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FLAMES

BY ROBERT HICHENS

AUTHOR OF THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, ETC.

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

This edition published July, 1906, by Duffield & Company

BOOK I—VALENTINE

CHAPTER I

THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET

Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age has its special sins. Each age passes them, like troops in review, before it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire. Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled cell, a deliberate and rejoicing prisoner. For a long time he loved to watch them. And he thought that it must always be so, for he was not greatly given to moods, and therefore scarcely appreciated the thrilling meaning of the word change, that is the key-word of so many a life cipher. He loved the pleasures of the intellect so much that he made the mistake of opposing them, as enemies, to the pleasures of the body. The reverse mistake is made by the generality of men; and those who deem it wise to mingle the sharply contrasted ingredients that form a good recipe for happiness are often dubbed incomprehensible, or worse. But there were moments at a period of Valentine's life when he felt discontented at his strange inability to long for sin; when he wondered, rather wearily, why he was rapt from the follies that other men enjoyed; why he could refuse, without effort, the things that they clamoured after year by year with an unceasing gluttony of appetite. The saint quarrelled mutely with his holiness of intellectuality, and argued, almost fiercely, with his cold and delicate purity.

"Why am I like some ivory statue?" he thought sometimes, "instead of like a human being, with drumming pulses, and dancing longings, and voices calling forever in my ears, like voices of sirens, 'Come, come, rest in our arms, sleep on our bosoms, for we are they who have given joy to all men from the beginning of time. We are they who have drawn good men from their sad goodness, and they have blessed us. We are they who have been the allegory of the sage and the story of the world. In our soft arms the world has learned the glory of embracing. On our melodious hearts the hearts of men have learned the sweet religion of singing.' Why cannot I be as other men are, instead of the Saint—the saint of Victoria Street—that I am?"

For, absurdly enough, that was the name his world gave to Valentine. This is not an age of romance, and he did not dwell, like the saints of old centuries, in the clear solitudes of the great desert, but in what the advertisement writer calls a "commodious flat" in Victoria Street. No little jackals thronged about him in sinful circle by night. No school of picturesque disciples surrounded him by day. If he peeped above his blinds he could see the radiant procession of omnibuses on their halting way towards Westminster. The melodies of wandering organs sang in his ascetic ears, not once, nor twice, but many times a week. The milk-boy came, it must be presumed, to pay his visit in the morning; and the sparrows made the air alive, poising above the chimneys, instead of the wild eagles, whose home is near the sun. Valentine was a modern young man of twenty-four, dealt at the Army and Navy Stores, was extremely well off, and knew everybody. He belonged to the best clubs and went occasionally to the best parties. His tailor had a habitation in Sackville Street, and his gloves came from the Burlington Arcade. He often lunched at the Berkeley and frequently dined at Willis's. Also he had laughed at the antics of Arthur Roberts, and gazed through a pair of gold-mounted opera-glasses at Empire ballets and at the discreet juggleries of Paul Cinquevalli. The romance of cloistered saintliness was not his. If it had been he might never have rebelled. For how often it is romance which makes a home for religion in the heart of man, romance which feathers the nest of purity in which the hermit soul delights to dwell! Is it not that bizarre silence of the Algerian waste which leads many a Trappist to his fate, rather than the strange thought of God calling his soul to heavenly dreams and ecstatic renunciations? Is it not the wild poetry of the sleeping snows by night that gives to the St. Bernard monk his holiest meditations? When the organ murmurs, and he kneels in that remote chapel of the clouds to pray, is it not the religion of his wonderful earthly situation and prospect that speaks to him loudly, rather than the religion of the far-off Power whose hands he believes to hold the threads of his destinies? Even the tonsure is a psalm to some, and the robe and cowl a litany. The knotted cord is a mass and the sandal a prayer.

But Valentine had been a saint by temperament, it seemed, and would be a saint by temperament to the end. He had not been scourged to a prayerful attitude by sorrow or by pain. Tears had not made a sea to float him to repentance or to purity. Apparently he had been given what men call goodness as others are given moustaches or a cheerful temper. When his contemporaries wondered at him, he often found himself wondering still more at them. Why did they love coarse sins? he thought. Why did they fling themselves down, like dogs, to roll in offal? He could not understand, and for a long time he did not wish to understand. But one night the wish came to him, and he expressed it to his bosom friend, Julian Addison.

CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE

Most of us need an opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, and to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singularly complete and perfect opposite, in nature if not in deeds. But, after all, it is the thoughts that are of account rather than the acts, to a mind like Valentine's. He knew that Julian's nature was totally unlike his own, so singularly unlike that Julian struck just the right note to give the strength of a discord to the chord—that often seemed a common chord—of his own harmony. Long ago, for this reason, or for no special reason, he had grown to love Julian. Theirs was a fine, clean specimen of friendship. How fine, Valentine never rightly knew until this evening.

They were sitting together in Valentine's flat in that hour when he became serious and expansive. He had rather a habit of becoming serious toward midnight, especially if he was with only one person; and no desire to please interfered with his natural play of mind and of feeling when he was with Julian. To affect any feeling with Julian would have seemed like being on conventional terms with an element, or endeavouring to deceive one's valet about one's personal habits. Long ago Julian and he had, in mind, taken up their residence together, fallen into the pleasant custom of breakfasting, lunching, and dining on all topics in common. Valentine knew of no barriers between them. And so, now, as they sat smoking, he expressed his mood without fear or hesitation.

The room in which they were was small. It was named the tentroom, being hung with dull-green draperies, which hid the ceiling and fell loosely to the floor on every side. A heavy curtain shrouded the one door. On the hearth flickered a fire, before which lay Valentine's fox-terrier, Rip. Julian was half lying down on a divan in an unbuttoned attitude. Valentine leaned forward in an arm-chair. They were smoking cigarettes.

"Julian," Valentine said, meditatively, "I sometimes wonder why you and
I are such great friends."

"How abominable of you! To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices, that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that danger with plate armour."

"Nonsense!"

"But you are. It sometimes seems to me that you and I are like Elijah and
Elisha, in a way. But I am covetous of your mantle."

"Then you want me to be caught from you into heaven?"

"No. I should like you to give me your mantle, your powers, your nature, that is, and to stay here as well."

"And send the chariot of fire to the coach-house, and the horses of fire to the nearest stables?"

"Exactly!"

"Well, but give me a reason for this rascally craving."

"A reason! Oh, I hate my nature and I love yours. What a curse it is to go through life eternally haunted by one's self; worse than being married to an ugly and boring wife."

"Now you are being morbid."

"Well, I'm telling you just how I feel."

"That is being morbid. Recording to some people who claim to direct
Society."

"The world's County Council, who would like to abolish all the public bars."

"And force us to do our drinking in the privacy of our bedrooms."

"You would never do any drinking, Valentine. How could you, the Saint of
Victoria Street?"

"I begin to hate that nickname."

And he frowned slowly. Tall, fair, curiously innocent-looking, his face was the face of a blonde ascetic. His blue eyes were certainly not cold, but nobody could imagine that they would ever gleam with passion or with desire as they looked upon sin. His mouth seemed made for prayer, not for kisses; and so women often longed to kiss it. Over him, indeed, intellectuality hung like a light veil, setting him apart from the uproar which the world raises while it breaks the ten commandments. Julian, on the other hand, was brown, with bright, eager eyes, and the expression of one who was above all things intensely human. Valentine had ever been, and still remained, to him a perpetual wonder, a sort of beautiful mystery. He actually reverenced this youth who stood apart from all the muddy ways of sin, too refined, as it seemed, rather than too religious, to be attracted by any wile of the devil's, too completely artistic to feel any impulse towards the subtle violence which lurks in all the vagaries of the body. Valentine was to Julian a god, but in their mutual relations this fact never became apparent. On the contrary, Valentine was apt to look up to Julian with admiration, and the curious respect often felt by those who are good by temperament for those who are completely human. And Julian loved Valentine for looking up to him, finding in this absurd modesty of his friend a crowning beauty of character. He had never told Valentine the fact that Valentine kept him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of fire that hedged him from sin, the armour that protected him against the assaults of self. He had never told Valentine this secret, which he cherished with the exceeding and watchful care men so often display in hiding that which does them credit. For who is not a pocket Byron nowadays? But to-night was fated by the Immortals to be a night of self-revelation. And Valentine led the way by taking a step that surprised Julian not a little. For as Valentine frowned he said:

"Yes, I begin to hate my nickname, and I begin to hate myself."

Julian could not help smiling at the absurdity of this bemoaning.

"What is it in yourself that you hate so much?" he asked, with a decided curiosity.

Valentine sat considering.

"Well," he replied at length, "I think it is my inhumanity, which robs me of many things. I don't desire the pleasures that most men desire, as you know. But lately I have often wished to desire them."

"Rather an elaborate state of mind."

"Yet a state easy to understand, surely. Julian, emotions pass me by. Why is that? Deep love, deep hate, despair, desire, won't stop to speak to me. Men tell me I am a marvel because I never do as they do. But I am not driven as they are evidently driven. The fact of the matter is that desire is not in me. My nature shrinks from sin; but it is not virtue that shrinks: it is rather reserve. I have no more temptation to be sensual, for instance, than I have to be vulgar."

"Hang it, Val, you don't want to have the temptation, do you?"

Valentine looked at Julian curiously.

"You have the temptation, Julian?" he said.

"You know I have—horribly."

"But you fight it and conquer it?"

"I fight it, and now I am beginning to conquer it, to get it under."

"Now? Since when?"

Julian replied by asking another question.

"Look here, how long have we known each other?"

"Let me see. I'm twenty-four, you twenty-three. Just five years."

"Ah! For just five years I've fought, Val, been able to fight."

"And before then?"

"I didn't fight; I revelled in the enemy's camp."

"You have never told me this before. Did you suddenly get conversion, as
Salvationists say?"

"Something like it. But my conversion had nothing to do with trumpets and tambourines."

"What then? This is interesting."

A certain confusion had come into Julian's expression, even a certain echoing awkwardness into his attitude. He looked away into the fire and lighted another cigarette before he answered. Then he said rather unevenly:

"I dare say you'll be surprised when I tell you. But I never meant to tell you at all."

"Don't, if you would rather not."

"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted; and that's not very far, I'm afraid."

"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."

"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."

"But explain."

"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then—just at the critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."

He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's gaze.

"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."

"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions, or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had, and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know, and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what we might be?"

Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued, throwing off his original shamefacedness:

"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion. Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose. But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no preachers could ever do. There—now you know."

He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.

"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."

"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and other men feel."

"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."

"It's better than an everlasting storm."

"I wonder!" Valentine said. "How curious that I should protect you. I am glad it is so. And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two. You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation. Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept, and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen. You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But her image haunted him, maddened him. He slunk back to the convent, and found her dying in the arms of God. And he tried to drag her away, that she might sin only once again with him, with him, her saviour. But she died, giving herself to God, and he went out cursing and blaspheming. This is only a dramatic fable to me. And yet I suppose it is a possibility."

"Of course. Val, I could imagine myself doing as that monk did, but for you. Only that I could never have been a monk at all."

"I am glad if I help you to any happiness, Julian. But—but—oh! to feel temptation!"

"Oh, not to feel it! By Jove, I long to have done with the infernal thing that's always ready to bother me. Fighting it is no fun, Val, I can tell you. If you would like to have my soul for a day or two, I should love to have yours in exchange."

Valentine smoked in silence for two or three minutes. His pure, pale, beautiful face was rather wistful as he gazed at the fire.

"Why can't these affairs be managed?" he sighed out at length.

"Why can't we do just the one thing more? We can kill a man's body. We can kill a woman's purity. And here you and I sit, the closest friends, and neither of us can have the same experiences, as the other, even for a moment. Why isn't it possible?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Why? How do you mean?"

"Well, of course I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But
I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting.
He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I met him at Lady
Crichton's."

"Who is he?"

"Haven't an idea. I never saw or heard of him before. We talked a good deal at dessert. He came over from the other side of the table to sit by me, and somehow, in five minutes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an occultist."

"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will?
Come, Julian?"

"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any two men in London, I suppose."

"Surely!"

"Then half the battle's won—according to Marr."

"You are joking."

"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could accomplish an exchange of souls."

Valentine laughed.

"Well, but how?"

Julian laughed too.

"Oh, it seems absurd—but he'd tell us to sit together."

"Well, we are sitting together now."

"No; at a table, I mean."

"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of ourselves."

"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr—and he's really a very smart, clever chap, Val—denies it. He swears it is possible for two people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your eyes, and pass in procession like living things."

"He must be mad."

"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very lucidly, very ingeniously."

Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.

"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.

"Never."

"Nor I. I have always thought it an idiotic and very dull way of wasting one's time. Now, what on earth can a table have to do with one's soul?"

"I don't know. What is one's soul?"

"One's essence, I suppose; the inner light that spreads its rays outward in actions, and that is extinguished, or expelled, at the hour of death."

"Expelled, I think."

"I think so too. That which is so full of strange power cannot surely die so soon. Even my soul, so frigid, so passionless, has, you say, held you back from sins like a leash of steel, And I did not even try to forge the steel. If we could exchange souls, would yours hold me back in the same way?"

"No doubt."

"I wonder," Valentine said thoughtfully. After a moment he added, "shall we make this absurd experiment of sitting, just for a phantasy?"

"Why not? It would be rather fun."

"It might be. We will just do it once to see whether you can get some of my feelings, and I some of yours."

"That's it. But you could never get mine. I know you too well, Val. You're my rock of defence. You've kept me straight because you're so straight yourself; and, with that face, you'll never alter. If anything should happen, it will be that you'll drag me up to where you are. I shan't drag you down to my level, you old saint!"

And he laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.

Valentine smiled.

"Your level is not low," he said.

"No, perhaps; but, by Jove, it could be, though. If you hadn't been chucked into the world, I often think the devil must have had me altogether. You keep him off. How he must hate you, Val. Hulloh! What's that?"

"What?"

"Who's that laughing outside? Has Wade got a friend in to-night?"

"Not that I know of. I didn't hear anything."

Valentine touched the electric bell, and his man appeared.

"Any one in with you to-night, Wade?" he asked.

The man looked surprised.

"No, sir; certainly not, sir."

"Oh! Don't sit up; we may be late to-night. And we don't want anything more, except—yes, bring another couple of sodas."

"Yes, sir."

He brought them and vanished. A moment later they heard the front door of the flat close. The butler was married and slept out of the house. Valentine had no servant sleeping in the flat. He preferred to be alone at night.

CHAPTER III

EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING

"Now, then," said Valentine, "let us be absurd and try this sitting.
Shall we clear this little table?"

"Yes. It's just the right size. It might do for three people, but certainly not for more."

"There! Now, then."

And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned off the electric light, and they sat down with their hands upon the table. The room was only very dimly illuminated by the fire on the hearth, where Rip slept on, indifferent to their proceedings.

"I suppose nothing could go wrong," Julian said, after a moment of silence.

"Wrong!"

