Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, and now and then covered his mouth with his pocket-handkerchief, afterwards examining it with an anxious, furtive eye. And then came the announcement that the lectures on Art would be discontinued till further notice. Anna Marholz brought the news to school that he had broken a blood-vessel. Lilly, without stopping to ask for further details, jumped to the conclusion that he was dying. After dark she found her way stealthily to his house, Anna Marholz having got his address from her father's books. There was a lamp with a green shade burning faintly in the window. Not a shadow stirred. No hand drew down the blind, but the lamp went on burning faintly the whole time that Lilly paced the damp street. Her conscience pricked her for not being at home helping her hard-worked mother; yet the next evening and the next she repeated the pilgrimage. She became more and more distressed, and fancied him lying there in his death-throes with no loving, gentle woman's hand to minister to him. On Saturday her anxiety took her from the work-table at home early in the afternoon. It was impossible to walk up and down before the house in broad daylight, but once there she didn't like to go back. Then suddenly she acted on an heroic impulse. She went to a florist's and spent the two marks fifty that was left over from the pawning of her little gold cross on a bunch of brownish-yellow autumn roses. With these she sprang up the steps of the house and rang at the door of the second floor, whence the light of the green-shaded lamp had proceeded. The door was answered by an old hag in a dirty blue-check apron. Lilly stammered forth his name.
"He lives at the back," said the old woman, and shut the door.
Then the green lamp wasn't his after all; it belonged instead to an old woman who wore dirty aprons and champed with her toothless gums. She had been worshipping at the wrong shrine for more than a week.
Lilly, utterly discouraged, was about to descend the staircase when his name caught her eye on one of the brass plates inside the lobby. Her heart gave a bound, and before she realised what she was doing she had knocked.
A pause ensued and then his head appeared through the half-opened door. The collar of his grey coat was turned up, apparently because he had no collar underneath. His hair was dishevelled, and the ends of his moustache drooped more than ever on either side of his mouth. His eyes seemed to ask in embarrassed surprise, "What have you come here for?"
"Fräulein--Fräulein----" He evidently recognised her, but could not recall her name. Lilly wanted to give him the roses and run away, but she was paralysed with shyness, and remained glued to the spot. "I presume you have been sent by your class?" he asked.
"Yes," assented Lilly eagerly. This saved her.
"I could not invite you to come in otherwise," he said, smiling nervously. "The consequences might be serious for both of us. But if you come as an emissary, that makes all the difference. Please come in."
Lilly had pictured him in a suite of lofty apartments filled with books, curios, instruments, and statues of great men. She was horrified to find that he lived in one small room. The bed was still unmade; besides the bed there was no furniture except a couple of chairs, a folding-table, a clothes-rack and a stand for books containing a few shabbily-bound volumes and paper-covered periodicals.
"This is a worse place than ours," she thought, and felt less shy as she sat down on one of the two chairs. Poverty seemed a bond between them.