Falbe got up.

“I would wish that—­that you were Kaiser of England,” he said.

“God forbid!” said Michael.  “I should not have time to play the piano.”

During the next day or two Michael often found himself chipping at the bed-rock, so to speak, of this conversation, and Falbe’s revealed attitude towards his country and, in particular, towards its supreme head.  It seemed to him a wonderful and an enviable thing that anyone could be so thoroughly English as Falbe certainly was in his ordinary, everyday life, and that yet, at the back of this there should lie so profound a patriotism towards another country, and so profound a reverence to its ruler.  In his general outlook on life, his friend appeared to be entirely of one blood with himself, yet now on two or three occasions a chance spark had lit up this Teutonic beacon.  To Michael this mixture of nationalities seemed to be a wonderful gift; it implied a widening of one’s sympathies and outlook, a larger comprehension of life than was possible to any of undiluted blood.

For himself, like most young Englishmen of his day, he was not conscious of any tremendous sense of patriotism like this.  Somewhere, deep down in him, he supposed there might be a source, a well of English waters, which some explosion in his nature might cause to flood him entirely, but such an idea was purely hypothetical; he did not, in fact, look forward to such a bouleversement as being a possible contingency.  But with Falbe it was different; quite a small cause, like the sight of the Rhine at Cologne, or a Bavarian village at sunset, or the fact of a friend having talked with the Emperor, was sufficient to make his innate patriotism find outlet in impassioned speech.  He wondered vaguely whether Falbe’s explanation of this—­namely, that nationally the English were prosperous, comfortable and insouciant—­was perhaps sound.  It seemed that the notion was not wholly foundationless.

CHAPTER VI

Michael had been practising all the morning of a dark November day, had eaten a couple of sandwiches standing in front of his fire, and observed with some secret satisfaction that the fog which had lifted for an hour had come down on the town again in earnest, and that it was only reasonable to dismiss the possibility of going out, and spend the afternoon as he had spent the morning.  But he permitted himself a few minutes’ relaxation as he smoked his cigarette, and sat down by the window, looking out, in Lucretian mood, on to the very dispiriting conditions that prevailed in the street.

Though it was still only between one and two in the afternoon, the densest gloom prevailed, so that it was impossible to see the outlines even of the houses across the street, and the only evidence that he was not in some desert spot lay in the fact of a few twinkling lights, looking incredibly remote, from the windows opposite and the gas-lamps below.  Traffic seemed to be at a standstill; the accustomed roar from Piccadilly was dumb, and he looked out on to a silent and vapour-swathed world.  This isolation from all his fellows and from the chances of being disturbed, it may be added, gave him a sense of extreme satisfaction.  He wanted his piano, but no intrusive presence.  He liked the sensation of being shut up in his own industrious citadel, secure from interruption.