The laughing crowds of the Kranzlerecke fell behind--the dagger-like lights no longer p.r.i.c.ked her.
Lilly scarcely knew where she was going.
She had probably reached one of the quieter cross streets that lead to the northwest side.
The middle of the empty street was dotted with glistening puddles. The pluvial autumn wind came sweeping along between the rows of houses. The dark windows coldly reflected the light of the street lamps. Everything about her seemed lifeless, extinct. Only at rare intervals a phantom glided by, and the cats sped from hiding place to hiding place.
Shivering, Lilly pressed the score closer under her arm.
She pa.s.sed a florist"s shop, where the blinds of the show window had not been drawn. Glancing at her reflection, she was startled to see the p.r.i.c.kly foliage of laurels and cypresses.
What had gleamed like that?
Oh, yes! The Clytie that dreamily smiled down from the proud staircase of the house of Liebert & Dehnicke.
Now Lilly Czepanek would never mount those laurel-lined stairs in triumph, nor even crawl to look upon them a repentant sinner.
She reached a bridge.
She crossed it quickly.
That other bridge luring her on lay in remoter solitude, in darker silence.
"You have too much love in you," some one had once said. "All three kinds: love of the heart, love of the senses, love springing from pity.
One of them everybody must have. Two are dangerous. All three lead to ruin."
Who had that been?
Oh, yes! Her first flame, the poor consumptive teacher who had lectured to the Selecta on the history of art, and whom she and Rosalie Katz had helped to send to the promised land, the land she herself had never entered.
He had spoken of blue olive vapours--the sea blackened by the breath of the sirocco--and shining meadows of asphodel.
"What kind of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?"
How fantastic the foreign word sounded and how full of promise.
But her heels said: "Tap--tap--tap," and the railing of the bridge called to her.
A man spoke to her. Wouldn"t she--?
She shook him off like a worm.
She had been given another warning, also with three parts to it.
By whom?
Oh, yes! Mr. Pieper.
She suddenly heard the sententious admonition, in his very words and tone of voice, as if he had uttered it the day before:
"First, exchange no superfluous glances; second, demand no superfluous rendering of accounts; third, make no superfluous confessions."
"If I had not exchanged superfluous glances, I should have seen my promised land. If I had not superfluously demanded the rendering of an account, I should never have been expelled from Lischnitz. And if I had not made superfluous confessions--"
What then?
"Konni, Konni," she moaned. Her yearning welled up hot and painful, and forced her revolving thoughts from her mind.
She walked on reeling.
More streets disappeared in the fog, interrupted at one place by a gra.s.s plot with a hedge about it.
What sort of meadows could they be--meadows of asphodel?
Suddenly she stood at the bridge.
Like a thief in the night it loomed up in the darkness of the wide, silent place, where the lights of thousands of street lamps dwindled into tiny sparks.
A pale-faced full moon shone somewhere in the black sky. It was the illuminated clock of a railway station, the body of which was swallowed by the darkness.
Half-past one o"clock.
Lilly saw everything as through a spotted veil.
She was going to turn the corner of the wall. Instead, paralysed by horror, she sank down against it, her heart throbbing powerfully.
"After all I am not going to do it," she said to herself.
"Yet--I will," she answered.
She tried to go on--straight ahead--on the bridge, where the rail awaited her maliciously. But her legs refused to carry her.
The singing in her ears rose to a roar. She stood on the dark, solitary bank wavering.
She took the score in both hands, tore at it, and tried to crumple it into a ball. But it did not give way. Her Song of Songs was stronger than she.
Suddenly her feet moved of themselves, and carried her on--on--whether she willed it or not, past the lamps at the entrance to the rail awaiting her.
Now her fingers grasped the iron top of the railing.
All she could see of the water below was a dark, slimy shimmer. Not even the lamps were reflected in it.
Now, one leap--and the thing was done.
"Yes, I"ll do it, I"ll do it," a voice within her called.
But she had to send the Song of Songs ahead. It would be a hindrance to her as she climbed over.