Raised to her full height, Lilly stood in the centre of the room in her blue Venus robe and held out her hand to him. The wide sleeves fell away and revealed the mature womanly beauty of her arms.

"If he sees me this way," she thought, "he will still be mine."

But he did not turn about. He reeled. His forehead struck against the half-open door.

All of a sudden he seemed to have been wiped out of existence, and with him the light of the world. A swarm of bees buzzed about her head, and in the darkness enveloping her, she sank through the floor, deeper, deeper, into the ca.n.a.l--a club dealt her a blow on her forehead--and all was over.

At first it sounded like a chirping of birds, then like the murmur of a mighty throng in some wide sunny place; and then only two voices sounded, one a man's, the other a woman's. They kept up an eager, whispered conversation.

The cook--Maggie--and the lackey with the mischievous smile. Of course, that's who they were.

The colonel would enter the next instant and want her to be his wife.

Something cool and damp dropped soothingly on her aching head. Just as then.

"So I'll have to go through all that again," she thought in terror, and she began to cry and entreat:

"Oh, colonel, please let me go. I'm much too bad for you! Oh, _dear_ colonel."

"For G.o.d's sake, she's raving!" said the man. After all he wasn't the horrid lackey.

Oh, how deliciously at ease she lay in the spell of that voice, in which a home-like note quivered solicitously.

"He didn't go at any rate." The thought tranquillised her, and she settled herself more comfortably on the pillow they had placed under her neck on the floor. If she had known his first name, she would have spoken to him. Why, how disgraceful not to know his first name yet. So she merely raised her arms a little toward him.

Instantly he was kneeling beside her, stroking her hands.

"Keep real quiet," he said, "real, real quiet."

"Will everything be all right now?" she asked, smiling up to him in blissful peace.

Yes, yes, everything would be all right. Ways and means would be found for their remaining together--like two friends, like a brother and sister. They wouldn't part--no, no, they wouldn't part. n.o.body need be tortured so terribly as that.

Lilly shuddered and thought of the moment when the light about her had gone out, and she had sunk into the wet, slimy depths.

Thus life would have been without him.

But now they would wander toward the dawning sun hand in hand like brother and sister in innocent gaiety, liberated and purified.

Inconceivable happiness!

Strange that neither of them had hit upon the idea sooner.

She groped for his arm and with a contented sigh nestled her cheek in his hollow hand.

But Adele, who all the while had considerately been looking out of the window, thought the compress ought to be changed, because the wound on Lilly's forehead was still bleeding.

CHAPTER XIV

Each spring in a man's life has its peculiar aspect and its peculiar history. Each spring finds him different, each stirs new depths and opens fresh, hidden wounds. One spring pa.s.ses by like a dull, vapid game, because he himself just then happens to be dull and vapid. Another tortures him with a thousand fruitless admonitions, because he cannot pay off a penny of the debt he owes himself. A third finds him listless and sodden as a field which cannot recover from the winter stress. And again the spring-time chants deceptive hymns of liberation and redemption in his heart, as if _it_ had the power to liberate and redeem.

But most beautiful is that spring of which we are scarcely aware for all the spring joy within us; whose bourgeoning seems but a reflection of our spiritual bourgeoning, and which is but the accompaniment of the mighty growth that broadens our minds and souls and fairly bursts the bonds of our being.

Such a spring broke upon Lilly.

Everything took on a new aspect. Never had the morning sun painted such crinkly, laughing grotesques on the walls. Never had rainy days enveloped the world in such languishing violet twilights. Never had people's faces been brightened by so much expectant festivity. Never had the din and bustle of the streets revealed so much joyous, purposeful activity.

Why, all of a sudden Lilly also was overwhelmed with work.

Every hour was filled with urgent occupations. If anyone in the last few years had dared to tell her that the day would come again when with burning cheeks and a heated brain she would indiscriminately cram names, dates, biographies, lists of great men's works, poetical quotations, and foreign terms, she would have laughed him to scorn.

But it would never do to loaf now. She must be ready with a response on any occasion, just as she had been when he asked her about Giotto. All her eagerness for knowledge, which a feeling of spiritual isolation and aimless endeavour had dammed up within her for years, now gushed out.

Her mind, insatiate as a fallow, unfertilised field, absorbed whatever was thrown upon it. She scarcely needed to put forth the least effort.

If she merely imagined herself repeating it to him, it remained in her memory.

She went at her studies with the utmost secrecy. Konrad--yes, his name was Konrad--must not suspect that her wisdom had just issued brand-new from the laboratory. She also kept her visits to the museums a secret.

He was to suppose she had always been thoroughly familiar with the masters. In addition she had to practice many a piece of early music which he wished to hear for his work. And often she blessed her father's strict hand which had held her down on the piano stool throughout many a long night.

Lilly and Dr. Rennschmidt saw a great deal of each other--every other evening of course. He avoided coming afternoons, which, he knew, belonged to her betrothed's friend. But often he ran up to her in the middle of the day to bring her a book or some flowers and ask her for a bit of music. No matter how much she pressed him, he never remained for a meal. In fact, he seemed not to feel quite at ease in her apartment.

He would walk up and down incessantly, pretty soon glance at the clock, and take leave. At first she felt hurt, then she asked him teasingly whether he thought he was in an enemy's country, and finally she adopted the policy of _laissez faire_.

Oh, she did not yet thoroughly understand him. Each day laid bare new, unusual sides of his being.

He was still very young. Not only in years. She had met many a cold, blase old man of twenty-five. His youth was deep-seated. He thought pa.s.sionately. Lilly had never seen such fervour expended on pure thinking. Ideas seemed to him like tangible beings with which he had to strive breast to breast, and which he drew to himself if they proved to be friendly to his intellectual att.i.tude, or rejected if hostile.

Similarly, great thinkers and creators of the past were either allies or enemies. He a.s.sociated with them as with teachers and comrades, adoring or despising them, submitting to their reprimands, or turning them into laughing-stocks.

His thoughts and speech were in a constant state of flux with counter-currents and a whirl of contradictions. He was like a man forcibly cleaving a way, or giving merciless chase. He never remained indifferent or apathetic to a phenomenon, spiritual or physical.

Everywhere he saw problems to be solved and vexed questions in regard to which he must take one side or the other. He either loved or hated. He scarcely knew a stage between.

And Lilly followed him with all the ardour of a pupil and lover. She planted each idea of his in her being and let it take root or die as chance willed. No need to cherish it; she enjoyed sufficient wealth without it.

He spoke little of his personal matters, not from distrust or reserve, but because he deemed them of small importance. Lilly had to extract jots of information by questioning.

He was very enthusiastic about his parents, though their pictures seemed to have faded in his mind or lost form.

His uncle had taken their place, the self-made man and globe-trotter who had made Dr. Rennschmidt his heir, and who even during his lifetime allowed him means for a modest, yet care-free existence.

Lilly could not fathom the inner relationship of the two men. Sometimes, it seemed, Dr. Rennschmidt cherished a tender love for the old man. Then again he was skeptical, almost bitter in his judgment of him. Evidently a profound difference existed in their natures, though they struggled for compromise.

He had few friends--chiefly old fellow-students--and he never paid purely social visits. As a result he could spend all his leisure hours with Lilly.

They sat in the restaurants, generally the little Italian bodega, until the waiter turned out the lights over their heads, to their invariable surprise--they had just come.