One day a pretty young thing, with a baby eight weeks old in her arms, called on Lilly, screamed and cried and declared that she ought to be promoted to Lilly's place, as she had a child by him.
Lilly consoled her, gave her some wine to drink, and, full of envy of the baby, tickled it under its damp little chin till it gurgled with bliss; whereupon the girl departed, deeply touched, after kissing Lilly's hand gratefully.
Richard, however, came in for no unpleasant scene that afternoon, for Lilly was entirely free from jealousy. When he came to her, looking sheepish, and avoided meeting her eyes, while his person exhaled an odour of cheap perfume, she always gave him a smile of maternal indulgence, which he well understood and couldn't bear.
However determined he might be to keep silent, he invariably broke down at last, and in about half an hour had poured out shuffling confessions, for which he expected to be praised or comforted.
It was inevitable that Lilly, in an existence of this sort, in which were rampant all the evils of married life, without any of its rights and dignity, should become more and more self-centred, and look forward to the future with increasing sadness.
She passed her days as if seated on a bough which every gust of wind threatened to snap, and so plunge her into the depths below. Before her lay a straight, dull, endless road, stretching onwards without goal, without horizon--nothing but the same old pleasures, the same aimless wandering about from one haunt to another till morning dawned. Often she felt as tired out as if she had been doing hard manual labour. Sometimes she struck, and lay the whole day in bed reading Fliegende Blätter, or dreaming of old days with closed eyes.
The sunless hole of the widow Asmussen's library came back to her like a paradise, and the milk puddings in retrospect seemed veritable ambrosia. The memory of her early loves she scarcely dared conjure up, as if it were sacrilege to think of them in such a present. Yet she caught herself indulging in vague hopes that one or other of them might one day turn up out of the past, and, holding his hand out to her, say, "You have wandered long enough in the wilderness, now come home." Who it would be she hadn't a notion, but she felt it must happen. Things could not go on like this for ever.
Every now and then, when secret restlessness gave her no peace, she resumed her nocturnal strolls, and taking the electric tram to distant suburbs would wander guiltily up and down unfamiliar lively streets, just as Frau Jula did; only, unlike Frau Jula, she never could bring herself to answer her pursuers.
It was on one of these expeditions--in a northerly direction far away beyond the Rosental gate--that one May evening she met a young man who did not take any notice of her, who also did not look like a gentleman, but whose appearance struck her as familiar--so familiar that it gave her a stab at the heart.