"Afterwards, I suppose, you felt more reconciled?"
"That shows how little you know me. I"d promised the girls supper. So I had to eat with them. But when that was over I let "em slide. I ran about in the streets and just--howled!"
"Very well, but what exactly are you after?"
"That"s what I don"t know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But it"s something quite indefinite--hard to think, hard to comprehend.
I"d like to howl with laughter and I don"t know why ... to shriek, and I don"t know what about."
"Blessed youth!" Niebeldingk thought, and looked at the enthusiastic boy full of emotion. ...
John, who was serving, announced that the florist"s girl had come with the Indian lilies.
"Indian lilies, what sort of lilies are they?" asked Fritz overcome by a hesitant admiration.
"You"ll see," Niebeldingk answered and ordered the girl to be admitted.
She struggled through the door, a half-grown thing with plump red cheeks and smooth yellow hair. Diffident and frightened, she nevertheless began to flirt with Fritz. In front of her she held the long stems of the exotic lilies whose blossoms, like gigantic narcissi, brooded in star-like rest over chaste and alien dreams. From the middle of each chalice came a sharp, green shimmer which faded gently along the petals of the flowers.
"Confound it, but they"re beautiful!" cried Fritz. "Surely they have quite a peculiar significance."
Niebeldingk arose, wrote the address without permitting John, who stood in suspicious proximity, to throw a glance at it, handed cards and flowers to the girl, gave her a tip, and escorted her to the door himself.
"So they do mean something special?" Fritz asked eagerly. He couldn"t get over his enthusiasm.
"Yes, my boy."
"And may one know...."
"Surely, one may know. I give these lilies to that lady whose lofty purity transcends all doubt--I give them as a symbol of my chaste and desireless admiration."
Fritz"s eyes shone.
"Ah, but I"d like to know a lady like that--some day!" he cried and pressed his hands to his forehead.
"That will come! That will come!" Niebeldingk tapped the youth"s shoulder calmingly.
"Will you have some salad?"
Chapter III.
Around the hour of afternoon tea Niebeldingk, true to a dear, old habit, went to see his friend.
She inhabited a small second-floor apartment in the _Regentenstra.s.se_ which he had himself selected for her when she came as a stranger to Berlin. With flowers and palms and oriental rugs she had moulded a delicious retreat, and before her bed-room windows the nightingales sang in the springtime.
She seemed to be expecting him. In the great, raised bay, separated from the rest of the drawing-room by a thicket of dark leaves, the stout tea-urn was already expectantly humming.
In a bright, girlish dress, devoid of coquetry or pouting, Alice came to meet him.
"I"m glad you"re here again, Richard."
That was all.
He wanted to launch out into the tale which he had meant to tell her, but she cut him short.
"Since when do I demand excuses, Richard? You come and there you are.
And if you don"t come, I have to be content too." "You should really be a little less tolerant," he warned her.
"A blessed lot it would help me," she answered merrily.
Gently she took his arm and led him to his old place. Then silently, and with that restrained eagerness that characterised all her actions she busied herself with the tea-urn.
His critical and discriminating gaze followed her movements. With swift, delicate gestures she pushed forward the Chinese dish, shook the tea from the canister and poured the first drops of boiling water through a sieve.... Her quick, bird-like head moved hither and thither, and the bow of the orange-coloured ribbon which surrounded her over-delicate neck trembled a little with every motion.
"She really is the most charming of all," such was the end of his reflections, "if only she weren"t so d.a.m.nably sensible."
Silently she took her seat opposite him, folded her white hands in her lap, and looked into his eyes with such significant archness that he began to feel embarra.s.sed.
Had she any suspicion of his infidelities?
Surely not. No jealous woman can look about her so calmly and serenely.
"What have you been doing all this time?" he asked.
"I? Good heavens! Look about you and you"ll see."
She pointed to a heap of books which lay scattered over the window seat and sewing table.
There were Moltke"s letters and the memoirs of von Schon, and Max Muller"s Aryan studies. Nor was the inevitable Schopenhauer lacking.
"What are you after with all that learning?" he asked.
"Ah, dear friend, what is one to do? One can"t always be going about in strange houses. Do you expect me to stand at the window and watch the clouds float over the old city-wall?"
He had the uncomfortable impression that she was quoting something again.
"My mood," she went on, "is in what Goethe calls the minor of the soul. It is the yearning that reaches out afar and yet restrains itself harmoniously within itself. Isn"t that beautifully put?"
"It may be, but it"s too high for me!" In laughing self-protection, he stretched out his arms toward her.
"Don"t make fun of me," she said, slightly shamed, and arose.
"And what is the object of your yearning?" he asked in order to leave the realm of Goethe as swiftly as possible. "Not you, you horrible person," she answered and, for a moment, touched his hair with her lips.
"I know that, dearest," he said, "it"s a long time since you"ve sent me two notes a day."