The Bright Messenger

by Algernon Blackwood

  CHAPTER XX

  He became, again, vividly aware of the power and presence of "N. H."

  He was not far from his house now on the shoulder of the hill. Heturned his eyes upwards, where the three-quarter moon sailed abovetransparent cirrus clouds that scarcely dimmed her light. Like dappledsands of silver, they sifted her soft shining, moving slowly across theheavens before an upper wind. The sound continued.

  For a moment or two, in the pale light of dawn, he watched andlistened, then lowered his gaze, caught his breath sharply, and stoodstock still. He stared in front of him. Next, turning slowly, he staredright and left. He stared behind as well.

  Yes, it was true. The lines and rows of crowding houses trembled,disappeared. The heavy buildings dissolved before his very eyes. Thesolid walls and roofs were gone, the chimneys, railings, doors andporches vanished. There were no more conservatories. There were nolamp-posts. The streets themselves had melted. He gazed in amazementand delight. The entire hill lay bare and open to the sky.

  Across the rising upland swept a keen fresh morning wind. Yet barethey were not, this rising upland and this hill. As far as he couldsee, the landscape flowed waist-deep in flowers, whose fragrance layupon the air; dew trembled, shimmering on a million petals of blue andgold, of orange, purple, violet; the very atmosphere seemed painted.Flowering trees, both singly and in groves, waved in the breeze, birdssang in chorus, there was a murmur of streams and falling waters. Yetthat other sound rose too, rose from the entire hill and all upon it,a continuous gentle rhythm, as though, he felt, the actual scenerypoured forth its being in spontaneous, natural expression of sound aswell as of form and colour. It was the simplest, happiest music he hadever heard.

  Unable to deal with the rapture of delight that swept upon him, hestood stock still among the blossoms to his waist. Eyes, ears andnostrils were inadequate to report a beauty which, simple though itwas, overbore nerves and senses accustomed to a lesser scale. Horizonsindeed had lifted, the joy and confidence of fuller life poured in.His own being grew immense, stretched, widened, deepened, till itseemed to include all space. He was everywhere, or rather everythingwas happening somewhere in him all at once.... In place of the heavysuburb lay this garden of primal beauty, while yet, in a sense, thesuburb itself remained as well. Only--it had flowered ... revealing thesubconscious soul the bricks and pavements hid.... Its potential selfhad blossomed into loveliness and wonder.

  The sound drew nearer. He was aware of movement. Figures wereapproaching; they were coming in his direction, coming towards him overthe crest of the hill, nearer and nearer. Concealed by the forest oftall flowers, he watched them come. Yet as Presences he perceived them,rather than as figures, already borrowing power from them, as sailsborrow from a rising wind. His consciousness expanded marvellously tolet them in.

  Their stature was conveyed to him, chiefly, at first, by the fact thatthese flowers, though rising to his own waist, did not cover the feetof them, yet that the flowers in the immediate line of their advancestill swayed and nodded, as though no weight had lain upon theirbrilliance. The footsteps were of wind, the figures light as air; theyshone; their radiant presences lit the acres. Their own atmosphere,too, came with them, as though the landscape moved and travelled withand in their being, as though the flowers, the natural beauty, emanatedfrom them. The landscape _was_ their atmosphere. They created, broughtit with them. It seemed that they "expressed" the landscape and "were"the scenery, with all its multitudinous forms.

  They approached with a great and easy speed that was not measurable.Over the crest of the living, sunlit hill they poured, with their bulk,their speed, their majesty, their sweet brimming joy. Fillery stoodmotionless watching them, his own joy touched with awed confusion, tillwonder and worship mastered the final trace of fear.

  Though he perceived these figures first as they topped the skyline, hewas aware that great space also stretched behind them, and that thisimmense perspective was in some way appropriate to their appearance.Born of a greater space than his "mind" could understand, theyflowed towards him across that windy crest and at the same time frominfinitely far beyond it. Above the continuous humming sound, he heardtheir music too, faint but mighty, filling the air with deep vibrationsthat seemed the natural expression of their joyful beings. Each figurewas a chord, yet all combining in a single harmony that had volumewithout loudness. It seemed to him that their sound and colour andmovement wove a new pattern upon space, a new outline, form or growth,perhaps a flower, a tree, perhaps a planet.... They were creative. Theyexpressed themselves naturally in a million forms.

