It seemed as if a veil passed from his face, a thin transparency that dimmed the shining effect his hair and eyes and radiant health produced. A far-away expression followed it.
"'N. H.'!" Devonham quickly flashed the whispered warning. And in the same instant, Fillery rose, holding out the open book.
"Come, LeVallon," he said, putting a hand upon his shoulder, "we'll go into my room for an hour, and I'll tell you all about the galaxies and nebulæ. You shall ask as many questions as you like. Devonham is a very busy man and has duties to attend to just now."
He moved across to open the door, and LeVallon, his face changing more and more, went with him; the light in his eyes increased; he smiled, the far-away expression passed a little.
"Dr. Devonham is quite right in what he says about useless speculations," continued Fillery, as they went out arm in arm together, "but we can play a bit with thought and imagination, for all that—you and I. 'Let your thought wander like an insect which is allowed to fly in the air, but is at the same time confined by a thread.' Come along, we'll have an hour's play. We'll travel together among the golden stars, eh?"
"Play!" exclaimed the youth, looking up with flashing eyes. "Ah! in the Spring we play! Our work with sap, roots, crystals, fire, all finished out of sight, so that their results followed of their own accord." He was talking at great speed in a low voice, a deep, rolling voice, and half to himself. "Spring is our holiday, the forms made perfect and ready for the power to rush through, and we rush with it, playing everywhere——"
"Spring is the wine of life, yes," put in Fillery, caught away momentarily by something behind the words he listened to, as though a rhythm swept him. "Creative life racing up and flooding into every form and body everywhere. It brings wonder, joy—play, as you call it."
"We—we build the way——" The youth broke off abruptly as they reached the study door. Something flowed down and back in him, emptying face and manner of a mood which had striven for utterance, then passed. He returned to the previous talk about the stars again:
"Who attends to them? Who looks after them?" he inquired, a deep, peculiar interest in his manner, his eyes turning a little darker.
"What we call the laws of Nature," was the reply, "which are, after all, merely our 'descriptive formulæ summing up certain regularities of recurrence,' the laws under which they were first set alight and then sent whirling into space. Under these same laws they will all eventually burn out and come to rest. They will be dead."