This church mouse he called his "distinguished lady-love." But it went no further. She and all the rest were soon heard no more of, because none of them turned out in the end to be good enough for him. Lilly meditated and planned what she must be like.... She must have white, softly rounded statuesque arms like the tall Danish girl's at the artists' carnival, and a very delicate, scarcely perceptible bust--her own seemed to her now to be too prominent--and when she smiled she must show two dimples in her cheeks; for dimples denoted a peaceable disposition. Yes, that was what he wanted more than anything--peace. She knew how he hated wrangling, and, as a matter of fact, they hardly ever did wrangle; but, if such a thing as a little quarrel did occur, he would be miserable for three days, speak in a woebegone, injured tone, and had to be coaxed back to good temper like a child. And Lilly enjoyed doing this, though she knew he did not deserve it. For there was no blinking the matter any longer; he had become a regular reprobate. It was not so much that he had lost enormous sums at his club, but he led the debauched existence of the fastest married man, and his amours were not of the purest. One day a pretty young thing, with a baby eight weeks old in her arms, called on Lilly, screamed and cried and declared that she ought to be promoted to Lilly's place, as she had a child by him. Lilly consoled her, gave her some wine to drink, and, full of envy of the baby, tickled it under its damp little chin till it gurgled with bliss; whereupon the girl departed, deeply touched, after kissing Lilly's hand gratefully. Richard, however, came in for no unpleasant scene that afternoon, for Lilly was entirely free from jealousy. When he came to her, looking sheepish, and avoided meeting her eyes, while his person exhaled an odour of cheap perfume, she always gave him a smile of maternal indulgence, which he well understood and couldn't bear. However determined he might be to keep silent, he invariably broke down at last, and in about half an hour had poured out shuffling confessions, for which he expected to be praised or comforted. It was inevitable that Lilly, in an existence of this sort, in which were rampant all the evils of married life, without any of its rights and dignity, should become more and more self-centred, and look forward to the future with increasing sadness. She passed her days as if seated on a bough which every gust of wind threatened to snap, and so plunge her into the depths below. Before her lay a straight, dull, endless road, stretching onwards without goal, without horizon--nothing but the same old pleasures, the same aimless wandering about from one haunt to another till morning dawned. Often she felt as tired out as if she had been doing hard manual labour. Sometimes she struck, and lay the whole day in bed reading _Fliegende Blaetter_, or dreaming of old days with closed eyes.