"Have you the least idea of life, if you don't know who the old man is? The old man is the cat-o'-nine-tails. The old man decides what is good and what is bad on earth. The old man breaks one man's neck and pays another man's debts. He is the punch bowl of all our virtues and all our sins. Withal the old man is eternally young. The old man sees you and says to you: 'Come here, little girl. I'm a grey old horror, but I wish to have you.' Then you have just enough courage left to ask 'When do you want me, high and mighty lord?' You see, child, that's the old man. They hist him on to you long ago, and if ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on you! Then all's over and done for with my poor young queen." "But I don't know yet who the old man is," said Lilly, whom this enigmatic alarum was beginning to make a little uncomfortable. "Then don't ask," he replied, and held out his freckled hand in good-by. "It's a pity for us two," he added, smiling at her tenderly and compassionately from between his blinking lids. "We could so cosily have enriched history with another famous pair of lovers." Leaning far over the counter, "Since I am a man utterly devoid of moral fibre, I should like to bestow one kiss upon you before I go." Lilly laughingly held her mouth up. He kissed her and walked to the door stiffly. "I can scarcely crawl, I'm so knocked up by my bout," he said, and with that was outside the door. After this visit Lilly was seized with the same disquieting sense as after his first visit. It seemed to her she was being flicked in sport with tickling switches. But this time, joined to the other feeling, was a certain anxiety which set her nerves a-tingle with a tormenting yet soothing sensation, as if she were waiting outside a locked door of gold, behind which an unknown fate was crouching ready to pounce on her. CHAPTER XI Outside on the street the hilt of a sword and the buttons of a uniform glittered in the noon sunlight of a December day. "A new one," thought Lilly. The stiff, thickset figure of the man who clanked up the steps of the porch was unfamiliar to her. A masterful stamping outside the door. The bell rang more sharply than usual. No, she did not know him. He was not a frivolous lieutenant, nor yet one of the maturer ones, who played the dignified and watched with an expectant smile for the first shy glance in order to extract from it whatever they dared. She saw eyes piercing sharp as a falcon's with a close ring of mobile crows' feet about them; she saw a severe high-bridged aquiline nose, and gaunt cheek bones on which lay a well-defined spot of red finely chased with purple veins. Under a short, bushy moustache she saw thin, compressed lips, the corners of which turned up in a smile of mocking benevolence. She saw a receding chin, polished to a shine by the shave, and disappearing in two limp folds near the high collar.