There was less song, you know." Falbe laughed.
"And more accompaniment!" he said.

"Perhaps you play ?" Michael was seized with a fit of shyness at the idea of talking to Falbe about himself.
"Oh, I just strum," he said.
Throughout the journey their acquaintanceship ripened; and casually, in dropped remarks, the two began to learn something about each other.
Falbe's command of English, as well as his sister's, which was so complete that it was impossible to believe that a foreigner was speaking, was explained, for it came out that his mother was English, and that from infancy they had spoken German and English indiscriminately.

His father, who had died some dozen years before, had been a singer of some note in his native land, but was distinguished more for his teaching than his practice, and it was he who had taught his daughter.

Hermann Falbe himself had always intended to be a pianist, but the poverty in which they were left at his father's death had obliged him to give lessons rather than devote himself to his own career; but now at the age of thirty he found himself within sight of the competence that would allow him to cut down his pupils, and begin to be a pupil again himself.
His sister, moreover, for whom he had slaved for years in order that she might continue her own singing education unchecked, was now more than able, especially after these last three months in London, where she had suddenly leaped into eminence, to support herself and contributed to the expenses of their common home.

But there was still, so Michael gathered, no great superabundance of money, and he guessed that Falbe's inability to go to Munich was due to the question of expense.
All this came out by inference and allusion rather than by direct information, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that his own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was less communicative.