"They tell me you and Elsa have been playing duos. Such good training. Very agreeable. We used to play together also. A nice girl to rub one's knees against under the piano—oh,
"I am Titania the blond,
Titania, of the air!"
Friedrich twittered gayly the lines from "Mignon." Then he abruptly changed.
"But I have now so little time for serious maidens. Ach Himmel! How I am driven by going here and going there! One says this to me, another says that to me, and my head gets all in a whirl."
So he wandered on with his mixtures of nonchalance, condescension and, above all, his ebullient self-esteem that flowed over on to everyone to the point of deluging them. When he went away, it was with such a warm invitation to call upon him the next week that Kirtley could not but accept. Besides, here was opened up a novel and suggestive line of behavior from the standpoint of the German young man of the world.
Gard was left with confused feelings that drooped their wings in displeasure if not distress. So there was a rival, and of long standing, on the little rosy sea of his romance! And this was he. Was it a wonder that Elsa had "spells"? Here was a true heart-breaker. Just the type to play havoc with a girl. What place was there left for the mild, unpretending Gard? And still she deserved far better than Von Tielitz. Perhaps it was this feeling that added to her unhappiness. His vulgarity! To talk as Von Tielitz did about one who might become his wife, and to a stranger, was a new form of German brutality. It steadied and deepened Gard's admiration for her. Who ever heard a young Yankee speak like this about his serious sweetheart? However raw he may be, there is a certain sacred respect at the bottom of his language about her—his bearing toward her.
Elsa did not appear at meals for a day or two after Friedrich left. Kirtley was not encouraged by learning that this usually happened after a call from the composer. He thought it strange that the Frau, with all her plain speech and hardy lack of sentiment, still made no reference to her daughter's trouble. Marriage is to the Germans such an earth-to-earth affair, as Gard perceived, that he marveled she did not unbosom herself capaciously about what must be a mother's anxiety. But the Teuton daughter is like a glove that can be put on or cast off by the sovereign male. She is meant to be toughened, exposed to rude blasts, fortified, to be able to support the draft-mare burdens of Teuton wifehood.