his elbow.

So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without
preamble.

"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he
said with a slight upward inflection in his voice.

Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and
colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things.

"I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she
made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I
finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS."

"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also.

"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again
acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I
suppose you know it? You're sure to."

This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore
spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she
said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that
you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean
Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider
Heine the one and only German poet."

Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly
and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it
incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it
down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn.

"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in
thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And
you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had
anything approaching a style?"

Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything,"
she said. "Like all English people--it flatters your national vanity, I
presume--you think German literature began and ended with Heine.--A
miserable Jew!"

"Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew,
can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this
being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as
Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely:
"Then you don't think much of Heine?"

But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expression
of opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "It
may be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on every
side. If you could tell me what I ought to rea