"One would have to begin here," she thought, "to win the confidence of all." So she nodded at them pleasantly and spoke a few friendly words. But her little advances were wrongly interpreted. They thought she mocked them, and with an almost contemptuous grimace went back to their work. Lilly's appearance in the packing-room, where women and children alone were employed, produced a happier impression. The girls giggled, whispered, and nudged each other. Only one woman, who was _enceinte_, took no notice of her. She seemed hardly able to stand on her feet and was near to sinking on the floor. She kept her relaxed pale lips tightly compressed, her cheeks wore a hectic flush, and her arms moved in feverish zeal as she wrapped one sheet of paper after the other round the limbs of the figures standing before her on the table, swaying first to the right and then to the left under her touch. "May I give her something?" asked Lilly, in an aside to Herr Dehnicke. "She is being looked after," he answered uneasily, as if displeased, and he quickly led the way to another door. "This is where the figures are stored," he said, "until sold, with the exception of those, naturally, that are made to order." Lilly looked down a long dusky gallery and met an icy-cold draught. Ranged on stands and shelves she saw endless regiments of ghostly objects, dwarfs, gnomes, monsters, shapeless in their wrappings of paper, yet looking somehow human, and as if they had been petrified by accident. "How strange this is!" said Lilly with a slight shiver, and she prepared to walk down the narrow gangway, the windows of which were covered with ice and frost-patterns. The same moment she observed that her guide gave a start and seemed suddenly to have lost his presence of mind. Then he walked before her and barred the way. "What has happened?" Lilly asked in surprise. He coloured, and said: "We had better not go on. We'll go somewhere where there's more of interest to see. There's nothing at all here." He planted himself firmly in front of her so that Lilly could not catch a glimpse of the shelves along the wall. Of course, this completely aroused her curiosity. "But I should like to go on," she said, and she assumed the defiant naughty manner which generally gained her the day with him. "No, no!" he exclaimed hurriedly. "There are secrets of business here that I can reveal to no one. Even the employes are not allowed to come in. I am very sorry, but I really cannot." "Then you should not have brought me in at all," said Lilly, and she turned back in high dudgeon. He exhausted every excuse he could think of, his excitement made him hoarse, and he coughed perpetually. He led her up the dirty steps again and over the gorgeous mosaic floor of the courtyard to the shoddy marble entrance, where a bitter wind was blowing. "You'll catch cold," she said, wishing to hasten her departure.