The two men talked to each other, not to the women, the Baron stiffly and on his guard, Herr Dremmel taking immense pains to be amiable and not offend. Between them hung the memories of altercations. Between them also hung the knowledge of the three years during which the Baron and his wife, as a result of the last and hottest difference of opinion, had attended Divine Service in a church that did not belong to them. They had altogether cut Kökensee. For three years their private gallery in the church in which their ancestors had once a fortnight feared God had been a place where mice enjoyed themselves. Its chairs were covered with dust; its hymn-books, growing brown, still lay open at the place the Glambecks had praised God out of last. Such a withdrawal of approval would have made any other pastor's life a thing of chill and bleakness; Herr Dremmel hardly observed it. He had no vanities. He was pleased that the rival pastor should be gratified. He cared nothing for comment, and had no eye for shrugs and smiles. His eyes, his thoughts, were wanted for his work; and he found it a relief, a release from at least one interruption, when his patron took to leaving him frigidly alone. Indeed, when he drove up to the Glambecks' house and remembered he had not had to go there for three peaceful years he felt really grateful, and he showed his gratitude by performing immense feats of social pleasantness during the visit. He agreed gigantically with everything the Baron said. Whatever subject was touched upon---very cautiously, for the Baron mistrusted all subjects with Herr Dremmel--he instantly dragged it off the dangerous shoals of the immediate and close up to a cosmic height and distance, a height and distance so enormous that even what the Kaiser said last became a negligible tinkling and Conscience and Dogma quavered off into silence; and he explained to the Baron, who guardedly said "Perhaps," that though people's opinions might and did vary seen near, if one spread them out wide enough, pushed them back far enough, took them up high enough, bored them down deep enough, got them away from detail and loose from foregrounds, one would come at last to the great Mother Opinion of them all, in whose huge lap men curled themselves up contentedly like the happy identities they indeed were and went, after kissing each other, in placidest agreement to sleep. "Perhaps," said the Baron. Personalities, immediate interests, duties, daily life, were swamped in the vast seas in which, with politeness but determination, Herr Dremmel took the Baron swimming. One only needed, he repeated, warm with the wish to keep in roomy regions, to trace back any two opinions, however bitterly different they now were, far enough to get at last to the point where they sweetly kissed. "Perhaps," said the Baron. "One only needed--" went on Herr Dremmel, making all-embracing movements with his arms. But the Baron cleared his throat and began to enumerate contrary facts.