At least Nettelbeck
did. As time went on, Gisela used her frankness as a mask while her soul
dodged in panic. She believed him to be lightly and agreeably in love
with her (she had witnessed many summer flirtations at Bar Harbor, and
been laid siege to by more than one young American, idle, enterprising,
charming and quite irresponsible), and she was appalled at her own
capacity for love and suffering, the complete rout of her theories,
based on harsh experience, before the ancient instinct to unleash her
womanhood at any cost.
She plunged into a serious study of the country, which she had
heretofore absorbed with her avid mental conduits, and read innumerable
newspapers, magazines, elucidating literature of all sorts, besides the
best histories of the nation and the illuminating biographies of its
distinguished men in politics and the arts. She was deeply responsive to
the freedom of the individual in this great whirling heterogeneous land,
and as her duties at any time were the reverse of onerous, it was
imperative to keep her consciousness as detached from her inner life as
possible.
But at the back of her mind was always the haunting terror that he never
would come again, that he was really more attracted to Ann Howland than
he knew; and of all American women whom Gisela had met she admired Miss
Howland preeminently.
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