Travellers on that winter day from Antwerp into Germany noticed the English girl, well dressed, and of attractive features, whose excited countenance and restless manner told of a journey in haste, with something most important, and assuredly not disagreeable, at the end of it.  She was alone, and evidently quite able to take care of herself.  Unlike the representative English Fraulein, she did not reject friendly overtures from strangers; her German was lame, but she spoke it with enjoyment, laughing at her stumbles and mistakes.  With her in the railway carriage she kept a violin-case.  A professional musician?  ’Noch nicht’ was her answer, with a laugh.  She knew Leipzig?  Oh dear, yes, and many other parts of Germany; had travelled a good deal; was an entirely free and independent person, quite without national prejudice, indeed without prejudice of any kind.  And in the same breath she spoke slightingly, if not contemptuously, of England and everything English.

At Leipzig she stayed until the end of April, living with a family named Gassner, people whom she had known for some years.  Only on condition that she would take up her abode with this household had Mrs. Frothingham consented to make her an allowance and let her go abroad.  Alma fretted at the restriction; she wished to have a room of her own in a lodging-house; but the family life improved her command of German —­ something gained.  To music, meanwhile, she gave very little attention, putting off with one excuse after another the beginning of her serious studies.  She seemed to have quite forgotten that music was her ‘religion’, and, for the matter of that, appeared to have no religion at all.  ‘Life’ was her interest, her study.  She made acquaintances, attended concerts and the theatre, read multitudes of French and German novels.  But her habits were economical.  All the pleasures she desired could be enjoyed at very small expense, and she found her stepmother’s remittances more than sufficient.

In April she gained Mrs. Frothingham’s consent to her removal from Leipzig to Munich.  A German girl with whom she had made friends was going to Munich to study art.  For reasons, vague even to herself (so ran her letters to Mrs. Frothingham), she could not ‘settle’ at Leipzig.  The climate did not seem to suit her.  She had suffered from bad colds, and, in short, was doing no good.  At Munich lived an admirable violinist, a friend of Herr Wilenski’s, who would be of great use to her.  ’In short, dear Mamma, doesn’t it seem to you rather humiliating that at the age of four-and-twenty I should be begging for permission to go here and there, do this or that?  I know all your anxieties about me, and I am very grateful, and I feel ashamed to be living at your expense, but really I must go about making a career for myself in my own way.’  Mrs. Frothingham yielded, and Alma took lodgings in Munich together with her German friend.