So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without preamble.
"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he said with a slight upward inflection in his voice.
Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things.
"I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS."
"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also.
"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I suppose you know it? You're sure to."
This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider Heine the one and only German poet."
Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn.
"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had anything approaching a style?"
Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything," she said. "Like all English people—it flatters your national vanity, I presume—you think German literature began and ended with Heine.—A miserable Jew!"