. There was no use--"

He jerked up the window and leaned against it panting.

Lilly wanted to ask, "Why did you do it?" but was afraid to. She knew what was coming. One thing stood before her with horrible clearness: she was in his hands beyond rescue. She lived in his house, spent his money, saw the world with his eyes. She was what he had determined she should be: his courtesan, his creature.

The river!

She tore at the brougham door, and set her right foot on the step, but he pulled her back and shut the door again.

"Be sensible," he commanded. "Keep your wits about you."

She burst into a fit of weeping, piteous, harrowing, heartbreaking. She had not shed such tears since the days of her divorce. She saw nothing and heard nothing. Sometimes she seemed to catch the sound of his voice as from a great, great distance. But she did not understand what he said. Simply to cry, cry, cry, as if salvation lay in crying, as if fear and distress would flow away with her tears.

The brougham came to a stand. She felt herself being lifted out. He carried the key in his pocket.

Supported by him she stumbled up the steps and thought from time to time:

"Why, I was going to throw myself into the river."

He led her to the sofa and turned on the lights of the chandelier. Then he undid the buckle of her cloak and removed the veil from her hair.

She lay there languidly, looking apathetically at the tablecloth.

The bird awoke and peeped to her.

"It's late," she heard Mr. Dehnicke say, "and the carriage is waiting.

But I can't leave you this way. I must vindicate myself. I want you to know how everything happened."

"It makes no difference," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

"To me it does," he rejoined. "I don't want you to think I'm a rascal."

"That makes no difference either," she thought.

"I loved you," he began, "long before I knew you, when you were still our colonel's wife."

She looked up at him in surprise.

As he stood there in his short, close-fitting dress suit, with a pale, joyless, pleading face, uneasily plucking at the tablecloth, he who was really master there, it seemed to her she was looking upon him for the first time.

"I had been called into service for the manoeuvres that summer," he continued, "and the club was still full of you. Even the ladies of the regiment talked of nothing else. There were ever so many pictures of you, too, in circulation. Some of the men had snapped you on the sly.

The instant I saw you I should have recognised you, because I remembered every feature. Yes, I may repeat with perfect truth, I loved you even then. What's more, after Prell's letter came and you were to step into my life, good Lord! what plans for winning you didn't I work out in those one and a half years! Then at last you appeared and exceeded my wildest fancies. But when I saw that in between you had become a _grande dame_, and how devoted you were to Walter--you kept talking of him--I lost my last hopes. Of course, I had never seriously counted upon winning you, because, though I lay some stock in myself, I'm not really self-a.s.sured--and besides--to have some one like you for a love--that's more happiness than anyone can dream of."

When he said "a love," pa.s.sionate bitterness welled up within Lilly.

"To have me for a wife," she thought, "_that_ is certainty more happiness than anyone can dream of."

She burst out laughing.

He took her laugh as a sign of modest deprecation of his compliment, and talked himself into greater enthusiasm. Did she think a single person in all that company to-night was worthy of unlacing her shoe-ties? Did she realise how immeasurably she was raised above everything bearing the name woman?

From out of her tear-stained eyes the question now candidly shone which pride and shame forbade her to utter.

He must have understood, because he paused suddenly, clapped his hand to his forehead, looked agitated, and paced up and down the room, suppressing sobs. She heard him murmur, "I can't--impossible--I can't."

"Oh--if he can't," she thought, and stared at him with her cheeks pressed between her hands.

He halted in front of her, and tried to talk. But he could only choke down half-articulated words, and he took to pacing the room again.

Lilly caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of words--"mother"--"never persuade her"--"must give up the business." And again and again, "I can't--impossible--I can't."

"He's right," she thought. "A person like me--he really can't." And feeling her renunciation was final she drew a deep breath, and collapsed.

He hastened to her, frightened; leaned over her, and wanted to stroke her hands. But she shook him off. Since he could not find a word in justification of his weak evasion, he took up the thread where Lilly's tortured laugh had cut it off.

"Remember one thing, dearest, dearest friend. I don't want anything for myself--no reward--nothing. Long ago I gave up all wishes for myself, I swear to you. The only thing I wanted was to draw you out of the hole where you were being degraded into a proletarian. Oh, I know it from experience. It lasts a few years--no more. They either go on the street, or they grow more careworn and uglier and uglier. Soon you'd never suspect what they once were. To keep the same thing from happening to you, I thought of that device of the check, and wrote to my American agents. When I saw you were completely taken in, I didn't sleep for several nights out of pure joy, because then I knew I shouldn't have to stand by and see you go to your ruin."

"Why should I go to ruin?" Lilly interjected. "By the time your check came I had already earned a decent little sum. You yourself helped me, and you yourself said, if I continued the same way--"

She stopped short in fright at the thought that if she had to separate from him, this one avenue would be cut off, too. The idea was a nightmare.

No word of encouragement came from him. He kept plucking at the tablecloth in dogged reserve.

"Say something! Have you already forgotten everything you did for me?"

He raised his head.

"Well," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "if you insist. At any rate, it may be well to be perfectly frank this evening."

"Why, what else is there?" Lilly cried.

"Do you remember when you visited the factory, I wouldn't let you into the storeroom?"

"Certainly. But what--"

"And afterwards I said it was because the room wasn't heated?"

"Yes--but I can't see what that has to do with my work."

"If you had gone the least little bit further, you would have seen every one of your transparencies, fifty-six in all. The last were still unwrapped."

Lilly looked up at him as to her executioner. Then she fell down before the sofa. She had no more tears to shed, but the soft darkness of the cushions was soothing to her eyes. To see nothing more, to hear nothing more, to think nothing more. To die quickly, forthwith, before hunger came, and shame.