"
Falbe did not reply for a moment.
"No, you've not annoyed me," he said. "I've annoyed myself. But that's
the worst of living on one's nerves, which is the penalty of Baireuth.
There is no charge, so to speak, except for your ticket, but a
collection is made, as happens at meetings, and you pay with your
nerves. You must cancel my annoyance, please. If I showed it I did not
mean to."
Michael pondered over this.
"But I can't leave it like that," he said at length. "Was it about the
possibility of war, which I said was unthinkable?"
Falbe laughed and turned on his elbow towards Michael.
"No, my dear chap," he said. "You may believe it to be unthinkable, and
I may believe it to be inevitable; but what does it matter what either
of us believes? Che sara sara. It was quite another thing that caused me
to annoy myself. It does not matter."
Michael lay back on the soft slope.
"Yet I insist on knowing," he said. "That is, I mean, if it is not
private."
Falbe lay quietly with his long fingers in the sediment of pine-needles.
"Well, then, as it is not private, and as you insist," he said, "I will
certainly tell you. Does it not strike you that you are behaving like an
absolute stranger to me? We have talked of me and my home and my
plans all the time since we met at Victoria Station, and you have kept
complete silence about yourself.
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