Flames

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF RIP

Although Dr. Levillier's visit to Victoria Street had been such a painful one, he had no intention whatever of letting the two young men drift away out of his acquaintance. He wanted especially to be with them in public places, and to see for himself, if possible, whether Cuckoo's accusation against Valentine were true. That a frightful change had taken place in Julian's life, and that he was rapidly sinking in a slough of wholly inordinate dissipation was clear enough. But did Valentine, this new, strange Valentine, lead him, or merely go with him, or stand aloof smiling at him and letting him take his own way like a foolish boy? That question the doctor must decide for himself. He could only decide it satisfactorily by ignoring Valentine's impertinence to himself, and endeavouring to resume his former relations of intimacy with these old friends who were strangers. He began by asking them both to dinner. Rather to his surprise they accepted and came. The mastiffs were shut close in their den below, lest they should repeat their performance of the summer. The dinner passed off with some apparent cheerfulness, but it served to show the doctor the gulf that was now fixed between him and his former dear associates. He was on one shore, they on another. Their faces were altered as if by the desolate influence of distance. Even their voices sounded strange and far away. Great spaces had widened between their minds and his. He endeavoured at first to cover those spaces, to bridge that gulf; but he soon came to learn the vanity of such an attempt. He could not go to them, nor would they return to him. He could only pretend to bridge the gulf by the exercise of a suave diplomacy, and by carefully banishing from his manner every trace of that dispraising elderliness which seems to the young the essence of prudery arising, like an appalling Phoenix, from the ashes of past imprudence. In this way he drew a little nearer to Julian, who obviously feared at first to suffer condemnation at his hands, but, finding only geniality, lost his uneasiness and suffered himself to become more natural.

But this thawing of Julian, the quick response of humanity to the adroit treatment of it, only threw into harsher relief the immobility of Valentine, and to him the doctor drew no nearer, but seemed, with each moment, more distant, more absolutely divided from him. And the gulf between them was full of icebergs, which filled the atmosphere with the breath of a deadly frost. This was what the doctor felt. What Valentine, the new Valentine, felt could not be ascertained. He wore a brilliant mask, on whose gay mouth the society smile was singularly well painted. He wore a manner edged with tinkling bells of brilliancy. Happiness and ease beamed in his eyes. Yet his look, his voice, his smile, his gaiety chilled the doctor and set him mentally shivering. And with each bright saying and merry laugh he struck a blow upon the former friendship. The doctor fancied he could actually hear the sound of the hammer at its work.

The simile of the hammer was peculiarly consonant with his present view of the new Valentine, for, despite the latter's gaiety, ease, and self-possession, his smiling sociability and expansiveness, the doctor was perpetually conscious of a lurking violence, an incessant and forcible exigence in him. It might be a fancy, but the doctor was not, as a rule, the prey of fancies. Yet Valentine gave no outward hint of inward turmoil. Rather did the doctor divine it as by a curious intuition that guided him to that which lay in hiding. And it was this apprehension of a deep violence and peculiar, excessive animation in Valentine that woke the doctor's deepest wonder, and set the gulf between them so widely. For all violence had once been so specially abhorred by Valentine. He had so loved and sought all calm. The calm, he had often said, were the true aristocrats of life. Fury and any wild movements of the passions were of the gutter.

That dinner was returned. The doctor dined with Valentine and Julian more than once, and accompanied them to the theatre. But he was unable to make certain of Valentine's precise attitude towards Julian, although he saw easily that the influence of the one over the other had rather waxed than waned. This being so, it followed that Julian, having completely changed, the influence that guided him must have completely changed also. The pendulum had swung back. That often happened in the record of men's lives. But not in such a way as this. The doctor, like Cuckoo, recognized the existence of a mystery. But he was by no means prepared to accept her fantastic and ignorantly vague explanation of it. That was a wild fable, a fairy tale for a child, not a reasonable elucidation for a man and a doctor. The most curious thing of all was that she declared that Valentine had actually told her the truth about the matter, knowing that she could not understand it. The doctor resolved to see her later, and to question her more minutely on this point. Meanwhile he began to watch Valentine carefully, and with the most sedulous attention to every detail and nuance of manner, look, and word. He understood Julian. His sad case was to an extent due to his long happiness and freedom from the bondage in which so many men move wearily. It was as if his passions had been dammed up by the original influence of Valentine. Through the years, behind the height of the dam, the waters had been rising, accumulating, pressing. Suddenly the dam was removed, and a devastating flood swept forth, uncontrollable, headlong, and furious. Julian needed rescue, but the only way to rescue seemed to lie through Valentine, within whose circle of influence he was so closely bound. The mystery of Valentine must be laid bare.

And so the doctor watched and wondered, bringing all his knowledge of the world and of the minds and bodies of men to help him.

And meanwhile the lady of the feathers was seen nightly in Piccadilly.

And Julian went his way steadily downwards.

* * * * *

One night there was a flicker of snow over London, and the air was chill with the breath of coming winter. The dreary light of snow illumined the faces of all who walked in the streets, painting the brightest cheeks with a murky grey pigment, and making the sweetest eyes hollow and expressive of depression. Heavily the afternoon went by and the evening came sharply, like a blow.

Dr. Levillier was engaged to dine with Julian and Valentine at the former's rooms in Mayfair. Of late Valentine had seemed to seek him out, and especially to enjoy seeing him in the company of Julian. And the doctor fancied he detected something of a triumph that was almost blatant in Valentine's manner when they three were together, and when the doctor's eyes rested sorrowfully upon that crumbling wall, which had once been so fair and strong. Of late, too, the doctor, ever watching for the signs of change in Valentine, had grown more and more aware that he was an utterly, through and through, different man from the youth men had called the Saint of Victoria Street. He felt the transformation to be inhuman, and, by slow and reluctant degrees, he was beginning to form an opinion. It was only in embryo as yet, a shadow hesitating in the background of his mind. He shrank from holding it. He shuddered at its coming. Yet, if it were right, it might explain everything, might make what was otherwise incredible clear and comprehensible.

Was this vile change in his friend caused by a radical distortion of mind? Was Valentine a madman?

Lunacy turns temperaments upside down, transforms the lamb into the tiger, the saint into the murderer.

Was Valentine then mad? and was the monstrous distortion of his brain playing upon the life of Julian, who, like the rest of the world, believed him sane?

