I 

 
 Flames
 
 By the Same Author 
 
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 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN
 
 Flames 
 
 A London Phantasy 
 
 By 
 
 Robert Hichens 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Green Carnation," "An Imaginative Man " 
 &c. 
 
 " And the souls mounting up to God 
 Went by kcr like thin flfimes " 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 London 
 William Heinemann 
 
 i8 97
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Annex 
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK I VALENTINE 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE SAINT OP VICTORIA STREET .... I 
 
 II. A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE 4 
 
 III. EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING I2 
 
 IV. THE SECOND SITTING l & 
 
 V. THE THIRD SITTING 2 4 
 
 VI. A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB 3 2 
 
 VII. THE REGENT STREET EPISODE . . . 4 
 
 VIII. PAUSE 5 1 
 
 IX. THE FOURTH SITTING 57 
 
 BOOK II JULIAN 
 
 I. THE TRANCE 6 3 
 
 II. THE PICCADILLY EPISODE ... 7 6 
 
 III. A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 83 
 
 IV. THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE 94 
 
 V. THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE 103 
 
 VI. THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 112 
 
 VII. JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS . . 123
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 VIII. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE . 135 
 
 IX. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE . 145 
 
 X. THE DANCE OF THE HOURS I$I 
 
 BOOK III THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 
 
 I. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WEEPS . . .169 
 
 II. VALENTINE SINGS 1 76 
 
 III. THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 184 
 
 IV. THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES . . . .198 
 
 V. JULIAN FEARS THE FLAME 206 
 
 VI. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM . 215 
 
 VII. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS BUCKLES ON HER 
 
 ARMOUR 223 
 
 VIII. VALENTINE EXPOUNDS THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 
 
 TO THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS . . . 227 
 
 BOOK IP DOCTOR LEVILLIER 
 
 I. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS DOCTOR 
 
 LEVILLIER 244 
 
 II. THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM .... 254 
 
 III. THE DOCTOR MEETS TWO STRANGERS . . . 260 
 
 IV. THE DEATH OF RIP 267 
 
 V. DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 276 
 
 VI. CLEAR WEATHER 287 
 
 VII. BATTLE ARRAY . 293 
 
 VIII. THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON . 302 
 IX. A SHADOW ON FIRE .... 3 JO 
 
 X. THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY OF THE 
 
 FEATHERS 3 r 9
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 BOOK V -FLAMES 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. VALENTINE INVITES HIS GUESTS .... 335 
 
 II. CAFE NOIR 341 
 
 III. THE HEALTH OP THE NEW YEAR . . . .352 
 
 IV. THE FIFTH SITTING 364 
 
 V. THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVKS . . . 373 
 
 VI. THE SELLING OF JESSIE 381 
 
 VII. A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS . . . 390 
 
 VIII. AN AWAKENING 396 
 
 IX. "THE LAST SITTING" 404
 
 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 keyword 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 
 
 A
 
 2 FLAMES 
 
 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 for ever 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 Valen- 
 tine. 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
 
 THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET 3 
 
 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 f ar-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 au opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, 
 and to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singu- 
 larly 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 arid expansive. He had rather a habit of becom- 
 ing serious towards 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 break- 
 fasting, 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 tent- 
 room, 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
 
 A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE 5 
 
 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 oneself ; worse 
 than being married to an ugly, boring wife." 
 
 " Now you are being morbid." 
 
 " Well, I'm telling you just how I feel." 
 
 " That is being morbid, according 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 bed- 
 rooms." 
 
 " 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 thnt they would ever gleam with 
 passion or with desire as they looke 1 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
 
 6 FLAMES 
 
 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 Valentino 
 kept him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of 
 fi>e 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, sm*ely. 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 ? " 
 
 " 1 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 ? "
 
 A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE 7 
 
 " 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 daresay you'll be surpn'sed when T 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 ai-e my armour 
 against all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate tho 
 notion of being a sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In 
 fact, I loved it. I wanted sin moi*e 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 under- 
 stood 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 con- 
 victions, or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I 
 understood that sin degrades oneself, 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, thi-owing off his original shamefacedness :
 
 8 FLAMES 
 
 " 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 ' cussed- 
 ness,' 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 pro- 
 tect 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 agonising 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
 
 A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE g 
 
 body. We can kill a woman's purity. And yet 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's 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."
 
 TO FLAMES 
 
 " Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to 
 yon very lucidly, very ingeniously." 
 
 Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his 
 foot. 
 
 " You have never sat, have vou ? " he asked. 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Nor I. I have always thoiight it an idiotic and a 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 Ave 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.
 
 A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE 11 
 
 The man looked surprised. 
 
 " No, sir, certainly not, sir." 
 
 "Oh! Don't sit up; we maybe late to-night. And we don't 
 want anything more, except yes, bring another couple of sodas." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 lie 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 si/e. It might do for three people, but 
 certainly not for more." 
 
 "There! Now then." 
 
 And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned oft* 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 oft* 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, eveiy chance." 
 
 They were silent. 
 
 Presently it might have been a quarter of an hour later Julian 
 said suddenly : 
 
 " Do you feel anything ? " 
 
 " 'M no," Valentine answered, rather doubtfully.
 
 EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING 13 
 
 "Sure?" 
 " I think so." 
 
 " You can't merely think you are sure, old chap." 
 " Well then yes, I'll say I am sure." 
 " Bight," 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. Kip ! 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 reflec- 
 tion. "Why do we? I wonder." 
 " That is what I am wondering." 
 He flicked the ash from his cigarette.
 
 14 FLAMES 
 
 " But I don't corne to any conclusion," he presently added medita- 
 tively. " 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 school- 
 boys." 
 
 " 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 to 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 to-morrow ? " 
 
 " 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 tent-room and glanced again at the 
 curtain. 
 
 " Yes, 1 am positive."
 
 EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING 15 
 
 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 tent-room 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. Some- 
 times 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 tent-room, 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 for- 
 sake 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 unreason- 
 ing 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, lean- 
 ing 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 Kip 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,
 
 THE SECOND SITTING 17 
 
 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 per- 
 petually 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 agonise, 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 success- 
 fully 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 a 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 
 
 B
 
 1 8 FLAMES 
 
 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, name 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 
 sxvfpt over him. Whether it was permanent, or only passing, lie 
 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 3-011 
 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 don 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." 
 
 " Oh, 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 ? "
 
 THE SECOND SITTING 19 
 
 " 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 manifes- 
 tation 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.
 
 20 FLAMES 
 
 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 : 
 1 Val ! " 
 < Well ? " 
 
 ' Let us go back into the tent-room." 
 ' 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 tent-room, 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 dark- 
 ness, and the silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they 
 were safe from trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm 
 voiyc d'or, they were, therefore, probably also safe from what Man- 
 had mysteriously called " manifestations." 
 
 Dead, numb 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. Witji 
 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, con- 
 sciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evan- 
 escent, fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring
 
 THE SECOND SITTING 21 
 
 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 haf>ty 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 expres- 
 sion 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
 
 22 FLAMES 
 
 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, bath-room 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 Valen- 
 tine shut the door, and they went back again to the tent-room, 
 accompanied closely by the dog, who gradually regained his calmness, 
 arid 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 tire," 
 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."
 
 THE SECOND SITTING 23 
 
 " 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 1 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." 
 
 lie laughed as he spoke, then added. 
 
 " No, no, 1 don't believe in such an exchange, and, Julian, I 
 scarcely desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excite- 
 ment to life." 
 
 " Yes. But it is seltish of you to wish to keep your soul to your- 
 self. 1 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 pro- 
 tected the room from the intrusion of what ? 
 
 He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell.
 
 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 knock- 
 ing 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 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 1 " 
 
 "Always. I found him in the smoking room. He showed the 
 most persistent interest in our proceedings, Yal. 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 favourite of yours, 'The Merciful Knight,'
 
 THE THIRD SITTING 25 
 
 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 tent-room 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, 
 4 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 tent-room 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 oft' 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.
 
 26 FLAMES 
 
 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
 
 THE THIRD SITTING 27 
 
 strange saying of Marr's that thoughts could take form, materialise. 
 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 for ever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil and 
 Julian had acknowledged them many, though combated 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, god-like 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 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 per- 
 turbed 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."
 
 z8 FLAMES 
 
 " 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 convic- 
 tion 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 1 mean it."
 
 THE THIRD SITTING 29 
 
 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 tent-room. 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 readinesa 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 5 and can be reasonable,"
 
 30 FLAMES 
 
 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 on to 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 inde- 
 scribable. 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
 
 THE THIRD SITTING 31 
 
 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 Hastinesses, 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 con- 
 tinents, 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
 
 A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB 33 
 
 strung his nerves strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appre- 
 ciate 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 analysable proceeding that 
 has gone on in his inside, and that you could diagnose. Eh ? " 
 
 Dr. 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 dis- 
 cussions between the two, they were the arguments and dis- 
 cussions 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 pastrycook'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 
 
 c
 
 34 FLAMES 
 
 people declared 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 con- 
 demned 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, Cress- 
 well, just as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a veiy 
 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."
 
 A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB 35 
 
 ' 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 melee." 
 
 "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 dissatisfac- 
 tion, 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 mon- 
 strous." 
 
 " Was that all ? " 
 
 " No. He told me he considered temptation rather a curse than 
 otherwise, and then he surprised me very much."
 
 36 FLAMES 
 
 " 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 friend- 
 ship 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 English- 
 men. 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 ? "
 
 A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB 37 
 
 " 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 
 on to what he called ' a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic 
 asylum, where he still remains." 
 
 " Then yoii 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'etre of the sittings is gone at once. 
 Supposing it not to be absurd " 
 
 "Yes. What then?" 
 
 "Then the danger is great. Imagine yourself with Addison's
 
 38 FLAMES 
 
 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, ns 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 he." 
 
 " But surely that fights against your theory that the existence of 
 a soul is proved by such an influence as J possess OA-er Addison ? ' 
 
 " Not at all. J 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 exist- 
 ence 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 yon 
 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 uncon- 
 sciously trained into a curious integrity, learn to hate and to despise 
 you. You remember our conversation to-night about that .sym- 
 phony ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I said that the soul which could reproduce hell should be able 
 to reproduce heaven." 
 
 " 1 know."
 
 A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB 39 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 "Tome?" 
 
 " 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 Addisoii 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-mori'ow 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 Athenteum 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 siyht.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE REGENT STREET EPISODE 
 
 THE things we do apparently by chance often have a curious appli- 
 cability 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 
 materialised by the action of the mind, as if, by the act of thinking, 
 we projected them. 
 
 When Dr. 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 illus- 
 trated 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 te 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 dramatie
 
 THE REGENT STREET EPISODE 41 
 
 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 terrorising 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 1 " 
 
 ' 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." 
 Dr. 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 an 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 bub good to all with whom he was brought into contact
 
 42 FLA MES 
 
 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 ex- 
 pressed his complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valen- 
 tine'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 A'alentine. 
 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 for ever, 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 tfot 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, 
 although placed in different, perhaps more dramatic, circumstances. 
 
 Dr. Levillier combined, to some appreciable extent, the differing 
 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 REGENT STREET EPISODE 43 
 
 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 putt' that proved successful. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 ' 1 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 8ir Joshua Keynolds 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 to play gently. The smoke from the 
 cigars curled away towards the watching pictures ; the room was 
 full of soft music. 
 
 " Yes, Addison," Dr. Levillier continued, in a low voice, " I am 
 perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That con- 
 sulting 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 neces- 
 sarily, 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 ? "
 
 44 FLAMES 
 
 " I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for 
 my reasons, Cress well, and I find many, though I can hardly say 
 which is the best n or whether any quite explains the faith that is 
 always in me. A propos of this evening, by-the-by, 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 for ever 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, influ- 
 ence, 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
 
 THE REGENT STREET EPISODE 45 
 
 change a beast into a man, a man into an angel for the moment. 
 Long after that evening was dead, both Julian and Dr. 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 Dr. 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 expres- 
 sion, 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 embodi- 
 ment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both 
 Dr. Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the 
 silent decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms com- 
 prehensible 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 
 dusk for Valentine had lost knowledge of his friends was crystal- 
 line 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
 
 4fi FLAMES 
 
 he might disturb the player. " He is not religious as as well, as 
 you are. Forgive the allusion ." 
 
 " Are the angels religious ? " said Dr. 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 a 
 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 Dr. 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."
 
 THE REGENT STREET EPISODE 47 
 
 " Nor T, 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 Valen- 
 tine, 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 : 
 
 " A.ddison, 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 recognise this. The law 
 doesn't recognise, perhaps ought not to recognise 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 you after all." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Dr. 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
 
 48 FLAMES 
 
 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
 
 THE REGENT STREET EPISODE 49 
 
 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 analysing 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. Dr. 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. 
 
 Dr. 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 over-mastering 
 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
 
 50 FLAMES 
 
 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 foot- 
 step appproaclied. Dr. 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 immedi- 
 ately 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 im- 
 pulsively. 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 in&tant 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 net been revealed before the shelter of the cab con- 
 cealed him.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PA USE 
 
 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 acknow- 
 ledge 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 Dr. Levillier's advice and of his own 
 secondary antagonistic desire, and to sit again with Julian. Every- 
 thing 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 tent-room, 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 Dr. Levillier's urgency 
 that had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually
 
 52 FLAMES 
 
 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 011 account of his con- 
 stitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding 
 calms of refinement and of the upper snow-fields 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 Dr. 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. Bat 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 ho 
 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
 
 PA USE 53 
 
 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,
 
 54 FLAMES 
 
 " 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 ever 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 
 tli at 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, 
 ycm 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 be 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 affected him oddly. He now felt a perverse desire 
 not to sit, not to 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,
 
 PA USE 55 
 
 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 
 pi'omise 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 1 have seen him. I will drop him 
 as much as I can. I promise you that." 
 
 "Thank you, old boy." 
 
 Julian fidgeted 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 alsvays against that sort of thing."
 
 56 FLAMES 
 
 " 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 nerve* ? " 
 
 " 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 temporising, 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 woild 
 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 expecta- 
 tion, 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 ? "
 
 58 FLA MES 
 
 " 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, un- 
 murmuring 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 paralysed 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, 
 materialised, 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 round 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 dis- 
 missing 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. Wo 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
 
 THE FOURTH SITTING 59 
 
 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 paroxsym, 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 clifliculty, 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 deter- 
 mination. " 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.
 
 Go FLAMES 
 
 And now the horror that had possessed Valentine so utterly began 
 to fade away, making its exit from his body and soul with infini- 
 tesimally 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 anaemic, 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 diminu- 
 endo 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 fleshly 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 that 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 breath physical cor- 
 ruption 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 'metier, 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
 
 THE FOURTH SITTING 61 
 
 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 
 bef ore, 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 towards me. Now it 
 is passing me. It's beyond. It's going. There, it has vanished. 
 Valentine ! Valentine ! "
 
 PART 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 the 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
 
 64 FLAMES 
 
 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, listen- 
 ing. 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 
 ball of the flat was a handle whicb, 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 
 tent-room. 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.J 
 
 " 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 tent-room 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 tent-room, 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 convic- 
 tion.
 
 THE TRAMCE 65 
 
 " 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 with 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 
 
 E
 
 66 FLAMES 
 
 inexplicable things of life the most inexplicable are the abrupt intru- 
 sions 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 Avho 
 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 instinc- 
 tive. 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 tent-room. 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 investi- 
 gate the body eagerly with its sharp nose, snuffing at head, shoulders, 
 legs, feet. Still it seemed in doubt, and paused at length with one 
 forefoot 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 under- 
 world 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
 
 THE TRANCE 67 
 
 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 
 Avith 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 
 1)0 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 hypnotised 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. Dr. Levillier narrowly scrutinised 
 Julian. Fora moment he thought Julian had been drinking, and he 
 took him by the arm. 
 
 " Xo, it is fear," he murmured, releasing him, and walking into 
 the tent-room. 
 
 Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step 
 suid to Death, " You are not here. You are not here." 
 
 He stood at a little distance near the door, while Levillier ap- 
 proached 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
 
 68 FLAMES 
 
 threw a glance on Julian. There was a scream of interrogation in 
 Julian's fixed eyes. Dr. 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 gi'oped 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. 
 
 Dr. Levillier saw that anxiety was beginning to unnerve him. 
 When the glass was found the doctor led Julian back to the tent- 
 room 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 heait, drew his eyelids apart, and carefully 
 examined the eyes, then slowly turned round. 
 
 " Doctor Doctor ! " Julian whispered. " Why do you turn away ? 
 What are you going to do ? " 
 
 Dr. Levillier made a gesture of finale, and knelt on the floor by 
 Valentkie. 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. Curee ! curge 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, hufh ! My science tells me Valentine is dead." 
 
 Julian opened his white lips, but the doctor, with a motion, 
 silenced him, and added, pointing to Kip, 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
 
 THE TRANCE 69 
 
 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 the 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 terri- 
 fied me !" Julian at last found a voice to exclaim. " Thank Gorl, 
 thank God ! you are alive. Oh, Valentine, you are alive, you are not 
 dead." 
 
 Valentine's lips smiled slowly. 
 
 " Dead/' he answered. " No, 1 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.
 
 70 FLAMES 
 
 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 am 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, bis 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 downwai d 
 movement of its master the dog shrank back, gathered itself 
 together, then suddenly sprang forward with a harsh snarl and
 
 THE TRANCE 71 
 
 tried to fasten its teeth in his. face. Valentine jumped back just iu 
 time. 
 
 " He must have gone mad," he exclaimed. " Julian, see what you 
 can do with him." 
 
 Curiously enough, Kip welcomed Julian's advances with avidity, 
 nestled into his arms, but when he walked towards 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. 
 
 Dr. Levillier was now sitting in an armchair. 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 ! " 
 
 Dr. 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.
 
 7 2 FLAMES 
 
 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 ciy 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 afterwards I saw something, 
 something that 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 death- beds? " 
 
 " 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 watch til 
 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 so^l, 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. Dr. Levillier bent over and pressed his two fore- 
 fingers hard on Julian's eyes. After a moment,
 
 THE TRANCE 73 
 
 " What do you see ? " he ru ked. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Dr. 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 for ever, 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."
 
 74 FLAMES 
 
 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." 
 
 Dr. 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 then, 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.
 
 THE TRANCE 75 
 
 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," LeviHier 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 friend- 
 ship, 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. lie 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 manservant 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 
 
 DR. LEVILLIER and Julian bade each other good-bye on the door- 
 step. 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 
 caine 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 
 lie 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 realise 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 realised 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 1 And as this idea struck into Julian's
 
 THE PICCADILLY EPISODE 77 
 
 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 
 Avith his big brown eyes. Presently he began to realise 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," Julian said. "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 ho did so, he started violently, for, across the human
 
 78 FLAMES 
 
 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 ths 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 upseb. 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 dis- 
 turbances 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 
 bruin 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 him- 
 self. 
 
 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 Dr. Levillier, of 
 people watching an invalid who had seen, at the precise moment of 
 dissolution, the soul escaping furtively from its fleshly 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 occasion- 
 ally conceive a fantastic attachment to a human being, and com- 
 panion him silently as the dog companions his master. He might
 
 THE PICCADILLY EPISODE 7y 
 
 have such a companion, whose nature he could not comprehend, 
 whose object in seeking him out he could not guess. Perhaps it felt 
 affection towards 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 a 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. 
 
 " Give me a cup of coffee," he said. 
 
 The youth clattered his wares in excited obedience. 
 
 While he was pouring out the steaming liquid, there drifted 
 down to Julian through the grey weariness of the morning a painted 
 girl of the streets, crowned with a large hat, on which a forest of 
 feathers waved in the weak and chilly breeze. Julian glanced at 
 her idly enough and she glanced back at him. Horror, he thought, 
 looked from her eyes as if from a window. As she returned his 
 gaze she hovered near him in the peculiar desultory way of such 
 women, and Julian, glad of any distraction, offered her a cup of 
 coffee. She drew nearer and accepted it. 
 
 " And a bun, my dear," she hinted to the sharp-featured youth. 
 
 " And a bun," echoed Julian, seeing his doubtful pause of 
 hesitation. 
 
 The bun came into view from a hidden basket, and the meal 
 began, Julian, Rip, and the lady of the feathers forming a 
 companionable group upon the kerb. The lady's curious and 
 almost thrilling expression, which had seemed to beacon from some 
 height of her soul some exceptional and dreary deed, faded under the 
 influence of the dough and currants. A smile overspread her thin 
 features. She examined Julian with a gracious interest.
 
 So FLAMES 
 
 " It's easy to see you've been makin' a night of it, Bertie," she 
 remarked casually at length, in the suffocated voice of one divided 
 between desire of conversation and love of food. 
 
 " You think so ? " said Julian. 
 
 " Think so, dear, I'm sure so ! Ask me another as I don't know ; 
 do, darlin'." 
 
 Julian .took another draught from the thick coffee-cup that held 
 so amazingly little. 
 
 " And what about yourself ?" he said. "Why are you out here 
 so early ? " 
 
 The lady of the feathers cast a suspicious glance upon him. Then 
 the horror dawned again in her eyes. 
 
 " I'm afraid to go home," she said. " Yes, that's a fact." 
 
 "Afraid; why?" Julian spoke abstractedly. In truth he 
 merely talked to this floating wisp of humanity to distract his 
 mind, and thought of her as a strange female David of the streets 
 sent to make a cockney music in his ears that his soul might be rid 
 of its evil spirit. 
 
 "Never you mind why," the lady answered. 
 
 She shivered suddenly, violently, as a dog just come out of 
 water. 
 
 " Have another cup ? " Julian said. 
 
 " And a bun, dearie," the lady again rejoined. She shook her 
 head till all the feathers danced. 
 
 " Never you mind why," she said, reverting again to his vagrant 
 question. " There's some things as don't do to talk about." 
 
 " I'm sure I've no wish to pry into your private affairs," Julian 
 rejoined carelessly. 
 
 But again he noticed the worn terror of her face. Surely that 
 night she too had passed through some unwonted experience, which 
 had written its sign manual amid the paint and powder of her 
 shame. 
 
 The lady stared back at him. Beneath her tinted eyelids the fear 
 seemed to grow like a weed. Tears followed, rolling over her cheeks 
 and mingling with the coffee in her cup. 
 
 " Oh dear," she murmured lamentably. " Oh, dear, oh ! " 
 
 " What's the matter ? " said Julian. 
 
 But she only shook her head, with the peevish persistence of weak 
 obstinacy, and continued vaguely to weep as one worn down by chill 
 circumstance. 
 
 Julian turned his eyes from her to the coffee-stall, in which the 
 sharp-featured youth now negligently leant, well satisfied with the 
 custom he had secured. Behind the youth's head it seemed to Julian 
 that the phantom flame hung trembling, as if blown by the light 
 wind of the morning. He laid his hand on the lady's left arm and
 
 THE PICCADILLY EPISODE 81 
 
 unconsciously closed his fingers firmly over the flesh, while, in a low 
 voice, he said to her : 
 
 "Look there!" 
 
 The lady of the feathers stopped crying abruptly, as if her tears 
 were suddenly frozen at their source. 
 
 " Where dearie ? " she said jerkily. " Whatever do you 
 mean ? " 
 
 " There, where the cups are hung up. Don't you see any- 
 thing ? " 
 
 But the lady was looking at him, and she now dropped her cup 
 with a crash to the pavement. 
 
 " There's a go," said the sharp-featured youth. " You're a nice 
 one, you are ! " 
 
 Without regarding his protest, the lady violently wrenched her 
 arm from Julian's grasp and recoiled from the stall. 
 
 " Le-go my arm," she babbled hysterically. " Le-go, I say. I 
 can't stand any more, no I can't." 
 
 " I'm not going to hurt you," said Julian, astonished at her out- 
 burst. 
 
 But she only repeated vehemently : 
 
 " Let go, let me go ! " 
 
 Backing away, she trod the fallen coffee-cup to fragments on the 
 pavement, and began to drift down Piccadilly, her face under the 
 feathers set so completely round over her shoulder, in observation of 
 Julian, that she seemed to be promenading backwards. And as she 
 went she uttered deplorable wailing sounds, which gradually increased 
 in volume. Apparently she considered that her life had been in 
 imminent danger, and that she saved herself by shrieks ; for, still 
 keeping her face towards the coffee-stall, she faded away in the 
 morning, until only the faint noise of her retreat betokened her 
 existence any longer. 
 
 The sharp-featured youth winked wearily at Julian from the midst 
 of his grove of coffee-cups. 
 
 " Nice things, women, sir," he ejaculated. " Good ayngels the 
 books calls 'em. Oh Gawd ! " 
 
 Julian paid him and walked away. 
 
 And as he went he found himself instinctively watching for the 
 fleeting shadow of a flame, trying to perceive it against the grey face 
 of a house, against the trunk of a tree, the dark green of a seat. 
 But the light of the mounting morning grew ever stronger and the 
 flame-shaped shadow did not reappear. 
 
 Julian reached his chambers, undressed abstractedly and went to 
 bed. Before he fell asleep he looked at Rip reposing happily at the 
 foot of the bed, and had a moment of snooting wonder that the 
 little dog was so completely comfortable with him. That it had 
 
 F
 
 82 FLA MES 
 
 flown at its master, who had always been kind to it, whom it had 
 always seemed to love hitherto, puzzled Julian. 
 
 But then so many things had puzzled him within the last few 
 days. 
 
 He stroked Rip with a meditative hand and lay down. Soon his 
 mind began to wander in the maze whose clue is sleep. He was 
 with Valentine, with Dr. Levillier, with the sharp-featured youth 
 and the lady of the feathers. They sat round a table and it was 
 dark; yet he could see. And the lady's feathers grew like the 
 beanstalk of Jack the giant-killer towards heaven and the land of 
 ogres. Then Julian climbed up and up till he reached the top of 
 the ladder. And it seemed to him that the feather ladder ended in 
 blue space and in air, and that far away he saw the outline of a 
 golden bar. And on this bar two figures leaned. One seemed an 
 angel, one a devil. Yet they had faces that were alike, and were 
 beautiful. They faded. 
 
 Julian seemed vaguely to hear the sharp featured youth say, 
 'Good ayngels ! Oh Gawd ! " 
 
 Was that the motto of his sleep ?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 
 
 WHEN Julian returned from Angelo's the next morning he found 
 lying upon the breakfast table a note, and, after the custom of many 
 people, before opening it, he read the address on the envelope two 
 or three times and considered who the writer might be. It struck 
 him at once that the writing ought to be familiar to him and 
 capable of instant identification. The name of his correspondent 
 was literally on the tip of his mind. Yet he could not utter it. And 
 so at last he broke the seal. Before reading the note he glanced at 
 the signature : " Valentine." 
 
 Julian was surprised. He knew now why he had seemed to 
 remember, yet had not actually remembered the handwriting. 
 Regarding it again, he found it curiously changed from Valentine's 
 usual hand, yet containing many points of resemblance. After a 
 while he came to the conclusion that it was like a bad photograph of 
 the original, imitating, closely enough, all the main points of the 
 original, yet leaving out all the character, all the delicacy of it. For 
 Valentine's handwriting had always seemed to Julian to express his 
 nature. It was rather large and very clear, but delicate, the letters 
 exquisitely formed, the lines perfectly even, neither depressed nor 
 {hinting upwards. This note was surely much more coarsely written 
 than usual. And yet of course it was Valentine's writing. Julian 
 wondered he had not known. He read the note at last : 
 
 " DEAR JULIAN, 
 
 " I am coming over to see you this afternoon 
 about five, and shall try and persuade Rip to restore me to his 
 confidence. I hope you will be in. Are you tired after last 
 night's experiences ? I never felt better. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " VALENTINE." 
 
 "And yet," Julian thought, "I should have guessed by your 
 writing that you were in some unusual frame of mind, either tired,
 
 84 FLAMES 
 
 or or " he looked again, and closely, at the writing, " or in 
 
 a temper less delightfully calm and seraphic than usual. Yet, it looks 
 actually a bad-tempered hand. Valentine's ! " Then he laughed, and 
 tossed the note carelessly into the fire that was crackling upon the 
 hearth. Rip lay by it, quietly sleeping. 
 
 Punctually at five o'clock Valentine appeared. Rip was still lying 
 happily before the fire, but directly the dog caught sight of its master 
 all the hair along the middle of its back bristled on end, and it 
 showed every symptom of acute distress and fury. Julian was 
 obliged to put it out of the room. 
 
 " What can have come over Rip, Valentine ? " he said as he came 
 back. " This sudden hatred of you is inexplicable." 
 
 "Absolutely," Valentine answered. " But it is sure to pass away. 
 There was something uncanny about that trance of mine which 
 frightened the little beggar." 
 
 " Perhaps. But the oddest thing is that while you were insensible 
 Rip lay with his head upon your arm as contented as possible. It 
 was only just as you began to show signs of life that he seemed to 
 turn against you. I can't understand it." 
 
 " Nor I. Have you seen Marr to-day ? " 
 
 "No. I haven't been to the Club. I am so glad you don't 
 know him." 
 
 Valentine laughed. He was lying back in a big chair, smoking 
 a cigarette. His face was unclouded and serene, and he had never 
 looked more entirely healthy. Indeed, he appeared much more 
 decisively robust than usual. Julian noticed this. 
 
 " Your trance seems positively to have done you good," he said. 
 
 " It certainly has not done me harm. My short death of the 
 senses has rested me wonderfully. I wonder if I am what is called a 
 medium." 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised if you are," Julian said. " But I don't 
 think I could be surprised at anything to-day. Indeed, I have 
 found myself dwelling with childish pleasure upon the most pre- 
 posterous ideas, hugging them to my soul, determining to believe in 
 them." 
 
 " Such as what ? " 
 
 " Well, such as this." 
 
 And then Julian told Valentine of his curious notion that some 
 wandering soul was beginning to companion him, and described how 
 he had thought he saw it when he was gazing at the old woman 
 in Grosvenor Place, and again when he was with the lady of the 
 feathers. 
 
 " But," Valentine said, "you say you were staring very hard at 
 the r Id woman ? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 85 
 
 " That might account for the matter of the first appearance of the 
 flame in daylight. If you look very steadily at some object, a kind 
 of slight mirage will often intervene between you and it." 
 
 "Perhaps. But I have seen this shadow of a flame when I was 
 not thinking of it or expecting it." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " Just now. As you came into the room I saw it float out at 
 that door." 
 
 " You are sure ? " 
 
 " I believe so. Yes, I am." 
 
 " But why should this soul, if soul it be, haunt you ? " 
 
 " I can't tell. Perhaps, Yal, you and I ought not to have played 
 at spiritualism as we should play at a game. Perhaps 
 
 Julian paused. He was looking anxious, even worried. 
 
 " Suppose we have not stopped in time," he said, 
 
 Yalentine raised his eyebrows. 
 
 "I don't understand." 
 
 Julian was standing exactly opposite to him, leaning against the 
 mantelpiece and looking down at him. 
 
 " We ought never to have sat again after our conversation with 
 the doctor, ' Julian said. " I feel that to-day, so strongly. I feel 
 that perhaps we have taken just the one step too far, the one step 
 in the dark that may be fatal." 
 
 " Fatal ! My dear Julian, you are unstrung by the events of the 
 night." 
 
 But the calm of Yalentine's voice did not seem to sway Julian. 
 He continued: 
 
 " Yalentine, now that I am with you, I am attacked by a strange 
 idea." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " That last night may have its consequences ; yes, even though 
 we strive to forget it, and to forget our sittings. If it should be so ! 
 If anything " 
 
 He was curiously upset, and did not seem able to-day to take the 
 influence of Yalentine's mood. Indeed, this new anxiety of his 
 was only born in Yalentine's presence, was communicated apparently 
 by him. 
 
 " Everything one does has its following consequence," Julian 
 said. 
 
 " It is the fashion to say so. I do not believe it. I believe, on 
 the contrary, that we often do things with a special view to the 
 doctrine of consequence, and that our intentions are frustrated by 
 the falseness of the doctrine. Suppose I kiss a woman. I may do 
 so with intention to make her love me, or, on the other hand, to 
 make her hate me. The chances are that she does neither the one
 
 86 FLAMES 
 
 nor the other. [She simply forgets all about such a trifle, and we go 
 on shaking hands politely* for the rest of our natural lives. Julian, 
 the memories of most people are like winter days very short." 
 
 " Perhaps. But there is some hidden thing in life whose memory 
 is everlasting. All the philosophers say so, especially those who are 
 inclined to deny the Deity. They put their faith in the chain of 
 cause and effect. What we have clone, you and I, Valentine, must 
 have an effect of some sort. 
 
 ' ; It will have a very bad effect upon yon, I can sec," said Valen- 
 tine smiling, "unless you pull yourself together. Come, this is 
 nonsense. We have sat once too often and the consequence followed, 
 and is over : I went into a trance. I have fortunately come out of 
 it, so the penalty, which you so firmly believe in, has been paid. 
 The score is cleared, Julian." 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " I have no doubt of it. Let us forget the whole matter, since to 
 remember it seems likely to affect those devils that make the hell of 
 the physical man the nerves. Let us forget- it. Where are you 
 dining to-night ? " 
 
 " Nowhere in particular. I have not thought about it/' Julian 
 said, rather listlessly. 
 
 u Dine with me then." 
 
 " Yes, Valentine." 
 
 Julian hesitated, then added. 
 
 " But not in Victoria Street, if you don't mind." 
 
 " At the Savoy then, or shall we say the Berkeley ? " 
 
 "Very well, the Berkeley." 
 
 " At eight o'clock. Good-bye till then. I must ask you to give 
 the shelter of your roof to Hip till he returns to a more reasonable 
 frame of mind about me." 
 
 When Valentine had gone Julian put on his coat, and walked 
 down to the club, ostensibly to look at the evening pnpers, really 
 because he had a desire to see Marr. His intention, if he did meet 
 the latter, was to question him closely as to the consequences which 
 might follow upon a sitting or series of sittings, undertaken by two 
 people for some reason unsuited to carry out such an enterprise 
 together. That Marr would be in the club he felt no shadow of 
 doubt. Apparently the club had for Marr all the attraction that 
 induces the new member to haunt the smoking- and reading-rooms of 
 his freshly acquired home during the first week or two of its posses- 
 sion. He was incessantly there, as Julian had had reason to 
 know. 
 
 But to-day proved to be an exception. Julian explored the dub 
 from end to end without finding the object of his search. Finally 
 he went to the hall porter.
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 87 
 
 " Is Mr. Marr in the club to-day ? " 
 
 "No, sir, he has not been in at all since yesterday afternoon." 
 
 "Oh, thanks." 
 
 Julian felt strongly, even absurdly, disappointed, and found him- 
 self wishing that he possessed Marr's private address. He would 
 certainly have called upon him. However he had no idea where 
 Marr lived, so there was nothing to be done. He went back to his 
 rooms, dressed for dinner, and was at the Berkeley by five minutes 
 past eight. The restaurant was very crowded that night, but 
 Valentine had secured a table in the window, and was waiting when 
 Julian arrived. The table next to theirs was the only one unoccupied 
 in the room. 
 
 The two friends sat down and began to eat rather silently in the 
 midst of the uproar of conversation round them. Valentine seemed 
 quite unconscious of the many glances directed towards him. He 
 never succeeded in passing unnoticed anywhere, and although he had 
 never done anything remarkable, was one of the best known men in 
 town merely by virtue of his unusual personality. 
 
 " There's the Victoria Street Saint," murmured a pretty girl to her 
 companion. " What a fortune that man could make on the stage." 
 
 " Yes, or as a pianist," responded the man rather enviously. " His 
 looks would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. 
 I never can understand how Cresswell manages to have such a com- 
 plexion in London. He must take precious good care of himself." 
 
 " Saints generally do. You see we live for time, they for eternity. 
 We only have to keep the wrinkles at bay for a few years, but they 
 want to look nice on the Judgment Day." 
 
 She was a little actress, and at this point she laughed to indicate 
 that she had said something smart. As her laugh was dutifully echoed 
 by the man who \vas paying for the dinner she felt deliciously clever 
 for the rest of the evening. 
 
 Presently Julian said, 
 
 " I went to the club this afternoon." 
 
 " Did you ? 
 
 " Yes. I wanted to have a talk with that fellow, Marr." 
 
 Valentine suddenly put down the glass of champagne which he was 
 in the act of raising to his lips. 
 
 ' But surely," he began, with some appearance of haste. Then he 
 seemed to check himself, and finished calmly. 
 
 " You found him, I suppose ? " 
 
 No." 
 
 " I thought he \vas perpetually there, apparently on the look-out 
 for you." 
 
 " Yes, but to-day he hadn't been in at all. Perhaps he has gone 
 out of town."
 
 88 FLAMES 
 
 "Ah, probably." 
 
 At this moment two men entered the restaurant and strolled 
 towards the table next to that at which Valentine and Julian sat. 
 One of them knew Julian and nodded as he passed. He was just on 
 the point of sitting down and unfolding his napkin when a sudden 
 thought seemed to strike him, and he came over and said to 
 Julian : 
 
 " You remember that dinner at Lady Crich ton's where we met the 
 other night ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Startling bit of news to-night, wasn't it ? Damned sudden ! " 
 
 Julian looked puzzled. 
 
 " What is Lady Crichton ill then? " 
 
 ''Lady Crichton ! No. I meant about that poor fellow, Marr." 
 
 Julian swung round in his seat and regarded the man full in the 
 face. 
 
 " Marr ! Why, what is it ? Has he had an accident ? " 
 
 " Dead ! " the other man said laconically, arranging the gardenia 
 in his coat, and taking a comprehensive survey of the room. 
 
 "Dead! " Julian repeated, without expression. " Dead ! " 
 
 "Yes. Well, bye-bye. Going on to the Empire ?" 
 
 He turned to go, but Julian caught his arm. 
 
 "Wait a moment. When did he die?" 
 
 " Last night. In the dead <>f the night, or in the early 
 morning." 
 
 " What of ? " 
 
 " They don't know. There's going to be an inquest. The poor 
 chap didn't die at home, but in a private hotel in the Euston Road, 
 the 'European.' He's lying there now. Funny sort of chap, but not 
 bad in his way. I expect 
 
 Here the man bent down and murmured something into Julian's 
 ear. 
 
 " Well, see you again presently. ' In the midst of life,' eh ? " 
 
 He lounged away and began applying his intellect to the dissection 
 of a sardine. 
 
 Julian turned round in his chair and again faced Valentine. But 
 he did not go on eating the cutlet in aspic that lay upon his plate. 
 He sat looking at Valentine, and at last said : 
 
 " How horribly sudden ! " 
 
 "Yes," Valentine answered sympathetically. " He must have had 
 a weak heart." 
 
 " I daresay. I suppose so. Valentine, I can't realr'se it." 
 
 " It must be difficult. A man whom you saw so recently, and I 
 suppose apparently quite well." 
 
 " Quite. Absolutely."
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 89 
 
 Julian sat silent again and allowed the waiter to take away his 
 plate with the untouched cutlet. 
 
 " I didn't like the man," he began at last. " But. still I'm 
 sorry, damned sorry about this. I wanted to see him again. He 
 was an awfully interesting fellow, Val, and, as I told you, might, I 
 believe, in time have gained a sort of influence over me ; not like 
 yours, of course, but he certainly had a power, a strength about 
 him, even a kind of fascination. He was not like other people 
 Ah " and he exclaimed impatiently " I wish now you had met 
 him." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " I scarcely know. But I should like you to have had the 
 experience. And then you are so intuitive about people, you might 
 have read him. I could not. And he was a fellow worth reading, 
 that I'm certain of. No, I won't have any mutton. I seem to have 
 lost my appetite over this." 
 
 Valentine calmly continued his dinner, while Julian talked 
 on about Marr rather excitedly. When they were having coffee 
 Valentine said : 
 
 " What shall we do to-night ? It is only a quarter past nine. 
 Shall we go anywhere ? " 
 
 " Oh no, I think not wait yes, we will." 
 
 Julian drank his coffee off at a gulp, in a way that would have 
 made him the despair of an epicure. 
 
 " Where shall we go then ? " 
 
 Julian answered : 
 
 " To the Euston Road. To the ' European.' " 
 
 " The European ! " ; 
 
 " Yes, Valentine, I must see Marr once more, even dead. And I 
 want you to see him. It was he who made the strangeness in our 
 lives. But for him these curious events of the last clays would not 
 have happened. And isn't it peculiar that he must have died just 
 about the time you were in your trance ? " 
 
 " I do not see that. The two things were totally uncon- 
 nected." 
 
 " Perhaps. I suppose so. But I must know how he died. I 
 must see what he looks like dead. You will come with me ? " 
 
 " If you wish it. But we may not be admitted." 
 
 " I will manage that somehow. Let us go." 
 
 Valentine got up. He showed neither definite reluctance nor 
 excitement. They put on their coats in the vestibule and went out 
 into the street. While they had been dining the weather, fine 
 during the day, had changed, and rain was falling in sheets. They 
 stood in the doorway while the hall porter called a cab. Piccadilly 
 on such a night as this looked, perhaps, more decisively dreary than
 
 go FLAMES 
 
 a rain-soaked country lane, or storm-driven sand-dunes by the sea. 
 For wet humanity, with wispy hair and swishing petticoats, draggled 
 with desire for shelter, is a piteous vision as it passes by. 
 
 Valentine and Julian regarded it, turning up their coat collars and 
 instinctively thrusting their hands deep into their pockets. Two 
 soldiers passed, pursued by a weary and tattered woman, at whom 
 they laughingly jeered as they adjusted the cloaks over their broad 
 shoulders. They were hurrying back to barracks and disregarded 
 the woman's reiterated exclamation that she would go with them, 
 having no home. A hansom went by with the glass down, a painted 
 face staring through it upon the yellow mud that splashed round the 
 horse's feet. Suddenly the horse slipped and came down. The 
 glass splintered as the painted and now screaming face was dashed 
 through it. A wet crowd of roughs and pavement vagabonds 
 gathered and made hoarse remarks on the woman's dress as she was 
 hauled out in her finery, bleeding and half fainting, her silk gown a 
 prey to the mud, her half naked shoulders a hostage to the wind. 
 Two men in opera hats walked towards their club, discussing a 
 divorce case, and telling funny stories through the rain. A very small, 
 pale, and filthy boy stood with bare feet upon the kerb-stone, and 
 cried damp matches. 
 
 " How horrible London is to-night," Julian said as he and Valen- 
 tine got into their cab. 
 
 "Yes. Why add to our necessary contemplation of its horrors ? 
 Why go on this mad errand ? " 
 
 " I want you to see Marr," Julian replied, with a curious obstinacy. 
 He pushed up the trap in the roof. 
 
