And Hans Castorp, watching, thought he detected, more plainly than ever before, a familiar, strange exhalation, faint, yet oddly clinging⁠—he blushed to find that it made him think of a former schoolfellow, who was avoided by his classmates because he suffered from a certain unpleasant affection⁠—for the drowning out of which the tuberoses were there, and which, with all their lovely luxuriance and the strongness of their scent, they yet failed to overpower.