  He heard, he saw. He knew no other words to use. But the "hearing" was,rather, some kind of intimate possession so that his whole being filledand overbrimmed; and the "sight" was greater than the customary littleirritation of the optic nerve--it involved another term of space. Hecould describe the sight more readily than the hearing. The apparentcontradiction of distance and proximity, of vast size yet intimacy,made him tremble in his hiding-place.

  His "sight," at any rate, perceived the approaching figures all round,all over, all at once, as they poured like a wave across the hill fromfar beyond its visible crest. For into this space below the horizon hesaw as well, though, normally speaking, it was out of sight. Nor did hesee one side only; he saw the backs of the towering forms as easily asthe portion facing him; he saw behind them. It was not as with ordinaryobjects refracting light, the back and underneath and further edgesinvisible. All sides were visible at once. The space beyond, moreover,whence the mighty outlines issued, was of such immensity that he couldthink only of interstellar regions. Not to the little planet, then, didthese magnificent shapes belong. They were of the Universe. The symbolof his valley, he knew suddenly, belonged here too.

  Silent with wonder, motionless with worship, he watched the singingflood of what he felt to be immense, non-human nature-life pour pasthim. The procession lasted for hours, yet was over in a minute's flash.All categories his mind knew hitherto were useless. The faces, in theirpower, their majesty, the splendour even of their extent, were bothappalling, yet infinitely tender. They were filled with stars, bluedistance, flowers, spirals of fire, space and air, interwoven too,with shining geometrical designs whose intricate patterns merged in acentral harmony. They brought their own winds with them.

  Yet of features precisely, he was not aware. Each face was, rather,an immense expression, but an expression that was permanent and couldnot change. These were immutable, eternal faces. He borrowed fromhuman terms the only words that offered, while aware that he falselyintroduced the personal into that which was essentially impersonal.

  There stole over him a strange certainty that what he worshipped wasthe grandeur of joyful service working through unalterable law--thegreat compassion of some untiring service that was deathless.... Hestood _within_ the Universe, face to face with its elemental builders,guardians, its constructive artizans, the impersonal angelic powers... the region, the state, he now felt convinced, to which "N. H."belonged, and whence, by some inexplicable chance, he had come tooccupy a human body.... And the sounds--the flash came to him withlightning conviction--were those essential rhythms which are thekernels of all visible, manifested forms....

  * * * * *

  He was not aware that he was moving, that he had left the spot where hehad stood--so long, yet for a single second only--and had now reachedthe corner of a street again. The flowers were gone, and the trees andgroves gone with them; no waters rippled past; there was no shininghill. The moon, the stars, the breaking dawn remained, but he sawwindows, walls and villas once again, while his feet echoed on deadstone pavements....

  Yet the figures had not wholly gone. Before a house, where he nowpaused a moment, the towering, flowing outlines were still faintlyvisible. Their singing still audible, their shapes still gentlyluminous, they stood grouped about an open window of the second story.In the front garden a big plane tree stirred its leafless branches; thetree and figures interpenetra
ted. Slowly then, the outlines grew dimand shadowy, indistinguishable almost from the objects in the twilightnear them. Chimneys, walls and roofs stole in upon the great shapeswith foreign, grosser details that obscured their harmony, confusedtheir proportion, as with two sets of values. The eye refused to focusboth at once. A roof, a chimney obtruded, while sight struggled,fluttered, then ended in confusion. The figures faded and melted out.They merged with the tree, the reddening sky, the murky air closeto the house which a street lamp made visible. Suddenly they werelost--they were no longer there.

  But the rhythmical sound, though fainter, still continued--and Fillerylooked up.

  It was a sound, he realized in a flash, evocative and summoning. Typecalled to type, brother to brother, across the universe. The housebefore him was his own, and the open window through which the musicissued was the bedroom of "N. H."

  He stood transfixed. Both sides of his complex nature operatedsimultaneously. His mind worked more clearly--the entire historyof the "case" in that upstairs room passed through it: he was adoctor. But his speculative, emotional aspect, the dreamer in him, sogreatly daring, all that poetic, transcendental, half-mystical partwhich classed him, he well knew, with the unstable; all this, longand dangerously repressed, worked with opposite, if equal pressure.From the subconscious rose violent hands as of wind and fire,lovely, fashioning, divine, tearing away the lid of the reasoningsurface-consciousness that confined, confused them.

