"Miss--Miss--Miss--" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but failed to recall her name.
Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained rooted to the spot as if paralysed.
"You have been sent here by your class, I presume," he said.
"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.
"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious consequences for both of us. But as a delegate--" he reflected a moment--"come in, please."
Lilly had imagined him living in high, spacious apartments, surrounded by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.
"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.
At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling less embarrassed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought them nearer to each other.
"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"
Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.
"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.
He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against his face.
"They don't smell," he said, "they are the last--but my first. So you can imagine how precious they are to me."
Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.
"Are you still in pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she managed to ask.
"Pain? No. I don't suffer from pain. A little fever now and then--but the fever's pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon away over everything--over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too; and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so beautiful--that is to say--I beg your pardon--"
His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the pupil.
In the midst of his embarrassment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in two blue hollows.
"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoarser than usual.
The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a short time.