2


That first evening at Waldstrasse there had been a performance that had
completed the transformation of Miriam's English ideas of "music." She
had caught the word "Vorspielen" being bandied about the long tea-table,
and had gathered that there was to be an informal playing of "pieces"
before Fraulein Pfaff. She welcomed the event. It relieved her from
the burden of being in high focus--the relief had come as soon as she
took her place at the gaslit table. No eye seemed to notice her. The
English girls having sat out two meal-times with her, had ceased the
hard-eyed observation which had made the long silence of the earlier
repasts only less embarrassing than Fraulein's questions about England.
The four Germans who had neither stared nor even appeared aware of her
existence, talked cheerfully across the table in a general exchange that
included tall Fraulein Pfaff smiling her horse-smile--Miriam
provisionally called it--behind the tea-urn, as chairman. The six
English-speaking girls, grouped as it were towards their chief, a
dark-skinned, athletic looking Australian with hot, brown, slightly
blood-shot eyes sitting as vice-president opposite Fraulein, joined
occasionally, in solo and chorus, and Miriam noted with relief a
unanimous atrocity of accent in their enviable fluency. Rapid _sotto
voce_ commentary and half-suppressed wordless by-play located still
more clearly the English quarter. Animation flowed and flowed. Miriam
safely ignored, scarcely heeding, but warmed and almost happy, basked.
She munched her black bread and butter, liberally smeared with the rich
savoury paste of liver sausage, and drank her sweet weak tea and knew