A few minutes later she lay beside him on the narrow camp-bedstead, the hard edges of which hurt her limbs. Her head was on his shoulder; her arms, one under his back, the other flung across his chest, clung to him as always, when she sought solace and protection from him in trouble. But this time she slept, and he kept watch.
CHAPTER XIX
The old lampshade-maker of the Neanderstrasse was not a little astonished when her former lodger, whom she had always admired as a smartly-turned-out grand lady, came one day in a badly fitting alpaca coat and skirt, and a sailor hat with a grass-green ribbon round it, and asked to be taken in. Last year's young lady occupant of the best room having recently married, however, she was glad to let it again to Lilly.
Thus it happened that Frau Laue's fiery crimson plush upholstery once more played a part in her life. The pictures of famous actors smiled down on her patronisingly from the walls, and she was reminded of the connection between cleanliness of person and purity of conscience as she made her toilette.
Konrad, in touching concern for her appearance, drew all the money that he had saved out of the bank--about five hundred marks altogether--and had purchased her a wardrobe at the draper's, for she could not go out and shop for herself in the costume she had worn the night that she came to his rooms. He had been persuaded by the shopgirls to buy the most ridiculous things. She would have died of laughing if he hadn't laid out a great deal of his money on them.
Dressed in the shoddy apparel, she felt she was masquerading, and not for the world would she now have been seen in the streets.
Frau Laue shook her head doubtfully.
"Four years ago you left me with court-dresses, bracelets, and brooches, and all sorts of lovely things, and now you are come back in these rags! That doesn't seem to me to be fitting to your career, Lilly dear."
Neither did Konrad find favour in the old lady's eyes.
"He's too young for you," she said, "and not enough of a swell. He may have high ideals, and be sentimental, otherwise he wouldn't see anything in you; but I tell you all that high-flown rubbish means sorrow."