Of course one’s ideal when one is in the streets is to be invisible, not to be noticed at all.  That’s the best thing.  And the next best is to be behaved to kindly, with the patient politeness of the London policemen, or indeed of anybody one asks one’s way of in England or Italy or France.  The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word Englanderin as though it were a curse, or says into one’s ear—­they seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both crushing and funny,—­“Ros bif,” and the women stare at one all over and also say to each other Englanderin.

You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they are, I wonder.  After my first expedition exploring through the Thiergarten and down Unter den Linden to the museums last Friday between my practisings, I preferred getting lost to asking anybody my way.  And as for the policemen, to whom I naturally turned when I wanted help, having been used to turning to policemen ever since I can remember for comfort and guidance, they simply never answered me at all.  They just stood and stared with a sort of mocking.  And of course they understood, for I got my question all ready beforehand.  I longed to hit them,—­I who don’t ever want to hit anybody, I whom you’ve so often reprimanded for being too friendly.  But the meekest lamb, a lamb dripping with milk and honey, would turn into a lion if its polite approaches were met with such wanton rudeness.  I was so indignantly certain that these people, any of them, policemen or policed, would have answered the same question with the most extravagant politeness if I had been an officer, or with an officer.  They grovel if an officer comes along; and a woman with an officer might walk on them if she wanted to.  They were rude simply because I was alone and a woman.  And that being so, though I spoke with the tongue of angels, as St. Paul saith, and as I as a matter of fact did, if what that means is immense mellifluousness, it would avail me nothing.

So when I was out, and being made so curiously to feel conspicuous and disliked, the knowledge that the only alternative was to go back to the muffled unfriendliness at Frau Berg’s did make me feel a little forlorn.  I can tell you now, because of the joy I’ve had since.  I don’t mind any more.  I’m raised up and blessed now.  Indeed I feel I’ve got much more by a long way than my share of good things, and with what Kloster said hugged secretly to my heart I’m placed outside the ordinary toiling-moiling that life means for most women who have got to wring a living out of it without having anything special to wring with.  It’s the sheerest, wonderfullest, most radiant luck that I’ve got this.  Won’t I just work.  Won’t this funny frowning bedroom of mine become a temple of happiness.  I’m going to play Bach to it till it turns beautiful.