Before starting for the West Prussian asylum to attend the funeral, her chief anxiety had been to get as simple mourning as possible, for she was ashamed not to have done more for her mother, and did not wish to give cause for scandal by being too elegant as she stood at the pauper grave. All the same, the officials and doctors at the asylum were most deferential to her, and appeared to regard her as some exquisite black bird of Paradise.
It was not till after she had spent three very hot spring evenings, praying and meditating, beside the small heap of gravel, that she returned to Berlin, full of serious thoughts and re-awakened memories.
While away she had thought she hated Richard, but when she found him waiting for her at the station, she sank into his arms helplessly, craving for his sympathy. For now she had no one else but him; he really was her all on earth.
It was an understood thing that for the next few months nocturnal dissipations should cease on account of her mourning, and to his credit Richard showed her every consideration in the matter. He sat at home spending many quiet evenings with her, reading books that he couldn't appreciate and playing backgammon; and would go to sleep on the sofa rather than attempt to beguile her into the gay world. But in order that he should not be quite lost to that world, it was agreed that he should have every other evening to himself.
The notoriety that his beautiful mistress had acquired smoothed the way for him. He was elected to the Club that he had long hankered after, through the support of two of her aristocratic admirers, without a single blackball. So now it was open to him to enjoy the supreme felicity of losing part of his firm's hardly earned fortune to young scions of the nobility, foreign attachés, and other superior beings.
Lilly was not pleased to hear of his losses, which he confided to her with much feigned growling and grumbling. She practised economy more assiduously than before to try and make them good. He laughed at her efforts, and declared that she cost him no more than an extra cigarette a day; but her conviction that she was a burden on the firm of Liebert & Dehnicke remained deeply rooted.
On the quiet evenings that he recruited from his nights of dissipation their business conversations were resumed. Lilly liked to "talk shop," and she displayed a keen commercial as well as artistic faculty.
Richard frequently brought with him sketches of models, and they would sit with their heads bent together over unrolled charts, planning and consulting like a pair of partners. Those hours were almost blissful, and she never tired of asking questions about the factory itself. How many hands, male and female, were employed there at the present moment? Was that man or woman or this one there now? She didn't know their names, but could describe their faces exactly. What work had they chiefly on hand? Had the supply of certain models run out? Thus she kept herself au courant with the inner life of the business.
The factory was her ill-starred love, as she often said in joke to Richard. If she was allowed to call for him after business hours at the office, it was the greatest treat he could give her. If she could have had her way she would have found an excuse for going daily to the factory; but Richard didn't wish it. The employés, he said, had long ago got to know what their relations to each other were, and he must be careful not to lay himself open to disrespectful gossip.
She was sure that this could not be his only motive. There was something else behind. She had realised for some time that his mother was not well disposed towards her. Once he had talked about her quite freely and openly, but now he avoided the subject, even when Lilly asked direct questions.