The thought came to the doctor, and once it had been born it was often near to him. Yet he would not encourage it unless he could rest it upon facts. That a man should change was not a proof of his madness, however unaccountable the change might seem. The doctor watched Valentine, and was compelled to admit to himself that in every way Valentine seemed perfectly sane. His cynicism, his love of ordinary life, his toleration of common and wretched people, might seem amazing to one who had known him well years ago, but there were many perfectly sane men of the same habits and opinions, of the same modes of speech and of action. If the doctor's strange thought were to become a definite belief, much more was needed, something at least of proof, something that would carry conviction not merely to the imagination, but to the cool and searching intellect.

On this night of the first snow the doctor's thought moved a step forward towards conviction.

When he arrived at Julian's rooms, he was greeted by Valentine alone.

"Our host has deserted us," he said, leading the doctor into the fire.

"What, is he ill?"

"He has not returned. He went away last night—on a quest of a certain pleasure. This afternoon he wired, asking me to entertain you. He was unavoidably detained, but hoped to arrive in time for dessert. His present love's arms are very strong. They keep him."

"Oh!" the doctor said, slipping out of his cloak; "we dine here then?"

"We do, alone. I don't think we've dined alone since Julian and I came back from abroad, and you deserted your Russian."

"No. I will consider myself your guest."

It struck the doctor that here was an excellent opportunity for confirming or abandoning his dreary suspicion. Alone with Valentine, he would be able to lead the conversation in any direction he chose. He was glad that Julian had not returned, and resolved to use this opportunity.

They went into the dining-room and sat down to dinner. Valentine was apparently rather amused at playing the host in another man's house. It was novel, and entertained him. He was obviously in splendid spirits, ate with good appetite and drank the champagne with an elation not unlike the elation of the dancing wine. More than once, too, he alluded to Julian's absence and probable occupation, as if both the one and the other were bouquets in his cap, or laurels in some crown which he alone could wear. Dr. Levillier noticed it and sought to draw him on in that direction, and to lead him to some open acknowledgment of his share in Julian's rapidly proceeding ruin. But Valentine changed the conversation into another channel without apparently observing his companion's intention, or deliberately frustrating it. He chattered of a thousand things, mostly of topics that are the common converse of London dinner-tables. The doctor joined in. To a listening stranger the two men would have seemed old friends, pleasantly at ease and secure with one another. Yet the doctor was doing detective duty all the time. And Valentine! was he not secretly revelling in that destruction of a human soul that was galloping apace?

Course succeeded course. At last dessert was placed upon the table.
Valentine raised his glass with a smile:

"Let us drink the health of Julian's absence," he said. "For you and I get on so perfectly together."

"Rather a cruel toast in Julian's own rooms," said the doctor.

"Ah, but he's happy enough where he is."

"You know where that is?"

"No—I only suspect," Valentine cried gaily. "In the wilds of South Kensington, in a tiny house, all Morris tapestry and Burne-Jones stained glass, dwells the latest siren who has been calling to our Ulysses. He is there, I suspect. Wait a moment, though. His telegram might tell us. Where was it sent from?"

He sprang up, went to the writing-table near the window, and caught up the crumpled thin paper that he had flung down there. Smoothing it out, he read, holding the paper close to a wax candle:

"Handed in at the Marylebone Road office at 5:50."

His brow clouded.

"Marylebone Road," he repeated, looking at the doctor. "Why should he be there?"

His words immediately set the doctor on the track.

"Does not Cuckoo Bright live there?" he said.

"Yes, she does."

"May he not be with her?"

Valentine had dropped the telegram. He was standing at the table, and he pressed his two fists, clenched, upon the white cloth.

"I have told him he must give Cuckoo up," he said, almost in a snarl.

The doctor glanced at him quickly.

"You have told him?"

"Advised him, I mean."

"You dislike her?"

"I! No. How can one dislike a painted rag? How can one dislike a pink and white shell that holds nothing?"

"Every body holds a soul. Every human shell holds its murmur of the great sea."

"The body of Cuckoo then contains a soul that's cankered with disease, moth-eaten with corruption, worn away to an atom not bigger than a grain of dust. I would not call it a soul at all."

He spoke with more than a shade of excitement, and the gay expression of his face had changed to an uneasy anger. The doctor observed it, and rejoined quietly:

"How can you answer for another person's soul? We see the body, it is true. But are we to divine the soul from that—wholly and solely?"

"The soul! Let us call it the will."

"Why?"

"The will of man is the soul of man. It is possible to judge the will by the body. The will of such a woman as Cuckoo Bright is a negative quantity. Her body is the word 'weakness,' written in flesh and blood for all to read."

"Ah, you speak of her will for herself," the doctor said, thinking of Cuckoo's broken wail to him, as she sat on that autumn evening in his consulting-room. "But what of her will for another, her soul for another?"

He had spoken partly at random, partly led by the thought, the suspicion, that Cuckoo's abandoned body held a fine love for Julian. He was by no means prepared for the striking effect his remark had upon Valentine. No sooner were the words spoken than a strong expression of fear was visible in Valentine's face, of terror so keen that it killed the anger which had preceded it. He trembled as he stood, till the table shook; and apparently noticing this, and wishing to conceal so extreme an exhibition of emotion, he slid hastily into a seat.

"Her will for another," he repeated,—"for another. What do you mean by that? where's the other, then? who is it?"

The doctor looked upon him keenly.

"Anybody for whom she has any desire, any solicitude, or any love—you, myself, or—Julian."

"Julian!" Valentine repeated unsteadily. "Julian! you mean to say you—"

He pulled himself together abruptly.

"Doctor," he said, "forgive me for saying that you are scarcely talking sense when you assume that such a creature as Cuckoo Bright can really love anybody. And even if she did, Julian's the last man—oh, but the whole thing is absurd. Why should you and I talk about a street-girl, a drab whose life begins and ends in the gutter? Julian will be here directly. Meanwhile let us have coffee."

He pushed his cigarette-case over to the doctor and touched the bell.

"Coffee!" he said, when Julian's man answered it.

The door stood open, and as the man murmured, "Yes, sir," a dog close by howled shrilly.

The noise diverted Valentine's attention and roused him from the agitation into which he had fallen. He glanced at the doctor.

"Rip," he said.

"Howling for his master," said the doctor.

"Wait a moment," Valentine said to the man, who was preparing to leave the room. Then, to the doctor:

"I am his master."

"To be sure," rejoined the doctor, who had, in truth, for the moment forgotten the fact, so long a time had elapsed since the little dog took up his residence with Julian.

