The numb feeling in Lilly's legs increased. She walked, and was hardly conscious that she moved at all. She only felt the tremendous force of her heart-beats, which made her whole body vibrate like a mill.
In the Friedrichstrasse there were nearly as many people about as by day. Young men pursued their smiling quarry, and the lamplight was reflected in the silk hose of the tripping grisettes.
"Once submerged in this sort of world," Lilly thought with a gruesome envy, "and one is disturbed by no sense of wounded honour or suicidal impulses."
Ah! but on the other side of this bright, laughing, jostling crowd came peace and darkness again, in the shelter of which you might die unseen and unknown.
Through the noise she still heard her heels tapping. Why shouldn't she go into some café, she asked herself? Even if someone saw her, what did it matter? It would give her one miserable quarter of an hour's breathing space. Lights, mirrors, velvet seats, blue cigarette-smoke, a clink of crystal, a pricking in her parched throat. Just once--once more ... not a quarter ... but a whole hour, and one more poor little bit of life would be hers, which could do no one else any harm. But she could find no justification for such a cowardly action, and determined that her last walk should be disgraced by no such weakness. And she went on, on and on.
The merry vortex of the Kranzlerecke was left behind; the daggers of light stabbed her no more. Lilly hardly knew where she was going. Most likely she was in one of those quiet cross-streets which led to the north-west end. The middle of the deserted street glistened with puddles. The rainy autumnal wind came sweeping along between the houses, and the cold lamplight was reflected in their dark windowpanes. Everything round her here seemed lifeless and extinct; only a human phantom glided forth at intervals, and cats chased each other noiselessly into obscurity.
Lilly shivered, and clasped the score tighter in her arms. As she tried to catch a sight of her reflection in the glass window of a florist's, the blinds of which were not drawn down, she started. There she saw stiff branches of evergreen laurels and cypresses encircling a bust of the Kaiser; that recalled something strongly to her mind. What was it? Ah! of course. They reminded her of the Clytie which reigned on the pretentious private staircase of Liebert & Dehnicke's, smiling and dreaming. Lilly Czepanek would never now ascend that green-shaded stairway, either as a penitent or a triumphant sinner.
She had chosen a better way, which led more directly to the great goal.
She came to a bridge, and crossed it quickly. That other bridge, with the iron palisade, which sung her such alluring cradle-songs, was further away in the open, buried in darkness and silence.
"You overflow with a superfluity of love ... three kinds of love: love emanating from the heart, the senses, and from compassion. One kind everybody has; two are dangerous; all three lead to ruin!"