*

A noise woke her: some one was knocking outside; but, before she could get
out of bed, one of the glass panes of the door broke into fragments.
Somebody had smashed it with his elbow. A hand came through the opening,
turned back the key. The door opened and Trampy entered, raging,
growling:

"There's a man here!"

"You won't find him; you can kill me if you do!" cried Lily.

She expected a terrible scene. Trampy, drunk, had the look which he wore
on his bad days. He peered into the corners, turned a cunning eye on
Lily.

Trampy had spent the evening at the cafe and there heard of the visits
which Lily received during his absence. The neighbors he didn't mind
about, but Jimmy. Jimmy again! The damned dog! Why should he poke his nose
in? And, perhaps, at heart, Trampy was not sorry to have a scene with
Lily, for he wasn't bringing home a pfennig, having spent all his money on
champagne with girls. He felt himself at fault. He would get out of it
with violence.

"There's a man here!" repeated Trampy, walking up to Lily like a madman.

She was humiliated to the core when she saw Trampy, dazed with tobacco,
heavy with beer, stoop and look under the bed. And, suddenly, seeing the
banknote which Lily had laid on the table, Trampy shouted:

"You can't deny it this time. Tell me where the money comes from!"

"It's from Jimmy," said Lily, beside herself. "He thinks of me, Jimmy
does, while you leave me here to starve. It's ... it's for the
law-costs."

"Oh, that's another thing!" said Trampy, putting the note in his pocket.

"Let the money be!" cried Lily, leaping out of bed. "Don't you touch it!"

"Everything here belongs to me, I should think," said Trampy, a little
more calmly, already overcome with drunken drowsiness. "Everything, even a
dear little wifie," he continued, putting his snout under Lily's disgusted
nose.

But she gave a movement of revulsion so spontaneous that Trampy turned
pale under the insult:

"W-what! N-no love?" he stammered. "I'm not used to that. I can get
l-l-love for the asking ... at the ca-ca-cafe ... or the th-theater ... or
anywhere."

And Trampy, making a false step, caught hold of the curtain and drew it
back.

In the pitiless light of the morning, he appeared to Lily like a drowned
man, with a puffed-out face, swollen eyes and wan cheeks. To think that
she belonged to that! Lily spat at him in contempt. Oh, rather sleep with
lizards and guinea-pigs than that; rather wit