"Very well, yes. That's all I want to know. Then he describes the dangers threatening us provided we continue to live in chains. His pet abomination is duty. He cannot bear it. As if we were so awfully particular about our little bit of duty. Lordy! Well, is that the way it went?" "Yes--but--" stammered Lilly. "Good. Then _he_ will deliver us. _He_ will guide us. He's the mountain guide ordained. 'Upward--up to the heights!' _N'est-ce pas?_" Lilly turned her face away to conceal her blush of shame. "Next in turn come the books. Miserable palaver written by immature little scribblers in imitation of the great Nietzsche. Nevertheless we all fall into the trap. It gets into our blood like Spanish fly. It quite befuddles us. The thing that so infuriates us afterwards is that we actually believed in the scoundrel's woebegone pathos, although the mangiest cynicism crops out of every pore of his body. But we're such sheep, and he's so clever--so clever. Yes, he is clever. You must give the devil his due." "But how does he manage," asked Lilly, who no longer dared to shield him, "how does he manage to make it appear that he lived through our entire past with us?" "Yes, child. People in similar circumstances usually have similar experiences. He can easily reconstruct our past--of those of us who came from the country. I'm a landed proprietor's daughter. Didn't he tell you in a by-the-way that he had passed a great part of his youth in castles?" Lilly assented. "Later I learned he had been private tutor to a Jew living on a leased estate near Breslau. But they bounced him pretty soon because he was saucy." In the midst of her sad disenchantment Lilly had to burst out laughing. "Fine," said her friend in approval, stroking her hands. "You may well feel happy. I wish someone had come to me the same way. Because afterwards, oh, how it hurts!" "Yes, tell me, how is it--afterwards?" asked Lilly, hesitatingly. "Very simple. After he's gotten what he wants, finis. He buttons up his coat, says in a voice quivering with emotion, '_au revoir_,' but there never is a _revoir_. You never see him again." "Impossible!" cried Lilly, horror-stricken. "A man can't treat a woman so currishly." "You--_never--see--him--again_, I tell you. What do you suppose? The man has weightier matters to attend to. I wrote my fingers sore--not a line in reply. Mrs. Welter lay on his threshold. Karla got the jaundice, she was so furious. And so on. But his name is eel. When you meet him later in company, you don't read the faintest recollection in his eyes. At the very most he 'jollies' you like the rest." Lilly, alarmed, brought it home to herself that she, too, had "later" encountered a conscience in company and had forcibly extinguished every recollection, no matter how much the conscience besought her with his comically mournful glances. One person behaved like the other in this world where you threw your dignity away like an ill-fitting dress.