At the cafe he selected an alcove as
far from the noisy groups of students as possible. All the "trees" were
hung with colored caps and the atmosphere was dense with smoke.
Zottmyer, who, after all, was young, soon thawed out in the warm room,
and when he had cheered his interior with a large cup of hot coffee and
lit a cigarette, he brought up the subject of matrimony. He had no
intention of proposing in these surroundings, but it was time to pave
the way--or set the pattern of the tiling; he cultivated the divergent
phrase.
"It is time I married," he announced, and, not to appear too serious, he
smiled into her glowing face. She looked happy enough to encourage a man
far less fatuous than Georg Zottmyer.
"Yes?" Gisela's eyes had wandered to the nearest group of students and
she was wondering if they might not have made handsome men had they
permitted their duel wounds to heal instead of excoriating them with
salt and pepper. "Most German men marry young."
"I am not conventional. I should not dream of marrying unless I found a
young lady who possessed everything that I demand in a wife."
"Ah? What then do you demand?"
"Everything."
"That is a large order. What do you mean, exactly."
"I mean, of course, that I should not marry a woman who did not have in
the first place beauty, that I might be proud of her in public, besides
refreshing myself with the sight of her in private.
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