He ordered his clothes from the representatives of London houses that bob up in Berlin every spring and autumn in search of customers. He adopted a monocle and stuck his handkerchief inside his left cuff. The military officer in him came to the surface and endeavoured to ape the effeminate gestures of the fops of the Guard. In short, he bent all his energies upon proving himself worthy of a mistress of Lilly's rank and qualities. He soon discovered that connection with so exquisite a creature, so far from damaging him, cast an unhoped for glamour about his life, even about his business, lending it an air of splendour that all his superb remodelling had not been able to give it. If the senior member of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, the world said, can indulge in such an extravagance, his goods must be selling much better than we thought. And many a dealer who had formerly bought of his competitors now came to him, impelled by those mysterious powers of suggestion whose laws psychologists and historians have in vain endeavoured to fathom. People showed him greater respect, but a respect mitigated by that jovial, confidential smile which the world always smiles when it pardons a man of proven harmlessness an interesting secret little infirmity. Questions like "When are we going to see you outside of business?" or "What do you say to making a night of it together now and then?" questions from persons who had paid no attention to him formerly, became as cheap as the bronze wares of Liebert & Dehnicke. "By right, I ought to charge you to the expense account of the business," he once said with a smile to Lilly, who by and by ceased to feel pained at delicate jokes of that sort. The evening excursions, which took place three or four times a week, gradually became a matter of habit, and rapidly acquainted Lilly with all the soap-bubble pleasures that float from the witch's cauldron of Berlin life. It was now too late in the winter for those great public balls, at which one shams the mysterious lady of rank beneath a silk domino. To compensate there were the theatres where observances are lax and the lowest vices of the Parisian boulevards, diluted and warmed over, are dished up to tickle the palates of hungry pleasure-seekers; all-night cabarets, where obscene jests are clothed in literary garb, and wild women escaped from the confines of middle-class life vie with professional music-hall singers for the palm of vulgarity; bars and grill-rooms; back rooms of aristocratic restaurants which the law forbids to be locked, and in which chilly orgies are smiled upon mockingly by correct waiters; and, to wind up with, certain cafés, sparkling with lights and blue with cigarette smoke, where the weary nerves seek and find their final stimulation in contact with prostitutes selling their wares in open market.