And once again--before parting--she would lay her hand on his ma.s.s of hair. Then what would might follow.

The next evening she exercised greater care in dressing than was her wont when she and Fritz Redlich were together. She herself had cooked his potato soup and cut the right amount of beefsteak for him--he no longer devoured such huge portions. All the maid had to do was put it in the saucepan.

The clock struck eight. He had not come.

"He's busy packing," she comforted herself.

The clock struck ten. Hopeless. He was not coming. But perhaps he was standing on the street outside the locked door clapping the way Richard sometimes did.

Lilly remained leaning out of the window until the clock struck eleven.

Then she went to bed sad and weary.

The next morning she received the following letter:

"My dear Mrs. Czepanek:--

After I have succeeded through my own efforts in establishing a livelihood for myself, I deem it my duty to terminate my former life, which, as I pointed out to you several times, too frequently forced me into circ.u.mstances conflicting with my principles. My firm character was led into temptations from which, I will candidly confess, it did not always emerge intact.

I am well aware that I am under great obligations to you, and I hereby duly express my thanks. n.o.body shall say Fritz Redlich is an ingrate.

I have kept an accurate account of the cash that circ.u.mstances compelled me to accept from you. I will return it, also the suit I am wearing, as soon as my salary will enable me to. But had you really respected me, you would have spared me that humiliating encounter with the gentleman to whom the garment in question evidently once belonged.

I may not conclude without making the following remarks: improve your ways, Mrs. Czepanek. They are a slap in the face of all the laws of morality. I believe, in giving you this advice, I prove myself to be a truer friend than if I had continued to let you think me a dunce.

I remain your ever grateful

Fritz Redlich, cand. phil. et theol."

Lilly suffered long and deeply from this experience.

It was not until some months later, when the maid gave notice because the solitary evenings with the very moral young student had not remained without consequences, that Lilly could get herself to see that the incident had its humorous aspect.

CHAPTER XII

Early in the autumn of the same year Richard went to Ostend to have a married man's vacation, while Lilly cheaply and innocently pa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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 gra.s.s on the ca.n.a.l 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 n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sn.o.bbish 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.