Still sadder did she feel when someone, whose appearance she liked, took no notice of her. "I am not good enough for him," she would think. "He despises me. I wonder why he despises me?" In fashionable resorts, such as the dining-room of the Bruehlische Terrace, where there was a perpetual crossfire of covert glances, her attitude towards the outside world began gradually to alter. She would acknowledge the incense burnt at her shrine by an ever so slight grateful uplifting of her eyes. She returned without shyness the scrutiny of ladies, and in spite of being blessed with sight as keen as a falcon's, she would dearly have loved to possess a lorgnette like theirs. She was often tormented with a desire to look deep into eyes that rested on her without reserve, fear or restraint. It would have been a mystical union of souls, which would have done her infinite good; for she could not disguise the fact from herself any longer--she was hungering for something, hungering as she had never hungered in her life before. The colonel appeared perfectly oblivious of what was passing within her. But he waged bitter warfare with all who laid siege to her with their glances. The old Uhlan was incessantly on the watch, and was ready to stab on the instant with his eye's deadly darts the too persistent and ardent adorers. But there were some who were not in the least discomposed by his threatening demeanour, and who even had the audacity to return the compliment and look daggers at him. This made him uneasy, and he would fidget with his card-case, look as if he were going to write something, then put the pencil away; and generally he ended by saying, "We seem in undesirable company here. Come, let us go!" Yet, despite these uncomfortable experiences out of doors, he found it less and less possible to live at home completely _a deux_ with his young wife. From his youth upwards he had been accustomed to gay society, and he liked noise, laughter, and light around him. Nevertheless, his suspicions grew and centred on Lilly. One day he put a stop to her early church-going, in which she found her greatest solace. The impulse she had followed on the first morning that she awakened by his side had become by degrees a habit. While he slept on in profound slumber, she softly rose and dressed herself and glided out in the freshness of the dawn. It is true that her church-going consisted often of merely dipping her fingers in the holy water and curtseying three times. Now and then she contented herself by passing the church door with an untroubled conscience and not going in at all.