With that easy grace of his he sat down instantly beside her on the low divan, his height and big frame contriving the awkward movement without a sign of clumsiness. His indifference was obvious—to Devonham, but the vain eyes of the woman did not notice it.
"That's better," she again welcomed him with a happy laugh. She edged closer a little. "Now, do make yourself comfortable"—she arranged the cushions again—"and please tell me about your wild life in the forests, or wherever it was. You know a lot about the stars, I hear." She devoured his face and figure with her shining eyes.
The upper lip was lifted for a second above a gleaming tooth. Devonham had the feeling she was about to eat him, licking her lips already in anticipation. He himself would be dismissed, he well knew, in another moment, for Lady Gleeson would not tolerate a third person at the meal. Before he was sent about his business, however, he had the good fortune to hear LeVallon's opening answer to the foolish invitation. Amazement filled him. He wished Fillery could have heard it with him, seen the play of expression on the faces too—the bewilderment of sensational hunger for something new in Lady Gleeson's staring eyes, arrested instantaneously; the calm, cold look of power, yet power tempered by a touch of pity, in LeVallon's glance, a glance that was only barely aware of her proximity. He smiled as he spoke, and the smile increased his natural radiance. He looked extraordinarily handsome, yet with a new touch of strangeness that held even the cautious doctor momentarily almost spellbound.
"Stars—yes, but I rarely see them here in London, and they seem so far away. They comfort me. They bring me—they and women bring me—nearest to a condition that is gone from me. I have lost it." He looked straight into her face, so that she blinked and screwed up her eyes, while her breathing came more rapidly. "But stars and women," he went on, his voice vibrating with music in spite of its quietness, "remind me that it is recoverable. Both give me this sweet message. I read it in stars and in the eyes of women. And it is true because no words convey it. For women cannot express themselves, I see; and stars, too, are silent—here."
The same soft thunder as before sounded below the gently spoken words; Lady Gleeson was trembling a little; she made a movement by means of which she shifted herself yet nearer to her companion in what seemed a natural and unconscious way. It was doubtless his proximity rather than his words that stirred her. Her face was set, though the lips quivered a trifle and the voice was less shrill than usual as she spoke, holding out her empty glass.
"Thank you, Dr. Devonham," she said icily.
The determined gesture, a toss of the head, with the glare of sharp impatience in the eyes, he could not ignore; yet he accepted his curt dismissal slowly enough to catch her murmured words to LeVallon:
"How wonderful! How wonderful you are! And what sort of women...?" followed him as he moved away. In his heart rose again an uncomfortable memory of a Jura valley blazing in the sunset, and of a half-naked figure worshipping before a great wood fire on the rocks.... He fancied he caught, too, in the voice, a suggestion of a lilt, a chanting resonance, that increased his uneasiness further. One thing was certain: it was not quite the ordinary "LeVallon" that answered the silly woman. The reaction was of a different kind. Was, then, the other self awake and stirring? Was it "N. H." after all, as his colleague claimed?
Allowing a considerable interval to pass, he returned with a glass—of lemonade—reaching the divan in its dim-lit corner just in time to see a flashing hand withdrawn quickly from LeVallon's arm, and to intercept a glance that told him the intrigue evidently had not developed altogether according to Lady Gleeson's plan, although her air was one of confidence and keenest self-satisfaction. LeVallon sat like a marble figure, cold, indifferent, looking straight before him, listening, if only with half an ear, to a stream of words whose import it was not difficult to guess.
This Devonham's practised eye read in the flashing look she shot at him, and in the quick way she thanked him.