"Yes. I don't know exactly what Marr meant, but he said that if unsuitable people sit together any amount of harm can result from it."

"What sort of harm?"

"I don't know."

"H'm! I expect that is all nonsense, like the rest of his remarks. Anyhow, Julian, no two people could ever hit it off better than you and I do. Wait a second."

He jumped up and drew the curtain over the door. Wade had pulled it back when he came in.

"I must have that curtain altered," Valentine said. "It is so badly hung that whenever the door is opened, it falls half way back, and looks hideous. That is better."

He sat down again.

"We won't talk," he said.

"No. We'll give the—whatever it is every chance."

They were silent.

Presently—it might have been a quarter of an hour—Julian said suddenly:

"Do you feel anything?"

"'M—no," Valentine answered, rather doubtfully.

"Sure?"

"I think so."

"You can't merely think you are sure, old chap."

"Well, then—yes, I'll say I am sure."

"Right," rejoined Julian.

Again there was a silence, broken this time by Valentine.

"Why did you ask me?" he said.

"Oh! no special reason. I just wanted to know."

"Then you didn't?"

"Didn't what?"

"Feel anything?"

"No; nothing particular."

"Well, what do you mean by that?"

"What I say. I can't be sure it was anything."

"That's vague."

"So was my—I can't even call it exactly sensation. It was so very slight. In fact, I'm as good as sure I felt nothing at all. It was a mere fancy. Nothing more."

And then again they were silent. The fire gradually died down until the room grew quite dark. Presently Valentine said:

"Hulloh! here is Rip up against my foot. He is cold without the fire, poor little beggar."

"Shall we stop?" asked Julian.

"Yes; I vote we do—for to-night."

Valentine struck a match, felt for the knob of the electric light, and turned it on. Julian and he looked at each other, blinking.

"Think there's anything in it?" asked Julian.

"I don't know," said Valentine. "I suppose not. Rip! Rip! He is cold. Did you ever see a dog shiver like that?"

He picked the little creature up in his arms. It nestled against his shoulder with a deep sigh.

"Well, we have made a beginning," he said, turning to pour out a drink.
"It is rather interesting."

Julian was lighting a cigarette.

"Yes; it is—very." he answered.

Valentine gave him a brandy and soda; then, as if struck by a sudden thought, asked:

"You really didn't feel anything?"

"No."

"Nor I. But then, Julian, why do we find it interesting?"

Julian looked puzzled.

"Hang it! I don't know," he answered, after an instant of reflection.
"Why do we? I wonder."

"That is what I am wondering."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

"But I don't come to any conclusion," he presently added, meditatively. "We sit in the dark for an hour and a quarter, with our hands solemnly spread out upon a table; we don't talk; the table doesn't move; we hear no sound; we see nothing; we feel nothing that we have not felt before. And yet we find the function interesting. This problem of sensation is simply insoluble. I cannot work it out."

"It is awfully puzzling," said Julian. "I suppose our nerves must have been subtly excited because the thing was an absolute novelty."

"Possibly. But, if so, we are a couple of children, mere schoolboys."

"That's rather refreshing, however undignified. If we sit long enough, we may even recover our long-lost babyhood."

And so they laughed the matter easily away. Soon afterwards, however, Julian got up to go home to his chambers. Valentine went towards the door, intending to open it and get his friend's coat. Suddenly he stopped.

"Strange!" he exclaimed.

"What's the row?"

"Look at the door, Julian."

"Well?"

"Don't you see?"

"What?"

"The curtain is half drawn back again."

Julian gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"So it is!"

"It always does that when the door is opened."

"And only then, of course?"

"Of course."

"But the door hasn't been opened."

"I know."

They regarded each other almost uneasily. Then Valentine added, with a short laugh:

"I can't have drawn it thoroughly over the door when Wade went away."

"I suppose not. Well, good-night, Val."

"Good-night. Shall we sit again tomorrow?"

"Yes; I vote we do."

Valentine let his friend out. As he shut the front door, he said to himself:

"I am positive I did draw the curtain thoroughly."

He went back into the tentroom and glanced again at the curtain.

"Yes; I am positive."

After an instant of puzzled wonder, he seemed to put the matter deliberately from him.

"Come along, Rip," he said. "Why, you are cold and miserable to-night!
Must I carry you then?"

He picked the dog up, turned out the light, and walked slowly into his bedroom.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND SITTING

On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano. For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke, he invariably sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude. To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and sound of one kind or another is as ardently sought as at other times it is avoided. In this room Valentine could hear the vague traffic of the dim street outside, the dull tumult of an omnibus, the furtive, flashing clamour of a hansom, the cry of an occasional newsboy, explanatory of the crimes and tragedies of the passing hour. Or perhaps the eyes of Valentine were, for the moment, weary of the monotonous green walls of his sanctum, leaning tent-wise towards the peaked apex of the ceiling, and longed to rest on the many beautiful pictures that hung in one line around his drawing-room. It seemed so, for now, as he sat in a chair before the fire, holding Rip upon his knee, his blue eyes were fixed meditatively upon a picture called "The Merciful Knight," which faced him over the mantelpiece. This was the only picture containing a figure of the Christ which Valentine possessed. He had no holy children, no Madonnas. But he loved this Christ, this exquisitely imagined dead, drooping figure, which, roused into life by an act of noble renunciation, bent down and kissed the armed hero who had been great enough to forgive his enemy. He loved those weary, tender lips, those faded limbs, the sacred tenuity of the ascetic figure, the wonderful posture of benign familiarity that was more majestic than any reserve. Yes, Valentine loved this Christ, and Julian knew it well. Often, late at night, Julian had leaned back lazily listening while Valentine played, improvising in a light so dim as to be near to darkness. And Julian had noticed that the player's eyes perpetually sought this picture, and rested on it, while his soul, through the touch of the fingers, called to the soul of music that slept in the piano, stirred it from sleep, carried it through strange and flashing scenes, taught it to strive and to agonize, then hushed it again to sleep and peace. And as Julian looked from the picture to the player, who seemed drawing inspiration from it, he often mutely compared the imagined beauty of the soul of the Christ with the known beauty of the soul of his friend. And the two lovelinesses seemed to meet, and to mingle as easily as two streams one with the other. Yet the beauty of the Christ soul sprang from a strange parentage, was a sublime inheritance, had been tried in the fiercest fires of pity and of pain. The beauty of Valentine's soul seemed curiously innate, and mingled with a dazzling snow of almost inhuman purity. His was not a great soul that had striven successfully, and must always strive. His was a soul that easily triumphed, that was almost coldly perfect without effort, that had surely never longed even for a moment to fall, had never desired and refused the shadowy pleasures of passion. The wonderful purity of his friend's face continually struck Julian anew. It suggested to him the ivory peak of an Alp, the luminous pallor of a pearl. What other young man in London looked like that? Valentine was indeed an unique figure in the modern London world. Had he strayed into it from the fragrant pages of a missal, or condescended to it from the beatific vistas of some far-off Paradise? Julian had often wondered, as he looked into the clear, calm eyes of the friend who had been for so long the vigilant, yet unconscious guardian of his soul.

To-night, as Valentine sat looking at the Christ, a curious wonder at himself came into his mind. He was musing on the confession of Julian, so long withheld, so shyly made at last. This confession caused him, for the first time, to look self-consciously upon himself, to stand away from his nature, as the artist stands away from the picture he is painting, and to examine it with a sideways head, with a peering, contracted gaze. This thing that protected a soul from sin—what was it like? What was it? He could not easily surmise. He had a clear vision of the Christ soul, of the exquisite essence of a divine individuality that prompted life to spring out of death for one perfect moment that it might miraculously reward a great human act of humanity. Yes, that soul floated before him almost visibly. He could call it up before his mind as a man can call up the vision of a supremely beautiful rose he has admired. And there was a scent from the Christ soul as ineffably delicious as the scent of the rose. But when Valentine tried to see his own soul, he could not see it. He could not comprehend how its aspect affected others, even quite how it affected Julian. Only he could comprehend, as he looked at the Christ, its imperfection, and a longing, not felt before, came to him to be better than he was. This new aspiration was given to him by Julian's confession. He knew that well. He protected his friend now without effort. Could he not protect him more certainly with effort? Can a soul be beautiful that never strives consciously after beauty? A child's nature is beautiful in its innocence because it has never striven to be innocent. But is not an innocent woman more wonderful, more beautiful, than an innocent child? Valentine felt within him that night a distinct aspiration, and he vaguely connected it with the drooping Christ, who touched with wan, rewarding lips the ardent face of the merciful knight. And he no longer had the desire to know desire of sin. He no longer sought to understand the power of temptation or the joy of yielding to that power. A subtle change swept over him. Whether it was permanent, or only passing, he could not tell.

A tingling cry from the electric bell in the passage told of Julian's arrival, and in a moment he entered. He looked gay, almost rowdy, and clapped Valentine on the shoulder rather boisterously.

"Why on earth are you in here?" he exclaimed. "Have you been playing?"

"No."

"Are you in an exalted state of mind, that demands the best parlour for its environment?"

"Hardly."

"But why then have you let out the fire in the den and enthroned yourself here?"

"A whim, Julian. I felt a strong inclination to sit in this room to-night. It seems to me a less nervous room than the other, and I want to be as cold-blooded as possible."

"O, I see! But, my dear fellow, what is there nervous about the tent?
Do you imagine ghosts lurking in the hangings, or phantoms of dead Arabs
clinging, like bats, round that rosette in the roof? You got it up the
Nile, didn't you?"

"Yes. Where have you been?"

"Dining out. And, oddly enough, I met Marr again, the man I told you about. It seems he is in universal request just now."

"On account of his mystery-mongering, I suppose."

"Probably."

"Did you tell him anything about our sitting?"

"Only that we had sat, and that nothing had happened."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Pooh, pooh! these processes are, and always must be, gradual.
Another time there may be some manifestation.'"

"Manifestation! Did you ask him of what nature the manifestation was likely to be? These people are so vague in the terms they employ."

"Yes, I asked him; but I couldn't get much out of him. I must tell you, Val, that he seemed curiously doubtful about my statement that nothing had happened. I can't think why. He said, 'Are you quite sure?'"

"Of course you answered Yes?"

"Of course."

Valentine looked at him for a moment and then said:

"You didn't mention the—the curtain by any chance?"

"No. You thought you had left it only partially drawn, didn't you?"

Valentine made no reply. His face was rather grave. Julian did not repeat the question. He felt instinctively that Valentine did not wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing half furtively at his friend.

"Valentine," he presently said, "shall we really sit to-night?"

"Yes, surely. You meant to when you came here, didn't you?"

"I don't believe there is anything in it."

"We will find out. Remember that I want to get hold of your soul."

Julian laughed.

"If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you," he said.

"I will risk that," Valentine answered.

And then he added:

"But, come, don't let us waste time. I will go and send away Wade.
Clear that little table by the piano."

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it, while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last
Julian said:

"Val!"

"Well?"

"Let us go back into the tentroom."

"Why?"

"Nothing will ever happen here."

"Why should anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him, so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm voix d'or, they were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his cosy rug. So—till the last gleam of the fire faded. So—till another twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that, but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive, consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent, fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed, appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian started perceptibly.

"'Sh!" Valentine hissed to the little dog. "'Sh! Rip! Quiet!"

The response of Rip was, with a violent scramble, to disentangle himself from his covering, emerging from which he again barked with shrill and piercing vehemence, at the same time leaping to the floor. By the sound, which he could locate, Valentine felt certain that the dog had gone over to the door.

"What on earth is he barking at?" Julian said in the darkness.

"I can't imagine. Hush, Rip! S-sh!"

"Val, turn on the light, quick! You're nearest to it."

Valentine stretched out his hand hastily, and in a flash the room sprang into view. He was right. Rip was crouched—his front legs extended along the floor, his hind legs standing almost straight—close to the door, and facing it full. His head was down, and moving, darting this way and that, as if he were worrying the feet of some person who was trying to advance from the door into the centre of the room. All his teeth showed, and his yellow eyes were glaring fiercely.

Julian, who had thrown a hasty and searching glance round the room when the light was turned on, sprang forward and bent down to him.

"Rip! Rip!" he said. "Silly! What's the matter? Silly dog!" and he began to stroke him.

Either this action of his, or something else not known by the young men, had an effect on the terrier, for he suddenly ceased barking, and began to snuffle eagerly, excitedly, at the bottom of the door.

"It's as if he were mad," said Julian, turning round. "Hulloh, Val! What the devil's come to you?"

For he found Valentine standing up by the table with an expression of deep astonishment on his face.

He pointed in silence to the door.

"By Jove! that curtain again!" said Julian, with an accent of amazement.
"I'm damned!"

The curtain was, in fact, drawn back from the door. Valentine struck a match and put it to a candle. Then he opened the door. Rip immediately darted out of the room and pattered excitedly down the passage, as if searching for something, his sharp nose investigating the ground with a vehement attention. The young men followed him. He ran to the front door, then back into Valentine's bedroom; then, by turns, into the four other apartments—bedroom, drawing-room, bathroom and kitchen—that formed the suite. The doors of the two latter were opened by Valentine. Having completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain, almost a wistful attitude.

"Open it!" said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited, listening. There was no sound. Rip still whimpered, rather feebly. His excitement was evidently dying away. At last Valentine shut the door, and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

"I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire," Julian said. "Give me some brandy."

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

"We mustn't have Rip in the room another time," he added. "He spoilt the whole thing."

"What whole thing?" Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

"Well, the sitting. Perhaps—perhaps one of Marr's mysterious manifestations might have come off to-night."

Valentine did not reply at first. When he did, he startled Julian by saying:

"Perhaps one of them did come off."

"Did?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"What was Rip barking at?"

"There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at shadows."

"At shadows—yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?"

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

"Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

"That is exactly what I felt," he said.

"Explain. For I was only joking."

"I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey."

"To what?"

"I felt—to us."

"Fancy."

"Probably. You didn't feel it?"

"I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and—and all the rest of it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val, isn't it?"

Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room."

"What else can it possibly be?" Julian said with an accent of rather unreasonable annoyance.

"I don't know. But I did draw the curtain completely over the door to-night. Julian, I am getting interested in this. Perhaps—who knows?—in the end I shall have your soul, you mine."

He laughed as he spoke; then added:

"No, no; I don't believe in such an exchange; and, Julian, I scarcely desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excitement to life."

"Yes. But it is selfish of you to wish to keep your soul to yourself.
I want it. Well, au revoir, Val; to-morrow night."

"Au revoir."

After Julian had gone Valentine went back into the drawing-room and stood for a long while before the "Merciful Knight." He had a strange fancy that the picture of the bending Christ protected the room from the intrusion of—what?

He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell.

CHAPTER V

THE THIRD SITTING

"Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening, "that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him day after day? While, if—"

"You don't meet him, you don't."

"No. I mean that if you don't happen to be introduced to him, you probably never set eyes on him at all."

"I know. But whom have you met to-day?"

"Marr again."

"That's odd. He is beginning to haunt you."

"I met him at my club. He has just been elected a member."

