It was like a dream, as if magic wings had wafted her into a strange country; only the genial "Prosit Neujahr," on the placard swinging close to her, reminded her that Germany, Berlin, and the Potsdamer Bridge were not far off.
"I have come here every day since my return," Lilly's friend said, as they made themselves at home in a corner. "Nostalgia for the South still afflicts me. The most perfect German cooking has no charms for me now, and I must have my Chianti, To-day we will, however, drink something else, because the palate has to acquire a taste for Chianti."
He beckoned to the waiter, who was called Francesco, just as if he had stepped out of a romance about knight-errantry and brigands--and after a lively discussion between the two a dusty, light-coloured bottle was produced and put on the table. Then came dishes of curious-looking macaroni and meat bathed in orange-red sauce.
Lilly could not remember that she had ever tasted anything half so good, and she told him so; in fact, altogether she had never enjoyed herself so much in all her life. But this she did not tell him.
They wound up with a dish of fruit--called "giardinetto"--mandarins, dates, and gorgonzola cheese. The yellow wine, which had a perfume of nutmegs, frothed in the glasses, radiating tiny bubbles.
Leaning back against the wall, she let her eyes rest dreamily on her new friend. He turned his head from side to side with quick little movements rather like a bird. Everywhere he found something to observe, to remark upon, to absorb him; or perhaps he did it all to be specially entertaining to her. His eyes sparkled with eagerness and zest in life; the wrinkles on his forehead rose up and down, and what she had mistaken for a cloud of wrath was, after all, only the expression of his brain's boiling activity.
He had a dear, funny habit, which heightened this effect: he would put his outspread fingers to his head as if he were going to run them through a mass of hair; but the hair was not there, and so he clapped his hand instead on his bare temples. He seemed compounded of force and resolution, which commanded her admiration and even awe. But his physique was not of the most robust, although a golden-brown hue of health, fresh from the South, tinged his cheek. His throat was delicate, his breath from time to time came in gasps, and when his eyes became veiled with fatigue, after some introspective probings, there was something pathetically boyish about him that awakened maternal tenderness.
"Ah, so this is you!" she thought, and stretched herself in blissful languor. "This is you at last, at last."
"Why do you shut your eyes?" he asked, concerned. "Aren't you feeling well?"
"Yes, oh yes," she said, flattering him with her eyes and mouth. "But do, please, tell me more about the land of my desires, where I have always wanted to go and where I have never been."