He chuckled over his pipe-stem, 'Aha!'
'How am I one or the other?'
'By the weight of what you carry in your head.'
'How by the weight?'
He shot a keen look at me. 'The case, I suspect, is singular, and does not often happen to a youth. You are fortunate if you have a solid and adventurous mind: most unfortunate if you are a mere sensational whipster. There 's an explanation that covers the whole. I am as much in the dark as you are. I do not say which of us two has the convex eye.'
Protesting that I was unable to read riddles, though the heat of the one in hand made my frame glow, I entreated to have explicit words. He might be in Ottilia's confidence, probing me—why not? Any question he chose to put to me, I said, I was ready to answer.
'But it's the questioner who unmasks,' said he.
'Are we masked, Herr Professor? I was not aware of it.'
'Look within, and avoid lying.'
He stood up. 'My nights,' he remarked, 'are not commonly wasted in this manner. We Germans use the night for work.'