"You think he's howling for me?" Valentine said.

"I was thinking of Julian at the moment."

"And what do you say now? Still that he is howling for his master?"

The dog's voice was heard again. It sounded almost like a shriek of fear.

"No," the doctor replied, wondering what intention was growing in
Valentine's face.

"Oh!" Valentine said curtly.

He turned to the man.

"Bateman, bring Rip in here to us."

The man hesitated.

"I don't think he'll come, sir."

"I said, bring him to us."

The man went out, as if with reluctance. Valentine turned to the doctor.

"We spoke about soul—that is, will—just now," he said. "To deny the will is death, despite Schopenhauer. Death? Worse than death—cowardice. To assert the will is life and victory. With each assertion a man steps nearer to a god. With each conquest of another will a man mounts, and if any man wants to enjoy an eternity he must create it for himself by feeding his will or soul with conquest till it is so strong that it cannot die."

His eyes shone with excitement. It seemed to the doctor that he was caught in the whirlpool of a violent reaction. He had shown fear, weakness; he was aware of it, and determined to reassert himself. The doctor answered nothing, neither agreeing with his fantastic philosophy nor striving to controvert it. And at this moment there was the sound of a struggle and of whining outside. The door was pushed open, and Julian's man appeared, hauling Rip along by the collar. The little dog was hanging back, with all its force, and striving to get away. Having succeeded in getting it into the room, the man quickly retreated, shutting the door hastily behind him. The little dog was left with Valentine and the doctor. It remained shrinking up against the door in a posture that denoted abject fear, its pretty head turned in the direction of Valentine, its eyes glaring, its teeth snapping at the air. The doctor looked at it and at Valentine. His pity for the dog's condition was held in check by a strange fascination of curiosity. He leaned his arms on the table and his eyes were fixed on Valentine, who got up slowly from his chair.

"I have let Rip be the prey of his absurd fancies long enough, doctor," he said. "To-night I will make him like me as he used to, or at least come to me."

And he whistled to the dog and called Rip, standing by the table. Rip howled and trembled in reply, and snapped more fiercely in the direction of Valentine.

"Do you see that, doctor? But he shall come. I will make him."

He shut his lips firmly and stared upon the animal. It was very evident that he was exerting himself strongly in some way. Indeed, he looked like a man performing some tremendous physical feat. Yet all his limbs were still. The violence of his mind created the illusion. Rip wavered against the door. There was foam on his jaws and his white legs trembled. Valentine snapped his fingers as one summoning or coaxing a dog. The doctor started at the sound and leaned further forward along the table to see the upshot of this strange fight between a man's desire and an animal's fear. Rip scarcely whined now, but turning his head rapidly from one side to the other, with a motion that seemed to become merely mechanical, he made a hoarse noise that was like a terrified and distressed growl half strangled in his throat. But though he wavered against the door, he did not obey Valentine and go to him, and the doctor was conscious of a sudden thrill of joy in the dog's obstinacy. This obstinacy angered Valentine greatly. His face clouded. He bent forward. He put out his hands as if to seize Rip. The dog snapped at him frantically, wildly. But Valentine did not recoil. On the contrary, he advanced, bending down over the wretched little creature. Then Rip shrank down on all fours before the door. To the doctor's watching eyes he seemed to wane visibly smaller. He dropped his head. Valentine bent lower. Rip lay right down, pressing himself upon the floor. As Valentine's hand touched him a quiver ran over him, succeeded by a surprising stillness.

The doctor made a slight sound. He knew that Rip was dead. Valentine took the little dog by the scruff of its neck and lifted it up. Then he, too, saw what he held. He glanced at the doctor, and there was a glare of defeat in his eyes. Then he passed across the room to the window, still holding the dog, pulled aside the curtain and thrust up the window. The ground was white and the snow was falling. With an angry gesture he flung the body out. It dropped with a soft noise in the snow and lay there.

Valentine closed the window, but the doctor felt as if he still saw the poor little corpse in the snow. And he shuddered.

A moment afterwards there was a step in the passage and Julian entered. He was looking haggard and excited, and ill with dissipation. His eyes shone in deep hollows that seemed to have been painted with indigo, and his lips were parched and feverish.

"Where have you been, Julian?" said Valentine.

"Oh, with her—with Molly, of course," he replied.

"What? Till now?"

Julian seemed uneasy under his scrutiny.

"Till this morning," he replied, almost suddenly.

"Well, but since then?"

"With Cuckoo. Oh! don't bother me."

He went over towards the window.

"Oh, how hot it is here," he said.

He glanced at the bright fire.

"Intolerably!" he murmured.

And he opened the window to the drifting snow.

"Am I mad?" he suddenly cried to them. "I saw the flame in her eyes again to-day, in Cuckoo's eyes. It held me with her. I'll swear it held me. It wouldn't let me go—wouldn't let me—till now!"

He sank down in a chair by the window, and turning his back on them, pushed his head out to get air.

"I say," he suddenly called. "What's that, that lying there?"

Valentine and the doctor joined him. He was pointing to the body of Rip, which was already almost covered by the snow.

"That," Valentine said; "that is—"

"The body of a creature that died fighting," the doctor interrupted. "A fine fashion of dying. Look at it, Julian. Its soul was indomitable to the last, and so it won the battle it fought. It won by its very death even. Nature is at work on its winding-sheet."

Valentine said nothing.

CHAPTER V

DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Julian's utterance about the flame that held him with the lady of the feathers struck Dr. Levillier forcibly at the time it was made, and remained in his mind. He could not fail to connect it with his own experience in Valentine's empty room, and, going further back, with the last sitting of the two young men which was succeeded by the long trance of Valentine. And as he thought of these things, it suddenly occurred to him that the ghastly change which had taken place in Valentine might well date from that night. Since the death of Rip the doctor had formed the opinion that Valentine was no longer perfectly sane. His excitement, the fury of his eyes when he spoke of the triumphs of will, seemed to give the clue to his transformation. The insane perpetually glorify themselves, and are transcendent egoists. Surely the egoism of insanity had peeped out in Valentine's diatribe upon the eternity of a strong man's individual will. The night of the trance had been a strange crisis of his life. He had seemed to recover from it, to come back from that wonderful simulation of death healthy, calm, reasonable as before. This might have been only seeming. In that sleep the sane and beautiful Valentine might have died, the insane and unbeautiful Valentine have been born. There are many instances of a sudden and acute shock to the nervous system leaving an indelible and dreary writing upon the nature. If Valentine had thus been tossed to madness, it was very possible that his dog, an instinctive creature, should recognize the change with terror. It was even possible that other instinctive creatures should divine the hideous mind of a maniac hidden in the beautiful body of an apparently normal man. And Cuckoo, she too was instinctive, a girl without education, culture, the reading that opens the mind and sometimes shuts the eyes. Cuckoo Bright, she had divined the evil of Valentine. To her he had made confession. In her eyes Julian had seen the mysterious flame. Some influence from her had kept him from his invited guests and from his house. Yes, Cuckoo, the lady of the feathers, the blessed damozel of Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus, the painted and possessed, faded and degraded, wanderer of the pavements, seemed to become the centre of this wheel of circumstances, as Doctor Levillier reflected upon her.

