You know you
strode in among those people like a being from another world.

CLEMENT. I hope so. And you, thank goodness, didn't look as if you
belonged to that one. No ... when I remember that crowd--the Russian
girl, for example, who looked like a student with her close-cropped
hair, only that she didn't wear the cap ...

MARGARET. She's a very talented artist, the Baranzewich.

CLEMENT. I know--you showed her to me in the Pinakothek, standing on a
ladder, copying pictures. And then the fellow with the Polish name ...

MARGARET (begins to recall the name). Zrkd ...

CLEMENT. Oh, don't bother--you won't need to pronounce it any more.
Once he delivered a lecture in the cafe, when I was there, without
seeming in the least embarrassed.

MARGARET. He's a great genius--you may take my word for it.

CLEMENT. Oh, of course--they're all great geniuses at the cafe. And
then there was that insufferable cub ...

MARGARET. Who?

CLEMENT. Oh, you know the fellow I mean--the one that was always making
tactless remarks about the aristocracy.

MARGARET. Gilbert--you must mean Gilbert.

CLEMENT. That's the one. Of course I don't undertake to defend
everybody in my station of life; there are clowns and boobies in every
rank, even among poets, I've been told. But it's unmannerly of the
fellow, one of us being there ...

MARGARET. Oh, that was his way.

CLEMENT. I had to take myself sharply in hand, or I should have said
something rude.

[Illustration: GERHART HAUPTMANN]

_Permission Albert Langen, Munich_
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"

MARGARET. He was an interesting man for all that ... yes. And
besides--he was fearfully jealous of you.

CLEMENT. So I thought I noticed. (Pause.)

MARGARET. Oh, they were all jealous of you. Naturally ... you were so
different. And then they all paid court to me, just because they were
all quite indifferent to me. You must have noticed that, too, didn't
you? What are you laughing at?

CLEMENT. It's comical ... If any one had prophesied to me that I should
marry one of the crowd at the Cafe Maximilian! The ones I liked best
were the two young painters--they were really just as if they'd stepped
out of a farce at the theatre. You know, those two that looked so much
alike, and shared everything together--I fancy even the Russian girl on
the step-ladder.

MARGARET. I never troubled my head about such things.

CLEMENT. Those two must have been Jews, weren't they?