"In your view, it's merely a case of a secondary—anyhow of a divided—personality?" he asked, as soon as the other had recovered a little from his journey, and was digesting his meal comfortably over a pipe. "You have seen more of him than I have. Of insanity, at any rate, there is no sign at all, I take it? His relations with his environment are sound?"
"None whatever." Devonham answered both questions at once. "Exactly."
He took off his pince-nez, cleaned them with his handkerchief, and then replaced them carefully. This gave him time to reflect, as though he was not quite sure where to begin his story.
"There are certainly indications," he went on slowly, "of a divided personality, though of an unusual kind. The margin between the two—between the normal and the secondary self—is so very slight. It is not clearly defined, I mean. They sometimes merge and interpenetrate. The frontier is almost indistinguishable."
Fillery raised his eyebrows.
"You feel uncertain which is the main self, and which the split-off secondary personality?" he inquired, with surprise.
Devonham nodded. "I'm extremely puzzled," he admitted. "LeVallon's most marked self, the best defined, the richest, the most fully developed, seems to me what we should call his Secondary Self—this 'Nature-being' that worships wind and fire, is terrified by a large body of water, is ignorant of human ways, probably also quite un-moral, yet alive with a kind of instinctive wisdom we credit usually to the animal kingdom—though far beyond anything animals can claim——"
"Briefly, what we mean by the term 'N. H.,'" suggested Fillery, not anxious for too many details at the moment.
"Exactly. And I propose we always refer to that aspect of him as 'N. H.,' the other, the normal ordinary man, being LeVallon, his right name." He smiled faintly.
"Agreed," replied his chief. "We shall always know then exactly which one we're talking of at a given moment. Now," he went on, "to come to the chief point, and before you give me details of what happened abroad, let me hear your own main conclusion. What is LeVallon? What is 'N. H.'?"