"And, secondly, I tell you in confidence that he has contributed generously towards founding the new magazine. So the two are, as it were, colleagues and partners. I arranged matters thus intentionally, for I thought that it would be the best guarantee of the continuance of amicable relations all round. You needn't open your eyes so wide, my dear. Life is made up of compromises. Every bird feathers its own nest. Pray don't think I am afraid of disclosures and revelations. I shrug my shoulders at the notion of such a thing. You know tragedy is a matter of taste. I abhor it, so there's no tragedy in my philosophy. I say to myself, it's safe to smile perpetually so long as you are made of iron underneath."
Lilly felt slightly disgusted.
"If it is at such a price as this," she thought, "that one purges one's life of tragedy, I would rather stick to unhappiness and leave happiness alone."
She rose to go.
However much this small creature might surpass her in strength of mind and will-power, so that she now stood with both feet firmly planted on the rock of an honourable life, she was no longer a suitable friend for Lilly.
"At all events," she said aloud, "I hope that your trust won't be misplaced."
Frau Jula waved her hand in the air.
"Bah!" she sneered. "Men are all alike. Those who know the world are devourers of women; those who don't are imbeciles. I can get on with both classes."
"There is possibly a third," Lilly put in, annoyed. She felt as if Konrad had been insulted.
"Possibly," responded Frau Jula, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I don't know it." And then, putting both hands round Lilly's waist, she said: "Tell me honestly, child; when you see me as I am now, and compare me with what I was, does it strike you that I am posing?"