The only one in her circle who now and then stimulated her intellectually was Mrs. Jula. Mrs. Jula could tell stories, and she showed familiarity with other worlds, her experiences in which she elaborated with a lively fancy. But for some time a veil of impenetrable mysteries have shrouded that foolish curly head of hers. The erotic verse she was wont to publish disappeared from the new-school magazines, and her nymphomaniac little tales were nowhere to be found. When her friends asked her teasingly: "What's become of your art?" she would laugh coyly, like a bride, and reply: "Wait; you'll see." Lilly would now have liked to become more intimate with Mrs. Jula, having long ceased to consider herself morally superior; but she could not succeed in approaching her and so she locked her distress and her longing in her own soul, and went her way thirsting. * * * * * It happened on the nineteenth of March. Lilly never forgot the date, because it was St. Joseph's day. A day of rough spring winds and reddish sunshine. One of those days on which the world's orchestra seems to tune its instruments before thrilling our senses again with its great spring symphony. The grass on the canal embankments was already turning green, the ducks going in pairs rocked themselves on the wavelets, and great foamy shimmering slabs of melting ice floated to annihilation. Lilly, overwrought by her painful, confused longings, could not endure remaining indoors. She wanted to run, cry aloud, climb over fences, throw herself on the bare earth--no matter what--but get away for a few hours from her prison, which smelled of powder and perfumes and was burdened by the spirit of idleness. She dressed herself for going out, gave a few directions to the maid--this time an elderly, patronising person, thoroughly accustomed to service with single ladies--and without troubling to order her carriage, took the electric tram to the Grunewald. At the fencing where the spick-and-span houses of the rich come to an end, and the abused woods rise high above the restraining yoke of man, Lilly got out and walked rapidly without caring in what direction. A few automobiles whizzed past. Some gentlemen in one of them laughed and beckoned to her, perhaps merely in sport; perhaps they actually recognised her. In either case it was best to leave the public road. So she turned into the path leading along the lake to the old Jagdschloss. Here nobody was to be seen far or near. The cold March wind swept across the milky water and whirled in the reeds, causing the dry stalks to rattle and crackle. Ice still glittered near the edge, though the crust was so thin and sieve-like that each little wave striving for the shore sent tiny springs shooting up through the holes. Here and there from a pine bough came a bird's song, sorry enough to extinguish timid spring hopes. "In the city streets it looks more like spring than here," thought Lilly.