Peace did not come until evening, when Mrs. Asmussen's medicine asserted its rights. The two girls might have taken advantage of her oblivion to give free play to their desires, had not their highly developed sense of propriety strictly forbidden going out at night. "Persons meeting us would take us for fast girls," they said, "and then no wedding bells for us." One would scarcely believe with what a number of conventions the young ladies circumscribed their apparently unrestrained existence. You may let yourself be kissed as much as you like, but on no account kiss back. You may let a gentleman call you by your first name in conversation, but if he does so in a letter it is an insult. You may let a gentleman treat you to coffee and cake, but not to bread and butter. You may let a strange man tread on your foot, but if he attempts to press your hand under the table you must get up. And so on. Lilly had absolutely no comprehension for this set of thoughts and desires. Hitherto man as a male had been a piece of life non-existent in bodily form, which came to her notice on occasions, but glided by like a stranger without holding her attention. She had solely loved the man of her dreams, the man of her novels, the man of her own creation. The thing that stared at her on the street, the thing that came to exchange books and found all sorts of little pretexts for entering into conversation with her, the thing that officiously held aside the wadded curtain of the church door as she entered, or played the amiable over a shop counter, this thing was a strange, annoying fact; it was stupid and brazen, a matter of unspeakable indifference, to think of which would be a waste of time and a degradation. A girl's entire life, she now learned, was here simply for the sake of that gross and disgusting race; and a girl could concern herself about them from the moment she rose to the moment she fell asleep, without cherishing the thought of the one for whom she had been created as for work and faith and God. Though Lilly knew she was infinitely above being influenced by the two girls' advice and example, she felt, in spite of herself, a small desire arising within her to find out what the nature of those creatures might be about whom such a fuss was made, whose approval brought pleasure, whose coldness meant annihilation. She was beset by a tormenting fear of that dreadful, seething world outside there, of the dirt that was carried to her door every day anew, and of the disquieting curiosity with which she picked it up to examine it. For whether or no, her thoughts _would_ return to the gay pictures, painted in colors of poison, which the two sisters, growing ever more demoralized, unrolled before her eyes evening after evening. It was a piece of good fortune that the hot friendship both at first bestowed upon her cooled off somewhat after a month or so.