"You are in his power," she thought; "he can make of you anything he likes."
As he drew her arm a little closer to his, her pressure in response brought his hand for a moment in contact with her bosom. She was overcome with terror that he might think she was throwing herself at his head. What if she went home with him, that he asked her ...
"I will take the tram," she said hurriedly. "I am tired."
He whistled for a cab, which was approaching out of the fog.
"No, no!" she cried, with no other thought than that of preserving the gift of his friendship as it was, intact. "Not with you. I must go home alone. You know what people are; besides ..."
She wrenched her arm out of his, and ran to the next stopping place so quickly that he could scarcely follow her before she had jumped on the first car that came up. The smile with which he looked after her was, however, not a disappointed one.
He intended to triumph, and would triumph.
Lilly Czepanek was once more travelling upwards to the heights.
Three days later they met again, but this time at a large social gathering. The party had come from a café chantant in the northern part of the town, and were to wind up the evening in the private back room of a middle-class public-house.