One had two millions, the other three. Influential relatives, mines, factories, legacies, government contracts, whole blocks of houses, and innumerable building lots nodded in the distance. Sometimes Lilly's drawing-room hummed with so many figures that it might have been a stockbroker's office. One of the prospective brides even was poor. But she was a general's daughter, and mama adored her. "I'm a general's widow," said Lilly. Whether rich or poor, they all disappeared, because none of them was good enough for him. Lilly meditated and schemed; this is the way she should be, and this way, and this way. She must have white, column-like arms such as the Danish girl at the carnival; and she must have an extremely delicate, scarcely perceptible bosom--her own seemed to Lilly to have become too voluptuous--and when she laughed, two dimples must form in her cheeks, because dimples were a sign of peaceableness. Peace she demanded for him above all. She knew he could not bear disputes. As a matter of fact they never did quarrel. But if a little disagreement arose, he went about for days looking miserable, spoke in a woebegone, sick tone, and had to be petted like a child. Which she did with joy, though he by no means deserved it. For, whatever the standpoint from which you viewed such things, he had become an out and out good-for-nothing. He might be pardoned the very respectable sums he lost at the club, but he debauched like a married man, and his experiences were none of the purest. One day a pretty young thing with an eight weeks' old baby on her arm came to Lilly and wept and screamed, and declared Lilly must cede her place to her because she had the child by him and so the greater right. Lilly comforted her and gave her some wine, and, filled with envy, tickled the baby's wet little chin until it laughed. Whereupon the girl left quieted, and even kissed Lilly's hand on parting. That afternoon Richard listened to an eloquent discourse. Lilly felt herself to be entirely free from jealousy. Whenever he appeared looking embarrassed or with a crafty expression in his eyes, his head inclined all the way to the left, and radiating an odour of cheap perfumes, she always received him with an indulgent smile, which he understood very well and feared like a plague. However valiant his resolve to maintain silence, it scarcely lasted half an hour before he sat there hopelessly stranded, making partly veiled confessions and asking for praise and comfort. In a life of this sort, which reflected all the faults and perfidies of marriage without bestowing its sense of dignity and natural rights, it was inevitable that Lilly should withdraw into herself more and more and look forward to her future with increasing gloom.