he would start his work under the tremendous handicap of Falbe not believing that he had it in him to play, and under the disappointment of not enjoying the added intimacy which work with and for Falbe would give him.  Then he had engaged in this tussle with refractory notes till he quite lost himself in what he was playing, and thought no more either of Falbe or the piano, but only of what the melody meant to him.  But at the end, when he came to himself again, and sat with dropped hands waiting for Falbe’s verdict, he remembered how his heart seemed to hang poised until it came.  He had rehearsed again to himself his fixed determination that he would play and could play, whatever his friend might think about it; but there was no doubt that he waited with a greater suspense than he had ever known in his life before for that verdict to be made known to him.

Next day came their journey to Munich, and the installation in the best hotel in Europe.  Here Michael was host, and the economy which he practised when he had only himself to provide for, and which made him go second-class when travelling, was, as usual, completely abandoned now that the pleasure of hospitality was his.  He engaged at once the best double suite of rooms that the hotel contained, two bedrooms with bathrooms, and an admirable sitting-room, looking spaciously out on to the square, and with brusque decision silenced Falbe’s attempted remonstrance.  “Don’t interfere with my show, please,” he had said, and proceeded to inquire about a piano to be sent in for the week.  Then he turned to his friend again.  “Oh, we are going to enjoy ourselves,” he said, with an irresistible sincerity.

Tristan und Isolde was given on the third day of their stay there, and Falbe, reading the morning German paper, found news.

“The Kaiser has arrived,” he said.  “There’s a truce in the army manoeuvres for a couple of days, and he has come to be present at Tristan this evening.  He’s travelled three hundred miles to get here, and will go back to-morrow.  The Reise-Kaiser, you know.”

Michael looked up with some slight anxiety.

“Ought I to write my name or anything?” he asked.  “He has stayed several times with my father.”

“Has he?  But I don’t suppose it matters.  The visit is a widely-advertised incognito.  That’s his way.  God be with the All-highest,” he added.

“Well, I shan’t” said Michael.  “But it would shock my father dreadfully if he knew.  The Kaiser looks on him as the type and model of the English nobleman.”

Michael crunched one of the inimitable breakfast rusks in his teeth.

“Lord, what a day we had when he was at Ashbridge last year,” he said.  “We began at eight with a review of the Suffolk Yeomanry; then we had a pheasant shoot from eleven till three; then the Emperor had out a steam launch and careered up and down the river till six, asking a thousand questions about the tides and the currents and the navigable channels.  Then he lectured us on the family portraits till dinner; after dinner there was a concert, at which he conducted the ‘Song to Aegir,’ and then there was a torch-light fandango by the tenants on the lawn.  He was on his holiday, you must remember.”