"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Lilly.
"Yes, I am one. The evening that my red-headed boy leaves me alone, I put on dark things and drive into districts where nobody knows who I am. When I meet someone whom I like the look of, I give him a glance that makes him turn round and speak to me; then I go with him into a common inn, or to a little confectioner's, anywhere he likes, or I sit with him on a seat in the dark ... and if I like him still better than I thought ... I will just go with him anywhere--anywhere he asks me to go."
"Oh, how dreadful that is!" said Lilly, and pressed her hands to her eyes. Now she knew why a few months ago something had seemed to draw her more and more powerfully to the streets, why a pleasant thrill had passed through her when someone had addressed her in the dark; only, of course, she had been too nervous to answer.
"And now I have told you this, and you know what I am, you won't want me to sit on your beautiful sofa any more!" cried Frau Jula. "Say it plump out, and I'll go." She caught beseechingly at Lilly's hands.
Lilly felt like a good Samaritan who, having come across someone grievously afflicted, was bound to do the best she could for her.
"What makes you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How have you come to it?"
"Yes, how have I come to it? Can you say how you have come to what you are? It's all very well for people to reproach us with weakness; but one necessity leads on to another, one wish gives birth to more wishes, and one always thinks one is doing right."
"That is true enough," Lilly faltered, recalling the decisive moments of her own life.
"I have always persuaded myself that I must do it for the sake of my poetry. I must have experiences, pictures, and what the French call frisson. But all that is nothing but an excuse, a mere pretext. The truth is that you just seek and seek. Your own husband is not what you want, your red-headed boy isn't either, and all the rest aren't--your sportsmen, merchants, and lieutenants. But you think he must be somewhere. Perhaps he's that stranger at the next table? You are almost sure he is, so you become acquainted with him, and find that he isn't. It's none of the worthy ones, for however much trouble they may take to possess us they take no trouble to find out if there is anything worthy in us. And so you have to go on searching. Perhaps it will be someone in the street? It becomes at last a positive fever ... it consumes and burns you up. Often I can't sleep for thinking of the next dark night when I shall be wandering about looking ... Don't you see? It must end in ruin to me, body and soul. And this evening, when I saw your daintily laid supper-table, all at once a longing came over me for my home and husband. Yes, I am periodically tortured with that longing. He has weak eyes, and smells of carbolic. Oh, that vilest of all vile smells! How much I should like to smell it again! I shouldn't even mind his throwing his stethoscope at me as often as he likes. He has written asking me to go back.... I can go back if I choose ... and yet I don't go. I stay here and perish. Oh, life is farcical!"
She rose and fumbled for her hat and hatpins, which lay on the table.