From time to time she looked around at her friend.
He stood behind her, and smiled rea.s.suringly, but said nothing. A mottled red burned on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Perhaps he had drunk too much champagne. As for herself, though she had taken only a sip, her head was spinning dizzily.
At two o"clock the speech-making ended. Now the final restraints were thrust aside. The company romped madly, danced, kissed, drank, quarrelled, and fought duels. Lovers stabbed themselves and were carried out dead. The cannon shot off crackers. A thin, droll youngster clad in a Greek gown, which an obliging model had lent him, stood in front of the "Arbour of the Right to Motherhood," and held forth in a singing falsetto. Science had shown, he said, by the results of artificial fish culture that man as a factor in reproduction would soon be unnecessary.
At the entrance to the "Arbour of the Cry for Man" a small, wild person with curly black hair had climbed on a chair and kept screaming "A woman! A woman! A woman!" Into the "Arbour of Perversity" they had pushed the baker and his corpulent better half, and each time the two kissed on command a shout of laughter went up outside.
Lilly"s head was a-whirl with the tumult. Everything turned in a circle, screeching, darting, hammering, like a series of painful flashes.
"We"d better be going," Mr. Dehnicke"s voice behind her advised.
She arose and stretched her arms with a shiver.
_That_ had been life! Life! Life!
Then she followed him.
Mr. Kellermann had noticed her leave, and furtively slipped up to her in the hall. His open collar hung over his jacket, his cheeks were puffed and shiny. He looked like a young Falstaff.
He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say, "It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps.
The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann turned to Lilly and whispered:
"The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?"
"Entirely," she replied with a languid smile.
"You"ll never come?"
"Never."
"And I tell you"--he led her to one side next to the banisters--"I tell you, you _will_ come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and you won"t know--"
Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent.
Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the bacchic faun.
She laughed at him.
The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down.
Leaning lightly against her friend"s shoulder she walked airily down the steps singing and swaying her hips.
The whole world seemed to have pa.s.sed into a soft, perfumed, chiming twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining.
Dehnicke"s carriage was waiting.
"Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in her fill of the invigorating, snowy air.
She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang and beat time with her feet.
He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night.
"Do say something," she cried.
"What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his bleared eyes.
They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage.
Lilly sank into a drowsy state.
"Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this way forever."
Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter"s arm was clasping her waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter"s neck, as once on blessed November nights.
But--where did Walter come from all of a sudden?
She started up and sank back, wide awake.
No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper arm.
"And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written.
He was demanding it after all.
How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later--Walter, whom everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there was salvation for her on earth.
To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But now it availed nothing.
Cautiously, as if fearing to hurt him, she withdrew from his arm and pressed against the other side of the brougham.
"Why didn"t you stay?" he asked, stammering like a drunkard. "Weren"t you comfortable?"
She shook her head.
He repeated the question several times. She maintained silence. She felt any word she might utter would entangle her still further.
Then he clasped her hand, which hung down limply.
"I mayn"t," she whispered, extracting her hand from his. "And you mayn"t, either."
"Why mayn"t we?"
"You will reproach yourself dreadfully later when you recall you are responsible to him."
"Whom?" he asked.
"Whom? _Him._ Whom else? You always say you"re nothing but his agent, and--"