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“I have seen more formal salutes,” Gisella said.

Gisella was looking at him. Into his face—his eyes. It was the first time she had done that.

"I think I am going to have a brandy,” Müller said. “Can I order something for you?”

“I will have a brandy, too, please,” Gisella said.

The proprietor personally delivered the brandy, displaying it like a treasure. It was one of his last two bottles, he said, as he placed a balloon glass in front of Gisella and then Müller.

“Before the war,” Gisella said when the proprietor had stepped away, “this is what my father used to drink.”

“Then we’ll buy him a bottle,” Müller said.

Her eyes were bright with pleasure.

“Could you?”

“Of course,” he said. “You heard him, he has two.”

That didn’t please her. It seemed to frighten her.

“When you’re finished,” he said,“I will take you home, if you like.”

“I would like, I think, to dance.”

This time, they did not dance like father and daughter. He could feel the softness of her breasts against him, and then Gisella laid her head against his chest, and he could smell her hair.

“I have to talk to you,” she said.

“All right.”

Is she in some kind of trouble? If that swine Peis…

“Are you sending me home, Johnny?” Gisella asked.

“I thought you—”

For an answer, she squeezed his hand again.

It is entirely possible that Gisella would prefer to be the girlfriend of a Standartenführer—even an old, turning-to-fat, balding, peasant Standartenführer—to being at Peis’s beck and call.

So what? What do you care why, just so you can get in her pants?

And then he discarded as beyond credibility that she might like him for himself.

“Why don’t we take the cognac to your room?” Gisella asked softly.

She knows what will happen there; that isn’t a riding crop pressing against her belly.

Gisella went straight into the bathroom when they reached his room. She came out in her slip, which was cotton, practical, and ill-fitting.

I should have bought her some nice underwear.

Then Müller took a quick shower, and, a little self-consciously, splashed 4711 cologne on his chest and under his arms and down there. He wrapped a towel around his middle and walked back to the bedroom.

Gisella lay in the bed, and she’d tossed her ugly slip on the back of a chair. She’s naked under the blankets! She raised her arm and held the sheets and blanket open for him.

When he slipped in beside her, she moved so that she was half on top of him, her leg over his, her face against his chest. He marveled at the softness of her back.