Kreisler ruminated.
“What do you find particularly attractive about Bertha?” Tarr asked in a discursive way. “I ask you as a German. I have often wondered what a German would think of her.”
Kreisler looked at him with resentful uncertainty for a moment.
“You want to know what I think of the Lunken?—She’s a sly prostitute, that’s what she is!” he announced loudly and challengingly.
“Ah!”
When he had given Tarr time for any possible demonstration, he thawed into his sociable self. He then added:
“She’s not a bad girl! But she tricked you, my friend! She never cared that”—he snapped his fingers inexpertly—“for you! She told me so!”
“Really? That’s interesting.—But I expect you’re only telling lies. All Germans do!”
“All Germans lie?”
“‘Deutsches Volk—the folk that deceives!’ is your philosopher Nietzsche’s account of the origin of the word Deutsch.”