'It is not so very difficult,' he said, looking more and more happy.
'But really not German? Fabelhaft.'
The young man's belief in my intelligence was now unshakeable. The Frau Förster, who had seen me disembark and set out for my walk alone, and who saw me now returning with a companion of the other sex, greeted me coldly. Her coldness, I felt, was not unjustifiable. It is not my practice to set out by myself and come back telling youths I have never seen before that their accomplishments are fabelhaft. I began to feel coldly towards myself, and turning to the young man said good-bye with some abruptness.
'Are you going in?' he asked.
'I am not staying here.'
'But the launch does not start for an hour. I go across too, then.'
'I am not crossing in the launch. I came over in a fishing-smack.'
'Oh really?' He seemed to meditate. 'How delightfully independent,' he added.
'Have you not observed that the German Fräulein is as independent as she is intellectual?'
'No, I have not. That is just where I think the Germans are so far behind us. Their women have nothing like the freedom ours have.'