So, a pilgrim without a staff, she had roamed....
But this special incident ought not to have occurred. Instinct told her there was a certain type of girl to whom it could not have occurred. She had always hoped she was this girl; sheathed in a sort of hard, transparent whiteness from which anything that was not the one big thing would infallibly slide off, without giving the occupant of this convenient armour the slightest trouble.
Of late, however, she had been growing suspicious of her powers to ward off an accumulation of petty experiences.
Experiences?—but she wanted experience.
She tried to trace back the initial carelessness—yes, carelessness was the only word for it—which had led to her present plight. She ought to have gone to her room to lie down, in spite of Marianna’s sneers. Yet that would have seemed a ridiculous affectation of prudery, especially as that very afternoon.... Ah, here the fault, then!... But she had not really flirted with Ralph von Sittart; the ladies of Dorzheim had misread that spurt of revolt which had suddenly lit her to flame; revolt from their disapproval of her; revolt from the stiff chairs on which each one stiffly sat, with her stiff neck upheld in whalebone.... Rather than make one of them, she had preferred to squat upon the bearskin in front of the tall, white, frozen stove; bend down her unfettered neck to rub her cheek caressingly against the animal’s beautiful head—Oh, it had been an exhibition of bad manners, certainly; even cheap bad manners ... bearskins and tigerskins were a bohemianism which London had long discarded; but these German women could be shocked by nothing more subtle than the effronteries of five seasons ago. And Deb had to shock them, in the impish mood which possessed her, for which Elly Ladenberg (née Harrison) was perhaps primarily responsible. “You haven’t brought your needle-work?” “I haven’t got any,” laughed Deb. “Then you have finished your present for Frau Koch?” in a discreet undertone. Deb learnt that it was the sacred custom here for any young girl staying with a married lady, to stitch a most elaborate piece of embroidery as a thank-offering for her hostess.
The information depressed her. She enquired if it would not be possible to obtain the same effect of overpowering gratitude, by sending to an expensive shop in London.
“You can see for yourself that it would not do. The sentiment would not be the same.”
“Curse the sentiment,” murmured Deb mournfully, disappointed of an ally.
... The word was passed round that the English girl was, to say the least of it, eccentric. Anything sensational might be expected of her.