 " Drive to the European Hotel in the Euston Road," he said to the 
 cabman. " D'you know it ? '' 
 
 " Yes, sir," the cabman said. He was smiling on his perch as he 
 cracked his whip and drove towards the Circus. 
 
 The glass had been let down and the two friends beheld a con- 
 tinuously blurred prospect of London framed in racing raindrops and 
 intersected by the wooden framework of the movable shutter. It 
 was at the same time fantastic and tumultuous. The glare of light at 
 the Circus shone over the everlasting procession of converging omni- 
 buses, the everlasting mob of pi-ostitutes and of respectable citizens 
 waiting to mount into the vehicles whose paint proclaimed their 
 destination. Active walkers darted dexterously to and fro over the 
 cobblestones, occasionally turning sharply to swear at a driver whose 
 cab had bespattered their black conventionality with clinging dirt. 
 The drivers were impassively insulting, as became men placed for the 
 moment in a high station of life. At the door of the Criterion 
 Restaurant an enormously fat and white bookmaker in a curly hat 
 and diamonds muttered remarks into the ear of an unshaven music-
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIX 91 
 
 hall singer. A gigantic "ohucker-out " observed them with the dull 
 gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar boy whined to them in vain 
 for alms, then fluttered on into obscurity. Fixed with corner 
 stones upon the wet pavement of the i( island " lay in an unwinking 
 row the contents bill of the evening papers, proclaiming in gigantic 
 black or red letters the facts of suicide, slander, divorce, murder, 
 railway accidents, fires and war complications. Dreary men read 
 them with dreary, unexcited eyes, then forked out half-pence to 
 raucous youths whose arms were full of damp sheets of pink paper. 
 A Guardsman kissed "Good-bye" to his trembling sweetheart as he 
 chivalrously assisted her into a Marylebone 'bus, and two shop-girls, 
 going home from work, nudged each othpr and giggled hysterically. 
 Four fat Frenchmen stood in the porch of the Monico violently 
 gesticulating and talking volubly at the tops of their voices. TAVO 
 English undergraduates pushed past them with a look of contempt, 
 and went speechlessly into the cafe beyond. A lady from Paris, all 
 red velvet and white ostrich tips, smoothed her cheek with her kid 
 glove meditatively, and glanced about in search of her fate of the 
 dark and silent hours. And then Valentine and Julian were in 
 the comparative dimness of Shaftesbury Avenue a huge red cross 
 on a black background started out of the gloom above a play-house. 
 Julian shuddered at it visibly. 
 
 " You are quite unstrung to-night, Julian," Valentino said. " Let 
 us turn the cab round and go home." 
 
 "No, no, my dear fellow, I am all right. It is only that I see 
 things to-night much more clearly than usual. I suppose it is owing 
 to something physical that every side of London seems to have 
 sprung into prominence. Of course I go about every day in Picca- 
 dilly, St. James's Street, everywhere ; but it is as if my eyes had been 
 always shut, and now they are open. I can see London to-night. 
 And that cross looked so devilishly ironical up there, as if it were 
 silently laughing at the tumult in the rain. Don't you feel London 
 to-night, too, Valentine ? " 
 
 " I always feel it." 
 
 " Tragically or comically ? " 
 
 " I don't know that I could say truly either. Calmly or con- 
 temptuously would rather be the word." 
 
 " You are always a philosopher. I can't be a philosopher when I 
 see those hordes of women standing hour after hour in the rain, and 
 those boys searching among them. I should be one of those boys 
 probably but for you." 
 
 " If you were, I doubt whether I should feel horrified." 
 
 "Not morally horrified, I dare say, but intellectually disgusted. 
 
 Eh ?" 
 
 " I am not sure whether I shall permit my intellect quite so much
 
 92 FLAMES 
 
 licence in the future as I have permitted it in the past," Valentine 
 said thoughtfully. 
 
 His blue eyes were on Julian, but Julian was gazing out on 
 Oxford Street, which they were crossing at that moment. Julian, 
 who had apparently continued dwelling on the train of thoughts 
 waked in him by the sight of the painted cross, ignored this remark 
 and said : 
 
 " It is not my moral sense which shuddered just now, I believe, 
 but my imagination. Sin is so full of prose, although many clever 
 writers have represented it as splendidly decorated with poetry. 
 Don't you think so, Yal ? And it is the prose of sin I realise so 
 vividly just now." 
 
 " The wet flowers on the waiting hats, the cold raindrops on the 
 painted faces, the damp boots trudging to find sin, the dark clouds 
 pouring a benediction on it. I know what you mean. But the 
 whole question is one of weather, I think. Vanity Fair on a hot, 
 sweet summer night, with a huge golden moon over Westminster, 
 soft airs and dry pavements would make you see this city in a 
 different light. And which of the lights is the true one ? " 
 
 " I daresay neither." 
 
 " Why not both ? The smartest coat has a lining, you know. I 
 daresay fhere are velvet sins as well as plush sins, and the man who 
 can find the velvet is the lucky fellow. Sins feel like plush to me, 
 however, and I dislike plush. So I am not the lucky fellow." 
 
 " No, Valentine, you are wrong. I'm pretty sure all virtue is 
 velvet and all vice is plush. So you stick to velvet." 
 
 " I don't know. Ask the next pretty dressmaker you meet. 
 Bloomsbury is a genteel inferno on a wet night." 
 
 They traversed it smoothly on asphalte ways. All the time 
 Valentine was watching Julian with a fixed and narrow scrutiny, 
 which Julian failed to notice. The rows of dull houses seemed end- 
 less, and endlessly alike. 
 
 " I am sure all of them are full of solicitors," said Valentine. 
 
 Presently in many fanlights they saw the mystic legend, " Apart- 
 ments." Then there were buildings that had an aged air and sported 
 broken windows. Occasionally, on a background of red glass lit by 
 a gas jet from behind, sat the word " Hotel." A certain grimy 
 degradation swam in the atmosphere of these streets. Their aspect 
 was subtly different from the Bloomsbury thoroughfares, which look 
 actively church-going, and are full of the shadows of an everlasting 
 respectability which pays its water rates and sends occasional con- 
 science money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. People looked 
 furtive, and went in and out of the houses furtively. They'crawled 
 rather than pranced, and their bodies bore themselves with a 
 depression that seemed indiscreet. Occasional men with dripping
 
 A DRIVE IN THE RAIN 93 
 
 umbrellas knocked at the doors under the red glass, and disappeared 
 into narrow passages inhabited by small iron umbrella stands. Night, 
 brooded here like a dyspeptic raven with moulting tail feathers and 
 ragged wings. But London is eloquent of surprises. The cab turned 
 a corner, and instantly they were in a wide and rain-swept street, 
 long and straight and lined with reserved houses, that shrank back 
 from the publicity of the passing traffic at the end of narrow alleys 
 protected by iron gates. Over many of these gates appeared lit arches 
 of glass on which names were inscribed: "Albion Hotel," "Valetta 
 Hotel," " Imperial Hotel," " Cosmopolitan Hotel " great names for 
 small houses. These houses had front doors with glass panels, and 
 all the panels glowed dimly with gas. 
 
 The cab flashed by them, and Julian read the fleeting names, until 
 his eyes were suddenly saluted with " European Hotel." 
 
 Violently the cabman drew up. The smoking horse was squeezed 
 upon its haunches, and its feet slithered harshly along the stones. 
 It tried to sit down, was hauled up by the reins, and stood trembling 
 as the right wheel of the cab collided with the pavement edge, and 
 the water in the gutter splashed up as if projected from a spray. 
 
 " Beg pardon, gents. I thought it was a bit further on," said the 
 cabby, leering down cheerfully. " Nice night, sir, ain't it ? " 
 
 He shook the reluctant drops of moisture from his waterproof 
 shrouded hat, and drove off. 
 
 Valentine opened the damp iron gate, and they walked up the 
 paved alley to the door.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE 
 
 OPENING the door they found themselves in a squalid passage. A 
 room on the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was 
 a long window giving on to the passage, and as the shrill tinkle of a 
 bell announced their entrance this window was pushed up, and the 
 large red face and furtive observant eyes of a man stared upon them 
 inquiringly. 
 
 " Do you require a room for the night ? " he asked, in a husky 
 voice, invaded by a strong French accent. " Because 
 
 " No," interrupted Julian. 
 
 The man nodded, and, strange to say, with apparent content. 
 
 " There is trouble in my house," he said. " I am unlucky ; I come 
 to England from my country to earn an honest living, and before 
 two years, I have the police here last night." 
 
 " Yes," said Julian. " I know." 
 
 " What ? You know it? Well, ib is not my fault. The gentle- 
 man come last night with a lady, his wife, I suppose. How am I to 
 know ? He ask for a room. He look perfectly well. I give them 
 the room. They go to bed. At four o'clock in the morning I hear 
 a bell ring. I get up. I go on the landing to listen. I hear tlio 
 bell again. I run to the chamber of the lady and gentleman. The 
 lady is gone. The gentleman falls back on the bed as I come in ami 
 dies. Mon Dieu ! It is '' 
 
 He suddenly paused in his excited narrative. Valentine had 
 moved his position slightly and was now standing almost immedi- 
 ately under the gas lamp that lit the glass door. 
 
 " You you are relation of him ? " he said. " You come to see 
 him ? " 
 
 " I have come to see him certainly," said Valentine. " But I am 
 no relation of his. This gentleman," and he pointed to Julian, " knew 
 him well, and wished to look at him once more." 
 
 The landlord seemed puzzled. He glanced from Valentine to 
 Julian, then back again to Valentine. 
 
 " But," he began once more addressing himself to the latter, "you
 
 THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE 95 
 
 are like there is something ; when the poor gentleman fell on the 
 bed and died he had your eyes. Yes, yes, you are relation 
 of him." 
 
 " Xo," Valentine said, " you are mistaken." 
 
 " I should think so," exclaimed Julian. " PoorMarr's face was as 
 utterly different from yours, Valentine, as darkness is different from 
 light." 
 
 " Xo, no, it is not the eyes of the gentleman," the landlord con- 
 tinued, leaning forward through his window, and still violently 
 scrutinising Valentine, < ; it is not the eyes. But there is something 
 the voice, the manner yes, I say there is something, I cannot 
 tell." 
 
 "You are dreaming, my friend." Valentine calmly interposed. 
 " Xow, Julian, what do you want to do ? " 
 
 Julian came forward and leant his arm on the counter. 
 
 " I am the poor gentleman's great friend," he said. " You must 
 let me see him." 
 
 The landlord held up his fat hands with a large gesticulation of 
 refusal. 
 
 " I cannot, sir. To-morrow they remove him. They sit on the 
 poor gentleman 
 
 " I know, the inquest. All this is very hard upon you, an honest 
 man trying to make an honest living." 
 
 Julian put some money into one of the agitated hands. 
 
 " My friend and I only wish to see him for a moment." 
 
 " Monsieur, I cannot. I 
 
 Julian insinuated another sovereign into his protesting fingers. 
 They took it as an anemone takes a shrimp, and made a gesture of 
 abdication. 
 
 " Well, if Monsieur is the friend of the poor gentleman, I have not 
 the heart, I am tender-hearted, I am foolish 
 
 He disappeared muttering from the window, and in a moment 
 appeared at a door on the left, disclosing himself now fully as a 
 degraded, flaccid looking, frowsy ruffian, of a very low type, flashily 
 dressed, and of a most unamiable expression. Taking a candlestick 
 from a dirty marble-topped slab that projected from the passage 
 wall, he struck a match, lit the candle, and preceded them up the 
 narrow flight of stairs, his boots creaking loudly at every step. On 
 the landing at the top a smart maidservant with a very pale face 
 reconnoitred the party for a moment with furtive curiosity, then 
 flitted away in the darkness to the upper regions of the house. 
 
 The landlord paused by a door numbered with a black 
 number. 
 
 " He is in here," he whispered hoarsely. " To-morrow they sit on 
 him. After that he go from me. Mon Dieu ! I am glad when he is
 
 96 FLAMES 
 
 gone. My custom he is spoilt. My hou.33 get a bad name, and like 
 a dog they hang him. Mon Dieu ! " 
 
 He opened the door stealthily, forming " St ! " with his fat, coarse 
 lips. 
 
 " I light the gas. It is all dark." 
 
 " No, no," Julian said, taking the candle from him, " I will do 
 that. Go down." 
 
 He motioned him away, and entered the room, followed by 
 Valentine, at whom the landlord again stared with a greedy 
 consideration and curiosity, before turning to retreat softly down 
 the narrow stairs. 
 
 They found themselves in a good-sized room, typically of London. 
 It was full of the peculiar and unmistakable metropolitan smell, a 
 stale odour of the streets that suggests smuts to the mind. Two 
 Avindows, with a long' dingy mirror set between their,, looked out 
 towards the Euston Koad. Venetian blinds and thin white curtains 
 looped with yellow ribbon, shrouded them. On a slab that stuck 
 out under the mirror was placed a bundle of curling-pins tied with 
 white tape, a small brush and comb, and a bottle of Cherry Blossom 
 scent. Near the mirror stood a narrow sofa covered with red rep. Upon 
 this lay a man's upturned top hat, in the corner of which reposed a 
 pair of reindeer gloves. A walking stick with a gold top stood 
 against the wall in a corner by the marble mantelpiece. In the 
 middle of the room lay a small open portmanteau, disclosing* a 
 disorder of shirts, handkerchiefs and boots, a cheque-book, a bottle 
 of brandy and some brushes. By the fireplace there was a vulgar 
 looking armchair upholstered in red. The room was full of the 
 faint sound of London voices and London traffic. 
 
 Julian went straight up to the gas chandelier and lit all three 
 jets. His action was hurried and abrupt. Then he set the candle 
 down beside the bundle of curling-pins, and turned sharply round to 
 face the bed. The room was now a glare of light, and in this glare 
 of light the broad bed with its white counterpane and sheets stood 
 out harshly enough. The sheets were turned smoothly down under 
 the blue chin of the dead man, who lay there upon his back, his face, 
 with fast shut eyes dusky white, or rather grey, among the pillows. 
 As Julian looked upon him he exclaimed : 
 
 " Good God, it isn't Marr ! Valentine, it isn't Marr ! " 
 
 " Not ? " 
 
 " No. And yet wait a moment 
 
 Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the 
 corpse. Then he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at 
 the other side of the bed. 
 
 "Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a 
 chair to the bedside he sank down upon it. " This is strange.
 
 THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE 97 
 
 What is it death does to a man ? Yes, this is Marr. I see now ; 
 but so different, so altered. The whole expression ; oh, it is almost 
 incredible." 
 
 He stared again upon the face. 
 
 It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the 
 face of a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very 
 various things. No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, com- 
 pletely characteristic. Yet this face was full of a character that 
 seemed curiously at war with the shape of the features and with the 
 position of the closed eyes, which were very near together. Julian, 
 in describing Marr to Valentine, had pronounced him Satanic, and 
 this dead face was, in truth, somewhat Mephistophelean. An artist 
 might well have painted it upon his canvas as a devil. But he 
 must have reproduced merely the features and colouring, the blue, 
 shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets ; for the expression of his 
 devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr dead 
 looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken 
 himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to 
 realise the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and 
 who smiles, thinking " that ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no 
 longer. I am free." The dead face was wonderfully happy. 
 
 Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered 
 exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head 
 of the bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers 
 look. 
 
 Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man. 
 
 There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon 
 the tall windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them 
 with an unceasing chilly vivacity. Lights from the street nickered 
 through the blinds to join the glare of the gas. All the music of 
 the town wandered round the house as a panther wanders round a 
 bungalow by night. And the thin stream of people flowed by on 
 the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of the narrow garden. 
 They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of life, details of 
 home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and common 
 hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close by 
 these two friends, under three flaring gas jets, watched the unwinking 
 dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, 
 without looking up, said : 
 
 " Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. 
 Formerly he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were 
 thanking God because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, 
 it's just like that. Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued." 
 
 As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of 
 the bed at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said 
 
 G
 
 g8 FLAMES 
 
 nothing. For he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It 
 seemed to him that there, under the hard glare of the gas lamps, the 
 soul of Marr spoke, stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. 
 That was like a possession of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil 
 chose for a moment to lurk and to do evil in the sanctuary of a 
 church, to blaspheme at the very altar. Valentine did not speak. 
 He was looking down on the dead serenity of Marr, vindictively. A 
 busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes, meditating vigorously 
 upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following him craftily to 
 the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely if it might be. 
 
 This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was 
 pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly 
 hatred. 
 
 " Valentine ! " Julian cried at last. 
 
 Valentine looked up. 
 
 And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend 
 and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The 
 death chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no 
 longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind. 
 
 " Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said. 
 
 Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him. 
 
 Julian examined him narrowly. 
 
 "Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine." 
 
 " Opposite to you ! Why not ? " 
 
 " Nothing, nothing. Or everything. What is the matter with 
 this room, and me, and you ? And why is Marr so changed ? " 
 
 " How is he changed ? You know I have never seen his face 
 before." 
 
 " You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was 
 Marr as I knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away 
 and left something quite different. Let us go." 
 
 Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside 
 the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas chandelier. He had 
 turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the 
 two others when Julian checked him. 
 
 " No, leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in 
 the light." 
 
 They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the 
 staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house 
 a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of 
 the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her. 
 
 " You showed the gentleman the gentleman who is dead to his 
 room last night ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Oh, sir, I can't believe he's really gone so sudden like." 
 
 " Then you saw the lady with him ? "
 
 THE HUSTON ROAD EPISODE 99 
 
 " Yes, sir, of course. Oh- 
 
 " Hush ! What was she like ? " 
 
 The housemaid's nose curled derisively. 
 
 " Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not 
 at all like the poor gentleman, sir." 
 
 "Young?" 
 
 " Not to say old, sir. No, I couldn't bring that against her. She 
 wore a hat, sir, and feathers well, more than ever growed on one 
 ostrich, I'll be bound." 
 
 " Feathers ! " 
 
 A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, 
 wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid 
 questions to the housemaid. But she could only say again that 
 Marr's companion had been a vei-y common person, a very common 
 sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she the 
 housemaid would care to go out of a Sunday. Julian tipped her 
 and left her amazed upon the dim landing. Then he and Valentine 
 descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in the passage in an 
 attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken unawares by 
 their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's face, 
 still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this, and 
 recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between 
 Man* and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently 
 unremembered, had remained lurking in his mind and was accoun- 
 table for his own curious deception. Or could it be that there really 
 was some vague, fleeting resemblance between the dead man and the 
 living which the landlord saw continuously, he only at moments ? 
 Looking again at Valentine he could not believe it. No, the 
 landlord was deceived now, as he had been in the death chamber 
 above stairs. 
 
 " May we come into your room for a moment ? " Julian asked the 
 man. " I want to put to you a few questions." 
 
 " But certainly, sir, with pleasure." 
 
 He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum 
 beyond the glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, 
 crowded with fumes of stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or 
 three French prints of more than doubtful decency. A table with a 
 bottle and two or three glasses ranged on it occupied the middle of 
 the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil Bias was thrown in a 
 crumpled attitude. One gas burner flared, unshaded by any glass 
 globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused the 
 landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously 
 at the inartistic improprieties of the prints. 
 
 " Did you let in the gentleman who came last night ? " asked 
 Julian.
 
 ioo FLAMES 
 
 " But sir, of course. I am always here. I mind my house. I 
 see that only respect " 
 
 " Exactly. I don't doubt that for a moment. What was the 
 lady like, the lady who accompanied him ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir, very chic, very pretty." 
 
 " Didn't you hear her go out in the night ? " 
 
 The landlord looked for a moment as if he were considering the 
 advisableness of a little bluster. He stared hard at Julian and 
 thought better of it. 
 
 " Not a sound, not a mouse. Till the bell rang I slept. Then 
 she is gone ! " 
 
 " Would you recognise her again ? " 
 
 " But no. I hardly look at her and I see so many." 
 
 "Yes, yes, no doubt. And the gentleman. When you went into 
 his room ? " 
 
 "Ah. He was half sitting up. I come in. He just look at me. 
 He fall back. He is dead. He say nothing. Then I I run." 
 
 " That's all I wanted to know," Julian said. " Valentine, shall we 
 go?" 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 The landlord seemed relieved at their decision, and eagerly let 
 them out into the pouring rain. When they were in the dismal 
 strip of garden Julian turned and looked up at the lit windows of 
 the bedroom on the first storey. Marr was lying there in the bright 
 illumination at ease, relieved of his soul. But, as Julian looked, the 
 two windows suddenly grew dark. Evidently the economical 
 landlord had hastened up, observed the waste of the material he had 
 to pay for, and abruptly stopped it. At the gate they called a cab. 
 
 " No, let us have the glass up," Julian said. " A drop of rain 
 more or less doesn't matter. And I want some air." 
 
 " So do I," said Valentine. " The atmosphere of that house was 
 abominable." 
 
 " Of course there can be no two opinions as to its character,'' 
 Julian said. 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " What a dreary place to die in ! " 
 
 " Yes. But does it matter where one dies ? I think not. I 
 attach immense importance to where one lives." 
 
 " It seems horrible to come to an end in such a place, to have had 
 that wretched Frenchman as the only witness of one's death. Still, 
 I suppose it is only foolish sentiment. Valentine, did you notice 
 how happy Marr looked ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Didn't you ? I thought you watched him almost as if you 
 wondered as I did."
 
 THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE 101 
 
 " How could I ? I had never seen him before." 
 
 " It was curious the landlord seeing a likeness between you and 
 him." 
 
 " Do you think so ? The man naturally supposed one of us might 
 be a relation, as we came to see Marr. I should not suppose there 
 could be much resemblance." 
 
 " There is none. It's impossible. There can be none ! " 
 
 They rattled on towards Piccadilly, back through the dismal 
 thoroughfares, towards the asphalte ways of Bloomsbury. Presently 
 Julian said : 
 
 " I wish I had seen Marr die." 
 
 " But why, Julian ? Why this extraordinary interest in a man 
 you knew so slightly and for so short a time ? " 
 
 " It's because I can't get it out of my head that he had something 
 to do with our sittings, more than we know." 
 
 " Impossible." 
 
 " I am almost certain the doctor thought so. I must tell him 
 about Marr's death. Valentine, let us drive to Harley Street now." 
 
 Valentine did not reply at once, and Julian said : 
 
 " I will tell the cabman." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 Julian gave the order. 
 
 " I wonder if he will be in," Julian said presently. " What is the 
 time ? " 
 
 He took out his watch and held it up sideways until the light of a 
 gas lamp flashed on it for a moment. 
 
 " Just eleven. So late ? I am surprised." 
 
 " We were a good while at the ' European.' " 
 
 " Longer than I thought. Probably the doctor will have come in, 
 even if he has been out dining. Ah, here we are ! " 
 
 The cab drew up. Julian got out and rang the bell in the rain. 
 
 " Is Doctor Levillier at home ? " 
 
 " No, sir. He is out dining. But I expect him every moment. 
 Will you come in and wait ? " said the manservant, who knew Julian 
 well. 
 
 " Thanks, I think I will. I rather want to see him. I will just 
 ask Mr. Cresswell. He's with me to-night." 
 
 Julian returned to the cab, in which Valentine was sitting. 
 
 " The doctor will probably be home in a few minutes. Let us go 
 in and wait for him." 
 
 " Yes, you go in." 
 
 " But surely " 
 
 " No, Julian," Valentine said, and suddenly there came into his 
 voice a weariness, " I am rather tired to-night. I think I'll go home 
 to bed."
 
 " Oh," Julian said. He was obviously disappointed. He hesi- 
 tated. 
 
 " Shall I come too, old chap ? You're sure you're certain that 
 you are not feeling ill after last night ? " 
 
 He leant with his foot on the step of the cab to look at Valentine 
 more closely. 
 
 " No, I am all right. Only tired and sleepy, Julian. Well, will 
 ' you come or stay ? " 
 
 " I think I will stay. I want badly to have a talk with the 
 doctor." 
 
 " All right. Good night." 
 
 " Good night ! " 
 
 Valentine called his address to the cabman, and the man whipped 
 up his horse. Just as the cab was turning round Valentine leaned 
 out over the wooden door and cried to Julian who was just going 
 into the house : 
 
 " Give my best regards to the doctor, Julian." 
 
 The cab disappeared, splashing through the puddles. 
 
 Julian stood still on the doorstep. 
 
 " Who said that, Lawler ? " he asked. 
 
 The servant looked at him in surprise. 
 
 " Mr. Valentine, sir." 
 
 "Mr. Valentine?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Of course, of course. But his voice, didn't it didn't you 
 notice 
 
 " It was Mr. Valentine's usual voice, sir," Lawler said, with 
 increasing astonishment. 
 
 " I'm upset to-night," Julian muttered. 
 
 He went into the house and Lawler closed the street door.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE HARLEV STREET EPISODE 
 
 JULIAN was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate 
 to show him into the doctor's very private room, a room dedicated to 
 ease, and to the cultivation of a busy man's hobbies. No patient 
 ever told the sad secrets of his body here. Here were no medical 
 books, no appliances for the writing of prescriptions, no hints of the 
 profession of the owner. Several pots of growing roses gravely 
 shadowed forth the doctor's fondness for flowers. A grand piano 
 mutely spoke of his love for music. Many of the books which lay 
 about were novels, one, soberly dressed in a vellum binding, being 
 Ouida's " Dog of Flanders." All the photographs which studded 
 the silent chamber with a reflection of life were photographs of 
 children, except one. That was Valentine's. The hearth, on which 
 a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants, Rupert and 
 Mab, the doctor's mastift's, who took their evening ease, pillowing 
 their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking 
 clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of 
 Master Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That 
 fact alone made it original. A .large cage of sleeping canaries was 
 covered with a cloth. The room was long and rather narrow, the 
 only door being at one end. On the walls hung many pictures, some 
 of them gifts from the artists. Some foils lay on an ottoman in a 
 far corner. The doctor fenced admirably, and believed in the exercise 
 as a tonic to the muscles and a splendid drill-sergeant to the eyes. 
 
 As Julian came into the room, which was lit only by wax candles, 
 he could not help comparing it with the room he had just left in 
 which the body of Marr lay. The atmosphere of a house is a strange 
 thing, and almost as definite to the mind as is an appearance to the 
 eye. A sensitive nature takes it in like a breath of foetid or of fresh 
 air. The atmosphere of the European Hotel had been sinister and 
 dreary, as of a building consecrated to hidden deeds, and inhabited 
 mainly by wandering sinners. This home of a great doctor was 
 open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The sleeping dogs, 
 heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the best hall-
 
 io 4 FLAMES 
 
 mark. It was a house judging at least by this room for happy 
 rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world 
 knew well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos eating. The 
 doctor sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it 
 by even so much as writing a postcard within its four walls. 
 
 Julian stroked the dogs, who woke to wink upon him majestically, 
 and sat down. Lawler quietly departed and he was left alone. 
 When he first entered the house he had been disappointed at the 
 departure of Valentine. Now he felt rather glad to have the doctor 
 to himself for a quiet half-hour. A conversation of two people is, 
 under certain circumstances, more complete than a conversation of 
 three, however delightful the third may chance to be. Julian placed 
 Valentine before all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to-night 
 he was glad that Valentine had gone home to bed. It seems some- 
 times as if affection contributes to the making of a man self-con- 
 scious. Julian had a vague notion that the presence of his greatest 
 friend to-night might render him self-conscious. He scarcely knew 
 why. Then he looked at the mastiffs, and wondered at the extra- 
 ordinary difference between men and the companion animals whom 
 they love and who love them. What man, however natural, however 
 independent and serene, could emulate the majestic and deliberate 
 abandon of a big dog courted and caressed by a blazing fire and a 
 soft rug ? Man has not the dignity of soul to be so grandly natural. 
 Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed petticoats of affecta- 
 tion which he wears, give him the kennel, the collar, the muzzle, the 
 whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to subjection. And Julian, 
 as he watched Rupert and Mab, wrapped in large lethargic dreams, 
 found, himself pitying them, as civilised man vaguely pities all other 
 inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things ! Sombre agitations 
 were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight against. 
 No devils and angels played at football with their souls. Their 
 liaisons were clear, uncomplicated by the violent mental drum-taps 
 that set the passions marching so often at a quick step in the wrong 
 direction. And Julian knelt down on the hearth-rug and laid his strong 
 young hands on their broad heads. Slowly they opened their veiled 
 eyes and blinked. One, Rupert, struck a strict tail feebly upon the 
 carpet in token of acquiescence and gratified goodwill. Mab heaved 
 herself over until she rested more completely upon her side, and 
 allowed an enormous sigh to rumble through her monotonously. 
 Julian enjoyed that sigh. It made him for the moment an optimist, 
 as a happy child makes a dreary old man shivering on the edge of 
 death an optimist. Dogs are blessed things. That was his thought. 
 And just then the door at the end of the room opened quietly, and 
 Dr. Levillier came in, with a cloak on and his crush hat in his 
 hand.
 
 THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE 105 
 
 " I am glad to see you, Addison," he said. 
 
 The dogs shook themselves up on to their legs and laid their heads 
 against his knees. 
 
 " Lawler, please bring my gruel." 
 
 " Yes, sir ! " 
 
 " Addison, will you have brandy or whisky ? " 
 
 "Whisky, please, Doctor." 
 
 Lawler took his master's cloak and hat and the doctor came up to 
 the fire. 
 
 " So Valentine has gone home to bed ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " He's all right, I hope?" 
 
 " Yes. Indeed, Doctor, I thought him looking more fit than usual 
 to-day, more alive than I have often seen him." 
 
 " I noticed that last night, when he revived from his trance. It 
 
 struck me very forcibly, very forcibly indeed. But you " and 
 
 the doctor's eyes were on Julian's face " look older than your age 
 to-night, my boy." 
 
 He sat down and lit a cigar. The mastiffs coiled themselves at his 
 feet rapturously. They sighed, and he sighed too, quietly in satis- 
 faction. He loved the one hour before midnight, the hour of perfect 
 rest for him. Putting his feet on Rupert's back, he went on : 
 
 " Last night's events upset you seriously, I see, young and strong 
 though you are. But the most muscular men are more often the 
 prey of their nervous systems than most people are aware. Spend a 
 few quiet days. Fence in the morning. Ride out in the country, 
 not in the Park. Get off your horse now and then, tie him up at a 
 lych-gate and sit in a village church. Listen to the amateur organist 
 practising ' Abide with me,' and the ' Old Hundredth,' on the Leiblich 
 CJedacht and the Dulciana, with the bourdon on the pedals. There's 
 nothing like that for making life seem a slow stepper instead of a 
 racer. And take Valentine with you. I should like to sit with 
 him in a chui'ch at twilight, when the rooks were going home, and 
 the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of 
 holidays." 
 
 " Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes, I am feeling a bit out of 
 sorts to-night. Last night, you see and then to-day." 
 
 " Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting but no, forgive 
 me. I've got your promise. Well, what is it ? " 
 
 Julian replied quickly : 
 
 " That man I told you about, Marr, is dead." 
 
 Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent 
 allusions to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had 
 impressed him as it had impressed Valentine. However, he only 
 said :
 
 io6 FLAMES 
 
 " Heart disease ? " 
 
 " I don't know. There is going to be an inquest." 
 " When did he die ? " 
 
 " Last night, or rather at four in the morning ; just as Valentine 
 came out of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the 
 clock striking ? " 
 
 "Certainly I do. But why do you connect the two circum- 
 stances ? " 
 
 " Doctor, how can you tell that I do ? " 
 " By your expression, the tone of your voice." 
 "You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told 
 Valentine so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body." 
 " You have just come from that death-bed, now ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he 
 left to the last the immense impression made upon him by the 
 expression of the dead man. 
 
 " He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognise 
 him," he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct 
 contradiction possible of his face, alive. He was not the same 
 man." 
 
 " The man was gone, you see, Addison." 
 
 " Yes. But then what was it which remained to work this change 
 in the body ? " 
 
 " Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop 
 of limbs and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, 
 work up an impression." 
 
 " But there was something more here, more than peace. There 
 was a well, a strong happiness and a goodness. And -Marr had 
 always struck me as an atrociously bad lot. I think I told you." 
 
 The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which 
 was a small basin of gruel and soda water bottles, a decanter of 
 whisky, and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the 
 doctor, still meditatively, took the basin of gruel on to his knees. As 
 he sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting there in 
 the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted gently on 
 the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes fixed on the 
 fire. He did not speak again until he was half-way through his 
 gruel. Then he said : 
 
 " And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history ? " 
 " No, nothing." 
 
 " I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of 
 study. If I knew it I might understand the startling change from 
 the aspect of evil to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man 
 must have been far less evil than you thought him, for dead faces
 
 THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE 107 
 
 express something that was always latent, if not known, in the 
 departed natures. Ignorantly you possibly attributed to Marr a 
 nature far more horrible than he ever really possessed." 
 
 But Julian answered : 
 
 " I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was 
 one of the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. 
 I never felt about any man as I did about him ! And he impressed 
 others in the same way." 
 
 " I wish I had seen him," Dr. Levillier said. 
 
 An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him. 
 
 " He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How ? In what way exactly ? " 
 
 Julian hesitated. 
 
 " It's difficult to say," he answered. " Awfully difficult to put such 
 a thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great 
 power of intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he 
 suggested a bad, a damnably bad character. A woman said to me 
 once about him that it was like an emanation." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table 
 beside him. 
 
 " By the way, where did Marr live ? Anywhere in my direction ? 
 Would he, for instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by 
 Regent Street 1 " 
 
 " I don't know at all where he lived." 
 
 " Have you ever seen him with animals, with dogs, for instance ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have 
 avoided him." 
 
 "Well, but dogs avoid perfection too." 
 
 " Hardly, Addison." 
 
 " But Rip and Valentine ! " 
 
 The remark struck the doctor, that was obvious. He pushed his 
 right foot slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking 
 up the dog's loose skin in heavy folds. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do 
 you mean to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine 
 to-day ? " 
 
 " This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had 
 touched him I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put 
 him out of the room." 
 
 " H'm ! " 
 
 " Isn't it unaccountable ? " 
 
 " I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If
 
 io8 FLAMES 
 
 Rupert and Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it 
 would strike at my heart more fiercely than the deed of any man 
 could." 
 
 He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back. 
 
 " The cheap satirist," he said, " is for ever comparing the fickleness 
 of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that. 
 I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many 
 men whom I could, and would, implicitly trust." 
 
 " There is one, Doctor, whom we both know." 
 
 "Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. 
 And yet his own dog flies at him." 
 
 Dr. Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly 
 that he could not dismiss it from his mind. 
 
 " There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said, 
 "yet with all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I 
 cannot divine it. Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cress- 
 well. Look after his health. Notice if he seems natural and happy. 
 Does he eat as usual ? " 
 
 " Rather. He did to-day." 
 
 " And he seems content with you ? " 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Well, all I can say is that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog 
 nature. He is uncanny." 
 
 " Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. " But everything 
 has become uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, 
 when I look back into the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself 
 whether I am a fool, or dreaming, or whether my health is going to 
 the deuce. London seems different. I look on things strangely. I 
 fancy, I imagine " 
 
 He broke off. Then he said : 
 
 " By Jove, Doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into 
 my mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum." 
 
 " It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the 
 men at White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good 
 heart. But it is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a 
 train runs into the Black Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. 
 In a day or two probably your lungs, which have drawn it in, will 
 expel it again." 
 
 He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said : 
 
 " You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined 
 to call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among 
 male muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning 
 organ, and the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a 
 week. Forget Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power 
 of mesmerism. And don't ask Valentine to go away with you."
 
 THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE 109 
 
 The last remark surprised Julian. 
 
 " But why not ? " he asked. 
 
 " Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that 
 have turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that 
 your mind is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, 
 besides yourself, two people only, Marr and Cresswell." 
 
 " Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian 
 exclaimed, like a schoolboy. " I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going 
 round and round. That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that 
 cursed circle of our sittings, and so I insanely connect them with 
 one another. I actually began to think to-night that Marr died, 
 poor fellow, because well 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with 
 our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of 
 any kind. Could could its exercise cause injury to his health ? " 
 
 But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet, and yet very 
 complete and self-possessed, manner. 
 
 " Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. " It is folly to connect 
 them together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, " rotten of you. 
 Go away to-morrow." 
 
 " I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you ? " 
 
 " Your friendship, my boy." 
 
 Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair and they smoked in silence, 
 both of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night 
 hour. Si s nce he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had 
 been much happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated 
 until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, 
 above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his 
 calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grdce to the uneasiness of a 
 spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide 
 medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbra- 
 geous intellectuality a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the 
 ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking 
 in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's ghosts were laid. He 
 smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and comfortable. The 
 dogs echoed and emphasised all the healing power of their small and 
 elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of large limbs and 
 supine strength, the fire shone over them till their fawn-coloured 
 coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The delightful 
 sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction, sang in 
 their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell with the 
 regularity of waves on the sea. Now and then one of them slowly 
 stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on 
 presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort,
 
 no FLAMES 
 
 and of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant 
 silence now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. 
 That silence rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished 
 steadily, steadily as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the 
 very end. And the grey ashes dropped away of their own accord, 
 and Julian's mind shed its grey ashes too and glowed serenely. The 
 dogs expanded their warm bodies on the hearth, and his nature 
 expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity of mute evening 
 emotion. 
 
 " How comfortable this is, Doctor," he murmured at last. 
 
 " Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go 
 slowly from his lips. " I wish I could give to all the poor creatures 
 in this city just one good hour." 
 
 They smoked their cigars out. 
 
 " I ought to go," Julian said lazily. 
 
 " No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a 
 pleasure. It loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night you 
 and I can get no harm from the experiment." 
 
 He handed Julian the cigar box. 
 
 " We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, 
 looking at their happiness with a shining satisfaction. f " Here are 
 the matches. Light up." 
 
 Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second 
 cigar, and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace. 
 Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick, 
 chirruped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men 
 learnt a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs. 
 
 Half-way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his 
 master's patent leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes 
 blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. 
 Then his ears, which had been lying down 011 each side of his head 
 in the suavest attitude which such features of a dog can assume, 
 lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to 
 something. His flaccid legs contracted under him, and the muscles 
 of his back quivered. Mab, less readily alert, quickly caught the 
 infection of his attention, rolled over out of her sideways position 
 and couched beside him. The movement of the dogs was not 
 congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under his feet, 
 communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre of his 
 being. He said to Julian : 
 
 " The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs 
 must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible 
 to us. Well, Rupert, what is it ? Lie down again and go to sleep." 
 
 Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him 
 a push, expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over on to the
 
 THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE in 
 
 warm rug to sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and 
 instead, got up, and stood at attention. Mab immediately followed 
 his example. 
 
 " What are they after, Doctor ? " said Julian. 
 
 As he spoke a bell rang in the house. 
 
 " Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. " A sum- 
 mons to a patient, no doubt." 
 
 As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward 
 and barked. He remained beside the door waiting, while Mab barked 
 too, nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of 
 Lawler, who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the 
 stairs from the servants' part of the house. It passed them on its 
 errand to the front door, but during its passage the excitement of 
 the two dogs rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously, and 
 to bristle. 
 
 " I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without 
 anxiety. 
 
 As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch 
 go and the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the 
 dogs were now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage 
 intentness, showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if 
 sentinels on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in 
 the hall, but more than Lawler 's. Evidently the man was returning 
 towards the room accompanied by somebody from the street. The 
 doctor was keenly observing the mastiffs, and just as Lawler's hand 
 struck upon the handle of the door to turn it, he suddenly called out 
 sharply : 
 
 " Lawler, you are not to open the door ! " 
 
 And as he called the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and 
 caught their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to 
 get away, but he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient 
 Lawler was heard on the hither side of the door, saying : 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir." 
 
 The doctor said hastily to Julian : 
 
 " These dogs will tear the person who has just come irto the 
 house to pieces if we don't take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison." 
 
 Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination 
 under his grasp. 
 
 " Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. " Does he wish 
 to see me ? " 
 
 " If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back 
 for Mr. Addison." 
 
 Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 
 
 BATHER reluctantly Julian acted on the advice of Dr. Levillier 
 and went out of town for a week on the following day. He took his 
 way to the sea, and tried to feel normal in a sailing boat with a 
 gnarled and corrugated old salt for his only companion. But his 
 success was only partial, for while his body gave itself to the whisper 
 of the ungoverned breezes, while his hands held the ropes, and his 
 eyes watched the subtle proceedings of the weather, and his ears 
 listened to the serial stories of the waves, and to the conversational 
 peregrinations of his Ancient Mariner about the China Seas in 
 bygone days, his mind was still in London, still busily concerned 
 itself with the very things that should now undergo a sea change 
 and vanish in ozone. Recent events oppressed him, to the occasional 
 undoing of the old salt, well accustomed to the seasick reverence 
 of his despairing clients on board the Star of the Sea. When 
 the mind of a man has once fallen into the habit of prancing in 
 a circle like a circus horse, it is difficult to drive it back into 
 the public streets, to make it trot serenely forward in its ordinary 
 ways. And Julian had with him a ring-master in the person of 
 the ignorant Rip. Whenever his eyes fell on Rip, curled uneasily 
 in the bottom of the swinging boat, he went at a tangent back 
 to Harley Street, and the strange finale of his evening with the 
 doctor. 
 
 It had been a curious tableau divided by a door. Levillier and he 
 stood on one side tugging mightily at the intent mastiffs, which 
 strained at their collars, dropping beads of foam from their grinning 
 jaws, savages, instead of calm companions. On the other side, in 
 the hall, Lawler and Valentine paused in amazement and a colloquy 
 shot to and fro through the wooden barrier. On hearing the name 
 of Valentine mentioned by the butler the doctor had cast an instant 
 glance of unbounded amazement upon Julian. And Julian had 
 returned it, feeling in his heart the dawning of an inexplicable 
 trouble. 
 
 " Is anything the matter ? " Valentine's voice had asked.
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 113 
 
 " No," said the doctor in reply. " But please go into the dining- 
 room. We will come to you there. And Lawler " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " When you have shown Mr. Cresswell to the dining-room be 
 careful to shut the door, and to keep it shut till I come." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 The butler's well-trained voice had vibrated with surprise and 
 Julian had found himself mechanically smiling as he noted this. 
 Then the footsteps of servant and visitor had retreated. Presently 
 a door was heard to shut. Lawler returned, and was passing dis- 
 creetly by, to wonder if his master had gone mad in his pantry, 
 when the doctor again called to him. 
 
 " Go downstairs, Lawler, and in a moment I shall bring the dogs 
 to you." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 The butler's voice was now almost shrill with scarcely governable 
 astonishment, and his footstep seemed to tremble uneasily upon the 
 stairs as he retired. Then the doctor went to a corner of the room 
 and took down from a hook a whip with a heavy thong. 
 