  To disentangle, to define these separate functions, were a difficultproblem even for the most competent psychiatrist. Creative imaginativepowers, hitherto merely fumbling, half denied as well, now stretchedtheir wings and soared. With them came a blinding clarity of sightthat enabled him to focus a vast field of detail with extraordinaryrapidity. Horizons had lifted, perspective deepened and lit up. In afew brief seconds, before his front door opened, a hundred detailsflashed towards a focus and shone concentrated:

  The Vision, of course--the Figures had now melted into the night--hadno objective reality. Suppressed passion had created them, forbiddenyearnings had passed the Censor and dramatized a dream, set aside yetnever explained, that heredity was responsible for. Both were bornof his lost radiant valley. His Note Books held a thousand similarcases....

  But the speculative dreamer flashed coloured lights against this commonwhite. The prism blazed. From the inter-stellar spaces came theseradiant figures, from Sirius, immense and splendid sun, from Aldebaranamong the happy Hyades, from awful Betelgeuse, whose volume fills aMartian orbit. Their dazzling, giant grandeur was of stellar origin.Yet, equally, they came from the dreadful back gardens of those sordidhouses. Nature was Nature everywhere, in the nebulae as in the stifledplane tree of a city court. That he saw them as "figures" was but hisown private, personal interpretation of a prophecy the whole Universeannounced. They were not figures necessarily; they were Powers. And "N.H." was of their kind.

  He suddenly remembered the small, troubled earth whereon he lived--aneglected corner of the universe that was in distress and criedfrantically for help.... Alcyone caught it in her golden arms perhaps;Sirius thundered against its little ears....

  He found his latchkey and fumblingly inserted it, but, even while hedid so, the state of the planet at the moment poured into his mind withswift, concentrated detail; he remembered the wireless excitement ofthe instant--and smiled. Not that way would it come. The new order wasof a spiritual kind. It would steal into men's hearts, not splutteralong the waves of ether, as the "dead" are said to splutter to the"living." The great impulse, the mighty invitation Nature sent out toreturn to simple, natural life, would come, without "phenomena" from_within_.... He remembered Relativity--that space is local, space andtime not separate entities. He understood. He had just experiencedit. Another, a fourth dimension! Space as a whole was annihilated! Hesmiled.

  His latchkey turned.

  The transmutation of metals flashed past him--all substance one. Hislatchkey was upside down. He turned it round and reinserted it, and theresults of advanced psychology rushed at him, as though the sun rushedover the horizon of some Eastern clime, covering all with the light ofa new, fair dawn.

  In a few seconds this accumulation of recent knowledge and discoveryflooded his state of singular receptiveness--as thinker and as poet.The Age was crumbling, civilization passing like its predecessors. Thelittle planet lay certainly in distress. No true help lay within it;its reservoirs were empty. No adequate constructive men or powers wereanywhere in sight. It was exhausted, dying. Unless new help, powersfrom a new, an inexhaustible source, came quickly ... a new vehicle fortheir expression....

  And wonder took him by the throat ... as the key turned in the lockwith its familiar grating sound, and the door, without actual pressureon his part, swung open.

  Paul Devonham, a look of bright terror in his eyes, stood on thethreshold.

  * * * * *

  The expression, not only of the face but of the whole person, he hadseen once only in another human countenance--a climber, who had slippedby his very side and dropped backward into empty space. The look ofhelpless bewilderment as hands and feet lost final touch with solidity,the air of terrible yet childlike amazement with which he began hisdescent of a thousand feet through a gulf of air--the shock marked theface in a single second with what he now saw in his colleague's eyes.Only, with Devonham--Fillery felt sure of his diagnosis--the lost holdwas mental.

  His outward control, however, was admirable. Devonham's voice,apart from a certain tenseness in it, was quiet enough: "I've beentelephoning everywhere.... There's been a--a crisis----"

  "Violence?"

  But the other shook his head. "It's all beyond me quite," he said,with a wry smile. "The first outbreak was nothing--nothing compared tothis." The continuous sound of humming which filled the hall, makingthe air vibrate oddly, grew louder. Devonham seized his friend's arm.

  "Listen!" he whispered. "You hear that?"

  "I heard it outside in the street," Fillery said. "What is it?"

  Devonham glared at him. "God knows," he said, "I don't. He's been doingit, on and off, for a couple of hours. It began the moment you left, itseems. They're all about him--these vibrations, I mean. He does it withhis whole body somehow. And"--he hesitated--"there's meaning in it ofsome kind. Results, I mean," he jerked out with an effort.

  "Visible?" came the gentle question.

  Devonham started. "How did you know?" There was a thrust of intensecuriosity in the eyes.

