Here that mysterious round creation, which on closer inspection proved to be a lamp shade, came to her rescue. It had been presented to her by an artistic friend, and it occurred to her to use it as a model for making others to sell. After peddling her wares about for years, after long drudgery and disenchantments of all sorts, she at last conquered a market for her "pressed-flower lamp shades," and won for herself a name as specialist in her field. In her back room with one window, which smelled of hay and paste, and where hundreds of dried flowers lay on a long white deal table--she herself did not gather them, of course, for lack of time--she had worked for nearly two decades tapping, daubing, pasting, drying, threading, and weaving sixteen hours a day, and had earned--thanks to her renown as a specialist!--so much that she was compelled to rent her best room, her treasure chamber, her sanctuary, to a stranger for thirty marks a month. Lilly and Mrs. Laue, it is true, did not remain strangers. Into the existence of this back-room being, in whose eyes a few betinseled ballet-dancers were paragons of beauty, the embodiment of unattainable splendour, Lilly descended from the world of genuine aristocracy as from heavenly heights. Her hostess idolised her, because she saw in her a messenger from that wholly improbable land which exists only in novels, and in which words like "lackey" and "drawing-room," and "pearl necklace"--Lilly soon told Mrs. Laue of hers--and other such things as one allows to melt on one's tongue with half-closed eyes, are taken as a matter of course. Mrs. Laue immediately became Lilly's confidante and counsellor. She helped her overcome the shame consequent upon the divorce trial, she encouraged her when the feeling of being lost unnerved her, and she held before her eyes the prospect of a radiant future. In great, powerful, wonder-working Berlin, nobody need succumb. Every day a dozen lucky chances might occur to help one to one's feet. There were lonely old ladies who were desperately seeking heiresses for their fortunes, there were noble young women who, disgusted with the artificiality of their surroundings, helplessly yearned to reach out the hand of companionship to a beautiful poor orphan; there were celebrated artists who sought to escape the snares of lewd women in the arms of a pure love; there were great poets with whom the position of muse had become vacant. The whole city seemed to have been waiting for Lilly's coming to lift her jubilantly to the throne of mistress. More months passed. Regret for her squandered life gradually lost its edge. Her nights became calmer. She no longer started out of a drowse with a cry because some picture of her paradise lost stood before her with horrible vividness.