"Did he make any more inquiries into our sittings?"

"Rather. He talked of nothing else. He's an extraordinary fellow, extraordinary."

"Why? What is he like?"

"In appearance? Oh, the sort of chap little pink women call Satanic; white complexion showing blue where he shaves, big dark eyes rather sunken, black hair, tall, very thin and quiet. Very well dressed. He is that uncanny kind of a man who has a silent manner and a noisy expression. You know what I mean?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"I think he's very morbid. He never reads the evening papers."

"That proves it absolutely. Does he smoke?"

"Always. I found him in the smoking-room. He showed the most persistent interest in our proceedings, Val. I couldn't get him to talk of anything else, so at last I told him exactly what had happened."

"Did you tell him that we began to sit last night in a different room?"

"Yes. That was curious. Directly I said it he began making minute inquiries as to what the room was like, how the furniture was placed, even what pictures hung on the walls."

"The pictures!"

"Yes. I described them."

"All of them?"

"No, one or two; that favorite of yours, 'The Merciful Knight,' the
Turner, those girls of Solomon's with the man playing to them, and—yes,
I think those were all."

"Oh!"

"He said, 'You made a great mistake in changing your venue to that room, a great mistake.' Then I explained how we moved back to the tentroom in the middle of the sitting, and all about Rip."

"Did he make any remark?"

"One that struck me as very quaint, 'You are en route.'"

"Enigmatic again. He was playing the wizard."

"He spoke very gravely."

"Of course. Great gravity is part of the business."

"Afterwards he said, 'Turn that dog out next time.'"

"And that was all?"

"I think so."

Valentine sat musing. Presently he said:

"I should rather like to meet this Marr."

"Oh, I don't think—I fancy—"

"Well?"

"I'd as soon you didn't."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'd get on. You wouldn't like him."

"For what reason?"

"I don't know. I've a notion he's something exceptional in the way of a blackguard. Perhaps I am wrong. I haven't an idea what sort of a reputation he has. But he is black, Valentine, not at all your colour. Oh! and, by the way, he doesn't want to meet you."

"How charming of him!"

"I had half suggested it, I don't know why, and he said, 'Thanks! Thanks! Chance will bring us together later on if we ought to meet.' And now I am glad he wasn't keen. Shall we begin? Put Rip into your bedroom, as he advised. Besides, I can't stand his barking."

Valentine carried the little dog away. When he came back he shut the tentroom door and was about to draw the curtain over it. But Julian stopped him.

"No, don't," Julian said.

"Why not?"

"I would rather you didn't. I hate that curtain. If I were you I would have it taken down altogether."

Valentine looked at him in surprise. He had uttered the words with an energy almost violent. But even as Valentine looked Julian switched off the electric light and the leaping darkness hid his face.

"Come now. Business! Business!" he cried.

And again they sat with their hands loosely on the table, not touching each other.

Valentine felt that Julian was being less frank with him than usual. Perhaps for this reason he was immediately conscious that they were not so much in sympathy as on the two former occasions of their sittings. Or there might have been some other reason which he could not identify. It is certain that he gradually became acutely aware of a stifling sense of constraint, which he believed to be greatly intensified by the surrounding darkness and silence. He wondered if Julian was conscious of it also, and at moments longed to ask. But something held him back, that curious something which we all feel at times like a strong hand laid upon us. He made up his mind that this discomfort of his soul, unreasonably considerable though it was, must be due solely to Julian's abrupt demeanour and obvious desire to check his curiosity about the drawing of the curtain. But, as the moments ran by, his sense of uneasiness assumed such fantastic proportions that he began to cast about for some more definite, more concrete, cause. At one instant he found it in the condition of his health. The day had been damp and dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what, interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt as if he could have fixed the exact moment in which the interposition had taken place, as one can fix the exact moment in which a person enters a room where one is sitting. And the interposition was one of great horror,—entirely malignant, Valentine believed.

He had an impulse to spring up from the table, to turn on the light, and to say, "Let us make an end of this jugglery!" Yet he sat still, wondering why he did so. 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. The vagrant fancies danced along with attenuated steps and tiny, whimsical gestures of fairies, fluttering their flame-veined wings. The sad thoughts moved slowly with drooped heads and monotonous hands, and tears fell forever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil—and Julian had acknowledged them many, though combatted—were endowed with a strangely sinister gait, like the gait of those modern sinners who express, ignorantly, in their motions the hidden deeds their tongues decline to speak. The wayward thoughts had faces like women, who kiss and frown within the limits of an hour. On the cheeks of the libertine thoughts a rosy cloud of rouge shone softly, and their haggard eyes were brightened by a cunning pigment. And the noble thoughts, grand in gesture, godlike in bearing, did not pass them by, but spoke to them serene words, and sought to bring them out from their degradation. And there was no music in this imagined procession which Valentine longed to see. All was silent as from the gulf of Julian's mind the inhabitants stole furtively to do their mission. Yes, Valentine knew to-night that he should feel no wonder if thought took form, if a disembodied voice spoke, or a detached hand moved into ripples of the air. Only he was irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger, which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain. His common sense had not deserted him. On the contrary, it was argumentative, cogent in explanation and in rebuke. It strove to sneer his distress down with stinging epithets, and shot arrows of laughter against his aimless fears. But the combat was, nevertheless, tamely unequal. Common sense was routed by this enigmatic enemy, and at length Valentine's spirits became so violently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice,
"Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel—I feel, well, horribly afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have snatched it away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of extreme uneasiness.

"Nobody," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was not lying, Julian. I tell you so, and I mean it."

Valentine's eyes met Julian's, and Julian believed him.

"Put your hands on the table again," Julian said.

Valentine obeyed, and Julian laid his beside them, linking one of his little fingers tightly in one of Valentine's, and at the same time shutting his eyes. After a long pause he grew visibly whiter, and hastily unlinked his finger.

"No, damn it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."

Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.

"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he repeated. "Good God, who is it?"

Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

"Let us go through the rooms," he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book, no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom, Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But, arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him, and then at each other.

"Rip knows somebody has been here," Julian said.

Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of the dog than by Julian's declaration and subsequent agitation. He had been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend's nerves. But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.

"But the thing is absolutely impossible," he repeated, with some disturbance of manner.

"Is anything that we can't investigate straight away absolutely impossible?"

Valentine did not reply directly.

"Here is a cigarette," he said. "Let us sit down, soothe our nerves, and talk things over calmly and openly. We have not been quite frank with each other about these sittings yet."

Julian accepted Valentine's offer with his usual readiness. The fire was relit with some difficulty. Rip was coaxed into silence.

Presently, as the smoke curled upward with its lazy demeanour, the horror that had hung like a thin vapour in the atmosphere seemed to be dissipated.

"Now I think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer from hysteria."

"The sceptics say, Val."

"And probably they are generally right. Now—yes, do drink some more of that brandy and soda. Now, Julian, do you still believe that a hand held yours just now?"

Julian answered quietly, showing no irritation at the question:

"I simply know it as surely as I know that I am sitting with you at this moment. And,—look here, you may laugh at me as much as you. like,—although I supposed the hand to be yours, until you denied it I had previously felt the most curious sensation."

"Of what?"

"Well, that something was coming, even had actually come, into the room."

Valentine answered nothing to this, so Julian went on.

"I thought it was a trick of the nerves, and determined to drive it away, and I succeeded. And then, just as I was internally laughing at myself, this hand, as if groping about in the dark, was first laid on mine, full on it, Val, and then slid off onto the table and linked its little finger tightly in mine. I, of course, supposed the hand was yours, and this finger was crooked round mine for fully five minutes, I should say. After you spoke, thinking that you were trying to deceive me for a joke, I caught the hand in mine, and pinched it with all my strength until it was forcibly dragged away."

"Strange," Valentine murmured.

"Deucedly strange! and, what's more, diabolically unpleasant."

"I wonder what that fellow, Marr, would say to this."

"Marr! By Jove, is this one of the manifestations which he spoke about so vaguely?"

"It seems like it."

"But describe your sensations. You say you felt horribly afraid. Why was that?"

"I can't tell. That, I think, made part of the horror. There was a sort of definite vagueness, if you can imagine such a seeming contradiction, in my state of mind. But the feeling is really indescribable. That it was more strange and more terrible than anything I have known is certain. I should like to ask Dr. Levillier about all this."

"Levillier—yes. But he would—"

"Be reasonable about it, as he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd, saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted little doctor. He is unique."

They talked on for some time, arriving at no conclusion, until it seemed they had talked the whole matter thoroughly out. Yet Valentine, who was curiously instinctive, had, all the time, a secret knowledge that Julian was keeping something from him, was not being perfectly frank. The conviction pained him. At last Julian got up to go. He stood putting on his overcoat.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Julian."

"Now—is this to be our last sitting?"

Valentine hesitated.

"What do you wish?" he asked at length.

"What do you?"

"Well, I—yes, I think I would rather it was the last."

Julian caught his hand impulsively.

"So would I. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Julian went out into the hall, got as far as the front door, opened it, then suddenly called out:

"Valentine!"

"Yes."

"Come here for a moment."

Valentine went, and found him standing with his hand on the door, looking flushed and rather excited.

"There is one thing I haven't told you," he began.

"I knew that."

"I guessed you did. The most horrible sensation I have had. During our sitting to-night—don't be vexed—an extraordinary apprehension of—well, of you, came over me. There! Now I have told you."

Valentine was greatly astonished.

"Of me?" he said.

"Yes. There was a moment when the idea that I was alone with you made my blood run cold."

"Good heavens!"

"Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

"No, of course not. But it is so extraordinary, so unnatural."

"It is utterly gone now, thank God. I say, we have resolved that we won't sit again, haven't we?"

"Yes; and what you have just told me makes me hate the whole thing. The game seems a game no longer."

When the door had closed upon Julian, Valentine sat down and wrote a note.

He addressed it to—

"Doctor Hermann Levillier,
"Harley Street, W.,"

and laid it on his writing-table, so that it might be posted early the next morning.

CHAPTER VI

A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB

Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's web of tingling threads which we call the nervous system. The man who sweeps out the temple, who polishes the marble steps and dusts the painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism, Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the nastinesses, the dreary failures, the unimaginable impulses of the flesh, the more he grew to believe in the existence, within it, of the soul. One day a worn-out dyspeptic, famous for his intellectual acquirements over two continents, sat with the little great doctor in his consulting-room. The author, with dry, white lips, had been recounting a series of sordid symptoms, and, as the recital grew, their sordidness seemed suddenly to strike him with a mighty disgust.

"Ah, doctor," he said. "And do you know there are people thousands of miles away from Harley Street who actually admire me, who are stirred and moved by what I write, who make a cult and a hero of me. They say I have soul, forsooth. But I am all body; you know that. You doctors know that it is only body that we put on paper, body that lifts us high, or drags us low. Why, my best romances come straight from my liver. My pathos springs from its condition of disorder, and my imaginative force is only due to an unnatural state of body which I can deliberately produce by drinking tea that has stood a long while and become full of tannin. When my prose glows with fiery beauty, the tea is getting well hold of my digestive organs, and by the time it has begun to prove its power by giving me a violent pain in the stomach, I have wrung from it a fine scene which will help to consolidate my fame. When a man wins the Victoria Cross, his healthy body has done the deed, unprompted by anything higher. Good air, or a muscular life, has strung his nerves strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appreciate danger. On the other hand, when a man shows funk, turns tail and bolts, and is dubbed a coward, it's his beastly body again. Some obscure physical misfortune is the cause of his disgrace, and if he'd only been to you he would have won the Cross too. Isn't it so? How you doctors must laugh at mystics, and at those who are ascetics, save for sake of their health. Why, I suppose even the saint owes his so-called goodness to some analyzable proceeding that has gone on in his inside, and that you could diagnose. Eh?"

Doctor Levillier was writing a prescription in which bismuth was an item.
He glanced up quietly.

"The more I know of the body, the more I think of and believe in the power of the soul," he said. "Have that made up. Take it three times a day and come to me again in a fortnight. Good-morning."

Indeed, this little man was writing prescriptions for the body and thinking prescriptions for the soul all day long. Within him there dwelt a double mind, the mind of a great doctor and the mind of a great priest, and these two minds linked hands and lived as friends. The one never strove against the other. There was never a moment of estrangement. And if there were frequent arguments and discussions between the two, they were the arguments and discussions that make friendship firmer, not enmity more bitter. And, as Dr. Levillier very well knew, it was often the mind of the priest within him that gave to him his healing power over the body. It was the mind of the priest that had won him testimonial clocks and silver salvers from grateful patients. Often as he sat with some dingy-faced complainant, listening to a recital of sickness or uttering directions about avoidance of green meat, sauces, pastry, and liquids, till the atmosphere seemed that of a hospital, a pastry-cook's shop and a bar combined, he was silently examining the patient's soul, facing its probable vagaries, mapping out the tours it had taken, scheming for its welfare. And, perhaps, after the dietary was arranged and the prescription was written, he would say carelessly:

"Do you read much? What do you read? Ah! such and such books. Yes, very interesting. Do you know this book which has struck me greatly? No? Allow me to lend it to you. Good-bye."

And the patient departed, ignorant that he had received a pill for his soul from the priest as well as a pill for his body from the doctor.

In appearance Dr. Levillier was small, slight, and delicate looking. His complexion was clear and white. His eyes were blue. What hair he possessed was rather soft, fluffy and reddish, with a dash of light brown in it. He wore neither beard nor moustache, was always very neatly and simply dressed, and was remarkable for his polished boots, said to be the most perfectly varnished in London. Although he must have been nearly fifty-five, he had never married, and some people declared that he had the intention of starting a new "order" of medical celibates, who would be father-confessors as well as physicians, and who would pray for the souls of their patients after tending their bodily needs.

For some years Valentine had been very intimate with the doctor, whom he admired for his intellect and loved for his nature. So now he resolved to lay the case of the sittings with Julian before him and hear his opinion of the matter. In all their conversations Valentine could not remember that they had ever discussed spiritualism or occultism. As a rule, they talked about books, painting, or music, of which Dr. Levillier was a devoted lover. Valentine's note asked the doctor to dine with him that night at his club. The messenger brought back an acceptance.

They dined at a corner table and the room was rather empty. A few men chatted desultorily of burlesques, horses, the legs of actresses, the chances of politics. The waiters moved quietly about with pathetic masks of satisfied servitude. Valentine and the doctor conversed earnestly.

At first they spoke of a new symphony composed by a daring young Frenchman, who had striven to reproduce vices in notes and to summon up visions of things damnable by harmonic progressions which frequently defied the laws of harmony. Levillier gently condemned him for putting a great art to a small and degraded use.

"His very success makes me regret the waste of his time more deeply, Cresswell," he said. "He is a marvellous painter in sound. He has improved upon Berlioz, if it is improvement to cry sin with a clearer, more determinate voice. Think what a heaven that man could reproduce in music."

"Because he has reproduced a hell. But do you think that follows? Can the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and originality too?"

