“This won’t do, Michael,” he said. “You played it before for me to see whether you could play. You can. But it won’t do to sketch it. Every note has got to be there; Chopin didn’t write them by accident. He knew quite well what he was about. Begin again, please.” This time Michael got not quite so far, when he was stopped again. He was playing without notes, and Falbe got up from his chair where he had the book open, and put it on the piano. “Do you find difficulty in memorising?” he asked. This was discouraging; Michael believed that he remembered easily; he also believed that he had long known this by heart. “No; I thought I knew it,” he said. “Try again.” This time Falbe stood by him, and suddenly put his finger down into the middle of Michael’s hands, striking a note. “You left out that F sharp,” he said. “Go on. . . . Now you are leaving out that E natural. Try to get it better by Thursday, and remember this, that playing, and all that differentiates playing from strumming, only begins when you can play all the notes that are put down for you to play without fail. You’re beginning at the wrong end; you have admirable feeling about that prelude, but you needn’t think about feeling till you’ve got all the notes at your fingers’ ends. Then and not till then, you may begin to remember that you want to be a pianist. Now, what’s the next thing?” Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged. He had thought he had really worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by sight. His heavy eyebrows drew together. “You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol,” he remarked, rather shortly. Falbe put his hand on his shoulder. “Look here, Michael,” he said, “you’re vexed with me. Now, there’s nothing to be vexed at. You know quite well you were leaving out lots of notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren’t playing cleanly. Now I’m taking you seriously, and I won’t have from you anything but the best you can do. You’re not doing your best when you don’t even play what is written. You can’t begin to work at this till you do that.” Michael had a moment’s severe tussle with his temper. He felt vexed and disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like a schoolboy with his exercise torn over. Not immediately did he confess to himself that he was completely in the wrong. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said. “It’s rather discouraging.” He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that Hermann’s hand was not wanted there. Hermann kept it there. “It might be discouraging,” he said, “if you were doing your best.” Michael’s ill-temper oozed from him. “I’m wrong,” he said, turning round with the smile that made his ugly face so pleasant. “And I’m sorry both that I have been slack and that I’ve been sulky. Will that do?” Falbe laughed. “Very well indeed,” he said. “Now for ‘Good King Wenceslas.’ Wasn’t it--”