 " I haven't had to use this since they were both puppies," he 
 said, with a side-glance at the dogs. " Now, Addison, keep hold of 
 Mab and go in front of me down the servants' stairs. If the dogs 
 once get out of hand we shall have trouble in the house to- 
 night." 
 
 The door was opened, and then a veritable att'ray began. The 
 animals seemed half mad. They tore at their collars, and struggled 
 furiously to break loose, snarling and even snapping, their great 
 heads turned in the direction of the dining-room. The doctor, 
 firmest as well as kindest of men, recognised necessity, and used 
 the whip unsparingly, lashing the animals through the door to the 
 servants' quarters, and down the stairs. It was a violent procession 
 to the lower regions. Julian could not get it out of his head. En- 
 tangled among the leaping dogs on the narrow stairway, he had a 
 sense of whirling in the eddies of a stream, driven from this side to 
 the other. His arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. The 
 shriek of the lash curling over and around the dogs, the dim vision 
 of the doctor's compressed lips and eyes full of unaccustomed fire, 
 the damp foam on his hands as he rocked from one wall to the other, 
 amid a dull music of growls and fierce, low barks, came back to him 
 now as he trimmed the sails to catch the undecided winds, or felt 
 the tiller leap under his hold. Each moment he had expected to be 
 bitten, but somehow they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler 's 
 pantry, where they found that factotum standing grim and wire- 
 strung with anticipation. Beyond the pantry were the dogs' night 
 quarters, and they were quickly driven into them and shut up. But 
 
 B
 
 n 4 FLAMES 
 
 they still bounded and beat against the door, and presently began to 
 howl a vain chorale. 
 
 " Lord, Lord, sir, what's come to them ? " Lawler exclaimed. 
 
 His fat face had become as white as a sheet, and the doctor was 
 scarcely less pale as he leaned against the dresser, whip in hand, 
 drawing panting breaths. 
 
 " I can't tell. They will be all right in a minute." 
 
 He pulled himself up. 
 
 " Go to bed now if you like, Lawler," he said, rather abruptly. 
 " Come, Addison." 
 
 They regained the hall, and made their way to Valentine. He 
 was sitting by the dining-table in a watchful attitude, and sprang 
 hastily up as they came in. 
 
 " My dear Doctor," he said, " what a pandemonium ! I nearly 
 came to your assistance." 
 
 "It's very lucky you didn't, Cresswell," the doctor answered, 
 almost grimly. 
 
 " Why ? " ' 
 
 " Because if you had you might chance to be a dead man by this 
 time." 
 
 Out on the sea, under the streaming clouds that fled before the 
 wind, Julian recalled the strange terseness of that reply, and the 
 perhaps stranger silence that followed it. For Valentine had made 
 no comment, had asked for no explanation. He had simply dropped 
 the subject, and the three men had remained together for a few 
 minutes, constrained and ill at ease. Then the doctor had said : 
 
 " Let us go back now to my room." 
 
 Valentine and he assented, and got upon their feet to follow him, 
 but when he opened the door there came up from the servants' 
 quarters the half-strangled howling of the mastiffs. Involuntarily 
 Dr. Levillier paused to listen, his hand behind his ear. Then he 
 turned to the young men, and held out his right hand. 
 
 " Good-night," he said. " I must go down to them, or there will 
 be a summons applied for against me in the morning by one of my 
 neighbours." 
 
 And they had let themselves out while he retreated once more 
 down the stairs. 
 
 The drive home had been a silent one. Only when Julian was 
 bidding Valentine good-night had he found a tongue to say to his 
 friend : 
 
 " The devil's in all this, Valentine." 
 
 And Valentine had merely nodded with a smile and driven off". 
 
 Now, in the sea solitude that was to be a medicine to his soul, 
 Julian went round and round in his mental circus, treading ever the 
 same sawdust under foot, hearing ever the same whip crack to send
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 115 
 
 him forward. His isolation bent him upon himself, and the old salt's 
 hoarse murmurings of the " Chiney " seas in no way drew him to a 
 healthier outlook. Why Valentine returned for him that night he 
 did not know. That might have been merely the prompting of a 
 vagrant impulse. Julian cursed that impulse on account of the 
 circumstances to which it directly led ; for there was a peculiar 
 strain of enmity in them which had affected, and continued to affect him 
 most disagreeably. To behold the instinctive hostility of another 
 towards a person whom one loves is offensively grotesque to the 
 observer, and at moments Julian hated the doctor's mastiffs, and 
 even hated the unconscious Rip, who lay, in a certain shivering dis- 
 comfort and apprehension, seeking sleep with the determination of 
 sorrow. There are things, feelings and desires, which should surely 
 be kicked out of men and dogs. Such a thing, beyond doubt, was a 
 savage hatred of Valentine. What prompted it, and whence it came, 
 were merely mysteries, which the dumbness of dogs must for ever 
 sustain. But what specially plunged Julian into concern was the 
 latent fear that Dr. Levillier might echo the repulsion of his dogs 
 and come to look upon Valentine with different eyes. Julian's tine 
 jealousy for his friend sharpened his faculties of observation and of 
 deduction, and he had observed the little doctor's dry reception of 
 Valentine after the struggle on the stairs ; and his eager dismissal of 
 them both to the street door on the howling excuse that rose up 
 from the basement. Such a mood might probably be transient, and 
 only engendered by the fatigue of excitement, or even by the physical 
 exhaustion attendant upon the preservation of Valentine from the 
 rage of Rupert and Mab. Julian told himself that to dwell upon it, 
 or to conceive of it as permanent, was neither sensible nor acute, 
 considering his intimate knowledge of the doctor's nature, and of his 
 tirm friendship for Valentine. That he did continue most persistently 
 to dwell upon it, and with a keen suspicion, must be due to the 
 present desolation of his circumstances, and to the vain babble of the 
 blue-coated Methuselah, whose intellect roamed incessantly through 
 a marine past, peopled with love episodes of a somewhat Rabelaisian 
 character. 
 
 At the end of tive days Julian abruptly threw up the sponge and 
 returned to London, abandoning the old salt to the tobacco-chewing, 
 which was his only solace during the winter season, now fast drawing 
 to a close. He went at once to see Valentine, who had a narrative 
 to tell him concerning Marr. 
 
 "You have probably read all about Marr in the papers?" he 
 asked, when he met Julian. 
 
 The question came at once with his hand-grasp. 
 
 " No," Julian said. " I shunted the papers, tried to give myself 
 up entirely to the sea, as the doctor advised. What has there been '{ "
 
 n6 FLAMES 
 
 " Oh, a good deal. I may as well tell it to you, or no doubt Lady 
 Crichton will. People exaggerate so much." 
 
 " Why what is there to exaggerate about ? " 
 
 " The inquest was held," Valentine answered. " And every effort 
 was made to find the woman who came with Marr to the hotel, and 
 evaporated so mysteriously, but there was no one to identify her. 
 The Frenchman had not noticed her features, and the housemaid, as 
 you remember, was a fool, and could only say she was a common-looking 
 person." 
 
 " Well," Julian said rather eagerly, " but what was the cause of 
 death ? " 
 
 " That was entirely obscure. The body seemed healthy at least 
 the various organs were sound. There was no obvious reason for 
 death, and the verdict was simply, ' Died from failure of the heart's 
 action.' " 
 
 " Vague but comprehensive." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose we shall all die strictly from the same cause." 
 
 " And that is all ? " 
 
 " Not quite. It appears that a description of the dead man got 
 into the papers, and that he was identified by his wife, who read the 
 account in some remote part of the country, took the train to town, 
 and found that Marr was, as she suspected, the man whom she had 
 married, from whom she had separated, and whose real name was 
 Wilson, the Wilson of a notorious newspaper case. Do you re- 
 member it ? " 
 
 " What, an action against a husband for gross cruelty, for in- 
 credible, unspeakable inhumanity some time ago ? " 
 
 " Yes. The wife got a judicial separation." 
 
 " And that is the history of Marr ? " 
 
 " That is, such of his history as is known," Valentine said in his 
 calm voice. 
 
 While he had been speaking his blue eyes had always been fixed 
 on Julian's face. When Julian looked up they were withdrawn. 
 
 " I always had a feeling that Marr was secretly a wretch, a devil/' 
 Julian said now. " It seems I was right. What has become of the 
 wife?" 
 
 " I suppose she has gone back to her country home. Probably she 
 is happy. Her first mate chastised her with whips. To fulfil her 
 destiny as a woman she ought now to seek another who is fond 
 of scorpions." 
 
 " Women are strange," Julian said, voluptuously generalising after 
 the manner of young men. 
 
 Valentine leaned forward as if the sentence stirred some depth in 
 his mind, and roused him to a certain excitement. 
 
 " Julian," he exclaimed, " are you and I wasting our lives, do you
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 117 
 
 think ? Since you have been away I have thought again over our 
 conversation before we had our first sitting. Do you remember it ? " 
 
 " Yes, Valentine." 
 
 " You said then I had held you back from so much." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And I have been asking myself whether I have not, perhaps, held 
 you back, held myself back, from all that is worth having in life." 
 
 Julian looked troubled. 
 
 " From all that is not worth having, old boy," he said. 
 
 But he looked troubled. When Valentine spoke like this he felt 
 as a man who stands at a garden gate and gazes out into the world, 
 and is stirred with a thrill of anticipation and of desire to leap out 
 from the green and shadowy close, where trees are and flowers, into 
 the dust and heat where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken 
 things lie warm. Julian was vaguely afraid of himself. It is 
 dangerous to lean on any one, however strong. Having met Valentine 
 on the threshold of life, Julian had never learnt to walk alone. He 
 trusted another instead of trusting himself. He had never forged 
 his own sword. When Siegfried sang at his anvil he sang a song of 
 all the greatness of life. Julian was notably strong as to his muscles. 
 He had arms of iron and the blood raced in his veins, but he had 
 never foi'ged his sword. Mistrust of himself was as a phantom that 
 walked with him unless Valentine drove it away. 
 
 " I thought you had got over that absurd feeling, Val," he said. 
 " I thought you were content with your soul." 
 
 " I think I have ceased to be content," said Valentine. " Perhaps 
 I have stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights 
 in the tent-room. Since you have been away I have wondered. An 
 extraordinary sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour has 
 come to me. And I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded 
 upon fact." 
 
 He was sitting in a low chair, and as he spoke he slowly stretched 
 his limbs. It was as if all his body yawned, waking from sleep. 
 
 " But how ? " Julian asked. 
 
 Already he looked rather interested than troubled. At Valentine's 
 words he too became violently conscious of his own strength, and 
 stirred by the wonder of youth dwelling in him. 
 
 " How? That is what I wish to find out by going into the world 
 with different eyes. I have been living in the arts, Julian. But is 
 that living at all ? " 
 
 Julian got up and stood by the fire. Valentine excited him. He 
 leaned one arm on the mantelpiece. His right hand kept closing 
 and unclosing as he talked. 
 
 " Such a life is natural to you," he said, " And you have made 
 me love it."
 
 nS FLAMES 
 
 " I sometimes wonder," responded Valentine, " whether I have 
 not trained my head to slay my heart. Men of intellect are often 
 strangely inhuman. Besides, what you call my purity and my 
 refinement are due perhaps to my cowardice. I am called the Saint 
 of Victoria Street because I live in a sort of London cloister with 
 you for my companion, and in the cloister I read or I give myself 
 up to music, and I hang my walls with pictures, and I wonder 
 at the sins of men, and I believe I am that deadly thing, a 
 Pharisee." 
 
 " But you are perfectly tolerant." 
 
 " Am I ? I often find myself sneering at the follies of others, at 
 what I call their coarsenesses, their wallowing in the mire." 
 
 " It is wallowing." 
 
 " And which is most human, the man who drives in a carriage, or 
 the man who walks sturdily along the road, and gets the mud on his 
 boots, and lets the rain fall on him and the wind be his friend ? I 
 suspect it is a fine thing to be out unsheltered in a storm, Julian." 
 
 Julian's dark eyes were glowing. Valentine spoke with an 
 unusual, almost with an electric warmth, and Julian was conscious 
 of drawing very near to him to-night. Always in their friendship, 
 hitherto, he had thought of Valentine as of one apart, walking at a 
 distance from all men, even from him. And he had believed most 
 honestly, that this very detachment had drawn him to Valentine 
 more than to any other human being. But to-night he began sud- 
 denly to feel that to be actually side by side with his friend would 
 be a very glorious thing. He could never hope to walk perpetually 
 upon the vestal heights. If Valentine did really come down towards 
 the valley, what then ? Just at first the idea had shocked him. 
 Now he began almost to wish that it might be so, to feel that he was 
 shaking hands with Valentine more brotherly than ever before. 
 
 " Extremes are wrong, desolate, abominable, I begin to think," 
 Valentine went on. " Angel and devil, both should be scourged 
 the one to be purged of excessive good, the other of excessive evil, 
 and between them, midway, is man, natural man. Julian, you 
 are natural man, and you are more right than I, who, it seems, 
 have been educating you by presenting to you for contemplation 
 my own disease." 
 
 " Well, but is natural man worth much ? That is the question ! 
 I don't know." 
 
 " He fights, and drinks, and loves, and, of tener than the renowned 
 philosopher thinks, lie knows how to die. And then he lives 
 thoroughly, and that is probably what we were sent into the world 
 to do." 
 
 "Can't we live thoroughly without, say, the fighting and the 
 drinking, Val?"
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 119 
 
 Valentine got up, too, as if excited, and stood by the fire by 
 Julian's side. 
 
 " Battle calls forth heroism," he said, " which else would sleep." 
 
 "And drinking?" 
 
 " Leads to good fellowship." 
 
 This last remark was so preposterously unlike Valentine that 
 Julian could not for a moment accept it as uttered seriously. His 
 mood changed, and he burst out suddenly into a laugh. 
 
 " You have been, taking me in all the time," he exclaimed, " and I 
 actually was fool enough to think you serious." 
 
 " And to agree with what I was saying ? " 
 
 Valentine still spoke quite gravely and earnestly, and Julian 
 began to be puzzled. 
 
 " You know I can never help agreeing with you when you really 
 mean anything." he began. " I have proved so often that you are 
 always right in the end. So your real theory of life must be the 
 true one, but your real theory, I know, is to reject what most people 
 run after." 
 
 " No longer that, I fancy, Julian." 
 
 " But then, what has changed you ? " 
 
 Valentine met his eyes calmly. 
 
 " I don't know," he said. " Do you ? " 
 
 " I ? How should I ? " 
 
 " Perhaps this change has been growing within me for a long 
 while. It is difficult to say, but to-night my nature culminates. I 
 am at a point, Julian." 
 
 " Then you have climbed to it. Don't you want to stay there ? " 
 
 " No mere man can face the weather on a mountain peak for ever, 
 and life lies rather in the plains." 
 
 Valentine went over to the window and touched the blind. It 
 shot up, leaving the naked window, through which the gas-lamps of 
 Victoria Street stared in the night. 
 
 " I wish," he said, " that we, in England, had the flat roofs of the 
 East." 
 
 He thrust up the glass, and the night air pushed in. 
 
 " Come here, Julian," he said. 
 
 Julian obeyed, wondering rather. Valentine leaned a little out on 
 the sill and made Julian lean beside him. It was early in the night 
 and the hum of London was yet loud, for the bees did not sleep but 
 were still busy in their monstrous hive. There was already a 
 gentleness of Spring among the discoloured houses. Spring will not 
 be denied even among men who dwell in flats. The cabs hurried 
 past, and pedestrians went by in twos and threes or solitary, soldiers 
 walking vaguely seeking cheap pleasures, or more gaily with adoring 
 maidens, tired business men journeying towards Victoria Station, a
 
 120 FLAMES 
 
 desolate shop-girl, in dreary virtue defiant of mankind, but still 
 unblessed, the Noah's ark figure of a policeman, tramping emptily, 
 standing wearily by turns, to keep public order. Lights starred 
 here and there the long line of mansions opposite. 
 
 " I often look out here at night," Valentine said, " generally to 
 wonder why people live as they do. When I see the soldiers going 
 by, for instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any 
 pleasure in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and 
 languish pei\sistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers. 
 And I gaze at the policeman on his beat and pity him for the dead 
 routine in which he stalks, seldom varied by the sordid capture of a 
 (starving cracksman, or the triumphant seizure of an unmuzzled dog. 
 The boys selling evening papers seem to me imps of desolation, 
 screaming through life aimlessly for halfpence, and the cabmen 
 creatures driving for ever to stations, yet never able to get into the 
 wide world. And yet they are all living, Julian ; that is the thing, 
 all having their experiences, all in strong touch with humanity. The 
 newspaper boy has got his flower girl to give him grimy kisses, and 
 the cabman is proud of the shine on his harness, and the soldier 
 glories in his military faculty of seduction, and in his quick capacity 
 for getting drunk in the glittering gin-palace at the corner of the 
 street, and the policeman hopes to take some one up, and to be praised 
 by a magistrate, and in those houses opposite intrigues are going on, 
 and jealousy is being born, and men and women are quarrelling over 
 trifles and making it up again, and children what matter if legiti- 
 mate or illegitimate ? are cooing and crying, and boys are waking 
 to the turmoil of manhood, and girls are dreaming of the things they 
 dare not pretend to know. Why should I be like a bird hovering over 
 it all ? Why should not I and you be in it ? If I can only cease 
 to be as 1 have always been, I can recreate London for myself, and 
 make it a live city, fearing neither its vices nor its tears. I have 
 made you fear them, Julian. I have done you an injury. Let us 
 be quiet, and feel the rustle of Spring over the gas-lamps, and hear 
 the pulsing of the hearts around us." 
 
 He put his arm through Julian's as they leaned out on the sill of 
 the window, and to Julian his arm was like a line of living fire, 
 compelling that which touched it to a speechless fever of excitement. 
 Was this man Valentine ? Julian's pulses throbbed and hammered 
 as he looked upon the street, and he seemed to see all the passers by 
 with eyes from which scales had fallen. If to die should be nothing 
 to the wise man, to live should be much. Underneath two drunken men 
 passed, embracing each other by the shoulders. They sang in snatches 
 and hiccoughed protestations of eternal friendship. Valentine watched 
 their wavering course with no disgust. His blue eyes even seemed 
 to praise them as they went.
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING 121 
 
 "Those men are more human than I," he slowly said. "Why 
 should I condemn them ? " 
 
 And, as if under the influence of a spell, Julian found himself 
 thinking of the wandering ruffians as fine fellows, full of warmth of 
 heart and generous feeling. A boy and girl went by. Neither 
 could have been more than sixteen years old. They paused by a 
 lamp-post, and the girl openly kissed the boy. He sturdily endured 
 the compliment, staring firmly at her pale cheeks and tired eyes. 
 Then the girl walked away, and he stood alone till she was out of 
 sight. Eventually he walked off slowly, singing a plantation song : 
 " I want you, my honey, yes I do ! " Valentine and Julian had 
 watched and listened, and now Valentine, moving round on the 
 window-ledge till he faced Julian, said : 
 
 "That is it, Julian, put in the straightforward music-hall way. 
 People are happy because they want things, yes, they do. It is a 
 philosophy of life. That boy has a life because he wants that 
 girl, and she wants him. And you, Julian, you want a thousand 
 things 
 
 " Not since I have known you," Julian said. 
 
 He felt curiously excited and troubled. His arm was still linked 
 in Valentine's. Slowly he withdrew it. Valentine shut down the 
 window and they came back to the fire. 
 
 " You know," Valentine said, " that it is possible for two influences 
 to work one upon the other, and for each to convert the other. I 
 begin to think that your nature has triumphed over mine." 
 
 " What? " Julian said, in frank amazement. The Philistines could 
 not have been more astounded when Samson pulled down the pillars. 
 
 " I have taught you, as you say, to die to the ordinary man's life, 
 Julian. But what if you have taught me to live to it ? " 
 
 Julian did not answer for a moment. He was wondering whether 
 Valentine could possibly be serious. But his face was serious, even 
 eager. There was an unwonted stain of red on his smooth, usually 
 pale cheeks. A certain wild boyishness had stolen over him, a 
 reckless devil danced in his blue eyes. Julian caught the infection 
 of his mood. 
 
 " And what's my lesson ? " Julian said. 
 
 His voice sounded thick and harsh. There was a surge of blood 
 through his brain and a prickly heat behind his eyeballs. Suddenly 
 a notion took him that Valentine had never been so magnificent as 
 now, now when a new fierceness glittered in his expression, and a 
 wild wave of humanity ran through him like a surging tide. 
 
 " What's my lesson, Valentine ? " 
 
 " I will show you this Spring. But it is the lesson the Spring 
 toadies, the lesson of fulfilling your nature, of Avaking from your 
 slumbers, of finding the air, of giving yourself to the rifling fingers
 
 122 FLAMES 
 
 of the sun, of yielding all your scent to others, and of taking all 
 their scent to you. That's the lesson of your strength, Julian, and 
 of all the strength of the Spring. Lie out in the showers, and let 
 the clouds cover you with shadows, and listen to the song of every 
 bird, and and Ah ! " he suddenly broke off in a burst of laughter, 
 " I am rhapsodising. The Spring has got into my veins even among 
 these chimney-pots of London. The spring is in me, and, who 
 knows? your soul, Julian. For don't you feel wild blood in your 
 veins, sometimes ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 " And humming passions that come to you and lift you from your 
 feet ? " 
 
 " You know I do." 
 
 " But I never knew before that they might lift you towards 
 heaven. That's the thing. I have thought that the exercise of the 
 passions dragged a man down, but why should it be so ? I have 
 talked of men wallowing in the mire. I must find out whether 1 
 have been lying when I said that. Julian, this Spring you and I 
 will see the world at any rate with open eyes. We will watch the 
 budding and blossoming of the souls around us, the flowers in the 
 garden of life. We will not be indifferent or afraid. I have been a 
 coward in my ice prison of refinement. I keep a perpetual season of 
 winter round me. I know it. I know it to-night." 
 
 Julian did not speak. He was carried away by this outburst, 
 which gained so much, and so strange, force by its issue from the 
 lips and from the heart of Valentine. But he was carried away as a 
 weak swimmer by a resistless torrent, and instinctively he seemed to 
 be aware of danger and to be stretching out his arms for some rock 
 or tree branch to stay his present course. Perhaps Valentine 
 noticed this, for his excitement suddenly faded, and his face resumed 
 its usual expression of almost cold purity and refinement. 
 
 " I generally translate this sort of thing into music," he said. 
 
 At the last word Julian looked up instinctively to the wall on 
 which the picture of " The Merciful Knight " usually hung. For 
 Valentine's music was inseparably connected in his mind with that 
 picture. His eyes fell on a gap. 
 
 " Val," he exclaimed, in astonishment, " what's become of ?" 
 
 " Oh, < The Merciful Knight ' ? It has gone to be cleaned." 
 
 " Why ? It was all right, surely ? " 
 
 " No. I found it wanted cleaning badly and I am having it 
 refrained. It will be away for some time." 
 
 " You must miss it." 
 
 " Yes, very much." 
 
 The words were spoken with cutting indifference.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 
 
 FROM that night, and almost imperceptibly, the relations existing 
 between Valentine and Julian slightly changed. It seemed to Julian 
 as if a door previously shut in his friend's soul opened and as if he 
 entered into this hitherto secret chamber. He found there an 
 apparent strange humanity which, as he grew accustomed to it, 
 warmed him. The curious refined saintliness of A^alentine, almost 
 chilly in its elevation, thawed gently as the days went by, but so 
 gently that Julian scarcely knew it, could scarcely define the differ- 
 ence which nevertheless led him to alter his conduct almost uncon- 
 sciously. One great sameness, perhaps, gave him a sensation of 
 safety and of continuity. Valentine's face still kept its almost 
 unearthly expression of intellectuality and of purity. When Julian 
 looked at him no passions flamed in his blue eyes, no lust ever crawled 
 in the lines about his mouth. His smooth cheeks never flushed 
 with beaconing desire, nor was his white forehead pencilled with 
 the shadowy writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And 
 yet his speech about the Spring that night as they leaned out over 
 Victoria Street had evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It 
 had held a meaning and was remembered. In Valentine there 
 seemed to be flowering a number of faint-hued wants, such wants as 
 had never flowered from his nature before. The fig-tree that had 
 seemed so exquisitely barren began to put forth leaves, and, when 
 the warm showers sang to it, it sang in tremulous reply. 
 
 And the Spring grew in London. 
 
 Never before had Julian been so conscious of the growth of the 
 year as now. The Spring stirred inside him, as if he were indeed 
 the Mother Earth. Tumults of nature shook him. With the burst- 
 ing of the crocus, the pointing of its spear of gold to the sun, a life 
 gathered itself together within him, a life that held, too, a golden 
 shaft within its colour-stained cup. And the bland scent of the 
 innumerable troops of hyacinths in Hyde Park was a language to 
 him as he strolled in the sun towards the Row. Scents speak to the 
 young of the future as they speak to the old of the past, to the one
 
 124 FLAMES 
 
 with an indefinite excitement, to the other with a vague regret. 
 And especially when he was in the company of Valentine did Julian 
 become intensely alive to the march of the earth towards summer, 
 and feel that he was in step with it, dragooned by the same music. 
 He began to learn, so he believed, what Valentine had called the 
 lesson of his strength and of all the strength of the Spring. His 
 wild blood leaped in his veins, and the world was walking with him 
 to a large prospect, as yet fancifully tricked out in mists and crowned 
 with clouds. 
 
 The Spring brought to Valentine an abounding health such as he 
 had never known before, a physical glory which, without actually 
 changing him, gave to him a certain novelty of aspect which Julian 
 felt without actually seeing. One day, when they were out riding 
 together in the Park, he said : 
 
 " How extraordinarily strong you look to-day, Val." 
 
 Valentine spurred his horse into a short gallop. 
 
 " I feel robust," he said. " 1 think it is my mind working on my 
 body. I have attained to a more healthy outlook on things, to a 
 saner conception of life. For years you have been learning from me, 
 Julian. Now I think the positions are reversed. I am learning 
 from you." 
 
 Julian pressed his knees against his horse's sides with an iron grip, 
 feeling the spirited animal's spirited life between them. They were 
 now on a level with the Serpentine and riding parallel to it. A few 
 vigorous and determined bathers swam gaily in the pale warmth of 
 the morning sun. Two boys raced along the grassy bank to dry 
 themselves, whooping with exultation, and leaping as they ran. A 
 man in a broad boat, ready to save life, exchanged loud jokes with 
 the swimmers. On a seat two filthy loafers watched the scene with 
 vacant eyes. They had slept in the Park all night, and their ragged 
 clothes were drenched with dew. 
 
 " I could race with those boys," Valentine paid. " But not so 
 long ago I was like the men on the bench. I only cared to look on 
 at the bathing of others. Now I could swim myself." 
 
 He sent his horse along at a tremendous pace for a moment, then 
 drew him in, and turned towards Julian. 
 
 " We are learning the lesson of the Spring," he said. 
 
 As he spoke a light from some hidden place shot for an instant 
 into his eyes and faded again. Julian laughed gaily. The ride 
 spurred his spirits. He was conscious of the recklessness created in 
 a man by exercise. 
 
 " I could believe that you were actually growing, Val," he said, 
 " growing before my eyes. Only you're much too old." 
 "Yes, I am too old for that," Valentine said. 
 A sudden wearipess ran in the words, a sudden sound of age.
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 125 
 
 " The truth is," he added, but with more life, " my nature is 
 expanding inside my body, and you feel it and fancy you can see the 
 envelope echo the words of the letter it holds. You are clever 
 enough to be fanciful. Gently, Raindrop, gently ! " 
 
 He quieted the mare as they turned into the road. Just as they 
 were passing under the arch into the open space at Hyde Park 
 corner a woman shot across in front of them. They nearly rode 
 over her, and she uttered a little yell as she awkwardly gained the 
 pavement. Her head was crowned with a perfect pyramid of 
 ostrich feathers, and as she turned to bestow upon the riders the 
 contemptuous glance of a cockney pedestrian, who demands possession 
 of all London as a sacred right, Julian suddenly pulled up his horse. 
 
 " Hulloh ! " he said to the woman. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Valentine, who was in front. 
 
 " Wait a second, Yal. I want a word with this lady." 
 
 " Rather compromising," Valentine said laughing, as his eyes took 
 in with a swift glance the woman's situation in the economy of 
 the town. 
 
 The woman now slowly advanced to the railing, apparently 
 flattered at being thus hailed from horseback. Her kinsmen doubt- 
 less always walked. 
 
 " Don't you remember me ? " Julian said. 
 
 She was in fact the lady of the feathers, with whom he had 
 foregathered at the coffee-stall in Piccadilly. The lady leaned her 
 plush arms upon the rail and surveyed him with her tinted eyes. 
 
 " Can't say as I do, my dear," she remarked. " What name ? " 
 
 " Never mind that. But tell me have you ever had a cup of coffee 
 and a bun in Piccadilly early in the morning ? " 
 
 The mention of the bun struck home to the lady, swept the 
 quivering chords of her memory into a tune. She pushed her face 
 nearer to Julian, and stared at him hard. 
 
 " So 'it is," she said. <l So it is." 
 
 For a moment she seemed inclined to retreat. Then she stood her 
 ground. Her nerves, perhaps, had grown stronger. 
 
 " I should like to know you," Julian said. 
 
 The lady was obviously gratified. She tossed her head and giggled. 
 
 " Where do you live ? " Julian continued. 
 
 The lady dived into the back part of her skirt, and, after a long 
 and passionate pursuit, ran a small purse to earth. Opening it with 
 deliberation she extracted a good-sized card, and handed it up to 
 Julian. 
 
 " There you are, dearie," she said. 
 
 On the card was printed " Cuckoo Bright, 400 Marylebone Road." 
 
 " I will come at five this afternoon and take you out to tea," said 
 Julian.
 
 I2 6 FLAMES 
 
 11 Right you are, Bertie," the lady cried, in a voice thrilling with 
 pride and exultation. 
 
 Julian rode off, and she watched him go, preening herself against 
 the rail, like some gaudy bird. She looked up at a policeman and 
 laughed knowingly. 
 
 " Well, copper," she said, " How's that, eh ? " 
 The policeman was equal to the occasion. 
 
 "Not out," he answered, with a stiff and semi-official smile. 
 " Move along." 
 
 And Cuckoo Bright moved, as one who walked on air. 
 Julian had joined Valentine, who had observed the colloquy from 
 afar, controlling with some difficulty the impatience of his mare, 
 excited by her gallop. 
 
 " You know that lady ? " he asked, still laughing, with perhaps a 
 touch of contempt. 
 
 " Very platonically. We met at a coffee-stall in Piccadilly as I 
 was going home after your trance. She was with me when I saw 
 that strange flame." 
 
 " When you imagined you saw it." 
 
 " If you prefer it, Val. I am going to see her this afternoon." 
 " My dear fellow why ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you," Julian answered gravely. " I believe she is the 
 woman who went to the ' European ' with Marr, who must have been 
 with Marr when he was taken ill, and who fled. I have a reason for 
 thinking so." 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " I'll tell you later, when I have talked to her." 
 " Surely you don't suspect the poor creature of foul play ? " 
 " Not I. It's sheer curiosity that takes me to her." 
 "Oh." 
 
 They rode on a step or two. Then Valentine said : 
 "Are you going to take her out? She's well she is a trifle un- 
 mistakable, Julian." 
 
 " Yes, I know. You are right. She is not for afternoon wear, 
 poor soul. What damned scoundrels men are." 
 
 Valentine did not join in the sentiment thus forcibly expressed. 
 Between four and five that afternoon Julian hailed a cab and 
 drove to Marylebone Road. The houses in it seemed endless, and 
 drearily alike, but at length the cab drew up at number 400, tall, 
 gaunt and haggard like the rest. Julian rang the bell, and immedi- 
 ately a shrill dog barked with a piping fury within the house. Then 
 the door was opened by an old woman, whose arid face was cabalistic, 
 and who looked as if she spent her existence in expecting a raid from 
 the police. 
 
 " Is Miss Cuckoo Bright at home ? "
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 127 
 
 " Miss Bright ! I'll see." 
 
 The old dame turned tail, and slithered, flat-footed, to a room 
 opening from the dirty passage. She vanished and Julian heard two 
 voices muttering. The old gentlewoman returned. 
 
 " This way, sir ! " she said, in a voice that perpetually struggled to 
 get the whip hand of an obvious bronchitis. 
 
 A moment more and Julian stood in the acute presence of the 
 lady of the feathers. At first he -scarcely recognised her, for she 
 had discarded her crown of glory, and now faced him in the strange 
 frivolity of her hatless touzled hair. She stood by the square table, 
 covered with a green cloth, that occupied the centre of the small 
 room, which communicated by folding doors with an inner chamber. 
 A pastile was burning drowsily in a corner, and the shrill dog piped 
 seditiously from its station on a black horsehair-covered sofa, over 
 which a wool-work rug was thrown in easy abandon. Julian 
 extended his hand. 
 
 " How d'you do ? " he said. 
 
 " Pretty bobbish, my dear," was the reply, but the voice was much 
 less pert than he remembered it, and, looking at his hostess, Julian 
 perceived that she was considerably younger than he had imagined, 
 and that she was actually, amazing luxury ! a little shy. She had 
 a box of safety-matches in her hand, and she now struck one, and 
 applied it to a gas-burner. The day was dark. 
 
 " Pleased to see you," she added, with an attempt at a hearty and 
 untutored air. " Jessie, shut up ! " 
 
 Jessie, the dog, of the toy species, and arched into the shape of a 
 note of interrogation, obeyed, lay down and trembled into sleep. 
 The gas light revealed the details of the sordid room, a satin box of 
 sweetmeats on the table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a 
 specimen glass, one or two yellow backed novels, and a few photo- 
 graphs ranged upon the imitation marble mantelpiece. There was 
 one armchair, whose torn lining indecently revealed the interior 
 stuffing and there were three other chairs with wooden backs. The 
 lady of the feathers did not dwell in marble halls, unless, perhaps, 
 imaginatively. 
 
 " You've got cosy quarters," Julian said, amiably lying. 
 
 " Yes, they're not bad, but they do cost money. Sit down, won't 
 you ? " 
 
 The lady shoved the one armchair forward, and, after a polite 
 skirmish, Julian was forced to take it. He sat down, disguising 
 from his companion his sudden knowledge that the springs were 
 broken. She, on her part, laid hold of Jessie, dumped the little 
 creature into her lap, and assumed an air of abrupt gentility, pursing 
 her painted lips, and shooting sidelong glances of inquiry at the 
 furniture. Julian could not at once explain his errand. He felt
 
 128 FLAMES 
 
 that caution was imperative. Besides, the lady doubtless expected 
 to be entertained at Verrey's or possibly even at Charbonnel's. 
 But Julian had resolved to throw himself upon the lady's hospi- 
 tality. 
 
 " It's an awful day," he said. 
 
 The lady assented, adding that she had not been out. 
 
 " We are very cosy here," Julian continued, gazing at the small 
 fire that was sputtering in the grate. 
 
 The lady looked gratified. She felt that the meagre abode which 
 she must name home had received the hall mark of a "toft's" 
 approval. 
 
 "Now I am going to ask you something," Julian said. "Will 
 you let me have tea with you to-day, and and come out with me 
 some evening, to the Empire or somewhere, instead ? " 
 
 The lady nodded her fringed head. 
 
 "Certainly, my dear," she responded. "Proud to give you tea 
 I'm sure." 
 
 Suddenly she bounced up, scattering Jessie over the floor. She 
 promenaded to the door, opened it and yelled : 
 
 " Mrs. Brigg ! Mrs. Brigg ! " 
 
 The expostulating feet of the old person ascended wearily from 
 the lower depths of the house. 
 
 " Lord ! Lord ! Whatever is it now ? " she wheezed, 
 
 " Please bring up tea for me and this gentleman." 
 
 The lady assumed the voice of a sucking dove. 
 
 " Tea ! Why, I thought you'd be out to " 
 
 The lady shot into the passage and shut the door behind her. 
 After a moment she put her head in and said to Julian : 
 
 " I'll be back in a minute. She's in a rare tantrum. I must go 
 down and help her. Pardon ! " 
 
 And she vanished like a flash. 
 
 Julian sat feeling rather guilty. To distract himself he got up 
 and looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Most of them 
 were of men, but there were two or three girls in tights, and there 
 was one of a stout and venerable woman, evidently respectable, 
 seated in an armchair, with staring bead-like eyes, but a sweet and 
 gentle mouth. Her hair was arranged in glossy bands. Her hands 
 held a large book, probably a Bible. Julian looked at her and 
 wondered a little how she chanced to be in this galere. Then he 
 started and almost exclaimed alound. For there, at the end of the 
 mantelpiece, was a cabinet photograph of Marr. He was right then 
 in his suspicion. The lady of the feathers was also the lady of the 
 " European." 
 
 " Sorry to keep you waiting," said a voice behind him. 
 
 There was a clatter of crockery. His hostess entered bearing a
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 129 
 
 tray, which held a teapot, cups, a large loaf of bread, and some butter, 
 and a milk-jug and sugar-basin. She plumped it down en the table. 
 
 " Mrs. Brigg wouldn't make toast," she explained. " And I 
 didn't like to keep you." 
 
 " Let's make some ourselves," said Julian, with a happy in- 
 spiration. 
 
 He felt that to perform a common and a cosy act must draw them 
 together, and awaken in the lady's breast a happy and progressive 
 confidence. She was evidently surprised at the suggestion. 
 
 " Well, I never ! " she ejaculated. " You are a queer one. You 
 are taking a rise out of me now ! " 
 
 "Not at all. I like making toast. Give me a fork. I'll do it 
 and you sit there and direct me." 
 
 She laughed and produced the fork from a mean cupboard which 
 did duty as a sideboard. 
 
 " Here you are then. Cut it pretty thick. It ain't so high class, 
 but it eats better. That's it. Sit on this stool, dear." 
 
 She kicked an ancient leather one to the hearth, and Julian, 
 tucking his long-tailed frock coat under him, squatted down and 
 thrust forward the bread to the bars of the grate. The lady opened 
 the lid of the teapot and examined the brew with an anxious eye. 
 
 " It's drawin' beautiful," she declared. " Well, I'm d She 
 
 caught herself up short. "Well, this is bally funny," she said 
 " Turn it, dearie." 
 
 Julian obeyed, and they began to talk. For the ice was broken 
 now, and the lady was quite at her ease, and simple and human in 
 her hospitalities. 
 
 " This is better than the bun," Julian said. 
 
 " I believe you, dear. And yet that bun did me a deal of good 
 that mornin'." 
 
 Her voice became suddenly reflective. 
 
 "A deal of good." 
 
 " Are you often out at such a time ? " 
 
 "Not I. But that night I'd well, I didn't feel like bein' 
 indoors. There's things well, there, it don't matter. That toast's 
 done, dearie. Bring it here, and let me butter it.'' 
 
 Julian brought it, and cut another slice from the loaf. He toasted 
 while the lady buttered, a fine division of labour which drew them 
 close together. Jessie, meanwhile, attracted by these pleasant 
 preparations, hovered about, wriggling in pathetic anxiety to share 
 the good things of life. 
 
 " Anything wrong that night ? " Julian said carelessly. 
 
 The lady buttered, like an angry machine. 
 
 " Oh no, dearie," she said. " Make haste, or the tea'll be as 
 black as a coal, Jessie, you're a pig ! I do spoil her." 
 
 I
 
 130 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 Julian called the little dog to him. She came voraciously, her 
 minute and rat-like body tense with greed. 
 
 ' She's a pretty dog," he said, 
 
 " Yes," the lady rejoined proudly. " She's a show dog. She 
 was give to me, and I wouldn't part with her for nuts, no nor for 
 diamonds neither. Would I, Jessie ? Ah, well, dogs stick to you 
 when men don't." 
 
 She was trying to be arch, but her voice was really quivering to 
 tears, and in that sentence rang all the tragedy of her poor life. 
 Julian looked across at her as she sat by the tray, buttering now 
 almost mechanically. She was naturally a pretty girl, but was 
 growing rapidly haggard, and was badly made up, rouged in wrong 
 places consumptively, powdered everywhere disastrously. Her eyes 
 were pathetic, but above them the hair was dreadfully dyed, and 
 frizzed into a desolate turmoil. She had a thin young figure and 
 anxious hands. As he looked Julian felt a profound pity and a 
 curious manly friendship for her. She had that saddest aspect of a 
 human being about whom it doesn't matter. Only it matters about 
 every living creature so much. 
 
 The lady caught his eye, and extended her lips in a forced smile. 
 
 " You never know your luck ! " she cried. " So it don't do to be 
 down on it. Come on, dearie. Now then for the tea." 
 
 She poured it out, and Julian drew up to the table. Already he 
 felt oddly at home in this poor room, with this poor life, into which 
 he longed to bring a little hope, a little safety. Jessie sprang to his 
 knees, and thence, naughtily, to the table, snuffling towards the 
 plate of toast. The lady drew it away and approached it to her 
 nose by turns, playfully. 
 
 " She is a funny one," she said. " Is your tea right, dearie ? " 
 
 " Perfect," said Julian. " Is my toast right ? " 
 
 " Right as ninepence, and lighter." 
 
 She munched. 
 
 " I like you," she said. " You're a gentleman." 
 
 She spoke naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience 
 for her to be treated with that thing some women never know 
 respect. She warmed under it and glistened. 
 
 " We must be friends," Julian said. 
 
 " Pals. Yes. Have some more sugar ? " 
 
 She jumped two lumps into his cup, and laughed quite gaily when 
 the tea spouted over into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed 
 Jessie into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversa- 
 tion round to the photographs. The lady was expansive. She 
 gave short histories of some of the men, summing them up with 
 considerable shrewdness, kodaking their characters with both 
 humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed along the mantel-
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 131 
 
 piece together. Presently they arrived at the old lady with the 
 Bible. 
 
 " And this ? " Julian said. 
 
 The lady's fund of spirits was suddenly exhausted. 
 
 " Oh, that," she said, and a sort of strange, suppressed blush 
 struggled up under the rouge on her face. " Well, that's mother." 
 
 " I like her face." 
 
 " Yes. She thinks I'm dead." 
 
 The lady turned away abruptly. 
 
 " I'll just carry the tray down to Mrs. Brigg," she said, and she 
 clattered out with it, and down the stairs. 
 
 Julian heard her loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, 
 the Requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible 
 on her knees. When she returned her mouth was hard and her eyes 
 were shining ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantel- 
 piece. As she came in he pointed to the photograph of Marr. 
 
