"Really," remarked the elder, "I cannot see why you shouldn't give in to such a gorgeous admirer. If it was one of us, it would be different, of course. We are in society, and could not afford to lose caste. But you, a mere shopgirl without any family to disgrace, why shouldn't you? Besides, such a life has its charms and advantages. If I were you, I should certainly try it."
The younger and more sentimental of the two protested. "The first step," she said, "should only be taken for love. That is what is due to yourself, even if you are nothing but a shopgirl."
They were still debating this knotty question when they went off to New Year's parade. They wanted to see Colonel von Mertzbach in command of the guard. They had heard he was "awfully handsome," and that all the fashionable girls in the town were setting their cap at him.
Lilly caressed her roses and would have kissed them all, only there were too many.
Then she took courage, locked up, and went out to St. Ann's to consult St. Joseph. She would have met the officers riding to parade if she had not turned down a back street in the nick of time.
High-mass was over, and had left an odour of incense and poor people lingering in the aisles. A few worshippers remained praying at the side altars. Lilly knelt down before her dear saint, pressed her forehead against the velvet padding of the altar ratings, and tried to pour out her torn heart to him, begging for advice and consolation.
"Ought I to ... May I? Can I?" Oh! She hoped she might so very much. Such a chance was not likely to come more than once in a lifetime. She would be rich, a baroness, with the world and all its splendours at her feet. When did such things happen outside fairy-tales?
If only one thing about him had been different. For the first time it struck her clearly what that one thing was.
It was not his eyes, whose glance was a dagger-thrust. It was not the grey bristly hair on his temples, nor the harsh commanding voice of the martinet. No; now she knew that it was none of these, but the folds of skin hanging down from his chin to his throat. It was these that must always form a barrier between him and her. They couldn't be got over, nothing could conceal them. She shuddered at the thought of them. And yet the Asmussen sisters had talked of him as a handsome man. The daughters of wealthy and distinguished people were said to run after him.
It would have been folly on her part to refuse him. Wasn't he the best and noblest and most high-principled of men? Wasn't he nearly as good and kind as God Himself? Then she mapped out a future in which she was to live and breathe only for him; to sit at his feet as a disciple. She would flutter about him in gayer moments like a dove, though she could not exactly picture herself being ever lively in his presence. But she might be poetic; she might gaze at the stars in the distant firmament and the evening clouds, and look the image of a pale, noble, saintly creature to whom young strangers would lift their eyes in devouring longing without being rewarded by a single glance from her. All this would be possible, because her life would be consecrated to him, who was her friend, protector, and father, to whom she looked up on the heights whence no gleam had ever descended to her before.