At this juncture that mysterious paper-creation, which on nearer inspection proved to be a lamp-shade, became her salvation. She had once been made a present of it by an artistic friend, and in her need she hit on the happy idea of making others after the same pattern and offering them for sale. After years of hawking her wares about, after drudgery and disillusionment of all kinds, she had wrung from the public a market for "pressed flower lamp-shades," and a reputation as a specialist in this line of business. In her back parlour, with one window, which smelt of hay and paste, and where on a long white deal table lay in their hundreds and thousands the skeletons of floral denizens of the Thuringian Forest--she could not, of course, afford the time to gather them herself--she had drudged for nearly two decades, tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, and threading sixteen hours a day, and had earned, thanks to her reputation as a specialist, enough to enable her to let her best room--her treasure-trove and sanctuary--to a stranger for thirty marks a month. The two did not long remain strangers, however. Into the back-room existence of this downtrodden being, before whose eyes the pictures of a few bedizened ballet-girls shone and glittered as paragons of unattainable magnificence, Lilly descended from the real aristocracy like a heaven-born divinity. Her landlady idolised her as an emissary from regions that she had believed hitherto were only possible in fiction; where such expressions as "footman," "drawing-room," "pearl necklace"--Lilly took care to tell all about hers--came quite naturally instead of being rolled on the tongue and allowed slowly to melt as with closed eyes one conjured up the surroundings to which such a vocabulary belonged. Frau Laue became in very early days Lilly's confidante and adviser. She helped her to live down the shame following her divorce, she cheered her when a feeling of desolation overcame her, and painted for her a future in radiant colours. No one need perish in a great powerful miracle-working city like Berlin. Every day there were dozens of happy chances that might set you on your legs again. There were lonely old ladies dying to find someone to whom they could leave their money; there were aristocratic young ones who yearned to hold out a hand of sympathy and friendship to a poor, beautiful orphaned sister; there were famous artists who would gladly escape from the snares laid for them by female admirers in the arms of a good woman; and there were great poets with whom the post of muse was vacant. In fact, one of the greatest capitals in the world, it would appear, had only been waiting for Lilly's advent to lift her to its throne as conquering heroine.