Richard frequently brought with him sketches of models, and they would sit with their heads bent together over unrolled charts, planning and consulting like a pair of partners. Those hours were almost blissful, and she never tired of asking questions about the factory itself. How many hands, male and female, were employed there at the present moment? Was that man or woman or this one there now? She didn't know their names, but could describe their faces exactly. What work had they chiefly on hand? Had the supply of certain models run out? Thus she kept herself _au courant_ with the inner life of the business. The factory was her ill-starred love, as she often said in joke to Richard. If she was allowed to call for him after business hours at the office, it was the greatest treat he could give her. If she could have had her way she would have found an excuse for going daily to the factory; but Richard didn't wish it. The employes, he said, had long ago got to know what their relations to each other were, and he must be careful not to lay himself open to disrespectful gossip. She was sure that this could not be his only motive. There was something else behind. She had realised for some time that his mother was not well disposed towards her. Once he had talked about her quite freely and openly, but now he avoided the subject, even when Lilly asked direct questions. It was likely enough that he was afraid of raising the old lady's ire by giving his mistress the run of his office, so she had to content herself by taking interest from a distance in the welfare of the little kingdom. On the evenings that she was left alone, she was in the habit of making ten-o'clock pilgrimages to the Alte Jakobstrasse on her own account. She would take up a position on the opposite side of the street and gaze reverentially across at the old grey house, with its wonderful modern embellishments. She admired the imitation marble pillars, which now gave an air of splendour, in the style of the Renaissance, to the entrance. She stared up at the floor where his mother made her home, and withdrew timorously into the darkness of a doorway when a woman's threatening shadow was cast on the drawn curtains. When it grew late and people ceased to come in and out of the house, she would boldly cross the street, slip up the steps to the front-door, and with her face pressed against the iron gate peep at the interior of the staircase landing, whence came the sheen of laurels, the milky radiance of the Clytie bust, and the dark, rich chequered glow of the stained-glass windows, an impressive combination that recalled the dim religious light of a chapel. Those front-door steps grew to be a sort of sacred pilgrims' way, along which penitents crawled on their hands and knees; the stained-glass became a heavenly glory; the Clytie a benedictory saint. * * * * *