"Expression," he said convincingly, but in a lowered voice. "The fullest expression, everywhere and always. Let it all come. Accept the lot, believe the lot, welcome the lot, and thus"—he could not conceal the note of passionate entreaty, of deep affection—"avoid every atom of repression. In the end—in the long run—your own best judgment must prevail."
They smiled into each other's eyes for a moment in silence, while, instinctively and automatically, their hands joined in a steady clasp.
"Bless you, old fellow," murmured the chief. "As if I didn't know! It's the treatment you've been trying on me for weeks and months. As if I hadn't noticed!"
As they entered the breakfast-room, Nurse Robbins, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, was pouring out the coffee, leaning close over her patient's shoulder as she did so. Fresh roses were in her cheeks as well as on the table.
"This is its touch upon the blossomed maid," whispered Fillery, with the quick hint of humour that belongs only to the sane. At the same time the light remark was produced, he well knew, by a part of himself that sought to remain veiled from recognition. Any other triviality would have done as well to cloak the sharp pain that swept him, and to lead his listener astray. For in that instant, as they entered, he saw at the table not "N. H.," but LeVallon—the backward, ignorant, commonplace LeVallon, an empty, untaught personality, yet so receptive that anything—anything—could be transferred to him by a strong, vivid mind, a mind, for instance, like his own....
The sight, for a swift instant, was intolerable and devastating. He balanced again on air that gave him no support. He wavered, almost swayed. "N. H.," in that horrible and painful second, did not exist, and never had existed. The unstable mind, he comforted himself, experiences dislocating extremes of attitude ... for, at the same time as he saw himself shaking and wavering without solid support, he saw the figure of Paul Devonham, big, important, authoritative, dominating the uncertainties of life with calm, steady power.
In a fraction of a second all this came and went. He sat down beside LeVallon, his eyes still twinkling with his trivial little joke.
"'N. H.,'" he whispered to Devonham quickly, "has—escaped at last."
"LeVallon," came the whispered reply as quickly, "is cured at last." And, to conceal an intolerable rush of pain, of loss, of loneliness that threatened tears, he pointed to the dropped eyes and blushing cheeks of the pretty nurse across the table.