Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/195

He was listened to, bowed to. He was the first to dip the battered silver spoon into the Kompottschale.

Dinner over, cigars and cigarettes lit, he held court, leaning over the piano in all his gray-green glory. He received congratulations which he accepted with a yawn. But when Takagawa bowed to him, saying something very kindly and very stiltified in his awkward German, Grosser looked him up and down as he might some exotic and nauseating beetle, and it was clear that the other boarders approved of his strange conduct.

It was the same in the laboratory. When he entered the students who were already there turned stony eyes upon him.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said. A harsh, rasping sound, something between a cough and a snort, was the reply.

Only the professor seemed unchanged.

"Good morning, miniature yellow peril!" he said, while the German students formed into a group near the window whence they could see the soldiers file down Unter den Linden, with the hollow tramp-tramp of drilled feet, the brasses braying out their insolent call.

They seemed silent and grave and stolid, though at times given to unreasonable, hectic fits of temper. They talked excitedly among themselves about "Weltpolitik" about "Unser Plats in der Sonne" and "Deutsche Ideate." Every once in a while one of them would whisper something about "die Engländer," pronouncing the word as if it were a dread talisman. Another would pick up the word: "die Engländer," with a tense, minatory hiss. Then again they would all talk together, excitedly; and once Takagawa, busy