They all laughed, as though the politeness of
their words was but formal, and veiled thinly--more and more thinly--a
very different meaning.
"And the hour of midnight draws near," added Bruder Kalkmann with a
charming smile, but in a voice that sounded to the Englishman like the
grating of iron hinges.
Their German seemed to him more and more difficult to understand. He
noted that they called him "Bruder" too, classing him as one of
themselves.
And then suddenly he had a flash of keener perception, and realised with
a creeping of his flesh that he had all along misinterpreted--grossly
misinterpreted all they had been saying. They had talked about the
beauty of the place, its isolation and remoteness from the world, its
peculiar fitness for certain kinds of spiritual development and
worship--yet hardly, he now grasped, in the sense in which he had taken
the words. They had meant something different. Their spiritual powers,
their desire for loneliness, their passion for worship, were not the
powers, the solitude, or the worship that _he_ meant and understood.
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