it looked as if a whole hell of a lot of expressions of every conceivable kind had passed over and through it in a rapid but lengthy succession , with each expression leaving behind a faint imprint of itself , a track smearing the expression preceding it , only to be smeared in its turn by the track of the succeeding expression ; and this amalgam further smeared by the next expression and so on and so forth right up to the expression he came in with , which , nonetheless , bore all the hallmarks of elation as if he himself had just remembered his own name and was announcing this knowledge to me when he said , hi !