The White Morning | Page 9

down the great
Leopoldstrasse, one of the finest streets in Europe, toward the Café
Luitpold, where he had invited her to drink coffee.
There was little conversation during that brisk walk. He was frozen,
and she was not thinking of him at all. At the café he selected an alcove
as far from the noisy groups of students as possible. All the "trees"
were hung with colored caps and the atmosphere was dense with
smoke.
Zottmyer, who, after all, was young, soon thawed out in the warm room,
and when he had cheered his interior with a large cup of hot coffee and
lit a cigarette, he brought up the subject of matrimony. He had no
intention of proposing in these surroundings, but it was time to pave the

way--or set the pattern of the tiling; he cultivated the divergent phrase.
"It is time I married," he announced, and, not to appear too serious, he
smiled into her glowing face. She looked happy enough to encourage a
man far less fatuous than Georg Zottmyer.
"Yes?" Gisela's eyes had wandered to the nearest group of students and
she was wondering if they might not have made handsome men had
they permitted their duel wounds to heal instead of excoriating them
with salt and pepper. "Most German men marry young."
"I am not conventional. I should not dream of marrying unless I found a
young lady who possessed everything that I demand in a wife."
"Ah? What then do you demand?"
"Everything."
"That is a large order. What do you mean, exactly."
"I mean, of course, that I should not marry a woman who did not have
in the first place beauty, that I might be proud of her in public, besides
refreshing myself with the sight of her in private. She must have beauty
of figure as well as of face, as I detest our dumpy type of German
women. And she must have style, and dress well. It would mortify me
to death, particularly after I had made my position, to go about with
one of those wives that seem to fall to the lot of most intellectuals.
Soft-waisted, bulging women," he added spitefully, "how I hate them!"
"Your taste is admirable. Our women are much too careless,
particularly after marriage. And the second requirement?"
"Oh, a small fortune, at least. I could not afford to marry, otherwise,
and although I shall no doubt make a large income in due course, I
must begin well. I prefer a house, as it gives an artist a more serious
and dignified position."
"Indeed, yes."
"And of course my wife must be of good birth, as good as my own. I
should never dream of marrying even a Venus in this Bohemian class.
That sort of thing is all very well--" He waved his hand, and arched an
eyebrow, and Gisela inferred she was to take quite a number of amours
for granted; much, for instance, as she would those of a handsome
officer who sat alone at the next table and who looked infinitely bored
with love and longing for war.
"She must--it goes without saying--be intellectual, clever, bright,
amusing. I must have companionship. Not an artist, however. I should

never permit my wife to write or model or sing for the public. And she
must have the social talent, magnetism, the power to charm whom she
will. That would help me infinitely in my career."
"Is that all?"
"Oh, she must be affectionate and a good housekeeper, but most
German women have the domestic virtues. Naturally, she must have
perfect health. I detest women with nerves and moods."
Gisela had been leaning forward, her elbows on the table, her little
square chin on her hands, and if there were wondering contempt in her
eyes he saw only their brilliance and fixed regard.
"And what, may I ask, do you purpose to give her in return for all
that?"
He flicked the ashes from his cigarette, and the gesture was quite
without affectation. "What has that to do with it?"
"Well--only--you think, then, that in return for all--but all!--that a
woman has to offer a man--any man--you should not feel yourself
bound to give her an equal measure in return?"
"I have not given the matter a thought. Naturally the woman I select
will see all in me that I see in her. Shall we get out of this? I feel I have
taken a cold. Fresh air is a drastic but efficient corrective."
He escorted her to her hotel, although he gazed longingly down his
own street as they passed it. His head felt overburdened and it was
awkward manipulating a handkerchief with mitts.
Within half a block of the hotel Gisela, who had been walking rapidly,
bending a little against the wind,