Since he did not venture to kiss her even yet, she offered him her lips. "The third," she thought. When she glanced up, she saw Walter's eyes on the wall looking down at her with a base, sneering smile. Just as she had feared in the carriage. Terrified, she drew Mr. Dehnicke's attention to the portrait. "We'd better have it sent right down to the basement to-morrow," he said. And since they now had very much to say to each other, the carriage was immediately dismissed, because it was half past three, and the coachman and the horses needed a rest. CHAPTER VIII A new life began for Lilly once again. An end to her loneliness! Every afternoon Mr. Dehnicke came for his cup of tea, and now he was no longer Mr. Dehnicke; he was Richard, dear, beloved Richard, to whom one waved and nodded cheerily from the window, whom one received with outstretched arms in front of the apartment door, against whose knees one crouched on the floor, and from whose forehead one smoothed away the naughty frown of care with a tender "poor boy, poor boy." Oh, how needless to have hoarded up such a wealth of love! She could lavish it in profusion, yet there was always a fresh supply. Away with the _grande dame_, the haughty aristocrat! She stooped to him, played the little girl, wanted to be found fault with and scolded, looked terrified at the faintest shadow of displeasure on his face, and tried to read his every wish--wishes he himself was not aware of--from his eyes. She wanted to be grateful for his goodness, his tenderness, for everything he had done to save her from ruin. No wonder, then, that by degrees he lost his adoring upward glance, and began to make demands, sometimes very whimsical demands, and assume the manner of a husband. Now and then he even recalled his benefactions, not very emphatically, though with sufficient explicitness to change what was at first voluntary humility into a duty. Since Lilly had become his mistress, his attitude to the world had veered about, so that his entire life stood on a different basis. The pedantic bronze manufacturer so dreadfully concerned for his good name and standing in respectable society had changed into a daring fast liver. So far from hesitating to be seen at Lilly's side on the streets and promenades, he could not display himself to the eyes of the crowd often enough. The good old brougham no longer sufficed. He must also have a new-fashioned, spacious victoria, in which to drive with Lilly along Unter den Linden to the Tiergarten. When they went out together in the evening, he chose the places where most of fashionable Berlin is to be found, and tried to obtain seats from which they could be observed on all sides. He sat in the boxes at theatre with a swelling shirt front, carefully tailored and barbered and manicured, and endeavoured to present an indifferent blasé smile to the glasses levelled upon him and his companion.