"There must be some cranks in the world, I suppose.
"My address in future will be--
"W. v. P.
"Street-loafer and Fortune's aspirant,
"Chicago (first stockyard on the left).
"PS.--Tommy would send his love, only I took care to plant a bullet in his forehead before leaving."
Lilly took this last and only communication from her comrade very calmly. She heard afterwards through Fräulein von Schwertfeger that he had sailed for America with a maimed arm. As he could think of her without bitterness or reproach, so she would try to think of him. Their love deserved honourable burial, even if its raptures had been a sham, and its elevated sentiments dragged through the dirt in shame.
He would like to be her "guardian angel," the dear little man had written. Well, anyhow, his letter offered a certain guarantee of protection in time of trouble, and indicated where a helping hand would be held out to her. But the course he advised she had no thought of adopting. Never would she avail herself of that helping-hand. She was in deadly terror of desirous masculine eyes reading her face, of masculine lips pouring out persuasive and convincing arguments.
She would take her fate in her own hands and go her own way. Whither it would lead her of course was not clear. In truth, grief and anxiety had rendered her so irresolute, that it needed but a breath of wind to drift her in a direction that would have decided her future once for all. The breath of wind, however, did not blow on her.
Month after month went by. Fräulein von Schwertfeger gave up writing. Want of money caused her little hoard of jewels to dwindle rapidly. The pensions she boarded in became more and more modest. Instead of Chilian attaches and Greek merchants, bankrupt auctioneers and clerks out of employment offered to cheer her evenings by forcing their company upon her; and the ladies who paid her visits in soiled tea-gowns glanced covetously at the few bracelets, brooches, and rings which she still had left. Thus she decided to end this mode of living and find a new one.