  "I've had a similar experience myself, Paul. You opened the front doorin the middle of it. The figures----"

  "You saw figures?" Devonham looked thunderstruck. In his heart wasobviously a touch of panic.

  As the two men stood gazing into each other's eyes a moment silently,the sound about them increased again, rising and falling, its greatseparate rhythmical waves almost distinguishable. In Fillery's mindrose patterns, outlines, forms of flowers, spirals, circles....

  "He knows you're in the house," said Devonham in a curious voice,relieved apparently no answer came to his question. "Better comeupstairs at once and see him." But he did not turn to lead the way."That's not auditory hallucination, Edward, whatever else it is!" Hewas still clinging to the rock, but the rock was crumbling beneath hisdesperate touch. Space yawned below him.

  "Visual," suggested Fillery, as though he held out a feeble hand to theman whose whole weight already hung unsupported before the plunge. Hisfriend spoke no word; but his expression made words unnecessary: "Wemust face the facts," it said plainly, "wherever these may lead. Noshirking, no prejudice of mine or yours must interfere. There must beno faltering now."

  So plainly was his passion for truth and knowledge legible in theexpression of the shocked but honest mind, that Fillery felt compassionoverpower the first attitude of privacy he had meant to take. This timehe must share. The honesty of the other won his confidence too fullyfor him to hold back anything. There was no doubt in his mind that heread his colleague's state aright.
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  "A moment, Paul," he said in a low voice, "before we go upstairs," andhe put his hand out, oddly enough meeting Devonham's hand alreadystretched to meet it. He drew him aside into a corner of the hall,while the waves of sound surged round and over them like a sea. "Letme first tell you," he went on, his voice trembling slightly, "my ownexperience." It seemed to him that any moment he must see the birth ofa new form, an outline, a "body" dance across before his very eyes.

  "Neither auditory nor visual," murmured Devonham, burning to hearwhat was coming, yet at the same time shrinking from it by the lawsof his personality. "Hallucination of any kind, there is absolutelynone. There's nothing transferred from your mind to his. This thing isreal--original."

  Fillery tightened his grip a second on the hand he held.

  "Paul," he said gravely, yet unable to hide the joy of recent ecstasyin his eyes, "it is also--new!"

  The low syllables seemed borne away and lifted beyond their reach by animmense vibration that swept softly past them. And so actual was thisinvisible wave that behind it lay the trough, the ebb, that awaits, asin the sea, the next advancing crest. Into this ebb, as it were, bothmen dropped simultaneously the same significant syllables: their lipsuttered together:

  "N. H." The wave of sound seemed to take their voices and increasethem. It was the older man who added: "Coming into full possession."

  The two stood waiting, listening, their heads turned sideways, theirbodies motionless, while the soft rhythmical uproar rose and fell aboutthem. No sign escaped them for some minutes; no words, it seemed,occurred to either of them.

  Through the transom over the front door stole the grey light of thelate autumn dawn; the hall furniture was visible, chairs, hat-rack,wooden chests that held the motor rugs. A china bowl filled withvisiting cards gleamed white beside it. Soon the milkman, utteringhis comic earthly cry, would clatter down the area staircase, and theservants would be up. As yet, however, but for the big soft sound, thehouse was perfectly still. This part of it, almost a separate wing, wascompletely cut off from the main building. No one had been disturbed.

  Fillery moved his head and looked at his companion. The expression ofboth face and figure arrested him. He had taken off his dinner jacket,and the old loose golfing coat he wore hung askew; he had one hand ina pocket of it, the other thrust deep into his trousers. His glasseshung down across his crumpled shirt-front, his black tie made an untidycross. He looked, thought Fillery, whose sense of the ludicrous becamealways specially alert in his gravest moments, like an unhappy curatewho had presided over some strenuous and worrying social gatheringin the local town hall. Only one detail denied this picture--theexpression of something mysterious and awed in the sheet-white face.He was listening with sharp dislike yet eager interest. His repugnancebetrayed itself in the tightened lips, the set of the angularshoulders; the panic was written in the glistening eyes. There werethings in his face he could never, never tell. The struggle in him wasnatural to his type of mind: he had experienced something himself, anda personal experience opens new vistas in sympathy and understanding.But--the experience ran contrary to every tenet of theory and practicehe had ever known. The moment of new birth was painful. This was hiscolleague's diagnosis.

