A curiosity walked in his mind, pacing about
till he could almost fancy he heard its footsteps. He sat, then, as one
awaiting an arrival, that has been heralded in some way, by a telegram,
a message, a carrier-pigeon flown in at an open window. But the herald,
too, was horrible. What then would follow it? What was coming? Valentine
felt that he began to understand Marr's queer remark, "You are _en
route_." At the first sitting he had felt a very vague suggestion of
immoderate possibilities, made possibilities by the apparently futile
position assumed at a table by himself and Julian. To-night the vague
seemed on march towards the definite. Fancy was surely moving towards
fact.
With his eyes wide open Valentine gazed in the direction of Julian,
sitting invisible opposite to him. He wondered how Julian was feeling,
what he was thinking. And then he remembered that strange saying of
Marr's, that thoughts could take form, materialize. What would he give
to witness that monstrous procession of embodied brain-actions trooping
from the mind of his friend! He imagined them small, spare, phantom-like
things, fringed with fire, as weapon against the darkness, silent-footed
as spirits, moving with a level impetus, as pale ghosts treading a sea,
onward to the vast world of clashing minds, to which we carelessly
cast out our thoughts as a man who shoots rubbish into a cart.
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