"Don't pretend," she said, "that you are not perfectly at home here. As if I didn't understand! Please call each other by your Christian or pet names, and I'll seem as if I hadn't heard."
Both smiled, and while Lilly gave her guest a cup of tea, he toyed with the newspaper in question, a little obviously, for he wanted to find out whether Frau Sievekingk had heard anything of their great triumph.
"That is just what I've come to talk about," said the little lady, "that rubbish in the paper. I suppose you think an awful lot of it?"
Richard made a gesture of protest, but smiled complacently.
"To speak frankly, I should have credited you with a little more sense."
"Would you really?" Richard exclaimed, aghast, and Lilly jumped. The crouching fear that had made itself felt earlier seemed to tell her that even this piece of undiluted good fortune might conceal a sting.
"Please listen to what I am going to say," the little visitor continued, and her eyes flashed now not shiftily but steadily. "I have experience in these matters, for my red-headed boy tried the same game on with me at first.... I wonder if the thought has ever occurred to you, Herr Dehnicke, that when one of the élite, as is that sweet exquisitely unique creature sitting there, entrusts herself to your care, you have taken a gigantic responsibility upon your shoulders? Do you men think we exist merely to feed and advertise your vanity? We're not milliners or chorus girls who want to be dressed up in silks and chiffons simply that the world may see what a dog you are. We may have lost caste, it is true, but that doesn't mean we are by a long way come down to what you would like to treat us as."
Richard struggled to retort, but could not find words.
Then she bent tenderly towards Lilly, and continued: "A poor butterfly of aristocratic lineage comes flitting along unsuspectingly and says, 'Take me--you can do what you like with me.' And what are you going to do with her? Are you going to make a bad woman of her, or rather what the world accepts as a bad woman? No! I won't be contradicted. That's a good beginning," and she pointed to the paper; "if once the scorpions of the Press busy themselves about us, then the gallants of the Guards are on our track. Then God help you! They are far handsomer and more gallant than any of you, and if we must be driven into the ranks of the cocottes, we'd rather know by whom and for whom. Afterwards you find yourselves chucked, a stale joke of the day before yesterday--nothing more."
All this confused Lilly and turned her giddy. She could not have believed that anyone would dare to speak to Richard in such a tone, and she laid her hand protestingly and comfortingly on his shoulder, fearful that he would be angry and assert his dignity as host.