High-mass was over, and had left an odour of incense and poor people lingering in the aisles. A few worshippers remained praying at the side altars. Lilly knelt down before her dear saint, pressed her forehead against the velvet padding of the altar ratings, and tried to pour out her torn heart to him, begging for advice and consolation. "Ought I to ... May I? Can I?" Oh! She hoped she might so very much. Such a chance was not likely to come more than once in a lifetime. She would be rich, a baroness, with the world and all its splendours at her feet. When did such things happen outside fairy-tales? If only one thing about him had been different. For the first time it struck her clearly what that one thing was. It was not his eyes, whose glance was a dagger-thrust. It was not the grey bristly hair on his temples, nor the harsh commanding voice of the martinet. No; now she knew that it was none of these, but the folds of skin hanging down from his chin to his throat. It was these that must always form a barrier between him and her. They couldn't be got over, nothing could conceal them. She shuddered at the thought of them. And yet the Asmussen sisters had talked of him as a handsome man. The daughters of wealthy and distinguished people were said to run after him. It would have been folly on her part to refuse him. Wasn't he the best and noblest and most high-principled of men? Wasn't he nearly as good and kind as God Himself? Then she mapped out a future in which she was to live and breathe only for him; to sit at his feet as a disciple. She would flutter about him in gayer moments like a dove, though she could not exactly picture herself being ever lively in his presence. But she might be poetic; she might gaze at the stars in the distant firmament and the evening clouds, and look the image of a pale, noble, saintly creature to whom young strangers would lift their eyes in devouring longing without being rewarded by a single glance from her. All this would be possible, because her life would be consecrated to him, who was her friend, protector, and father, to whom she looked up on the heights whence no gleam had ever descended to her before. "Yes, I will--I will!" an eager voice cried within her. "Yes, dear St. Joseph, I will!" For answer St. Joseph held up a warning forefinger. Of course, he would have done it in any case. He couldn't help himself, for his artist had presented him thus. And yet there was something disconcerting about that raised forefinger. It didn't somehow help a poor distraught human being on its way through this troublesome world. The next day Lilly got a letter from Herr Doktor Pieper, making an appointment with her at his office. She turned hot and cold. "He knows," she said to herself. When she asked leave to go, Frau Asmussen remonstrated severely with her.