ir at the noisy Milanese
_table d'hote_ and snarled out a surly "_Mahlzeit_" to the assembled
feasters. It was echoed sweetly from his left with a languishing
"_Mahlzeit, Herr Professor_." The advance disconcerted him. Resolving
upon a policy of complete indifference to the fluffy and amiable vision
beside him, he devoted himself singly to the food. The _risotto_
diminished as his knife travelled rhythmically between the plate and his
bearded lips. Conceding only the inevitable, nay the exacted courtesies
to his neighbour, he performed still greater prodigies with the green
peas, and it was not until he leaned back for a deft operation with a
pocket comb, that the vivacious, blue-eyed one got her chance to ask if
it were not the Herr Professor Hauptmann, the great authority on the
Lombard tongue. The query floored him; he could not deny that it was, and
as curlylocks began to evince an intelligent interest in Lombard matters,
his stiffness melted like wax under a burning glass. He was soon if not
the protagonist at least the object of an animated, yes fairly intimate
conversation.

To non-German eyes the pair were worth looking at. He was clad in
tightfitting sage-green felt, so it appeared, with a superfluity of
straps, buttons, lacings, and harness of all sorts. A conical Tyrol hat
garnished with a cock's plume and faded violets was crushed between his
back and that of the chair. As his large nervous feet reached for the
chairlegs below, one could see an expanse of moss-green stockings, only
half concealed at the extremities by resplendent yellow sandals. Bearded
and moustached after the military fashion, nothing betrayed the professor
except the myopic droop of the head. As for Frauelein Linda Goeritz, no
mere man may adequately describe her. A German new woman of the artistic
stamp, she was pastelling through Lombardy where the Professor was
archeologising. Short, crisp curls gathered about her boyish head. Her
general effect was of a plump bonniness that might yield agreeably to an
audacious arm. She cultivated an aggressive pertness that would have
seemed vulgar, had it not been redeemed by something merely frank and
German. Shortskirted, she wore a high-strapped variant of the prevalent
sandals. The sides of her blue bolero were adorned with stilted yellow
lilies in the top of the Viennese new-art mode. In front her shirtwaist
appeared cool and white, at the sleeves it flowered alarmingly into
something like an I