Then he pulled himself together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him.  Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—­there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—­treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves.  This, again, was a very subtle delight to him.  He felt that he had stepped out of the greedy, vulgar, self-seeking world, the world of silk and markets and profit-making—­stepped into the cleaner atmosphere where spiritual ideals were paramount and life was simple and devoted.  It all charmed him inexpressibly, so that he realised—­yes, in a sense—­the degradation of his twenty years’ absorption in business.  This keen atmosphere under the stars where men thought only of their souls, and of the souls of others, was too rarefied for the world he was now associated with.  He found himself making comparisons to his own disadvantage,—­comparisons with the mystical little dreamer that had stepped thirty years before from the stern peace of this devout community, and the man of the world that he had since become,—­and the contrast made him shiver with a keen regret and something like self-contempt.

He glanced round at the other faces floating towards him through tobacco smoke—­this acrid cigar smoke he remembered so well:  how keen they were, how strong, placid, touched with the nobility of great aims and unselfish purposes.  At one or two he looked particularly.  He hardly knew why.  They rather fascinated him.  There was something so very stern and uncompromising about them, and something, too, oddly, subtly, familiar, that yet just eluded him.  But whenever their eyes met his own they held undeniable welcome in them; and some held more—­a kind of perplexed admiration, he thought, something that was between esteem and deference.  This note of respect in all the faces was very flattering to his vanity.

Coffee was served presently, made by a black-haired Brother who sat in the corner by the piano and bore a marked resemblance to Bruder Schliemann, the musical director of thirty years ago.  Harris exchanged bows with him when he took the cup from his white hands, which he noticed were like the hands of a woman.  He lit a cigar, offered to him by his neighbour, with whom he was chatting delightfully, and who, in the glare of the lighted match, reminded him sharply for a moment of Bruder Pagel, his former room-master.

“Es ist wirklich merkwuerdig,” he said, “how many resemblances I see, or imagine.  It is really very curious!”

“Yes,” replied the other, peering at him over his coffee cup, “the spell of the place is wonderfully strong.  I can well understand that the old faces rise before your mind’s eye—­almost to the exclusion of ourselves perhaps.”

They both laughed presently.  It was soothing to find his mood understood and appreciated.  And they passed on to talk of the mountain village, its isolation, its remoteness from worldly life, its peculiar fitness for meditation and worship, and for spiritual development—­of a certain kind.