ho hovered round wives ready for divorce,
helping them, if need be. He could have smashed the face of that
green-eyed impersonator. There was also that architect, that
theater-builder, Harrasford's friend: he was passing through Berlin and
Lily had taken his fancy the other evening, at the cafe; he had patted her
cheek gaily:

"I knew you when you were 'that high.' You used to sit on my knee. How
beautiful you've grown!"

There appeared to be an infinity of people who had known Lily when she was
"that high." They paid her more and more attention ... and then they
believed her to be looked after by Jimmy. That again was a friendship
dating back to her childhood, they said: Jimmy, the bill-topper. He, too,
had known her when she was "that high."

The greater part of this talk reached Trampy's ears. Oh, he could have
killed that Jimmy! But he was obliged to hold his tongue. Jimmy had him
under his heel, with that crushing lawsuit.

They did not even dare speak of it, so painful was the subject. The little
table by the earthenware stove separated them like a wall; and there was
one thing always between them: Jimmy. Trampy never mentioned his name now.
He would have had too much to say.... And there were continual summonses,
always; and lawyers, always; and costs, always. Money melted away, like
butter in the sun. Lily was tired of it; and an agony overcame her at the
thought of leading a life like that for the rest of her days:

"Oh," she said, "he's taking the very bread from our mouths, with his
lawsuit! And I haven't a decent hat to wear."

"He'll drive us to the workhouse," grumbled Trampy, staring before him,
with folded arms.

"It's your fault!" Lily began, but soon stopped: the subject led to a
surfeit of quarreling.

But, in her own mind:

"That son of a gun of a Jimmy!" she thought. "All the same, who would ever
have believed it of him? Can he guess that all of this falls upon me?"

"Suppose you were to go and see him," said Trampy, at his wits' end, one
day when he had exhausted himself in stormy explanations with the manager
of the Kaiserin.

"I go and see Jimmy?" exclaimed Lily. "What for?"

"To try and arrange things," replied Trampy, dropping his head. "No one
but you could ..."

"I'll think about it, I'll see," said Lily.

But she had to get used by degrees to the idea of going and seeing that
Jimmy who was now ruining her. A strange curiosity, nevertheless, drove
her toward that conqueror,