It was time for him to go to Cuckoo. Julian's descent must be stayed, before he went down, like a new Orpheus without a mission, into Hades. Valentine's influence, whether mad or sane, must be fought. It was to be a struggle, a battle of wills, of what Valentine chose to consider souls. And some prompting led the doctor to think of Cuckoo as a possible weapon. Why? Because she had even once held Julian against his will, against the intention of his soul.

So the doctor at length sought the lady of the feathers. She had been passing through a period of great and benumbing desolation, believing that her last appeal, her great effort for Julian, had been a failure. For the doctor had not come to her, and Cuckoo could not tell that he was making observations for himself and that she was often in his mind. She supposed that he, like all others, laughed at her pretensions to gravity, swept her exhibition of real and honest emotion away from his memory with a sneer, considered her despair over another's ruin a vile travesty, a grinning absurdity and trick. Never had Cuckoo felt more lonely than in these days, though a vast loneliness is the constant companion of her large sisterhood. Even Jessie failed to comfort her, and she could find little courage within herself. And yet there were moments when the vigour that had led her once to defy Valentine, when the fire that had sprung up in her, as a flame may burst forth in a swamp, seemed to be near to her again. She felt a new possibility within her, stirring, striving. It was at such moments that she longed to see the doctor, and could have cursed him for not coming to her. For at such moments she seemed only waiting for a touch of sympathy, a word of encouragement, to perform some great action, some momentous deed. But the touch, the word, were lacking, and her life and experience of constant and monotonous degradation dulled the impulse, stifled the enthusiasm that she could not understand. And she fell again to brooding, and to an ignorant and vague consciousness of impotence.

She bought a new hair-dye, painted her thin cheeks more heavily than ever before, and sought, almost with a wild exultation that swiftly fled away, to sink lower.

The monotony of sin is one of the scourges of sin. In those days Cuckoo suffered many stripes. Her eyes grew more weary, her smile in Piccadilly more mechanical, her walk more puppet-like than ever. Life was like a moving dream of horror. And yet no day passed without a gleam of that strange sensation of ignorant power, fluttering upward, fading away, pausing, passing, dead.

She did not know what it meant. She could not keep it nor use it. She could not unravel its message nor rest upon its strength. It was gone almost while it came, but it did something for the lady of the feathers. It gave to her the little seed of expectation that, quite alone in a weary desert, yet makes of that desert the plot men call a garden. Like a thread of steel, it held up this girl from the uttermost abyss, until at last the doctor's hand struck upon her door.

Julian's occasional visits were as the scourgings of God, giving to Cuckoo a vision of shifting ruin, in which she—so she told herself, thinking of the dance of the hours—had been the first to have a share.

It was a wintry afternoon when the doctor came. Frost clung stealthily round the grimy black trees, outlining their naked boughs with meagre lines of white sewn with smuts. Above the frost hung the fog as if in charge of the town, a despondent and gloomy sentinel. During the morning the sun had lain in the fog like a faint blood-red jewel in a thick and awkward sulphur setting, but with the afternoon the jewel faded to a distant dim phantom, from that to blank nothingness. As if satisfied with this piteous exit, the fog drew closer, keeping especially heavy watch upon the long and bleak line of the Marylebone Road, and taking the high and narrow house in which Cuckoo dwelt under its severest protection. Twilight wanted to come as the afternoon drew on, but it had been forestalled and was practically already there. Doubtless it did come, but no one was much the wiser. The lamps had been alight all day, and no procession of gloomy things, advancing from whithersoever, could have added much to the volume of the crowding darkness, or have appreciably increased its density. In the darkness the cold gathered, and the frost began to take a harder grip of everything,—of desolate, solitary pumps in tiny and squalid back yards, of pipes that crawled like liver-coloured snakes over the unpresentable sides of houses, of pools thick with orange-brown mud, and vagrant bushes creaking above the grimy earth in places that children named gardens.

Fog and frost had taken a strong grip, too, upon the heart of the lady of the feathers. Somewhere about eleven o'clock in the morning she had stirred wearily in her bed, had stretched out her arms to the stagnant air of the room, and crouched up on her pillow in a grotesque hump. For a while the hump remained motionless. Then Cuckoo rolled round and extended a bare thin leg to test the atmosphere. The leg was quickly withdrawn, the atmosphere having been evidently tried in the balance and found wanting. Cuckoo's bell rang, and Mrs. Brigg was called for tea and toast, while once more the hump decorated the upper part of the disordered bed. Jessie, awakened in her basket at the foot of the bed, joined the hump, whining a greeting, and wriggling furiously in an effort to tunnel her way to the ultimate depths of sheets and blankets. Then Mrs. Brigg, of yellowish and bleak aspect, beneath a tumbled appurtenance that she called a cap, appeared with a tray.

"Going to stop abed?" she asked, in a husky voice, in which the smuts seemed floating.

"Yes. What's there to get up for?" Cuckoo groaned.

"Nothun' as I know of."

And Mrs. Brigg was gone about her business.

