Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to close her eyes and clench her teeth--she was ashamed of the shiver, too.
Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set with pearls and precious gems.
"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have _something_. Then I could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St. Joseph--and the swords in _my_ heart would be sumptuous to behold."
As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at the wedding.
She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot, surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint--how she had been borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon the fair and blessed distance.
None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.
"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and shrugged her shoulders.
Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return, that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted, distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.
"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.
She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She prayed to be able to love him--with as much passion as she had drops of blood--with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much delight as there was laughter in her heart.
With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and trust--as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he happened to wish.
The colonel wishing, on account of his mésalliance, to avoid his many military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.
He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple. Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath--that was all they needed. Close companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring about inward intimacy.