She held out her hand to Lilly with her most alluring smile, but, when she turned to Richard, there flashed in her shifty bright eyes a gleam of determination similar to that with which she intimidated her red-headed lover into taking his tabloids for dyspepsia. As since the carnival they had continued outwardly to maintain the sham of a platonic friendship, Richard meekly took up his hat, as if giving Lilly a cue to ask him formally if he could not stay longer. But the little woman forestalled them. "Don't pretend," she said, "that you are not perfectly at home here. As if I didn't understand! Please call each other by your Christian or pet names, and I'll seem as if I hadn't heard." Both smiled, and while Lilly gave her guest a cup of tea, he toyed with the newspaper in question, a little obviously, for he wanted to find out whether Frau Sievekingk had heard anything of their great triumph. "That is just what I've come to talk about," said the little lady, "that rubbish in the paper. I suppose you think an awful lot of it?" Richard made a gesture of protest, but smiled complacently. "To speak frankly, I should have credited you with a little more sense." "Would you really?" Richard exclaimed, aghast, and Lilly jumped. The crouching fear that had made itself felt earlier seemed to tell her that even this piece of undiluted good fortune might conceal a sting. "Please listen to what I am going to say," the little visitor continued, and her eyes flashed now not shiftily but steadily. "I have experience in these matters, for my red-headed boy tried the same game on with me at first.... I wonder if the thought has ever occurred to you, Herr Dehnicke, that when one of the _elite_, as is that sweet exquisitely unique creature sitting there, entrusts herself to your care, you have taken a gigantic responsibility upon your shoulders? Do you men think we exist merely to feed and advertise your vanity? We're not milliners or chorus girls who want to be dressed up in silks and chiffons simply that the world may see what a dog you are. We may have lost caste, it is true, but that doesn't mean we are by a long way come down to what you would like to treat us as." Richard struggled to retort, but could not find words.