Although she avoided questioning him as to his own doings, occasional allusions and complaints of his enabled her to piece together a picture of his unsuccessful career. After two years of starvation, he gave up the teaching profession, and, consciously sacrificing his convictions, took up the study of theology in his native city for the sake of one or two scholarships. "After all!" thought Lilly, deeply stirred. She recalled the red, sunny morning when the Sunday chimes sent up their greeting from out of the green valley. But his supreme sacrifice seemed to have done no permanent good. During the last year he had kept himself alive by occasionally addressing envelopes, and in other mysterious ways, concerning which he was not explicit. "Nevertheless," he said, "I maintained my dignity. And even if I am poor and despised, I know my worth, indeed I do." He paced the room, fiery and lowering. When he threw out his chest and ran his hand through his mane, he almost resembled the young hero who had once filled Lilly's enthusiastic fancy with pictures of inordinate ambition. To complete her work and lead him entirely back to happiness, she tried to find out what lot in life he desired for himself. He wanted to go away. Leave Berlin! He wanted to feel himself a man again, who does his duty and knows where he belongs and is permitted to breathe pure air. "All of us want something lovely like that," she thought. It would have to be a tutorship in a family, anywhere in the country, preferably with a minister of whose library he could avail himself. "And round about the linden trees will bloom," thought Lilly, "and the wheat will wave in the breeze, and the cattle will wind their way to water." She nearly cried with envy. From that day on she worked industriously to satisfy his heart's desire. She gave him money to insert advertisements in the _Kreuzzeitung_, wrote letters herself in reply to all sorts of offers, and asked her little circle of friends to do what they could for him. All these transactions had to be carried on in secret to avoid attracting Richard's attention. Even so she had much to suffer from him these days. He found her wanting in attentiveness to him; he rebuked her for being cold and loveless, and detected a hostile influence in her every word. "That's probably what your intellectual friend says." "You should ask your brilliant scholar." Thus it went without cease. One day the bomb exploded. Despite his promise to have the maid announce him when strangers were present, Richard stepped into the dining-room while Lilly was at table with her girlhood friend. He had neither rung nor knocked, and a frown of revenge puckered his brow. Lilly jumped from her seat, paling. As if caught in guilt, Fritz Redlich also jumped up. He stood there awkward and sheepish, while the corner of his napkin slowly glided from his buttonhole into his soup plate.