He exchanged glances with Dehnicke, who nodded slightly, as if to say, "It was all right," and went off in search of their wraps. The instant Mr. Dehnicke was lost among the overcoats, Mr. Kellermann turned to Lilly and whispered: "The chained beauty, have you forgotten her entirely?" "Entirely," she replied with a languid smile. "You'll never come?" "Never." "And I tell you"--he led her to one side next to the banisters--"I tell you, you _will_ come. When your own chains have cut into your flesh, and you won't know--" Mr. Dehnicke returned with the wraps, and Mr. Kellermann became silent. Lilly was keyed up to too blissful a pitch to attach any significance to these strange words, which sounded like a joke in the mouth of the bacchic faun. She laughed at him. * * * * * The lightning flashes that had darted through her brain died down. Leaning lightly against her friend's shoulder she walked airily down the steps singing and swaying her hips. The whole world seemed to have passed into a soft, perfumed, chiming twilight. Snow had fallen, and the moon was shining. Dehnicke's carriage was waiting. "Let us drive to the Tiergarten," Lilly suggested. She could not draw in her fill of the invigorating, snowy air. She threw herself against the cushioned back of the brougham, and sang and beat time with her feet. He sat in his corner quite still, looking out into the night. "Do say something," she cried. "What shall I say?" he rejoined, and sedulously looked past her with his bleared eyes. They rolled silently along under the trees, from which every now and then a little silver star was brushed into the carriage. Lilly sank into a drowsy state. "Oh," she whispered, seeking a prop for her head, "I could ride on this way forever." Then, suddenly, it seemed to her that Walter's arm was clasping her waist, and her left cheek was nestling comfortably against Walter's neck, as once on blessed November nights. But--where did Walter come from all of a sudden? She started up and sank back, wide awake. No, that was not Walter. Now she knew exactly who it was. But her great shame kept her from changing her position, and for a while she lay with her eyes wide open listening to his heart. It throbbed even in his upper arm. "And he will not ask the price which it is the custom in our country to demand of beautiful women," was what Walter had written. He was demanding it after all. How contemptuously Walter would look down on her when she would turn on the lights in her drawing-room half an hour later--Walter, whom everybody, including the man into whose arms she had glided, considered to be her betrothed; Walter, to whom she must be true as long as there was salvation for her on earth. To be sure, it was heavenly to be lying there that way. She felt she had a place in the universe. And how horrible that loneliness had been! But now it availed nothing.