All the morning Cuckoo lay staring at the blank square of the window, and Jessie snored under the blankets. The tea was drunk, the toast lay about in fragments. One bit, hard and many cornered as it seemed, somehow gained entrance to the bed, and greeted Cuckoo's every movement with uncompromising grittiness. No shaking of coverlet and sheet, no beating of pillow, no kicks and scufflings could expel it. The bed seemed full of hard bits of toast, and Cuckoo felt as if an additional burden were laid upon her by this slight evil. But, indeed, the horror of her existence reached a culminating point to-day,—a point of loneliness, vacant dreariness, squalor, and degradation that could not be surpassed. The preceding night had been peculiarly horrible, and as Cuckoo now lay on the tumbled bed, in the dim, cold room, with the fog gazing in, the leaden hours of winter crawling by, she felt as if she could bear no more. She could bear no more addition to her sick weariness; no more addition to her useless hunger of love for Julian, that could never be crowned with anything but despair; no more addition to her bodily fatigue, born of tramping monotony succeeded by yet more enervating weariness of the flesh. She could bear no more. Yes, but she must bear more. For Cuckoo knew that she was not dying, was not even ill. She was only tired in body, prostrate in heart, deserted in life, and forced to witness the quick and running ruin of the man she had the farcical absurdity to love. Imaginative, for once, in her morbid fatigue, she began to wish that she could fade away and become part of the fog that lay about London, be drawn into its murkiness, with all her murky recollections, her fiendish knowledge, her mechanical wiles of the streets, her thin and ghostly despairs and desires. For they seemed thin and ghostly, they too, to-day, fit food for the fog, as indeed the whole of her was. How could such as she evaporate into sweet air, a clear heaven?

She caught at the hand-glass, leaning far out on the bed, as the blessed damozel o'er the bright bar of heaven, and tried to see, with staring eyes, how the new hair-dye that she was now using became her. Her mind was vagrant, coming and going miserably, from that love of hers which was strangely strong and subtle, to the powder-box with its arsenic-green lid, or the rouge-pot of dirty white china. And by each event it paused and sank, as if benumbed by the increasing frost. Leaning again to put back the hand-glass she fell over too far and dropped it. The glass fell face downwards and was smashed. Cuckoo laughed aloud, revelling feebly in the additional misery a superstitious mind now began to promise her. The fragments of broken glass actually pleased her, and, on a sudden, she resolved to set her feet in them, that she might be cut and wounded, that she might bleed outwardly as she had been bleeding inwardly for so long. She swung her legs over the breadth of the bed, disorganizing Jessie, planted her feet in the array of glass and stood up. As she did so the doctor mounted her doorstep, plied the knocker and rang the bell. Cuckoo stood listening. A fragment of glass had really penetrated the bare sole of her foot, which bled a little gently on the carpet. But she scarcely knew it. She heard Mrs. Brigg go by, and then steps sounding in the passage. Then there came to her ears a quiet voice with a very characteristic note of bright calmness in it. Standing in her frilled nightdress among the bits of glass, Cuckoo flushed scarlet all over her face and neck. She knew who the visitor was. With one dart she reached the washhand-stand. Sponges, brushes, combs, all her weapons of the toilet, were immediately in commotion, and when Mrs. Brigg opened her door, the room was a whirlpool of quick activities, in the midst of which, as on a frouzy throne, Jessie stood upon the bed barking excitedly. Mrs. Brigg came in and closed the door. Her thin lips were pursed.

"Light the fire!" Cuckoo called at her from the basin.

"What do you want the doctor for?"

Mrs. Brigg uttered the words with some suspicion.

"Hurry up and light the fire!"

Cuckoo turned round, her hands darting in her hair, and actually laughed with a touch of merriment.

"You old owl! He's not come to doctor me, only to see me."

Mrs. Brigg looked relieved, but still surprised.

"Oh," she said. "That's it, is it?"

She paused as if in consideration.

Suddenly Cuckoo sprang on her, twisted her round, and spun her out into the cold passage. "Light the fire, I tell you!"

She banged the bedroom door and went on with her rapid toilet.

When she came into the sitting-room an uneasy fire was sputtering in the grate, one gas-jet flared, and Doctor Levillier was standing by the window looking out at the fog. He turned to greet her.

"I thought you'd forgotten—or didn't mean to come," Cuckoo said; "they often do—people that say they will to me, I mean."

The doctor held out his hand with a smile.

"No. Am I interrupting you?"

"Me!" said Cuckoo, in amazement, thinking of her empty days. "Lord, no."

Her accent was convincing. The little doctor sat down by the fire and put his hat and gloves on the table.

"Mrs. Brigg thought I was ill—you bein' a doctor," Cuckoo said, with an attempt at a laugh. She felt nervous now, and was not sustained today by the strung-up enthusiasm which had supported her in Harley Street. "Funny there bein' a fog again this time, ain't it?"

"Yes. I hope we shall meet some day in clear weather."

As the doctor said that, following a tender thought of the girl, he glanced round the room and at Cuckoo. "I hope so," he repeated. Then, rather abruptly:

"Two or three nights ago I went to dine with Mr. Addison. He was out. He was here with you."

Cuckoo got red. She could still be very sensitive with a few people, and perhaps Mrs. Brigg and her kind had trained her into irritable suspicion of suspicion in others.

"Only for a friendly visit," she said hastily. "Nothin' else. He would stop."

"I understand perfectly," the doctor said gently. Cuckoo was reassured.

"Did he say as he'd been?"

"Yes."

Cuckoo looked at the doctor and a world of reproach dawned in her eyes.

"I say," she said, "you haven't done nothin'. He's worse than ever. He's gettin'—oh, he's gettin' cruel bad."

Tears came up over the world of reproach.

"It's all him, all Valentine," she said.

And Doctor Levillier was moved to cast reticence, the usual loyalty of one man to another who has been his friend, away. Somehow the dead body of Rip lying in the snow put that old friendship far off. And also an inward thrill caught him near to Cuckoo. An impulse, swift and vital, thrust his mind to hers.

"You are right," he answered. "I believe that it is all Valentine."

"There! Didn't I tell you?" Cuckoo cried with eyes of triumph. "It's been him from the first. Oh, get him—get Julian away."

The doctor laid his hand upon Cuckoo's, which was stretched upon the tablecloth, very gently, almost abstractedly.

"Will you tell me something?" he said.

"What's it?"

"You love Julian?"

"Me!" the lady of the feathers said.

Her voice trembled over the word. She stole a hasty, hunted glance at the doctor. Was he, too, going to jeer at her? Would no one allow her to have a clean corner in her heart?

"You're laughin' at me. What's the good of such as me doin' a thing like that—lovin' a man?"

"I think you must love Julian. If you do, perhaps you are meant to protect and save him."

A secret voice prompted the doctor with the words he spoke, gave them to him, bent him irresistibly to repeat them. Never before had he felt what it is to be between the strong hands of destiny.

"Me! Me save any one!" Cuckoo said, trembling.

