They exploded with, "It may very well be as you say in America! That is to be expected. Are there any morals in the United States? We have heard awful things. There are the Mormons. There is co-education. And young girls of the best families go around loose with men day and night. What _could_ be the result? Free love. And free love means cheap love or no love at all. Admittedly pretty low conditions for virtue. What else can be looked for in a country where all sorts of people come promiscuously from everywhere? Divorces, voting females, slatterns, homelessness, neglected, poorly educated children." If, in passing, America and Americans were referred to in the family, and this was rare, Elsa, Gard noticed, kept silent. Yet she could be very wrought up about other Europeans. This nursed his fancies. He interpreted it in terms of promise. Elsa, he decided, was a good girl in a hedge-hog environment of unbelievable traits, of warring contrasts. CHAPTER VIII GERMAN COURTSHIP Once during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had the rickets. So he speedily gave this up. Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other relations between young men and young women in America and in Germany. He asked himself. "Are the German ways more civilized?" Certainly, to the Teuton, they represent a more creditable and becoming evolution. He always stoutly favors his own customs, and finds little here to discuss. Even if a rotten morality in his young gods is to be assumed, this would be proper as in the young gods of the mythologies. The Teuton marriage refers plainly to property. The language has prominent terms indicating how espousal means goods with a woman attached to them. There is scarcely an equivalent in English. Courtship in the form of natural little raptures that disport in and beautify enamored companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered, mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or permanent evil.