Lilly burst into a fit of wild laughter. "Oh, how funny! How very funny!" she exclaimed, and this time the colonel believed her. "Yes; but something funnier is coming," he continued. "I said to him, 'If you confess the whole truth, I'll forgive you; if not, you'll go packing to-morrow early.' And then it came out--what do you think the rascal has been up to? Carrying on with the barmaid at the _Golden Apple_, if you please--the resort of non-commissioned officers and clerks. So that he might loaf there at his ease, he bribed the porters, and actually went and came back in the same train with me evening after evening concealed in the luggage van. If that isn't impudence, I don't know what is--eh, Lilly?" There was a pause. She felt herself tossing on a stormy sea, a boiling and singing in her ears, and felt at the same moment Anna's hand closing on hers under the table, in warning pressure. "Yes, it certainly is very funny," she said. The tone in which she spoke was not convincing, for another pause ensued. Then the colonel rose, took her head between his hands, pressing it so hard she thought her ears would split, and said: "You certainly appear in need of rest." With this he turned on his heel and went out of the dining-room. "Now pull yourself together, dear," Lilly heard her friend's voice urging her, "because after this he'll be on the _qui vive_." Lilly was going to throw herself on Fraeulein von Schwertfeger's bosom, hoping to be petted and consoled, but she held herself aloof, as if she feared being caught in too intimate converse with Lilly, and said in a tone of strained friendliness: "Excuse me, Lilly dear. There is something I must attend to at once," and she too left the room. "What now?" she thought. She looked about her. The remains of their abruptly finished meal were still on the table. The dark oak furniture cast shining black shadows into the wintry half-light of the room. The old brass chandeliers gleamed dully. All was as it always was, and yet there was nothing there--only a cruel, all-devouring void, an abyss which lured her into its depths as if drawing her with hooks and pulleys. She went to the window, and looked out apathetically. The bare branches shook in the wind, the ivy on the railing swayed; even the bent rose-trees, the shoots of which the old gardener had protected with straw, moved quiveringly backwards and forwards. All of them writhed in the grip of winter, and only the fallen leaves lying in heaps on the thin coating of snow were still, but they were dead eternally. What was to be done now? If this could happen, then all was in vain. There was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no more strength of purpose, and no more truth. You might as well throw yourself down on the ground beside the dead leaves and die.