Why not grimace and be very "bright" and "animated" until the end of the term and then go and stay with the Bergmanns for two months and be as charming as she could?... Her heart sank.... She imagined a house, everyone kind and blond and smiling. Emma's big tall brother smiling and joking and liking her. She would laugh and pretend and flirt like the Pooles and make up to him--and it would be lovely for a little while. Then she would offend someone. She would offend everyone but Emma--and get tired and cross and lose her temper. Stare at them all as they said the things everybody said, the things she hated; and she would sit glowering, and suddenly refuse to allow the women to be familiar with her.... She tried to see the brother more clearly. She looked at the screen. The Bergmanns' house would be full of German furniture.... At the end of a week every bit of it would reproach her. She tried to imagine him without the house and the family, not talking or joking or pretending ... alone and sad ... despising his family ... needing her. He loved forests and music. He had a great strong solid voice and was strong and sure about everything and she need never worry any more. "Seit ich ihn gesehen Glaub' ich blind zu sein." There would be a garden and German springs and summers and sunsets and strong kind arms and a shoulder. She would grow so happy. No one would recognise her as the same person. She would wear a band of turquoise-blue velvet ribbon round her hair and look at the mountains.... No good. She could never get out to that. Never. She could not pretend long enough. Everything would be at an end long before there was any chance of her turning into a happy German woman. Certainly with a German man she would be angry at once. She thought of the men she had seen--in the streets, in cafés and gardens, the masters in the school, photographs in the girls' albums. They had all offended her at once. Something in their bearing and manner.... Blind and impudent.... She thought of the interview she had witnessed between Ulrica and her cousin--the cousin coming up from the estate in Erfurth, arriving in a carriage, Fräulein's manner, her smiles and hints; Ulrica standing in the saal in her sprigged saffron muslin dress curtseying ... with bent head, the cousin's condescending laughing voice. It would never do for her to go into a German home. She must not say anything about the chance of going to the Bergmanns'--even to Eve. She imagined Eve sitting listening in the window space in the bow that was carpeted with linoleum to look like parquet flooring. Beyond them lay the length of the Turkey carpet darkening away under the long table. She could see each object on the shining sideboard. The silver biscuit-box and the large épergne made her feel guilty and shifting, guilty from the beginning of things.