me." If they stuck her up on the stove, she remained there laughing, and if they wanted to copy her English exercise, she gave them the solution to an arithmetic problem besides.

The only discord in her relations with them arose from the jealousy that set her bosom friends by the ears. In this she was not quite blameless, as she changed her friendships with startling rapidity, feeling in duty bound to respond to all overtures of intimacy. Consequently her affections could not be fastened on a single companion for long, and she herself was amazed when she saw one sentiment pushed aside by the next attack.

The teachers, too, had kindly feelings for her. The words, "Lilly, you are dreaming," which sometimes came from the platform, sounded more like a caress than a reproach. As head of the newcomers in the 1 B class she sat for a time at the end of the sixth row, and more than one hand gave her hair a paternal stroke in passing.

Her nickname was "Lilly with the eyes." Her schoolmates declared such eyes were absolutely improbable, such eyes could not exist. "Cat eyes," "nixie eyes," are samples of the epithets bestowed upon them. Some maintained they were violet, some knew for sure she penciled her lids. However that may be, he who looked at her face saw eyes and nothing but eyes, and was content to look no further.

When fifteen and a half years old Lilly passed from the first-year class into the Selecta, the class for advanced pupils, for it had been decided that she was to earn her living as a governess.

With this came a change in many respects; new teachers, new subjects of study, new companions and a new tone in intercourse. Nobody was addressed by the first name; the throwing of paper balls ceased, and no one on going home found bits of paper stuck in her hair. Phrases like "sacredness of a vocation" and "consecration of life" were cheapened by repetition; but so also were love episodes and secret betrothals.

For the first time Lilly experienced a slight feeling of envy—she was neither engaged, nor did the least love affair come her way. Such trivialities as anonymous bouquets or verses bearing the superscription, "Thine forever," with two initial letters intertwined, were, of course, not to be counted.

But her time came. Her love was compounded of marble statues and temple pillars, of evergreen cypresses and a sky eternally blue, of pity and yearning for the far-off, of a pupil's adoration for her teacher, and of a desire to save.

He was assistant instructor in science in the girls' high school, and taught in the lower grades, where the ruler is still used on pupils' knuckles and tongues are stuck out behind the teacher's back in revenge. He gave no instruction whatever in the higher classes, but delivered lectures on the history of art to the Selecta.

"History of art." The very words are enough to send a shiver of ecstasy through a maiden's soul. How much greater the charm when a suffering young man with deep-set, burning eyes and a lily-white forehead expounds the subject!

His first name was Arpad.

But there the romance ended. What remained was a poor consumptive, who had painfully earned his way through the university by private tutoring, only to fall a victim to the grave just when he had hoped to reap the scant fruit of the sufferings of his youth. His superiors helped him to the extent of their ability. They assigned him the easiest classes, and as soon as they noticed the fever stains burning on his cheeks, they obtained a substitute in his place and sent him home. But they succeeded in securing only a short respite, during which the dying man became a burden to the teaching staff. Feeling this himself he put forth suicidal energy to disarm whatever criticism might be made against his ability to work. He eagerly assumed all possible duties in his line, and what the most industrious and ambitious man found too difficult he, who stood with one foot in the grave, with no career ahead of him, gladly took upon his shoulders.

The day the principal introduced him to the Selecta remained fixed in Lilly's memory. It was between three and four o'clock, the last hour, when the almighty principal's portly belly unexpectedly appeared in the doorway. He entered followed by the slender, good-looking young man with a slight stoop, who stood at Miss Hennig's right side during morning services in the main hall and dog-eared the pages of his hymn-book while the anthem was being sung. He wore a tight grey coat, which emphasised his slimness, and his shining modish silk vest cast a false glitter of the world of society over him. He made two or three abrupt bows to the class, like a lieutenant, and looked very shy and embarrassed.

"Dr. Mälzer," said the principal, presenting him. "He will introduce you to the art of the Renaissance. I should like you, young ladies, to listen most attentively, for although the subject is not obligatory, and you will not have to pass an examination in it, it is of great importance for general education, and I shall have occasion to test your progress in the literature class when we take up, for example, Lessing, Goethe, or Winckelmann."

With these words he strutted out of the room.

The young pedagogue twirled his little blond moustache, which fell in two thin scraggly tufts over the corners of his mouth. A smile both bashful and sarcastic flitted across his face. He looked around irresolutely for the chair, hesitating, apparently, whether to sit down or remain standing.

Meta Jachmann, with her usual inclination to be silly, began to giggle, and soon half the class had followed suit. A hot red spread over the teacher's wan face.

"Laugh, ladies, laugh," he said with a voice which despite its weakness shook his narrow chest. "Persons in your position may well laugh; for a life full of activity and vigour lies ahead of you. I may rejoice, too, for I am permitted to speak to you as soul to soul; which is a piece of good fortune that rarely falls to the lot of a novice in the teaching profession. You will find that out from your own experience soon enough."

The class grew still as a mouse. From that moment on he had the girls in his grip.

"But that's not the whole of my good fortune," he continued. "The theme which the authorities of this institution have entrusted to my slender ability—whether from magnanimity toward me, or lack of respect for the subject, I cannot say—is the highest theme which human tradition knows. Every personal expression in history, however defiant, revolutionary, or alien the voice of the chosen one that uttered it, later exegesis used as moral fodder with which to satiate the masses. The only personages with whom this did not succeed were the men of the Renaissance. The nine times wise branded Plato as a shield bearer of Christianity, Horace as a pedant, Augustine as a church saint, Jesus as the Son of God. But no one has ever undertaken to make of Michael Angelo, of Alexander Borgia, of Machiavelli, anything but an ego, an ego which faces surrounding conditions and the world either as creator or destroyer, relying on the fulness of his own power."

The young souls sat up and listened. Never had anyone spoken to them in such a tone. They felt he was talking his life away, but in the very moment they realised this, they drew a chain of freemasonry about him with which they shielded him.

He continued. With bold rapid strokes, which wrung new life from the dead, he pictured to them the time and the men. The accumulation of many years of repression now burst from him in passionate utterance.

His auditors suspected that here was more than a school lesson, more, even, than the harvest of scholarship. They divined that they were listening to a confession of faith; and they attached themselves to him with all the rapturous abandon of a woman and pupil, most rapturous when they did not understand.

Lilly being one of the younger girls sat nearest to the instructor. She had a vague feeling, as of a flood of new, ineffably beautiful