 " And this ? " he asked. " Who's this ? " 
 
 The lady burst into a shrill laugh of mingled fear and cunning. 
 
 " That's the old gentleman ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " What I say, the old gentleman, Nick, the devil, if you like it." 
 
 " Now you are trying to take a rise out of me." 
 
 " Not I, dear," she said. " That's the devil sure enough." 
 
 Either the tea and toast had rendered her exuberant, or the 
 thought of the old woman who believed her to be dead had driven 
 her into recklessness. She continued : 
 
 . " I'd been with him that night I met you, and I was frightened, I 
 tell you. I'd been mad with fright." 
 
 " Why ? What had he done to you ? " 
 
 Julian strove to conceal his eager interest under a light assump- 
 tion of carelessness. 
 
 " Done ! never mind. It don't do to talk about it." 
 
 She laid her thin hand on his arm, as if impelled to be confiden- 
 tial. 
 
 " Do you believe in people being struck ? '' she said. 
 
 " Struck ! I don't understand." 
 
 " Struck," she repeated superstitiously. " Down, from up 
 there ? " 
 
 Her eyes went up to the ceiling, like the child's when it thinks of 
 heaven. 
 
 " Was he ? " Julian asked. 
 
 She nodded, pursing her red lips. 
 
 "That's what I think. It came so sudden. Just when I was 
 going to scream somethiii' seemed to come over him, like madness 
 it was. He seemed listening. ' Then he says, ' Now now ! '
 
 132 FLAMES 
 
 And he seemed goin' right off. He stai-ed at me and didn't seem 
 to know me. Lord, I was blue with it, I tell you, dear ! I was that 
 frightened I just left him and bunked for it, and never said a word 
 to anybody. I ran downstairs and got out of the house, and I daren't 
 go home. So I just walked about till I met you." 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 " I did enjoy that coffee, I tell you straight, but when you began 
 about seein' things, I couldn't slow it. My nerves was shook. So 
 off I trotted again." 
 
 Julian put a question to her. 
 
 " Do you know what has become of him ? " 
 
 "Not I. He'll never get in here again. Mrs. Brigg won't let 
 him. She never could abide him." 
 
 She shook her shoulders in an irrepressible shudder. 
 
 "I wish he was dead," she said. "I never go out but what I'm 
 afraid I shall meet him. or come back late but what I think I shall 
 find him standin' against the street door. I wish he was dead." 
 
 " I knew him. He is dead." 
 
 She looked at him, at first questioning, then awe-stricken. 
 
 " Then he was struck ? Lord ! " 
 
 Her red mouth gaped. 
 
 " It was in the papers," Julian said. " At the European Hotel." 
 
 "That was the place. Lord! I never see the papers. Dead is 
 he ? I am glad." 
 
 Her relief was obvious yet almost shocking, and Julian could not 
 question her good faith . She had certainly not known. Belonged 
 to find out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment 
 of her, but she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really 
 loathed and detested the remembrance of him. 
 
 " But why do you keep his photograph ? " Julian asked at last. 
 
 The lady seemed puzzled. 
 
 " I dunno," she said at last. " I don't seem as if I could burn it. 
 But if he is gone dead I mean really " 
 
 " He is." 
 
 " 1 know." 
 
 She sat thoughtfully. Then she said : 
 
 " He didn't look a fellow to die. It seems funny. No, he didn't 
 look it." 
 
 And then she dropped the subject, and nothing would induce her 
 to return to it. Presently they heard a church clock strike. It 
 chimed seven. Julian was astonished to find that time had gone so 
 quickly. 
 
 " I must be going," he said. 
 
 The lady looked at him with an odd, half-impudent, half-girlish 
 and wistful scrutiny.
 
 JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 133 
 
 " I say," she began, and stopped. 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " I say why ever did you come ? " 
 
 The short question that expressed her wondering curiosity might 
 well have driven any thoughtful man into tears. And Julian, young 
 and careless as he often was, felt something of the terror and the 
 pain enshrined in it. But he did not let her see this. 
 
 " I wanted to have a talk with you," he answered. 
 
 " A talk ; you like a talk with me ? " 
 
 " Yes, surely." 
 
 She still stared at him with pathetic eyes. He had stood up. 
 
 " Oh," she said. " Well, dearie, I'm glad." 
 
 Julian took up his hat. 
 
 " I'm going out, too," she said. 
 
 "A re you?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She threw a sidelong glance at him, then added hardily, although 
 her painted lips were suddenly quivering : 
 
 " I've got to go to work." 
 
 " I know," Julian said. " Well, I will wait till you are ready and 
 drive you wherever you want to go." 
 
 " Want to go," she began, with a little shrill, hideous laugh. 
 Then, pulling herself up, she added in a subdued voice : 
 
 " Thank you, dearie. I won't be long." 
 
 She opened the folding doors and passed into the inner room, 
 accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself 
 listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, 
 as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, 
 the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the 
 whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the 
 piteous battle of the London streets. And then his ears caught the 
 eager patter of Jessie to and fro, and a murmured expostulation 
 from her mistress. Evidently the little dog had got hold of some 
 article of attire and was worrying it. There was a hidden chase and 
 a hidden capture. Jessie was scolded and kissed. Then the sitting- 
 room slowly filled with the scent of cherry blossom. A tooth brush 
 in action was distinctly audible. This tragedy had its comic relief, 
 like almost all tragedies. Julian sighed and smiled, but his heart 
 was heavy with the desolate and sordid wonder of life, as his mind 
 heard all over London a thousand echoes of the bedchamber 
 music of the lady of the feathers. 
 
 The folding doors opened wide and she appeared, frashly painted 
 and powdered, crowned once again with the forest of ostrich tipa, 
 and holding the struggling Jessie in her arms. 
 
 " Jessie must go to basket," she said, and she dropped the dog
 
 I 3 4 FLAMES 
 
 into a tiny basket lined with red flannel, and held up a Avarning 
 finger. 
 
 " Naughty go bials ! " the cried. " Go bials, Jessie." 
 
 "What's that !T 
 
 "Bials by-bye. She don't like bein' left. Well, dearie, we've 
 had a nice time." 
 
 Suddenly she put her hands on Julian's shoulders and kissed his 
 mouth. 
 
 " I wish there was more like you," she whispered. 
 
 He kissed her too, and put his arms around her. 
 
 "If I give you something will you will you stay at home 
 to-night, just to-night with Jessie ? " he said. 
 
 But she drew away and shook her head. 
 
 " I won't take it." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I Avon't. No Ave're pals, not not the other thing. You're 
 the only one I've got of that kind. I won't spoil it no I Avon't." 
 
 Her decision was almost angry. Julian did not persist. 
 
 " I'll come again," he said. 
 
 She looked at him Avistfully. 
 
 "Ah but you won't," she answered. 
 
 " 1 will." 
 
 He spoke with energy. She nodded. 
 
 " I'd like you to." 
 
 Then they Avent out into the evening and hailed a hansom. 
 
 "Put me doAvn at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street," said the 
 lady of the feathers.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE 
 
 JULIAN was curiously touched by his interview in the Marylebone 
 Koad, and he did not fail to recount it to Valentine, whose delicate 
 imagination would, he felt certain, feel the pity and the pain of it. 
 
 But Valentine did not respond to his generous emotion. 
 
 " I thought she looked a very degraded young person," he said, 
 distantly. "And not interesting. The woman who is falling is 
 interesting. The woman who has reached the bottom, who has com- 
 pletely arrived at degradation, is dull enough." 
 
 " But she is not utterly degraded, Val. For I know that she can 
 see and understand something of the horror of her own condition." 
 
 Valentine put his hand on Julian's shoulder. 
 
 " I know what you are thinking," he said. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " That you would like to rescue this girl." 
 
 A dull blush ran over Julian's face. 
 
 " I don't know that I had got quite so far as that," he said. 
 " Would it be absurd if I had ? " 
 
 " I am not sure that it would not be wrong. Probably this girl 
 lives the life she is best fitted for." 
 
 " You surely don't mean " 
 
 " That some human beings are born merely to further the neces- 
 sities of sin in the scheme of creation ? I don't know that. Nature, 
 in certain countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly 
 snakes to live in her bosom. Man demands and obtains female 
 snakes to live in his bosom. Are not such women literally created 
 for this metier ? How can one tell ? " 
 
 " But if they are unhappy ? '' 
 
 " You think they would be happy in purity ? " 
 
 " I believe she would." 
 
 Valentine smiled and shook his head. 
 
 " I expect her sorrows are not caused by the loss of her virtue but 
 merely by her lack of the luxuries of life. These birds always want 
 their nests to be made of golden twigs and lined with satin."
 
 i 3 6 FLAMES 
 
 But Julian remained unconvinced. 
 
 " You don't know her," he said. " Why, Valentine, you have 
 never known such a woman ! You ! The very notion is ridicu- 
 lous." 
 
 " I have seen them in their garden of Eden, offering men the fruit 
 of the tree of knowledge." 
 
 " You mean ? " 
 
 " At the ' Empire.' " 
 
 " Ah ! I have half promised to take her there one night." 
 
 " Shall I come with you, Julian ? " 
 
 Julian looked at him to see if he was in earnest as he made this 
 unutterable proposition. Valentine's clear, cold, thoughtful blue 
 eyes met his eager, glowing, brown ones with direct gravity. 
 
 " You mean it, Val ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " You will be seen at the ' Empire ' with her ? " 
 
 " Well would not you ? " 
 
 " But you are so different." 
 
 "Julian, you remember that night when we leaned out over 
 London, when we saw what are called common people having common 
 experiences ? I said then that they at any rate were living." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You and I will try to live with them." 
 
 " But Valentine you 
 
 " Even I may learn to feel the strength of the Spring if I order 
 my life rather differently in the future. We three, you, I, the girl, 
 will go one night to the Garden of Eden, where the birds wear 
 tights and sing comic songs in French, and the scent that comes from 
 the flowers is patchouli, and silk rustles instead of the leaves of the 
 trees. We will go there on boat-race night. Ah, the strength of 
 the Spring ! On boat-race night it beats with hammering pulses 
 among the groves of the Garden of Eden." 
 
 Julian was surprised at this outburst, which sounded oddly de- 
 liberate, and was apparently spoken without real impulse. He was 
 surprised, but, on consideration, he came to the conclusion that 
 Valentine, having silently debated the question of his own life, had 
 resolved to make a definite effort to see if he could change the course 
 of it. Julian felt that such an effort must be useless. He knew 
 Valentine so ^intimately he thought, knew the very ground-work of 
 his nature that that nature was too strong to be carved into a 
 different, and possibly grotesque, foi m. 
 
 " Are you an experimentalist, Val ? " he asked. 
 
 Valentine threw a rapid glance on him. 
 
 " I ? I don't understand. Why should I experiment upon you ? " 
 
 " No, not on me, but on yourself."
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE 137 
 
 " Oh, I see what you mean. No, Julian, I prefer to let fate ex- 
 periment upon me." 
 
 " At the ' Empire ' ? " 
 
 "If fate chooses." 
 
 " I think you ought to know Cuckoo " 
 
 " Is that her name ? " 
 
 " Yes, Cuckoo Bright, before our meditated expedition." 
 
 Valentine seemed struck by this idea. 
 
 " So that we may all be at our ease. A capital motion. Julian, 
 sit down, write a note asking her to come to tea on Thursday in the 
 flat. I will show her my pictures, and you shall talk to her of 
 Huxley and of Herbert Spencer." 
 
 Julian regarded Valentine rather doubtfully. 
 
 " Are you malicious ? " he said, with a hesitating note in his 
 voice. 
 
 " Malicious no ! " 
 
 " You won't chaff her ? " 
 
 " Chaff a lady who wears more feathers than ever ' growed on one 
 ostrich,' and who was the intime of the mysterious Marr ? Julian, 
 Julian ! " 
 
 Then seeing that Julian still looked rather uncomfortable, Valen- 
 tine added, dropping his mock heroic manner : 
 
 " Don't be afraid. We will give the lady one good hour." 
 
 "Ah," Julian cried, struck by the expression; "that's what the 
 doctor wished to give to every poor wretch in London." 
 
 " We won't ask the doctor to our tea," Valentine replied, with a 
 sudden coldness. 
 
 The invitation was conveyed to the lady of the feathers, and in due 
 course an answer was received, a mosaic of mis-spelling and obvious 
 gratification. 
 
 "My dear," ran the missive, " I will com. I shall be pleased 
 to see you agane, but I thorght I shoold not. Men say oh 
 yes, I shall com back but not many does, and I thorght praps 
 you was like all the rest. Your friend is very good to ask me, 
 and I am, 
 
 " Yr loving, 
 
 " CUCKOO." 
 
 Valentine read the letter without comment, and ordered an elabo- 
 rate tea. Julian read it, and wondered whether he was a fool because 
 he felt touched by the mis-spelt words, as he had sometimes felt 
 touched when he saw some very poor woman attired in her ridiculous 
 " best " clothes. 
 
 The tea time had been fixed for five o'clock, and Julian intended
 
 138 FLAMES 
 
 of course to be in Victoria Street with Valentine to receive the ex- 
 pected guest, but Cuckoo Bright threw his polite plans out of gear, 
 and Valentine was alone when, at half -past four, the electric bell 
 rang, and, a moment later, Wade solemnly showed into the drawing 
 room a striking vision, such as had never " burst into that silent 
 sea " of artistic repose and refinement before. 
 
 The lady undoubtedly wore what seemed to be her one hat, and 
 the effect of it, at all times remarkable, was amazingly heightened by 
 its proximity to the quiet and beautiful surroundings of the room. 
 As a rule it merely cried out. Now it seemed absolutely to yell bank- 
 holiday vulgarity and impropriety at the silent pictures. But her 
 gown decidedly exceeded it in uproar, being of the very loudest 
 scarlet hue, with large black lozenges scattered liberally over it. 
 From her rather narrow shoulders depended a black cape, whose silk 
 foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill scent of cherry 
 blossom ran wiih her like a crowd, and in her hand she carried an 
 umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the midst 
 of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it was 
 with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine 
 standing alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably 
 about in obvious quest of an acquaintance and protector. 
 
 " I am sorry that Mr. Addison has not come yet," Valentine said, 
 holding out his hand. " I expect him every minute. Won't you 
 come and sit down ? " 
 
 An ironical courtesy vibrated in his voice. The lady grew more 
 obviously nervous. She looked at Valentine through the veil which 
 was drawn tightly across her face. His appearance seemed to carry 
 awe into her heart, for she stood staring and attempted no reply, 
 allowing him to take her hand without either protest or response. 
 
 " Won't you sit clown? " he repeated, smiling at her with humorous 
 contemplation of her awkward distress. 
 
 The lady abruptly sat down on a sofa. 
 
 " Allow me to put a cushion at your back," Valentine said. And 
 he passed behind her to do so. But she quickly shifted round, 
 almost as if in fear, and faced him as he stood with his hand on the 
 back of the sofa. 
 
 "No," she said in a hurry, "I don't know as I want one, 
 thanks." 
 
 She half got up. 
 
 " Havo I come right ? " she asked uneasily. " Is this the 
 house?" 
 
 " Certainly. It's so good of you to come." 
 
 The words did not seem to carry any comfort to the lady. She 
 passed the tip of her tongue along her painted lips and looked 
 towards the door.
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE 139 
 
 " Pray don't be alarmed," Valentine said, sitting down on a chair 
 immediately opposite to her. 
 
 " I ain't. But but you're not the friend, are you ? " 
 
 " I am, and the ami des femmes, too, I assure you. Be calm. ' 
 
 He bent forward, looking closely into her face. The lady leaned 
 quickly back and uttered a little gasp. 
 
 " What is the matter? Valentine asked. 
 
 " Nothin', nothin', 1 ' the lady answered, returning his glance as 
 if fascinated into something that approached horror. " When's he 
 comin' ? When's he comin' ? " 
 
 " Directly. But I trust you will not regret spending a few 
 minutes alone in my company. What can I do to make you 
 happy ? " 
 
 " I'm all right, thank you," she said, almost roughly. " Don't 
 bother about me." 
 
 "Who could help bothering about a pretty woman?" Valentine 
 answered suavely, and approaching his chair a little more closely to 
 her. " Do you know that my friend, Addison, can talk of nobody 
 but you ? " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Nobody. He raves about you." 
 
 " You're laughing," the lady said, still uncomfortably. 
 
 " Not at all. I never laugh." 
 
 As he made this last remark, Valentine slowly frowned. The 
 effect of this change of expression upon the lady was most extra- 
 ordinary. She leaned far back upon the sofa as if in retreat from 
 the face that stared upon her, mechanically thrusting out her hands 
 in a faltering gesture of self-defence. Then planting her feet on the 
 ground, and using them as a lever, she succeeded in moving the 
 sofa backwards upon its castors, which ran easily over the thick 
 carpet. Valentine, on his part, did not stir, but, with immovable 
 face, regarded her apparent terror as a man regards some spectacle 
 neither new nor strange to him, silently awaiting its eventual closing 
 tableau. What this would have been cannot be known, for at this 
 moment the bell rang and the butler was heard moving in the hall. 
 The frown faded from Valentine's face, and the lady sprang up from 
 the sofa with a violent, almost a passionate, eagerness. Julian 
 entered hastily. 
 
 "Why was you late? " Cuckoo Bright cried out, hastening up to 
 him, and speaking almost angrily. " Why was you late ? I didn't 
 think I didn't oh ! " 
 
 Her voice sounded like the voice of one on the verge of tears. 
 Julian looked astonished. 
 
 " I am very sorry," he began. " But I didn't know you would be 
 here so soon."
 
 140 FLAMES 
 
 He glanced from the lady to Valentine inquiringly, as much as 
 to say : 
 
 " How have you been getting on ? " 
 
 "Valentine's expression was gay and re-assuring. 
 
 " I have been entertaining your friend, Julian," he said. " But 
 she has been almost inconsolable in your absence. She was standing 
 up because I was just about to show her the pictures. But now you 
 are here we will have tea first instead. Ah, here is tea. Miss 
 Bright, do come and sit by the fire, and put your feet on this stool. 
 We will wait upon you." 
 
 Since the entrance of Julian, his manner had entirely changed. 
 All the irony, all the mock politeness had died out of it. He was 
 now a kind and delicately courteous host, desirous of putting his 
 guests upon good terms and gilding the passing hour with a definite 
 happiness. Cuckoo Bright seemed struck completely dumb by the 
 transformation. She took the chair he indicated, mechanically put 
 her feet up on the stool he pushed forward, and, with a rather 
 trembling hand, accepted a cup of tea. 
 
 " Do you take sugar ? " Valentine said, bending over her with the 
 sugar basin. 
 
 " No, no," she said. 
 
 " Oh, but I thought you loved sweet things," Julian interposed. 
 " Surely " 
 
 " I won't have none to-day," she ejaculated, adding with an 
 endeavour after gentility, " thank you all the same," to Valentine. 
 
 He offered her some delicious cakes, but she was apparently 
 petrified by the grandeur of her surroundings, or by some hidden 
 sensation of shyness or of shame, and was refusing to eat anything 
 when Julian came to the rescue. 
 
 " Oh, but you must," he said. " Have some of these sugar 
 biscuits." 
 
 She took some from him, and began to sip and munch steadily 
 but still in silence. Julian began to fear that the festival must be 
 a dire failure, for her obvious and extreme constraint affected him, 
 and he was also seized with an absurd sense of shyness in the 
 presence of Valentine, and, instead of talking, found himself 
 immersed in a boyish anxiety as to Valentine's attitude of mind 
 towards the girl. He looked at Cuckoo in the firelight, as she 
 mutely ate and drank, and was all at once profoundly conscious of 
 the dreary vulgarity of her appearance, against which even her 
 original prettiness and her present youth fought in vain. Her hat 
 cast a monstrous shadow upon the wall, a shadow so distorted and 
 appalling that Julian almost grew red as he observed it, and felt 
 that Valentine was probably observing it also. He wished poor 
 Cuckoo had left the crying scarlet gown at home and those black
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE 141 
 
 lozenges, which were suited to the pavement of the hall of a 
 financier. Everything she had on expressed a mind such as 
 Valentine must become acquainted with in amazement, and have 
 intercourse with in sorrow. The pathetic side of this preposterous 
 feathered and bugled degradation he would fail to see. Julian felt 
 painfully certain of this. All the details of the woman would offend 
 him who was so alive to the value of fine details in life. He must 
 surely be wondering with all his soul how Julian could ever have 
 contemplated continuing the intercourse with Cuckoo which had been 
 begun for a definite purpose already accomplished. Yet Julian's 
 feeling of friendship towards this rouged scarecrow with the pathetic 
 eyes and the anxious hands did not diminish as he blushed for her, 
 but rather increased, fed, it seemed, by the discordant trifles in which 
 her soul moved as in a maze. He was so much in the thrall of 
 thought that he had become quite unconscious of the awkwardness 
 of the brooding silence when he heard Valentine's voice say : 
 
 " Are you fond of art, Miss Bright ? " 
 
 The question sounded as if addressed to some society woman at 
 home in Melbury Road. Addressed to Cuckoo it was entirely 
 absurd, and Julian glanced at Valentine to deprecate the gay sarcasm 
 which he suspected. But Valentine's face disarmed him. It was so 
 gravely and serenely polite. 
 
 " Eh ? " said Cuckoo. 
 
 " Are you fond of art, or do you prefer literature ? " 
 
 " I don't know," she said nervously. 
 
 " Or perhaps music ? " 
 
 " I like singin'," she said. " And the organs." 
 
 " Do sing us something. Val," Julian said, to create a diversion. 
 
 But Valentine shook his head. 
 
 " Not to-day. I have got a cold in my throat." 
 
 " Well then play something." 
 
 But Valentine did not seem to hear the last request. He had 
 turned again to Cuckoo, who visibly shied away from him, and 
 clattered the teacup and saucer, which she held like one alarmed. 
 
 "Music is a great art," he said persuasively. " And appeals 
 essentially to one's emotions. I am certain now that you are 
 emotional." 
 
 " I don't know, I'm sure," she said, with an effort at self-con- 
 fidence. 
 
 " You feel strongly, whether it be love or hate." 
 
 This last remark seemed to reach her, even to stir her to something 
 more definite than mere mauvaise honte. She glanced quickly from 
 Julian to Valentine. 
 
 "Love and hate," she responded. "Yes, that's it, I could feel 
 them both. You're right there, my d , I mean yes,"
 
 i 4 2 FLAMES 
 
 And cagain she looked from one young man to the other. She had 
 put up her veil, which was stretched in a bimched-up mass across her 
 powdered forehead, and Julian had an odd fancy that in the firelight 
 he saw upon her haggard young face the rapid and fleeting expression 
 of the two violently opposed emotions of which she spoke. Her face, 
 turned upon him, seemed to shine with a queer, almost with a 
 ludicrous, vehemence of yearning which might mean passion. This 
 flashed into the sudden frown of a young harridan as her eyes 
 travelled on to Valentine. But the frown died quickly, and she 
 looked downcast, and sat biting her thin lips, and crumbling a 
 biscuit into the tiny blue and white china plate upon her knee. 
 
 " And do you give way to your impulses ? " Valentine continued, 
 still very gravely. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Do you express what you feel ? " 
 
 A flash of childish cunning crept into her eyes and mouth, giving 
 her the aspect of a gamin. 
 
 " No, I ain't such a fool," she anssvered. " Men don't like to be 
 told the truth. Do they now ? " 
 
 The question went to Julian. 
 
 "Why not?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, they like to be fooled. If you don't fool them, they fool 
 you." 
 
 " A sufficiently clear statement of the relations of the sexes 
 through all time," said Valentine. " Have you ever studied Schopen- 
 hauer ? " 
 
 " Ah, now you're kiddin' me ! " was her not inappropriate answer. 
 
 She was getting a little more at her ease, but she still stole fre- 
 quent furtive glances at Valentine from time to time, and moved 
 with an uncomfortable jerk if he bent forward to her, or seemed 
 about to come near to her. He seemed now really interested in her 
 personality, and Julian began to wonder if its very vulgarity came 
 to him with a charm of novelty. 
 
 " Kidding ? " Valentine said interrogatively. 
 
 " Crettin' at me ! Pullin' my leg ! Oh, I know you ! " cried 
 Cuckoo. " I'm up to all them games. You don't get a rise out 
 of me." 
 
 " The lady speaks in parables," Valentine murmured to Julian. 
 " I assure you," he added aloud, " I am speaking quite seriously." 
 
 " Oh, seriously be hanged ! " said Cuckoo recklessly. " You're a 
 regular funny feller. Oh yes. Only don't you try to be funny with 
 me, because I'm up to all that." 
 
 She seemed suddenly bent on turning the tables on one whom she 
 apparently regarded as her adversary. Some people, when they do 
 make an effort of will, are always carried forward by the unwonted
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE 143 
 
 exertion into an almost libertine excess. Miss Bright's timidity was 
 now developing into violent impudence. She tossed her head till the 
 gigantic shadow of the sarcophagus that crowned it aspired upon the 
 wall almost to the ceiling. She stuck her feet out upon the stool 
 aggressively, and her arms instinctively sought the akimbo position 
 that is the physical expression of mental hardihood, in vulgar 
 natures. 
 
 " Go along ! " she said. 
 
 Valentine pretended to take her at her word. He got up. 
 
 " Where shall I go ? I am your slave ! " 
 
 She laughed shrilly. 
 
 " Go to blazes if you like." 
 
 Valentine crossed to the door, and, before Julian had time to speak, 
 opened it and quietly vanished. Julian and Cuckoo were left staring 
 at one another. The latter's impudence had suddenly evaporated. 
 Her face was working as if she were astonished and afraid. 
 
 "What's he after? What's he after, I say?" she ejaculated. 
 " Go and see." 
 
 But Julian shook his head. 
 
 " It's all right. He has only done it for a joke. He will be back 
 directly." 
 
 " Yes, but but 
 
 She seemed really frightened. Julian supposed she realised her 
 rudeness vaguely, and imagined she had made an abominable faux pas. 
 Acting on this supposition he said reassuringly : 
 
 " He didn't mind your chaff. He knew you were only joking." 
 
 " Lord, it isn't that," she rejoined with trembling lips. " But 
 what's he goin' to do ? " 
 
 " Do ? " 
 
 " Yes. Go and see. Hark ! " 
 
 She held up her hand and leaned forward in a strained attitude of 
 attention. But there was no sound in the flat. Then she turned 
 again to Julian and said : 
 
 " And he's your friend. Well, I never ! " 
 
 The words were spoken with an extraordinary conviction of 
 astonishment that roused Julian to keen attention. 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ? " he asked. 
 
 " He's a wicked fellow," she said with a snatch of the breath. 
 " A real downright wicked fellow, like Man*. That's what he is." 
 
 Julian was amazed. 
 
 " You don't know what are you saying," he answered. 
 
 But she stuck to her guns with the animation of hysteria. 
 
 " Don't I though ? Don't I ? A girl that lives like me has to 
 know, I tell you. Where should I be if I didn't ? Tell me that 
 then. Why, there's men in the streets I wouldn't speak to, not for
 
 1 14 FLAMES 
 
 twenty pounds, I wouldn't. And he's one of them. Why didn't 
 you come ? Why ever did you let me be on my own with him ? He's 
 a devil." 
 
 " Nonsense," Julian said brusquely. 
 
 She laid her hand on his, and hers was trembling. 
 
 " Well, then, why's he gone off all sudden like that?" 
 
 " Only for a joke. Wait, I'll fetch him back." 
 
 Cuckoo Bright looked frankly terrified at the idea. 
 
 " No," she cried ; "don't. I'm goin'. I'm off. Help me on with 
 my cloak, dearie. I'm off." 
 
 Julian saw that it was useless to argue with her. He put the 
 cloak round her shoulders. As he did so he was standing behind her, 
 with his face to the fireplace. The leaping flames sprang from the 
 coals in the grate and their light was reflected on the wall near the 
 door, but only of course to a certain height. Julian's eyes were 
 attracted to these leaping flames on the wall and he saw one suddenly 
 detach itself from the shadows of its brethren, take definite shape 
 and life, develop while he looked from shadow into substance, 
 float up on the background of the wall higher and higher, reach the 
 ceiling and melt away. As it faded the drawing-room door opened 
 and Valentine re-appeared. 
 
 Miss Bright started violently, and caught at her cloak with both 
 hands. Valentine came forward slowly. 
 
 " You are not going already, surely," he said. 
 
 " I must, I must," she ejaculated, already in movement towards 
 the hall. 
 
 " But I have just been to get you a box of sugar plums." 
 
 He held a satin box in his hand and began to open it. But she 
 hurried on with a nod. 
 
 " Good-bye. Sorry, but I can't stop." 
 
 She was in the hall and out of the flat in the twinkling of an eye, 
 followed by Julian. Valentine remained in the drawing-room. 
 
 " Lord, I am glad to be out of it," said the lady when she had 
 gained the street and stood panting on the pavement. 
 
 Julian hailed a hansom and put her into it. She gazed at him ns 
 if she was almost afraid to part from him. 
 
 " You'll you'll come and see me again ? " she said, wistfully. 
 
 " Yes, I'll come," he answered. 
 
 " For God's sake, don't bring him, dearie," she said, with an 
 upward lift of her feathered head towards the block of mansions. 
 
 Then she drove off into the darkness.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE 
 
 IT was at this point in his career that Julian, just for a time, began 
 keenly to observe Valentine and to wonder if there were hidden 
 depths in his friend which he had never sounded. The cause of the 
 dawning of this consideration lay in Cuckoo's strange assertion and 
 fear of Valentine, primarily, but there were other reasons prompting 
 him to an unusual attitude of attention, although he might not at 
 first have been able to name them. He could not believe that there 
 was any change in Valentine, but he fancied that there might be 
 some side of Valentine's nature which he did not fully understand, 
 which others vaguely felt and wrongly interpreted. For it was the 
 instinctive creatures in whom Valentine's presence now seemed to 
 awake distrust, and surely an instinct may be too violent, or move 
 in a wrong direction, and yet be inspired by some subtlety in the 
 character that awakens it and prompts it and drives it forward. Julian 
 thought that he found a reason for Cuckoo's aversion in Valentine's 
 lofty refinement, which would naturally jar upon her nature of the 
 streets. For her pathos, her better impulses, which had touched 
 him, and led him to sympathy with her, were perhaps only stars in 
 a mind that must be a dust-heap of horrible memories and coarse 
 thoughts. To protect Valentine from even the most diminutive 
 shadow of suspicion, Julian was ready silently to insist that Cuckoo 
 was radically bad, although he really knew that she was rather a 
 weak sacrifice than an eager sinner. 
 
 Her declaration that Valentine was evil carried complete conviction 
 of its sincerity. Indeed, her obvious fear of him proved this. And 
 this fear of a woman reminded Julian of the fear exhibited towards 
 Valentine by Rip, a terror which still continued, to such an extent 
 indeed, that the little dog was now never permitted to be in the 
 presence of its master. 
 
 " You are rather an awe-inspiring person, Valentine," Julian said 
 one day, 
 
 Valentine looked surprised. 
 
 " I never knew it," he answered. " Who is afraid of me ? " 
 
 E
 
 146 FLAMES 
 
 "Oh, I don't know well, Rip, for one, and and that girl, 
 Cuckoo, for another." 
 " Why is she afraid ? " 
 " I can't imagine." 
 
 " I could soon put her at her ease, and I will do so." 
 He went over to the mantelpiece and took up an envelope that 
 was lying there. From it he drew a slip of coloured paper. 
 
 " This will be the talisman," he said. " Have you forgotten that 
 Saturday is boat-race day ? " 
 
 " What, you have really got a box for the ' Empire ' ? " 
 " Yes, and I mean to invite Miss Bright." 
 Julian exclaimed with his usual frankness. 
 " Why the devil do you think of asking her ? " 
 " Because I am certain she will be amusing company on such an 
 occasion." 
 
 " That's your real reason ? " 
 " Yes. She will come, of course." 
 Julian looked rather doubtful. 
 " I don't know," he said. " She may." 
 
 " She must. Julian. Here is a note I have written to her. Do 
 give it to her yourself. I can't be thought a bogey. She must come 
 and learn that I am harmless." 
 
 As he said this Valentine's fingers unconsciously twisted the note 
 they held so strongly that it was torn to shreds. 
 
 "Why, you have torn it up," Julian said, in surprise. 
 " Oh yes." 
 
 "Valentine paxised, then added, 
 
 " You had better ask her by word of mouth. Persuade her to 
 come." 
 
 " I will try." 
 
 The lady of the feathers did indeed require a good deal of persua- 
 sion. When first Julian made the proposition her face shone with 
 gratification, for he gave the invitation without mentioning Valen- 
 tine's name. But then the clouds came down. The lady remembered 
 him suddenly, and said : 
 
 "Are we two going alone, dearie ? " 
 
 " Well it's a big box, you see. We should be lost in it." 
 "Oh." 
 
 She waited for further explanation, an obvious anxiety in her eyes. 
 " My friend, Cresswell, is coming with us. It's his box." 
 The gratification died away from the painted face. Cuckoo shook 
 her head and pursed her lips in obvious and absurd disapprobation. 
 " Then I don't think I'll go. No ; I won't." 
 
 And, upon this, Julian had to launch forth over a sea of expos- 
 tulation and protest. Cuckoo possessed all the obstinacy of an
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE 147 
 
 ignorant and battered nature, taught, by many a well-founded 
 distrust, to rely upon its own feebleness rather than upon the 
 probably brutal strength of others. She was difficult to move, 
 although she had no arguments with which to defend her assumption 
 of the mule's attitude. At last Julian grew almost angry in defence 
 of Valentine. 
 
 " Half the women in London would be proud to go with him," he 
 said hotly. 
 
 " Not if they knew as much about men as I do," she answered. 
 
 " But you know nothing whatever about him. That's just the 
 point." 
 
 " Ah, but I feel a lot," she said, with an expressive twist of her 
 thin, rather pretty face. " He's bad, rank bad. That's what he is." 
 
 Julian was suddenly seized Avith a desire to probe this outrageous 
 instinct to its source, believing, like many people, that the stream 
 of instinct must flow from some hidden spring of reason. 
 
 " Now look here," he said, more quietly. " I want you to try to 
 tell me what it is in him that you dislike so much." 
 
 " It's everything, dearie." 
 
 " No, but that's absurd. For instance it can't be his looks." 
 
 " It is." 
 
 " Why he's wonderfully handsome." 
 
 " I don't care. I hate his face ; yes I do." 
 
 Julian impatiently pitied her, as one pities a blind man who 
 knocks up against one in the street. But he thought it best to 
 abandon Valentine's appearance to its unhappy fate of her dislike, 
 and sailed away on another tack. 
 
 " My friend likes you," he said, as he thought, craftily. 
 
 Cuckoo tossed her head without reply. 
 
 li He said he would rather go with you on Saturday than with 
 any one in London." 
 
 This last remark seemed to produce a considerable effect upon the 
 girl. 
 
 " Did he though ? " she asked, one finger going up to her under' 
 lip, reflectively. " Really, truly ? " 
 
 " Really, truly." 
 
 " What should he want with me ? He's he's not one of the 
 usual sort." 
 
 " Valentine usual ! I should think not." 
 
 " And he wants me to go ? " 
 
 Certainly she Avas impressed and flattere L 
 
 " Yes, very much." 
 
 Julian found himself again Avondering, with CuctoD, mightily at 
 Valentine's vagary of desire. She touched his hani vith her longj 
 thin fingers.
 
 148 FLAMES 
 
 " You'll stay with me all the time ? " 
 
 " Why, of course." 
 
 " You won't leave me ? Not alone with him, I mean." 
 
 " No, don't be so absurd." 
 
 A new hesitation sprang into her face. 
 
 " But what am I to go in?" she said. "He he don't like my 
 red." 
 
 So her awe and dislike prompted her to a desire of pleasing 
 Valentine after all, and had led her shrewdly to read his verdict on 
 her poorly smart gown. Julian, pleased at his apparent victory, 
 now ventured on a careful process of education, on the insertion of 
 the thin edge of the wedge, as he mutely named it. 
 
 " Cuckoo," he said, " let me give you a present, a dress. Now," 
 as she began to shake her tangled head, " don't be silly. I have 
 never given you anything, and if we are to be pals you mustn't be 
 so proud. Can you get a dress made in three days, a black 
 dress?" 
 
 " Yes," she said. " But black ! I shall look a dowdy." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Oh, but I shall," she murmured, dismally. " Colours suits me 
 best. You see I'm thin now, not as I was when I well, before I 
 started. Ah, I looked different then, I did. I don't want to be a 
 scarecrow and make you ashamed of me." 
 
 Julian longed to tell her that it was the rouge, the feathers, the 
 scarlet skirt, the effusive bugles, that made a scarecrow of her. 
 But he had a rough diplomacy that taught him to refrain. He 
 stuck to his point, however. 
 
 " I shall give you a black dress and hat " 
 
 " Oh, my hat's all right now," she interposed. " Them feathers is 
 beautiful." 
 
 " Splendid, but I'll give you a hat to match the dress, and a 
 feather boa, and black suede gloves." 
 
 " But, dearie, I shall be a trottin' funeral, that I shall," she ex- 
 postulated, divided between excitement and perplexity. 
 
 "No, you'll look splendid. And Cuckoo " 
 
 He hesitated, aware that he was treading on the divine quicksand 
 of woman's prejudices. 
 
 " Cuckoo, I want you to make a little experiment for my sake." 
 
 " Whatever is it, dearie ? " 
 
 " Just on that one night take take all that off." 
 
 With an almost timid gesture, and growing boyishly red, he indi- 
 cated the art decoration, pink and pale, that adorned her face. 
 
 Poor Cuckoo looked completely flabbergasted. 
 
 " What ! " she said uncertainly. " Don't you like me with it ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 v'
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE 149 
 
 " Well, but, I don't know." 
 
 Such an experiment evidently struck her as portentous, earth- 
 shaking. She stared into the dingy glass that stood over the mantel- 
 piece in Marylebone Eoad. 
 
 " I shall look a hag," she muttered with conviction. " I shall." 
 
 " You never had it, before you started." 
 
 Her eyes grew round. 
 
 " Ah, that was jolly different though," she said. 
 
 "Try it," he urged. "Go and try it now, then come and show 
 me." 
 
 " I don't like to." 
 
 The idea reduced her almost to shyness. But she got up falter- 
 ingly, and moved towards the bedroom. When she was by the fold- 
 ing door she said : 
 
 " I say." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I say, you won't laugh at me ? " 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " You won't honour ? " 
 
 "Honour!" 
 
 She disappeared. And there was the sound of many waters. 
 Julian listened to it, repeating under his breath that word of many 
 meanings, that panorama word, honour. Among thieves, among 
 prostitutes, among murderers, rebels, the lost, the damned of this 
 world, still does it not sing, like a bird that is too hopeful of some 
 great and beautiful end ever to be quite silent ? 
 
 Julian waited, while Cuckoo washed away her sin of paint and 
 powder, at first nervously, then with a certain zest that was almost 
 violent, that splashed the water on floor and walls, and sent the 
 shivering Jessie beneath the bed for shelter. Cuckoo scrubbed and 
 scrubbed then applied a towel, until her skin protested in patches. 
 Finally, and with a disturbed heart, she approached the sitting-room. 
 Her voice came in to Julian while she remained hidden : 
 
 " I say " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I know you will laugh." 
 
 "Honour, Cuckoo, honour." 
 
 "Oh, all right." 
 
 And she came in to him, hanging her head down, rather like a 
 child among strangers, ashamed, poor thing, of looking respectable. 
 Julian was astonished at the change the water had wrought. Cuckoo 
 looked another woman, or rather girl, oddly young, thin, and haggard 
 certainly, and the reverse of dashing, but pretty, even fascinating in 
 her shyness. As he looked at her and saw the real red of nature 
 run over her cheeks in waves of faint rose colour, Julian understood
 
 1 50 FLAMES 
 
 fully all that the girl gives up when she gives up herself, and the 
 wish smiled at by Valentine came to him again, the wish to 
 reclaim her. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said. "Now you are yourself." 
 
 He took her hand, and drew her in front of the mirror, but she 
 refused to lift up her eyes and look at her reflection. 
 
 " I'm a scai-ecrow," she murmured, twisting the front of her gown 
 in her fingers. Her lips began to twitch ominously. Julian felt 
 uncomfortable. He thought she was going to cry. 
 
 " You are prettier than ever," he said. " Look ! " 
 
 "No, no. It's all gone all gone." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 "My looks, dearie. I could do without the 1 paint once. I can't 
 now." 
 
 Suddenly she turned to him with a sort of vulgar passion, that 
 suspicion of the hard young harridan, typical of the pavement, which 
 he had observed in her before. 
 
 " I should like to get the whole lot of men in here," she said, " and 
 -and chew them up." 
 
 She showed her teeth almost like an animal. Then the relapse, 
 characteristic of the hysterical condition in which she was, came. 
 
 " Never you treat me like the rest," she said, bursting into sobs. 
 " Never you try anythin' on. If you do I'll kill myself." 
 
 This outburst showed to Julian that she was capable of a curious 
 depth of real sentiment that gave to her a glimpse of purity and the 
 divinity of restraint. He tried to soothe her and quickly succeeded. 
 When she had recovered they went out together to see about the 
 making of the new black dress, and before they parted he had per- 
 suaded Cuckoo to face the " Empire " multitude on the fateful 
 evening without her panoply of paint and powder. She pleaded 
 hard for a touch of black on the eyes, a line of red on the lips. But 
 he was inexorable. When he had gained his point he comforted 
 her anxiety with chocolates, a feat more easy than the soothing of 
 her with reasoning could have been. 
 
 When he told Valentine of the success of his embassy, Valentine 
 simply said : 
 
 " I am glad." 
 