"I believe he could learn to. The main thing is to possess genius in any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that seize upon the minds of men. But to possess genius is only a beginning. We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be obedient."

"Genius and obedience. Don't the two terms quarrel?"

"They should not. Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent thing."

"Yes," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. "I believe you are right. But, if you are right, I have missed a great deal."

"How do you deduce that?"

"In this way. I have never had to be obedient. I have never had to struggle."

"Surely the latter," the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind eyes on Valentine's face. "I don't think, in all my experience, that I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the bayonet and using the sword at moments. There must be an occasional mêlée."

"Indeed not; that is to say," Valentine rather hastily added, "as regards the pure life. For I cannot lay claim to anything fine. But I assure you that my life has been pure without a struggle."

"Without one? Think!"

"Without one. Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the completeness of my coldness. Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied."

"I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction, that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the very tissues of the body."

"I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor optimist—just myself, and I believe happy."

"And what is this change? and what has it led to?"

"It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night."

They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Passing through the hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books. Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar. When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued, answering his attentive silence.

"It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first, the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me, perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse to sin—to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against impulses."

"I understand."

"And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian."

"To Addison?" the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding into his face. "I should much like to know how he received it."

"He said, of course, that such a dissatisfaction was rather monstrous."

"Was that all?"

"No. He told me he considered temptation rather a curse than otherwise, and then he surprised me very much."

"He told you a secret?"

"Why, yes."

"The secret of your great influence over his life?"

"You knew of this secret, then?"

"He didn't tell it to me. Long ago I divined it. Addison is a very interesting fellow to a doctor, and the fact of his strong friendship with you has made him more interesting even than he would otherwise have been. His physique is tremendous. He has a quite unusual vitality, and stronger passions by far than most Englishmen. I confess that my knowledge of human nature led me to foresee a very troubled and too vehement future for him. My anticipation being utterly falsified led me naturally to look round for the reason of its falsification. I very soon found that reason in you."

"I had never suspected it."

"Your lack of suspicion was not the least reason of the influence you exercised."

"Possibly. He told me of the strength of his evil impulses, of how he hated their assaults, and of how being with me enabled him to conquer them. Apparently the contemplation of my unnatural nature is an armour to him."

"It is."

"Well, I continued to bewail my condition, which he envied, and it ended in our sitting down, in jest, to make an experiment to try to exchange our souls."

"What means did you take?"

And then Valentine told Dr. Levillier the exact circumstances of the three sittings, without embellishment, without omission of any kind. He listened with keen attention, and without attempting interruption or intruding comment. When Valentine had finished he made no remark.

"What do you think of it, doctor?"

"Of what part of it?"

"Of any part. Do you attach any importance to it?"

"I do, certainly."

"I thought you would laugh at the whole thing."

"Why should I? Why should I laugh at any circumstances which strongly affect men whom I know, or, indeed, any men?"

"But then, tell me, do you believe in some strange, unseen agency? Do you believe that Julian absolutely held the hand of some being dwelling in another sphere, some being attracted to us, or, say, enabled to come to us by such an action as our sitting at a table in the dark?"

"No. I don't believe that."

"You attribute the whole thing to bodily causes?"

"I am inclined to attribute it to the action and reaction of mind and body, undoubtedly. If you had sat in the light, for instance, I don't think Addison would have felt that hand. The hand is indeed the least of the circumstances you have related, in my opinion. The incidents of the dog and of the curtain are far more mysterious. You are positive the door was securely shut?"

"Quite positive."

"Could you, after having drawn the curtain, have allowed your hand to slip slightly back, pulling the curtain with it?"

"I don't think so. I feel sure not."

"You know we all constantly make involuntary motions—motions that our minds are quite unaware of."

"I do feel sure, nevertheless. And the dog? What do you say to that?"

"I don't know what to say. But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive. I do not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your nerves—for there was tumult; you confess it—communicated itself to him."

"And was the cause of his conduct?"

"Yes. In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and so forth. One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he called 'a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum, where he still remains."

"Then you consider spiritualism—?"

"I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it. When one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner with him. One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display his mind. When I come into contact with a soul, I don't want to try to detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time. I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion to fight uselessly. The soul can do all its work where it is—in the body. The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations, sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations. Why should we not be satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are? I consider that you and Addison were ill-advised in making this—no doubt absurd—experiment. Supposing it to be absurd, the raison d'être of the sittings is gone at once. Supposing it not to be—"

"Yes. What, then?"

"Then the danger is great. Imagine yourself with Addison's soul or nature, him with yours. To what might not you be led? How do you know that your nature in him would exert any control over his nature in you?"

"Why should it not?"

"There comes in the power of the body, which is very great. I believe, as you know, absolutely in the existence of the soul, and in its immortal destiny; but that does not blind me to the extraordinary influence, the extraordinary kingship, which a mere body, a mere husk and shell, as some good people call it—I don't feel with them—can obtain not only over another body, but, strangely, over the soul which is in that body. Your influence over Addison has been, and is, immense. Do you imagine that it is simply your nature which governs him?"

"I suppose so."

"Your mere appearance may have an immense deal to do with the matter. You have the look, the expression, of one who has not sinned. It is partly that which keeps Addison from giving the reins to his impulses. I consider that if it were possible for your nature to change secretly and for your face to remain unchanged, if you sinned perpetually and retained your exact appearance, and if Addison did not know you sinned, you could still be his guardian, while, really, yourself far worse in every way than him."

"But surely that fights against your theory that the existence of a soul is proved by such an influence as I possess over Addison?"

"Not at all. I said if it were possible for the body not to express the soul, if—but that's just the difficulty, it is not possible. The body manifests the soul. Supposing it were not so, the power of evil, the devil, if you choose to name it and imply a personal existence for it, might have hold of the world even more tightly than now. Just conceive, under such conditions, how you might lure Addison to destruction if you desired to do so. Looking at you, and seeing the same face in which he has learned to see what he thinks entire goodness, he would be unable to believe that any action you could suggest and take part in could be evil. You could wreck his future with a perfect ease. But, as things are, did your nature change and become malignant, your face would change too, and you might quickly cease to exercise a strong influence over Addison. He might even, having now been unconsciously trained into a curious integrity, learn to hate and to despise you. You remember our conversation to-night about that symphony?"

"Yes."

"I said that the soul which could reproduce hell should be able to reproduce heaven."

"I know."

"Well, my boy—for you are a boy to me—the reverse of that might happen also."

"Perhaps. But I don't quite see."

"The application—to you?"

"To me?"

"Yes, to you, Cresswell. You have been given a strangely perfect nature. As you say, you seem to have nothing to do with the matter. You have even been inclined to rebel against your gift. But, take my advice. Cherish it. Don't play with it, as you have been playing. Remember, if you lose heaven, the space once filled by heaven will not be left empty."

"Ah! now I see. You think that I—"

"Might swing from a great height to an equally great depth. That has been my experience—that the man who is once extreme is always extreme, but not always in the same way. The greatest libertines have made the greatest ascetics. But, within my own experience, I have known the reverse process to obtain. And you, if you changed, might carry Addison with you."

"But then, doctor, you do believe in these manifestations?"

"Not necessarily. But I believe that the minds of men are often very carefully, very deftly, poised, and that a little push can send them one way or the other. Have you ever balanced one billiard-ball on the top of another?"

"Yes."

"Then you know that a breath will upset it and send it rolling. Be careful. Your mind, your very nature, may be poised like that billiard-ball. Addison's may be the same. Indeed, I feel sure Addison's is. That curious dread of you which overcame him at your last sitting is a sign of it. The whole thing is wrong—bad for body and for mind."

"Perhaps. Well, we have definitely agreed to give it up."

"That's well. Eleven o'clock! I must be going. Are you doing anything to-morrow night?"

"No."

"I have got a box for this new play at the Duke's Theatre. Will you come?"

"With pleasure."

"I will ask Addison also."

They put on their overcoats, and walked a little way along Pall Mall before they parted. Near the Atheneaum they passed a tall, thin man, who was coming in the opposite direction. He turned round as they went by, and stood directly regarding them till they were out of sight.

CHAPTER VII

THE REGENT STREET EPISODE

The things we do apparently by chance often have a curious applicability to the things we have thought. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of the Lord. These thoughts are the John the Baptists of the mind, and prepare the way for facts that often startlingly illustrate them. It is as if our thoughts were gradually materialized by the action of the mind; as if, by the act of thinking, we projected them.

When Doctor Levillier got a box for the first night of the new play at the Duke's Theatre, and when he invited Valentine and Julian to make up his party, he had no idea what the subject of the piece was, no notion that it would have anything to do with the conversation which took place between him and Valentine at the club. But the plot applied with almost amazing fidelity to much that he had said upon that occasion. The play was a modern allegory of the struggle between good and evil, which has been illustrated in so many different ways since the birth of the Faust legend. But the piece had a certain curious originality which sprang from the daring of the author. Instead of showing one result of the struggle, a good man drawn gradually down, or a bad man drawn gradually up, he set forth, with a great deal of detail, a great deal of vividness, a modern wobbler, a human pendulum, and simply noted down, as it were, his slow swinging backwards and forwards. His hero, an evil liver, a modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice, was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his author, having led him up to the pinnacle, had no intention of leaving him there, blessed by the proclaimed admiration of the gods in the gallery. In the succeeding acts he introduced a second personal influence, exerted this time on the side of evil, and permitted it to act upon his central figure successfully. The man fell again into the mire, and was left there at the conclusion of the piece, but hugging a different sin, not the sin he had been embracing when the curtain rose upon the first act. This dramatic scheme took away the breath of the house for a moment, but only for a moment. Then the lungs once more did their accustomed duty, and enabled a large number of excited persons to hiss with a wonderful penetration. Their well-meant efforts did not have the effect of terrorizing the author. On the contrary, he quickly responded to the hostile uproar, and, coming forward in a very neat Jaeger suit, a flannel shirt, and a pair of admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu, and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful jig, and the lingering audience at length began to disperse.

Dr. Levillier, Julian, and Valentine left their box in silence. It seemed that this odd play, which dared to be natural, had impressed them. They walked into the vestibule without a word, and, avoiding many voluble friends who were letting off the steam as they gathered their coats and hats from a weary lady in a white cap, they threaded their way through the crowd and emerged into the street. Just as they reached the portico, Julian suddenly started and laid his hand on Valentine's arm.

"What is it?" asked Valentine, looking round.

"Ah! you're just too late. He's gone!"

"He—who?"

"Marr."

"Oh," Valentine said, showing considerable interest; "I wish I had seen him. Where was he sitting?"

"I haven't an idea. Didn't know he was in the theatre."

Doctor Levillier made an exception to his rule of being in bed by twelve o'clock that night, and accepted Valentine's invitation to sup in Victoria Street. He had always been greatly drawn to Valentine, attracted by the latter's exceptional clarity of character, and he was scarcely less interested in Julian. Nor did the considerable difference between his age and the ages of the two youths in any way interfere with their pleasant intercourse. For Levillier had a heart that was ageless. The corroding years did not act as acid upon it. All his sympathies were as keen, all his power of enjoyment was as great, as when he had been a delightfully gay and delightfully pleasant boy at school. Youth always loved him, and age always respected him. He possessed the great secret of a beautiful life. He was absolutely genuine, and he meant nothing but good to all with whom he was brought into contact.

The three friends spoke but little as they went back to the flat, but when they had sat down to supper, and Dr. Levillier had expressed his complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valentine's butler had politely insinuated into his glass, the silence took to itself wings and lightly departed. They talked of the play, and it appeared that they were all impressed by it, but in slightly different ways, and for different reasons. Valentine, who was intensely, but sometimes almost coldly, artistic, appreciated it, he said, because it did not obviously endeavour to work out a problem or to teach a lesson. It simply, with a great deal of literary finish and dramatic force, stated a curiously human character, showed the nature of a man at work, and left him, after some scenes of his life, still at work upon his own salvation or destruction, not telling the audience what his end would be, scarcely even trying to imply his innate tendency one way or the other. This satisfied Valentine. This had made him feel as if he had seen a block cut out of life.

"I do not want to learn what becomes of that man," he said. "I have known him, good and bad. That is enough. That satisfies me more than the sight of a thousand bombastic heroes, a thousand equally bombastic villains. Life is neither ebony nor ivory. That man is something to my mind forever, as Ibsen's 'Master Builder' is something. I can never forget the one or the other."

"Your life is ivory, Val," Julian said.

He had liked the play because the violent struggle between good and evil woke up many responsive memories in his mind. The hero of the play had been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt. That was enough. He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had remarked with so much pleasure. He did not specially note the peculiar effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness of the dialogue. He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature was akin to his own nature, although placed in different, perhaps more dramatic, circumstances.

Dr. Levillier combined, to some appreciable extent, the different joys of his two companions, and obtained another that was quite his own. He had seen two horses running in double harness that night, the body and mind of the hero, and had taken delight in observing what had practically escaped the definite notice of his companions, the ingenuity and subtlety with which the author, without being obtrusive or insistent, had displayed their liaison; the effect of each upon the other, their answering excursions and alarums, their attempts at separate amours, amours that always had an inevitable effect upon the one which the other had, for the moment, endeavoured to exclude from its life. The doctor in him and the priest in him had both enjoyed a glorious evening of bracing activity. As they discussed the piece, and each advanced his reason of pleasure, the doctor expanded into a sort of saintly geniality, which was peculiarly attractive even to sinners. And when supper was over, and they strolled into the drawing-room to smoke and to make music, he sank into a chair, stretched out his polished boots with a sigh, and said:

"And people say there is so little joy in life!"

Julian laughed at the satisfied whimsicality of his exclamation and of the expression which shadowed it.

"Light up, doctor," he cried. "You are a boon to this modern world. For you see all the sorrows of life, I suppose, and yet you always manage to convey the impression that the joys win the battle after all."

Valentine had gone over to the piano and was dreamily opening it. He did not seem to hear what they were saying. The doctor obeyed the injunction to light up. He was one of the hardest and most assiduous toilers in all London, and he appreciated a good cigar and a comfortable arm-chair more than some men could appreciate Paradise, or some women appreciate love.

"And I believe that joy will win the battle in the end," he said, with a puff that proved successful.

"Why?"

"I see evidences of it, or think I do. The colour will fade out of bad acts, Addison, but the colour of a good act is eternal. A noble deed will never emulate a Sir Joshua Reynolds—never. Play to us, Cresswell."

"Yes, but I wish you to talk. I want to improvise to-night. The murmur of your conversation will help me."

Julian sat down by the doctor. He, too, looked very happy. It was a pleasant hour. Sympathy was in that pretty room, complete human sympathy, and a sympathy that sprang from their vitality, avoiding the dusky dumbness of the phlegmatic. Valentine sat down at the piano and began gently to play. The smoke from the cigars curled away towards the watching pictures; the room was full of soft music.

