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.
“No, my dear chap,” he said. “You may believe it to be unthinkable, and I may believe it to be inevitable; but what does it matter what either of us believes? Che sara sara. It was quite another thing that caused me to annoy myself. It does not matter.”
Michael lay back on the soft slope.
“Yet I insist on knowing,” he said. “That is, I mean, if it is not private.”