But her skill, which consisted of nothing more than some recollections of water-color lessons at high school, failed her utterly. The colors ran together, and the woods in the foreground, which had significance and value only in conjunction with the painted landscape, remained nothing but fern leaves and grass blades, rooted in nothingness.
Lilly agonised a long time. Finally shedding hot tears she threw all the stuff into a corner, and ruefully returned to her lamp shades. She again took to pasting oiled paper wings and weaving six of them together with white silk ribbons.
Mrs. Laue, who during the weeks of Lilly's truancy had maintained glum silence, took again to depicting seductive futures. All the fancies that had been held fast in her poor brain for twenty long years were set free, now that she herself had nothing to hope for, and were laid in Lilly's outstretched hands.
As for Lilly, she continued to listen greedily; but a feeling began to oppress her soul that as her life went on--that which she called life--she was sinking slowly, almost imperceptibly, but deeper, deeper every day into this dark, sorry existence; and she was tormented by a horror of her landlady, of that limited human being in whose great, watery, red-rimmed eyes a hopeless desire for life's attractions still shone, although her lamp shades had brought her nearly to the edge of the grave.
This horror often came upon Lilly so powerfully that she had to run out of doors, no matter where--out into the world, into the arms of life.
Before an hour had elapsed she was back again. The streets frightened her. The painted prostitutes who brushed her shoulders, the young fellows hunting for game who trotted behind her, the unconcerned brazenness with which each and every one elbowed his way--all this filled her with apprehension and made a coward of her.
A dim feeling told her she would never again be equal to that lusty independence which takes pleasure in fight. She seemed to herself a helpless cripple, when she remembered the poor shop-girl who in cozy security performed her duties among Mrs. Asmussen's old volumes, and felt she was in the right even when she lied and deceived and was beaten and obviously was in the wrong.