Lilly rebelled at having to utter her former lover's name, and so expose her shame to the man who lived behind those respectable porcelain flower pots.
"Is it possible," she asked hesitatingly, "that you do not recall having received a letter from a comrade in your regiment, in which he asks you to interest yourself in a lady who--"
Mr. Dehnicke jumped to his feet and reddened to the roots of his hair. His eyes grew bright and round between his stretched lids and threatened to pop from their sockets.
"I beg pardon," he faltered. "You probably refer to a letter which I received nearly a year and a half ago from Lieutenant von Prell?"
"My lady," he cried, completely upset. "If I had suspected that my lady--"
So much simple respect was depicted on his face that Lilly's consciousness of aristocracy was heightened quite a bit.
"I call myself Lilly--Czepanek," she whispered, blushing in her turn, though delighting in the expression "call myself," which permitted the assumption that she had voluntarily chosen to use her maiden name.
Fright at the indelicacy of which he thought himself guilty was plainly to be read in his features.
"I beg pardon," he said, "I should have remembered that you must have gone through many difficulties." Then as if shot from a pistol: "Why didn't you come sooner? I waited and waited--a month--several months--then I took to looking for you--in vain. I even thought of going to a detective bureau, but I feared overstepping the bounds of reserve--"
Lilly nodded with a smile of appreciation.
"Unfortunately I did not dream of another name. So I gave up the hope of ever having the great pleasure--"
In the exuberance of his delight he seemed prepared to clasp her hand. However, he proved himself sufficiently well bred to desist when he saw she did not respond.
Lilly now had the reins of the situation in her hands. She felt she was so saturated with the romance of suffering, so enveloped by the delicate aroma of aristocratic aloofness, that she might just have stepped out of one of Mrs. Asmussen's novels.
"I am grateful to you for your reproaches. I see I did not knock at your door in vain."
"I assure you," he replied, inclining his head still more to the left by way of emphasis, "I place myself at your service with all my powers, with everything I am and--" He paused. The word "have," which should naturally have followed, was more than he, the scrupulous business man, would allow to pass his lips so lightly.