"Ah; that's good, that's good!" he said. "How I love smells--clean,
sharp smells like this. But they've got to be wild; you can't tame a
smell and put it on your handkerchief; it takes the life out of it. Do
you like smells, Comber?"
"I--I really never thought about it," said Michael.
"Think now, then, and tell me," said Falbe. "If you consider, you know
such a lot about me, and, as a matter of fact, I know nothing whatever
about you. I know you like music--I know you like blue trout, because
you ate so many of them at lunch to-day. But what else do I know about
you? I don't even know what you thought of Parsifal. No, perhaps I'm
wrong there, because the fact that you've never mentioned it probably
shows that you couldn't. The symptom of not understanding anything about
Parsifal is to talk about it, and say what a tremendous impression it
has made on you."
"Ah! you've guessed right there," said Michael. "I couldn't talk about
it; there's nothing to say about it, except that it is Parsifal."
"That's true. It becomes part of you, and you can't talk of it any more
than you can talk about your elbows and your knees. It's one of the
things that makes you. . . ."
He turned over on to his back, and laid his hands palm uppermost over
his eyes.
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