but he smiled all the same. He was used to toil himself, in weariness of
body; now he stood here master, was mind and soul and directing will. He
felt it now for the first time, and it sent a thrill of triumph through
every nerve of his body.

But all through the long evenings he sat alone, reading, reading, and
heard the horses stamping in the stable below. And when he crept
into bed, well after midnight, there was only one thing that troubled
him--his utter loneliness. Klaus Brock lived with his uncle, in a fine
house, and went to parties. And he lay here all by himself. If he were
to die that very night, there would be hardly a soul to care. So utterly
alone he was--in a strange and indifferent world.

Sometimes it helped him a little to think of the old mother at Troen,
or of the church at home, where the vaulted roof had soared so high over
the swelling organ-notes, and all the faces had looked so beautiful. But
the evening prayer was no longer what it had been for him. There was no
grey-haired bishop any more sitting at the top of the ladder he was to
climb. The Chief Engineer that was there now had nothing to do with Our
Lord, or with life in the world to come. He would never come so far now
that he could go down into the place of torment where his mother lay,
and bring her up with him, up to salvation. And whatever power and
might he gained, he could never stand in autumn evenings and lift up his
finger and make all the stars break into song.

Something was past and gone for Peer. It was as if he were rowing away
from a coast where red clouds hung in the sky and dream-visions filled
the air--rowing farther and farther away, towards something quite new. A
power stronger than himself had willed it so.