"Yes, you. There is something in you—I feel it and I can't tell you why, nor what it is—something that has hold of Julian. He told us so the other night. Don't you know what it is?"

"Eh?"

"Perhaps he feels that you love him—purely, cleanly."

"I do—oh! I do that!" Cuckoo cried.

A wonder as to the relations between Julian and this girl shot through the doctor. He was the last man in the world to think evil of any one, but just then, as Cuckoo moved, the gaslight struck fully on her. The dye on her hair shone crudely. The red and white of her face burned as on the face of a clown. And then even the doctor's good heart wondered. Cuckoo knew it in an instant, and her face hardened and looked older.

"Oh, go on," she said rudely. "Think as the others do. Damn you men! Damn you! Damn you!"

And without warning she put her head down on the table and broke into a wild passion of tears. She sobbed, and as she sobbed she cursed and clenched her hands. She lost herself in fury and in despair. The Fates had stung her too hard this time, and she must blaspheme against them with her voice of the streets, her language of the streets, her poor heart—not quite of the streets. The Fates had stung her too hard, for they had put a flaw even in this one self-respect of hers. That one night accused her whenever she thought of Julian, whenever she saw the dissipation deepen round his eyes. She was not to have even one thing that she could be quite proud of; not one thing of which she could say, "This has been always pure." And then she turned on the doctor and cried:

"Go on—think it—think it! Think what you like! But I'll tell you the truth. There was only once I did him any harm, and that wasn't my fault. I never wanted to. I hated it. I told him I hated it. I didn't want him to be that, like the others. And that was Valentine, too. And now—just because of that I'm no use. And you'd said I might be, you'd said I might be."

"And I say you shall be."

The wail died in Cuckoo's throat. The tears were arrested as by a spell. Dr. Levillier had got upon his feet. All the truth and tenderness of his heart was roused and quickened. He knew real passion, real grief, and from that moment he knew and trusted the lady of the feathers. And by the strength of her bitterness, even by the broken curses that would have shocked so many of the elect of this world, he measured the width and the depth of her possibilities. She had sent to damnation—what? The vile cruelty, the loathsome, unspeakable, dastardly mercilessness of the world. To damnation with it! That was the loud echo in his man's heart.

"That one night is nothing," he said. "Or rather it is something that you must redeem. It is good to have to pay for a thing. It is that makes one work. There is a work for you to do, a work which I believe no one else can do. You love Julian. Love him more. Make him love you. My will cannot fight the will of Valentine over him. No man's will can. A woman's may. Yours may, shall."

His pale, small, delicate face flamed with excitement as he spoke. Few of his patients looking upon him just then would have known their calm little doctor. But Cuckoo had cried to him out of the very depths, and out of the very depths he answered her, still prompted—though now he knew it not—by that secret voice which sometimes rules a man, at which he wonders ignorantly, the voice of some soul, some great influence, hidden from him in the spaces of the air, the voice of a flame, warm, keen, alive, and power-prompting.

And Cuckoo, as she listened to the doctor, had once again a hint of her own strength, a thrill of hope, a sense that she, even she, was not broken quite in pieces upon the cruel wheel of the world.

"Whatever can I do?" she said; "Valentine's got him."

As she spoke, the doctor, restless, as men are in excitement, had moved over to the mantelpiece, and stood with one foot upon the edge of the fender. Thinking deeply, he glanced over the photographs of Cuckoo's acquaintance, without actually seeing them. But presently one, at which he had looked long and fixedly, dawned upon him, cruelly, powerfully. It was the face of Marr.

"Who is that?" he said abruptly to Cuckoo.

"That?" She too got up and came near to him, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. "That's really him."

"Him?"

"Valentine."

The doctor looked at her in blank astonishment.

"Yes, it is," Cuckoo reiterated, and nodding her head with the obstinacy of a child.

"That—Valentine! It has no resemblance to him."

The doctor took up the photograph, and examined it closely. "This is not
Valentine."

"He told me it was. It's Marr—and somehow it's him now."

"Marr," said the doctor, sharply. "Why, he is dead. Julian told me so.
He died—he died in the Euston Road on the night of Valentine's trance.
Ah, but you know nothing about that. Did you know Marr, then?"

"Yes, I knew him."

Cuckoo hesitated. But something taught her to be perfectly frank with the doctor. So she added:

"I'd been with him at that hotel the night he died."

"You were the woman! But, then, how can you say that this (he touched the photograph with his finger) is Valentine?"

"He says he's really Marr."

Cuckoo spoke in the most mulish manner, following her habit when she was completely puzzled, but sticking to what she believed to be the truth.

"Marr and Valentine one man! He told you that?"

"He says to me—'I'm Marr.'"

Cuckoo repeated the words steadily, but like a parrot. The doctor said nothing, only looked at her and at the photograph. He was thinking now of his suspicion as to Valentine's sanity. Had he, perhaps in his madness, been playing on the ignorance of the lady of the feathers? She went on:

"It was on the night he told me all that. I couldn't understand what he is and what he's doing. And he said that the real Valentine had gone. And then he said—'I am Marr.'"

"The real Valentine gone. Yes," said the doctor, gravely, "that is true. Does he then know that he is—?" "Mad" was on his lips, but he checked himself.

"What else did he say that night?" he asked. "Can you remember? If you succeed, you may help Julian."

Cuckoo frowned till her long, broad eyebrows nearly met. The grimace gave her the aspect of a sinister boy, bold and audacious. For she protruded her under lip, too, and the graces of ardent feeling, of pain and of passion, died out of her eyes. But this abrupt and hard mask was only caused by the effort she was making after thought, after understanding. She pressed her feet upon the ground, and the toes inside her worn shoes curved themselves inwards. What had Valentine said? What—what? She stared dully at the doctor under her corrugated brows.

"What did he say?" she murmured in an inward voice, "Well—he didn't want me to see you. He came here about that—my seeing you."

"Yes."

"And—and Marr's not dead, he says, at least not done with. Yes, that was it—he says as no strong man who's lived long's done with when he's put away. See?"

Her face lighted up a little. She was beginning to trust her memory.

"The influence of men lives after them," the doctor said. "Marr's too.
Yes. He said that?"

She nodded. Then with a flash of understanding, a flash of that smouldering power which she had felt in loneliness and longed to tear out from its prison, she cried:

"That's it. That's how he's Marr, then."

She hesitated.

"Isn't it?" she said, flushing with the thought that she might be showing herself a fool. For she scarcely understood what she really meant.

