She repulsed his attack fiercely and struggled with him. Tears of humiliation and fury coursed down her cheeks. "Have I come to this?" a voice cried within her as she struck at him with her fists. In the midst of the tussle she succeeded in reaching the bell. The maid-servant came in. He picked up his hat from the floor and, murmuring something that sounded like "_Canaille_!" disappeared. He disappeared too for ever from the little circle, which he had at times honoured with his presence. * * * * * Lilly gave up attempting to scale the heights. CHAPTER XI During the year that followed, Lilly engaged in two small love adventures, which had no influence on her subsequent life. While she was staying for a month's change of air in the Riesengebirge she came across a novelist whose name at that time was in everybody's mouth. He was parading his newly acquired fame at the Bohemian bathing resorts, and accepted cheerfully any good thing that came in his way. He forced his acquaintance on Lilly without much difficulty, and in a few days left her in search of fresh conquests. Back in Berlin, she flirted with a handsome and elegant officer of the Hussars whom she had first met in an aristocratic restaurant. But on his sending her a little leather case from a jeweller's, she speedily threw him over. Both these affairs gave her no pleasure to look back upon, and she tried to erase them from her memory. At Christmas her little household was increased by a new member. She had often complained to Richard that her life was empty of interest. She would like something alive to pet and cherish and love, and so one day he brought her a little naked monkey, that even when he nestled close to her breast could not get warm, and in his wrath spat in her face scorn of her yearning caresses. From time to time there was the excitement, too, of new marriage schemes. How well she knew the signs! When Richard, with scowlling brows, absent-minded, and taciturn, made the tour of the rooms, when he began to philosophise over the rottenness of everything, when his mother wanted the carriage at unwonted hours, when little packets of concert and opera tickets fell out of his pocket-book, then she knew that something was going on out of the ordinary routine. And soon he would break silence and tell her what it was. One of them had three millions, influential relatives, mines, factories, trusts, house property, making up a dazzling perspective. Often figures were talked in Lilly's corner drawing-room to such an extent that it might have been the office of an outside stockbroker. Another eligible young woman was actually poor, but she was a general's daughter, and his mother thought no end of her. "And I am a general's widow," said Lilly, in her wounded pride.