 Julian did not mention the episode of the washing, the prepara- 
 tion of the black gown, or the promise wrung from the lady of the 
 feathers. The result springing from these three events was to come 
 as a surprise to Valentine on boat-race night.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 
 
 EVEN so huge a city as London, full of so many valuing personalities 
 and clashing interests, assumes upon certain days of the year a 
 particular and characteristic aspect, arising from a community of 
 curiosity, of excitement, or of delight felt by its inhabitants. Such 
 days are Derby day and boat-race day. On the latter more 
 especially London is leavened by a huge mob of juveniles from the 
 universities and their female admirers from the country, who cast a 
 sort of pleasant spell over the frigid indifference of town-bred dullards, 
 and wake even the most vacuous of the Piccadilly loungers into a 
 certain vivacity and boyishness. The cabmen blossom cheerily in 
 dark and light blue favours. The butcher boys are partisans. Every 
 yamin in the gutter is all for one boat or for the other, and dances 
 excitedly to know the result. London, in fact, loses several wrinkles 
 on boat-race day, and smiles itself into a very pleasant appearance of 
 briskness and of youth. As a rule, Julian went to see the race 
 and to lunch with his friends at Putney or elsewhere, without either 
 abnormal experience of excitement or any unusual vivacity. He was 
 naturally full of life, and had hot blood in his veins, loved a spectacle 
 and especially a struggle of youth against youth. But no boat-race 
 day had ever stirred him as this one did found him so attentive to 
 outside influence, so receptive of common things. For Julian had 
 recently been half conscious that he was progressing, and with 
 increasing rapidity, though he knew not in what exact direction. 
 Simply he had the feeling of motion, of journeying, and it seemed to 
 him that he had been standing comparatively still for years. And 
 this boat-race day came to him like a flashing milestone upon the 
 road of life. He felt as if it held in its hours a climax of episodes 
 or of emotions, as if upon it either his body or his mind must prepare 
 to undergo some large experience, to meet the searching eyes of a 
 face new and unfamiliar. 
 
 Possibly the reason of his own excitement lay in the excitement of 
 another, in the curious preparations, which he had oddly shared, for 
 the transformation of the unmistakable into the vague. For the
 
 1 5 2 FLAMES 
 
 transformation of Cuckoo Bright had been preparing apace, and 
 Julian was looking forward like a schoolboy to the effect which her 
 novel respectability of appearance would have upon Valentine. The 
 rouge box lay lonely and untouched in a drawer. Even the powder- 
 puff suffered an unaccustomed neglect. The black gown had been 
 tried on and taught to fit the thin young figure, and a hat with only 
 one feather kept company with the discarded sarcophagus which 
 had given to Cuckoo her original nickname. And Cuckoo herself 
 was almost as excited as Francine when she received her muff. She 
 had not seen Valentine since the day of the tea-party, yet her 
 attitude of mind had undergone a change towards him, bent to it 
 probably by her vanity. Ever since Julian had given her the 
 invitation to the Empire she had displayed a furtive desire to meet 
 him again, was perpetually talking of him and asking questions about 
 him. Nevertheless her fear of him had not died away. Even now 
 she sometimes exclaimed against him almost with vehemence, and 
 made Julian renew his promise not to leave her during the evening. 
 But Julian could see that she longed, as well as dreaded, to meet him 
 again. After all, had he not picked her out from all the girlhood of 
 London as one to whom he wished to do honour ? Had he been the 
 Minotaur such a fact must have made her look upon him with 
 desirous interest. 
 
 When the great day arrived poor Cuckoo had to struggle with a 
 keen and a sore temptation. She longed to deck herself out in her 
 usual borrowed plumage, to take the habitual brilliant complexion 
 out of the accustomed drawer, to crown her frizzed head with 
 feathers, and to look noisily dashing her only idea of elegance and 
 grace. Never before had she so desired to create an impression. Yet 
 she had given Julian her most solemn promise, and she intended to 
 keep it. As she slowly attired herself, however, she wondered very 
 much why he was so set upon denuding her of her accustomed 
 magnificence. Her mind was entirely unable to grasp his conception 
 of beauty and of attractiveness. She thought all men preferred the 
 peony to the violet. To-night it was very certain that she would be 
 no peony, scarcely even a violet. Her new gown had been expensive, 
 but it was terribly simple, and the skirt hung beautifully, but was 
 surely most direfully sombre. Nevertheless, it rustled with a hand- 
 some sound, a melody of wealth, when she had put it on and 
 promenaded about her dingy bedroom, with Jessie at her heels, 
 pretending to worry it playfully. The black bodice had some 
 trimming. But it was all black. Cuckoo wished it had been scarlet, 
 or, at the least, orange, something to catch the eye and hold it. 
 When she was fully attired, and was staring into her glass, between 
 two boldly flaring gas jets, she nearly resolved to break her promise 
 to Julian. She even went so far as to paint her lips and eyes, and
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 153 
 
 was charmed with the effect against the black. But then, with a 
 sudden fury, she sponged her pale face clean, threw the new feather 
 boa round her throat, and, without daring to glance again at her 
 funereal image, turned out the gas, and went into the sitting-room. 
 As usual, her last act was to ensconce the pensive Jessie in the 
 flannel-lined basket, and to give her a kiss. To-i\ight, as she did 
 so, she let a tear fall on the little dog's head. She scarcely knew 
 why she cried. Perhaps the quiet gown, the lack of paint and 
 powder, the prospect of kind and even respectful treatment from at 
 least Julian, if not from Valentine, gave to her heart a vision of 
 some existence in which Piccadilly Circus had no part. 
 
 Jessie shivered as she felt the tear, and licked the face of her 
 mistress eagerly. Then Cuckoo rustled forth, avoiding Mrs. Brigg, 
 who might be heard laboriously ascending the kitchen stairs to view 
 her in her gala attire. In the twinkling of an eye she was out in 
 the street, and Mrs. Brigg returned, swearing gustily, to the lower 
 regions. 
 
 Cuckoo was to join the young men in their box, of which she 
 had received the number. She took a cab to the Empire, and was 
 there in excellent time. As she paid the man, she saw several 
 women going noisily in, dressed in bright colours and gigantic hats. 
 She looked at them, and felt terribly mean and poor, and it was with 
 no trace of her usual airy impudence that she asked her way of the 
 towering attendant in uniform who stood at the bottom of the 
 carpeted staircase. 
 
 Julian and Valentine were already there. They turned round as 
 she came in, and stood up to receive her. Julian took her hand, but 
 Valentine hesitated for a moment. Then he said : 
 
 " Is it can it be really Miss Bright ? " 
 
 " Sure enough it is," Cuckoo answered, with an effort after 
 liveliness. 
 
 But her eyes were fixed on his. She had seen a curious expression 
 of mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came 
 in. Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her ? She 
 was looking horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman. She was 
 certain of it. For a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for 
 placing her in such a bitter position. But he was glowing with 
 a consciousness of successful diplomacy, and was delighted with her 
 neat black aspect, and with her smart, though small, hat. He was 
 indeed surprised to find how really pretty she still was when she 
 allowed her true face to be seen, and was only wishing that she had 
 made a little less of her hair, which was more vigorously arranged 
 even than usual. He glanced to see Valentine's surprise. 
 
 " You are so altered," the latter continued, " I scarcely recognised 
 you."
 
 154 FLAMES 
 
 Cuckoo's lips tightened. 
 
 " Altered or not, it's me, though," she said. 
 
 Valentine did not reply to -this. He only made her come to the 
 front of the box, and placed a chair for her. She sat down -feeling 
 like a dog just whipped. The young men were on each side of her, 
 and the band played an overture. Cuckoo peered out over the bar 
 of the box, shifting ever so little away from the side on which Val- 
 entine sat. In his presence all her original and extreme discomfort 
 returned, with an added enmity caused by her secret certainty that 
 he thought her looking her worst. She peered from the box and 
 strove to interest herself in the huge crowd that thronged the house 
 and in her own dignified and elevated position in it. For Valentine 
 had taken one of the big boxes next the stage on the first tier, 
 and Cuckoo had never been in such a situation before. She could 
 survey the endless rows of heads in the stalls with a completeness 
 of bird's-eye observation never previously attained. What multi- 
 tudes there were. Endless ranks of men, all staling in the same 
 direction, all smoking, all with handkerchiefs peeping out of their 
 cuffs, and goldrings on their little fingers. Some of them looked half 
 asleep, others, who had evidently been dining, threw themselves 
 back in their stalls roaring with laughter, and leaning to tell each 
 other stories that must surely have teemed with wit. Most of them 
 were young. But here and there an elderly and lined figure-head 
 appeared among them, a figure-head that had faced many sorts of 
 weather in many shifting days and nights, and that must soon face 
 eternity instead of time. Yet at the gates of death it still sipped 
 its brandy and soda, smiled over a French song with tired lips, and 
 sat forward with a pale gleam dawning in its eyes to reconnoitre the 
 charms of a ballet. And if it looked aside at youth and was pierced 
 by the sword of tragedy, yet it was too well bred or too conventional 
 to let even one of the world around witness the wound. There is 
 much secret bravery in social life. But these elderly figure-heads 
 were fewer than usual to-night. Youth seemed to have usurped the 
 playing-grounds of pleasure, to have driven old age away into the 
 shadows. With flag flying, with trumpet and drum, it gaily held the 
 field. The lady of the feathers, Valentine, and Julian leaned out 
 from their box as from the car of a balloon and saw below them a 
 world of youth, hand in hand with the world of pleasure the gods 
 offer to youth as wine. It was yet early in the evening, and the 
 hours were only tripping along, as women trip in the. pictures of 
 Albert Moore. They had not begun to dance, although the band 
 was playing a laughing measure from an opera of Auber that foams 
 with frivolity. Men kept dropping in, cigar in mouth, walking to 
 their seats with that air of well- washed and stiff composure peculiar 
 to British vouth grim with self-consciousness, but affecting the dev;l-
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 155 
 
 may-care with a certain measure of success. Some of them escorted 
 ladies, but by far the greater number were in couples, or in parties of 
 three or four. The rose of health, or, in many cases, of repletion, 
 sat enthroned upon their cheeks ; on the upper lips of many the 
 moustaches were budding delicately. These were just getting up on 
 the box and gripping the reins for the great coach drive. Little 
 wonder if the veins in the eager hands stood out. Little wonder if 
 they flourished the whip with an unnecessary vehemence. But for 
 them, too, so far the hours were only tripping, a slow and a dainty 
 measure, a formal minuet. And they were but watching. Only 
 later would they rise up and join the great dance of the hours, large, 
 complicated, alluring, through whose measures the feet of eventual 
 saints have trod, whose music rings in the ears of many who, long 
 after, try to pray and to forget. Some who were with women made 
 conversation jocosely, putting on travesties of military airs, and a 
 knowingness of expression that might have put the wisdom of the 
 Sphinx to shame. Nor did they hesitate to appear amorous in the 
 public eye. On the contrary, their attitudes of attention were 
 purposely assumed silently to utter volumes. They lay, to all 
 intents and purposes, at the feet of their houris, as Samson lay 
 shorn at the feet of Delilah. In loud, young voices they fold 
 the secrets of their hearts, until even the clash of the music could 
 scarcely keep them hidden. And Delilah, who had shorn the locks 
 of so many Samsons, and who had heard so many secrets, gave ear 
 with a clever affectation of interested surprise that deceived these 
 gay deceivers and set them high on the peaks of their own estima- 
 tion. Two or three family parties, one obviously French, seemed 
 out of place, indecently domestic, in the midst of such a throng, in 
 which matrimony was a Cinderella before the ball, cuffed in curl- 
 papers rather than kissed in crystal slippers. They sat rather 
 silent. One consisted of a father, a mother, and two daughters, the 
 latter in large flowered hats. The father smoked. The mother 
 looked furtive in a bonnet, and the two daughters, with wide open 
 eyes, examined the flirtations around them as a child examines a 
 butterfly caught in a net. One of them blushed. But she did not 
 turn away her eyes. Nor were her girlish ears inactive. Family 
 life seemed suddenly to become dull to her. She wondered whether 
 it were life at all. And the father still smoked domestically. He 
 knew it all. That was the difference. And perhaps it was his 
 knowledge that made him serenely content with domesticity and the 
 three women who belonged to him. Two boys, who had come up 
 from a public school for the race, and had forgotten to go back, sat 
 at the end of a row in glistening white collars and neat ties, almost 
 angrily observant of all that was going on around them. For them 
 the dance of the hours was already begun, and already become a
 
 156 FLAMES 
 
 can-can. They watched it with an eager interest and excitement, 
 and the calm self-possession with which some of the men near them 
 made jokes to magnificently dressed women with diamond earrings, 
 struck them dumb with admiration. Yet, later on, they too were 
 fated to join in the dance, when the stars affected to sleep on 
 the clouds and the moon lay wearily inattentive to the pilgrims 
 of the night, like an invalid in a blue boudoir. On the thick 
 carpet by the wall attendants stood loaded with programmes. One 
 of them, very trim and respectable, in a white cap, was named Clara 
 and offered a drink by an impudent Oxonian. She giggled with all 
 the vanity of sixteen, happily forgetful of her husband and of the 
 seven children who called her mother. Yet the dance of the hours 
 was a venerable saraband to her, and she often wished she was in 
 bed as she stood listening to the familiar music. In the enclosure 
 set apart for the orchestra the massed musicians earned their living 
 violently in the midst of the gaily dressed idlers, who heard them 
 with indifference, and saw them as wound-up marionettes. The 
 drummer hammered on his blatant instrument with all the crude 
 skill of his tribe, producing occasional terrific noises with darting 
 fists, while his face remained as immovable as that of a Punchinello. 
 A flautist piped romantically an Arcadian measure while his pro- 
 minent eyes stared about over the chattering audience as if in search 
 of some one. Suddenly he gave a " couac." He had seen his sweet- 
 heart in the distance with a youth from Christ Church. The conductor 
 turned on the estrade in the centre of the orchestra and scowled at 
 him, and he hastened to become Arcadian once again, gazing at his 
 flute as if the devil had entered into it. In a doorway shrouded 
 with heavy curtains two acting managers talked warily, their hands 
 in retreat behind their coat-tails. They surveyed the house and 
 mentally calculated the amount of money in it, raising their eyes to 
 the more distant promenade, at the back of which large hats covered 
 with flowers and feathers moved steadily to and fro. One of them 
 curled his lips and murmured the word " Chant." Then they both 
 laughed and strolled out to the bar. More men passed in. Many 
 could not get seats, and these stood, smoking and exchanging remarks 
 in the broad space between the stalls and the wall. Some of them 
 leaned nonchalantly against it and criticised the appearance of the 
 seated audience, or nodded to acquaintances. Others gathered round 
 the bar, and a few looked at the drop-curtain as if they thought 
 their ascetic glances would cause it to roll up and disappear. The 
 overture at length ended. The stage was disclosed, and a man came 
 forward with a smirk, and a wriggle of gigantic feet, to sing a song. 
 But Cuckoo Bright, Valentine, and Julian, from their balloon car, 
 still surveyed the world. Cuckoo had heard the man before. She 
 was no stranger to the upper regions of the Empire, but the fascina-
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 157 
 
 tion of knowing herself watched and commented on from the stalls 
 was a new experience and she wished to make the most of it. For- 
 getting that she was not painted and powdered, she stretched herself 
 into view and believed she was creating a sensation. So absorbed 
 was she in the grand effort of being seen that when Valentine drew 
 his chair a little closer to her she did not notice it. One of her 
 hands lay on her lap, the other being on the ledge of the box 
 supporting her chin. She returned eagerly the glances of the 
 stalls. The hand that was in her lap felt another hand close 
 on it. Instinctively Cuckoo turned towards Julian ready to 
 smile. But Julian was gazing absorbed at the crowd, and half 
 abstractedly listening to the song of the man in the huge, distorted 
 boots. It was Valentine who held her hand. She tried to draw it 
 away. He merely tightened his grip on it and continued sitting in 
 silence, not even looking towards her. And as he held her hand a 
 sense of helplessness came over Cuckoo. Even through his kid glove 
 she could feel the burning heat of his palm, of the fingers that 
 clutched hers with the strength of an athlete. She gazed towards 
 him through the new black veil that was drawn over her face, and it 
 seemed even to her limited intelligence that the man who was so 
 brutally holding her against her will could not be the man at whom 
 she was now looking. For Valentine, whose profile was set towards 
 her, was pale, calm, almost languid in appearance. His blue eyes 
 were glancing quietly over the multitude, with an air of indifferent 
 observation. His lips were slightly parted in a sort of dawning smile, 
 and his whole attitude was that of a man lazily at ease and taking his 
 pleasure in a desultory mood. Yet the hand on Cuckoo's knees was 
 vicious in its grasp. This startling and silent contradiction threw 
 her into a complete panic, but she did not dare to say anything in 
 protest. She sat silently trembling and drawing her lips together in 
 growing perturbation, till Julian happened to turn towards them. 
 Then Valentine's fingers relaxed their grasp quietly, and slipped 
 away. At the same time he moved with an air of energy, and broke 
 into gay conversation. His languor vanished. His blue eyes 
 sparkled. Julian was astonished at his intense vivacity. He laughed, 
 made jokes, became absolutely boyish. 
 
 " Why, Val, how gay you are ! " Julian said. 
 " Every one is gay to-night." 
 
 He was interrupted by a roar of laughter. The man in the boots 
 was becoming immoderately whimsical. His feet seemed to have 
 escaped from control, and to be prancing in Paradise while he looked 
 on in Purgatory. 
 
 " Every one is gay." 
 
 As Valentine repeated the words, and the huge theatre laughed 
 like one enormous person, Julian felt again the strange thrill of over-
 
 I 5 8 FLAMES 
 
 mastering excitement that had shaken him on the night when he and 
 Valentine had leaned out of the Victoria Street \vindow. The 
 strength of the Spring and of his long tended and repressed young 
 instincts stirred within him mightily. Scales fell from his eyes. 
 From the car of the balloon he gazed down, and it seemed to him 
 that they Valentine, Cuckoo, and himself were drifting over a 
 new country, of which all the inhabitants were young, gay, careless, 
 rightly irresponsible. The rows of open-mouthed, laughing faces 
 called to him to join in their mirth, more, to join in their lives, and 
 in the lives of the pirouetting hours. He moved in his chair, as if 
 he were impelled to get up and leave his seat. And as he moved a 
 voice whispered in his ear : 
 
 ' ; Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." 
 Was it Valentine's voice? He turned round hastily, curiously 
 perturbed. 
 
 " Val, was that you ? Did you speak to me ? '' 
 " No." 
 
 Julian looked at Cuckoo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes 
 shone with dancing excitement. 
 " Did you, Cuckoo ? " 
 
 " Not I, dearie. I say, ain't he funny to-night ? " 
 Then the voice must have spoken in his own brain. He listened 
 for it and fancied he could hear it again and again, driving him on 
 like a phantom fate. But the voice was in timbre like the voice of 
 Valentine, and he felt as if Valentine spoke with a strange insistence 
 and reiteration. His heart, his whole being-, made answer to the 
 whisper. 
 
 " To-morrow we die. It is true. Ah, then, let us let us eat and 
 let us drink." 
 
 The man in the boots wriggled furiously into the wings, and the 
 curtain rose on the ballet. Wenzel had ascended to the conductor's 
 platform amid loud applause. The first weary melodies of " Faust " 
 streamed plaintively from the orchestra, and a gravity came over the 
 rows of faces in the stalls. Julian's face, too, was grave, but his 
 excitement and his sense of his own power of youth grew as he 
 looked on. The old Faust appeared, heavy with the years and with 
 the trouble of useless thought, and Julian felt that he could sneer at 
 him for his venerable age. As he watched the philosopher's grandi- 
 loquent pantomime of gesture, like a mist there floated over him the 
 keen imagination of the hell of regret in which the old age, that 
 never used to the full its irrevocable youth, must move, and a 
 passion of desire to use his own youth rushed over him, as fire 
 rushes over a dry prairie. Even a sudden anger against Valentine 
 came to him, against Valentine for the protection he had given 
 through so many years. For had he not been protecting Julian
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 159 
 
 against joy, and does not the capacity for joy pass away with a 
 tragic swiftness ? As Faust was transformed into a youth, and the 
 ballet danced in the market-place, Julian turned to Valentine and 
 said : 
 
 " We will live to-night." 
 Valentine laughed. 
 " You look excited." 
 " I feel excited ? Don't you ? ; ' 
 Valentine answered : 
 
 " I may presently. We mustn't stay in here all the evening." 
 There was a knock at the door of the box. An attendant 
 appeared to ask their orders. Valentine spoke some words to him, 
 and in a few minutes he brought three long drinks to the box. 
 Julian drank his mechanically. His eyes were always on the ballet. 
 The betrayal of poor Margaret had now been accomplished and the 
 soldiers were returning from the wars. Beyond the wall of the 
 garden the tramp of their feet was heard, a vision of the tops of 
 their passing weapons was seen. The orchestra played the fragment 
 of a march. Cuckoo sipped her brandy and soda, anil gazed 
 sometimes at the stage indifferently, often at the audience eagerly, 
 and then at Julian. When her eyes were on Julian's face a light 
 came into them that made her expression young, and even pure. A 
 simplicity hovered about her lips, and a queer dawning of something 
 that was almost refinement spoke in her attitude. But if she 
 chanced to meet the eyes of Valentine her face was full of fear. 
 
 And now the last great scene of the pageant approached, and the 
 two schoolboys leant forward in their stalls in a passion of greedy 
 excitement. Julian happened to see them, and instead of smiling 
 at their frankly lustful attitudes, with the superiority of the drilled 
 man over the child, he was conscious of an eager sympathy with 
 their vigour of enjoyment and of desire. His nature retrograded 
 and became a schoolboy's nature, with the whole garden of life 
 flowering before its feet. Suddenly there came to him the need of 
 touching something human. He stole his arm closely round Cuckoo's 
 waist. She glanced at him surprised. But his eyes were turned 
 away to the stage. Valentine pushed his chair a little backwards. 
 He was watching them, and when he saw the movement of Julian's 
 arm, he laughed to himself. The classical Sabbath sprang into view, 
 and it seemed to be just then that the feet of the hours first began 
 to move in the opening-steps of their great dance of that night. Was 
 it the magnificent Cleopatra that gave them the signal ? Or did 
 Venus herself whisper in their ears that the time for their fete was 
 come at length, that the paid vagaries of the stage demanded com- 
 panionship, and that the audience too must move in great pro- 
 cessions, whirl in demon circles, rise up in heart to the clash of
 
 160 FLAMES 
 
 cymbals, bow down before the goddesses of the night, the women 
 who give to modern men the modern heaven that they desire in 
 our days. The stage was a waving sea of scarlet, through which one 
 white woman floated, like a sin with pale cheeks in the midst of the 
 rubicund virtues. She was, perhaps, not beautiful, but she was 
 provocative and alluring, and her whiteness made her as voluptuous 
 as innocence is when it moves through the habitations of the wicked. 
 Julian watched her come to Faust and win him from the scarlet 
 dancers and from the arms of Cleopatra, and the strange rejuvena- 
 tion of this philosopher who had been old, and known decaying 
 faculties, and the flight of the heart from the warm closes of the 
 summer to the white and iron winter plains, filled him with sympathy. 
 It must be easy to use your youth after you have known the enforced 
 reserve of age. For age is a bitter lesson. The dance grew more 
 wild and rattling. The frou-frou of the swinging sc.irlet skirts filled 
 the great house with sound as the glitter of spangles filled it with a 
 shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by fluttering women 
 moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of reckless 
 devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the 
 skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers, 
 and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, 
 vagrant desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen 
 sensual sensation. They danced to fire a real Faust, and he was 
 Faust for the moment. His arm closed more firmly round the waist 
 of Cuckoo, and he could feel the throbbing of her heart against the 
 palm of his hand. He did not look at her, and so ho did not see the 
 dawning anxiety with which she was beginning furtively to regard 
 him. Entirely engrossed with the stage spectacle, the movement of his 
 arm had been entirely mechanical, prompted by the hardening 
 pressure of excitement in his mind. If he had actually crushed 
 Cuckoo and hurt her he would have been unconscious that he was 
 doing it. 
 
 And Valentine all this time leaned back in his chair, that stood 
 in the shadow of the box, and looked at the enlaced figures before 
 him with an unvarying smile. 
 
 Contrast and surprise are the essence of the successful " spectacle." 
 Just as the scarlet dervish whirl was at its height the character of 
 the music changed, slackened, softened, died from the angrily sensuous 
 into an ethereal delicacy. The stage filled with clouds that faded in. 
 golden light, and a huge and glittering stairway rose towards the 
 painted sky. On either side of it hung in the blue ether guardian 
 angels with outstretched wings, and between their attentive ranks 
 stood the radiant figure of the purified Margaret, at whose white feet 
 the red crowd of women, even the majestic Cleopatra and pale 
 voluptuous Venus, sank abashed. Harps sounded frostily, suggesting
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 161 
 
 that crystal heaven of St. John, in which the beauties we know in 
 nature are ousted by unbreathing jewels, the lifeless pearl and 
 chrysolite. The air tilled with thin and wintry light, that deepened, 
 and began to glow, through lemon to amber and to rose. The 
 angels swam in it, and then the huge stairway leading up to heaven 
 shone with the violence of a gigantic star. Faust fell in repentance 
 before the girl he had ruined and failed to ruin, the girl who bent 
 as if to bless him upon this fiery ascent to heaven. And Julian, 
 absorbed, devoured the wide and glowing scene with his eyes, which 
 were attracted especially by the living flames that were half veiled 
 and half revealed beneath the feet of Margaret. The music of the 
 orchestra rippled faintly, and then it seemed to Julian that, as if in 
 answer, there rippled up from the golden stairs and from the hidden 
 company of flames, that faint, thin riband of shado.wy fire which had 
 already so strangely been with him in the dawn and in the dusk. 
 It came from beneath the pausing feet of the girl who blessed Faust, 
 and trembled upwards slowly above her glittering hair. Julian felt 
 a burning sensation at his heart, as if the tiny fire found its way 
 there. lie turned round sharply, withdrawing his arm from Cuckoo's 
 waist with an abruptness that startled her. 
 
 "Valentine!" he exclaimed, in a whisper, "There; now you 
 see it." 
 
 Valentine leaned to him. 
 " See what ? " 
 
 " The flame. It's no fancy. It's no chimera. Look, it is mount- 
 ing up behind Margaret. Watch it, Valentine, and tell me what 
 it Is." 
 
 " I see nothing." 
 
 Julian stared into his eyes, as if to make certain that he really 
 spoke the truth. Then Valentine asked of Cuckoo : 
 
 " Miss Bright, can you see this flame of which Julian speaks ? " 
 Cuckoo answered, with the roughness that always came to her in 
 the company of alarm : 
 
 " Not I. There ain't nothing, no more than there was that day 
 when I hail the coffee." 
 
 She added to Julian, reproachfully : 
 "You've been drinkin'. Now, dearie, you have." 
 Suddenly his two companions became intolerable to Julian. He 
 thought them stupid, boorish, dense, devoid of the senses of common 
 humanity, not to see what he saw, not to feel as he felt that this 
 vague flame had a meaning and a message not yet interpreted, per- 
 haps not even remotely divined. With an angry exclamation he 
 sprang to his feet, turning once more to the stage. And as the 
 curtain fell, he distinctly saw the flame glowing, like a long and 
 curiously shaped star above the head of Margaret.
 
 162 FLA MES 
 
 And this man and woman wcmld not see it ! A "sudden enmity 
 to them both came to him in that moment. I To abruptly opened 
 the door of the box, and went out without another word to either 
 of them. Cuckoo's voice, shrilly calling to him to stop, did not 
 affect his resolution and desire to escape from them if only for a 
 moment. 
 
 Out in the corridor at the back of the dress circle people were 
 beginning to circulate, relieved from the tension of examining the 
 ballet. Julian was instantly swallowed lip in a noisy crowd, hot, 
 flushed, loud-voiced, bright-eyed. Masses of excited young men 
 lounged to and fro, smoking cigarettes, and making fervent remarks 
 upon the gaily-dressed women, who glided among them observantly. 
 From the adjoining bar rose the music of popping corks and flowing 
 liquids. The barmaids were besieged. Clouds of smoke hung in 
 the air, and the heat was terrific. Julian felt it clinging to him as 
 if with human arms as he slowly walked over the thick carpet, 
 glancing about him. Humanity touched him on every side. At 
 one moment an elderly woman, with yellow hair and a fat lined face, 
 enveloped him in her skirts of scarlet and black striped silk. The 
 black chiffon that swept about her neck and heaving shoulders 
 fluttered against his face. Her high-heeled boots trod on his. He 
 seemed one with her. Then she had vanished, and instantly he was 
 in the arms of a huge racing man, who wore gigantic pink pearls in 
 his shirt front, and bellowed the latest slang to a thin and dissipated 
 companion. It seemed to Julian that he was kicked like a football 
 from one life to another, and that from each life he drew away 
 something as he bounded from it, the fragment of a thought, the 
 thrill of a desire, the indrawn breath of a hope. Like a machine 
 that winds in threads of various coloured silks, he wound in threads 
 from the various coloured hearts about him red, white, coarse and 
 fine. And, half-unconsciously, was he not weaving them into a 
 fabric? Never before had he understood the meaning of a crowd, 
 that strange congregation of passions and of fates which speaks in 
 movements and is melodious in attitudes, which quarrels in all its 
 parts, silently, yet is swayed through and through by large impulses, 
 and has an intellect far more keen and assertively critical than the 
 intellect of any one person in it. And now, when Julian began to 
 feel the meaning of this surging mob of men and women, the hours 
 danced, and he and all the crowd danced with them. And the music 
 that accompanied and directed the feet through the figures of that 
 night's quadrille was the music of words and of laughter, of hissing 
 enticements and of whispered replies. Irresistible was the perform- 
 ance of the hours and of the crowd that lived in them. Julian knew 
 it when the dance began, marvelled at it for a little when the dance 
 was ended. There was contagion in the air, furtive, but strong as
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 163 
 
 the contagion of cholera the contagion of human creatures gathered 
 together in the night. Only the youth who dwells like^Will-o'-the- 
 Mill for ever by the lonely stream in the lonely mountain valley 
 escapes it entirely. Aged saints look backward on their lives, and 
 remember at least one night when it seized them in its embrace ; and 
 even the purest woman, through its spell, has caught sight of the 
 vision behind the veil of our civilisation, and although she has 
 shrunk from it, has had a moment of wonder and of interest, never 
 quite effaced from her memory. 
 
 On every side the Oxford and Cambridge boys laughed and shouted, 
 piished and elbowed. They had begun to cast off" restraint, and the 
 god that is rowdy on a rowdy throne compelled them to their annual 
 obeisance at his feet. Some of them moved along singing, and inter- 
 rupting their song with shouts. Friends, when they met in the 
 crowd, yelled shrill recognitions at each other, and nicknames sang 
 in the air like noisy birds. Rows of men linked arms and, striding 
 forward, compelled the throng to yield them difficult passage, swing- 
 ing this way and that to make their progress more comprehensive. 
 The attendants, standing by the wall like giants, calmly smiled on 
 the growing uproar, into which they darted now and then with a 
 sudden frenzy of dutiful agility, to eject some rude wit who had 
 transgressed their code of propriety. The very spirit of lusty youth 
 was in this crowd of hot, careless, blatant, roving youths, mad to find 
 themselves away from the cool and grey Oxford towers, and from the 
 vacant banks of the Cam, in passionate Leicester Square, fired by the 
 scarlet ballet, and the thunder of the orchestra, and the sight of 
 smart women. Sudden emancipation is the most flaming torch to 
 human passions that exists in the world. It flared through all that 
 mob, urging it to conflagration, to the flames that burst up in hearts 
 that are fresh and ardent, and that so curiously confuse joy with 
 wickedness. 
 
 Flames ! flames ! The word ran in Julian's mind, and in his breast 
 flames surely burned that night, for, when he suddenly ran against 
 Valentine and Cuckoo in the throng, he caught Valentine by the 
 arm, and said : 
 
 " Val, you were right just now. There was no flame, there could 
 have been no flame where Margaret stood. She was too pure. 
 What can fire have to do with snow ? Cuckoo, I was a fool. Catch 
 hold of my arm." 
 
 He pulled her arm roughly through his, never noticing how pale 
 the girl's face was, how horror-stricken were her eyes. He wanted to 
 bathe himself, and her, and Valentine, in this crowd that influenced 
 him and that he helped to influence. He felt as the diver feels, who, 
 when he plunges, has a sacred passion for the depths. There are 
 people who have an ardour for going down comparable to the ardour
 
 164 FLAMES 
 
 felt by those who mount. To-night such an ardour took hold of 
 Julian. 
 
 Valentine fell in with it, seeing the humour of his friend, and 
 Cuckoo, prisoned between the two men, did not attempt to resist 
 them. As they moved on Valentine said, in a voice he made loud 
 that it might be haard : 
 
 " _NV>w you feel the strength of the Spring, Julian. Is it not better 
 than all my teachings of ascetism ? " 
 
 " Yes, by - - it is." 
 
 And as he made that answer, Julian, for the first time, forgot to 
 look up to Valentine, and felt a splendid equality with him, the 
 equality that men of the same age and temper feel when they are 
 bent on the same pursuit. How can one of two Bacchanals stoop in 
 adoration of the other, when both are bounding in the procession of 
 Silenus ? Valentine fell from his pedestal and became a comrade 
 instead of a god. He was no longer the chaperon of the dancing 
 hours but their partner. And a new fire shone in his blue eyes, an 
 unaccustomed red ran over his cheeks, as he heard Julian's answer 
 to his question. From that moment he ceased to play what, it 
 seemed, had been but a part, the empty ivory rule of saint. For 
 Julian was no longer conscious or observant of him, no longer able 
 to wonder at his abrupt transformation. In a flash he cast off his 
 habitual restraint, and passed from the reserve of thought to the 
 rowdyism of act. 
 
 He chattered unceasingly, dressing his English in all the slang 
 embroidery of the day. He laughed and chaffed, exchanged repartees 
 with the flowing multitude through which they passed, stopped to 
 speak to the flaunting women and loaded them with extravagant 
 compliments, elbowed loungers out of his way, and made the most 
 personal remarks on those around him. Two men went by, and 
 one of them exclaimed, with a surprised glance at Valentine : 
 
 " I'm damned ! Why, there goes the Saint of Victoria Street." 
 
 " Saint ! " said the other, " I should think devil the more appro- 
 priate name. That chap looks up to anything." 
 
 " Ah well, when a saint turns sinner " answered the first 
 
 speaker with a laugh. 
 
 Valentine heard the words, and burst into a roar of laughter. He 
 drew Cuckoo to the left and Julian followed. They passed under an 
 archway into the bar, which was crowded with men, drinking and 
 talking at the tops of their voices. Valentine called for drinks in a 
 voice so loud and authoritative that the barmaid hurried to serve 
 him, deserting other customers, who protested vainly. He forced 
 Cuckoo to drink, and Julian needed no urging. Clinking glasses 
 noisily with them he gave as a toast : 
 
 " To the dance of the hours ! ''
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 165 
 
 These words, uttered with almost strident force, attracted atten- 
 tion even amid the violent hubbub that was raging, and several 
 young men pressed round Valentine as he stood with his back 
 against the counter of the bar. They raised their glasses, too, half 
 in ridicule, and shouting in chorus : 
 
 " To the dance of the hours ! " drained them to this toast, which 
 they could not comprehend. Valentine dashed his glass down. It 
 broke and was trodden under foot. The barmaid protested. He 
 threw her a sovereign. The young men gathered round, broke theirs 
 in imitation, and Julian, snatching Cuckoo's from her, flung it away. 
 As he did so, Valentine thrust another, filled with champagne, into 
 her hand, and again cried out the toast. 
 
 " What the deuce does he mean by it ? " one youth called out. 
 " The dance of the hours ; what's that ? " 
 
 " The dance of the hours ! The dance of the hours ! " echoed other 
 voices, and glasses were drained wildly. There was something 
 exciting in the mere sound of the words that seemed to set brains 
 jigging, and feet moving, and the world spinning and bowing. For 
 if Time itself danced what could the most Puritan human being do 
 but dance with it ? Seeing the crowd round Valentine, men who 
 were drinking at the other end of the bar joined it, and the toast 
 passed quickly from mouth to mouth. Uttered by every variety of 
 voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, 
 and tickled many an empty brain, like the catch-word political that 
 can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, 
 men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and 
 yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have 
 put many a trumpet blast to shame. Glasses were emptied and 
 filled again in its honour. Yet nobody knew what it meant, and 
 apparently nobody cared, except the Oxford boy, who had already 
 expressed his desire to be better informed on the subject. He had 
 gradually edged his way through the throng until he was close to 
 Valentine, at whom he gazed with a sort of tipsy reverence. 
 
 " I say, you chap," he cried. " What are we drinking to eh ? 
 What the devil's the dance of the hours ? " 
 
 Valentine brought his glass down on the counter. 
 
 " What is it ? " he exclaimed. " Why, the greatest dance in the 
 world, the dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women 
 live for, and old men die with longing for. We set the hours 
 dancing in the night, we all who are gay and careless, who love life 
 in the greatest way, and who laugh at death, and who aren't afraid 
 of the devil. The devil's only a bogey to frighten old women and 
 children. What do the hours care for him ? Not a snap. It's only 
 cowards who fear him. Brave men do what they will, and when the 
 hours dance they dance with them, and drink with them all the
 
 166 FLAMES 
 
 night through. Who says there'll be another morning? I don't 
 believe it. Curse the sunshine. Give me the night and the dancing 
 hours ! " 
 
 The youth gave a yell, which was echoed by some of his rowdy 
 companions, and by the two little schoolboys who had joined the 
 throng in a frenzy of childish excitement, which they thought 
 manly. 
 
 " The dancing hours ! The dancing hours ! " they cried, and one 
 who was with a girl, suddenly caught her round the waist and broke 
 into wild steps. Others joined in. The confusion became tremendous. 
 Glasses were knocked over. Whiskies and sodas were poured out in 
 libations upon the carpet. The protests of the barmaids were un- 
 heeded or unheard. Julian whirled Cuckoo into the throng, and 
 Valentine, snapping his long white fingers like castanets, stamped his 
 feet as if to the measure of a wild music. Against the wall some 
 loungers looked on in contemptuous amusement, but by far the greater 
 number of men present were young and eager for any absurdity, and 
 not a few were half tipsy. These ardently welcomed anything in the 
 nature of a row, and the romp became general and noisy. Men 
 danced awkwardly with one another, roaring the latest music-hall 
 tunes at the pitch of their voices. The women screamed with 
 laughter 1 , or giggled piercingly as they were banged and trodden on 
 in the tumult. The noise penetrating to the promenade, drew the 
 attention of the audience, many of whom hurried to see what was 
 going on, and the block round the archways quickly became impene- 
 trable. One or two of the gigantic chuckers-out forced their way 
 into the throng and seized the dancers nearest to them, but they 
 were entirely unable to stay the ridiculous impulse which impelled 
 this mob of young human beings to capering and yelling. Indeed 
 they merely increased the scuffle, which rapidly developed towards a 
 free fight. Hats were knocked off, dresses were torn. The women 
 got frightened and began to scream. The men swore, and some lost 
 their tempers and struck out right and left. Valentine watched the 
 scene with laughing eyes as if he enjoyed it. Especially he watched 
 Julian, who, with scarlet face and sparkling eyes, still forced Cuckoo 
 round and round in the midst of the tumult. Cuckoo was white, 
 and seemed to be half fainting. Her head rested helplessly against 
 Julian's shoulder, and her eyes stared at him as if fascinated. Her 
 dress was torn, and her black veil hung all awry. If she danced with 
 the hours it was without joy or desire. 
 
 But suddenly police appeared. The dancers, abruptly realising 
 that a joke was dying in a disaster, ceased to prance. Some violently 
 assumed airs of indifference and of alarming respectability. Many 
 sinuously wound their way out to the promenade. A few, who had 
 completely lost their heads, hustled the police, and were promptly
 
 THE DANCE OF THE HOURS 167 
 
 taken into custody. Julian would have been among these had it riot 
 been for the intervention of Valentine, who caught him by the 
 shoulder, and drew him and Cuckoo away. 
 
 " No, you mustn't end to-night in a cell," he said in Julian's ear. 
 " The dancing hours want you still. Julian, you are only beginning 
 your real life to-night." 
 
 Julian, like a man in. an excited dream, followed Valentine to the 
 bottom of the broad stairs, on, through the blooming masses of 
 flowers, to the entrance. Two or three cabs were waiting. Valentine 
 put Cuckoo into one. She had not spoken a word, and was trembling 
 as if with fear. 
 
 " Get in, Julian." 
 
 J ulian obeyed, and Valentine, standing on the pavement, leaned 
 forward and whispered to him : 
 
 " Take her home, Julian." 
 
 Suddenly J ulian shouted Cuckoo's address to the cabman hoarsely. 
 
 The cab drove away. 
 
 Valentine walked slowly towards Piccadilly Circus, whistling softly, 
 " I want you, my honey, yes, I do."
 
 BOOK III THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WEEPS 
 
 THE thin afternoon light of an indefinite .spring day shone over the 
 Marylebone lload. A. heavy warmth was in the air, arid the weather 
 was peculiarly windless, but the sun only shone fitfully, and the 
 street looked sulky. The faces of the passers-by were hot and weary. 
 Women trailed along under the weight of their parcels, and men 
 returned from work grimmer than usual, and wondering almost with 
 a fretfulness of passion why they were born predestined to toil. The 
 cabmen about Baker Street Station dozed with nodding heads upon 
 their perches, and the omnibus conductors forgot to chaff', and 
 collected their tolls with a mechanical deliberation. At the crossings 
 the policemen, helpless in their uniforms of the winter, became 
 dictatorial more readily than on cooler days. Some sorts of weather 
 incline every one to temper or to depression. The day after the 
 boat-race lay under a malign spell. It seemed to feel all the weari- 
 ness of reaction, and to fold all men and women in the embrace of 
 its lassitude and heavy hopelessness. 
 
 At number 400, Jessie whined pitifully in her basket, and her 
 arched back quivered perpetually as her minute body expanded and 
 contracted in the effort of breathing. Her beady eyes were open 
 and fixed furtively upon her mistress, as if in inquiry or alarm, and 
 her whole soul was whirling in a turmoil set in motion by the first 
 slap she had ever received in gravity at the hands of Cuckoo. 
 Jessie's inner nature was stung by that slap. It knocked her world 
 over like a doll hit by a child. Her universe lay prone upon its 
 back. 
 
 Ami Cuckoo's? She was sitting in the one armchair with her 
 thin hands folded in her lap. She wore the black dress given to her
 
 i yo FLAMES 
 
 by Julian, but she did riot look prepared to go out, for her hair was 
 standing up over her head in violent disorder, her cheeks were 
 haggard and unwashed, and her boots still muddy from the previous 
 night's promenading stood in a corner near the grate in the lirst 
 position, as if directed by a dancing mistress. Cuckoo was neither 
 reading nor working. She was simply staring straight before her, 
 without definite expression. Her face indeed wore a quite singularly 
 blank look and her mouth was slightly open. Her feet, stuck out 
 before her, rested on the edge of the fender, shoeless, and both her 
 general appearance and attitude betokened a complete absence of 
 self-consciousness, and that lack of expectation of any immediate 
 event which is often dubbed stupidity. The lady of the feathers 
 sitting in the horsehair-covered chair in the cheap sitting-room with 
 the folding doors, looked indeed stupid, pale, and heavy. Fatigue 
 lay in the shadows of her eyes, but something more than ordinary 
 fatigue hovered round her parted lips and spoke in her posture. A 
 dull weariness, in which the mind took part with the body, held her 
 in numbing captivity. She had only broken through it in some 
 hours to repulse the anxious effort of Jessie to scramble into the nest 
 of her lap. That slap given, she had again relapsed without a struggle 
 into this waking sleep. 
 
