With frowning impatience he bent forward quickly once or twice, asking Tarr to repeat some remark. Tarr’s German was not good.
Several glasses of beer, and Kreisler became engagingly expansive.
“Have you ever been to England?” Tarr asked him.
“England?—No—I should like to go there! I like Englishmen! I feel I should get on better with them than with these French. I hate the French! They are all actors.”
“You should go to London.”
“Ah, to London. Yes, I should go to London! It must be a wonderful town! I have often meant to go there. Is it expensive?”
“The journey?”
“Well, life there. Dearer than it is here, I have been told.” Kreisler forgot his circumstances for the moment. The Englishman seemed to have hit on a means of escape for him. He had never thought of England! A hazy notion of its untold wealth made it easier for him to put aside momentarily the fact of his tottering finances.
Perhaps this Englishman had been sent him by the Schicksal. He had always got on well with Englishmen!
The peculiar notion then crossed his mind that Tarr perhaps wanted to get him out of Paris, and had come to make him some offer of hospitality in England. In a bargaining spirit he began to run England down. He must not appear too anxious to go there.