  Fillery then suddenly realized that the gulf between them was without abridge. To tell his own experience became at once utterly impossible.He saw this clearly. He could not speak of it to his assistant. It was,after all, incommunicable. The bridge of terms, language, feeling, didnot exist between them. And, again, up flashed for a second his senseof the comic, this time in an odd touch of memory--Povey's favouritesentence: "Never argue with the once-born!" Only to older souls wasexpression possible.

  For the first time then his diagnosis wavered oddly. Why, forinstance, did Paul persist in that curious, watchful stare...?

  Devonham, conscious of his chief's eyes and mind upon him, looked up.Somewhere in his expression was a glare, but nothing revealed his stateof mind better than the fact that he stupidly contradicted himself:

  "You're putting all this into him, Edward," a touch of anger, perhapsof fear, in the intense whispering voice. "The hysteria of the studioupset him, of course. If you'd left him alone, as you promised, he'dhave always stayed LeVallon. He'd be cured by now." Then, as Fillerymade no reply or comment, he added, but this time only the anxiety ofthe doctor in his tone: "Hadn't you better go up to him at once? He'syour patient, not mine, remember!"

  The other took his arm. "Not yet," he said quietly. "He's best alonefor the moment." He smiled, and it was the smile that invariably wonhim the confidence of even the most obstinate and difficult patient.He was completely master of himself again. "Besides, Paul," he went ongently. "I want to hear what you have to tell me. Some of it--if notall. I want your Report. It is of value. I must have that first, youknow."

  They sat on the bottom stair together, while Devonham told briefly whathad happened. He was glad to tell it, too. It was a relief to becomethe mere accurate observer again.

  "I can summarize it for you in two words," he said: "light and sound.The sound, at first, seemed wind--wind rising, wind outside. With thelight, was perceptible heat. The two seemed correlated. When the soundincreased, the heat increased too. Then the sound became methodical,rhythmical--it became almost musical. As it did so the light becamecoloured. Both"--he looked across at the ghostly hat-rack in thehall--"were produced--by him."

  "Items, please, Paul. I want an itemized account."

  Devonham fumbled in the big pockets of his coat and eventually lita cigarette, though he did not in the least want to smoke. Thatwatchful, penetrating stare persisted, none the less. Amid the anxietywere items of carelessness that almost seemed assumed.

  "Mrs. Soames sent Nurse Robbins to fetch me," he resumed, his voiceharshly, as it seemed, cutting across the waves of pleasant sound thatpoured down the empty stairs behind them and filled the hall withresonant vibrations. "I went in, turned them both out, and closedthe door. The room was filled with a soft, white light, rather palein tint, that seemed to emanate from nowhere. I could trace it tono source. It was equally diffused, I mean, yet a kind of wave-likevibration ran through it in faint curves and circles. There was asound, a sound like wind. A wind was in the room, moaning and sighinginside the walls--a perfectly natural and ordinary sound, if it hadbeen outside. The light moved and quivered. It lay in sheets. Itsmovement, I noticed, was in direct relation to the wind: the louderthe volume of sound, the greater the movement of the air--the brighterbecame the light, and vice versa. I could not take notes at the actualmoment, but my memory"--a slight grimace by way of a smile indicatedthat forgetting was impossible--"is accurate, as you know."

  Fillery did not interrupt, either by word or gesture.

  "The increase of light was accompanied by colour, and the increase ofsound led into a measure--not actual bars, and never melody, but adistinct measure that involved rhythm. It was musical, as I said. Thecolour--I'm coming to that--then took on a very faint tinge of goldor orange, a little red in it sometimes, flame colour almost. The airwas luminous--it was radiant. At one time I half expected to see fire.For there was heat as well. Not an unpleasant heat, but a comforting,stimulating, agreeable heat like--I was going to say, like the heatof a bright coal fire on a winter's day, but I think the better termis sunlight. I had an impression this heat must burst presently intoactual flame. It never did so. The sheets of coloured light rose andfell with the volume of the sound. There were curves and waves andrising columns like spirals, but anything approaching a definiteoutline, form, or shape"--he broke off for a second--"figures," heannounced abruptly, almost challengingly, staring at the white chinabowl in front of him, "I could _not_ swear to."

  He turned suddenly and stared at his chief with an expression halfof question, half of challenge; then seemed to change his mind,shrugging his shoulders a very little. But Fillery made no sign. Hedid not answer. He laid one hand, however, upon the banisters, asthough preliminary to getting to his feet. The sound about them hadbeen gra
dually growing less, the vibrations were smaller, its wavesperceptibly decreasing.

