In due course she and her daughter went to lunch and returned delighted, having found themselves fellow-guests of some of the most notable people in Lucerne, though not those whom Miss Ogilvy entertained on Sundays. Needless to say from that time forward Godfrey's intimacy with this charming and wealthy hostess was in every way encouraged by the Boiset family.
The course of this intimacy does not need any very long description. Every Sunday after church the well-appointed carriage and pair appeared and bore Godfrey away to luncheon at the Villa Ogilvy. Here he always met Madame Riennes, Colonel Josiah Smith, and Professor Petersen; also occasionally one or two others with whom these seemed to be sufficiently intimate to admit of their addressing them as "Brother" or "Sister."
Soon Godfrey came to understand that they were all members of some kind of semi-secret society, though what this might be he could not quite ascertain. All he made sure of was that it had to do with matters which were not of this world. Nothing concerning mundane affairs, however important or interesting, seemed to appeal to them; all their conversation was directed towards what might be called spiritual problems, reincarnations, Karmas (it took him a long time to understand what a Karma is), astral shapes, mediumship, telepathic influences, celestial guides, and the rest.
At first this talk with its jargon of words which he did not comprehend, bored him considerably, but by degrees he felt that he was being drawn into a vortex, and began to understand its drift. Even while it was enigmatic it acquired a kind of unholy attraction for him, and he began to seek out its secret meaning in which he found that company ready instructors.
"Young brother," said Madame Riennes, "we deal with the things not of the body, but of the soul. The body, what is it? In a few years it will be dust and ashes, but the soul--it is eternal--and all those stars you study are its inheritance, and you and I, if we cultivate our spiritual parts, shall rule in them."
Then she would roll her big eyes and become in a way magnificent, so that Godfrey forgot her ugliness and the repulsion with which she inspired him.
In the end his outlook on life and the world became different, and this not so much because of what he learned from his esoteric teachers, as through some change in his internal self. He grew to appreciate the vastness of things and the infinite possibilities of existence. Indeed, his spiritual education was a fitting pendant to his physical study of the heavens, peopled with unnumbered worlds, each of them the home, doubtless, of an infinite variety of life, and each of them keeping its awful secrets locked in its floating orb. He trembled in presence of the stupendous Whole, of which thus by degrees he became aware, and though it frightened him, thought with pity of the busy millions of mankind to whom such mysteries are nothing at all; who are lost in their business or idleness, in their eating, drinking, sleeping, love-making, and general satisfaction of the instincts which they possess in common with every other animal. The yearning for wisdom, the desire to know, entered his young heart and possessed it, as once these did that of Solomon, to such a degree indeed, that standing on the threshold of his days, he would have paid them all away, and with them his share in this warm and breathing world, could he have been assured that in exchange he would receive the key of the treasure-house of the Infinite.