Lily was left alone in Berlin.
Generally, she hated the hotels frequented by artistes, but she was very glad to be in one this time. She, poor little broken-down thing, was not left to the care of a common servant; she had nice, kind nurses.... And she had no lack of friends who took interest in her, very sincerely, for that matter, for she was a favorite with all of them, that pretty Miss Lily, who would soon be free....
Lily let herself be coddled. Pending the arrival of the money which Trampy was to send, she wanted for nothing, especially in the way of luxuries: chocolates, sweets, flowers, they brought her everything. Her friends passing through Berlin, the impersonator, the Paras, many others, hearing that she was ill, came to see her, treated her as a lady, cried out how well she was looking, how pretty she was and how it suited her to be ill in bed.
Lily thought that very nice, put on a languid air, like a poor little jaded thing that had got out of gear:
“I shall die of overdoing it, I know I shall,” she said. “I’ve been at the bike ever since I was that high”—raising her hand twelve inches above the bed—“and my heart’s worn out by the hard work. My knees, too. Sit down there on the basket trunk. You at the foot of the bed. Have a chocolate.”
Then she turned over in her sheets, which molded her firm, plump shape, took a bag of sweets from the chair beside her and offered it round. Poor little martyr, she had been forbidden them by the doctor, because of a cough.... But she took them all the same, merely for the sake of taking them, with a graceful movement, her bare arm outstretched, her wrist making a supple curve, like a swan’s neck, as she dipped her pretty hand into the bag.
In addition to her regular friends, such as the impersonator or the Paras, others, the people staying in the hotel, would tap discreetly at the glass door between her room and the passage, come in on tip-toe, speak in a whisper.
“What nonsense!” Lily would say. “I’m not dead yet, you know!”