He offered her his arm. She declined.

They walked side by side through dark, tortuous streets on the farther west side.

He talked to her steadily. One idea suggested another. One wheel of fire set free another. Sometimes it appeared to Lilly he had totally forgotten her presence and was speaking for his own delight in the play of his fancy. What he said seemed to have no bearing upon herself and her sorry existence.

But no, she was mistaken. His gold had been coined for her after all. He merely gave too much, and her brain lacked s.p.a.ce to receive all of it.

He walked with an elastic, somewhat tripping tread. His cane, stuck head downward in his coat pocket, tapped against his shoulder. His white silk necktie gleamed. She saw nothing else of him. And he talked, talked.

Sometimes she felt that she was being boxed on the ear, and anon that she was being stroked tenderly.

When he made mock of Richard and Richard's friends, she wanted to contradict him, but he never mentioned names. Besides she had always thought the same, it seemed to her.

He alluded cautiously to her aristocratic past, chose pictures from country life, extolled discreet horseback rides _a deux_, and the transports awakened by reddish, golden dawns. Lilly felt he had been present at all the events of her life.

"I have lived a good deal in castles," he added by way of explanation.

"I know it all."

Oh, if his past had been similar!

So he drilled ever deeper into her soul.

When he began to speak of the books he had brought her--he considerately ignored her having denied herself the time he had called--she ventured a languid resistance.

"Please don't lend me anything of the sort again," she entreated.

"Why not?"

"The books confuse and sicken me--I don't know. You said they would lead me to myself. On the contrary. It seemed to me everything was growing strange which I had once looked upon as right and sacred.

"Perhaps it should be so," he replied, setting his cane a-dancing.

"Perhaps that is the prime demand I have to make of you in the name of a higher life. Let me tell you a little fable apropos. Once upon a time there were two good old missionaries. To satisfy a strong spiritual craving they wanted to spread Christianity in Central Africa. There is really no need for such queer fish, but they do exist, and we must accept the fact. They took a small portable organ with them for enhancing the solemnity of their sermons. In the sweat of their brows and the encouraging heat of the tropics, they dragged it hundreds of miles into the interior, where dwelt the poor naked savages upon whom they had designs. There they set their organ down and began to play. But scarcely did the poor naked savages hear the first chords, when they took up their clubs and beat the good missionaries to death--on account of the spirits, of course, who resided in the chest. Life does the same to us if we attempt to play on the good old organ of our moral exactions."

Lilly felt she could not cope with his superior intellect.

Now he laid her arm in his without question, and she did not venture to withdraw it.

They walked along lowering factory walls, amid whose dark ma.s.ses a lantern now and then spread its milky circle of light. Scaffoldings stretched their bony arms to the sulphur-coloured sky, and from parallel streets came the intermittent clang of electric tram gongs.

"Where are we going?" asked Lilly, anxiously.

"We're going out of the way of society. And if I wanted to exploit the present conjuncture of circ.u.mstances I should profit by your being lost, your feeling that you need protection. But I'm not a calculating nature.

In matters of emotion I'm like a child. I take whatever the heavens rain down on me. Aren't you the same way?"

"I'm too heavy," replied Lilly, ready to bare her soul to him. "I'm full of scruples. I think a lot over everything."

"The question is _what_ you think," he said gaily.

She wanted to reply and talk to him--tell him all her thoughts. She felt like holding out her heart on her open palm, so that nothing should remain concealed from him. But shame before his great wisdom sealed her lips.

"Why do you take the trouble to bother with a stupid thing like me?" she asked, to show him her humility at least.

"Perhaps because I have a mission to fulfil in your life. 'Perhaps,' I say, because one can never be sure whether there is such a thing as reflex action of the emotions. Certain _moments psychologiques_ will teach us."

Though his meaning was not at all clear to Lilly, a hesitating sense of happiness stole over her that so mighty a man should actually concern himself with her.

"You are entirely in his power," she thought, "and you will be whatever he wants you to be."

At that moment he drew her arm a little closer, and her pressure in response brought his hand for an instant on her breast.

She was overwhelmed with fright. He might think she was offering herself to him. If he were to take her home, were to ask--

"I'd like to get into a tram," she faltered. "I'm very tired."

He whistled for a cab, which just then came swaying out of the fog.

"No, no," she burst out, thinking of nothing but that she must not lightly forego the joy of his friendship. "Not with you--I must go home alone--on account--"

She tore her arm from his and ran to the next stopping place so quickly that he was just about able to reach her before she jumped on the first tram that came along. She scarcely said good-by.

The smile with which he looked after her was by no means melancholy.

He might, he should triumph.

She, Lilly Czepanek, was once again aspiring to the heights.

Three days later they met again; this time in a large company which had visited a _cafe chantant_, and was to wind up the evening at a respectable bodega.

Unluckily somebody else took the seat at her side, which she had carefully reserved for him.

That upset her.

The champagne heated up everybody's spirits.

Lilly, out of spite and boredom, drank more than was good for her.

Provocative merriness burned in her eyes. Her cheeks took on the Baldwin apple hue that they all dearly loved. Her laughter rang out clear, her body moved more nonchalantly.

Suddenly she heard a general outcry: "Lilly! Lilly! We want Lilly!"

Terror stopped her pulse.

She had never ventured to perform in his presence. In fact, she had not been asked to when he had been there, for then _he_ formed the centre of attraction.

But she felt:

"I can do it to-day. To-day I will show him what I am."