eless it appeared to be a violent case of love at
first sight, and before the first sight.

Kirtley dropped out of the running. He excused himself by the
necessity of burying himself deeper in his books on Teuton origins
and traits. In a brief week the Buchers had forgotten him. All was
Herr Deming--the wonderful Herr Deming--the fortunate youth who was
bringing the witchery of good luck into the drab home. It was Herr
Deming morning, noon and night.

There were theater parties, suppers on Bruehl Terrace, plans for the
next dance. Jim spread it on thick, and the dutiful, docile Elsa was
swept along with the rest, although with a reserve in evocation as
became the modesty of a maiden who was manifestly the pivotal center
of all this vertiginous attraction and activity. The Buchers
suddenly evinced a great and favorable curiosity about America.
Their attitude toward it was revolutionized. They plied Gard with
questions. What was living like there? It must be most desirable.
Gard came across convenient hand books of knowledge, inconvenient
encyclopedias and atlases, lying here and there in the house, with
pages opened freely at the United States. Frau Bucher became
vociferous in praise of the advantages of the Yankee fashion of
courtship over the slow, economical, dull, German process of
match-making.

The household was overturned. Its affairs got dreadfully behind.
Mother was mightily absorbed in getting out and fixing up imposing
old dresses, laces, wraps, that were heirlooms or dated from her
bridal days of a quarter of a century before. Elsa's lessons in
etching and her methodical hours for perfecting her manifold
talents, became badly confused.

The great thing was driving at the fashionable hour in the Grosse
Garten. This was what the Buchers had never dreamed of. In the
winter only the royal and very aristocratic families drove there.
The common people, who might extravagantly expend a few marks to
indulge in this pastime of nobility in summer, were frozen out of it
in winter. Hot drinks in beer halls were then more to their taste.

But many an afternoon at four Deming, with his two ladies
overdressed for the occasion in the dowdy German manner, occupying
a handsome, heated limousine decorated with a conspicuous mirror and
with Parma violets gently disengaging a delicate perfume, fell in
right behind the king's household if possible, and toured the park
in stately measure, being numbered, no doubt, by the ope