His sister, moreover, for whom he had slaved for years in order that she might continue her own singing education unchecked, was now more than able, especially after these last three months in London, where she had suddenly leaped into eminence, to support herself and contributed to the expenses of their common home.  But there was still, so Michael gathered, no great superabundance of money, and he guessed that Falbe’s inability to go to Munich was due to the question of expense.

All this came out by inference and allusion rather than by direct information, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that his own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was less communicative.  And, indeed, while shunning the appearance of inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his new acquaintance to think of volunteering much himself.  Here to him was this citizen of the new country who all his life had lived in the palace of art, and that in no dilettante fashion, but with set aim and serious purpose.  And Falbe abounded in such topics; he knew the singers and the musicians of the world, and, which was much more than that, he was himself of them; humble, no doubt, in circumstances and achievement as yet, but clearly to Michael of the blood royal of artistry.  That was the essential thing about him as regards his relations with his fellow-traveller, though, when next morning the spires of Cologne and the swift river of his Fatherland came into sight, he burst out into a sort of rhapsody of patriotism that mockingly covered a great sincerity.

“Ah! beloved land!” he cried.  “Soil of heaven and of divine harmony!  Hail to thee!  Hail to thee!  Rhine, Rhine deep and true and steadfast.” . . .  And he waved his hat and sang the greeting of Brunnhilde.  Then he turned laughingly to Michael.

“I am sufficiently English to know how ridiculous that must seem to you,” he said, “for I love England also, and the passengers on the boat would merely think me mad if I apostrophised the cliffs of Dover and the mud of the English roads.  But here I am a German again, and I would willingly kiss the soil.  You English—­we English, I may say, for I am as much English as German—­I believe have got the same feeling somewhere in our hearts, but we lock it up and hide it away.  Pray God I shall never have to choose to which nation I belong, though for that matter there in no choice in it at all, for I am certainly a German subject.  Guten Tag, Koln; let us instantly have our coffee.  There is no coffee like German coffee, though the French coffee is undeniably pleasanter to the mere superficial palate.  But it doesn’t touch the heart, as everything German touches my heart when I come back to the Fatherland.”

He chattered on in tremendous high spirits.