"Valentine, no longer himself, but endowed with the influence of Marr," the doctor muttered; "she means that he told her something like that. The phantasy of an unsteady brain."—"Go on," he added to her.

But Cuckoo was relapsing into confusion already.

"And then he talked a lot about will, as he called it. Can't remember what he said."

"Try to."

She was silent, knitting her brows.

"It's no use. I can't," she said, despairingly. "But I know he says that he's really Marr and that he's killed Valentine. He said that; I know he did."

She glanced eagerly at the doctor, in the obvious hope that his cleverness, which she believed to be unlimited and profound, would in a flash divine all the strange secret from this exposition of her disjointed recollection. With each word she spoke, however, the doctor became more and more convinced that Valentine had only been cruelly amusing himself with her, or weaving for her benefit some intricate web of vain madness. And Cuckoo, noticing this now, and recollecting the momentary clearness of comprehension which had seized her at one point in Valentine's wild sermon to her, was mad with herself for not being able to seize again that current of inspiration, almost mad with the doctor for not unravelling the mystery. This excess of feeling finally drowned and swept away as a corpse the memory of the gospel of influence.

"I can't remember no more," she said stolidly. "There was ever such a lot about—about some one as was good and didn't want to be good any more, and so it was driven away—I don't know. P'rhaps he was only gamin' me."

She stared moodily at her feet, which she had stuck out from under her dress. The doctor said nothing, but at her last speech his face had lit up with a sort of excitement. For had she not described in those few ill-chosen words the very mental position of the former Valentine? A saint at first with his will, a saint at last against his will—and now a saint no more. That was, perhaps, the key to the whole matter. A good man prays to be no longer good. His prayer is granted. His grievous desire is fulfilled. And then he may pray forever in vain to be as he once was. Yet the change in Valentine was more even than this, more than the gliding from white purity to black sin. There was something.

As Cuckoo and the doctor sat in silence, she staring vacantly and empty of thought, being now utterly and chaotically puzzled, he thinking deeply, the door bell rang. In a moment Mrs. Brigg appeared, went to Cuckoo and muttered in her ear:

"Mr. Haddison wants to come in. I told him you was busy."

"Oh," said Cuckoo, "I say—wait," and then to the doctor, "It's him. It's
Julian."

"Let him in," the doctor said quickly.

To see Cuckoo and Julian together might tell him much.

Julian came in, stumbling rather heavily at the entrance of the room.

CHAPTER VI

CLEAR WEATHER

"Damn that mat!" he exclaimed. "I say, Cuckoo, who the—?" The question faded on his lips as he saw Doctor Levillier, on whom he gazed with a vacant surprise that, added to the unsteadiness of his movement upon them, spoke his condition very plainly.

"You, doctor! Well, I'm damned! What are you here for?"

"To see Miss Bright," the doctor said, coolly.

He had pushed forward a chair quickly with his foot. Julian collapsed in it by the table. Beads of the fog lay all over his long greatcoat and upon his hat, which he had not yet taken off. His face was flushed and dull.

"It's an infernal evening," he said. "You doctoring Cuckoo, eh?"

"I have been talking to Miss Bright."

"Oh, all right. I don't mind. Cuckoo, help me off with this coat. There's a good girl."

She obeyed without a word. When the coat was off Julian threw himself back in the chair and heaved a long sigh. His hat fell onto the floor with a bang, but he did not seem to notice it. His face was moody and miserable.

"Molly's thrown me over," he said.

Cuckoo caught her breath sharply and stole a glance at the doctor.

"Have some tea?" she said.

"No; a brandy and soda."

"Haven't got it. You must do with tea."

She rang the bell and ordered it despite his grumblings. Mrs. Brigg made no difficulty. Julian had long ago soothed her delicate susceptibilities with gold.

So, Cuckoo, oddly shy and excited, made tea for the doctor and Julian. The tea cleared the latter's fogged brain a little, but he was still morose and self-centred. He had evidently come to pour some woes out to Cuckoo and was restrained by the presence of the doctor, at whom he looked from time to time with an expression that was near to disfavour. But the doctor began to chat easily and cordially, and Julian gradually thawed.

"I suppose you know Rip's dead," he said presently. "Went out the other night and got frozen in the snow. Poor little beggar. Val's awfully cut up about it."

"Is he?" said the doctor.

"Yes. Dear old Val. Dev'lish hard Rip's never making it up with him again, wasn't it? Rip didn't know a good fellow, did he, doctor?"

"He was devoted to Valentine once," the doctor said.

"Ah, but he changed. Dogs are just like women, just like women, never the same two days together. Curse them."

He appeared to have forgotten Cuckoo's presence, and she sat listening eagerly, quite unmoved by the dagger thrust at her sex.

"Dogs don't usually change. Their faithfulness bears everything without breaking."

"Except a trance, then," Julian said, still with a wavering in-and-out stolidity, at the same time mournful and almost ludicrous.

"That trance did for Rip; did for him, I tell you. He never knew poor old
Val again. As if he thought him another man after that, another man."

The doctor's eyes met Cuckoo's. She had a teacup at her rouged lips, and had paused in the act of drinking, fascinated by the words that wound so naturally into the legend of change which she knew and knew not.

"As if Val wasn't just the same," Julian pursued, shaking his head slowly. "Just the same."

"You think so?" the doctor said, quickly.

"Eh?"

"You think that trance made no difference to him?"

"Why, how should it?"

Cuckoo drank her tea hastily and put the cup down.

"How should it?" Julian repeated, as if with a heavy challenge.

"It might in many ways, to his health—"

"He's stronger than ever he was."

"Or to his mind, his nature. You see no change there that might have frightened Rip?"

"Not I. He's more of a man, good old Val, even than he was."

"Ah! You acknowledge there is a change."

"Give me some more tea, Cuckoo," Julian said, thrusting his cup towards her. "Make it strong. It's picking me up." He sat forward in his chair and began to light a cigar, keeping his eyes on the doctor.

"Well, if you call that a change; to get like other men. Old Val was a saint. I loved him then, but I love him ten times more now he's—a—the other thing, you know. Ten times more. He knows the world now, and his advice is worth having. I'd follow him anywhere. He can't go wrong. Takes care of himself, and of me too. I might have been anything—anything, but for him. Instead of what I am—"

He drew himself up with some pride, and pulled at the cup which Cuckoo pushed towards him.

