He looked up, as though to trace this sudden new consciousness of bright, quick, rapid competence—almost as of some immense power building with consistent scheme and system—that had occurred to him; and he met again the direct, yet slightly bewildered eyes that watched him, watched him with confidence, sweetness, and with a questioning intensity he found intriguing, captivating, and oddly stimulating. He felt happiness.
"By yer leave!" roared a porter, as they stepped aside just in time to save being pushed by the laden truck—just in time to save himself, that is, for the other, Fillery noticed, moved like a chamois on its native rocks, so surely, lightly, swiftly was he poised.
"This! Ah, you must excuse it," the doctor exclaimed with a smile of apology almost, "we've not yet had time to settle down after the war, you see." He pointed with a sweep of his hand to the roaring, dim-lit cavern where confusion reigned supreme, the G.H.Q. of travel in the biggest city of the Empire.
"I've got a porter," cried Devonham, beckoning vigorously a little further down the platform. "You wait there. I'll be along in a minute with the stuff." He was hot, flustered, exhausted.
"You struggle. It was like this all the way. Is there no knowledge?" LeVallon asked in his deep, quiet tones.
"We do," said Fillery. "With us life is always struggle. But there is more system than appears. The confusion is chiefly on the surface."
"It is dark and there is so little air," observed the other. "And they all work against each other."
Fillery laughed into the other's eyes; they laughed together; and it seemed suddenly to the doctor that their beings somehow merged, so that, for a second, he knew the entire content of his companion's mind—as if there was nothing in LeVallon he did not understand.
"You—are a builder," LeVallon said abruptly. But as he said it his companion caught, on the wing as it were, another meaning. He became curiously aware of the smallness, of the remote insignificance of the little planet whereon this dialogue took place, yet at the same time of its superb seductive loveliness. In him rose a feeling, as on wings, that he was not chained in his familiar, daily personality, but that an immense, delicious freedom lay within reach. He could be everywhere at once. He could do everything.
"Wait here while I help Devonham. Then we'll get into the car and be off." He moved away, threading a path with difficulty.