She apologised for the omission, and added, with a little pang at her heart, "I suppose we shall not have many more meals together?"
"Probably not," he said; and cast a glance at the servant, whose presence obviously embarrassed him. Otherwise she felt sure that he would have expressed his feelings more graciously.
Afterwards they withdrew to the corner drawing-room. The hot July air came in through the open windows, but the little naked monkey, whose cage was placed near the aquarium, was perished with cold, and now shivered so violently that he had to be wrapped up in his coat, an attention to which he submitted with snarls. The bullfinch piped its evening song and it grew dusk.
Fritz Redlich sat as usual in the rocking-chair, his favourite seat after he had partaken of a good meal. She walked excitedly up and down the room.
"I shall soon be lonely again," she thought, "and start knocking about all alone, as before."
Yet what a piece of luck it was for him! What a piece of luck! She told him so repeatedly.
"Yes," he said, "it certainly is very fortunate that I have fought my way as I have done"; he emphasised the last few words and went on, "When I think what awful years those have been, how often I have been compelled to belie my character, how often my principles have been endangered ... And not only that," he added after a depressed pause, "there have been the many doubtful circumstances in which I have been thrown, and the enforced connection with impurity, not to be wondered at when one takes into consideration how easily a man becomes infected by the society he is in, and finds himself doing things that he would rather leave alone. It's hard--very hard, Frau Czepanek."
"Oh, please don't Frau Czepanek me!" she exclaimed. "Can't you call me 'Frau Lilly,' or simply 'Lilly'? We are old friends, you know."
"Willingly, if you wish," he replied.
To-day she felt a tenderness for him such as she had not experienced since the days of her early youth. It was, too, a motherly, a sisterly tenderness, and something else besides--something like a shimmer of light drawing nearer and nearer from the distance.