But he did nothing of the sort.
"I am willing to be guided by you," he said humbly, "if you'll only tell me what----"
"If you don't know what you ought to do, I'll tell you. You ought not to trot her out and put her through her paces as if she were a prize animal, exposing her to the gaze of any gaping crew. Don't put her in the front of your box at the theatre for every roué to look at through his opera-glasses."
Richard manned himself to parry her attack.
"If I may venture to ask the question, are you not to be seen everywhere?" he asked.
"Yes, certainly, because I want to see as well as be seen. That is why I ran away from my brute of a husband and chucked respectability. Still, I don't sit in the front of boxes, and I don't let myself be trotted up and down a race-course. I am a Bohemian; Lilly, on the contrary, with her placid refined nature, is a home-bird, and should be treated as if she were your legal wife.... We neither of us want to descend to the demi-monde--that is to say, what we call demi-monde here in Germany; in the French sense we are already there. Now I have said my say, Herr Dehnicke."
Richard stood up. He had grown very red, and was biting his moustache with impotent resentment.
"I have always put her welfare before everything," he said. "Besides, I have only acted according to her wishes; have I not, Lilly?"
Lilly felt she couldn't contradict him. She did not desire to see him further humiliated, and said nothing.
"And if you acted a thousand-fold according to her wishes," answered the little woman for her, "you were wrong. You should have said, 'My child, you don't understand this sort of life; as we are not married--which, mark my word, would be far the best for both of you--we must live at a moderate pace, otherwise I shall do you an irreparable injury and drag you into the mud.'"