"Yes, Addison," Doctor Levillier continued, in a low voice, "I am perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That consulting-room of mine is as a pool of Bethesda, only not all who come to it, alas! can be healed. I sit day by day in my confessional—I like to call it that; perhaps I was meant to be a priest—and I read the stories of the lives of men and of women, most of them necessarily, from the circumstances which bring them to me, sad. And yet I have a belief in joy and its triumph which nothing can ever shake, a belief in the final glory of good which nothing can ever conquer."

"That's fine, doctor. But do you know why you have it?"

"I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for my reasons, Addison, and I find many, though I can hardly say which is the best, or whether any quite explains the faith that is always in me. Apropos of this evening, by the bye, I long ago found one of my reasons in the theatre, the theatre which some really good men hate and condemn."

"What was that?"

"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the mass express eternal truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot of bad men, or—we won't call them bad, why should we?—loose, careless, thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps, drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What, then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness, and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it must be that eternal truth—the rocks of good that lie forever beneath the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps long after death, becomes the substance."

"You think we cannot kill the good that is in us?"

"Not quite. But I think we can go near to killing it, so near that it will take longer to recover and to be itself again, longer far than the most relapsing typhoid patient."

"And have you other reasons for your belief?"

"Perhaps. But some of them are difficult to define, and would carry no conviction to any one but myself. There is one in this very room with us."

Julian glanced up, surprised.

"What is that, doctor?" he said.

"You ought to know better than I," Levillier answered.

He was looking at Valentine, who, apparently quite unconscious of their presence, was still playing rather softly. Julian followed his eyes.

The light in the room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically, considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.

And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a Steinway grand piano.

They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him. Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute injunction, Julian now did so.

Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture of "The Merciful Knight." Was he not playing to the picture, playing to that figure in it? And did not his musical imagination seek to reproduce in sound the vision of the life of that mailed knight who never lived and died? The purity of his expression, always consummate, was to-night more peculiar, more unearthly, than before in any place, at any moment. And, as mere line can convey to the senses of man a conception of a great virtue or of a great vice, the actual shape of his features, thus seen in profile, was the embodiment of an exquisitely ascetic purity, as much an embodiment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. Lust cannot lie at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given in music, and to the air and the dust—for Valentine had lost knowledge of his friends—was crystalline too. In his improvisation he journeyed through many themes of varying characters. He hymned the knight's temptation no less than his triumph. But purity was in the hymn even at the hour of temptation, and sang like a bird in every scene of the life,—a purity classical, detached, so refined as to be almost physically cold.

"I understand you," Julian whispered to the little doctor. "Yes, you are right. He is a great reason why what you think may be true. And yet"—here Julian lowered his voice to a breath, lest he might disturb the player—"he is not religious, as—as—well, as you are. Forgive the allusion—."

"Are the angels religious?" said Doctor Levillier. "Why should you refrain, my dear boy? But you are right. There is a curious unconsciousness about Cresswell—about Valentine—which seems to exclude even definite religious belief as something in a way self-conscious, and so impossible to him. There is an extraordinary strain of the child in Cresswell, such as I conceive to be in unearthly beings, who have never had the power to sin. And the best-behaved, sweetest child in the world might catch flies or go to sleep during the Litany or a sermon. This very absence of controversial or dogmatic religion gives Valentine much of his power, seems positively to lift him higher than religionists of any creed."

"You think—you think that perhaps it is something in him of which he is unconscious which does so much for me?"

"Perhaps it is."

Valentine now glided into an accompaniment, and began to sing. And the doctor and Julian ceased to talk. Valentine certainly did not sing with such peculiar skill as he showed in playing, but he had a charming voice which he used with great ease, and he never sang a single note, or phrased a passage, without complete intelligence and understanding of his composer. Only he lacked power. This scarcely interfered with the pleasure he could give in a drawing-room, and to-night both Levillier and Julian were rather in a mood for supreme delicacy than for great passion. They listened with silent pleasure for a time. Then Levillier said:

"Do you remark how wonderfully the timbre of Cresswell's voice expresses the timbre of his mind? The parallel is exact."

Julian nodded.

"That is his soul written in sound," the doctor added.

It was at this point that Valentine ceased and got up from the piano.

"I must smoke too," he said. "No, not a cigar, I'll have a cigarette to-night."

"You are fond of that picture, Cresswell?" said Doctor Levillier as
Valentine sat down.

"'The Merciful Knight'? Yes, I love it. Have you told Julian your opinion of our sittings, doctor?"

"No. He didn't ask me for it."

"I should be glad to have it, all the same," Julian said.

"Well, my opinion is entirely adverse to your proceedings," Levillier said, with his usual frankness.

"You are, in fact, at the opposite pole from Marr," Julian answered.

"Marr! Who is Marr? I never heard of him."

"Nor I, until the other evening," Julian said. "But now I see him every day. He was at the theatre to-night. I saw him as we came out."

"What is he, a spiritualist? A professional?"

"Oh dear, no! He calls himself an occultist. He goes out in society a great deal, apparently. I met him at dinner first. Since then he has taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine."

"Indeed! You know him, Cresswell?"

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

"The fun of it is that Marr doesn't wish to know Valentine," he said.

"Why?" the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and gave a fairly minute description of Marr's attitude towards their proceedings. Levillier listened with great attention.

"Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?" he said when
Julian had finished.

"Scarcely that. But he certainly seems anxious that we should."

"You have both resolved to give them up, haven't you?"

"Certainly, doctor," Valentine replied.

"Does Marr know that?" Levillier asked of Julian.

"No. I haven't seen him to speak to since our final sitting."

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.
Then he remarked, with abruptness:

"Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a piece of advice?"

"You—doctor! Of course not. What is it?"

"Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of the moment. But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to force. The world doesn't completely recognize this. The law doesn't recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it. Some call it hypnotism. I call it suggestion."

He paused, as if he had finished.

"But your advice, doctor?" Julian said, wondering.

"Oh, h'm! I don't mean to give it to you, after all."

"Why?"

Doctor Levillier became enigmatic.

"Because I have just remembered that to warn is often to supply a cause of stumbling," he said.

Dr. Levillier and Julian drove together as far as the latter's chambers that evening, and, after bidding Julian good-night, the doctor dismissed the cab and set out to walk to Harley Street. He proceeded at a leisurely pace along Piccadilly, threading his way abstractedly among the wandering wisps of painted humanity that dye the London night with rouge. Occasionally a passing man in evening dress would bid him good-night, for he was universally known in the town. But he did not reply. With his firm round chin pressed down upon his fur coat, and his eyelids lowered, he moved thoughtfully. The problem of the relations existing between youth and life eternally fascinated him. He pondered over them now. What a strange, complicated liaison it was, sometimes so happy, sometimes so disastrous, always, to him, pathetic. Youth sets up house with life as a lover sets up house with his mistress, takes an attic near the stars, or builds a mansion that amazes the street-urchins. And they dwell together. And youth strives in every way to know his mistress. He tests her, tries her, kisses and cuffs her, gives her presents, weeps at her knees. And at first she is magical, and a wonder, and a dream, and eternity. And then, perhaps, she is a faded creature, and terrible as a lost girl whom one has known in innocence. She is grim and arid. She fills youth with a great horror and with a great fear. He dare not kiss her any more. And then, perhaps, at last he prays, "Deliver me from this bondage!" And he thinks that he knows his mistress. But, happy or sad, does he ever quite know her? Is she not always a mystery, this life, a sphinx who jealously guards a great secret?

His evening with the two boys, for so the doctor called them in his thoughts, had set him musing thus definitely. Was there not a wonder and a secret in their dual life of friendship? For is not the potent influence of one soul over another one of the marvels of time? The doctor loved Valentine as a human saint loves another saint. But he loved Julian as a saint loves a sinner. Not that he named Julian sinner, but it was impossible to be with him, observantly, sensitively, and not to feel the thrill of his warm, passionate humanity, which cried aloud for governance, for protection. Julian could be great, with the greatness only attained by purged humanity, superior surely to the peaceful purity of angels. But he could be a castaway, oh! as much a castaway as the fainting shipwrecked man whom the hoarse surf rolls to the sad island of a desert sea.

Without Valentine what might he not have been? And the little doctor let his imagination run loose until his light eyes were dim with absurd tears. He winked them away as he turned into Regent Street. The hour was nearly two, and the great curved thoroughfare was rather deserted. Those few persons who were about had a curious aspect of wolves. Their eyes were watchful; their gait denoted a ghastly readiness for pause, for colloquy. Poor creatures! What was their liaison with life? A thing like a cry for help in the dark. The doctor longed to be a miracle-worker, to lift up his hands, just there where he was by the New Gallery, and to say, "Be ye healed!" He had a true love for every human thing. And that love sometimes seared his heart, despite his fervent faith and hope.

But now, as he pursued his way, a physical sensation intruded itself upon his mind, and gradually excluded all his reflections. A sense of bodily uneasiness came upon him, of a curious irritation and contempt, mingled with fear. He at first ascribed it to the coffee he had imprudently drunk at Valentine's flat, and to the strength of the two cigars he had smoked, or to some ordinary, trifling cause of diet. But by the time he crossed Oxford Street, and was in the desert of Vere Street, he felt that there was a reason for his distress, outside of him.

"I am being followed," he said to himself. "I am being followed, and by some utterly abominable person."

He went by the Chapel, and struck across to the right, not looking behind him, but analyzing his feelings. Being strongly intuitive, he had no need to turn his head. He knew now for certain the cause of his uneasiness. Some dreadful human being was very near to him, full of hateful thoughts, sinister recollections, possibly evil intentions. Something, the very vibrations of the night air, it might be, carried, as a telegraph wire conveys a message, the soul-aroma of this human being to the doctor. As he walked on, not hurrying, he mutely diagnosed the heart of this unseen being. It seemed full of deadly disease. Never had he suspected man or woman of such wickedness as he divined here; never had he felt from any of his kind such a sick repulsion as from this unseen monster who was journeying steadily in his steps. Doctor Levillier was puzzled at the depth of the horror which beleaguered him. He remembered once driving a staid, well-behaved horse in a country lane. The animal ambled forward at a gentle pace, flicking its ears lazily to circumvent the flies, apparently at ease with its driver and with the world. But suddenly it raised its head, drew the air into its distended nostrils, stopped, quivered in every limb, and then, with a strange cry, bolted like a mad thing. Far away a travelling menagerie was encamping. It had scented the wild animals.

Doctor Levillier felt like that horse. A longing to bolt for his life came upon him. He had an impulse to cry out, to run forward, to escape out of the atmosphere created by this evil nature, this deadly life. He could have crept like a coward into the shadow of one of the areas of Henrietta Street, and sheltered there till the thing went past. And, just because he had this almost overmastering desire to flee, he stood still, paused abruptly, and, without turning his head, listened. At a distance, and he judged, round the corner of the street he heard the sound of a quickening footstep advancing in his direction. He waited, under the obligation of exerting all his powers of self-control; for his limbs trembled to movement, his heart beat to the march, and every separate vein, every separate hair of his body, seemed crying out piercingly to begone. The footstep approached. Doctor Levillier heard it turning the corner.

"Now," thought he, "this person will see me waiting here. Will he come on? Will he pass me? And if he does, shall I be able to await, to endure the incident?"

And he listened, as a scout might listen in the night for sounds of the hidden enemy. Upon turning the corner, the footsteps advanced a pace or two, faltered, slackened, stopped. For an instant there was silence. The doctor knew that the man had been struck by his attentive figure, and was pausing to regard it, to consider it. What would be the result of the inspection? In a moment the doctor knew. The footsteps sounded again, this time in retreat.

On this the impulse of the doctor to flee changed, giving way to a strict desire and determination. He was resolved to interview this night-wanderer, to see his face. A greedy anxiety for view, for question, of this person came upon him. He, too, wheeled round, and followed hastily in pursuit. The man had already escaped from his sight into Vere Street, and the doctor broke into a soft run until he reached the corner, skirting which, the man was immediately in his view, but at a considerable distance from him. As the doctor sprang upon the pavement the man turned round, and, evidently observing that he was pursued, quickened his steps impulsively. The doctor was now absolutely determined to address him, and began openly to run. And he was not far from coming up with the fellow when he suddenly whistled a passing hansom, bounded in, and thrust up the trapdoor in the roof. The direction given was sufficiently obvious, for the cabby glanced round at the doctor, lifted his whip, brought it down with a sweep over the horse's loins, and the cab disappeared down Oxford Street at a rocking gallop.

The doctor paused. He was breathing hard, and the perspiration stood upon his face. His disappointment was absurdly keen, and for an instant he had even some idea of hailing another cab, and of following in pursuit. But, upon reflection, he deemed it more reasonable to return upon his steps, and to seek his bed in Harley Street. This accordingly he did, wondering what had moved him so strangely, and wondering, also, not a little, at the abrupt flight of the unknown person. In the brief and distant view of him, which was all that the doctor had obtained, he judged him to be tall, spare, and pale of countenance, with the figure of a gentleman. The aspect of his face had not been revealed before the shelter of the cab concealed him.

CHAPTER VIII

PAUSE

It chanced that for three or four days after the night of the theatre expedition Valentine and Julian did not meet. They were rarely apart for so long a period, and each was moved to wonder at this unwonted abstinence of their friendship. What was the cause of it? Each found it in a curious hesitation that enveloped him, and impelled him to avoidance of the other. Valentine went about as usual. He looked in at White's, dined out, rode in the park, visited two theatres, lived the habitual London life which contents so many and disgusts not a few. But he did not ask Julian to share any of these well-worn doings, and at first he did not acknowledge to himself why he did not do so. He sought, more definitely than ever before, to gain amusement from amusements, and this definite intention, of course, frustrated his purpose. His power of pleasure was, in fact, clogged by an abiding sense of dissatisfaction and depression. And it was really his eventual knowledge of this depression's cause that led him to bar Julian out from these few days of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire, and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual. His morning ride was an active ennui, an ennui revolving, like a horse in a circus, round and round the weariness of the park.

Yet he had made up his mind quite fully that it would be better not to sit any more. It was not merely Doctor Levillier's urgency that had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually forced itself upon him that if anything resulted from such apparently imbecile proceedings it would certainly not be of an agreeable nature. But, too, this very sense that a secret danger might be lurking against him and Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health, perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger. As he knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy in which he held himself. Until now he had believed that he was free from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account of his constitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding calms of refinement and of the upper snowfields of the intellect. The discovery of his mistake irritated him, but the irritation could not conquer its cause, and each day the longing to sit once more grew upon him until it became almost painful. It was this longing which occasioned Valentine's avoidance of Julian. He knew that if they were together he would yield to this foolish, witless temptation, and at any rate try to persuade Julian into an act which might be attended with misfortune, if not with disaster. And then Valentine's profound respect for Doctor Levillier, a respect which the doctor inspired without effort in every one who knew him, was a chain almost of steel to hold the young man back from gratification of his longing. Valentine never sought any one's advice except the little doctor's, and he had a strong feeling of the obligation laid upon him by such sought advice. To ask it and to reject it was a short course to insult.

He resolved to avoid Julian until this gripping desire was shaken from the shoulders of his mind.

