After confessing everything--except, of course, her love story--he had become too much of a stranger for _that_--she hastened away. The clocks were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose nor significance.
She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street.
He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath, remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a great danger.
From now on there were two such encounters a week.
Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when--blushing a bit--he raised his cap to her.
Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell. She opened the door--there _he_ stood.
"Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion.
Did she happen to have Rückert's poems in her library?
Lilly knew for certain she did _not_ have them, but if she admitted forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the customers' chair placed close to the door.
Lilly spent some time searching, because she was afraid the inevitable "no" would send him off with a curt "thank you," and she ran up and down the aisles between the shelves aimlessly, reiterating:
"I'm sure I saw the poems just a little while ago."
Then, in order to think the matter over more quietly, she seated herself opposite him with the counter between. But he encouraged her to renew the search.
"If you saw them only a short time ago, then they are bound to be here."
When finally convinced that Rückert's poems were not in the library, he fetched a deep sigh and murmured something like, "What shall I do?" and disappeared.