Emma, in raptures--near the window, was calling to the other Germans. Minna came and chirruped too--there was a sound of dull scratching on the window--then a little burst of admiration from Emma and Minna together. Miriam looked round--in Emma's hand shone a small antique watch encrusted with jewels; at her side was the new girl. Miriam saw a filmy black dress, and above it a pallid face. What was it like? It was like--like--like jasmine--that was it--jasmine--and out of the jasmine face the great gaze she had met in the morning turned half-puzzled, half-disappointed upon the growing group of girls examining the watch. CHAPTER IV 1 Miriam paid her first visit to a German church the next day, her third Sunday. Of the first Sunday, now so far off, she could remember nothing but sitting in a low-backed chair in the saal trying to read "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" ... seas ... and a sunburnt youth striding down a desolate lane in a storm ... and the beginning of tea-time. They had been kept indoors all day by the rain. The second Sunday they had all gone in the evening to the English church with Fräulein Pfaff ... rush-seated chairs with a ledge for books, placed very close together and scrooping on the stone floor with the movements of the congregation ... a little gathering of English people. They seemed very dear for a moment ... what was it about them that was so attractive ... that gave them their air of "refinement"?... Then as she watched their faces as they sang she felt that she knew all these women, the way, with little personal differences, they would talk, the way they would smile and take things for granted. And the men, standing there in their overcoats.... Why were they there? What were they doing? What were their thoughts? She pressed as against a barrier. Nothing came to her from these unconscious forms. They seemed so untroubled.... Probably they were all Conservatives.... That was part of their "refinement." They would all disapprove of Mr. Gladstone.... Get up into the pulpit and say "Gladstone" very loud ... and watch the result. Gladstone was a Radical ... "pull everything up by the roots." ... Pater was always angry and sneery about him.... Where were the Radicals? Somewhere very far away ... tub-thumping ... the Conservatives made them thump tubs ... no wonder. She decided she must be a Radical. Certainly she did not belong to these "refined" English--women or men. She was quite sure of that, seeing them gathered together, English Church-people in this foreign town. But then Radicals were probably chapel?