Once or twice he tacitly wondered whether Julian was also the prey of this desire, but then he felt certain that his friend could not be so afflicted. Had he been, Julian would surely have found a swift occasion to call. But he did not call. His feet did not turn their accustomed way to Victoria Street. And it did not occur to Valentine that Julian might be immersed in the same sort of struggle as himself. He thought he knew Julian well enough to be sure that he would not have joined issue with such an enemy without instant consultation. A council of war would certainly have been convened.

So Valentine believed himself lonely in his feeling. One night he returned from the theatre and a succeeding supper party at half-past twelve, let himself into the flat with a latchkey, threw off his coat and stood before the fire. His usually smooth, white forehead was puckered in a frown. He contemplated the inevitable hours of bed with dissatisfaction. When a man has allowed a vice to obtain dominion over him there are moments when an enforced abstinence from it, even of only a few hours, seems intolerably irksome. So Valentine felt now. It seemed to him that he must sit again; that he could not go to bed, could not rest and sleep, until he gratified his desire. Yet what was he to do? He thought at first of starting out, late as the hour was, to Julian's rooms. But that would be ridiculous, more especially after their mutual resolution. Julian might refuse, would probably, in any event, wish to refuse, the request which he came to make. Valentine strove sincerely to dismiss the desire from his mind, but his effort was entirely vain. Presently he went into his bedroom with the intention of forcing himself to go, as usual, to bed. He began to undress slowly, and had taken off his coat and waistcoat when he felt that he must resume them; that he must remain, unnecessarily, up. He allowed the mental prompting to govern him, and hardly had he once more fully attired himself when the electric bell in the passage rang twice. Valentine went to the door, opened it, and descended the flight of stone steps to the main door of the house, which was locked at night. Julian was standing outside on the pavement.

"You are still up, then," he exclaimed. "That's good. May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. Where have you been to-night?"

They were going up, their footsteps echoing hoarsely in the dim light.

"Nowhere."

"Then what made you turn out so late?"

"Oh," Julian said, with an elaborate carelessness; "I don't know. I thought we were becoming strangers, I suppose. And suddenly I resolved to look you up."

"I see," Valentine said, wondering why Julian was lying.

By this time they were in the flat and had shut the door behind them.

"Why haven't you been near me?" Julian said.

"Why haven't you been near me?"

"Oh—well—do you want to know really?"

"Yes; if you have got a definite reason."

"To tell the truth, I have; but it is such an absurd one."

Julian looked at Valentine and then added, with a decidedly forced laugh:

"You'll be awfully surprised when I tell you what it is, Val. I want to sit again."

"Now I know why I stopped undressing just now," said Valentine. "I must have had a sense that you were coming. Were you thinking very hard of me to-night and of our sittings?"

"Rather! It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I've been perfectly miserable. I haven't enjoyed a single thing I've done since that night."

"Nor I," said Valentine.

"What! you have been as bad? And without having Marr continually at your elbow!"

"Marr again!"

"Again! Yes, I should think so. That chap has taken a fancy to me, I suppose. Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or night, up he comes. He must live there. And the first thing he says is, 'Have you gone on with your sittings? You should, you should.' To-day he changed his formula and said, 'You must,' and when I was going away, he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless voice, 'You will.' I declare I almost think he must have a sort of influence over me, for I couldn't go to bed for the life of me, and here I am. By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination. Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors, and, by Jove, didn't he abuse them! He says they stand more in the way of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body of people. He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the tinkering of the flesh. 'What does the flesh matter?' he said. 'It is nothing. It is only an envelope. And the more tightly it is fastened together, the more it stifles the spirit. I would like to catch hold of some men's bodies and tear them in pieces to get at their souls.' Val, as he made that cheerful remark, he looked more like a homicidal maniac than anything I ever saw."

"I suppose you didn't stand up for the doctors?"

"But I did—for our little man. D'you think I wasn't going to say a word for him?"

"What! you mentioned his name to this chap?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I don't know," Valentine said, hesitatingly.

"What objection could there possibly be?"

"None, of course—none. I simply had a quite unreasonable feeling that I wished you hadn't. That is all."

And then Valentine relapsed into silence, the silence some men keep when they are needlessly, uselessly irritated. The mention of Marr's name had effected him oddly. He now felt a perverse desire not to sit, not comply with the rather impertinent prediction of this dark-featured prophet whom he had never seen. To carry out this prediction would seem like an obedience to a stranger, governing, unseen, and at a distance. Why did this man concern himself in the affairs of those over whom he had no sovereignty, with whom he had no friendship?

"Julian," Valentine said at last, abruptly, "I wish you would promise me something."

"What is it?"

"To drop this fellow, Marr. He has nothing to do with us, and it is a decided impertinence, this curiosity he shows in our doings. Don't answer any more of his questions. Tell him to keep his advice to himself. And if you really believe he is obtaining an influence over you, avoid him."

"You talk as if you disliked him."

"I feel as if I hated him."

"A man you have never even seen?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't take to him, and I have seen him. I will drop him as much as I can. I promise you that."

"Thank you, old boy."

Julian fidgetted about rather uneasily, touching the ornaments on the mantelpiece, opening and shutting his silver cigarette-case with a click. It was obvious that he felt restless and dissatisfied. Then he said:

"Well, are we going to—"

"Surely you don't mean to say that you came here to-night to persuade me into doing again what we both decided not to do any more?" asked Valentine.

"I came to try," Julian replied with decision.

He looked at Valentine and then added:

"And do you know I have been thinking, especially to-day, that you were of the same mind as I."

"How?"

"That you wanted to sit again as much as I did."

"But I don't know Marr," Valentine said, with unusual sarcasm.

Julian flushed red, like a man who has been stung.

"Perhaps he influences you through me, though," he said with a laugh.

"What nonsense, Julian! If I thought he had anything to do with the matter, I would never sit again. But he can have nothing to do with it."

"Of course not. So will you sit? You want to give in. I know that."

"I do"

"I was sure of it."

"At the same time, remember the doctor's advice."

"Oh, doctors are always against that sort of thing."

"Julian, I have a strong feeling that, should we ever get any manifestation at all, it will be inimical, even deadly, to one or both of us. Each time we have sat a sensation of distress has taken hold of me, and each time with greater force."

"Nerves!"

"Well, then, the hand which you say you held was nerves?"

"Perhaps. But that is just it. I must know, or at least try to know. It is inevitable. We can't stop now, Val, whether we are standing on the threshold of good, or evil, or—nothing at all. We have got to go on. Besides, you and I have not effected an exchange."

"Of souls? No. Perhaps it is an imbecile proceeding to try."

"No matter."

"Or a dangerous proceeding."

"You are temporizing, and the night is running away as hard as it can.
Come, now, will you do what I want—yes or no?"

After a long hesitation, Valentine slowly answered:

"Yes."

And absurdly, as he said it, he felt like a man who tosses the dice for life or death.

CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH SITTING

They turned the light off and sat down in silence. Then Julian said:

"Keep your hands well away from mine, Val."

"I will."

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery, with a certain steady and unyielding dreariness hanging round them like a cloud. They were once again confronted by a strange reality. Surely they were. Valentine felt it, silently knew it.

In this blackness he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then, in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his nerves for spurring him to such flagrant imbecilities.

"This is all nonsense," he told himself, "all fancy, all a world created, peopled, endowed with life by my desirous mind, which longs for a new sensation. I will not encourage this absurdity. I will be calm, cold, observant, discriminating. This is the same darkness in which every night I sleep, with no sense of being surrounded by forms which I cannot see, pressed upon by the denizens of some other sphere, not that in which I breathe and live."

He deliberately detached himself from his mood of keen expectation, and ardently resolved to anticipate nothing. And at this moment the table began to shift along the carpet, to twist under their hands, to rap, to tremble, and to pulsate, as if breath had entered into it. Like some live animal it stirred beneath their pressing fingers.

"It is beginning," Julian whispered.

"Animal magnetism," Valentine murmured.

"Yes, of course," Julian replied. "Shall I ask—"

"Hush!" Valentine interrupted.

Julian was silent.

For some time the table continued its stereotyped performances. Then it tremblingly ceased, and stood, mere dead furniture of every day, wood on which lay the four hands made deliberately limp. A long period of unpopulated silence ensued, and through that silence, very gradually, came again to Valentine a growing sense of anxiety. At first he fought against it as most men, perhaps out of self-respect, fight against the entrance of fear into their souls. Then he yielded to it, and let it crawl over him, as the sea crawls over flat sands. And the sea left no inch of sand uncovered. Every cranny of Valentine's soul was flooded. There was no part of it which did not shudder with apprehension. And outwards flowed this invisible, unmurmuring tide, devouring his body, till the sweat was upon his face and his strained hands and trembling fingers were cold like ice, and his knees fluttered as the knees of palsied age, and his teeth clicked, row against row, and his hairs stirred, and his head, under its thatch, tingled and burned and throbbed. Every faculty, too, seemed to stand straight up like a sentinel at its post, staring into dust clouds through which rode an approaching enemy. Eyes watched, ears listened, brain was hideously alert. The whole body kept itself tense, stiff, wary. For Valentine had a secret conviction at this moment that he was about to be attacked. By what? He was hardly master of himself enough to wonder. His thoughts no longer ran free. They crept like paralyzed things about his mind, and that despite the unnatural vitality of his brain. It was as if he thought intensely, violently, and yet could not think at all, as a man terrified may stare with wide open eyes and yet perceive nothing, lacking for a moment the faculty of perceiving. So Valentine waited, like some blind man with glaring eyeballs. And then, passing into another stage of sensation, he found himself vehemently and rapidly discussing possibilities of terror, forming mental pictures of all the things, of all the powers, that we cannot see. He embodied, materialized, the wind, the voice of the sea, the angry, hot scent of certain flowers, of the white lily, the tuberose, the hyacinth. He created figures for light, for darkness, for a wail, for a laugh, and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet may there not be physical or mental paroxysms, during which we become conscious of them, during which we know, beyond all power of doubt, that they are near us, with us? And, in such paroxysms, is it not possible for them to break through the intangible and yet all-powerful barriers that divide them from us, and to touch us, caress us, attack us? Valentine believed that he was immersed in such a paroxysm, and that the barriers were in process of being broken down. He seemed actually to hear the faint cry of an approaching being, the dim uproar of its violent efforts to obtain its sinister will, and gain the power to make itself known to him by some ghastly and malignant deed. He was unutterably afraid.

"The hand again!" Julian suddenly cried. "Valentine, is it yours? Why don't you answer? I say, is it yours?"

"No," Valentine forced himself, with difficulty, to reply.

"For God's sake then—the light!"

Valentine felt for it, but his hand shook and did not find the button.

"Make haste, Val. What are you doing? Ah!"

The room sprang into view, and Julian's eyes, with a furious, sick eagerness, sought his hands.

"Valentine," he exclaimed hoarsely, "I see nothing, but I've got hold of the hand still. I've got it tight. Put your hand here—that's it—under mine. Now d'you feel the thing?"

Julian's hand, contracted as if grasping another, was in the air, about an inch, or an inch and a half, above the surface of the table. Valentine obediently thrust his hand beneath it. He now shook his head.

"I feel nothing," he said. "There is nothing."

"Then am I mad?" said Julian. "I'm holding flesh and blood. I'll swear that. Yes, I can feel the fingers twitching, the muscles, the bones. I can even trace the veins. What does this mean?"

"I can't tell."

"You look very strange, Valentine. You are certain you see and feel nothing?"

"Nothing whatever," Valentine forced himself to answer calmly.

"We'll see this through," said Julian with a sort of angry determination. "I won't be frightened by a hand. We'll see it through. Out with the light."

Valentine turned it off. The action was purely mechanical. He had to perform it, whether he would or no.

"Don't speak," he whispered to Julian in the darkness. "Don't speak, whatever happens, till I ask you to speak."

"Why?"

"Don't; don't!"

"All right."

They sat still.

And now the horror that had possessed Valentine so utterly began to fade away, making its exit from his body and soul with infinitesimally small steps. At length it had quite gone, and its place was taken by a numb calm, level and still at first, then curiously definite, almost too definite to be calm at all. Gradually this calm withdrew into exhaustion, an exhaustion such as dwells incessantly with the anemic, with those whose hearts beat feebly and whose vitality flickers low to fading. That was like a delicious arrival of death, of death delicate and serene, ivory white and pure, death desirable, grateful. Valentine indeed believed that he was dying, there in the darkness beside his friend, and, impersonally as it seemed, something of him, his brain perhaps, seemed to be floating high up, as a bird floats over the sea, and listening, and noting all that he did in this crisis. This attentive spirit heard a strange movement of his soul in its bodily prison, heard his soul stir, as if waking out of sleep, heard it shift, and rise up slowly, noted its pause of hesitation. Then, as the vitality of the body ebbed lower, there grew in the soul an excitement that aspired like a leaping flame. It was as if a madman, prisoned in his narrow cell in a vast asylum, secluded with his company of phantoms, heard the crackling of the fire that devoured his habitation, and was stirred into an ignorant and yet tumultuous passion. As the madman, with a childish, increasing uneasiness, awed by the sinuous approach of the unseen fire, might pace to and fro, round and round about his cell, so it seemed to this poised, watching faculty of Valentine that his soul wandered in its confined cell of the body, at first with the cushioned softness of an animal, moving mechanically, driven by an endless and unmeaning restlessness, then with an increasing energy, a fervour, a crescendo of endeavour. What drove his soul? Surely it was struggling with an unseen power. And the steady diminuendo of his bodily forces continued, until he was a corpse in which a fury dwelt. That fury was the soul. He had a strange fancy that he, unlike all the rest of humanity, would die, yet still retain his spirit in its fleshy prison, and that the spirit screamed and fought to be free on its wayward pilgrimage to heaven or hell. All its brother and sister spirits had fled, since the beginnings of time, from their bodies at the crisis of dissolution, had gone to punishment or to reward. His soul alone was to meet a different fate, was to be confined in a decaying body, to breathe physical corruption, and to be at home in a crumbling dwelling to which no light, no air, could ever penetrate. And the soul, which knows instinctively its eternal mêtier, rebelled with a fantastic violence. And still, ever, the body died. The pulses ceased from beating. The warm blood was mixed with snow until it grew cold and gradually congealed in the veins. The little door of the heart swung slower and slower upon its hinges, more feebly—more feebly. And then there came a supreme moment. The soul of Valentine, with a frantic vehemence, beat down at last its prison door, and, even as his body died, escaped with a cry through the air.

* * * * *

"Valentine, did you hear that strange cry?"

* * * * *

"Valentine, what was it? I never heard any sound like that before, so thin and small, and yet so horribly clear and piercing; neither like the cry of a child nor of an animal, nor like the wail that could come from any instrument. Valentine, now I see a little flame come from where you are sitting. It's so tiny and faint. Don't you see it? It is floating toward me. Now it is passing me. It's beyond. It's going. There, it has vanished. Valentine! Valentine!"