 The sun came out with a sudden violence, and an organ began to 
 play a frisky tune in the street. Jessie whined and whimpered, 
 formed her mouth into the shape of an and, throwing up her head, 
 emitted a vague and smothered howl. Below stairs, Mrs. Brigg, 
 who was afflicted with a complaint that prompted her to perpetual 
 anxious movement, laboured about the kitchen doing nothing in 
 particular among her pots and pans. The occasional clatter of them 
 mingled with the sound of the organ, and with the suffocated note 
 of Jessie, in a depressing symphony. The sun went in again, and 
 some dust, stirred into motion by a passing omnibus, floated in 
 through the half -open window and settled in a light film upon the 
 photograph of Marr. Presently the organ moved away, and faded 
 gradually in pert tunes down the street. Jessie's nervous system, 
 no longer played upon, ceased to spend its pain in sound, and a 
 London silence fell round the little room. Then, at length, Cuckoo 
 shifted in her chair, stretched her hands in her lap, and sat up 
 slowly. The inward expression had not faded from her eyes yet, for, 
 leaning .forward, she still stared blankly before her, looking, as it 
 seemed, straight at Marr's photograph. Gradually she woke to a 
 consciousness of what she was looking at, and putting up one hand 
 she took the photograph from its place, laid it in her lap, and, bend- 
 ing down, gazed at it long and earnestly. Then she shook her head 
 as if puzzled. 
 
 " I don't know," she murmured, " I don't know."
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WEEPS 171 
 
 Encouraged by the sound of her mistress's voice, Jessie stepped 
 from her basket and gingerly approached, snuffling round Cuckoo's 
 feet, and wriggling her body in token of anxious humility. Cuckoo 
 picked her up and stroked her mechanically, but still with her eyes 
 on the photograph. Two tears swam in them. She dashed the 
 photograph down. It lay on the carpet, and was still there when a 
 knock at the door was succeeded by the entrance of Julian. 
 
 He too looked pale and rather weary, but excited. 
 
 " Cuckoo," he said. 
 
 She sat still in the chair looking at him. 
 
 11 Well ? " she said, and closed her lips tightly. 
 
 He came a step or two forward into the little room, and put his 
 hat and stick down on the table. 
 
 " You expected me to come, didn't you ? " 
 
 " I don't know as I did." 
 
 Her eyes were on Jessie now, and she stroked the little dog's 
 back steadily up and down, alternately smoothing and ruffling its 
 short coat. Julian came over and stood by the mantelpiece. 
 
 " I told you I should come." 
 
 " Did you ? " 
 
 " Don't you remember ? " 
 
 She shifted round in the chair till he could only see her shoulder, 
 and the side of her head and neck, on which the loose hair was 
 tumbling in ugly confusion. Sitting thus she threw back at him 
 the sentence : 
 
 " I don't want to remember nothing. 1 don't want to re- 
 member." 
 
 Julian stood hesitating. He glanced at Cuckoo's hair and at the 
 back of her thin hand moving to and fro above the little contented 
 dog. 
 
 " Why not ? " he said. 
 
 At first she made no answer to this question, and seemed as if 
 she had not heard it, but presently it appeared that her silence had 
 been caused by the effect of consideration, for at length she said, still 
 retaining her aloof attitude: 
 
 " I don't want to remember, because it's like a beastly dream, and 
 when I remember I know it ain't a dream." 
 
 Julian said nothing, and suddenly Cuckoo turned round to him, 
 and took her hand from Jessie's back. 
 
 " I say. You were mad last night. Now, weren't you ? " 
 
 The words came from her almost pleadingly, and her eyes rested 
 on Julian's insistently, as if demanding an atlirmative. 
 
 " He'd made you mad," she continued. 
 
 " He," said Julian ; " who ? " 
 
 " Your friend."
 
 1 72 FLAMES 
 
 "Valentine ! He had nothing to do with it." 
 
 " It was all his doing." 
 
 Her voice grew shrill with feeling. 
 
 " He's a devil," she said. " I hate him. I hate him worse than 
 I hate that copper west side of Regent Street. And I hate you 
 too, yes I do, to-day." 
 
 The tears gathered in her eyes and began to fall, tears of rage and 
 shame and regret, tears of one who had lost a great possession. 
 Julian looked embarrassed and pained, almost guilty too. He put 
 out his hand and tried to take Cuckoo's. But she drew hers away 
 and went on crying. She spoke again with vehemence. 
 
 "I told you what I wanted you to be, yes, I did," she exclaimed. 
 Yes, I told you. You said you only come here to talk to me." 
 
 "It was true." 
 
 " No it wasn't. You're just like all the others. And I did so 
 want to have a pal. I've never had one." 
 
 With the words the sense of her desolation seemed to strike her 
 with stunning force. She leaned her head against the back of the 
 chair, and cried bitterly, catching at the horsehair with violent hands, 
 as if she longed to hurt something, to revenge her loss even vipon an 
 object without power of feeling. Julian sprang up and went over 
 to the window. He looked out on to the road and watched the 
 people moving by in the fitful sunshine beyond the dirty railings. 
 That day, he, too, was in a tumult. He felt like a monk who had 
 suddenly thrown oft* his habit, broken his vows and come forth into 
 the world. The cell and the cloister were left behind, were things 
 to be forgotten, with the grating of the confessional and the dim 
 routine of service and of asceticism. He had been borne on by the 
 wave of a brilliant, a violent hour, away from them. Let the 
 angelus bell ring ; he no longer heard it. Let the drone of prayers 
 and praises rise in a monotonous music by day and by night ; he 
 no longer had the will to heed them. For there was another music 
 in his ears. Soon it would be in his heart. Imagine a Trappist 
 suddenly transported from the desert of his long silence to a gay 
 plage on which a brass band was playing. Julian was that Trappist 
 in mind. And though he knew Cuckoo was sobbing at his back, 
 and though his heart held a sense of pity for her trouble, yet he 
 heard her grief with a strange cruelty, at which he wondered, with- 
 out being able to soften it. That afternoon it seemed to him useless 
 for anybody to cry. No grief was quite worth tears. The violence 
 of life was present with him, gave him light and blinded him at the 
 same time. He found delight in the thought of violence, because it 
 held action in its grasp. Even cruelty was worth something. Was 
 he cruel to Cuckoo ? 
 
 He turned from the window and looked at her, with the observa-
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WEEPS 173 
 
 tion of a nature not generally his own. He noted the desolation of 
 her hair, and he noted, too, that she wore the gown he had given 
 to her. Would she have put it on if she had hated him as she said 
 she did ? Somehow it scarcely seemed to suit her to-day. It looked 
 draggled, and as if it had been up all night, he thought. The black 
 back of it heaved as Cuckoo sobbed, like a little black wave. Was the 
 eternal movement of the sea caused by some horrible, inward grief 
 which, though secret, must come thus to the eye of God and of the 
 world ? J ulian found himself wondering in an unreasonable abstrac- 
 tion as he contemplated the crying girl. Then suddenly his mind 
 swerved to more normal paths ; he was seized by the natural feeling 
 of a man who has made a woman weep, and had the impulse to 
 comfort. 
 
 " Don't cry, Cuckoo," he said, coming over to her and sitting on 
 the edge of her chair. " You must not. Let us say I was mad last 
 night. Perhaps I was. Men are often mad surely. To-day I'm 
 sane, and I want you to forgive me." 
 
 He put his arm round her shoulder. She glanced up at him. 
 Then, with the odd penetration that so often gilds female ignorance 
 till it dazzles and distracts, she said quickly : 
 
 " You don't mean what you say ; you don't really care." 
 
 J ulian was taken aback by her sharpness, and by the self -rev elation 
 that immediately stabbed him. 
 
 " You mustn't say that," he began. But she stopped him on the 
 instant. 
 
 " You don't care ; you think it's nothing. So it ought to be to 
 me, I know." 
 
 That had perhaps actually been his thought, the thought of a 
 mind unimaginative to-day, because deadened by the excitement of 
 action. But if it was his thought he hastened to deny it. 
 
 " You know I don't think of you in that way," he said. 
 
 " You will now. You do." 
 
 That was the scourge that had lashed her all through this weary 
 day of miserable reaction, that now stung her to a passion that was 
 like the passion of purity. As she made this statement there Avas a 
 question in her eyes, but it was a question of despair, that scarcely 
 even asked for the negative which Julian hastened to give. He was 
 both perplexed and troubled by the unexpected violence of her 
 emotion, and blamed himself as the cause. But though he blamed 
 himself, his regret for what was irrevocable had none of the poignancy 
 of Cuckoo's. For a long time he had gloried in living in a cloister 
 with Valentine. Now he had left the cloister, he did not look back 
 to it with the curious pathos which so often gathers like moss upon 
 even a dull and vacant past. He did not, for the moment, look back 
 at all. Action had lifted scales from his eyes, had stirred the youth
 
 i 7 4 FLAMES 
 
 in him, had stung him as if with bright fire, and given him, at a 
 breath, a thousand thoughts, visions, curiosities. A sense of power 
 came to him. He did not ask whether the power made for evil or for 
 good. Simply he was inclined to glory in it, as a man glories in his 
 recovered strength when he wakes from a long sleep following 
 fatigue. Cuckoo, with feeble hands, seemed tugging to hold back 
 this power, with feeble voice seemed crying against it as a deadly 
 thing. And Julian, though he strove to console her, scarcely sym- 
 pathised with her fully. He could not, if he would, be quite unhappy 
 to-day. Only in Cuckoo's grief he began to read a curious legend. 
 In her tears there was a passion, in her anger a vehemence that 
 could only spring from the depths of a nature. Julian began to 
 suspect that through all her sins and degradations this girl, his lady 
 of the feathers, had managed to keep shut one door though all the 
 others had been ruthlessly opened. And beyond this door was surely 
 that holy of holies, an unspoiled woman's heart ? From what other 
 dwelling could rush forth such a passion for a man's respect, such a 
 fury to be rightly and chivalrously considered. As he half vaguely 
 realised something of the true position of Cuckoo and of himself, 
 Julian felt stirred by the wonder of life, in which such strange 
 blossoms flower out of the very dust. He looked at Cuckoo with 
 new eyes. She looked back at him with the old ones of a girl who 
 loves. 
 
 As he looked she stopped crying. Perhaps the sudden under- 
 standing in his gaze thrilled her. He put out his hand to touch 
 hers, and again repeated his negative, but this time with greater 
 conviction. 
 
 " I do not think of you in that way. I never shall," he said. 
 
 Her face was still full of doubt and thin with anxiety. She was 
 not reassured, that seemed apparent ; for in her ignorance she had 
 a strange knowledge of life, and especially a strange intuition which 
 guided her instincts as to the instinctive proceedings of men. 
 
 " They always do," she murmured. " Why should you be dif- 
 ferent ? " 
 
 " All men aren't alike," he said, pretending to laugh at her. 
 
 " Yes, in some things though," she contradicted. " They all think 
 dirt of you for doing what they want." 
 
 Seeing how unsatisfied she was, and how restlessly her anxiety 
 paced up and down, Julian resolved on more plain speaking. 
 
 " Look here, Cuckoo," he said, and his voice had never sounded 
 more boyish, " last night I was drunk. Last night I woke up, and 
 I'd been asleep for years." 
 ^ " Eh ? " she interrupted, looking puzzled, but he went on : 
 
 " I was emancipated, and I was mad. Mind, I didn't mean to do 
 you any wrong, but if you have thought of me in a different way,
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WEEPS 175 
 
 I'm sorry. Tell mo what you want me to be to you, find in future 
 I'll be it." 
 
 Hope and eagerness spiung up in her eyes then. 
 
 " I say," she began. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You promise." 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 The dull blood rose in her tired face. 
 
 "I want just a just a friend," she said, as if almost ashamed. 
 
 Julian smiled. 
 
 " Not a lover," he said, with a fleeting air of gallantry. She 
 shrank visibly from the word, and hurriedly went on : 
 
 " Not I. I've had too much of love." The last word was spoken 
 with a violence of contempt. " I want a man as likes me, just really 
 likes me, as he might another man. See ? " 
 
 " And you'll not love him ? " 
 
 His eyes searched hers with a gaiety of inquiry that was almost 
 laughter. Cuckoo looked away. 
 
 " I'll not love him either," she said steadily. "I'll just like him 
 too." 
 
 Seeing her earnestness and obvious emotion, Julian dropped his 
 gently quizzing manner, and became earnest, too, in his degree. 
 
 " Then it's a bargain," he said. " You and I are to like each 
 other thoroughly, never anything more, never anything less. Like 
 two men, eh ? " 
 
 She began at last to look relieved and happier. 
 
 " Yes, like that," she said. " Ain't it ain't it truer than the 
 other thing ? There's something beastly about love, that's what I 
 always think." 
 
 And she spoke with the sincerest conviction. When Julian left 
 her that day, he shook hands with her by the door ; she stood after 
 he had done it as if still half expectant. 
 
 " There's a man's good-bye to a man," he said. " Better sort of 
 thing than a man's good-bye to a woman, isn't it ? " 
 
 " .Rather ! " she said hastily, and moved back into the sitting-room. 
 She stepped on something, and bent down to pick it up. It was 
 Marr's photograph. 
 
 "What's that?" Julian asked. 
 
 " Nothing," she said, concealing it. She had a foolish fancy that 
 even the photograph of the creature she had feared and hated might 
 spoil that good-bye of theirs. Yet even as it was, when Julian had 
 gone she still seemed unsatisfied. 
 
 She was a woman after all, and woman is most feminine in her 
 farewells.
 
 VALENTINE SINGS 
 
 WHEN Valentine heard of the scene in Marylebone Road he 
 smiled. 
 
 " How extraordinary women are," he said. " A man might give 
 his life to them, I suppose, yet never understand them." 
 
 "It would be rather jolly making that gift, I mean," said 
 Julian. 
 
 " You think so ? Since last night." 
 
 r l want to talk to you about that. Valentine, d'you blame 
 me?" 
 
 " Not a bit." 
 
 " Only wonder at me ? " 
 
 " I don't even say that." 
 
 "No, but of course you must wonder at me." 
 
 Julian spoke almost wistfully, and as if he wanted Valentine to 
 sweep away the suggestion. Last night they had been comrades. 
 To-day, in the light and in the calm of afternoon, Valentine seemed 
 much more remote, and Julian felt for the first time a sense of 
 degradation. He was uneasily conscious that he might have fallen 
 in Valentine's esteem. But Valentine reassured him. 
 
 " I don't wonder at you either, Julian, I simply envy you, and 
 metaphorically sit at your feet." 
 
 " That's absurd." 
 
 " Not quite ; and I maj 7 not always be sitting there, for I believe 
 I have really got a little bit of your soul. Last night I seemed to 
 feel it stirring within me, and I liked its personality." 
 
 "You did seem different last night," Julian said, looking at 
 Valentine with a keen interest. "Can it be possible that those 
 sittings of ours have really had any effect ? " 
 
 " On me they have, not on you. You haven't caught my coldness, 
 but I have gained something of your warmth. Doesn't that perhaps 
 show that mine was, after all, the wrong nature ? " 
 
 " I don't know," Julian said doubtfully, " you look the same." 
 
 " Do I ? Exactly ? "
 
 VALENTINE SINGS 177 
 
 Valentine spoke with a sort of whimsical defiance, as it' almost 
 daring Julian to answer, yes. And Julian, too, seemed suddenly 
 doubtful whether he had stated what was the fact. He looked 
 closely at Valentine. 
 
 " Do you think your face has changed ? Do you mean to say 
 that ? " he asked. 
 
 " I only fancied there might be a little more humanity in it, that 
 was all." 
 
 "Once or twice I have thought I noticed something," Julian said, 
 still d mbtf ully, " but I believe it's imagination. It doesn't 
 stay." 
 
 " When it does, I suppose I shall be able thoroughly to appreciate 
 all your temptations. Don't you begin to think now it's good to have 
 them ? " 
 
 " I don't know," Julian said. But he was conscious that there 
 had come a change in his attitude of mind towards temptation. Some 
 men glory in resisting temptation, others in yielding to it. Hitherto 
 Julian had not been able to range himself in either of those two 
 opposed camps. He had merely hated his faculty for being tempted. 
 Did he entirely hate it now ? He could not say so to himself, 
 whatever he might say to others, but something kept him from 
 making confession of the truth to Valentine. S > ho professed igno- 
 rance of his own exact state of feeling ; really, had he analysed his 
 reticence, it sprang from a fine desire to give forth no breath that 
 might tarnish the clear mirror of Valentine's nature. He would not 
 admit a change that might make his friend again fall into the 
 absurd dissatisfaction which lie had combated on the night of their 
 fir&t sitting in the tent-room. While they talked the afternojn had 
 fallen into a creeping twilight. In the twilight the front-door bell 
 rang. 
 
 " Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door," 
 Valentine said, quoting Poe. " It must be the doctor." 
 
 Julian reddened suddenly. 
 
 " I hope not," he said. 
 
 " What ? " Valentine cried. " You don't want our little 
 doctor ? " 
 
 "Somehow not to-day. ;> 
 
 The door opened and Dr. Levillier entered. Valentine greeted 
 him warmly. They had not met since the night of the affray with 
 the mastiffs. In J ulian's manner there was a touch of awkwardness 
 as he shook hands with the doctor. Levillier did not seem to notice 
 it. He looked very tired and rather depressed. 
 
 " Cresswell," he said, " 1 have come to you for a tonic." 
 
 " Doctor coming to patient ! " 
 
 " Doctors take medicine oftener than you may suppose. I'm in 
 
 M
 
 I? 8 FLAMES 
 
 bad spirits to-Juy. I've been trying Lu cure too many people lately. 
 It's hard work." 
 
 "It must be. Sit down and forget. Imagine the world beauti- 
 fully incurable and your occupation consequently gone." 
 
 The doctor sat down, saying : 
 
 " My imagination stops short at that feat." 
 
 He kept silence for a moment, then he said : 
 
 " You know what I want." 
 
 " No," Valentine answered. " But I'll do anything. You know 
 that." 
 
 " I want your music." 
 
 Valentine suddenly became unresponsive. He didn't speak at 
 first, and both Julian and the doctor glanced at him in some 
 surprise. 
 
 " Oh, you want me to be David to your Saul," he said at length. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Do, Val," said Julian. " I should like it too." 
 
 Valentine, who was sitting near the doctor, looked down thought- 
 fully 011 the carpet. 
 
 " I'm not in the mood to-day," he said slowly. 
 
 " You are always in the mood enough to cheer and rest me," 
 Lev il Her said. 
 
 He had driven all the way from Harley Street for his medicine, 
 and it was obvious that he meant to have it. But Valentine still 
 hesitated, and a certain slight confusion became noticeable in his 
 manner. Moving the toe of his right boot to and fro, following the 
 pattern of the carpet, he glanced sideways at the doctor, and an odd 
 smile curved his lips. 
 
 " Doctor," he said, " d'you believe that talents can die in us while 
 we ourselves live? " 
 
 "That's a strange question." 
 
 " It's waiting an answer." 
 
 " Well, my answer is : No, not wholly, unless through the approach 
 of old age, or the development of madness." 
 
 " I'm neither old nor mad." 
 
 Levillier and Julian both looked at Valentine with some amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 " Are you talking about yourself ? " the doctor asked. 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Why ? 'What talent is dead in you ? " 
 
 " My talent for music. Do you know that for the last few days 
 I've been able neither to sing nor play ? " 
 
 " Val, you're joking," exclaimed Julian. 
 
 " I am certainly not," he answered, and quite gravely. " I am 
 simply stating a fact."
 
 VALENTINE SINGS 179 
 
 Dr. Levillier seemed unable to appreciate that lie was speaking 
 seriously. 
 
 "I have com e all this way to hear you sing," he said. "I have 
 never asked you in vain yet.'' 
 
 " Is it my fault if you ask me in vain now ? " 
 
 Valentine looked him in the face, and spoke with a complete 
 sincerity. The doctor returned the glance, as he sometimes returned 
 the glance of a patient, very directly, with a clear and simple gravity. 
 Having done this he felt completely puzzled. 
 
 " The talent for music has died in you ? " he asked. 
 " Entirely. I can do nothing with my piano. I have even 
 locked it." 
 
 As he spoke he went over to it and pulled at the lid to show them 
 that he was speaking the truth. 
 
 " Where's the key ? " asked the doctor. 
 " Here," said Valentine, producing it from his pocket. 
 " Give it to me," said the doctor. 
 
 Valentine did so, and the doctor quietly opened the piano, di'ew 
 up the music-stool, and signed to Valentine to sit down. 
 
 " If you mean what you say the explanation must simply be that 
 you are suffering from some form of hysteria," he said, rather 
 authoritatively. " Now sing me something. No, I won't let you 
 off." 
 
 Valentine, sitting on the stool, extended his hands and laid the 
 tips of his long fingers upon the keys, but without sounding them. 
 " You insist on my trying to sing ? " he asked. 
 " I do." 
 
 " I warn you, Doctor, you will be sorry if I do. My voice is quite 
 out of order." 
 " No matter." 
 
 " Go on, Val," cried Julian, from his arm-chair. " Anybody would 
 think you were a young lady." 
 
 Valentine bent his head, with a quick gesture of abnegation. 
 " As you will," he said. 
 
 He struck his hand down upon the keys as he spoke. That was 
 the strangest prelude ever heard. In their different ways Dr. 
 Levillier and Julian were both intensely fond of music, both quickly 
 stirred by it when it was good music, not merely classical, but extrava- 
 gant, violent, and in any way interesting. Each of them had heard 
 Valentine play, not once only, but a hundred times. They knew 
 not simply his large repertoire of pieces and songs through and 
 through, but also the peculiar and characteristic progressions of his 
 improvisations, the ornaments he most delighted in, the wildness of 
 his melancholy, the phantasy of his gaieties : and they knew every 
 tone of his voice, which expressed with an exquisite realism the
 
 l8o FLAMES 
 
 temperament of his soul. But now, as Valentine's hands powerfully 
 struck the keys, they both started and exchanged an involuntary 
 glance of keen surprise. The first few bars gave the lie to Valentine's 
 assertion that he could no longer play. A cataract of notes streamed 
 from beneath his fingers, and of notes so curiously combined, or 
 following each other in such a fantastic array, that they seemed 
 arranged in the musical pattern by an intelligence of the strangest 
 order. It is often easy for a cultivated ear to detect whether a given 
 composition has sprung from the brain of a Frenchman, a German, 
 a Hungarian, a Kussian. The wildness of Bohemia, too, may be 
 identified, or the vague sorrow of that northern melody which seems 
 an echo of voices heard amid the fiords, or in pale valleys near the 
 farthest Cape of Europe. And then there is that large and lofty 
 music of the stars and the spheres, of the mightiest passions and of 
 the deepest imaginings, that is of no definite country, but seems to be 
 of its own power and beauty, and not of the brain and heart of any 
 one man. It exists for eternity, and its creator can only wonder 
 and worship before it, far from conceit as God was when He said, 
 " Let there be light." Such music, too, is recognised on the instant 
 by the men who have loved and studied the secrets of the most 
 divine of the arts, for profound genius can utter itself as easily in five 
 notes as in fifty. But the prelude now played by Valentine was 
 neither the great music that is of all time and of all countries, nor 
 the music that is of any one country. It was not even distinctively 
 northern or southern in character, impregnated with the mystery 
 of the tuneless, wonderful East, or with the peculiar homeliness that 
 stirs western hearts. Both the doctor and Julian felt, as they 
 listened, that it was music without an earthly home, without 
 location, devoid of that sense of relation to humanity which links 
 the greatness of the arts to the smallness of those who follow them. 
 Eccentric the music was, but the eccentricity of it seemed almost 
 inhuman, so unmannerly as to be beyond the range of the most 
 uncouth man, in advance of the invention of any mind however 
 coarse and criminal. That was the atmosphere of this prelude, 
 excessive, unutterable, crude, sombre vulgarity of a detached and 
 remote kind. As Levillier listened to it amazed, he found that he 
 did not instinctively connect the vulgarity with any human traits, or 
 translate the notes into acts within his experience. Pie was simply 
 conscious of being brought to the verge of some sphere in which the 
 sordidness attained by our race would be sneered at as delicacy, in 
 which our lowest grovellings of the pigsty would be as lofty llights 
 through the skies. And the hideous eccentricity of the music, its 
 wanton desolation, deepened until both Levillier and Julian were 
 pale under its spell, shrank from its ardent, its merciless and 
 lambent sarcasm against all things refined or beautiful. The
 
 VALENTINE SINGS 181 
 
 proliiflo was as fire and sword, as plague and famine, as plunder and 
 war, as all instruments that lay waste and that wound, a. destroying 
 unvvl before whose breath the first-born withered and the very sun 
 shrivelled into a heap of gi'ey ashes. 
 
 As Dr. Levillier leaned forward, moved by an irresistible im- 
 pulse, and stretched out his hand to enforce silence from this blare 
 of deplorable melody, Valentine looked up at him, into his eyes, and 
 began to sing. The doctor's movement was arrested, his hand 
 dropped to his side, he remained tense, frigid, his eyes fastened on 
 Valentine's like a man mesmerised. At first he knew that he was 
 wondering whether his brain was playing him a trick, whether his 
 sense of hearing had, by some means, become impaired, so that he 
 heard a voice not dimly, as is the case with the partially deaf, but 
 wrongly, as may be the case with the mad, or with those who have 
 suffered under a blow or through an injury to the brain. For this 
 voice was not Valentine's at all, but the voice of a stranger, 
 powerful, harsh, and malignant. It rang through the room noisily. 
 A thick hoarseness dressed it as in disease, and at moments broke it 
 and crushed it down. Then it would emerge as in a sigh or wail, 
 pushing its way up with all the mechanical power of the voice of a 
 wild animal, and mounting to a desperate climax, sinister and 
 alarming. So unlike ordinary singing was the performance of this 
 voice that, after the first paralysis of surprise and disgust had 
 passed away from the doctor and Julian, they both feit the 
 immediate necessity of putting a period to this deadly song, to 
 which no words gave the faintest touch of humanity. They knew 
 that it must attract and rivet the attention of others in the 
 mansions, even possibly of passers-by in the street. The doctor 
 withdrew his gaze from Valentine's at length and turned hastily to 
 Julian, whom he found regarding him with a glance almost of 
 horror. 
 
 " Stop him,'' Julian murmured. 
 
 " You ! " answered Levillier. 
 
 And then each knew that the other was in some nervous crisis 
 that rendered action almost an impossibility. And while they thus 
 hesitated there came a loud, repeated, and unsteady knock at the 
 door. Julian opened it. Valentine's man was standing outside, 
 pale and anxious. 
 
 " Good God, sir," he ejaculated. " What is it ? What on earth 
 is the matter?" 
 
 The man's exclamation broke through Julian's frost of inaction. 
 He whispered to Wade : 
 
 " It's all right," pushed him out and shut the door. Then he 
 went straight up to the piano, seized Valentine's hands and dragged 
 them from the'Jcey-board.
 
 1 82 FLAMES 
 
 The silence was like a sweet blow. 
 
 " I said my voice was out of order," .Valentine said, simply and 
 with a smile. 
 
 "You did not say you had another voice, the voice of of a 
 devil," Julian said, almost falteringly, for he was still shaken by 
 his distress of the senses, into a mental -condition that was almost 
 anger. 
 
 Dr. Levillier said nothing. More sensitive to musical sounds 
 than Julian, he dared not speak, lest he should say something that 
 might stand like a fixed gulf to separate him eternally from 
 Valentine He knew the future that stretches out like a spear 
 beyond one word. So he sat quietly with his eyes on the ground. 
 His lips were set firmly together. Valentine turned to observe 
 him. 
 
 " Doctor, you're not angry ? " he asked. 
 
 The doctor made no reply. 
 
 "You know I warned you," Valentine went on. " You brought 
 this thing on yourself." 
 
 " Yes," said Levillier. 
 
 But Julian interposed. 
 
 " No, Valentine," he exclaimed. "For of course it is all a trick 
 of yours. You didn't want to sing. We made you. This is your 
 revenge, eh ? I didn't know you had it in you to be so so beastly 
 and cantankerous." 
 
 Valentine shook his head. 
 
 " It's no trick. It's simply as I said. My talent for music is 
 dead. You have been listening to the voice of its corpse." 
 
 Dr. Levillier looked up at length. 
 
 " You really mean that ? " he said, and there was an awakening 
 within him of his normal ready interest in all things. 
 
 " I mean it absolutely." 
 
 " That is the only event in which I can forgive the torture you 
 have been inflicting upon me." 
 
 " That is the true event." 
 
 " But it's not possible," Julian said. " It's not conceivable. 
 Surely, Doctor, you would not say 
 
 The doctor interrupted him. 
 
 " I cannot believe that Cresswell would deliberately commit an 
 outrage upon me," he said. "And it would be an outrage to sing 
 like that to a tired man. Weeks of work would not fatigue me as I 
 am fatigued by Cresswell's music." 
 
 Julian was silent and looked uneasy. Valentine repeated again : 
 
 " I couldn't help it. I am sorry." 
 
 Dr. Levillier ignored the remark. His professional interest was 
 beginning to be aroused. For the first time he felt convinced
 
 VALENTINE SIXGS 183 
 
 that some very peculiar and bizarre change was dawning over the 
 youth he knew so well. He wanted to watch it grow or fade, to 
 analyse it, to study it, to be aware of its exact nature. But he did 
 not want to put either Valentine or Julian upon the alert. So he 
 spoke lightly as he said : 
 
 11 But I shall soon get the better of my fatigue, even without the 
 usual medicine. Cresswell, take my advice, give your music a rest. 
 Lock your piano again for a while. It will be better." 
 
 Valentine shut down the lid on the instant, and turned the little 
 key in the lock. 
 
 " Adieu to my companion of many lonely hours ! '' he said with a 
 half whimsical pensiveness. Then, as if in joke, he held out his hand 
 with the key in it, to the doctor. 
 
 " "Will you take charge of this hostage ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," the doctor replied. 
 
 Quite gravely he took the key and put it into his pocket. 
 
 And so it was that silence fell round the Saint of Victoria Street.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 
 
 JULIAN had resolved to keep his compact with the lady of the feathers. 
 He had learned partially to understand the curious and beautiful 
 attitude which her mind had assumed towards him, polluted as it 
 must be by the terror and working out of her fate, by many dreary 
 actions and by many vile imaginings. But although he held to his 
 promise he did not, after that night of crisis, resume his former 
 career of asceticism tempered by winds of temptation which could 
 never blow his casement open. There are men who can vary the 
 fine monotony of virtue by an occasional deliberate error, and who 
 return from such an excursion into dangerous by-paths drilled and 
 comforted, as it appears, for further journeying along the main road 
 of their respectability. But Julian was not such a man. He re- 
 sembled rather the morphia victim, or the inebriate, who must at all 
 hazards abstain from any indulgence, even the smallest, in drug or 
 draiight, lest the demon who has such charm for him clasp him in 
 imperturbable arms, and refuse with the steadfastness of a once 
 tricked Venus ever to let him go again. 
 
 Valentine's empire of five years was broken in one night. 
 
 At first Julian was scarcely conscious that his descent was not 
 momentary, but rather tending to the permanent. Certainly, at the 
 first, he was inclined to have the schoolboy outlook upon it, and the 
 schoolboy outlook is as a glance through the wrong end of a telescope, 
 dwindling giant sins to the stature of pigmies, and pigmy sins to 
 mere points of darkness which equal nothingness. But, strangely 
 enough, it was his interview with the weeping Cuckoo, that Magdalen 
 of the streets, which drove the schoolboy to limbo, and set virtue and 
 vice for the moment rightly on the throne and in the gutter. 
 Despite his comparatively dull mood and tendency to a calm of self- 
 satisfaction in the Marylebone Road, Julian could not be wholly 
 unmoved by the passion of Cuckoo's regret, nor entirely unaware 
 that it was a passion in which he must have some share, whether 
 now or at some more distant time, when the thrall of recently moved 
 senses was weakened, and the numbness really born of excitement
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 185 
 
 melted in the quiet expansion of a manly and a reasonable calm. 
 His understanding of her passion, none too definite at first, gave him 
 a moment's wonder, both at her and at himself. It seemed strange 
 that the shattered influence of Valentine should be of less account to 
 him who had known and loved it than to her who had never known 
 it. It seemed stranger still that the streets those wolves which 
 tear one by one the rags of good from human nature, till it stands 
 naked and tearless beneath the lamps, which are the eyes of the 
 wolves stranger that those streets should have left to one of their 
 children a veil so bridal and so beautiful as that which hung round 
 Cuckoo when she wept. Julian was almost driven to believe that 
 sin and purity can dwell together in one woman, yet never have 
 intercourse. Yet he knew that to be impossible. The fact remained 
 that the tarnished Cuckoo, in the first moments of regret, was more 
 conscious of his sin for him than he was conscious of it for himself ; 
 that she led him, with her dingy hands, to such repentance as he 
 experienced, and that she, too, guarded him against repetition of the 
 sin, so far as she was concerned. Julian considered these circum- 
 stances ; and there was a time when they were not without effect upon 
 him, and when, with the assistance of a word from Valentine, they 
 might have worked upon him an easy salvation. But Valentine did 
 not speak that word. His peculiar purity had saved Julian in the 
 past by its mei'e existence. Its presence was enough. That satis 
 was dead now. Julian did not ask why. Nor did he find himself 
 troubled by its decease. There is nothing like action for making 
 man unobservant. Julian was no longer a ship in dock, nor even a 
 ship riding at anchor. The anchor was up, the sails were set, the 
 water ran back from the vessel's prow. 
 
 Cuckoo was not conscious of this. Sometimes she was subtle by 
 intuition ; often she was not subtle at all. When she understood 
 Julian's nature for the moment it was because his nature was, for 
 the moment, in close relation to hers. Her fate was affected by it, 
 or its passages of arms clashed near her heai't. Then intuition, 
 woman's guardian, had eyes and ears, saw and heard with a distinct- 
 ness that was nearly brilliant. But when Julian's nature wandered, 
 and the wanderings did not bring it where hers was dwelling, her 
 observation slept soundly enough. So she was not conscious at first 
 of Julian's gentle progress in a new direction. Whether Valentine 
 was conscious of it did not immediately appear, for Julian said 
 nothing. For five years he had not had a secret from Valentine. 
 Now he had to have one. He ranked Valentine with Dr. Levil- 
 lier as too good to be told of the evil thing. When he had had 
 temptations and resisted them he had told Valentine of them frankly. 
 Now he had temptations and was beginning not to resist them, he 
 kept silence about them. This silence lasted for a little while, and
 
 1 86 FLAMES 
 
 then Valentine swept it away, involuntarily it seemed, and by means 
 of action, not of words. 
 
 One day Julian met a man at his club, a lively, devil-may-care 
 soldier of fortune in the world. The man came to where he wns 
 sitting and said : 
 
 " So, Addison, your god has fallen from his pedestal. He's only 
 a Dagon, after all." 
 
 Julian looked at him ignorantly. 
 
 "What god?" he asked. 
 
 " Your saint has tumbled from his perch. I never believed in him." 
 
 He was of the species that never believes in anything except vice 
 and the Sporting Times. 
 
 Julian rejoined : 
 
 " I don't understand you." 
 
 " Cresswell," said the man. 
 
 Julian began to wonder what was coming, and silently got ready 
 for the defence, as he always did instinctively when Valentine w;is 
 the subject of attack. 
 
 " What have you got to say about Cresswell ? " he asked curtly. 
 
 " My dear chap, now don't you get your frills out. Nothing that 
 I should mind being said about me, I assure you. Only Cresswell 
 will soon lose his nickname if he goes on as he's going now." 
 
 " I'm in the dark." 
 
 " That's what he likes being, if what they say is true. Quite a 
 night bird I'm told." 
 
 " You'd better be more explicit." 
 
 But the man glanced at Julian's face and seemed to think better 
 of it. He moved off muttering : 
 
 " Damned rot, minding a little chaff. And when we're all in the 
 same boat too." 
 
 Julian sat pondering over his veiled remarks. They surprised him, 
 but at first he was inclined to consider them as meaningless .and un- 
 founded as so much of the gossip of the clubs. Men like Valentine 
 must always be a target for the arrows of the cynical. Julian had 
 heard his sanctity laughed at in billiard rooms and in bars many 
 times, and had simply felt an easy contempt for the laughers, who 
 could not understand that any nature could be finer than their own. 
 But to-day his own faint change of life as yet in its gentle begin- 
 nings- led him presently to wonder, literally for the first time, 
 whether there was a side of Valentine's life that was not merely a 
 side of feeling, but of action, and that he knew nothing of. If it 
 were so, Julian felt an inward conviction that the very nearest weeks 
 of the past had seen its birth. He remembered once more Valentine's 
 idle remark about his weariness of goodness, and wondered whether 
 in violation of his nature, in violent revolt against his own nobility
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE DATS 187 
 
 ho was living at last that commonplace, theatrical puppet-play of the 
 world, a double life. 
 
 Valentine a night bii'd ! What did that mean ? 
 
 And then Julian thought of the great wheeling army of the bats, 
 whose evolutions every night of creation witnesses. In the day 
 they do not sleep, but they are hidden. Their wings are folded so 
 closely as to be invisible. Nobody could tell that they ever flew 
 through shadowy places, seeking that which never satiates, although 
 it may transform, the appetite. Nobody could tell how the twilight 
 affects them when it comes, how, in their obscurity, they have to 
 keep a guard lest the involuntary fluttering of a half-spread pinion 
 betray them. And then when the twilight, the blessed one of the 
 twin twilights, one in course towards day, one in course towards 
 night, has deepened and has died, they can dare to be themselves, to 
 spread their short wings, and to flutter on their vagrant and mono- 
 tonous courses. It is a great though secret army, the army of the 
 bats. It scours through cities. No weather will keep it quite restful 
 in camp. No darkness will blind it into immobility. The main- 
 spring of sin beats in it as drums beat in a Soudanese fantasia, as 
 blood beats in a heart. The air of night is black with the movement 
 of the bats. They fly so thickly round some lives that those lives 
 can never see the sky, never catch a glimpse of the stars, never hear 
 the wings of the angels, but always and ever the wings of the bats. 
 Nor can such lives hear the whisper of Nature and of the sirens who 
 walk purely with Nature. The murmur of the bats drowns all other 
 sounds, and makes a hoarse and monotonous music. And the eyes 
 of the bats are hungry, and the breath of the bats is poisonous, and 
 the flight of the bats is a charade of the tragedy of the flight of the 
 devils in hell. 
 
 How could Valentine be one of the bats ? It seemed to Julian 
 that if Valentine tried to join them they would fall upon him, as 
 certain birds will fall upon one who is not of their tribe, and kill 
 him. And yet ? 
 
 Yet Julian began to know that he had been aware of a change in 
 Valentine. He had believed it to be momentary. Perhaps it was 
 not momentary. Perhaps Valentine was concealing'his new mode 
 of life from some strange idea of chivalry towards Julian. As 
 Julian pondered he grew excited. He began to long to tell 
 Valentine now what he had not liked to tell him before. Suddenly 
 he got up and hastened out of the club. He drove to Victoria 
 Street. But Valentine was not at home. 
 
 " I suppose Mr. Cresswell goes out every night, Wade? " he asked 
 the man, after a moment of hesitation. 
 
 Wade looked very much astonished at such a question coming 
 from Julian,
 
 i88 FLAMES 
 
 " Yes, sir. At least most nights," Wade answered. 
 
 " I see," Julian said. 
 
 He stood a minute longer. Then lie turned away, after an 
 abrupt : 
 
 " Say I called ; will you ? " 
 
 Wade looked after him as ho went down the stairs, with the 
 raised eyehrows of the confidential butler. 
 
 That night was warm and gentle, with a full moon riding in clear 
 heavens. The season was growing towards its full height, and the 
 streets were thronged with carriages till a late hour. There is one 
 long pavement that is generally trodden by many feet at eveiy time 
 of the year, and in almost every hour of the wheeling twenty- four. 
 It is the pavement on which the legend of London's disgrace is 
 written in bold characters of defiance. Men from distant lands, 
 having made the pilgrimage to our Mecca, the queen, by right of 
 magnitude at least, of the world's cities, stare aghast upon the 
 legend, almost as Belshazzar stared upon the writing on the wall. 
 Colonists seeking for the first time the comfortable embrace of that 
 mother country which has been the fable of their childhood and the 
 dream of their laborious years of maturity, gaze with withering 
 hearts at this cancer in her bosom. Pure women turn their eyt-s 
 from it. Children seek it that they may learn in one sharp moment 
 the knowledge of good and evil. The music of the feet on that 
 pavement has called women to despair and men to destruction ; has 
 sung in the ears of innocence till they grew deaf to virtue, and 
 murmured round the heart of love till it became the heart of lust. 
 And that pavement is the camping-ground of the army of the bats. 
 On wet nights they flit drearily through the rain. In winter they 
 glide like shadows among the revealing snows. But in the time of 
 flowers and of soft airs, when the moon at the full swims calmly 
 above the towers of Westminster, and the Thames rests rocked in a 
 silver dream among the ebony wharves and barges, the flight of the 
 bats is gay and their number is legion. And their circle is joined by 
 many who are but recruits, or as camp-followers, treading in the 
 track of those whose names are on the roll-call. 
 
 The lady of the feathers rarely failed to join the evening flight of 
 the bats. Her acquaintance with Julian, even her curious passion 
 for his respect and distant treatment, had not won her to different 
 evenings, or to a new mode of life. But her feeling for Julian led 
 her to ignore now the fact of this fate of hers. She chose to set him 
 aside from it, to keep him for a friend, as an innocent peasant girl 
 might keep some recluse wandering after peace into her solitude. 
 Julian was to be the one man who looked on her with quiet, habitual 
 eyes, who touched her with calm, gentle hand, who spoke to her with 
 the voice of friendship, demanding nothing, and thought of her with
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 189 
 
 a feeling that was neither greed nor contempt. Arid that one fatal 
 night in which Cuckoo's private and secluded heart was so bitterly 
 wounded she put out of her recollection with a strength of deter- 
 mination soldier- like and almost fierce. It lay in the past, but she 
 did not treat the past as a woman treats a drawer full of old, used 
 things, opening it in quiet moments and turning over its contents 
 with a lingering and a loving hand. She shut it, locked it almost 
 angrily, and never, never looked into it. Julian was to be her friend 
 of leisure, never associated in any way with her tragic hours. All 
 other men were the same, stamped with a similar hall-mark. He 
 only was unstamped and was beautiful. 
 
