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Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except under a quasi truce or other provisional conditions. To form a perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton reformation took place.
An accidental glimpse under the immense flowing white beard of his host revealed the absence of a shirt collar, and the neck evidently relied on its untrimmed hairiness as an excuse for not being customarily washed. It became apparent to Kirtley after a month that personal cleanness and neatness in Germany were not particularly considered as next to godliness.
It was when, on one of these days, Kirtley learned that Anderson had moved, and traced him to his new abode. From the window of this apartment they could see, through the bleary March light, the dowager-like Grosse Garten where Deming paraded in style with Frau Bucher and Fräulein.
Their kind hospitality, their flush demonstrations of friendliness, their little presents! This was the final mark that, to Gard Kirtley, branded the German as only a partly reclaimed Goth.
Anderson was smooth-shaven, with piercing gray eyes under bushy eyebrows, his head presenting the appearance of just having been in a barber's chair. With the insistent curiosity of a practiced interviewer he wanted to know why Kirtley had come to this godless land; where he was hanging out; and all about the Buchers. A bachelor, Anderson had become toughened by hotel and pension.
How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by works.
Kirtley heard of the tonic of the nutritious Teuton beer and Teuton music in overflowing measures. In the Kaiser's realm, it appeared, the digestions are always good. How desirable it would be for Gard to take on some flesh in the German manner!
Then he saw, at times, a bulky form bending over some curiosity and contemplating it. As Kirtley had no companion on his journey, except the military scarecrow, he felt a touch of lonesomeness and was glad when he gradually approached near enough to see that this person was a kindly looking German who had the wondering air of a sight-seer.
She brusquely alternated between a sisterly tenderness of familiarity, almost exaggerated, only to follow it by a sudden, disquieting flop over on the side of a formality as stiff as buckram. She would be as distant as if they were two boarders having a tiff in a pension. These detachments were not because of anything Kirtley had done or said.
He was ashamed enough. To be carried to his room in the odor of champagne and with a girl's silk stockings in his pocket! He Gard Kirtley! Was this the low estate to which German life had brought him? But he soon observed that the Buchers cared nothing about all this. Young men, as we have seen, were expected to go on larks. No one spoke of the distressing occurrence.
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