BOOK II—JULIAN

CHAPTER I

THE TRANCE

Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists. Julian seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head, which fell on it grotesquely and lay sideways, still smiling horribly at nothing. Then he poured out a glass of brandy and strove to force some of it between Valentine's teeth, dashed water in the glaring eyes, beat the air with a fan which he tore from the mantelpiece. All was in vain. There came no sign of returning life. Then Julian caught Valentine's hands in his and sought to unclench the rigid, cold fingers. He laid his hand on the heart of his friend. No pulsation beat beneath his anxious touch. Then a great horror overtook him. Suddenly he felt a conviction that Valentine had died beside him in the dark, had died sitting up in his chair by the table. The cry he had heard, so thin, so strange and piercing, the attenuated flame that he had seen, were the voice and the vision of the flying soul which he had loved, seeking its final freedom, en route to the distant spheres believers dream of and sceptics deny.

"Valentine! Valentine!" he cried again, with the desperate insistence of the hopeless. But the cold, staring creature upon the green divan did not reply. With a brusque and fearful movement Julian shut the eyelids. Would they ever open again? He knelt upon the floor, leaning passionately over his friend, or that which had been his friend. He bent his head down on the silent breast, listening. Surely if Valentine were alive he would show it by some sign, the least stir, breath, shiver, pulse. There was none. Julian might have been clasping stone or iron. If he could only know for certain whether Valentine were really dead. Yet he dared not leave him alone and go to seek aid. Suddenly a thought struck him. In the hall of the flat was a handle which, when turned in a certain direction, communicated with one of those wooden and glass hutches in which sleepy boy-messengers harbour at night. Julian sprang to this handle, set the communicator in motion, then ran back into the tentroom. His intention was to write a note to Dr. Levillier. The writing-table was so placed that, sitting at it, his back would be turned to that silent figure on the divan. A shiver ran over him at the bare thought of such a blind posture. No, he must face that terror, once so dear. He caught up a pen and a sheet of note paper, and, swerving round, was about to write, holding the paper on his knee, when the electric bell rang. The boy had been very quick in his run from the hutch. Julian laid down the paper and went to let the boy in. His knees shook as he descended the dark, echoing stairs and opened the door. There stood the messenger, a rosy-faced urchin of about twelve, with rather sleepy brown eyes.

"Come up," Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself upon him.

"Lor', sir," it said. "Is the gentleman ill?"

Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan.

"Yes," Julian replied; "ill, very ill. I want you to go for a doctor."

The boy approached the divan, moved apparently by the impelling curiosity of tender years. Julian stopped writing and watched him. He leaned down and looked at the face, at the inertia of hands and limbs. As he raised himself up from a calm and close inspection he saw Julian staring at him. He shook his round bullet head, on which the thick hair grew in an unparted stubble.

"No, I don't think he's ill, sir," he remarked, with treble conviction.

"Then why does he lie like that?"

"I expect it's because he's dead, sir," the child replied, with grave serenity.

This unbiased testimony in favour of his fears came to Julian's mind like a storm.

"How do you know?" he exclaimed, with a harsh voice.

"Lor', sir," the boy said, not without a certain pride, "I knows a corpse when I sees it. My father died come a fortnight ago. See that?"

And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm.

"Well, father looked just like the gentleman."

Julian was petrified by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck him as utterly vicious and terrible. A horror of the rosy-faced little creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came over him.

"Hush!" he said.

"All right, sir; but you take my word for it, the gentleman's dead."

Julian finished the note, thrust it into an envelope, and addressed it to the doctor.

"Run and get a cab and take that at once to Harley Street," he said.

The boy smiled.

"I like cab-riding," he said.

"And," Julian caught his arm, "that gentleman is not dead. He's alive,
I tell you; only in a faint, and alive."

The boy looked into Julian's face with the pitying grin of superior knowledge of the world.

"Ah, sir, you didn't see father," he said.

Then he turned and bounded eagerly down the stairs, in a hurry for the cab-ride.

Loneliness and desolation descended like a cloud over Julian when he had gone, for the frank belief of the boy, who cared nothing, struck like an arrow of truth to his heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed dead? He would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the world in ruins about his feet. Such a belief would people his soul with phantoms of despair and of wickedness. Could he not cry out against God in blasphemy, if God took his friend from him? The tears rushed into his eyes, as he sat waiting there in the night. As before a drowning man, scenes of the last five years flashed before him, painted in vital colours,—scenes of his life with Valentine,—then scenes of all that might have been had he never met Valentine, never known his strange mastering influence. Could that influence have been given only to be withdrawn? Of all the inexplicable things of life the most inexplicable are the abrupt intrusions and disappearances of those lovely manifestations which give healing to tired hearts, to the wounded soldiers of the campaign of the world. Why are they not permitted to stay? Bitterly Julian asked that question. Of all the men whom he knew, only Valentine did anything for him. Must Valentine, of all men, be the one who might not stay with him? The rest he could spare. He could not spare Valentine. He could not. The impotence of his patience tortured him physically, like a disease. He sprang up from his chair. He must do something at once to know the truth. What could he do? He had no knowledge of medicine. He could not tabulate physical indications, and he would not trust to his infernal instinct. For it was that which cried to him again and again, "Valentine is dead." What—what could he do?

A thought darted into his mind. Dogs are miraculously instinctive. Rip might know what he did not certainly know, might divine the truth. He ran into Valentine's bedroom.

"Rip," he cried; "Rip!"

The little dog sprang from its lonely sleep and accompanied Julian energetically to the tentroom. Observing Valentine's attitude, it sprang upon the couch beside him, licked his white face eagerly, then, gaining no response, showed hesitation, alarm. It began to investigate the body eagerly with its sharp nose, snuffing at head, shoulders, legs, feet. Still it seemed in doubt, and paused at length with one fore foot planted on Valentine's breast, the other raised in air.

"Even Rip is at fault," Julian said to himself. But as the words ran through his mind, the little dog grew suddenly calmer. It dropped the hesitating paw, again licked the face, then nestled quietly into the space between Valentine's left breast and arm, rested its chin on the latter, and with blinking eyes prepared evidently for repose. A wild hope came again to Julian.

"Valentine is not dead," he said to himself. "He is in some strange hypnotic trance. Presently he will recover from it. He will be well. Thank God! Thank God! I will watch!"

And so he kept an attentive and hopeful vigil, his eyes always upon Valentine's face, his hand always touching Valentine's. Already life seemed blossoming anew with an inexplicable radiance. Valentine would speak once more, would come back from this underworld of the senses. And Julian's hand closed on his cold hand with a warm, impulsive strength, as if it might be possible to draw him back physically to consciousness and to speech. But there was no answer. And again Julian was assailed with doubts. Yet the dog slept on happily, a hostage to peace.

Julian never knew how long that vigil lasted. It might have been five minutes, or a lifetime. The vehemence of his mental debate slew his power of observation of normal things. He forgot what he was waiting for. He forgot to expect Dr. Levillier. Two visions alternated in glaring contrast before the eyes of his brain—life with Valentine, and life without him. It is so we watch the trance, or death,—we know not which,—of those whom we love, with a greedy, beautiful selfishness. They are themselves only in relation to us. They live, they die, in that wonderful relation. To live is to be with us; to die, to go away from us. There are women who love so much that they angrily expostulate with the dying, as if indeed the dying deliberately elected to depart out of their arms. Do we not all feel at moments the "You could stay with me, if only you had the will!" that is the last bitter cry of despairing affection? Julian, sitting there, while Valentine lay silent and the dog slept by his breast, saw ever and ever those two lives, flashing and fading like lamps across a dark sea, life with, life without, him. The immensity of the contrast, the millions of airy miles between those two life-worlds, appalled him, for it revealed to him what mighty issues of joy and grief hung upon the almost visionary thin thread of one little life. It is ghastly to be so idiotically dependent. Yet who, at some time, is not? And those who are independent lose, by their power, their possible Paradise. But such a time of uncertainty as that which Julian must now endure is a great penalty to pay for even the greatest joy, when the joy is past. He had his trance of the mind. He was hypnotized by his ignorance whether Valentine were alive or dead. And so he sat motionless, making the tour of an eternity of suffering, of wonder, of doubt, and hope, and yet, through it all, in some strange, indefinite way, numb, phlegmatic, and actually stupid.

At last the bell rang. Dr. Levillier had arrived. He was struck at once by Julian's heaviness of manner.

"What is it? What is the matter?" he asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

"He is fainting—unconscious?"

"Unconscious, yes."

They were in the little hall now. Doctor Levillier narrowly scrutinized Julian. For a moment he thought Julian had been drinking, and he took him by the arm.

"No; it is fear," he murmured, releasing him, and walking into the tentroom.

Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step said to
Death, "You are not here. You are not here."

He stood at a little distance near the door, while Levillier approached Valentine and bent over him. Rip woke up and curled his top lip in a terrier smile of welcome. The doctor stroked his head, then lifted Valentine's hand and held the wrist. He dropped it, and threw a glance on Julian. There was a scream of interrogation in Julian's fixed eyes. Doctor Levillier avoided it by dropping his own, and again turning his attention to the figure on the divan. He undid Valentine's shirt, bared the breast, and laid his hand on the heart, keeping it there for a long time.

"Fetch me a hand-glass," he said to Julian.

Mechanically, Julian went into the bedroom, and groped in the dark upon the dressing-table.

"Well, have you got it? Why don't you turn up the light?"

"I don't know," Julian answered, drily.

Doctor Levillier saw that anxiety was beginning to unnerve him. When the glass was found the doctor led Julian back to the tentroom and pushed him gently down in a chair.

"Keep quiet," he said. "And—keep hoping."

"There is—there is—hope?"

"Why not?"

Then the doctor held the little glass to Valentine's lips. The bright surface was not dimmed. No breath of life tarnished it to dulness. Again the doctor felt his heart, drew his eyelids apart, and carefully examined the eyes, then turned slowly round.

"Doctor—doctor!" Julian whispered. "Why do you turn away? What are you going to do?"

Doctor Levillier made a gesture of finale, and knelt on the floor by Valentine. His head was bowed. His lips moved silently. Julian saw that he was praying, and sprang up fiercely. All the frost of his senses thawed in a moment. He seized Levillier by the shoulders.

"Don't pray!" he cried out; "don't pray. Curse! Curse as I do! If he's dead you shall not pray. You shall not! You shall not!"

The little doctor drew him down to his knees.

"Julian, hush! My science tells me Valentine is dead."

Julian opened his white lips, but the doctor, with a motion, silenced him, and added, pointing to Rip, who still lay happily by his master's side:

"But that dog seems to tell me he is alive; that this is some strangely complete and perfect simulation of death, some unnatural sleep of the senses. Pray, pray with me that Valentine may wake."

And, kneeling by his friend, with bent head, Julian strove to pray. The answer to that double prayer pierced the two men. It was so instant, and so bizarre, fighting against probability, yet heralding light, and the end of that night's pale circumstances.

Rip, relapsing quickly from his perfunctory smile on the doctor, had again fallen asleep with an evident exceeding confidence and comfort, snoring his way into an apparent peace that passed all understanding. But scarcely had the doctor spoken, giving Julian hope, than the little dog suddenly opened its eyes, shifted round in its nest of arm and bosom, smelt furtively at Valentine's hand. Then it turned from the hand to the side of its master, investigated it with a supreme anxiety, pursued its search as far as the white, strict face and bared bosom. From the face it recoiled, and with a piercing howl like the scream of a dog run over by a cart, it sprang away, darted to the farthest corner of the room, and huddled close against the wall in an agony of terror.

Julian turned cold. He believed implicitly that the trance at that very moment had deepened into death, and that the sleepless instinct of the dog had divined it partially while he slept, and now knew it and was afraid. And the same error of belief shook Dr. Levillier. A spasm crossed his thin, earnest face. No death had ever hurt him so sharply as this death hurt him. He saw Julian recoil in horror from the divan, and he could say nothing. For he, too, felt horror.

But in this moment of despair Valentine's hands slowly unclenched themselves, and the fingers were gradually extended as by a man stretching himself after a long sleep.

The doctor saw this, but believed himself a victim of a delusion, tricked by the excitement of his mind into foolish visions. And Julian had turned quite away, trembling. But now Valentine moved slightly, pressed his elbows on the cushions that supported him, and half sat up, still with closed eyes.

"Julian," Dr. Levillier said in a low, summoning voice,—"Julian, do you see what I see? Is he indeed alive? Julian."

Then Julian, turning, saw, with the doctor, Valentine sit up erect, open his eyes and gaze upon his two friends with a grave, staring scrutiny.

"Valentine, Valentine, how you frightened me! How you terrified me!" Julian at last found a voice to exclaim. "Thank God, thank God! you are alive. Oh, Valentine, you are alive; you are not dead."

Valentine's lips smiled slowly.

"Dead," he answered. "No; I am not dead."

And again he smiled quietly, as a man smiles at some secret thought which tickles him or whips the sense of humour in him till, like an obeying dog, it dances.

Dr. Levillier, having regained his feet, stood silently looking at Valentine, all his professional instinct wide awake to note this apparent resurrection from the dead.

"You here, doctor!" said Valentine. "Why, what does this all mean?"

"I want you to tell me that," Levillier said. "And you," he added, now turning towards Julian.

But Julian was too much excited to answer. His eyes were blazing with joy and with emotion. And Valentine seemed still to be informed with a curious, serpentine lassitude. The life seemed to be only very gently running again over his body, creeping from the centre, from the heart, to the extremities, gradually growing in the eyes, stronger and stronger, a dawn of life in a full-grown man. Dr. Levillier had never seen anything quite like it before. There was something violently unnatural about it, he thought, yet he could not say what. He could only stand by the broad couch, fascinated by the spectacle under his gaze. Once he had read a tale of the revivifying of a mummy in a museum. That might have been like this; or the raising of Lazarus. The streams of strength almost visibly trickled through Valentine's veins. And this new life was so vigorous, so alert. It was as if during his strange sleep Valentine had been carpentering his energies, polishing his powers, setting the temple of his soul in order, gaining almost a ruthlessness from rest. He stretched his limbs now as an athlete might stretch them to win the full consciousness of their muscular force. When the doctor took hold of his hand to feel his pulse the hand was hard and tense like iron, the fingers gripped for a moment like thin bands of steel, and the life in the blue eyes bounded, raced, swirled as water swirls in a mill-stream. Indeed, Dr. Levillier felt as if there was too much life in them, as if the cup had been filled with wine until the wine ran over. He put his fingers on the pulse. It was strong and rapid and did not fluctuate, but beat steadily. He felt the heart. That, too, throbbed strongly. And while he made his examination Valentine smiled at him.

"I'm all right, you see," Valentine said.

"All right," the doctor echoed, still possessed by the feeling that there lurked almost a danger in this apparently abounding health.

"What was it all?" Julian asked eagerly. "Was it a trance?"

"A trance?" Valentine said. "Yes, I suppose so."

He put his feet to the floor, stood up, and again stretched all his limbs. His eyes fell upon Rip, who was still in the corner, huddled up, his teeth showing, his eyes almost starting out of his head.

