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.