Here, in the intensity of his emotions of delight, he would have grasped her hand, but he had the tact to resist the impulse when he saw that she did not respond.
Lilly was conscious of being mistress of the situation. She felt so saturated with the romance of martyrdom, so surrounded by the delicious incense of lofty aloofness, that it was as if she had stepped out of the pages of one of Frau Asmussen's novels into the light of day.
"I am grateful to you, Herr--Lieutenant." She could not bring the plebeian name of Dehnicke over her lips. "Now I fed that I have not knocked at your door in vain."
"I can assure you," he replied, cocking his head still more to the left as a sign of his good-will, "that I place myself entirely at your service, all I am and all I----" He was going to say "have," but as an astute man of business he hesitated to commit himself so lightly.
"Of course, I shall not impose on you too much," she replied airily, in order to damp his ardour a little. "I simply wish to be put in the way of earning my living, and to have someone who will advise me, and, as Herr von Prell"--now his name was spoken--"said that I might have absolute confidence in you----"
"Indeed, you may rely on me as on yourself," he could not forbear from assuring her.
"That would not mean much," she thought, but took care not to betray what passed through her mind by even a smile.
"Have you, by-the-by, heard anything from him lately?" he asked.
She blushed. To admit that she hadn't would expose his treatment of her. So, not to appear in the light of being neglected and cast off, she said:
"We promised each other at parting not to write. We thought it would be best in the struggle that lay before us not to be always looking out for letters, and expecting to hear from one another. But you probably have heard from him, have you not?"