I know nothing of you, not who you are,
or what you are, or what your flag is. You fly no flag, you proclaim no
identity. You may be a crossing-sweeper, or a grocer, or a marquis for
all I know. Of course, that matters very little; but what does matter is
that never for a moment have you shown me not what you happen to be,
but what you are. I've got the impression that you are something, that
there's a real 'you' in your inside. But you don't let me see it. You
send a polite servant to the door when I knock. Probably this sounds
very weird and un-English to you. But to my mind it is much more weird
to behave as you are behaving. Come out, can't you. Let's look at you."
It was exactly that--that brusque, unsentimental appeal--that Michael
needed. He saw himself at that moment, as Falbe saw him, a shelled and
muffled figure, intangible and withdrawn, but observing, as it were,
through eye-holes, and giving nothing in exchange for what he saw.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It's quite true what you tell me. I'm like that.
But it really has never struck me that anybody cared to know."
Falbe ceased digging his excavation in the pine-needles and looked up on
Michael.
"Good Lord, man!" he said; "people care if you'll only allow them to.
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