Delormais roused himself to the present as one who awakes from a dream. Those large dark eyes seemed capable of every expression; could flash with intellect, melt with fervent love or grow earnest with condemnation; sparkle with wit, or suffuse with sympathy and pathos. In Delormais susceptibilities and intellect seemed equally balanced.
"I have been reviewing my life," he began. "And I am asking myself why we are here seated together as old familiar friends. How it is that to you, a comparative stranger, I have promised to speak of the past, open my heart, disclose secrets unknown to the world? It must be that you deal in magnetism. Or that we were born in the same mystic sphere, or under the same conjunction of stars; and that for the third time in my life I discover one who is altogether sympathetic to me; to whom I feel I can speak as to my other self. Nor is it necessary that this feeling should be shared by you in an equal degree. Enough that you are not antagonistic; even approach me with a friendly liking. I, many years your senior, am the dominant power. You follow where I lead. But a truce to metaphysics; searchings into spiritual conditions we cannot altogether fathom; wandering into realms withholden from mortal vision. Let us leave the unseen and uncertain, and turn altogether to the present world."
We made no reply. Our sympathy was strongly awakened in this singular man. Here was a nature rare as it was powerful; distinguished by all the finest and noblest qualities vouchsafed to mankind. But we wished him to take his own way, utter his own thoughts, not disturbed by remark or turned aside by suggestion.
He rose for a moment, replenished the cups, and went on with his narrative.
"I have not asked you to join me to-night to read you a lesson," he continued. "In reviewing my past life, I find it full of incident and action. But it has none of those startling dramas and strange coincidences, none of those high achievements or fatal mistakes, which occasionally make biographies a solemn warning to some or a pillar of fire to others. I have brought you here simply for the pleasure of spending an evening with you. If I beguiled you at this late hour under any other impression I am guilty of false pretences. But late though it be it is still evening to me, to whom all hours are alike. For a whole week at a time I have slept an hour in the twenty-four in my arm-chair, and found this sufficient rest. We give too much time to sleep. Like everything else it is a habit. The day will come soon enough for the folding of the hands. At any time I can turn night into day, and feel no sense of fatigue or loss of power. Nature never takes her revenge by turning day into night. I cannot remember the time when the daylight hours caught me napping.