"I feel," repeated the youth. The sentence was complete. "I am there."
"Ah! when you feel you're there, you are there?"
The other nodded.
He leaned forward. "I know," he whispered as with sudden joy. "You help me to remember, Fillery." The voice, though whispering, was strong; it vibrated full of over-tones and under-tones. The sound of the "F" was like a wind in branches. "You wonderful, you know too! It is the same with flowers, with everything. We build with wind and fire." He stopped, rubbing a hand across his forehead a moment. "Wind and fire," he went on, but this time to himself, "my splendid mighty ones...." Dropping his hand, he flashed an amazing look of enthusiasm and power into his companion's face. The look held in concentrated form something of the power that seemed pulsing and throbbing in his atmosphere. "Help me to remember, dear Fillery," his voice rang out aloud like singing. "Remember with me why we both are here. When we remember we can go back where we belong."
The glow went from his face and eyes as though an inner lamp had been suddenly extinguished. The power left both voice and atmosphere. He sank back in his chair, his great sensitive hands spread over the table where the star charts lay, as through the open window came the crash and clatter of an aeroplane tearing, like some violent, monstrous insect, through the sunlight.
A look of pain came into his eyes. "It goes again. I've lost it."
"We were talking about the stars and the laws of Nature," said Fillery quickly, though his voice was shaking, "when that noisy flying-machine disturbed us." He leaned over, taking his companion's hand. His heart was beating. He smelt the open spaces. The blood ran wildly in his veins. It was with the utmost difficulty he found simple, common words to use. "You must not ask too much at once. We will learn slowly—there is so much we have to learn together."
LeVallon's smile was beautiful, but it was the smile of "LeVallon" again only.
"Thank you, dear Fillery," he replied, and the talk continued as between a tutor and his backward pupil.... But for some time afterwards the "tutor's" mind and heart, while attending to LeVallon now, went travelling, it seemed, with "N. H." There was this strange division in his being ... for "N. H." appealed with power to a part of him, perhaps the greatest, that had never yet found expression, much less satisfaction.
Many a talk together of this kind, with occasional semi-irruptions of "N. H.," he had already enjoyed with his new patient, and LeVallon was by now fairly well instructed in the general history of our little world, briefly but picturesquely given. Evolution had been outlined and explained, the rise of man sketched vividly, the great war, and the planet's present state of chaos described in a way that furnished a clear enough synopsis of where humanity now stood. LeVallon was able to hold his own in conversation with others; he might pass for a simple-minded but not ill-informed young man, and both Paul Devonham and Edward Fillery, though each for different reasons, were, therefore, well satisfied with the young human being entrusted to their care, a human being to be eventually discharged from the Home, healed and cured of extravagances, made harmonious with himself, able to make his own way in the world alone. To Devonham it appeared already certain that, within a reasonable time, LeVallon would find himself happily at home among his fellow kind, a normal, even a gifted young man with a future before him. "N. H." would disappear and be forgotten, absorbed back into the parent Self. To his colleague, on the other hand, another vision of his future opened. Sooner or later it was LeVallon that would disappear and "N. H." remain in full control, a strange, possibly a new type of being, not alone marvellously gifted, but who might even throw light upon a vista of research and knowledge hitherto unknown to humanity, and with benefits for the Race as yet beyond the reach of any wildest prophecy.