  Devonham finished his account in a lower voice, speaking rapidly, asthough the words burnt his tongue:

  "The sound, I had already discovered, issued from himself. He was lyingon his back, the eyes wide open, the expression peaceful, even happy.The lips were closed. He was humming, continuously humming. Yet thesound came in some way I cannot describe, and could not examine orascertain, from his whole body. I detected no vibration of the body. Itlay half naked, only a corner of the sheet upon it. It lay quite still.The cause of the light and heat, the cause of the movement of air Ihave called wind--I could not ascertain. They came _through_ him, as itwere." A slight shiver ran across his body, noticed by his companion,but eliciting no comment from him. "I--I took his pulse," concludedDevonham, sinking his voice now to a whisper, though a very clear one;"it was very rapid and extraordinarily strong. He seemed entirelyunconscious of my presence. I also"--again the faint shiver wasperceptible--"felt his heart. It was--I have never felt such perfectaction, such power--it was beating like an engine, like an engine. Andthe sense of vitality, of life in the room everywhere was--electrical.I could have sworn it was packed to the walls with--with others."Devonham never ceased to watch his companion keenly while he spoke.

  Fillery then put his first question.

  "And the effect upon yourself?" he asked quietly. "I mean--anyemotional disturbance? Anything, for instance, like what you _saw_ inthe Jura forests?" He did not look at his colleague; he stood up; thesound about them had now ceased almost entirely and only faint, dyingfragments of it reached them. "Roughly speaking," he added, making ahalf movement to go upstairs. He understood the inner struggle goingon; he wished to make it easy for him. For the complete account he didnot press him.

  Devonham rose too; he walked over to the china bowl, took up a card,read it and let it fall again. The sun was over the horizon now, anda pallid light showed objects clearly. It showed the whiteness of thethin, tired face. He turned and walked slowly back across the hall. Thefirst cart went clattering noisily down the street. At the same momenta final sound from the room upstairs came floating down into the chillearly air.

  "My interest, of course," began Devonham, his hands in his pockets,his body rigid, as he looked up into his companion's eyes, "wasvery concentrated, my mind intensely active." He paused, then addedcautiously: "I may confess, however--I must admit, that is, a certainincrease of--of--well, a general sense of well-being, let me call it.The heat, you see. A feeling of peace, if you like it better--beyondthe--fear," he blurted out finally, changing his hands from his coat tohis trouser pockets, as though the new position protected him betterfrom attack. "Also--I somehow expected--any moment--to see outlines,forms, something new!" He stared frankly into the eyes of the man who,from the step above him, returned his gaze with equal frankness. "And_you_--Edward?" he asked with great suddenness.

  "Joy? Could you describe it as joy?" His companion ignored thereference to new forms. He also ignored the sudden question. "Anyincrease of----?"

  "Vitality, you want to say. The word joy is meaningless, as you know."

  "An intensification of consciousness in any way?"

  But Devonham had reached his limit of possible confession. He did notreply for a moment. He took a step forward and stood beside Fillery onthe stairs. His manner had abruptly changed. It was as though he hadcome to a conclusion suddenly. His reply, when it came, was no reply atall:

  "Heat and light are favourable, of course, to life," he remarked. "Youremember Joaquin Mueller: 'the optic nerve, under the action of light,acts as a stimulus to the organs of the imagination and fancy.'"

  Fillery smiled as he took his arm and they went quietly upstairstogether. The quoting was a sign of returning confidence. He saidsomething to himself about the absence of light, but so low it wasunder his breath almost, and even if his companion heard it, he made nocomment: "There was no moon at all to-night till well past three, andeven then her light was of the faintest...."

  No sound was now audible. They entered a room that was filled withsilence and with peace. A faint ray of morning sunlight showed the formof the patient sleeping calmly, the body entirely uncovered. There wasan expression of quiet happiness upon the face whose perfect healthsuggested perhaps radiance. But there was a change as well, thoughindescribable--there was power. He did not stir as they approached thebed. The breathing was regular and very deep.

  Standing beside him a moment, Fillery sniffed the air, then smiled.There was a perfume of wild flowers. There was, in spite of the coolmorning air, a pleasant warmth.

  "You notice--anything?" he whispered, turning to his colleague.

  Devonham likewise sniffed the air. "The window's wide open," was thelow rejoinder. "There are conservatories at the back of every house alldown the row."

  And they left the room on tiptoe, closing the door behind them verysoftly. Upon Devonham's face lay a curious expression, half anxiety,half pain.