She attended the lectures, practising on short stories meanwhile,
devoting most of her effort to becoming a stylist, that she might attain
immediate recognition whatever her matter. She lived in a small but
comfortable hotel, for not only had she saved the greater part of her
salary, but the Bolands, however oblivious socially of a paid attendant,
had a magnificent way with them at Christmas, and had given her an even
larger cheque at parting.

In Munich she was once more Gisela Döring, once more led the student
life. There are liberties even for people of rank in Munich, and many
nobles, exasperated with the rigid class lines of Berlin and other
German capitals, move there, and, while careful to attend court
functions, make intelligent friends in all sets. They are, or were, the
happiest people in Germany. Here Gisela could sit alone in a café by the
hour reading the illustrated papers and smoking with her coffee,
attracting no attention whatever. She joined parties of students during
the summer and tramped the Bavarian Alps, and she danced all night at
student balls. Nevertheless, she managed to hold herself somewhat aloof
and it was understood that she did not live the "loose" life of the
"artist class." She was much admired for her stately beauty and her
style, and if the young people of that free and easy community were at
times inclined to resent a manifest difference, they succumbed to her
magnetism, and respected her obvious devotion to a high literary ideal.

It was during her second winter that she met Georg Zottmyer.

He was a tall, narrow, angular young man with a small clipped head and
preëminent ears. His narrow face was set with narrower features, and his
eyes were very bright, and the windows of his conceit. Although his