After the meal they seated themselves in the drawing-room.
It was July, and a hot breeze blew through the open windows. But the naked little monkey, whose cage stood next to the aquarium, shivered even at this season, and had to be wrapped in a cloak, an attention to which he submitted, snarling all the while.
The canary sang its evening song, and twilight fell.
Fritz Redlich sat in the rocking chair, in which he liked to lounge after a meal. Lilly walked up and down the room agitatedly.
"Now I"ll be lonely again," she thought, "and I"ll fling myself about as before."
Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune!
She told him so for about the hundredth time.
"Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it"s hard, very hard."
"Oh, don"t always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out.
We"re old friends."
"I will gladly if you wish it."
Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer hesitatingly, like a light in the distance.
"Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have you ever been in love?"
He started as if he had been hit.
"In love? What do you mean?"
"Well--what do you think--I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of the rocking chair with her thumb nail.
He seemed to breathe more easily.
"For that which one calls real love I"ve never had the time or the desire."
"And hasn"t any woman ever loved you?"
"Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders.
His embittered dejection annoyed her.
"Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little teasing.
He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled him with dread.
Poor fellow! A girl"s eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman"s arm had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman.
An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago, which would prove to him how mistaken he was.
She choked it down.
Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving Berlin.
Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the little canary also slept.
Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she pa.s.sed the rocking chair.
She halted in front of him again.
There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected nothing. Suspected nothing of what women"s arms could bestow.
Poor, poor fellow!
"You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said with a constrained laugh, "then you"ll succeed better with the women."
With difficulty, as if she were drawing up a hundred pound weight, Lilly raised her left hand, and laid it on his hard, crisp hair, which sank under the light touch like a cushion.
He stopped rocking abruptly, looked about on all sides uneasily, and coughed a little.
"Why, yes," he said after a pause. "That"s good advice. If I want to make a pleasant impression in my new position--"
As he spoke he turned to the window, causing her hand to slip down on his neck.
Lilly swallowed a sigh, and he jumped up to take leave.
She was too embarra.s.sed to invite him to remain.
The maid was already standing outside with a lamp to light his way down the stairs.
"Day after to-morrow!" Lilly called to him from the window.
He nodded up his thanks, and disappeared in the dark.
Poor, poor fellow! Engulfed in bitterness and despondency, he walked away little divining what happy gardens blossomed about him.
The rest of the evening Lilly was absorbed in anxious, confused thoughts.
"I ought not to have laid my hand on his head," she said to herself.
Nevertheless she was glad she had.
The next morning a postal card came from Mrs. Jula saying she had gotten word from "up there." Everything was proceeding smoothly. Lilly"s protege was to enter his position immediately. Money for his travelling expenses had already been forwarded to him.
Lilly wept tears of joy.
Her work was complete. Her girlhood friend had been saved and won back to life. With work and effort, with deception and fear she had made him her own.
And when he came the next evening, as had been arranged, she would tell him all: that about her loving him when she was a girl--everything.