It was then arranged that one of his vans should call the next day for the transparencies, and business thus being concluded, he begged modestly to be allowed to stay a few minutes longer. He would so enjoy a little chat about the absent friend; he had so few opportunities.
"I shall enjoy it too," Lilly responded, inviting him to sit down. "It's a great happiness for me to find someone who knows my fiancé."
The word "fiancé" now fell glibly from her lips as something quite natural. As the chance of his staying longer had been foreseen and provided for, she had only to ring, and Frau Laue appeared in the famous brown velvet gown with the black sequin square décolletage, which was now decorously filled in with one of Lilly's white silk fichus. She bore a tea-tray with two dainty cups of mocha coffee; and when presented to Herr Dehnicke she made a curtsey, which would have graced a ball at Prince Orloffski's. After she had added a few remarks about the great histrionic artists of the past and the photographs to which they had affixed their autographs at her special request, she retired, as it beseemed her to do.
Then Lilly displayed her charms as a hostess, and with the aroma of mocha coffee the spirit of "better days" pervaded everything.
Nearly a week later the post brought Frau Lilly Czepanek a money-order for two hundred and ten marks, from Richard Dehnicke, of the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke, metal-ware craftsmen, "Due for seven landscapes painted on glass, with dried flowers, sold at thirty marks apiece."
Thus the foundation of a future career seemed to be laid.
CHAPTER V
Bright times followed. With part of the sum she had earned, Lilly invested in new materials, and soon more sunsets flared behind woods of dried grass and flowers pasted on glass.
As she lay sleepless, through the hot summer nights, from overwork, she made plans of all the great things she would do when her art had conquered the world. She would have a workshop like Herr Dehnicke's, and employ a dozen women-hands with Frau Laue as forewoman. Then she would advertise for her lost father, and move her poor insane mother to an expensive private asylum.