Then she bent tenderly towards Lilly, and continued: "A poor butterfly of aristocratic lineage comes flitting along unsuspectingly and says, 'Take me--you can do what you like with me.' And what are you going to do with her? Are you going to make a bad woman of her, or rather what the world accepts as a bad woman? No! I won't be contradicted. That's a good beginning," and she pointed to the paper; "if once the scorpions of the Press busy themselves about us, then the gallants of the Guards are on our track. Then God help you! They are far handsomer and more gallant than any of you, and if we must be driven into the ranks of the _cocottes_, we'd rather know by whom and for whom. Afterwards you find yourselves chucked, a stale joke of the day before yesterday--nothing more." All this confused Lilly and turned her giddy. She could not have believed that anyone would dare to speak to Richard in such a tone, and she laid her hand protestingly and comfortingly on his shoulder, fearful that he would be angry and assert his dignity as host. But he did nothing of the sort. "I am willing to be guided by you," he said humbly, "if you'll only tell me what----" "If you don't know what you ought to do, I'll tell you. You ought not to trot her out and put her through her paces as if she were a prize animal, exposing her to the gaze of any gaping crew. Don't put her in the front of your box at the theatre for every _roue_ to look at through his opera-glasses." Richard manned himself to parry her attack. "If I may venture to ask the question, are you not to be seen everywhere?" he asked. "Yes, certainly, because I want to see as well as be seen. That is why I ran away from my brute of a husband and chucked respectability. Still, I don't sit in the front of boxes, and I don't let myself be trotted up and down a race-course. I am a Bohemian; Lilly, on the contrary, with her placid refined nature, is a home-bird, and should be treated as if she were your legal wife.... We neither of us want to descend to the demi-monde--that is to say, what we call demi-monde here in Germany; in the French sense we are already there. Now I have said my say, Herr Dehnicke." Richard stood up. He had grown very red, and was biting his moustache with impotent resentment. "I have always put her welfare before everything," he said. "Besides, I have only acted according to her wishes; have I not, Lilly?" Lilly felt she couldn't contradict him. She did not desire to see him further humiliated, and said nothing. "And if you acted a thousand-fold according to her wishes," answered the little woman for her, "you were wrong. You should have said, 'My child, you don't understand this sort of life; as we are not married--which, mark my word, would be far the best for both of you--we must live at a moderate pace, otherwise I shall do you an irreparable injury and drag you into the mud.'"