"I think we had better go on with our work," Lilly cut him short.
From that day she was careful to keep off the subject of the picture, and she did not dare so much as to glance across at it if Herr Kellermann was looking; but, all the same, he made constant allusions to his presumptuous idea, which seemed to obsess him, and at last Lilly had to forbid him to mention it.
Her enthusiasm for her work grew day by day. She was not content with the lessons in the studio, she practised at home, and when she tried her newly acquired talent on the glass plaques she had purchased, the results were, both in her own and Frau Laue's opinion, highly creditable. The sunsets ran blood-red over cornflower blue hills, and in the foreground stood dark silent primæval forests of grass and ferns, shading huts which had been built and brilliantly illuminated apparently by a prehistoric race of men.
She had never shown any of her performances to her master, for he had declared that he could not on principle tolerate such paste-and-scissors atrocities. But Herr Dehnicke would have been interested, she was sure, in her progress, and she would dearly have loved to show him her works of art.
Unfortunately, since his letter of introduction to Herr Kellermann she had heard no more from him, and she felt a little piqued at being so easily forgotten.
One day Herr Kellermann said suddenly: "By Jove! The bronze business has begun to boom all at once. Our Herr Dehnicke keeps me at it with orders. He's up here nearly every day to see how things are getting on."
Something in his manner as he said this, with his eyes blinking at her, made Lilly redden and feel uncomfortable, though it filled her at the same time with a quiet satisfaction. And when at last the seven pairs of glass plaques were finished, she was so brimming over with pride in them that she couldn't keep it all to herself, and boldly wrote him a note on her superb ivory paper, with the seven-pointed gold coronet, of which she had about twenty sheets left. Would he, she wrote, come next Sunday afternoon, as he had been so good as to take an interest in her work?
An answer came at once. Nothing could have given him greater pleasure than her kind letter; he had been longing to come and see her, and he hoped that she wouldn't doubt that it was only out of regard for her wishes that he had kept away.
On the appointed Sunday afternoon he appeared. Lilly arranged a plant of gladiolas in the punch-bowl, and pink carnations round the box containing the specimen lamp-shade. Fastened against the windows by ribbon bows hung the glorious sunsets like conflagrations, casting a magic glow over the room and the tawdry treasures which Frau Laue had preserved with her own character from "better times." Lilly presented a gay and charming appearance in the white lace blouse washed and ironed by her own hands; and when she went to receive her guest, who stood at the door in patent-leather boots, with a top-hat in his hand, she was quite the self-possessed, condescending, unapproachable fine lady who had entered his office a few weeks before.
Her benefactor was all the more embarrassed. He sniffed the frowsy odour which reached Frau Laue's best room from the other part of the house, cast uneasy glances at the walls, and behaved altogether as if he were poaching on forbidden ground.