"I'm just what Val makes me; just what he makes me," he said, taking obvious joy in the thought. "Val can make me do anything. You know that, doctor?"

"Yes. Then you have changed with him, become more of a man, as you call it, with him. Is that so, Julian?"

"I suppose so."

Julian was drinking his tea, which had become very strong from standing.

"And are you happier than you were before?"

The doctor spoke insistently and gravely. Cuckoo had taken Jessie onto her lap and now stroked the little dog quickly and softly with a thin, fluttering hand. Julian seemed trying to think, to dive into his mind and discover its real feelings.

"I suppose so," he said presently. "But who's happy? I should like to know. Cuckoo isn't. Are you, Cuckoo?"

It seemed a cruel question, addressed to that spectre of girlhood.

"I dunno," she answered swiftly. "It don't matter much either way."

"She may be," the doctor said. "And you were happy, Julian."

The tea had certainly cleared the boy's brain. His manner was more sensible, and the heavy sensuality had gone from his eyes. Though he still looked haggard and wretched, he was no longer the mere wreck of vice he had seemed when he drifted into the little room out of the fog.

"Was I?" he said slowly. "It seems a devil of a time ago."

The doctor's heart warmed to these two young creatures, children to him, yet who had seen so much, gone so far down into the depths that lie beneath the feet of life. He thought in that moment that he could willingly give up all his own peace of mind, success, fame, restfulness of heart, to set them straight up, face to face with strength and purity once more. One was well born, educated, still handsome, the other a so-called lost woman, and originally only a very poor and hopelessly ignorant girl. Yet their community of misery and sorrow put them side by side, like two children who gather violets in a lane together, or drown together in some strong, sad river.

"It is not so long, Julian," he said. "Only before Valentine's trance."

Julian caught him up quickly.

"Why d'you say that, doctor?"

"Why? Simply because it is truth."

"You're always at that trance. I believe it's just because you told us not to sit again. But there was no harm done."

"You are sure of that?"

As he put the question the doctor's mind was on a hunt round that sleep and waking. He had gradually come to think that night a night of some strange crisis, through which Valentine had passed from what he had been to what he was. Yet his knowledge could not set at the door of that unnatural slumber the blame of all that followed it. His imagination might, but not his knowledge. He wondered whether Julian might not help him to elucidation.

"Sure? of course! Why not? Valentine's all right. I'm all right. Rip's the only one gone. And if he'd only stayed in the house that night he'd be all right too."

"No, Addison."

Julian stared at this flat contradiction.

"Not?"

"Rip never went out of the house."

"But he died in the snow."

"No," the doctor said quietly. "He died in your dining-room, of fear—fear of his old master, Valentine."

"What?" said Julian, gripping the table with his right hand. "Val had been at him?"

In two or three simple, straightforward words, the doctor described the death of Rip. When he had finished Cuckoo gave a little cry, and clasped the astonished and squirming Jessie close in her arms. Julian's brow clouded.

"He might have left Rip alone," he said. "It's odd dogs can't bear Val now."

"Again since that trance," the doctor said.

Julian looked at him with acute irritation, but said nothing. Then, turning his eyes on Cuckoo, who was still hugging Jessie, he snapped his fingers at the little dog and called its name. Cuckoo extended her arms, holding Jessie, to Julian, and he took the small creature gently. And as he took her he bent forward and gazed long and deeply into Cuckoo's eyes. She trembled and flushed, half with pleasure, half with a nervous consciousness of the doctor's presence.

"Oh, why do you?" she murmured, turning her head away. The action seemed to make Julian aware that perhaps his manner was odd, and his subsequent glance at the doctor was very plainly, and even rudely, explanatory of a wish to be alone with Cuckoo. The doctor read its meaning and resolved to go away. With the quick observation and knowledge of men which long years of training had given to him, he saw that, strangely enough, the only creature whose influence could in any way cope with the influence of Valentine was not himself, who once had been as a seer to the two young men, but the thin, spectral, weary, painted Cuckoo. There, in that small room, with the long murmur of London outside, sat these two human beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate. And he stood strong, faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding them. For some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a helping hand to misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust back vice and degradation. The fallen creature was to be the protector, the unredeemed to be the redeemer. Doctor Levillier knew this when he saw Julian's long glance into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo. And he thrilled with the knowledge. It seemed to him a great demonstration of the root, the core, of divine pity which he believed to be the centre of the scheme of the world. Round this centre revolved wheels within wheels of cruelty, of agony, of ruthless passions and of lawless bitterness. Yet they radiated from pity. They radiated from love. How it was so he could not tell, and there the pessimist had him by the throat. But that it was so he felt in his inmost heart, and never more than now, when the tired boy sneered at him, who was an old friend, clean of life, gentle of nature, and turned to this girl, this thing that loathsome men played with and scorned. Cuckoo flushed and trembled; this divine pity outpainted her rouge, and shook that body which had so often betrayed itself to destroyers. This divine pity gave to her, who had lost all, the power to find freedom for another soul that lay in bondage.

The doctor gazed for an instant at the boy and girl, and was deeply moved. His lips breathed a word that was a prayer, for Julian, for the lady of the feathers.

Then he got up.

"I have to go," he said.

Julian said nothing; Cuckoo flushed again, and accompanied the doctor to the hall door. When she had opened it, and they looked out, it was very cold, but the fog had lifted, and was floating away to reveal a sky full of stars, which always seem to shine more brightly upon frost. The doctor took the girl's hand.

"I see you in clear weather," he said.

"You don't—you don't think as he'll—as I'll—" stammered Cuckoo, glancing awkwardly towards the lighted doorway of the little sitting-room, and then at the doctor. The church clock striking 7:30 pointed the application of the hesitating murmur. It was unconventionally late for an afternoon call.

"It'll be all right, you know that?" said the lady of the feathers.

"Yes, I know that," he answered. "You have to fight, I feel that; only you can do it. You have to fight this—this—" and here the doctor's loyalty spoke, for he could not betray even this new Valentine,—"this strange madness of Valentine's. Pit your will against his, and conquer for Julian's sake."

"Will," said Cuckoo. "That's what he says I can't have."

"Won't you pray to have it given you?" said the little doctor.

Cuckoo looked at him, wondering. Then she said:

"I believe I could fight better 'n pray."

"Sometimes battle is the greatest of all prayers," said the doctor.

The iron gate clicked. He was gone. Cuckoo cast an oblique glance up at the stars before she shut the door, and retraced her steps down the passage.