The White Morning | Page 8

to the sex of the mother that bore him. She returned
to Munich after a month in Berlin, for by this time she had made up her
mind to write, and the city by the Isar was the most beautiful in the
world to write and to dream in. Moreover, she wished to attend the
lectures on drama at the University.
The four years in America, during which she had, in spite of her
sentimental preoccupation, studied diligently every phase that passed

before her keen critical vision, analyzed every person she had met, and
passed many of her evenings in the study of the best contemporary
fiction, had, associated with the spur of her own upheaval, developed
her imagination, and her head was full of unwritten stories. They were
highly realistic, of course, as became a modern German, but
unmistakably dramatic.
She attended the lectures, practising on short stories meanwhile,
devoting most of her effort to becoming a stylist, that she might attain
immediate recognition whatever her matter. She lived in a small but
comfortable hotel, for not only had she saved the greater part of her
salary, but the Bolands, however oblivious socially of a paid attendant,
had a magnificent way with them at Christmas, and had given her an
even larger cheque at parting.
In Munich she was once more Gisela Döring, once more led the student
life. There are liberties even for people of rank in Munich, and many
nobles, exasperated with the rigid class lines of Berlin and other
German capitals, move there, and, while careful to attend court
functions, make intelligent friends in all sets. They are, or were, the
happiest people in Germany. Here Gisela could sit alone in a café by
the hour reading the illustrated papers and smoking with her coffee,
attracting no attention whatever. She joined parties of students during
the summer and tramped the Bavarian Alps, and she danced all night at
student balls. Nevertheless, she managed to hold herself somewhat
aloof and it was understood that she did not live the "loose" life of the
"artist class." She was much admired for her stately beauty and her
style, and if the young people of that free and easy community were at
times inclined to resent a manifest difference, they succumbed to her
magnetism, and respected her obvious devotion to a high literary ideal.
It was during her second winter that she met Georg Zottmyer.
He was a tall, narrow, angular young man with a small clipped head
and preëminent ears. His narrow face was set with narrower features,
and his eyes were very bright, and the windows of his conceit.
Although his income was minute he boasted a father of note in the
University of Leipzig, and his mother had traveled and written a
scathing satire on the United States of America. He had not a grain of
originality or imagination, but he too was taking the course in dramatic
art, and reading for that degree without whose magic letters he could

not hope to take his place in the world of art to which his parts entitled
him. He met Gisela in the lecture room and immediately became her
cavalier.
At first Gisela endeavored to get rid of him by an icy front, but this he
took for feminine coquetry and his own front was serene. As he had
made up his mind to be a dramatist merely because the career appealed
acutely to his itching ambition, so did he in due course make up his
mind to marry this handsome brunette (what hair he had was drab) who
bore all the earmarks of secret wealth in spite of the fact that she lived
in a small hotel. As time went on, Gisela resigned herself and put his
little ego under her microscope.
His wooing was methodical. He not only walked home with her after
every lecture, but he gave her a series of teas in his high little flat, and
he really did know "people." His parental introductions had given him
the entrée to the professional circles, and he cultivated society both
semi-fashionable and ultra-literary. He knew no one who had not
"arrived."
He chose an unpropitious day for a tentative declaration of his
intentions. It was very cold. White mufflers protected his outstanding
ears, a gray woolen scarf was wound about his long neck and almost
covered his tight little mouth. He wore mitts and wristlets, and his nose
was crimson. Gisela, in a new set of furs, sent her for Christmas by
Mariette, and a smart gown of wine-colored cloth, looked radiant. Her
dark eyes shone with joy in the cold electric air of that high plateau, her
cheeks were red, her warm full-lipped mouth was parted over her even
white teeth. They walked from the University