Then at Konrad's side she strolled through the blue twilight of the streets, using her eyes so as to escape observation from acquaintances who might chance to be about.
They met worthy, middle-class families on their way to the gardens. Lovers joined each other at appointed street corners. And between these two extremes was the floating element of those detached beings who are alone and solitary in crowds, and who yearn to steal from laughing Chance what they have prayed for in vain from sterner gods. A sultry vapour of secret desires hung over the exhausted city, in which conventional reserve and genuine sentiment flickered up and were extinguished as if they had never been.
How long ago seemed the days when she herself had sauntered around, hoping for fate to come her way, yet not daring to compel it. And, with a shudder at the thought of the dangers she had escaped, she clung closer to Konrad's protecting arm.
They always succeeded in finding some private nook after their own heart to dine in, where a gipsy band scraped their fiddles wildly, or Tyrolese played their zithers, or the landlord himself, a musician who had known better days, acted as conductor of an orchestra. In ivy-clad arbours, where the hot breeze stirred the dust on the evergreens in tubs, they could pass the evening hours together without fear of discovery. In the meantime a change had come over their intercourse. There were still instructive and erudite harangues on every conceivable subject, and listening attentively she hung on his lips with as much eagerness as ever, but her holy zeal for scientific studies had evaporated.
That God did not exist, that Fra Filippo Lippi was a scoundrel, that a line gone mad should be consigned to an asylum even if it was modern of the modern, that baroque art had its redeeming qualities--all this and much else that was interesting Lilly had heard many times, but it no longer provoked argument.
Often they looked long and silently into each other's eyes with a tender smile of yearning, as if that were the most eloquent language in which they could converse. Often too his thoughts wandered away on their own solitary excursions, and only came back to her under coercion. Then she was sad and jealous, and begged to go home.
Not till he was pillowed in her arms, lying close to her heart, was she content. The heat of the day had baked the walls through. The curtains were oppressive, and through the blinds a kind of desert cyclone blew; but they took no notice, the sultriness suited their mood.
They dreaded falling asleep as a misfortune, which shamefully abbreviated the hours of their being together, and so they promised that the one who kept awake longer was to rouse the other.
It was she who always kept awake longer; for he was exhausted by the day's work. For him there was no prospect of another doze after breakfast in bed, or of a siesta on the couch as alleviation from the midday heat. And as he lay with tired limbs outstretched, twitching like a noble hound's after a day's sport, she had not the heart to keep her promise. Then she would sit up beside him, and in the light cast from the pink-shaded, dimly burning lamp gaze at him hour after hour without tiring.
There was always something in his face to study. The frown of wrath, or rather of power, between his brows was more sharply defined than it used to be, and still frightened her a little. The muscles in his temples were never at rest, and the firm, curved upper lip trembled at the corners as if he were smiling at her in his sleep. He had become thin. In the haggard hollows of his cheeks were shadows spreading towards the jaws which they darkened, and there was a line of suffering about his nostrils. He was like a young Christ, made to be worshipped.