The meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph was touching. Really, going back to him was like going back home. The cherubs that fluttered in the gay glass case behind him greeted her with a knowing, confidential look, like brothers and sisters who have been let into the secret that the punishment after all is not going to be so very severe. The golden-yellow carpet extended a hospitable invitation to kneel, and the flowers on the Holy Virgin's altar close by perfumed the air. The saint at first seemed a little hurt because she had not visited him for so long. But after she had made her moan--telling of her loneliness, the daily mush and the blows--he softened and forgave her. Since her last visit he had received three new silver hearts, which shot out rays of light the length of a finger. She felt like dedicating one to him, too, but on what grounds she did not know, since the miracle to be worked in her was yet to be accomplished. "Perhaps it's only jealousy in me, or a desire to show off," she thought, for it was painful to her that others should stand in closer relations to her saint than she. "After all," she comforted herself, "how can I expect anything else when I neglected him so long?" After confessing everything--except, of course, her love story--he had become too much of a stranger for _that_--she hastened away. The clocks were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose nor significance. She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street. He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath, remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a great danger. From now on there were two such encounters a week. Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when--blushing a bit--he raised his cap to her. * * * * * Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell. She opened the door--there _he_ stood. "Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion. Did she happen to have Rückert's poems in her library? Lilly knew for certain she did _not_ have them, but if she admitted forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the customers' chair placed close to the door.