had thin ankles, too, and was like Elsa
intent and cold and dead. She could imagine Elsa in society now--hard
and thin and glittery--she would be stylish--military men's women always
were. The girl had avoided being with her during walks since then, and
they never voluntarily addressed one another. Minna and the Bergmanns
had talked to her. Minna responded to everything she said in her eager
husky voice--not because she was interested Miriam felt, but because
she was polite, and it had tired her once or twice dreadfully to go
on "making conversation" with Minna. She had wanted to like being with
these three. She felt she could give them something. It made her full
of solicitude to glance at either of them at her side. She had longed
to feel at home with them and to teach them things worth teaching; they
seemed pitiful in some way, like children in her hands. She did not
know how to begin. All her efforts and their efforts left them just as
pitiful.

15

Each occasion left her more puzzled and helpless. Now and again she
thought there was going to be a change. She would feel a stirring of
animation in her companions. Then she would discover that someone
was being discussed, generally one of the girls; or perhaps they were
beginning to tell her something about Fraulein Pfaff, or talking about
food. These topics made her feel ill at ease at once. Things were going
wrong. It was not to discuss such things that they were together out in
the air in the wonderful streets and boulevards of Hanover. She would
grow cold and constrained, and the conversation would drop.

And then, suddenly, within a day or so of each other, dreadful things
had happened.

The first had come on the second occasion of her going with Minna to
see Dr. Dieckel. Minna, as they were walking quietly along together had
suddenly begun in a broken English which soon turned to shy, fluent,
animated German, to tell about a friend, an _apotheker,_ a man, Miriam
gathered--missing many links in her amazement--in a shop, the chemist's
shop where her parents dealt, in the little country town in Pomerania
which was her home. Minna was so altered, looked so radiantly happy
whilst she talked about this man that Miriam had wanted to put out a
hand and touch her. Afterwards she could recall the sound of her voice
as it was at that moment with its yearning and its promise and its
absolute confidence. Minna was so certain of her happiness--at the end
of each hu