He measured Lilly from between lids masterfully narrowed to a slit with a cursory and apparently disillusioned glance, threw out a strident "good evening," and examined the back part of the room, as if expecting some one to emerge from behind the bookcases and give him a special greeting. Lilly asked what she could do for him. "Oh, you are the young lady in charge of the circulating library?" he asked. The existence of such a young lady seemed to transport him into a kind of careless gaiety. Lilly said she was. "Splendid!" he replied. "Just splendid!" And a thousand little merry devils danced in his blinking, white-lashed eyes. Lilly asked what book he wished. "Be it known to you, most honored and erudite miss, I am not exactly familiar with German literature and the allied sciences, but ever since yesterday I have been possessed of a fabulous and downright sophomoric zeal for culture. If you would help me with your valuable--" He came to a sudden halt, stuck a monocle in his eye, looked her up and down, first on the right side, then on the left, the way an intending purchaser scrutinises a long-legged horse, murmured something like "the devil," and asked to have the light turned on immediately. Since it had actually grown so dark that the numbers on the backs of the books were illegible, Lilly saw no reason for refusing his request. When she reached up in all her glory to raise the chimney from the hanging lamp, he uttered a second and more audible "the devil." And when she stood there before him, the light shining on her sidewise, with an uneasy, questioning look in her improbable eyes--those long-concealed "Lilly eyes"--he sank back on the customers' seat to show how utterly nonplussed he was, and folded his hands and implored her forgiveness. Lilly felt a hot sense of insult rising in her. So low was she esteemed in her position that an aristocratic young man--the first who had strayed in to her in the course of one and a half years--did not deem it necessary to show her the most ordinary courtesy. "If you do not wish to borrow a book, sir," she said, giving him a superior look, "please leave the place." "What--what did you say?" he rejoined, outraged. "I borrow a book? _One_ book? One beggarly book? For every five minutes I am permitted to stay here I will take out a whole shelf of books, for all I care, a whole case of books--but with the proviso that I may return them to-morrow. I will immediately contract with the best express company in town to keep hauling the cases away and back again. But one moment--one moment. It seems to me I once heard that for every book taken from a circulating library you have to leave three marks deposit. Isn't that so?" Lilly stared at him in blank astonishment and said it was so.