Mr. Dehnicke and Lilly went along many strange streets all filled with human beings; and Lilly was happily conscious of having a leader and protector at her side in all that bustle.
Mr. Dehnicke, who had been brooding over something a long time, finally began:
"Have you reached a decision yet as to your way of living in the future?"
Lilly did not reply. She was fully determined to reject every offer on this point. But it is heavenly to have someone begging of you; you feel you are of some value in the world.
"If I had the right to make a choice for you," he continued in his modest, prim way, "I think I could find a little corner that you would delight in."
"I"m not so sure of that," she rejoined, half in jest. "You seem to a.s.sume that our tastes are absolutely similar."
"Oh, no! I"m not so presumptuous. But recently I saw an apartment that I think would please you, unless I"m very much mistaken. It belongs to a lady customer of mine who left town."
"What a pity! I should like to have seen it, if for no other reason than to find out whether you have a correct estimate of me."
He reflected.
"I think it can be arranged. I think I can take you to see it. The maid, to be sure, won"t be in, because it"s Sunday, but the porter"s wife knows me and will give me the key. So if you want to--"
Lilly hesitated to force herself into the home of an absolute stranger, but Mr. Dehnicke overbore her objections, summoned a cab, and ordered that they be driven to the western section of the city, where the houses are statelier and the people look more aristocratic and a row of glorious chestnut trees planted in velvety gra.s.s hang over the blue waters of a ca.n.a.l.
"Oh, what a joy it must be to live here!" she cried.
The cab drew up at a corner house on the "Konigin-Augusta-Ufer."
Dehnicke went to the porter"s lodge and spoke a few words through the window. A key was handed to him, and he led Lilly up the carpeted stairs of carved oak. How easy to ascend them, and how different from the bare flagging at home, which hurt one"s feet.
He stopped at a door on the second floor, and politely rang in case the maid should be in after all. But no one answered the ring, so he unlocked the door with the key.
In the meanwhile Lilly tried to read the name posted alongside the door on a porcelain plate, but unsuccessfully, owing to the dim lighting in the halls.
They entered a narrow, dark anteroom smelling of fresh paint, and pa.s.sed through it to a room with one window. Here tall closets with gla.s.s doors curtained with green silk were ranged against the walls. The furniture consisted of nothing but two armchairs, a few small gilt chairs, and a large, dark, highly polished dining-table.
"This is really a dining-room," said Mr. Dehnicke. "But it wouldn"t be bad for a sample room and private studio for you."
Lilly, who would have enjoyed contradicting him, was compelled to agree.
Adjoining the dining-room on the right was the bedroom with strawberry-colored cretonne drapery, old rose enamelled furniture, and a broad, canopied bed with a puffy silk counterpane and curtains held together by a dull gold seven-pointed coronet.
"Does your customer belong to the n.o.bility?" asked Lilly, seized by a vague feeling of envy.
"Not that I know of. Her husband isn"t a n.o.bleman. But maybe she herself is of n.o.ble extraction."
Lilly heaved a little sigh, recalling her ivory toilet articles and her underwear embroidered with a coronet lying in Mrs. Laue"s musty drawers.
How well they would suit a place like this! She rapturously breathed in the delicate lilac perfume which penetrated the entire room like the aroma of an aristocratic spring, and shuddered as she compared it with the poor-people"s odour that was invading her Dresden treasures with deadly certainty, no matter how persistently she aired them.
"Happy creature!" she said softly.
It struck Lilly as peculiar that no traces were to be seen of the life and activity of the mistress of the place, not a silk ribbon, no matinee, or nightgown, not a bit of underwear.
"She probably locked everything away, or took everything with her," said Mr. Dehnicke.
They returned to the dining-room, and through the other door on the left entered a small drawing-room at the corner of the house. It was flooded with sunlight.
Lilly clasped her hands rapturously.
She looked at the delicate old rose carpet with a pattern of vaguely outlined vines, at the dear little crystal chandelier, whose prisms radiated all the colours of the rainbow, at the dark reddish mahogany furniture with bronze statuettes on the dainty tables--a woman about to dive into water with outstretched arms, a reaper folding his hands in prayer at the sound of the Angelus, and similar subjects. There was a little bookcase, a lady"s secretaire, paintings on the walls, and even an upright piano.
"A piano!" sighed Lilly closing her eyes in mournful bliss.
There were animate objects, too. In front of one of the three windows stood an aquarium with a broad-leaved palm rising over it, and the sunlight gleaming on the water and the gold fish. A canary bird chirped at them from another window.
Lilly recalled her light blue realm. In comparison how plain and compact all this was--like a bird"s nest--yet how inconceivably charming when contrasted with the horror she now dwelt in.
"Why, it"s a veritable paradise!" she said gaily, though tears were rising in her eyes.
"Here is one more room," said Mr. Dehnicke, opening a door which Lilly had failed to notice. "It has a separate entrance from the hall of the house. The lady probably uses it as a guest room, or something like that. If you were living here, it would do admirably for a place for your a.s.sistants to work in."
Lilly looked in. The room was more simply furnished than the others, though not without care. In the middle of the floor stood a wide table with greenish grey upholstered chairs standing about it, and in a corner was a comfortable iron bed.
"If you had it, of course, the bed would have to be removed," explained Mr. Dehnicke.
It was really remarkable how well the apartment suited her purposes.
They returned to the drawing-room. Lilly was struck by something she had not observed before. A long picture in an ornate carved frame hung over the sofa, forming, as it were, the centre about which all the rest of the furnishings were grouped. But the picture itself was concealed beneath a curtain of lavender c.r.a.pe.
"What"s that?" Lilly asked.
Mr. Dehnicke shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of the secretaire, where a photograph, the only ornament there, had the same mysterious veil.
Seized with curiosity Lilly tried slightly to raise the lower end of the covering over the large picture.
"I wonder whether I may," she queried timidly, as if about to commit a theft.
"If you have the courage," he replied, apparently breathing a little more heavily than usual.
She tugged--tugged more violently--the c.r.a.pe fell off--and before her hung her friend and betrothed, Walter von Prell! There he stood in the uniform of his former regiment, boldly and carelessly dashed off in crayon.
Lilly"s knees trembled. Cold shivers ran through her body. She refused to believe, to understand. Then she felt Mr. Dehnicke take her hand and draw her to the outside hall.
He lit a match.
On the porcelain plate she now read what she had previously been unable to decipher:
Lilly Czepanek Pressed Flower Studio
She uttered a cry, rushed back into the drawing-room, threw herself in the corner of the sofa, and wept the hot, blissful tears of desire and yearning that had so long been repressed.
When she ventured to look up again, she saw Mr. Dehnicke waiting before her, modest and correct, with his sober, serious face.