ss in a wealthy family.
She remained in South America for several years, gaining, of course,
poise and experience. Then a relative died and left her a comfortable
fortune. When I met her she was living in Munich from choice, like so
many other Germans who were bored with routine and rigid class lines.

She was a beautiful young woman, with dark hair and eyes and a brilliant
complexion, and dressed to perfection, although she wore no stays. This
may have been a bit of vanity on her part, as the awful reformkleid was
in vogue, and fat German women were displaying themselves in lumps and
creases and billows and sections that rolled like the untrammelled waves
of the sea. Her own figure was so firmly molded and so erect and supple
that it was, for all her fashionable clothes, quite independent of the
corset. She had charming manners combined with an imperturbable
serenity, and always seemed faintly amused. On the other hand, she
displayed none of the offensive German conceit and arrogance.

We spent several days together at Partenkirchen, one of the most
picturesque spots in the Bavarian Alps, and as we were both good
walkers, and there was no one else in the hotel who interested us, we
became quite intimate. She was one of the first to talk to me about the
deep discontent and disgust of the German women, and of her own utter
contempt for the meek hausfrau type, and for the tyrannies, petty,
coarse, often brutal, of the man in his home. Nothing, she was
determined, would ever tempt her to marry, and she could name many
others who were making an independent life for themselves, although,
lacking fortune, often in secret. No matter how much she might fancy
herself in love (and I imagine that she had had her enlightening
experiences) she would not risk a lifelong clash of wills with a man who
might turn out to be a medieval despot.

It was then that she told me of the tentative proposal of one of her
beaux (she had many) "Georg Zottmyer," which I have recorded almost
literally in the scene between this passing character and Gisela in the
Cafe Luitpolt. My object in doing so was to give as realistic an
impression as possible of what the German woman is up against in
dealings with her male. I knew Zottmyer personally, and he interested me
the more (as one is interested in a bug under a microscope) because he
had less excuse for his conceit and arrogance than most German men: he
was brought up in California, where his father is