To avoid answering, she rushed up the wide carpeted stairway and came upon a lackey in silver-striped knickerbockers, who without question quietly relieved her of her umbrella, while the shadow of a mischievous smile flickered across his pudding face. High white doors were held open for her, red-shaded lamps shone like great flowers, beautiful bare-shouldered women with tiaras in their hair smiled down on her from oval gilt frames. It was so silent and warm in the spacious rooms you could lie down on the soft carpet and go to sleep. If only there had not been that feeling of dread which was tightening about her throat and brow like a net drawn closer and closer. Another door flew open. Beyond was green twilight, as in a thick forest, and from out of the twilight _his_ figure came toward her, broad, resplendent, clanking. She felt her hand being taken, felt herself being led into the green dusk. Bookcases towered before her like black walls. From somewhere came the threatening glitter of swords, helmets and armour. She did not dare look at him. Even after she had been seated in a tall, dark arm-chair, whose top hung over her head like a canopy, she had not given him a single glance. She heard his voice, whose resounding roughness seemed to have been muffled to vibrating organ tones. It was all unearthly, all that she perceived and felt. It was not heaven, it was not hell. It was a region of anxiety and dreams, where souls hovered between deprivation and fulfillment in a state of lethargy. At last she understood his words. There was nothing unearthly about them. They dealt most rationally with the Christmas gifts, the return of which he did not consider final. They were securely stowed away biding the time when their mistress would graciously deign to receive them. Lilly with a frozen smile on her lips merely shook her head. She could not summon the courage to voice a refusal. "And now you will ask me, my dear," he began anew, "what impels me, a man advancing in years, to hang on to your skirts like a pertinacious lover." At the words, "advancing in years," she looked up instinctively. There he sat, too sharply illuminated by the light of the green student's lamp. The orders on his breast gave out a subdued, golden lustre. The silver tassels of his epaulets quivered and glittered like little snakes. There was a shimmer upon and around him like the halo about a saint in gold and brocade. Confused and abashed by all this glory Lilly quickly sank her gaze again.