"One thing is lying heavy on my conscience," he began. "You might think me overweening because I make so much of myself. But I don't wish to appear more important than others. I know every vigorous young fellow must have a similar work to bring purpose into his life. One has a book to write, another a business to carry on, another a dependent to support. For some it's enough if they keep their heads above water. It doesn't matter what. If you let yourself go, you're lost. And none of us want to be lost, do we?" "I think I lost myself long ago," whispered Lilly, shuddering and crouching like a whipped dog. He burst out laughing. "You, the best, the finest, the noblest." She knew how undeserved his praise was. Yet how delicious, oh, how delicious. They were now walking so closely pressed against each other that their cheeks almost touched. She closed her eyes and ardently drank in the warm breath of his life. She felt she was being wafted to unknown blessed distances. She did not come to herself until they reached her home. "When?" he asked her. She had no time the next day. She was invited out. But the day after. Yes, the day after, she had the whole evening free. He need only call for her. For fear she might after all ask him to come the very next day, she hurried into the house, ran up the steps, and concealed her happiness in the hushed apartment. She did not turn on the lights. The street lamps, shining on the walls of the drawing-room and touching rainbow colours on the chandelier prisms, provided sufficient illumination. She began to wander through the open doors from room to room, into the corner where the bed stood, around the dining table, across the drawing-room, into the cold guest room, which had never received a guest, up and down, back and forth, singing, crying, exulting. And from amid her tears and singing and exultation suddenly arose--how did it go? Come, my beloved! Let us go forth into the field, Let us spend the night in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards, Let us see if the vine have blossomed. No, not quite--a little different. But she would surely get it. Impetuously she raised the lid of the piano, which had long remained closed. As if the neglected instrument, unforced into silence, had suddenly acquired a life of its own, a flood of sound rushed toward her, of which she had deemed neither the piano nor herself capable. Let us see if the young grape have opened, Whether the pomegranates have budded, There will I give my young love unto thee. Yes, that was the way it went. Exactly. She had found each note again. Where had it kept itself hidden all those long years? It seemed as if the last time she had sung it had been the very day before. Yet worlds of suffering lay between. No, not suffering. "If only it had been suffering," thought Lilly, "the Song of Songs would never have become mute." CHAPTER XIII