"Visual," suggested Fillery, as though he held out a feeble hand to the man whose whole weight already hung unsupported before the plunge. His friend spoke no word; but his expression made words unnecessary: "We must face the facts," it said plainly, "wherever these may lead. No shirking, no prejudice of mine or yours must interfere. There must be no faltering now."
So plainly was his passion for truth and knowledge legible in the expression of the shocked but honest mind, that Fillery felt compassion overpower the first attitude of privacy he had meant to take. This time he must share. The honesty of the other won his confidence too fully for him to hold back anything. There was no doubt in his mind that he read his colleague's state aright.
"A moment, Paul," he said in a low voice, "before we go upstairs," and he put his hand out, oddly enough meeting Devonham's hand already stretched to meet it. He drew him aside into a corner of the hall, while the waves of sound surged round and over them like a sea. "Let me first tell you," he went on, his voice trembling slightly, "my own experience." It seemed to him that any moment he must see the birth of a new form, an outline, a "body" dance across before his very eyes.
"Neither auditory nor visual," murmured Devonham, burning to hear what was coming, yet at the same time shrinking from it by the laws of his personality. "Hallucination of any kind, there is absolutely none. There's nothing transferred from your mind to his. This thing is real—original."
Fillery tightened his grip a second on the hand he held.
"Paul," he said gravely, yet unable to hide the joy of recent ecstasy in his eyes, "it is also—new!"
The low syllables seemed borne away and lifted beyond their reach by an immense vibration that swept softly past them. And so actual was this invisible wave that behind it lay the trough, the ebb, that awaits, as in the sea, the next advancing crest. Into this ebb, as it were, both men dropped simultaneously the same significant syllables: their lips uttered together:
"N. H." The wave of sound seemed to take their voices and increase them. It was the older man who added: "Coming into full possession."
The two stood waiting, listening, their heads turned sideways, their bodies motionless, while the soft rhythmical uproar rose and fell about them. No sign escaped them for some minutes; no words, it seemed, occurred to either of them.
Through the transom over the front door stole the grey light of the late autumn dawn; the hall furniture was visible, chairs, hat-rack, wooden chests that held the motor rugs. A china bowl filled with visiting cards gleamed white beside it. Soon the milkman, uttering his comic earthly cry, would clatter down the area staircase, and the servants would be up. As yet, however, but for the big soft sound, the house was perfectly still. This part of it, almost a separate wing, was completely cut off from the main building. No one had been disturbed.