“I deny it; I deny it flatly,” he said.  “I know where I get my power of foolish, unthinking enjoyment from, and it’s from my English blood.  I rejoice in my English blood, because you are the happiest people on the face of the earth.  But you are happy because you don’t think, whereas the joy of being German is that you do think.  England is lying in the shade, like us, with a cigarette and a drink—­I wish I had one—­and a golf ball or the world with which she has been playing her game.  But Germany is sitting up all night thinking, and every morning she gives an order or two.”

Michael supplied the cigarette.

“Do you mean she is thinking about England’s golf ball?” asked Michael.

“Why, of course she is!  What else is there to think about?”

“Oh, it’s impossible that there should be a European war,” said Michael, “for that is what it will mean!”

“And why is a European war impossible?” demanded Falbe, lighting his cigarette.

“It’s simply unthinkable!”

“Because you don’t think,” he interrupted.  “I can tell you that the thought of war is never absent for a single day from the average German mind.  We are all soldiers, you see.  We start with that.  You start by being golfers and cricketers.  But ‘der Tag’ is never quite absent from the German mind.  I don’t say that all you golfers and cricketers wouldn’t make good soldiers, but you’ve got to be made.  You can’t be a golfer one day and a soldier the next.”

Michael laughed.

“As for that,” he said, “I made an uncommonly bad soldier.  But I am an even worse golfer.  As for cricket—­”

Falbe again interrupted.

“Ah, then at last I know two things about you,” he said.  “You were a soldier and you can’t play golf.  I have never known so little about anybody after three—­four days.  However, what is our proverb?  ’Live and learn.’  But it takes longer to learn than to live.  Eh, what nonsense I talk.”

He spoke with a sudden irritation, and the laugh at the end of his speech was not one of amusement, but rather of mockery.  To Michael this mood was quite inexplicable, but, characteristically, he looked about in himself for the possible explanation of it.

“But what’s the matter?” he asked.  “Have I annoyed you somehow?  I’m awfully sorry.”

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.