"Now I'll be lonely again," she thought, "and I'll fling myself about as before." Yet, what a piece of good fortune it had been. What good fortune! She told him so for about the hundredth time. "Yes," he rejoined, "what I managed to achieve here through my struggles is really a piece of good fortune." He emphasised "my struggles." "When I think what dreadful years those were, how often I had to do violence to my real character, how often my principles were endangered. And not only that," he added after a melancholy pause, "if one considers the doubtful, impure situations into which life throws one, it is really no wonder that one is infected with the prevailing spirit and commits acts one would rather have left undone. I tell you, Mrs. Czepanek, it's hard, very hard." "Oh, don't always call me Mrs. Czepanek. Say Lilly right straight out. We're old friends." "I will gladly if you wish it." Lilly felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since her days in the library. Yet it was different from then. It was a motherly, sisterly tenderness. No, not exactly that either. It was a bit of everything, and something in addition, which drew nearer and nearer hesitatingly, like a light in the distance. "Tell me something, Fritz," she said, standing in front of him. "Have you ever been in love?" He started as if he had been hit. "In love? What do you mean?" "Well--what do you think--I mean?" she laughed, scratching the arm of the rocking chair with her thumb nail. He seemed to breathe more easily. "For that which one calls real love I've never had the time or the desire." "And hasn't any woman ever loved you?" "Do I look as if a woman could love me?" he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders. His embittered dejection annoyed her. "Well, well," she said, shaking her finger to comfort him with a little teasing. He started again, as if the mere thought of such a possibility filled him with dread. Poor fellow! A girl's eyes had never sought his in a glow, a woman's arm had never clasped his neck in bliss. He had been denied the supreme delight that makes life worth the while both for man and woman. An avowal burnt on her lips drifting down from times long, long ago, which would prove to him how mistaken he was. She choked it down. Not to-day. Later. Perhaps when he came to say good-by before leaving Berlin. Darkness fell, and the light of the street lamps played on the walls and ceiling. The monkey had rolled himself into a ball in his cloak, and the little canary also slept. Lilly still paced to and fro, gently grazing his elbow each time she passed the rocking chair. She halted in front of him again. There he sat, he whom she had once loved so hotly, and suspected nothing. Suspected nothing of what women's arms could bestow. Poor, poor fellow! "You must really have that shock of hair of yours trimmed," she said with a constrained laugh, "then you'll succeed better with the women."