Thus Lilly stumbled at every step. Occasionally, when he quartered officers on their way through the country, the colonel, as if to test Lilly's social ability, would have her preside at table with Miss von Schwertfeger's assistance. Each time the same scene was enacted. At first Lilly would be stiff as a mechanical doll, incapable of addressing a word she had not learned by rote to these guests gleaming in military resplendence. A glass or two of wine would give her courage. Gradually she would liven up, and even grow merry, and finally bubble over with harmless pleasantries--from where they came flying into her head she did not know--which would so enrapture the gentlemen, most of whom were well past their prime, that they directed all their remarks to her, as if to pay her court, while their eyes hung on her face in enjoyment and desire. Now the colonel would grow uneasy. He would cast furtive glances at Miss von Schwertfeger, who usually sat with her eyes on her plate and a wry smile on her lips; and then despite the gentlemen's protestations of regret, the ladies would leave the table. Lilly grew hot with the fire she herself had kindled in the heads of her guests. It caused her pleasure and distress, and forced her to sit at her window until midnight, staring into the blue twilight of the park with beating heart and quivering nerves and flushed cheeks streaming with tears. Forebodings of mad acts and riotous self-abandon flashed up in her brain. A parching fever enervated her body. Her clothes, her room, the park, the world became too contracted. A wild dance of looks and flames, a whirl of fiery red, inured, desirous masculinity chased through her head. On such nights, when the guests had at last retired, the colonel, more or less intoxicated, would force himself into her bedroom, and begin by reproaching her for not having been ladylike enough. Lilly would cry and try to excuse herself. Then he would kiss the tears from her lashes, snatch her clothes from her body, and throw himself next to her in bed. Shuddering with foolish pangs of conscience, quivering in disgust of his drunkenness, happy, nevertheless, to feel that tormenting tenseness relax, she gave her body up to him. On other nights when she felt uneasy and alone and desired his presence, when her body as well as her soul longed to cling to him in the humble sense of belonging to him entirely, then he was not to be had. He kept his door locked.