"That shows how little you know me. I'd promised the girls supper. So I had to eat with them. But when that was over I let 'em slide. I ran about in the streets and just—howled!"
"Very well, but what exactly are you after?"
"That's what I don't know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But
it's something quite indefinite—hard to think, hard to comprehend.
I'd like to howl with laughter and I don't know why … to shriek, and
I don't know what about."
"Blessed youth!" Niebeldingk thought, and looked at the enthusiastic boy full of emotion. …
John, who was serving, announced that the florist's girl had come with the Indian lilies.
"Indian lilies, what sort of lilies are they?" asked Fritz overcome by a hesitant admiration.
"You'll see," Niebeldingk answered and ordered the girl to be admitted.
She struggled through the door, a half-grown thing with plump red cheeks and smooth yellow hair. Diffident and frightened, she nevertheless began to flirt with Fritz. In front of her she held the long stems of the exotic lilies whose blossoms, like gigantic narcissi, brooded in star-like rest over chaste and alien dreams. From the middle of each chalice came a sharp, green shimmer which faded gently along the petals of the flowers.
"Confound it, but they're beautiful!" cried Fritz. "Surely they have quite a peculiar significance."
Niebeldingk arose, wrote the address without permitting John, who stood in suspicious proximity, to throw a glance at it, handed cards and flowers to the girl, gave her a tip, and escorted her to the door himself.