"The day after to-morrow I shall expect you," Lilly called after him from the window.
He sent up a "Thank you and good-night" in reply, and disappeared in the darkness. The poor, poor boy! Plunged in bitterness and depression he went his way, little dreaming what paradises might have been his for the asking.
For the remainder of the evening she was distraught and anxious. "It would have been better not to have put my hand on his head," she thought. Yet, all the same, she was glad that she had.
The next afternoon a postcard came from Frau Jula. She had good news from "high quarters." The negotiations were concluded. Her protégé was to start without delay, and even his travelling expenses had been provided. Lilly cried with joy.
Thus was her good work completed. The friend of her youth was saved, and his zest for life restored. Now it only remained to teach him how to laugh and enter into his inheritance of proud courageous freedom, all that belonged to him by rights, which she herself could now never hope to attain.
Fate might do with her as it pleased, so long as he made upward progress. He had become an essential part of her existence. She had made him her own by her efforts and prayers, her lies, and her toil, and when he came to-morrow evening, as arranged, she would tell him all--all about that first love ... and everything.
And once more--in farewell--she would lay her hand on his shock of hair, and then let come what might.
The next evening she dressed herself more carefully than had been her wont when she spent the evening with him. She made the potato soup with her own hands and cut the beefsteak--he ate much smaller portions than he used to --so that the servant had nothing to do but put it in the pan.
The clock struck eight, but he had not come. He was busy packing, she thought, to console herself. It struck nine, and still he had not come; then it struck ten, and there was no further hope, unless the door was locked up and he was clapping his hands to be let in, as Richard did sometimes. She leaned out at the open window till it struck eleven. Then, tired out and very sad, she went to bed.