At the same time I did listen to you, especially in the
French songs. There was less song, you know."
Falbe laughed.
"And more accompaniment!" he said. "Perhaps you play?"
Michael was seized with a fit of shyness at the idea of talking to Falbe
about himself.
"Oh, I just strum," he said.
Throughout the journey their acquaintanceship ripened; and casually,
in dropped remarks, the two began to learn something about each other.
Falbe's command of English, as well as his sister's, which was so
complete that it was impossible to believe that a foreigner was
speaking, was explained, for it came out that his mother was
English, and that from infancy they had spoken German and English
indiscriminately. His father, who had died some dozen years before, had
been a singer of some note in his native land, but was distinguished
more for his teaching than his practice, and it was he who had taught
his daughter. Hermann Falbe himself had always intended to be a pianist,
but the poverty in which they were left at his father's death had
obliged him to give lessons rather than devote himself to his own
career; but now at the age of thirty he found himself within sight of
the competence that would allow him to cut down his pupils, and begin to
be a pupil again himself.
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