One of the elect was that seductive little dark woman with the unsteady bright eyes and the silly laugh, who at the carnival had wanted to make a family party with her friend and Lilly at supper. She was called Frau Sievekingk, and prompted by a desire to "live life" she had left her husband, a doctor somewhere in Further Pomerania, and after various adventures was at present being kept by the wealthy proprietor of a steam-laundry, by name Wohlfahrt. He was as thin as a skeleton, had red hair, and suffered from dyspepsia, remedies for which she carried about with her in her handbag, in the shape of tabloids and quack powders. But this touching and considerate attention did not prevent her from deceiving him with every man who made advances to her. It was universally known, and no one blamed her, for she was a poet, and was obliged to seek experiences to write about. An inevitable result of indulging in what many a one had thought was an absolutely secret _liaison_ with her was to find himself a few weeks later portrayed to the life as the hero of a passionate short story in a modern German magazine, or providing a theme for a lurid love lyric. Frau Welter, the divorced wife of the famous composer, was another of their intimate circle. Her round, tanned face--she had lately come back from a secret mission to Algiers--formed a comical contrast to her mass of dyed golden hair, which stood out round her head and neck like a halo. It was rather a dangerous thing to become friendly with her. She asked everyone she met to lend her money, though she was well off, and in receipt of a handsome alimony from her husband's relatives. Her generosity was so boundless that she sacrificed all that she had and all that her friends lent her to a pair of ex-lovers, both of whom were scamps. No one exactly knew under whose protection she was living at the present moment. She was often seen with a puisne judge, who looked as if he had swallowed a poker and used his tongue instead of a toothpick. A thin shrewish little woman, pretty and malicious, with cold steel-blue eyes and sucked-in lips, always wore white silk, and trailed a fan-shaped train behind her: she called herself Frau Karla, but what her real name was no one knew except her lover, a very young, very pale and slim young man, the son of a rich manufacturer. He gratified her absorbing passion for pleasure, being completely in her power, and followed her about till dawn. In an unguarded moment he had rashly disclosed that she was the wife of a well-known Hebrew scholar, who lived a life of seclusion, and imagined that she was employed in visiting society in the west-end of Berlin, while he sat peacefully poring over his philological tables. All the time she was racing about from one haunt of vice to another in suspicious company.