The Song of Songs. Hermann Sudermann
lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were still seething within him.
"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you." A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open the coach door, and run away into the night?"
She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped, would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen perhaps.
At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she returned his pressure.
Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the fleeting thought beset her again:
"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run away and never come back?"
She was already walking up the steps on his arm.
They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.
In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards, smoothly covered with a white counterpane.
She looked about in vain for another bed.
"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.
The colonel—when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel still—behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit, fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.
She remained leaning against the wall.
"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out of the window."
"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so, I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."
A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure of his possession.
He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.
A knock at the door.
A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated bottle.
"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish feeling.
"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for her in the trunk."
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