"Yes."
"He"s going to be _Privatdozent_, I suppose?"
"He"s not quite certain, but he probably will."
"And I suppose he"s highly intellectual and scintillating and superior?"
She turned her eyes heavenward.
"I"ve never in my life met a man who--" She stopped in fright. It was scarcely the better part of wisdom to give reins to her enthusiasm.
"Hm, hm," he said, as one who finds long harboured suspicions confirmed.
His face was quite red, and he gnawed the ends of his moustache.
"I knew it!" cried Lilly. "You"re jealous after all."
She felt as if a bitter injustice were being done her.
He said nothing more, and left lowering.
An hour later a package from Messrs. Liebert & Dehnicke was left at the door.
Lilly opened it and found it contained a man"s suit, which she recognised as one Richard had frequently worn the previous summer.
A letter accompanied the package.
"Dearest Lilly:--
As I promised you that time, I shall always be ready to come to the a.s.sistance of your affinities with old clothes. To further their progress I shall also be glad to provide them with old boots.
You see how jealous I am.
Your Richard."
In the exuberance of her delight Lilly drank to excess that evening.
Never--not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni--had she allowed her imitative faculties such full play. She was in a state of mad self-abandon.
In conclusion she danced on the tops of the tables set close together, a wild Salome dance, which had just then come into fashion.
Between her clenched teeth she zimmed strange oriental melodies.
"What"s that she"s mumbling?" the spectators asked.
Later they put the question to her.
But she had lost her senses. She was unconscious.
CHAPTER XV
The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the railroad station"s sooty gla.s.s roof.
Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.
The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an indispensable master of ceremonies.
There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing societies, and an entire department store.
In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from each other, so that n.o.body could be sure whether or not they belonged together. They made for one of the front coaches.
Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness--a mute homage which she well knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her triumph.
In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white--a linen crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the country until they wearied.
They sat in opposite corners of the third-cla.s.s compartment smiling slyly and saying not a word.
They were riding into the unknown.
"Follow me," he had said. "I"ll give you a surprise. We will go on a voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal.
Otherwise it wouldn"t be a voyage of discovery."
The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.
About an hour must have pa.s.sed and the compartment had long been empty, when he nodded to her to get out.
"Where are we?"
"What difference does it make where we are?"
Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the station.
They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display windows to proclaim the Sunday.
Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A turkey c.o.c.k strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them--no more organ tones.
The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it.
Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.
They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of silvery white dust chased ahead of them.
Konrad knew and saw everything--how the falcon flapping its wings stood still in the air--how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump leapt away in droll haste--every minute there was something new.
Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming spring.
"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have been so different."