the beer out
through the gash. He had swum in Lake Starnberg where Ludwig II had
drowned himself; had seen the cafe in Munich where the celebrated
Naked Culture was said to have originated; had bribed his way into
the villa at Mayerling where Rudolph of Austria and Marie had ended
that mysterious night of fatality. In short, he had done Germany
pretty thoroughly.

When, by his insistent questionings, he learned about the
comfortable and illuminating German home where Kirtley had installed
himself, and that there was a fine, serious young lady in it with a
harvest of straw-colored hair, he soon confessed, after all, to his
disappointments.

"Kirtley, you are always a lucky dog. Here you are with nice Dutch
people, in the social swim, absorbing German to beat the band. All I
see is chambermaids who shout at me some kind of devilish dialect
that a fellow can't understand. And my chambermaid and I are just at
present at outs. I told her this morning she was the tallest woman I
ever saw. A little of her went such a long ways. As she don't know
any English words, that is the only thing we have agreed about. She
said, Ja wohl! This going to balls and cafes as I'm doing is all
right for local color and all that, but it would tickle dad a lot if
I knew a quiet, decent, respectable German family. And I want to
know a nice, sober German girl who has got yellow, chorus-girl hair
and will steady a fellow down. The proper study of young man is
young woman. I haven't been able to meet any young ladies in this
country. Sometimes I think they have only wenches. And I want some
of the classic Gayty and Schiller stuff too that you can get here in
Loschwitz."

This urgent idea did not appear auspicious to Gard. If Deming got
the run of Villa Elsa, he would unsettle things, interfere with his
own work. Jim was a good boy but he played hob with study. And he
was just the kind of flashy, ignorant Yankee who would prove to
Villa Elsa what it claimed about the race. He would disgust the
Buchers with his showy superficiality and dolessness. Mere money,
everlasting money. More than all he would complicate the situation
with Fraeulein. He might upset her somehow, and at least discover his
own secret feelings toward her--feelings that had become more
distraught after the Von Tielitz revelation. In a word, everything
would be helter-skelter.

After Jim had called twice, bent upon becoming intimate with the
Buchers, Gard, as he thought, concei