 On this evening of summer Cuckoo, as usual, joined the flight of 
 the bats, with a tired wing. The heat tried her. Her cheeks were 
 white as ivory under their cloud of rouge. Her mouth was more 
 plaintive even than usual, and her heart felt dull and heavy. As 
 she got out of the omnibus at the Circus one of her ankles turned, 
 and she gave an awkward jump that set all the feathers on her hat 
 in commotion, and made the newspaper boys laugh at her scornfully. 
 They knew her by sight and joked her every evening when she 
 arrived. At first that was a long while ago she had resented 
 their remarks, still more their shrewd unboyish questions, and had 
 answered them with angry bitterness. But well, that was a long 
 while ago. Now she simply recovered her footing, paused a moment 
 on the kerb-stone to arrange her dress, and then drifted away into 
 the crowd slowly, without even glancing at her nightly critics, who 
 were aware of a new bow on her gown, recognised, with imperturb- 
 able sang-froid, the change in a trimming, or the alteration of a 
 waist-belt. 
 
 Slowly she walked along. Piccadilly bats fly slowly. The moon 
 went up. She had not met her fate. In the throng she saw 
 A'alentine pass. He looked at her with a smile. She turned her 
 eyes hastily away. She had met him on several evenings of late, 
 but had never told Julian so, for she began to understand now his 
 reverence for Valentine and a new-born, lady-like instinct taught her 
 not to hurt that reverence. Valentine disappeared. He had not 
 tried to speak with her. Once, on encountering her, he had paused, 
 but Cuckoo glided behind two large Frenchwomen and escaped with 
 the adroitness of a snake in grass. Apparently he recognised her 
 movement as one of retreat, and was resolved to leave her alone, for 
 he had never followed her since that day, although he always lifted 
 his hat when he saw her. The crowd grew thicker. It was very 
 heterogeneous, but Cuckoo did not thread it with the attention of a 
 psychologist, or examine it with the pains of a philosopher of the 
 dark hours. She stared listlessly at the faces of the men, and, if 
 they stared back at her, smiled mechanically with a thin and stereo-
 
 tgo FLAMES 
 
 typed coquetry, moving on vacantly the while in a sort of dream, 
 such as a tired journalist may fall into as he drives his pen over the 
 paper, leaving a train of familiar words and phrases behind it. 
 There are many dreamers like Cuckoo on the thin riband of that 
 pavement, moving in a maze created by everlasting custom, beneath 
 their flowers, half -senseless to life, and yet alive to the least human 
 notice, behind the stretched barriers of their veils. She walked from 
 the Circus to Plyde Park Corner and back again, then turned, with 
 an ever-growing lassitude, to repeat the desolate expei'ience. By this 
 time the playhouses had vomited their patrons into the night, and 
 locomotion was becoming more difficult. Sometimes there was a 
 block, and Cuckoo found herself " hung up " as she called it, squashed 
 in a mass of people, all intent on some scheme of their own, and 
 resentful of the enforced interruption to their movement. Then, by 
 some unknown and mysterious means, the human knot was untied, 
 and all the atoms murmured on again through the ocean of the town. 
 And still Cuckoo was alone, and still the mechanical smile came and 
 went upon her lips, and her feet seemed to grow heavier and heavier, 
 till they were as cannon balls to be lifted and dragged by her pro- 
 testing muscles. And still her senses seem to become more and more 
 drugged by the familiarity of it all, the familiarity of smile, of 
 tired limbs, of incessant slow motion, of staring faces and watchful 
 eyes ; the familiarity of the cabs rolling home towards Kiiightsbridge 
 .and farther Kensington, with a dull, harsh noise ; the familiarity of 
 persona], intense loneliness and longing for quiet, the familiarity 
 of the knowledge that quiet could only be earned by failure, and 
 that failure meant lack of food, debt, and deeper degradation. 
 
 At last, perhaps it was owing to the unusual heat of the night, 
 Cuckoo became so over-fatigued that she was scarcely conscious what 
 she was doing. Her smile was utterly devoid of meaning, and, had 
 she been suddenly asked, she could not have told whether she was 
 at the Regent Street end of Piccadilly, at Hyde Park Corner, or 
 midway between the two. Once more there was a block. The 
 people were pressed, or surged of their own will, together, and 
 Cuckoo found herself leaning against some stranger. This sudden 
 support gave to her an equally sudden knowledge of the extent to 
 which she was fatigued, and when the block ceased and the stranger 
 unconscious that he was being used as a species of pillow moved 
 away, Cuckoo almost fell to the ground. Stretching out her hands 
 to save herself she caught hold of a man's arm, and as she did so her 
 eyes moved to his face. It was Julian, and, before her grasp had 
 time to fix all his attention on her, Cuckoo saw why he was in 
 Piccadilly. In an instant all her lassitude was gone, all the fatigue, 
 so passionless and complete, vanished. An extraordinary warmth, 
 that of fire, not of summer, swept into her heart. She stood still,
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 191 
 
 and trembled as if from the accession of the abrupt strength that 
 flows from an energy purely nervous. 
 
 " Hulloh, Cuckoo ! " Julian said. 
 
 She nodded at him. He looked down at her not quite knowing 
 what to say, for he knew, by this time, that she objected to any 
 hint from him on the subject of her proceedings of the night. That 
 was ignored between them, and when they met the situation was 
 that of a lodger in the Marylebone lload holding friendly intercourse 
 with a dweller in Mayfair, nothing more and nothing less. 
 
 " Taking a stroll ? " Julian said at last. " Isn't it a lovely 
 night ? " 
 
 " Yes. I say, I'm tired," she answered. 
 
 " Shall I take you somewhere ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, do," she said. 
 
 They moved towards the Circus. 
 
 " Where shall we go ? ' : Julian said. " Have you any pet place ? " 
 
 " I don't know oh, the Monico," she replied. 
 
 The restaurant was right in front of them. They dodged across 
 to the island, thence to the opposite pavement, and passed in 
 silently. The outer hall was thronged with people. So was the 
 long inner room, and for a moment they stood in the doorway look- 
 ing for a table. At length Julian caught sight of an empty one far 
 down under the clock at the end. They made their way to it and 
 sat down. 
 
 " What will you have? " Julian asked Cuckoo. 
 
 She considered, sinking back on the plush settee. 
 
 " A glass of stout, I think, and 
 
 " And a bun," he interposed, smiling in recollection of their first 
 interview. 
 
 But Cuckoo did not smile or seem to recognise the allusion. 
 
 " Please I'll have a sandwich," she said. 
 
 Julian ordered it, the stout, a cup of coffee and a liqueur brandy 
 for himself. While the waiter was getting the things he noticed 
 Cuckoo's extreme and active gravity, a gravity which seemed oddly 
 to give her quite a formidable appearance under her feathers. 
 Despite the obvious weariness written on her face, there was some- 
 how a look of enei'gy about her, the aspect of a person full of inten- 
 tion and purpose. 
 
 "Why, Cuckoo," he said, "you look like a young judge about to 
 deliver a sentence on somebody." 
 
 And indeed that was just how her expression and pose behind the 
 marble-topped table affected him. Just then the waiter brought the 
 stout and the other things. Cuckoo removed her cheap kid gloves, 
 took the tumbler in her thin fingers and sipped at it. After a sip 
 or two she put the glass down, and said to Julian :
 
 192 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 " I say." 
 "Well?" 
 
 " What are you about to-night ? " 
 
 The question came from her painted lips very sternly. It seemed 
 addressed by one who had a right to condemn and who was going to 
 exercise that right. Julian Avas astonished by her tone, and had an 
 instant's inclination to resent it. But then he thought that there 
 was nothing in the words themselves, and that the odd manner 
 probably sprang simply from fatigue or some other womanish, 
 undivined cause. So he answered : 
 
 " Just taking a stroll. It's so fine," and began to drink his cofl'ee. 
 But Cuckoo quickly showed that her manner meant all that it 
 had seemed to say. 
 
 " That ain't it," she said, with emphatic excitement, though she 
 spoke in a low voice, because of the people all round them. " You 
 know it ain't." 
 
 Julian was just lighting a cigarette. The match was naming in 
 his hand. He let it go out as he looked at her. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he asked. " What's the matter ? " 
 " What are you doin' ? " she retorted. " That's what I want to 
 know. Not as I need to ask though," she added, bitterly. 
 
 Julian was distinctly taken aback by the emotion in her manner, 
 and the passion that she tried to keep quiet in her voice. He 
 flushed rather red, a boyish trick which he could never quite get 
 over. 
 
 "I don't know whkt you're talking about," he said, lighting 
 
 another match, and this time making it do its office on his cigarette. 
 
 Cuckoo tossed her head in a way that was not wholly free from 
 
 vulgarity, but that was certainly wholly unconscious and expressive 
 
 of real feeling. 
 
 " Oh yes, you do," she rejoined. Then after a moment's silence 
 she added, with bitter emphasis, and a movement of her hand in the 
 direction of the door : 
 
 " You out in that crowd, and doing the same as all of them ! " 
 As she said the words tears started under her blackened eyelashes. 
 If Julian had been taken aback before she spoke the last ' sentence, 
 he was ten times more astonished now. The whole situation struck 
 him as unexampled, and, but for something so passionate in the 
 girl's manner that it over-rode the natural feeling of the momont, his 
 sense of humour must have moved him to a smile. It was strange 
 indeed to sit at midnight under the electric moons of the Monico, 
 and to be passionately condemned for dissipation by a girl with a 
 painted face, dyed hair and that terribly unmistakable imprint of the 
 streets. But Julian could not smile. Something in Cuckoo's 
 demeanour, something so vehement and so unconscious as to be
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 193 
 
 not far from dignity, impressed him and took him well beyond the 
 gates of laughter. 
 
 " Why but you were out in the crowd too," he said. 
 " I ! " she said sharply, and with a touch of scathing contempt for 
 herself, yet impatient, too, of any introduction of her entity into the 
 discussion, " of course I've got to be there. What's that to do 
 with it ? " 
 
 " Really, Cuckoo," Julian began, but she interrupted him. 
 " I ain't you," she said. 
 "No, of course, but " 
 
 " I'm different. It's nothing to me where I go of a night, or 
 what I do. Bat you ain't got to be there. You needn't go, need 
 you ? " 
 
 " Nobody need," he said. " But " 
 
 " Then what d'you do it for ? " she reiterated, still in the same tone 
 of one sitting on high in condemnation, and moved by her own utter- 
 ance to an increasing excitement. This time she paused for a reply, 
 and set her rouged lips together with the obvious intention of not 
 speaking until Julian had plainly put forward his defence. Strange 
 to say, her manner had impressed him with a ridiculous feeling that 
 defence of some kind was actually necessary. It was a case of one 
 denizen of the dock putting on the black cap to sentence another. 
 Julian glanced at Cuckoo before he made any reply to her last ques- 
 tion. If he had had any intention of not answering it at all, of 
 calmly disposing, in a word or two, of her right to interrogate him on 
 his proceedings, her fixed and passionate eyes killed it instantly. 
 He moved his coffee-cup round uneasily in the saucer. 
 
 " Men do many things they needn't do, as well as women," he 
 began. " I must have my amusements. Why not ? " 
 
 At the word amusements she drew in her breath with a little hiss 
 of contempt. Julian flushed again. 
 
 " You're the last person," he began, and then caught himself up 
 short. It must be confessed that she was very aggravating, and that 
 the position she took up was wholly untenable. Having checked 
 himself, he said more calmly : 
 
 " What's the good of talking about it ? I live as other men do, 
 naturally." 
 
 " Are you a beast too, then ? " she asked. 
 
 She still kept her voice low, and the sentence came with all the 
 more effect on this account. 
 
 " I don't see that," Julian exclaimed, evidently stung. " Women 
 are always ready to say that about men." 
 
 Cuckoo broke into a laugh. She picked up her glass, and drank 
 all that was in it. Putting it down empty she laughed again, with 
 her eyes on Julian. That sound of mirth chilled him utterly.
 
 I 9 4 FLAMES 
 
 " Why d'you laugh ? " he said. 
 
 " I don't know thinkin' that you're to be like all the rest, I 
 suppose," she answered. " Like all them brutes out there, and him 
 too." 
 
 " Him," said Julian. " Whom are you speaking of ? " 
 
 She had not meant to say those last words, and tried to get out 
 of an answer by asking for something more to drink. 
 
 " Chartreuse," she said, with the oddest imaginable accent. 
 
 Julian ordered it hastily, and then immediately repeated his 
 question. 
 
 " Never mind," Cuckoo replied. " It don't matter." 
 
 But he was not to be denied. 
 
 " D'you mean Valentine ? " he asked. 
 
 She nodded her head slowly. Although Julian had half suspected 
 that Valentine might be there this confirmation of his suspicion gave 
 him a decided shock. 
 
 " Oh, he was just walking home from some party," he exclaimed. 
 
 " P'raps." 
 
 "I'm certain of it." 
 
 " He don't matter," she said, with a hard accent. 
 
 She drank the Chartreuse very slowly, and seemed to be reflecting, 
 and a change came over her face. It softened as much as a painted 
 face can soften under dyed hair. 
 
 " Dearie," she said, " it makes me sick to see you like the rest." 
 
 " I never pretended to be anything different/' 
 
 " But you was different," she asserted. " I know you was 
 different." 
 
 How could she have divined the change in Julian that one night 
 of the Empire had wrought ? 
 
 " I say," she went on, and her voice was trembling with eagerness, 
 " you've got to tell me somethin'." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " That night I I it wasn't me made you different, was it ? " 
 
 And as she spoke Julian knew that it was she. Perhaps a fleeting 
 expression in his face telling naked truth as expressions may, though 
 words belie them made her understand, for her cheeks turned grey 
 beneath the paint on them. 
 
 " I wish I'd killed myself long ago," she said, in a whisper. 
 
 " Hush ! " he exclaimed, cursing his tell-tale features. "I'm not 
 different ; and if I was you could have nothing to do with it." 
 
 She said no more, but he saw by her brooding expression that she 
 clung to her intuition, and knew what he denied. 
 
 The hands of the clock fixed on the wall above their heads pointed 
 to the half-hour after midnight. The pale and weary waiters were 
 racing to and fro clearing the tables, dodging this way and that with
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 195 
 
 trays, stealing along with arms full of long-stemmed, thick tumblers, 
 eager for rest. The electric moons gave a sudden portentous wink. 
 
 " Time ! " a voice cried. 
 
 People began to get up and move out, exchanging loud good- 
 nights. The long room slowly assumed an aspect of desertion and 
 greedy desolation. 
 
 " We must go," Julian said. 
 
 Cuckoo woke out of that reverie, which seemed so chilly, so terrible 
 even. She glanced at Julian, and her eyes were again full of tears. 
 He was standing, and he bent down to her with his two hands 
 resting upon the marble of the table. He bent down and then suddenly 
 stooped lower, lower, almost glaring into her eyes. She went back 
 in her seat a little, half-frightened. 
 
 ' What's it ? " she murmured. 
 
 But Julian only remained fixedly looking into her eyes. In the 
 pool of the tears of them he saw too tiny shadowy flames, flickering, 
 as he thought, but quite clear, distinct, unmistakable. And there 
 came a thick beating in his side. His heart beat hard. Each time 
 he had seen the vision of the flame he had been instantly impressed 
 with a sense of strange mystery, as if at the vision of some holy 
 thing, a flame upon a prayer-blessed altar, a flame ascending from a 
 tear-washed sacrifice. And now he saw this thing that he fancied 
 holy burning behind the tears in Cuckoo's eyes ! 
 
 Cuckoo got up. 
 
 " Come on," she said abruptly. 
 
 Julian followed her out of the cafe. 
 
 The dream of the, moon was with them as they came to the entrance, 
 clear as a quiet soul, directly above them in a clear sky. Julian 
 looked up at it, but Cuckoo looked, with eyes that were almost 
 sullen, at the night panorama of the Circus. They waited a moment 
 on the step. Julian was lighting a cigar, and many other voluble 
 men, most of them French or Italian, were doing likewise. Having 
 lighted it, and given a strong puff or two, Julian said to Cuckoo : 
 
 " Shall I drive you home ? " 
 
 " I ain't going home yet," she replied doggedly. " Are you ? " 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " Are you, or aren't you ? " she reiterated. 
 
 While she spoke, in her voice that was often a little hoarse, a 
 young voice with a thread in it, he realised that somehow she 
 painted sinner as she was had managed to make him ashamed of 
 himself. Or was it that an awe had come to his soul with that 
 sti^ange flame ? In any case his mood had risen from the old night 
 mood of a young man to something higher, something that could not 
 be satisfied in the sordid way of the world. 
 
 " I think I shall go home," he said,
 
 196 FLAMES 
 
 " Right," she answered, and for the first time there was an accent 
 of pleasure in her voice. 
 
 " But I'll walk a little way with you first," he added. 
 
 Together they crossed the Circus and mingled with the humming 
 mob at the corner of Regent Street. They pushed their way towards 
 Piccadilly with difficulty, for numbers of people at this hour do not 
 attempt to walk, but stand stock still, despite the cry of the police- 
 man, staring at the passers-by, or talking and laughing with the 
 women who throng the pavement. Having elbowed their way along 
 as far as the St. James's restaurant, they began to move with a little 
 more ease, and could have talked as they went, but apparently neither 
 of them felt conversational. Julian was comparing the vision of the 
 moon with the vision of the street, a comparison no doubt often made 
 even by young men in London on still nights of summer, suggestive to 
 most people, perhaps, of much the same thoughts yet a comparison 
 to thrill, as all the wild and eternal contrasts of life thrill. And Julian 
 was thinking, too, rather sombrely of himself. Cuckoo walked on 
 beside him, looking straight before her. Quite unconsciously, with 
 the unconsciousness of a mechanical toy, expressive at the turning of a 
 key in its interior, she had assumed her thin, invariable, professional 
 smile. It came to her face in a flash when the pavement of Picca- 
 dilly came to her feet. She did not know it was there. 
 
 The moon looked down on it, yet, if Julian had been able to see, 
 perhaps the little flame still flickered in those eyes which had been 
 full of tears. But a little beyond St. James's Hall their silent pro- 
 gress was arrested, for they both saw Valentine pass them swiftly in 
 the crowd. He saw them, too, but did not attempt to speak to them. 
 With a smile at Julian he walked on. Julian gazed after him, then 
 turned to Cuckoo. 
 
 " And you saw him here to-night before I met you ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How long ago ? " 
 
 "Two hours, I daresay." 
 
 After that Julian ceased to think of the vision of the moon. But 
 presently he noticed that Cuckoo was walking more slowly. 
 
 " You're tired ? " he said. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Have you been out all the evening ? " 
 
 She nodded again. 
 
 " Take a cab and go home. I'll pay the man." 
 
 " No, I can't go yet/' 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I can't." She repeated, and a mulish look of obstinacy came 
 into her face. 
 
 Julian guessed the miserable reason.
 
 THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS 197 
 
 " Let me " he began, and in a moment his hand would have 
 
 been in his pocket. She stopped him. 
 
 " I told you as I never would, not from you," she said. " And I 
 wouldn't all the more since since that .night." 
 
 Then, after an instant, she added : 
 
 " But you'd better leave me to myself now." 
 
 And then Julian realised that his presence and company were 
 ruining her chance. That thought turned him sick arid dull. 
 
 " I can't," he began, almost desperately. 
 
 She gave with her hand a little twitch at his. 
 
 " I say," she whispered, and she spoke to him as if to Jessie in the 
 tiny flannel-lined basket, " Go bials ! will you ? " 
 
 " But you ? " he said, and there was something that was half a sob 
 in his voice. 
 
 " I can't. But you go bials." 
 
 And then, to please her, he held up his hand and hailed a hansom. 
 Getting in he gave the direction of his rooms, loud enough for her 
 to hear. She stood at the edge of the pavement and nodded at him 
 as she heard it. 
 
 Then she turned away, and Julian saw the feathers in her big hat 
 waving, as she joined once more the flight of the bats.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES 
 
 " THAT girl loves you," Valentine had said, when Julian told him of 
 Cuckoo's strange fragmentary sermon in the Monico, and of its 
 effect upon himself. 
 
 Valentine spoke without any emotion or sympathy, and the 
 absence of feeling from his voice seemed almost to bring a certain 
 slight vexation into his manner. The love of Cuckoo, perhaps 
 naturally, was to his fine nature a thing of no account, or even of ill 
 account. At least his look and manner faintly said so to Julian. 
 
 " But if she loves me," Julian said, and a certain wonder came 
 into his heart at the thought, " surely she wouldn't behave to me as 
 she does, turning me from a lover into a friend, and keeping me 
 almost angrily in the latter relation." 
 
 " Perhaps not," Valentine said languidly. 
 
 No doubt he understood what Julian did not entirely understand, 
 the subtleties of such a nature as Cuckoo's, a nature hammered out 
 thin by cruel circumstance, drilled till it found the unspeakable 
 ordinary and the loathsome inevitable, worn as a stone by dropping 
 water till the water, ceasing to fall, must have left a loneliness of 
 surprise. Julian did not fully realise that Cuckoo's life might well 
 lead her to display real affection, if she possessed it, by ways the 
 reverse of those naturally sought and gloried in by pure and pro- 
 tected women. To give is the act natural to the love of such 
 women. It is at least their impulse, although restrained within 
 strict limits, perhaps, by exigencies of conscience or of religion. But 
 to give is the impulse, giving being the unusual act. the strange new 
 act in them. Cuckoo's profession being an ordered routine of giving, 
 how could she show her love better than by withholding ? To be to 
 Julian as she was to all men could prove nothing, either to him or to 
 herself. To be to him as she was not to any other man whom she 
 knew must mean something, argue something. So, at least, dimly 
 and without mental self-consciousness, her mind reasoned rather 
 instinctively, for the lady of the feathers was above all things 
 instinctive. Instead of logic, ethics, morals, the equipment of sage,
 
 THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES 199 
 
 philosopher, good women, she had instinct only. Instinct told her 
 the secret meaning of reticence in her relations with Julian. When 
 she said good-bye to him, the hand-shake that passed between them 
 had become something more to her than a kiss. She kissed so many 
 whom she hated, so many who were dolls of vice to her, who were 
 walking sins, incarnate lust shadows, scarcely men. To be to Julian 
 what another woman might have been would be to seem to make him 
 as all those dolls of horrible London. So Cuckoo set him apart by 
 her relations towards him, as she had previously set him apart in 
 her heart. She pushed the chair of her beloved from the hearth 
 whei-ethe dolls sat night after night warming their expressive hands 
 at the cheap and ever-burning fire. She pushed it out into a circle 
 of cold that was the only sacred thing she could supply. The world 
 and her situation in it had bereft her of the power of even proving 
 the simplicity of love by simplicity of natural action. She had to 
 find a new way to show an old worship. She found it in refusal 
 where others find it in assent. 
 
 But, after all, she was a Avoman, and perhaps she wished Julian to 
 be an anchorite. That was what Valentine meant when, after 
 Julian's account of Cuckoo's anger on finding him in Piccadilly, he 
 simply said : 
 
 " That girl loves you." 
 
 The sentence stirred Julian to a surprise warmer than seemed rea- 
 sonable, for he had really known that Cuckoo had some feeling for 
 him. But he had always at the back of his mind the idea common 
 to so many, that such a girl as Cuckoo could not be capable of the 
 real love, the love ascetic, not the love Bacchanalian. Love among 
 the roses is easy, but not many can welcome love among the nettles, 
 and whenever Julian, despite his knowledge of the thorny paths 
 along which Cuckoo walked habitually, along which all her poor 
 sisterhood walk incessantly, had not entirely disabused himself of the 
 fallacy that a life such as hers was, in some vague, undefined and in- 
 definable way, a life of pleasure. Even when we know a thing to be 
 we often cannot feel it to be. Knowledge in the mind does not in- 
 evitably bring to the birth sensation in the heart, or even the mental 
 apprehension, half reasonable and half emotional, on the base and 
 foundation of which it is comparatively easy to ground acts that 
 indicate an understanding. 
 
 From Valentine's remark Julian xmderstood him to mean that 
 Cuckoo's anger was entirely caused by jealousy, not at all by a fine 
 desire of protecting some one stronger than herself from that which 
 she knew so well through her own original weakness. Yet that was 
 what Julian had been led to believe, not by any hint of Cuckoo's, but 
 by something within himself. 
 
 "I don't see why she should love me," he said presently.
 
 200 FLAMES 
 
 " You're well off, Julian," Valentine rejoined. 
 
 Almost for the first time in his life Julian felt angry with 
 Valentine. 
 
 " You don't know her at all," he said, hotly. 
 
 " I know her class." 
 
 Julian looked at him, and his anger died, as his mind sailed off on 
 a new tack. 
 
 " Her class ! Then you must have been studying it lately, Val. 
 Not long ago you could not have studied it. Your nature would not 
 have let you." 
 
 ' That is true enough." 
 
 ' Were you studying it when we met you the other night ? " 
 ' Yes." 
 
 ' With what result ? " Julian asked with eager curiosity. 
 'That I understand something I never understood before the 
 charm of sin." 
 
 Julian was greatly surprised at this deliverance of his friend, who 
 uttered it in his coldly pure voice, looking serenely high-minded and 
 even loftily intellectual. 
 
 " You find the charm of sin in Piccadilly ? " 
 
 " I begin to find it everywhere, in every place in which human 
 beings gather together." 
 
 " You no longer feel yourself aloof from the average man, then ? " 
 
 Valentine pressed his right hand slowly upon Julian's shoulder. 
 
 " No longer," he answered quietly. " Julian, you and I are 
 emerging together from the hermitage in which we have dwelt 
 retired for so long. I always thought you would emerge some day. 
 I never thought I should. But so it is. Don't think that I am 
 standing still while you are travelling. It is not so." 
 
 The strength of his hand's grip upon Julian's shoulder seemed to 
 indicate a violence of feeling which the tones of his voice did not 
 imply. Julian listened, and then said, in a hesitating, irresolute 
 manner : 
 
 " Yes, I see, Val ; but I say, where are we travelling ? or, at least, 
 where shall we travel if we don't pull up, if we keep on ? That's the 
 thing, I suppose." 
 
 As he spoke he did not tell himself that it was nothing less than 
 the disconnected and ungrammatical remarks of the lady of the 
 feathers which prompted this consideration, this prophetic movement 
 of his mind. Yet so it was. And when Valentine replied he, the 
 saint, was fighting against her, the sinner, and surely in the cause of 
 evil. For he said lightly : 
 
 " After all, do human souls travel ? I often think they are like 
 eyes looking at a whirling zoetrope. It is the zoetrope that 
 travels."
 
 THE FLAME IN A- WOMAN'S EYES 201 
 
 " You think souls don't go up or down ?" 
 
 " I think that none of us know really much about souls, and 
 that, after all, it is best not to bother ourselves too much about 
 them." 
 
 " Marr thought a great deal about them. I used to fancy that, as 
 some maniacs have been known to murder people in order to tear 
 out their hearts, he could have murdered them to tear out their 
 souls." 
 
 Valentine took his hand from Julian's shoulder. 
 
 " Marr is dead and forgotten," he said almost sternly. 
 
 " I can't quite forget him, Val, and I still feel as if he had had 
 some influence over both of us. We have changed since those days 
 of the sittings, since that night of your trance and his death." 
 
 Julian was looking at Valentine in a puzzled way while he spoke. 
 Valentine met his eyes calmly. 
 
 " If I have changed," he said slowly, "it cannot be in essentials. 
 Look at me. Is my face altered 1 Is my expression different ? " 
 
 " No, Valentine." 
 
 Julian said the words with a sort of return to confidence and 
 to greater happiness. To look into the face of his friend set all his 
 doubts at rest. No man with eyes like that could ever fall into any- 
 thing which was really and radically evil. Valentine perhaps was 
 playing with life as a boy plays with a dog, making life jump up 
 at him, dance round him, just to see the strength and grace of the 
 creature, its possibilities of quick motion, its powers of varied move- 
 ment. Where could be the harm of that ? And what Valentine 
 could do safely he began to think he might do safely too. He gave 
 expression to his thought with his usual frankness. 
 
 " You mean you are beginning to play with life ? " he said. 
 
 " That is it exactly. I am putting life through its paces. After 
 all, no man is worth his salt if he shuts himself up from that which is 
 placed in the world for him to see, to know, and perhaps but only 
 after he has seen and known it to reject. To do that is like living 
 in the midst of a number of people who may be either very agreeable 
 or the revei'se, and declining ever to be introduced to them on the 
 ground that they must all be horrible and certain to do one an infinity 
 of harm/' 
 
 " Yes, yes, I see. Then you think that Cuckoo is jealous of me ? 
 That that was all she meant ? " 
 
 Julian again returned to the old question. Valentine replied : 
 
 " I feel sure of it. Women are always governed by their hearts. 
 So much so that my last sentence is a truism, scarcely worthy the 
 saying. Besides, my dear Julian, what would it matter if she were 
 not ? What could the attitude of such a woman on any subject 
 under the sun matter to you ? "
 
 202 FLAMES 
 
 The words were not spoken without intentional sarcasm. They 
 stung Julian a little, but did not lead him, from any sense of false 
 shame, to a feeble concealment of his real feeling. 
 
 "It does seem absurd, I dare say," he said. "But she's well, 
 she's not an ordinary woman, Val." 
 
 " Let us hope not." 
 
 "No, you don't understand. There's something strong about 
 her. What she says might really matter, I think, to a cleverer man 
 than I. She knows men, and then, Valentine, there's something 
 else." 
 
 He stopped. There was a queer look of mystery in his face. 
 
 " Something else ! What is it ? What can there be ? " 
 
 " I saw the flame as if it was burning in her eyes." 
 
 Valentine made an abrupt movement. It might have been caused 
 by surprise, annoyance, anger, or simply by the desire to fidget 
 which overcomes every one, not paralysed, at some time or another. 
 His action knocked over a chair, and he stooped to pick it up and 
 set it in its place before he spoke. Then he said : 
 
 " The flame, you say ! What on earth is your theory about this 
 extraordinary flame ? You seem to attach a strange importance to 
 it. Yet it can only be the fire of a fancy, a jet from the imagina- 
 tion. Tell me, have you any theory about it, honestly, and, if so, 
 what is it ? " 
 
 Julian was rather taken aback by this very sledge hammer invita- 
 tion. Hitherto the flame, and his thought of it, had seemed to have 
 the pale vagueness and the mystery of a dream. When the flame 
 appeared, it is true, he was oppressed by a sense of awe; but the 
 awe was indefinite, blurred, resisting analysis, and quite inexplicable 
 to another. 
 
 " I did not say I had any theory about it," he answered. 
 
 " But then, why do you consider it at all ? And Avhy seem to 
 think that its supposed presence in the eyes of a woman makes that 
 woman in any way different from others ? " 
 
 " But I did not say I thought so," Julian said, rather hastily. 
 " How you jump to conclusions to-day ! " 
 
 " You implied it, and you meant it. Now, didn't you ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I may have." 
 
 " This is all too much for me," Valentine said, showing now a very 
 unusual irritation. He even began to pace up and down the room 
 with a slow, soft footstep, monotonous and mechanical in its regu- 
 laiity. As he was walking he went on : 
 
 " I do really think, Julian, that it is a mistake to allow any fancy 
 to get upon your nerves. You know what the doctor thought about 
 this flame." 
 
 " Yes."
 
 THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES 203 
 
 " And you know what I think." 
 
 " Do I ? " 
 
 " Yes, that it is a mere chimera. But my opinion on such a subject 
 has no particular value. The doctor is different. He is a great 
 specialist. The nerves have been his constant study for years. If 
 this vision continues to haunt you, you really ought to put yourself 
 definitely into his hands." 
 
 " Perhaps I will/' said Julian. 
 
 He spoke rather seriously and meditatively Valentine, possibly 
 because he was in the sort of peculiarly irritable frame of mind that 
 will sometimes cause a man to dislike having his tendered advice 
 taken, seemed additionally vexed by this reply, or at any rate struck 
 by it. He paused in his walk, and seemed for an instant as if he 
 were going to say something sharply sarcastic. Then suddenly he 
 laughed. 
 
 "After all," he exclaimed, in a calmer voice, "we are taking an 
 absurdity mighty seriously." 
 
 But Julian would not agree to this view of the matter. 
 
 " I don't know that we are," he said. 
 
 " You don't know ! ;) 
 
 " That it is an absurdity. No, Valentine, I don't, I can't think that 
 it is. I saw it in Cuckoo's eyes only once, and that was just 
 
 " Tell me just when you saw it." 
 
 The words came from Valentine's lips with a pressure, a hurry 
 almost of anxiety. He seemed curiously eager about the history of 
 this chimera. But Julian, eager too, and engrossed in thoughts 
 that moved as yet in a maze full of vapours and of mists, did not find 
 time to notice it. 
 
 "I noticed it just after, or when, she was begging me to go 
 home." 
 
 "Like a good boy," Valentine hastily interposed. " Because her 
 jealousy prompted her to hate the thought of your having any 
 pleasure in which she did not share. Oh, you noticed the flame 
 then. Did it, too, tell you to go home ? " 
 
 He spoke rather harshly and flippantly, and apparently put the 
 question without desire of an answer, and rather with the intention 
 of ridicule than for any other reason. But Julian took, it seriously 
 and replied to it. 
 
 " Somehow I felt as if, perhaps, it did wish to speak some 
 message to me, and that the message came, or might come, through 
 her." 
 
 He spoke slowly, for indeed it was this action of words that was 
 beginning to make clear to himself his own impression, so vngue 
 and so unpresentable before. As he thus traced it out. like a, man 
 following the blurred letters of an old inscription with the point of
 
 204 FLAMES 
 
 his stick, and gradually coming at their meaning, his excitement 
 grew. He said, speaking with a rising emphasis of conviction : 
 
 " I'm not a mere fool. There is there is something in all this ; 
 I feel it ; I cannot be simply imagining. There is something. But 
 I'm like a man in the dark. I can't see what it is ; I can't tell. 
 But you, Valentine, you, with your nature, so much better than I 
 am, with so much deeper an insight, how is it you don't see this 
 
 flame ? Unless " And here Julian struck his hand violently on 
 
 the table. " Unless it comes, as it seemed to come that night in the 
 darkness, from you. If it's part of yourself but then " and his 
 manner clouded again " how can that be ? " 
 
 " How indeed ? " said Valentine, who had been watching him all 
 through this outburst with a scrutiny that seemed almost uneasy, so 
 narrow and so determined was it. 
 
 "Julian, listen to me; you trust me, don't you, and think my 
 opinion worth something ? " 
 
 "Worth everything." 
 
 " Well, I believe you're getting into an unnatural if you weren't 
 a man I should say a hysterical habit of mind. If you can't throw 
 it off by yourself, I must help you to do so." 
 
 " Perhaps you're right. But how will you help me ? : ' 
 
 Valentine seemed to think and consider for a moment. Then he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " I'll tell you. By making you join with me in putting this life, 
 this old life new enough to both of us through its paces. Why 
 should each of us do it alone ? We are friends. We can trust one 
 another. You know me through and through. You know the 
 chilliness I'll call it of my nature, my natural bookishness, my bias 
 towards contemning people too readily, and avoiding what all men 
 ought to know. And I know you. Without you I believe I should 
 never go any distance. Without me you might go too far. Together 
 \ve will strike the happy medium. For us life shall go through lla his 
 paces, but he shall never lame us with a kick, like a vicious horse, or 
 give us a furtive bite when we're not looking. Men carry such bites 
 and kicks, the wounds from them, to their graves. We'll be more 
 careful. But we'll see the great play in all all its acts. And, 
 when we've seen it, we'll be as we were, only we'll be no longer 
 blind. And we'll never forget our grand power of rejecting and 
 refusing." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Julian. " Perhaps I haven't that power." 
 
 " But I have." 
 
 " Yes, you have." 
 
 "And I'll share my power with you. We are friends and com- 
 rades. We ought to share everything." 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Julian, carried away. " Yes, by Jove, yes ! "
 
 THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES. 205 
 
 "And as to this flame 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 "We'll soon know if it's a vision or a reality. But it's a vision. 
 You saw it in a woman's eyes." 
 
 " I'll swear I did." 
 
 " Then that proves it's a fraud. The flame in a woman's eyes 
 never burnt true yet, never, Julian, since the clays of Delilah."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ALTHOUGH Cuckoo knew well that Julian carried out his intention 
 of going home after he left her in Piccadilly, the fact of his being 
 there, of his making one of that crowd, that slowly moving crowd, 
 troubled her. Valentine and Julian had argued the question of her 
 real feeling about the matter. Cuckoo did not argue it. She never 
 deliberately thought to herself, " I feel this or that. Why do I feel 
 it?" She knew as much about astronomy as introspection, and that 
 was simply nothing at all, Instead of diving into the depths of her 
 mind and laboriously tracing every labelled and tabulated subtlety to 
 its source, she sat in the squalid Marylebone Eoad sitting-room, with 
 the folding doors open into the bedroom to temper the heat of 
 summer with draughts from the frigid zone of the back area, and 
 babbled her sensations to Jessie, who wriggled in response to every 
 passing shadow that stole across the heart of her mistress. 
 
 Jessie had learned much about Julian in these latter days. Into 
 her pricked and pointed ear, leaf shaped and the hue of india-rubber, 
 had been whispered a strange tale of the dawning of love in a 
 battered heart, of the blossoming of respect in a warped mind. She 
 had heard of the meeting in Piccadilly, of the meal at the Monico 
 of the farewell on the kerbstone. And she alone knew or ought to 
 have known the mingling of intense jealousy and of a grander 
 feeling that burnt in Cuckoo's breast whenever she thought of 
 Julian's life, the greater part of it that lay beyond her knowledge, 
 her sight or keeping. 
 
 For the lady of the feathers, in most things a strange mixture, 
 had never driven two more contrasted passions in double harness 
 than those which she drove around the circle of which Julian was 
 the core, the centre. One was a passion of jealousy, the other a 
 curious passion of protection. Each backed up the other, urged it 
 to its work. It would have been a hard task indeed to tell at first 
 which was the greater of the two. Cuckoo neither knew nor cared. 
 She did not even differentiate the two passions or say to herself that 
 there were two, That was not her way. She felt quickly and
 
 JULIAN FEARS THE FLAME 207 
 
 strongly, and she acted on her feelings with the peculiar and almost 
 wild promptitude that such a life as hers seems to breed in woman's 
 nature. It is the French lady of the feathers who scatters vitriol in 
 the streets of Paris, the Italian or Spanish lady of the feathers who 
 snatches the dagger from her hair to stab an enemy. The wind of 
 Cuckoo's feelings blew her about like a dancing mote, and the 
 feelings awakened by Julian were the strongest her nature was 
 capable of. 
 
 Only Jessie knew that at present, unless indeed Valentine had 
 divined it, as seemed possible from his words to Julian. 
 
 And these twin passions were fed full by the peculiar circum- 
 stances of Cuckoo's relation to Julian, and by the depth of her 
 knowledge concerning a certain side of life. 
 
 She went home that night of their meeting very late, and in the 
 weariness of the morning succeeding it, and of many following 
 mornings, she began to brood over the change in Julian that she had 
 intuitively divined. Her street woman's instinct could not be at 
 fault with a boy. For Julian was little more than a boy. She 
 knew that when she first met him, when they made toast together 
 on the foggy afternoon that she could never forget, Julian was 
 unshadowed by the darkness that envelops the steps of so much 
 human nature. Lively, bright, full of youth, strength, energy as he 
 was, Cuckoo knew that then he had been free from the bondage of 
 sense which demands and obtains the sacrifice of so many lives like 
 hers. And she knew that now he was not free from that bondage, 
 and that she, by an irony of fate, had, with her own hands, 
 fastened the first fetter upon him. 
 Valentine had plotted that. 
 
 Cuckoo's belief said so ; but surely her curious instinct against 
 Valentine must have tricked her here ! 
 
 It was this knowledge of her unwilling action against Julian's 
 peace that first woke in her the strong protective feeling towards 
 him, a feeling almost akin to the maternal instinct. It was her 
 strange love for him that prompted the fiery antagonism against his 
 relations with others that could only be called jealousy. And though 
 one of her passions was noble, the other pitiable, they could but work 
 together for the same end, aim at a similar salvation. 
 
 Yet how could any salvation for a man come out of that dreary 
 house in the Marylebone Road, from that piteous rouged agent of the 
 devil ? 
 
 Cuckoo never stopped to ask such a question as that. She was a 
 girl, and she began to understand love. She had no time to stop. 
 And each passing clay soon began to give fresh vitality to the vision 
 of Julian's need. 
 
 Between him and her there had sprung up on the ruins of one
 
 2 o8 FLAMES 
 
 night's folly a tower of comradeship. Its foundations were not of 
 sand. Even Cuckoo, despite her ceaseless jealousy, felt that. But, 
 after all, she had only come into his life as a desolate waif drifts into 
 a settled community. She was neither of his class, his understand- 
 ing, or his education. She was in the gutter ; in the gutter to an 
 extent that no man, as women feel at present, can ever be. And 
 though through her inspiration he had not to come into the glitter 
 to find her and to be with her, yet she sometimes writhed with the 
 thought that he was so far above her. Nevertheless, her position 
 never once tempted her, in the struggle that the future quickly 
 brought with it, to shrink from effort, to fail in fight, to despair in 
 endeavour for him. 
 
 There are flames that burn the dross from humanity and reveal 
 
 the gold. There are flames in the eyes and in the hearts of women. 
 ***** 
 
 Julian's visits to Cuckoo were irregular but fairly frequent. He 
 always came in the afternoon, an hour or two before the psychological 
 moment of her start out for the evening's duty. Sometimes he 
 would take her out to tea at a small Italian restaurant near Baker 
 Street Station. More often they would make tea together in the 
 little sitting-room, with the ecstatic assistance of Jessie. And Rip, 
 Valentine's dog, generally made one of the party. He and Jessie got 
 on excellently together, and devoutly shared the scraps that fell from 
 ihe Marylebone Road table. The first time that Julian brought Rip 
 to number 400 Cuckoo fell in love with him. 
 
 ' Why, you never said you had a dog," she exclaimed. 
 ' Rip's not mine," Julian answered. 
 
 ' Isn't he ? Whose is he ? " 
 ' Valentine's." 
 
 ' Then why d'you have him with you ? " asked Cuckoo, suddenly 
 and rather roughly pushing away Rip, who was swirling in her lap 
 like a whirlpool. 
 
 " Oh, he's taken a stupid dislike to Valentine," Julian answered 
 thoughtlessly. " He won't stay with him." 
 
