"Ah! if I were to tell you the stories of all the women who are around us, you would be surprised," Frau Jula went on. "Some will only look at girls. Some let furnished rooms to students, that are only taken by those they fancy; others"--here she lowered her voice to a whisper--"others find their lovers in the streets." Lilly shuddered. "What? Have I sat next them, perfectly unsuspecting?" Frau Jula's eyes burned into vacancy. "It's awful, isn't it?" she said, and laughed. "I don't care so much; you see, I have my poetry the sort of thing that gives me absolution. For its sake everything is sacrificed. One must have sensations. I must feel my blood run quicker ... I must study human nature; there is something new in everyone.... No matter how wretched a specimen a man is, with brains and soul that might be packed into a thimble, he can give you an hour of ecstasy--one hour in which bells chime, in which the spheres are full of organ-sounds. And the more you have, the more life you live, the more souls do you creep to the other side of. Doors are flung open: all secrets are revealed.... And if you can hear a stranger's heart beating, can feel his heart-beats in your fingertips--then he is yours, part of yourself. Then you live one life more. Yes, that is life--really life." She put up her arms and clasped her hands at the back of her neck. Lilly said to herself that she couldn't take this talk seriously, but she felt hot and cold waves pass over her. "I don't understand at all what you are talking about," she said, rising. Frau Jula didn't seem to hear. Her eyes were full of mystic fire. She looked like a priestess sacrificing to strange gods. It struck eight. The maid servant who had been laying the table in the next room had set a place for the lady, who didn't seem inclined to go, and now came in to announce that the repast was ready. "Will you stay and have supper with me?" Lilly asked against her will. Frau Jula at last collected herself; she neither accepted nor declined, but got up and removed her scarlet toque from her dark locks. "I am quite mad, am I not?" she asked, and the silly but alluring smile played about her lips again. With a sigh of relief, Lilly opened the dining-room door. The table was covered with a sheeny damask cloth, on which leaves of light were cast by the hanging lamp. The bright-coloured dinner service, copied from an old Strasburg pattern, had been bought by Lilly cheap at a sale, and the plate, including the castors and the sugar-tongs, shone as brightly as real silver, and could only be distinguished from it by the absence of a mark. The idea was, that when Richard stayed to meals he should find all as well ordered and spick-and-span as at his mother's table.