They had been twice since her coming. Sitting at a little marble-topped table with the Bergmanns near the window and overlooking the full flood of the Georgstrasse Miriam felt a keen renewal of the sense of being abroad. Here she sat, in the little enclosure of this upper room above a shopful of strange Delikatessen, securely adrift. Behind her she felt, not home but the German school where she belonged. Here they all sat, free. Germany was all around them. They were in the midst of it. Fräulein Pfaff seemed far away.... How strange of her to send them there.... She glanced towards the two tables of English girls in the centre of the room wondering whether they felt as she did.... They had come to Germany. They were sharing it with her. It must be changing them. They must be different for having come. They would all go back she supposed. But they would not be the same as those who had never come. She was sure they felt something of this. They were sitting about in easy attitudes. How English they all looked ... for a moment she wanted to go and sit with them--just sit with them, rejoice in being abroad; in having got away. She imagined all their people looking in and seeing them so thoroughly at home in this little German restaurant free from home influences, in a little world of their own. She felt a pang of response as she heard their confidently raised voices. She could see they were all, even Judy, a little excited. They chaffed each other. Gertrude had taken everyone's choice between coffee and chocolate and given an order. Orders for schocolade were heard from all over the room. There were only women there--wonderful German women in twos and threes--ladies out shopping, Miriam supposed. She managed intermittently to watch three or four of them and wondered what kind of conversation made them so emphatic--whether it was because they held themselves so well and "spoke out" that everything they said seemed so important. She had never seen women with so much decision in their bearing. She found herself drawing herself up. She heard German laughter about the room. The sounds excited her and she watched eagerly for laughing faces.... They were different.... The laughter sounded differently and the laughing faces were different. The eyes were expressionless as they laughed--or evil ... they had that same knowing way of laughing as though everything were settled--but they did not pretend to be refined as Englishwomen did ... they had the same horridness ... but they were ... jolly.... They could shout if they liked. Three cups of thick-looking chocolate, each supporting a little hillock of solid cream arrived at her table. Clara ordered cakes. At the first sip, taken with lips that slid helplessly on the surprisingly thick rim of her cup Miriam renounced all the beverages she had ever known as unworthy.