“Perhaps I have.”
“A female German.”
“The sex weakens the ‘German,’ surely.”
“Does it in Fräulein Lunken’s case?”
“Oh, you know her, do you?—Of course, you would know her, as she’s a German.”
Alan Hobson cackled morosely, like a very sad top-dog trying to imitate a rooster.
Tarr’s unwieldy playfulness, might in the chequered northern shade, in conjunction with nut-brown ale, gazed at by some Rowlandson—he on the ultimate borders of the epoch—have pleased by its à propos. But when the last Rowlandson dies, the life, too, that he saw should vanish. Anything that survives the artist’s death is not life, but play-acting. This homely, thick-waisted affectation!—Hobson yawned and yawned as though he wished to swallow Tarr and have done with him. Tarr yawned more noisily, rattled his chair, sat up, haggard and stiff, as though he wished to frighten this crow away. “Carrion-Crow” was Tarr’s name for Hobson: “The olde Crow of Cairo,” rather longer.
Why was he talking to this man? However, he shortly began to lay bare the secrets of his soul. Hobson opened:
“It seems to me, Tarr, that you know more Germans than I do. But you’re ashamed of it. Hence your attack. I met a Fräulein Fierspitz the other day, a German, who claimed to know you. I am always meeting Germans who know you. She also referred to you as the ‘official fiancé’ of Fräulein Lunken.—Are you an ‘official fiancé’? And if so, what is that, may I ask?”