"Rip," he said, holding out his hand and slapping his knee, "come here!
Come along! Rip! Rip! What's the matter with him?"

"He thought you were dead," said Julian. "Poor little chap. Rip, it's all right. Come!"

But the dog refused to be pacified, and still displayed every symptom of angry fear. At last Valentine, weary of calling the dog, went towards it and stooped to pick it up. At the downward movement of its master the dog shrank back, gathered itself together, then suddenly sprang forward with a harsh snarl and tried to fasten its teeth in his face. Valentine jumped back just in time.

"He must have gone mad," he exclaimed. "Julian, see what you can do with him."

Curiously enough, Rip welcomed Julian's advances with avidity, nestled into his arms, but when he walked toward Valentine, struggled to escape and trembled in every limb.

"How extraordinary!" Julian said. "Since your trance he seems to have taken a violent dislike to you. What can it mean?"

"Oh, nothing probably. He will get over it. Put him into the other room."

Julian did so and returned.

Doctor Levillier was now sitting in an arm-chair. His light, kind eyes were fixed on Valentine with a scrutiny so intense as to render the expression of his usually gentle face almost stern. But Valentine appeared quite unconscious of his gaze and mainly attentive to all that Julian said and did. All this time the doctor had not said a word. Now he spoke.

"You spoke of a trance?" he said, interrogatively.

Julian looked as guilty as a cribbing schoolboy discovered in his dingy act.

"Doctor, Val and I have to crawl to you for forgiveness," he said.

"To me—why?"

"We have disobeyed you."

"But I should never give you an order."

"Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor," said Valentine, with a sudden laugh.

"And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the wall?"

"We have been table-turning again."

"Ah!"

Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape assumed by one whistling.

"And this has been the result?"

"Yes," Julian cried. "Never, as long as I live, will I sit again. Val, if you go down on your knees to me—"

"I shall not do that," Valentine quietly interposed. "I have no desire to sit again now."

"You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last," said the doctor. "Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said."

And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety. The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed:

"Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before you went into your trance? Were you frightened? or did something—that hand—touch you? Or what was it?"

"A cry?"

"Yes."

"It was not I."

"Didn't you hear it?"

"No."

Julian turned to the doctor.

"It was an unearthly sound," he said. "Like nothing I have ever heard or imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that made me believe Valentine was really dead."

"What was it?"

Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.

"Doctor," he said, "of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at deathbeds?"

"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.

"I have never seen any one die," Julian continued, still with excitement. "But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost, comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they say that flame is the soul going out of the body."

"I have never seen that," Levillier said. "And I have watched many deaths."

"I saw such a flame to-night," Julian said. "After I heard the cry, I distinctly saw a flame come from where Valentine was sitting and float up and disappear in the darkness. And—and afterwards, when Valentine lay so still and cold, I grew to believe that flame was his soul and that I had actually seen him die in the dark."

"Imagination," Valentine said, rather abruptly. "All imagination. Wasn't it, doctor?"

"Probably," Levillier said. "Darkness certainly makes things visible that do not exist. I have patients who are perfectly sane, yet whom I forbid ever to be entirely in the dark. Remove all objects from their sight, and they immediately see non-existent things."

"You think that flame came only from my inner consciousness?" Julian asked.

"I suspect so. Shut your eyes now."

Julian did so. Doctor Levillier bent over and pressed his two forefingers hard on Julian's eyes. After a moment,

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Nothing," Julian replied.

"Wait a little longer. Now what do you see?"

"Now I see a broad ring of yellow light edged with ragged purple."

"Exactly. You see flame-colour."

He removed his fingers and Julian opened his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "But that cry. I most distinctly heard it."

"Imitate it."

"That would be impossible. It was too strange. Are the ears affected by darkness?"

"The sense of hearing is intimately affected by suspense. If you do not listen attentively you may fail to hear a sound that is. If you listen too attentively you may succeed in hearing a sound that is not. Now, shut your eyes again."

Julian obeyed.

"I am going to clap my hands presently," said the doctor. "Tell me as soon as you have heard me do so."

"Yes."

Doctor Levillier made no movement for some time. Then he softly leant forward, extended his arms in the air, and made the motion of clapping his hands close to Julian's face. In reality he did not touch one hand with the other, yet Julian cried out:

"I heard you clap them then."

"I have not clapped them at all," Levillier said.

Julian expressed extreme surprise.

"You see how very easy it is for the senses to be deceived," the doctor added. "Once stir the nervous system into an acute state of anticipation, and it will conjure up for you a veritable panorama of sights, sounds, bodily sensations. But throw it into that state once too often, and the panorama, instead of passing and disappearing, may remain fixed for a time, even forever, before your eyes, your ears, your touch. And that means recurrent or permanent madness. Valentine, I desire you most especially to remember that."

He uttered the words weightily, with very definite intention. Valentine, who still seemed to be in an unusually lazy or careless mood, laughed easily.

"I will remember," he said.

He yawned.

"My trance has made me sleepy," he added.

The doctor got up.

"Yes; bed is the best place for you," he said.

"And for us all, I suppose," added Julian. "Though I feel as if I could never sleep again."

The doctor went out into the hall to get his coat, leaving the friends alone for a moment.

"I am still so excited," Julian went on. "Dear old fellow! How good it is to see you yourself again. I made up my mind that you were dead. This is like a resurrection. Oh, Val, if you had been dead, really!"

"What would you have done?"

"Done! I don't know. Gone to the devil, probably."

"Do you know where to find him?"

"My dear boy, he is in every London street, to begin with."

"In Victoria Street, even. I was only laughing."

"But tell me, what did you feel?"

"Nothing. As if I slept."

"And you really heard, saw, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And that hand?"

Valentine smiled again, and seemed to hesitate. But then he replied, quietly:

"I told you I could not feel it."

"I did, until I heard that dreadful cry, and then it was suddenly drawn away from me."

Doctor Levillier appeared in the doorway with his overcoat on, but Julian did not notice him. Again his excitement was rising. He began to pace up and down the room.

"My God!" he said, vehemently, "what would Marr say to all this? What does it mean? What can it mean?"

"Don't let us bother too much about it."

"Excellent advice," said Levillier, from the doorway.

Julian stood still.

"Doctor, I can understand your attitude," he said. "But what an amazing being you are, Val. You are as calm and collected as if you had sat and held converse with spirits all through your life. And yet something has governed you, has temporarily deprived you of life. For you were to all intents and purposes dead while you were in that trance."

"Death is simply nothing, and nothingness does not excite or terrify one.
I never felt better than I do at this moment."

"That's well," said Levillier, cheerfully.

Julian regarded Valentine's pure, beautiful face with astonishment.

"And you never looked better."

"I shall sleep exquisitely to-night, or rather this morning," Valentine said.

As he spoke he drew away the heavy green curtain that hung across the window. A very pale shaft of light stole in and lit up his white face.

It was the dawn, and, standing there, he looked like the spirit of the dawn, painted against the dying night in such pale colours, white, blue, and shadowy gold, a wonder of death and of life.

In the silence Dr. Levillier and Julian gazed at him, and he seemed a mystery to them both, a strange enigma of purity and of unearthliness.

"Good-bye, Cresswell," Levillier said at last.

"Good-bye, doctor."

"Good-bye, Valentine."

Julian held out his hand to grasp his friend's, but Valentine began looping up the curtain and did not take it. In his gentlest voice he said to Julian:

"Good-bye, dear Julian, good-bye. The dawn is on our friendship, Julian."

"Yes, Valentine."

Valentine added, after a moment of apparent reflection:

"Take Rip away with you just for to-night. I don't want to be bitten in my sleep."

And when Julian went away, the little dog eagerly followed him, pressing close to his heels, so close that several times Julian could not avoid kicking him.

As soon as the flat door had closed on his two friends, Valentine walked down the passage to the drawing-room, which was shrouded in darkness. He entered it without turning on the light, and closed the door behind him. He remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At length the door opened again. He emerged out of the blackness. There was a calm smile on his face. Two of his fingers were stained with blood, and to one a fragment of painted canvas adhered.

When Valentine's man-servant went into the room in the morning and drew up the blinds, he found, to his horror, the picture of "The Merciful Knight" lying upon the floor. The canvas hung from the gold frame in shreds, as if rats had been gnawing it.

CHAPTER II

THE PICCADILLY EPISODE

Doctor Levillier and Julian bade each other good-bye on the doorstep. The doctor hailed a hansom, but Julian preferred to walk. He wished to be alone, to feel the cold touch of the air on his face. The dawn was indeed just breaking, ever so wearily. A strong wind came up with it over the housetops, and Victoria Street looked dreary in the faint, dusky, grey light, which grew as slowly in the cloudy sky as hope in a long-starved heart. Julian lived in Mayfair, and he now walked forward slowly towards Grosvenor Place, making a deliberate detour for the sake of exercising his limbs. He was glad to be out under the sky, glad to feel the breeze on his face, and to be free from the horror of that little room in which he had kept so appalling a vigil. The dull lines of the houses stretching away through the foggy perspective were gracious to his eyes. His feet welcomed the hard fibre of the pavement. They had learned in that night almost to shudder at the softness of a thick carpet. And all his senses began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the chimneys which they loved.

And yet he had been communing with death, had for the first time completely realized the fact and the meaning of death. What a demon of the world it was, sly, bitter, chuckling at its power, the one thing, surely, that has perfect enjoyment of all the things in the scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind he found himself on the pavement by the chemist's shop that is opposite to the underground railway station of Victoria. His eyes fell on the hutch of the boy-messengers, and he beheld through the glass shutter three heads. He crossed the road and tapped on the glass. A young man pulled it up.

"Want to send a message, sir?"

"No. I wish to speak to one of your boys, if the one I mean is here. Ah, there he is."

Julian pointed to his little Hermes of the midnight, who was crouched within, uneasily sleeping, his chin nestling wearily among the medals which his exemplary conduct had won for him. The young man shook the child by the shoulder.

"Hulloh, Bob!" he yelled. "Here's a gentleman wants to speak to yer."

Bob came from his dreams with a jerk, and stared upon Julian with his big brown eyes. Presently he began to realize matters.

"Want another doctor, sir? It ain't no manner of good," he remarked airily, beginning to search for his cap, and to glow in the prospect of another cab-ride.

"No," said Julian. "I stopped to tell you that you were wrong. The gentleman is quite well again."

He put his hand into his pocket and produced half a crown.

"There's something for your mistake," he said.

Bob took it solemnly, and, as Julian walked on, called after him:

"It wasn't my fault, sir; it was father's."

He had more desire to shine as an intellectual authority on great matters of dissolution than to respect the departed. Julian could not help smiling at the child's evident discomfiture as he pursued his way towards Grosvenor Place. On one of the doorsteps of the big houses that drive respect like a sharp nail into the hearts of the poor passers-by, a ragged old woman was tumultuously squatting. Her gin-soddened face came, like a scarlet cloud, to the view from the embrace of a vagabond black bonnet, braided with rags, viciously glittering here and there with the stray bugles which survived from some bygone era of comparative respectability. Her penetrating snores denoted that she was oblivious of the lounging approach of the policeman, whose blue and burly form was visible in the extreme distance. Julian stopped to observe her reflectively. His eye, which loved the grotesque, was pleased by the bedragglement of her attitude, by the flat foot, in its bursting boot, which protruded from the ocean of her mud-stained petticoats, by the wisps of coarse hair wandering in the breeze above her brazen wrinkles. Poor soul! she kept a diary of her deeds, even though she could perhaps only make a mark where her signature should have been. Julian stared at her very intently, and as he did so he started violently, for across the human background which her sleeping dissipation supplied there seemed to float the vague shadow, suggestion, call it what you will, of a tongue of flame.

He walked hastily on, angrily blaming his nerves. As he passed the policeman he fancied he noticed that the man glanced at him with a certain flickering suspicion. Was horror legibly written in his face? he wondered uneasily, confessing to himself that even in the dawn and the lap of Grosvenor Place a horror had again seized him. What did this shadow which he had now twice seen portend? Surely his nerves were not permanently upset. He was at first heartily ashamed of himself. Near St. George's Hospital, gaunt and grey in the morning, he stopped again, bent his left arm forcibly, and with his right hand felt the hard lump of muscle, that sprang up like a ball of iron under his coat sleeve. And as he felt it he cursed himself for the greatest of all fools. Thin, meagre little men of the town, tea-party men whose thoughts were ever on their ties and their moustaches, no doubt gave themselves up readily to disturbances of the nerves. But Julian had always prided himself on being an athlete, able to hold his own in the world by mere muscular force, if need be. He had found it possible to develop side by side brain and biceps, each to an adequate end. It had seemed grand to him to hold these scales of his being evenly, to balance them to a hair. Those scales hung badly now, lopsidedly. One was up in the clouds. He resolved that the other should correct it. After a cold bath and a sleep he would go round to Angelo's and have an hour's hard fencing. Cold water, the Englishman's panacea for every ill, cold steel, the pioneer's Minerva, would tonic this errant brain of his and drill it into its customary obedience. So he said to himself.

And yet as he walked there came to him a notion that this little shadow of a flame was still his companion; that this night just passed, this day just begun, were the birthnight and the birthday of this small, ghostlike thing which had come into being to bear him company, to haunt him. Yes, as he walked, followed always closely by Rip, and saw the tall iron gates of the Park, Apsley House, the long line of Piccadilly, all uncertain, gentle, reduced to a whimsical mildness of aspect in the half-light of the dawning, he again recalled the fact, which he had mentioned that night to Doctor Levillier, of people watching an invalid who had seen, at the precise moment of dissolution, the soul escaping furtively from its fleshy prison like a flame, which was immediately lost in the air. Surely, wandering souls, if indeed there were such things, might still retain this faint semblance of a shape, a form. And if so, they might perhaps occasionally conceive a fantastic attachment to a human being, and companion him silently as the dog companions his master. He might have such a companion, whose nature he could not comprehend, whose object in seeking him out he could not guess. Perhaps it felt affection toward him; perhaps, on the other hand, enmity. A lover, or a spy—it might be either. Or it might have no definite purpose, but simply drift near him in the air, as some human beings drift feebly along together through life, because they have long ago loved each other, or thought each other useful, or fancied, in some moment of madness, that God meant them for each other. It might be an aimless, dreary soul, unable to be gone from sheer dulness of purpose—a soul without temperament, without character.

As this thought crossed Julian's mind he happened to glance at the front of a shop on his left, and against the iron shutters the flame was dimly but distinctly outlined. He stopped at once to look at it, but even as he stopped it was gone. Then he sternly brought himself back from the vague regions of fancy, and was angry that he had permitted himself to wander in them like a child lost in the forest. He bent down and patted Rip, and sought to wrench his mind from its wayward course, and to thrust it forcibly into its accustomed groove of healthy sanity. Yet sanity seemed to become abruptly commonplace, a sort of whining crossing-sweeper, chattering untimely, meaningless phrases to him. To divert himself entirely he paused beside a peripatetic coffee-stall, presided over by a grey-faced, prematurely old youth, with sharp features and the glancing eyes of poverty-stricken avarice.