s all for _Wilhelm Meister_, _Faust_, _The
Robbers_, and _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ in those days) was a German girl
learning English, a robust, vital, brown-haired wench from Stuttgart.
Often when it came to his turn to read from the set piece of
literature, he felt this girl's eyes upon him and he would raise his
own to find her regarding him with a steady, appraising glance. And
yet she seemed to vanish effectively enough in the general confusion
of departure. Once she picked up his pencil and asked mutely for the
use of it, and he assented with what he knew was a fiery blush. She
replaced it with a firm nod of the head and her steady glance. For a
few days the thought of her bothered his dreams and then, in the
fanatical pursuit of knowledge, the mood evaporated. Perhaps she was
aware of this and laid her plans accordingly, for on the last evening
of the session, as he came down the steps of the college and turned
toward Fetter Lane, he saw her standing under the lamp-post at the
corner. A frightful predicament! It was one thing to read about
Johann Wolfgang Goethe and his free emotional development, about
Arthur Schopenhauer living in Venice with his mistress and writing
philosophical works, or to approve the newly translated vapourings of
Frederick Nietzsche. It was quite another to walk steadily onward and
encounter a robust, vital, brown-haired wench from Stuttgart who stood
waiting with unmistakable invitation in her pose. When he arrived at
the corner he was in a condition bordering on blind panic and he
heard, as through a thick wall, a hoarse, musical voice murmur
unintelligible words. He heard himself murmur something which brought
a look of angry astonishment into her eyes. He heard the words "Don't
you like me?" far off, drowned by a buzzing of the blood in his
ear-drums. And then a vicious thrust forward of the blonde head, a
show of big white teeth, and the contemptuous phrase "Nassty you are!"
as she flung round and hurried down the street.

No doubt she was right. Often, in the night-watches at sea, the author
has recalled the vitality of her appeal, the genuine frankness of her
character, and wished for an opportunity to express his regret for his
_gaucherie_ and offer adequate amends. And as the 'bus lumbers along
towards Ludgate Hill he thinks of her and wonders precisely what
purpose these fugitive and fortuitous encounters serve. These futile
yet fascinating conjectures bring him past Saint Paul's,