Miss von Schwertfeger fixed her eyes on Lilly's face in an aggrieved stare. "My dear child, if you weren't a stupid thing, who has to sin in order to mature, you would have a better understanding of what goes on inside a person like myself. For the present be satisfied that you are out of danger." In a gush of gratitude Lilly threw herself on Miss von Schwertfeger, and kissed her face and hands; and Miss von Schwertfeger no longer repulsed her. She stroked her hair, and spoke to her as to a child. Kneeling at her feet Lilly confessed. She told how her relations with Walter had developed insensibly, how they had been old friends, and how he had really been the author of her happiness. "Happiness?" Miss von Schwertfeger drawled, and drew in the air through the right corner of her mouth, causing a sound like a whistle. Lilly started, looked at her, and understood. The question burned in her brain: "Am I better than I should have been had I allowed the colonel to drag me here without marrying me?" Eleven months had passed since that night when he courted her. She put her arms about Miss von Schwertfeger, and cried, cried, cried. It was so good to know there was a sisterly, no, a motherly, person in whose dress she could bury her tearful face. She had not experienced such easement since the day a certain knife had been waved over her head. The affair with Von Prell, of course, could not go on. He and Lilly must not meet even once again. Miss von Schwertfeger demanded it, and Lilly acquiesced without a word of protest. If only she had not had her mission! "What mission?" asked Miss von Schwertfeger. Lilly told of the holy task she had to perform in his life; how her love had awakened him to the realisation of a loftier, purer life; how she had to answer with every drop of blood in her body for his rising to better things and entering upon a noble, beneficent field of activity. It was Miss von Schwertfeger's turn to be astonished. She listened, and looked at Lilly with great, doubting eyes, then got up, and paced the room agitatedly, muttering: "Incredible! Incredible!" When Lilly asked her what was incredible, she kissed her on her forehead, and said: "You poor thing!" "Why?" "Because you will suffer much in life." Thereupon it was agreed that Miss von Schwertfeger should speak with him once again, and the price of her silence was to be the breaking off of all relations between him and Lilly. They must not take their rides together, either. Lilly begged for only one thing, to be allowed to write him a farewell letter. She thought she owed this to him so that he should not harbour doubts of her and his future. Then the two women parted. Released, redeemed, born into a new life, Lilly walked upstairs, forgetting every precaution. But, thank goodness! the colonel was snoring. The clock struck four, and the shuffling of the stablemen already resounded in the courtyard.