She felt she was growing more beautiful from day to day and emanated a sort of radiance which caused all who met her to look up with a smile of astonishment and satisfaction, mingled, however, with a touch of melancholy, such as always comes over us when we see a human being or a flower developing too happily, too proudly for its glory to endure. The two High Mightinesses did not keep their eyes closed, either. The colonel found no formula for such symptoms in his store of experiences. Had Lilly gone about downcast, staring dreamily into space, had she crept about him timidly, had she wavered between ardour and estrangement, his suspicions would have grown lively. He would have begun to sound and spy on her. But it was not in his power to discern aught else than increased spiritual well-being in her pliable, blissful tenderness. So he smirked complacently at the harmless gaiety his young wife radiated, and with paternal calm accepted the lavish caresses, which served as an outlet for her overwrought ecstasy. Anna von Schwertfeger shared no less benevolently in Lilly's happiness. She seemed to harbour as little suspicion as the colonel that a third person was playing a part in her life. Otherwise she would scarcely have viewed the growing frequency with which the two young people met with such unbegrudging kindliness. Often after supper she drew Lilly into the room on the ground floor, where she dwelt amid her account books. A genuine old maid's home, with canary birds, flower pots, faded family photographs, and all sorts of gilt and china knick-knacks, remnants of past glory such as are handed down from generation to generation in families of decayed gentlefolk. At other times she came gliding into Lilly's bedroom at an incredibly late hour, seated herself on the edge of the bed, and did not stir until she heard the sound of the colonel's carriage coming from the station. The two women would plunge into profound conversations concerning life and death, solitary old age and overflowing youth, the measure God has set for each mortal, and the misfortune of trying to exceed that measure. Anna von Schwertfeger no longer pried or warned, yet her fashion of hopping from subject to subject, of heedlessly expressing an opinion the very reverse of one she had uttered a moment before, seemed sufficient reason for supposing that her mind was occupied with very, very different things. Often while her speech flowed on monotonously Lilly would be astonished to look up and find her eyes resting on her intently, almost apprehensively. Then again Lilly would feel herself stroked and kissed with such pitying inwardliness that she herself was touched, and later, when left alone, she began to feel afraid of the dark, as if a menacing fate were crouching at the bottom of her bed ready to pounce on her and choke her.