"Escape," he heard in a low, clear voice, half a question, half an exclamation, and saw the blood leave her face.
The instinctive "Hush!" that rose to his lips he did not utter. The sense of loss, of searching pain, the word implied he did not show. Instead, he spoke in his natural, everyday tone again:
"The body irks him, of course, and he may try to rid himself of it. Its limitations to him are a prison, for his true consciousness he finds outside it. The explanation," he added to himself, "of many a case of suicidal mania probably. I've often wondered——"
He took her hand, aware by the pallor of her face what her feelings were. "Death, you see, Nayan, has no meaning for him, as it has for us who think consciousness out of the body impossible, and he is puzzled by our dread of it. 'We,' he said once, 'have nothing that decays. We may be stationary, or advance, or retreat, but we can never end.' He derives—oh, I'm convinced of it—from another order. Here—amongst us—he is inarticulate, unable to express himself, hopeless, helpless, in prison. Oh, if only——"
"He loves you," she said quickly, releasing her hand. "I suppose he realizes the eternal part of you and identifies himself with that. In you, Edward, lies something very close to what he is, akin—he needs it terribly, just as you——" She became confused.
"Love, as we understand it," he interrupted, his voice shaking a little, "he does not, cannot know, for he serves another law, another order of being."
"That's how I feel it too."
She shivered slightly, but she did not turn away, and her eyes kept all their frankness.
"Our humanity," she murmured, "writes upon his heart in ink that quickly fades——"
"And leaves no trace," he caught her up hurriedly. "His one idea is to help, to render service. It is as natural to him as for water to run down hill. He seeks instinctively to become one with the person he seeks to aid. As with us an embrace is an attempt at union, so he seeks, by some law of his own being, to become identified with those whom he would help. And he helps by intensifying their consciousness—somewhat as heat and air increase ordinary physical vitality. Only, first there must be something for him to work on. Energy, even bad, vicious, wrongly used, he can work on. Mere emptiness prevents him. You remember Lady Gleeson——"