 In a moment Cuckoo had caught the little dog back. 
 
 " That's funny," she said. 
 
 " Yes, isn't it ? " said Julian. 
 
 Then, seeing her thoughtful gaze, and the odd way in which she 
 suddenly caressed the dog, he was angry with himself for having told 
 her anything about the matter. 
 
 " Rip's a little fool," he said. " Perhaps Jessie will take a dislike 
 to you some day, Cuckoo. 
 
 "Not she, never!" said Cuckoo, with conviction. And, after 
 that, she could never spoil Rip enough. 
 
 These visits and teas ought to have been pleasant functions, bright
 
 aog 
 
 oases in the desert of Cuckoo's life, but a cloud fell over them at the 
 beginning and deepened as the clays went by. For Cuckoo, with her 
 sharpness of the yamiti and her quick instinct of the London streets, 
 was perpetually watching for and noting the signs in Julian's face, 
 manner, or language, that fed those two passions of jealousy and of 
 protection within her. And, at first, she allowed Julian to see what 
 she was doing. 
 
 One day, as they sat at the table in the middle of the room, Julian 
 said to her : 
 
 " I say, Cuckoo, why d'you look at me like that ? " 
 
 " Like what ? " 
 
 " Why d'you stare at me ? Anything wrong ? " 
 
 " I wasn't staring at you," she asserted. " The sun gets in my eyes 
 if I look the other way." 
 
 " I'll draw the blind down," he said. 
 
 He got up from the table and shut the afternoon sun out. The 
 tea-tray, the photographs, the little dogs, they two, were plunged in 
 a greenish twilight manufactured by the sun with the assistance of 
 the Venetian blind. 
 
 " There," Julian said, sitting down again, " now we shall all look 
 ghostly." 
 
 " But if I do take a fancy to look at you, why shouldn't I then ? " 
 Cuckoo asked. 
 
 " I don't mind,'' he laughed. " But you didn't seem pleased with 
 me, I thought." 
 
 " Hot ! "~ 
 
 " Oh ! you were pleased then ? " 
 
 " I don't say as I was, or wasn't." 
 
 " You're rather like the Sphinx." 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " Enigmatic." 
 
 She didn't understand, and looked rather cross. 
 
 " I told you I wasn't looking at you," she exclaimed pettishly. 
 
 " Then you told a lie," Julian said, with supreme gravity. "Think 
 of that, Cuckoo." 
 
 " And what would you ever tell me but lies if I was to ask you 
 things ? " she rejoined quickly. 
 
 Julian began to see that there was something lurking in the 
 background behind her show of temper. He wondered what on 
 earth it was. 
 
 " Why should I tell you lies ? " he said. 
 
 "Oh! to kid me. Men like that. You're just like the rest, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 She seemed vexed at his assent, and went on : 
 
 o
 
 2IO FLAMES 
 
 " Now aren't you, though ? " 
 
 " I say, yes." 
 
 " Well, you usen't to be," she exclaimed, with actual bitterness of 
 accent and of look. " That's just why I was lookin' at you for I 
 was lookin' makin' out the difference." 
 
 " I'm just the same as I was," Julian said, and he spoke with 
 quite sincere conviction. 
 
 " No, you ain't." 
 
 Having uttered this very direct contradiction, Cuckoo proceeded 
 with great energy : 
 
 " You've been lettin' him do it. I know you have." 
 
 Julian was completely puzzled. 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked, with a real desire for 
 information. 
 
 " You know well enough. He's leadin' you wrong." 
 
 Julian reddened, with a sudden understanding. Her words 
 touched him in his sorest place. In the first place, no man likes to 
 think he has been doing a thing because he has been led by some 
 one else. In the second, Julian had grown ardently to dislike 
 Cuckoo's unreasoning antipathy to Valentine. Originally, and for 
 some time, he had believed that she would get over it. Finding 
 later that there was no chance of that, he had once told her that he 
 could not hear Valentine abused. Since that day she had been 
 careful not to mention his name. But now her bitterness against 
 him peeped out once more, and seemed even to have been gathering 
 force during the interval. 
 
 " Cuckoo, you're talking great nonsense," he said, forcing himself 
 to speak quietly. 
 
 But she was in one of her most mulish moods, and was not to be 
 turned from the subject or silenced. 
 
 " No, I ain't," she said. " Where was you last week ? You didn't 
 come in once." 
 
 " I was in Paris." 
 
 Cuckoo's brow clouded still more. Her knowledge of Paris was 
 not intimate, and, indeed, was confined to stories dropped from the 
 lips of men who had been there for short periods, and for purposes 
 the reverse of geographical or artistic. Julian's mention of the 
 French capital drove a sword into her. 
 
 " With him ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, with Valentine." 
 
 " Oh, what did you do there ? " 
 
 She spoke with angry insistence, and Julian could not help think- 
 ing of Valentine's remark, " That girl loves you." It seemed indeed 
 that Cuckoo must have some deep and wholly personal reason 
 prompting her to this strange demonstration of vexation.
 
 211 
 
 " I can't tell you everything," Julian answered. 
 
 " Oh, you can't kid me over that. I know well enough what 
 men go to Paris for ! " she rejoined, with almost hysterical bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 Julian was silent. It was curious, but this girl stirred his con- 
 science from its sleep, as once Valentine alone could stir it. But by 
 how different a method ! The stillness and calm of one who was 
 sinless were replaced by the vehemence and the passion of one who 
 was steeped in sin. And yet the two opposites had, to some extent, 
 the same effect. Julian did not yet realise this thoroughly, and did 
 not analyse it at all. Had any one hinted to him that the waning 
 influence of Valentine for good could ever be balanced by the waxing 
 influence of the lady of the feathers, he would have laughed at the 
 crazy notion. And in the first place he would have denied that 
 Valentine's spell upon him had changed in nature ; for Valentine 
 was still as a god to him. And Cuckoo could never be a goddess, 
 either to him or to any one else. But, though he would scarcely 
 acknowledge it even to himself, he did not care for Cuckoo to know 
 fully the changing way of his life. Perhaps it was the curiously 
 strong line she had from the first taken with regard to his actions 
 that made him careful with her. Perhaps it was the incident of the 
 vision of the flame but no ; remembrance of that had been well- 
 nigh lulled to sleep by the lullabies of Valentine, by his disregard of 
 it, his certainty that it was an hallucination, a mirage. Whatever 
 the cause might be, Julian felt somewhat like a naughty boy in the 
 angry presence of Cuckoo. As he looked at her the greenish twilight 
 painted a chill and menacing gleam in her eyes, and made her twist- 
 ing lips venomous and acrid to his glance. Her rouge vanished in 
 the twilight, or seemed only as a dull, darkish cloud upon her thin 
 and worn cheeks. She sat at the table almost like a scarecrow, 
 giving the tables of some strange law to a trembling and an unwilling 
 votary. 
 
 " I know ! " she reiterated. 
 
 Julian said nothing. He did not choose to deny what was in fact 
 the truth, that his stay in Paris had not been free from fault, and 
 yet he did not feel inclined to do what most men in his situation 
 must by all means have done, challenge Cuckoo's right to sit in 
 judgment, or even for a moment to criticise any action of his. There 
 was something about her, a frankness, perhaps, which made it 
 impossible to put her out of court by any allusion to her own life. 
 And, indeed, that must have been cowardice and an impossibility. 
 Besides, she put herself and her own deeds calmly away as unworthy 
 and impossible of discussion, as things sunk down beneath the wave 
 of notice or comment, remote from criticism or condemnation, because 
 the life of their hopelessness had been so long and sunless.
 
 2U FLAMES 
 
 Cuckoo, with her eyes on Julian, was silent too now. She 
 understood that what her suspicion had affirmed, without actually 
 knowing, was true, and her stormy heart was swept by a whirlwind 
 of jealousy, and of womanish pity for the man she was jealous of. 
 In that moment she felt a sickness of life more sharp than she had 
 ever felt before, and a dull longing to be a different woman, a 
 woman of Julian's class, and clever, that she might be able to do 
 something to keep him from sinking to the level of the men she 
 hated. 
 
 How could she, in her nakedness of permanent degradation, give 
 a helping hand to anybody ? That was a clear rendering of the 
 vague thought, vague as this twilight in which they sat, that ran 
 through her mind. Suddenly she turned to the tray and poured 
 herself out a cup of tea. The tea had been standing while they 
 talked, and was black and strong. She drank it eagerly, and a wave 
 of nervous energy rushed over her, surging up to her brain like 
 light and electricity. It gave to her a sort of reckless valour to say 
 just the thing she felt. She turned towards Julian with a manner 
 that was half shrew, half wild-cat street girls cannot always 
 compass the impressive, though they may feel the great eternities 
 nestling round their hearts and cried out : 
 
 " I just hate you ! " 
 
 All her jealousy rang in that cry, smothering the whisper of the 
 maternal passion that went ever with it. Julian could no longer 
 doubt the truth of Valentine's words. 
 
 " Cuckoo, don't be silly," he said hastily, and awkwardly 
 enough. 
 
 " Silly ! " she burst out. What do I care for that ? I ain't silly 
 either, and I ain't blind like you are. I can see where you're 
 goin'." 
 
 " I shall go away from here," Julian said, trying to laugh, " if 
 you talk in this ridiculous way." 
 
 She sprang up and ran passionately in front of the door, as if she 
 thought he was really going to escape. 
 
 " No, you don't," she said, and her accent seemed to draw near to 
 that of Whitechapel as her voice rose higher. " Not till I've said 
 what I mean." 
 
 " Hush, Cuckoo ! We shall have Mrs. Brigg up thinking I'm 
 murdering you." 
 
 "Let her come! And you are, that's what you are, murderin' 
 me and worse, seein' you go where you're goin'. He's takin' you. 
 It's all him. Yes, it is ! He'll make you as he is." 
 
 " Cuckoo, I won't have it." 
 
 Julian spoke sternly and got up. The little dogs, alarmed by tho 
 tumult, had begun to whine uneasily, and at his movement Jessie
 
 JULIAN FEARS THE FLA. ME 213 
 
 barked in a thin voice. Julian went to Cuckoo, took her wrists iri 
 his two hands and drew her away from the door ; but she tore 
 herself from his grasp with fury, for the touch of his hands gave a 
 clearer vision to her jealousy of his secret deeds, and made her 
 understand better the depth of her present feeling. 
 
 " You shall have it," she cried. " You shall. I know men. I 
 know what you'll be. I know what women'll make of you." 
 
 " A man makes himself," Julian interrupted. 
 
 " Rot ! That's all you know about it. I've seen them begin ?o 
 nice and go right down, like a stone in a well. And they never 
 come up again. Not they. No more'll you. D'you hear that I " 
 
 " I shall hear you better if you speak lower." 
 
 Cuckoo suddenly changed from a sort of frenzy to a violent 
 calm. 
 
 " You're different already," she said. " Can't I see it 1 " 
 
 As if to emphasise her remark she approached her face quite close 
 to his in the twilight. While they had been arguing a cloud had 
 passed over the sun and dimness increased in the little room. Both 
 of them were still standing up, and now Cuckoo peered into Julian's 
 eyes with almost hungiy scrutiny. Her lips were still trembling 
 with excitement and her mouth was contorted into a sideways grin, 
 expressive of contemptuous knowledge of the descent of Julian's 
 nature. She was a mere mask of passion, no doubt a ridiculous object 
 enough, touzled, dishevelled, and shaken with temper, as she leaned 
 forward to get a better view of him. And Julian was both vexed 
 and disgusted by her outbreak, and sick of a scene which, like all men, 
 he ardently hated and would have given much to avoid. He faced 
 her coldly, endeavouring to calm her by banishing every trace of 
 excitement from his expression. 
 
 And then, in the twilight of the dingy room and in the twilight of 
 her eyes, he saw the flame once more. A thin glint of sunshine 
 found its way in from the street, and threw a shadow near them. 
 Cuckoo's eyes emitted a greenish ray like a cat's, and in this ray 
 the flame swam and flickered, cold and pale, and, Julian fancied, 
 menacing. 
 
 Perhaps, because he was already irritated and slightly strung up 
 by Cuckoo's attack, he felt a sudden anger against the flame, almost 
 as he might have felt a rage against a person. As he stared upon it, 
 he could almost believe that it, too, had eyes, scrutinising, upbraiding, 
 condemning him, and that in the thin riband and shade of its fire 
 there dwelt a heart to hate him for the dear sin to which, at last, he 
 began to give himself. For the moment Cuckoo and the flame were 
 as one, and for the moment he feared and hated them both. 
 
 Abruptly he held up his hand to stop the further words that were 
 fluttering on her thin and painted lips.
 
 2i4 FLAMES 
 
 "Hush ! " he said, in a little hiss of protest against sound. 
 
 For again, fighting with the anger, there was awe in his heart. 
 
 There was something unusual in his expression which held her 
 silent, a furtive horror and expectation which she did not understand. 
 And while she waited, Julian turned suddenly, and left the room and 
 the house.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM 
 
 JULIAN did not come again to the house in the Marylebone Road for 
 at least a fortnight, and during that time the lady of the feathers 
 was left alone with her life and with her sad thoughts. The summer 
 days went heavily by, and the sultry summer nights. No rain fell, 
 and London was veiled in dust. The pavements were so hot that 
 they burned the feet that trod them. Sometimes they seemed to 
 burn Cuckoo's very soul, and to sear her heart as she stood upon 
 them for hours in the night, while the crowds of Piccadilly flitted by 
 like shadows in an evil dream. She stared mechanically at the faces 
 of those passing as she strolled with a lagging footstep along the 
 line of houses. She turned to meet the eyes of the pale-faced 
 loungers in the lighted entrance of the St. James's Restaurant 
 " Jimmy's " as she called it. But her mind was preoccupied. A 
 problem had fastened upon it with the tenacity of some vampire or 
 strange clinging creature of the night. Cuckoo was wrestling with 
 an angel, or was it a devil? And often, when she stopped on the 
 pavement and exchanged a word or two with some casual stranger, 
 she scarcely knew what she said, or to what kind of man she was 
 speaking. She was possessed by one thought, the thought of Julian 
 and of his danger. Valentine, in her thoughts, was strangely a pale 
 shadow, incredibly evil, incredibly persistent, luring Julian down- 
 wards, beckoning him with the thin hand of a saint to depths 
 unpierced by the gaze of even the most sinful. And that hand of 
 the saint was only part of the appalling deception of his beautiful 
 and tragically lying body, a crystal temple in which a demon dwelt 
 secretly, peering from its concealment through the shadowy blue 
 windows, in which Julian saw truth and honour, but in which 
 Cuckoo read things to terrify and to dismay. 
 
 For she was not wholly unaware of the mystery of Valentine, of 
 the sharp contrast between, his appearance and the vision of his 
 nature as it came to her. She understood that there was something 
 in the fine beauty of his face and figure to account for Julian's 
 blindness and refusal to be warned against him. Cuckoo's intuition,
 
 216 FLAMES 
 
 the intuition of an unlearned and instinctive creature trained by the 
 hardest circumstances to rely on what she called her wits, laid the 
 crystal temple in ruins, and drove the demon from its lurking place 
 naked and shrieking into the open. But, after all, was not she 
 rather deceived than Julian ? Julian, from the first moment of 
 meeting Valentine, looked upon him as saint. Cuckoo, from the 
 first moment of meeting, looked upon him as devil. Each put him 
 aside from the general run of humanity, the one in a heaven of the 
 imagination, the other in a hell. Neither would allow him to be 
 midway between the two, containing possibilities of both ; ordinary, 
 natural man. Julian angrily scouted the notion of Valentine's 
 being like other men. Cuckoo felt instinctively that he was not. 
 And so they glorified and cursed him. 
 
 Cuckoo had at first cursed him plainly in the market-place, and 
 upon the house-top. But that was before she had learnt wisdom. 
 Slowly she learnt it on these hot days and nights, when the London 
 dust filtered over the paint upon her cheeks and lips, clung round 
 the shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes, and slept in the artificial 
 primrose of her elaborate cloud of hair. Slowly she learnt it in 
 many vague and struggling mental arguments, arguments in which 
 logic was a dwarf and passion a giant, in which instinct strangled 
 reason, and love wandered as a shame-faced fairy with tear-dimmed 
 eyes. 
 
 Julian's prolonged absence and silence first taught the lady of the 
 feathers the slow necessity of wisdom, otherwise, perhaps, her vehement 
 ignorance could never have absorbed the precious thing. Women of 
 her training and vile experience, nerve-ridden and clothed in hysteria 
 as in a garment, often think to gain what they want by the mere 
 shrillness of outcry, the mere grabbing of ostentatious, eager hands 
 and frenzy of body. Their lives lead them through a wonder of 
 knowledge and of danger to the demeanour of babyhood, and they 
 cry for every rattle, much more for every moon. So Cuckoo had 
 thrown her feelings down before Julian. She had dashed her hatred 
 of Valentine in his face ; she had cried her fears of his downfall to 
 that which she consorted with eternally and loathed when she had 
 still the energy to loathe it, which was not always in his ears with 
 the ardent shrillness of a boatswain's whistle. She had in fact done 
 all that her instinct prompted her to do, and the result was the exit 
 of Julian from her life. This set her, always in her sharp and yet 
 childish way, sometimes oddly clear-sighted, often muddled and dis- 
 tressed, to turn upon instinct with a contempt not known before, to 
 discard it with the fury still of a child. And instinct thus forsaken 
 by an essentially instinctive creature opened the gates of distress 
 and of confusion. 
 
 By day Cuckoo sat in her stuffy little parlour brooding wearily.
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM 217 
 
 She waited in day after day, always hoping that Julian would return, 
 full of resolutions, prompted by fear, to be gentle, even lively, to him 
 when he did come, full of excited intention which could not be ful- 
 filled ; for he did not come. And by night, while she tramped the 
 streets, still Cuckoo's anxious mind revolved the question of her 
 behaviour in the future. For she would not, passionately would 
 not, allow herself to contemplate the possibility that Julian's anger 
 against her would keep him for ever beyond reach either of her fury 
 or of her tenderness. She insisted on contemplating his ultimate 
 reappearance, and her wits were at work to devise means to win him 
 from Valentine's influence without stirring his horror at any thought 
 of disloyalty to his friend. Cuckoo in fact wanted to be subtle, 
 intended to be subtle, and sought intensely the right way of subtlety. 
 She sought it as she walked, as she hovered at street corners in the 
 night, while the hours ran by, sometimes till the streets were nearly 
 deserted, sometimes even till the dawn sang in the sky to the wail of 
 the hungry woman beneath it. She sought it even in the company 
 of those strangers who stepped for a night into her life as into a 
 public room, and stepped from it on the morrow with a careless and 
 everlasting adieu, half-drowned in the chink of money. 
 
 And sometimes she thought with a sick dreariness that she would 
 never find it, and sometimes courage failed her, and despite her 
 passionate resolution she did for a moment say to herself, " If he 
 should never come again." There were moments, too, when every 
 other feeling was drowned by sheer jealousy of Julian, when the 
 tiger cat woke in this street girl who had always had to fight, when 
 her thin frame shivered with the shaking violence of the soul it 
 held. Then she clenched her hands, and longed to plant her nails 
 in the faces of those other women, divined though never seen, those 
 Frenchwomen who had sung him, like sirens, to Paris, away from 
 the sea of her greedy love. Her similes were commonplace. In her 
 heart she called such sirens hussies. Had she met them the battle 
 of words would have been strong and singularly unclean. That she 
 herself was a hussy to other men, not to Julian, did not trouble her. 
 She did not realise it. Human nature has always one blind eye 
 even when the other does not squint. This passion of jealousy 
 circling round an absent man seized her at the strangest, the most 
 inopportune, moments. Sometimes it came upon her in the street, 
 and the meditation of it was so vital and complete that Cuckoo 
 could not go on walking, lest she should, by movement, miss the 
 keenest edge of the agony. Then she would stop wherever she was, 
 lean against the down-drawn shutter of a shop, or the corner of a 
 public house, among the gaping loungers, let her powdered chin drop 
 upon her breast, and sink into a tit of desperate detective duty, 
 during which she followed Julian like a shadow through imagined
 
 2 i8 FLAMES 
 
 wanderings, and watched him committing all those imagined actions 
 that could cause her to feel the wildest and most inhuman 
 despair. 
 
 One night, when she was thus sunk and swallowed up in the maw 
 of miserable inward contemplation, a young man who was walking 
 by observed her. He was very young and eager, fresh from Cam- 
 bridge, ardent after the mysteries and the subtleties of life, as is the 
 fashion of clever modern youth. The sight of this painted girl 
 leaning, motionless as some doll or puppet, against the iron shutters 
 of the vacant house, her head drooped, and her hands, ar, if the 
 strings to manipulate her had fallen loose from the grasp that guided 
 them, caught and eventually fascinated him. It was a late hour of 
 night. He passed on and returned, shooting each time a devouring, 
 analytical glance upon Cuckoo. Again he came back, walking a 
 little nearer to the houses. His heart beat quicker as he approached 
 the puppet. Its complete immobility was almost appalling, and each 
 time he came within view of it he examined it violently to see if a 
 limb was displaced. No, one might almost suppose that it was the 
 body of some one struck dead so suddenly against the shop that 
 she had not had time to fall, and so remained leaning thus. 
 With shorter and shorter revolutions, like a dog working itself up to 
 approach some motionless but strange object, the youth went by 
 Cuckoo, hesitating more and more each time he came in front of her 
 with strange feelings of one being vaguely criminal. He longed to 
 touch the puppet, to see if any quiver would convulse its limbs, any 
 light nicker into its eyes. And he was so fascinated and interested 
 that at last he did furtively stop precisely in front of it. For a 
 second both of them were motionless, he from contemplation of the 
 outward, she of the inward. Then Cuckoo's thoughtful jealousy 
 came to a ghastly crisis. Her imagination had shown her frightful 
 things and herself an utterly helpless and compelled spectator. The 
 puppet opened its red lips to utter a sob, lifted up its white and heavy 
 eyelids to let loose tears upon its unnaturally bright cheeks, stirred 
 its hanging hands to clasp them in a crude gesture of dull fury. The 
 youth started as at a corpse showing suddenly the pangs of life. His 
 movement shot Cuckoo like a bullet into her real world. Through 
 her tears she saw a man regarding her. In a flash old habit brought 
 to her a smile, a turned head of coquetry, an entreating hand, a 
 hackneyed phrase that reiteration rendered parrot-like in intonation. 
 The youth shrank back and fled away in the darkness. Long after- 
 wards that incident haunted him as an epitome of all the horrors of 
 cruel London. 
 
 And Cuckoo, thus roused and deserted, put aside for the moment 
 her nightmare and started once more upon her promenade of the 
 night,
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM 219 
 
 At last she began to fear that Julian would never come back, and, 
 by a sudden impulse, she wrote to him, a short, very ill-spelt letter 
 hoping he would come to tea with her on a certain afternoon. On 
 the day mentioned she waited in an agony of expectation. She had 
 put on his black dress, removed all traces of paint and powder from 
 her face, remembering his former request and her experiment, 
 tricked Jessie out in a bright yellow satin ribbon twisted into a bow 
 almost larger than herself, and bought flowers large ones, sun- 
 flowers -to give to her dingy room an air of refinement and of gaiety. 
 Amid all this brilliancy of yellow satin and yellow flowers she waited 
 uneasily in her simple black gown. The day was dull, not wet, but 
 brooding and severe, iron-grey, like a hard-featured Puritan, and 
 still with the angry peace of coming thunder. The window was open to 
 let in air, but no air seemed to enter, only the weariful and incessant 
 street noises. Jessie wriggled about, biting sideways with animation 
 to get at her yellow adornment, and pattering round the furniture 
 seeking stray crumbs, which sometimes eluded her for a while and, 
 lying in hidden nooks and corners, unexpectedly rewarded her desul- 
 tory and impromptu search. Cuckoo leaned her arms across the 
 table, glanced at the tea-things for two, and listened. A cab stopped 
 presently. She twisted in her chair to face the window. It had 
 drawn up next door, and she subsided again into her fever of atten- 
 tion. Jessie found a crumb and swallowed it with as much action 
 and large air of tasting it as if it had been a city dinner. The 
 hands of the clock drew to the hour named in Cuckoo's note, touched 
 it, passed it. A sickness of despair began to creep upon her like a 
 thousand little biting insects. She shuffled in her seat, glanced this 
 way and that, pressed her lips together and, taking her arms from 
 the table, clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Then she sat straight 
 up and counted the tickings of the clock, the spots on the tablecloth, 
 the gold stars upon the wall-paper of the room. She counted and 
 counted until her head began to swim. And all the time she waited, 
 the lady of the feathers was learning wisdom. The lesson was 
 harsh, as the lessons of time usually are, the lesson was bitter as 
 Marah waters. And she thought the lesson was going to be a cross 
 too heavy for her narrow shoulders to bear when the iron gate of the 
 garden sang its invariable little note of protest on being opened. 
 Cuckoo's head turned slowly to one side. Her haggard eyes swept 
 the view of the path. Julian was walking up it. 
 
 She met him very quietly, almost seriously, and he shook hands 
 with her as if they had been together quite recently and parted the 
 best of friends. Only, as he held her hand, she noticed that he cast 
 a hasty, and, as she fancied, a fearful glance into her eyes. Then he 
 seemed reassured and they sat down to tea. Cuckoo supposed that 
 he had for the moment dreaded what she called another row, and was
 
 220 FLAMES 
 
 satisfied by her expression of good temper. They drank their tea, 
 and after a short interval of constraint began chattering together 
 very much as usual. At first Cuckoo had hardly dared to look much 
 at Julian lest he should see the joy she felt at his coming, but when 
 she was pouring out his second cup she let her eyes rest fully on his 
 face, and only then did she realise that a shadow lay upon it, a 
 shadow from which it had been free before. 
 
 With a trembling hand she filled the cup and stared upon the 
 shadow. She knew its brethren so well. In dead days she herself 
 had helped to manufacture such shadows upon the faces of men. 
 She had seen them come, thin, faint, delicate, impalpable as a veil of 
 mist before morning. Only morning light never fellowed them. 
 And she had seen them stay and grow and deepen and darken. 
 Shadow over the eyes of the man, shadow round his lips, shadow 
 like a cloud upon the forehead, shadow over the picture painted by 
 the soul, working through the features, that we call expression. 
 Many times had she seen the journey taken by a man's face to that 
 haunted bourne, arrived at which it is scarcely any more a man's 
 face but only a mask expressive of one, or of many, sins. Had 
 Julian then definitely set foot upon that journey ? As yet the shadow 
 that lay over him was no more than the lightest film, suggestive 
 of a slightly unnatural and forbidding fatigue. Yet Cuckoo shrank 
 from it as from a ghcst. 
 
 " Why, Cuckoo, how your hand is trembling ! " Julian said. 
 
 " Oh I was out late last night," she answered, putting the teapot 
 hastily down. And they talked on, pretending there were only two 
 of them and no shadowy third. 
 
 Julian, having returned at last to the Marylebone Head, fell into 
 his old habit of coming there often. And each time that he came 
 the lady of the feathers counted a fresh step on his hideous journey 
 towards the haunted bourne. Yet she never spoke of the dreary 
 addition sum she was doing. She never reproached Julian, or wept 
 or let him see that her heart was growing cold as a pilgrim who 
 kneels, bare, in long prayers upon the steps of a shrine. For she 
 had learnt wisdom, and hugged it in her arms. Valentine was 
 scarcely ever mentioned between them, but once, and evidently by 
 accident, Julian allowed an expression to escape him which implied 
 that Valentine now objected to the intimacy with Cuckoo. Imme- 
 diately the words were uttered Julian looked confused, and 
 obviously would have wished to recall them, had it been possible. 
 
 " Oh, I know as he don't like me," Cuckoo said. 
 
 Julian answered nothing. 
 
 "Why d'you come then?" she continued, with a certain despera- 
 tion. " There ain't nothin' here to bring you. I know that well 
 enough."
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM 221 
 
 She cast a comprehensive glance round over the badly furnished 
 room. 
 
 " Nothin' at all," she added with a sigh. 
 
 While she spoke Julian began to wonder too why he came, why 
 he liked to come there. As Cuckoo said, there was nothing at all to 
 bring him so often. He liked her, he was sorry for her, he had 
 even a deep running sympathy for her, but he did not love her. 
 Yet he was fascinated to come to her, and there were sometimes 
 moments when he seemed taken possession of, led by the hand, to 
 that squalid room and that squalid presence in it. Why was that ? 
 What led him ? He could not tell. 
 
 "I like coming here," he said, "and of course it's nothing to 
 Valentine where I go." 
 
 Cuckoo glanced up hastily at the words. A little serpent of 
 enmity surely hissed in them. Julian spoke as if he were a man 
 with some rebel feeling at his heart. But the serpent glided and 
 was gone as he added : 
 
 " I'm always with him when I'm not with you, for I haven't seen 
 the doctor for ages." 
 
 " The doctor ! Who's that then ? " asked Cuckoo. 
 
 " Dr. Levillier. Surely you've heard me talk about him." 
 
 " No, dearie." 
 
 " Oh, he's a nerve doctor and a sort of little saint, lives for hib 
 work, and is a deuced religious chap, never does anything, you 
 know." 
 
 Julian looked at her. 
 
 " Oh," she said. 
 
 "And believes in everything. He's a dear little chap, the 
 kindest heart in the world, good to every one, no matter who it is. 
 He's devoted to Valentine." 
 
 " Eh ? " said Cuckoo, with a long-drawn intonation of astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " I say he's devoted to Valentine," Julian repeated rather 
 irritably. His temper was much less certain and sunny lately than 
 of old. " But I believe he's devoted to every one he can do any good 
 to. We used to see him continually, but he's been abroad for weeks, 
 looking after a bad case, a Eussian Grand Duke in Italy, who would 
 have him and pays him all the fees he'd be getting in London. 
 He'll be coming back directly, I think." 
 
 " Where does he live ? " said Cuckoo, ever so carelessly. 
 
 Julian gave the number in Harley Street rather abstractedly. 
 Their conversation had led him to think of the little doctor. Would 
 he be glad to see him again ? And would Valentine ? He tried to 
 realise, and presently understood, and had a moment of shame at his 
 own feeling. Soon afterwards he went away. That night, before
 
 222 FLAMES 
 
 she went to Piccadilly, Cuckoo walked round to Harley Street. 
 She wandered slowly down the long thoroughfare and presently 
 came to the doctor's house. There was a brass plate upon the door. 
 The light from a gas lamp, just lit, nickered upon it and Cuckoo, 
 stopping, bent downwards and slowly read the printed name, 
 " Dr. Levillier." Did it look a nice name, a kind name ? She con- 
 sidered that question childishly, standing there alone. Then, without 
 making up her mind on the subject, she turned to go. As she did 
 so she saw the tall figure of a man motionless under the gas lamp on 
 the other side of the street. He was evidently regarding her, and 
 Cuckoo felt a sudden thrill of terror as she recognised Valentine. 
 They stood still on the two pavements for a minute, looking across at 
 one another. Cuckoo could only see Valentine's face faintly, but 
 she fancied it was angry and distorted, and her terror grew. She 
 hesitated what to do, when he made what seemed to her a threaten- 
 ing gesture, and walked quickly away down the street.
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS BUCKLES ON 
 HER ARMOUR 
 
 THAT evening Cuckoo remained in a condition of mingled terror arid 
 resolution. There was something about Valentine that filled her 
 not merely with alarm but with a nameless horror, indescribable and 
 inveterate. She felt that he was her deadly enemy and the enemy 
 of Julian. But he had cast such a spell over Julian that the latter 
 was blinded and ready to follow him anywhere, and not merely 
 to follow him, but to defend every step he took. Cuckoo had 
 a sense of entering upon a combat with Valentine. As she 
 stood upon the doorstep in Harley Street and faced him under 
 the gas lamp, were they not as antagonists definitely crossing 
 swords for the first time ? It seemed so to her. And the impres- 
 sion upon her was so strong and so exciting, that for once she broke 
 through her invariable routine. Instead of going to Piccadilly she 
 went home to her lodgings. It was about half-past nine when she 
 arrived and opened the door with her latch-key. Mrs. Brigg 
 happened to be in the passage en route to the kitchen from some busi- 
 ness in the upper regions. She stared upon Cuckoo with amazement. 
 
 " What ever," she began, her voice croaky with interrogation. 
 " Are you ill ? What are you back lor ? " 
 
 " I'm all right," said Cuckoo, crossly. " Leave me alone, do." 
 
 She turned into her sitticg-rooni. Mrs. Brigg followed, open- 
 mouthed. 
 
 " Ain't you a-goin' out agin?" 
 
 " No ; oh do leave offstarin'. What's the matter with you ? " 
 
 Mrs. Brigg heaved a thick sigh and shuflied round upon her heels, 
 which made a noise upon the oilcloth like the boots of the comic 
 man at a music-hall. 
 
 " Well," she said, with a sudden grimness, " I hope it'll be all 
 right about the rent, that's all." 
 
 She vanished, shaking her head, on which a stray curl paper, bereft 
 of its comrades of the morning, sat unique in a thin forest of iron 
 grey wisps.
 
 224 FLAMES 
 
 Cuckoo shut her door and sat down to think. But at first she had 
 to receive the attentions of Jessie, who was even more surprised than 
 Mrs. Brigg at her unexpected return, and who began to bark with 
 shrill joy and run violently round the room with the speed of a rat 
 emancipated from a cage. As she would not consent to repose her- 
 self again, Cuckoo at last put her into the next room on the bed, 
 and shut the door on her. Then she returned, lit all the three gas 
 burners and turned them full on, before she removed her hat, and 
 definitely settled herself in for the evening. She was fearful, and 
 dreaded darkness or even twilight. The pulse of London beat round 
 her while she stretched herself on the hard sofa, let down her touzled 
 yellow hair, and frowned slowly as the unlearned do when they know 
 that they want to meditate. 
 
 Now and then she rose suddenly on her elbow, half turned her 
 head towards the window and listened. She had thought she heard 
 a step on the pavement pause, and the cry of the little iron gate. 
 Then, reassured, she leaned back once more. She had taken off her 
 boots, and her feet, in black stockings, gone a little white at the toes, 
 were tilted up on the shoulder of the sofa. She fixed her eyes 
 mechanically upon them while she began, all confusedly, and with 
 the blurred vagueness of the illiterate, to plan out a campaign. Not 
 that she said that word to herself. She did not know its meaning. 
 All that she knew was that she wanted to put her back against the 
 wall, or get into an angle, like a cornered animal, and use her teeth 
 and claws against Valentine, that menacing figure with an angel's 
 face. And what disgusted, and drove Cuckoo almost mad, as she 
 lay there in the crude gaslight, was the abominable fact that she 
 was desperately afraid of Valentine. There was something about 
 him which filled her with intense horror, but with something worse 
 than horror, intense fear. Why, she had all three gas burners 
 alight because, having met him that night, and seen him watching 
 her, she trembled at the faintest shadow, and must see things plainly, 
 lest their dim outlines should appal her fancy by taking his form. 
 
 Only once had the lady of the feathers known such enfeebling 
 terror as this, on the night when she fled from the hotel in the 
 Euston Road and left Marr dying on the bed between the tall 
 windows. More than once, in her thoughts, had she loosely linked 
 Marr with Valentine, puzzled, scarcely knowing why she did so. 
 And she repeated the mental operation now, more definitely. They 
 had at least one thing in common, this extraordinary power of 
 striking fear into her soul. And Cuckoo was not accustomed to sit 
 with fear. Her life had bred in her a strong, tough-fibred restlessness. 
 She was essentially a careless creature, ready to argue, quarrel, hold 
 her own with anybody, proud, as a rule, of being a match for any 
 man and well able to take care of herself. She had krockpd about,
 
 THE LADY BUCKLES ON HER ARMOUR 225 
 
 and was utterly familiar with many horrors of the streets, and of 
 nameless houses. She had heard many rows at night, had been in 
 brawls, had been waked, in the dense hours, by sudden sharp cries 
 for help, was accustomed to be alone with strangers, men of unknown 
 history, of unknown deeds. And all these circumstances she met 
 with absolute carelessness, with a devil-may-care laugh, or the sigh of 
 one weary but not afraid. She was no more timid than the average 
 English street boy. Only these two men, one dead, one alive, knew 
 how to dress her in terror from head to foot, brain, heart and body. 
 And so she joined them in a ghastly brotherhood. 
 
 But to-night she was making a conscious effort against the domi- 
 nation of Valentine, for the awakening of fear in her was counter- 
 balanced by other feelings prompting her to fight. And once Cuckoo 
 began to fight she felt that she would not lack courage. For she 
 clung to action and hated thought, walking clearly in the one, but 
 through a maze in the other. 
 
 Despite her fear of him something drove her to fight Valentine ; 
 only she did not know how to fight him. It was in a mood of doubt 
 that she had wandered into Harley Street and bent to read the name 
 on the door of Dr. Levillier. Julian's description of the doctor had 
 appealed to her. The mention of his goodness, of his pure life, 
 of his care for others had impressed her, she scarcely knew why, and 
 brought into her mind a desire to see this little man. Yet he was 
 devoted to Valentine. And then Cuckoo, lying back on the sofa, 
 felt heart-sick, wondering at the power of this man whom she hated 
 and feared, wondering how she could ever fight against his influence 
 over Julian, wondering too a little why it was that she knew she 
 must and certainly would fight it. For beyond the motive power of 
 her love and jealousy, beyond the ordinary woman's desire to keep 
 the man she admired from sinking to the level of the men she des- 
 pised, there was another fiery and strong and urging insistent 
 influence working upon her, working within her, crying to her like 
 a voice to buckle on her armour and to do battle with the enemy. 
 This influence came silently from without and spoke to the lady of 
 the feathers when she was alone, and never more clearly and power- 
 fully than to-night. It wrestled with her terror of Valentine and 
 told her to put it away, to come into closer relations with him fear- 
 lessly, not to flee from him, but rather to watch him, dog him, learn 
 what he was and what he was doing or trying to do. Yet fear 
 fought this growing, stirring, strange warm influence that burned 
 like a fire at Cuckoo's heart. She flushed and she paled as she lay 
 there, with down-drawn brows and enlaced hands, her yellow hair 
 falling over the hard, shiny horsehair of the sofa. She longed for 
 some one to come to her who would give her counsel, help, courage, 
 that she might fight for Julian who was too spell-bound to fight for 
 
 p
 
 226 FLAMES 
 
 himself, and who was falling so fast, so terribly fast, into the abyes 
 where men crawl like insects and women are as poisonous weeds in 
 the slime of the pit. 
 
 Oh, for some one ! 
 
 Involuntarily she sat up and extended her thin arms almost as if 
 in a beckoning gesture. 
 
 As she did so the front-door bell rang. 
 
 Cuckoo was startled and felt as if it rang for her. But that was 
 unlikely ; and there were other lodgers of her kind in the house. No 
 doubt it was a visitor for one of them. 
 
 Mrs. Brigg went in weary procession along the passage and opened 
 the door. A few words were indistinctly spoken in a man's voice. 
 Then the street door shut, and almost simultaneously the door of 
 Cuckoo's sitting-room opened very quietly and Valentine entered.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 VALENTINE EXPOUNDS THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 
 TO THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS 
 
 VALENTINE closed the door behind him and stood by it, looking at 
 Cuckoo gravely. She had pushed herself up on the sofa, using her 
 elbows as a lever, and in an awkward attitude, half sitting, half 
 lying down, stared at him with startled eyes. Her unshod feet 
 were drawn in towards her body, and her dyed hair hung in a 
 thick tangle round her face and on her shoulders. She said 
 nothing. 
 
 Valentine put his hat down on the table and began, to take off his 
 gloves. 
 
 " I am glad to find you at home," he said politely. 
 
 Cuckoo shifted a little further back on the sofa. Now that she 
 was actually shut up alone with Valentine, fear returned upon her 
 and banished every other feeling, every desire except the desire to 
 be away from him. She ran her tongue over her lips, which had 
 suddenly become dry. 
 
 " What are you come for ? " she asked, never taking her eyes 
 from his. 
 
 " To see you. I have never yet returned your kind call upon me." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 Cuckoo spoke in the tone of one who had become deaf, and she 
 felt as if the agitation of her mind actually clamoured within her 
 like a crowd of human voices, deadening sounds from without. 
 Valentine repeated his remark, adding : 
 
 " Won't you ask me to sit down ? " 
 
 He put his hand on the back of a chair. 
 
 " May I ? " 
 
 Cuckoo gave her body a jerk, which brought her feet down to the 
 floor, so that she was sitting upright. She pushed out one of her 
 hands as if in protest. 
 
 " You can't sit here," she murmured. 
 
 " I ? Why not ? " 
 
 " I can't have you here, nor I won't either."
 
 228 FLAMES 
 
 Her voice was gi'owing louder and fiercer as the first paralysis of 
 surprise died gradually away from her. After all she had not 
 buckled on her armour only to run away from the enemy in it. 
 The street Arab impudence was not quite killed in her by the 
 strange influence of this man. The mere fact of having her feet 
 firmly planted upon the floor gave Cuckoo a certain fillip of courage, and 
 she tossed her head with that old vulgar gesture of hers which 
 suggested the harridan. She pointed to the door. 
 " Out you go ! " she cried. 
 
 For her intrepidity had not risen to calm contemplation of an 
 interview. She was only bracing herself up to the necessnry 
 momentary endurance of his presence, which followed upon Mrs. 
 Brigg's admittance of him within the door. 
 
 Valentine heard the gentle hint unmoved, and replied to it by 
 drawing a chair out from the table and sitting down upon it. A sort 
 of rage, stirred by terror, ran over Cuckoo. She seized the back of 
 his chair with both hands and shook it violently. 
 
 " No, you don't stay," she ejaculated ; " I won't have it ! " 
 It was characteristic of her to lose all sense of dignity at an instant, 
 when dignity might have served her purpose. Her outburst might 
 have been directed against a statue. Valentine neither moved nor 
 looked in any way affected. Glancing at Cuckoo with a whimsical 
 am usement, he said : 
 
 " What a child you are ! When will you learn wisdom ? " 
 Cuckoo took away her hands. A conviction pierced her that the 
 weapons a woman may use with effect against an ordinary man could 
 be of no service now, and with this man. She faded abruptly from 
 anger and violence into fatigue, always closely accompanied by fear. 
 
 " I'm awful tired to-night," she said. " Please do go ! I'm home 
 because I'm tired." 
 
 " The walk from Harley Street was too much for you. You 
 shouldn't make such exertions." 
 
 For the first time a sinister note rang in his voice. 
 " I shall go where I like," Cuckoo answered, and this time with 
 some real sturdiness of manner. " It ain't nothin' to you where I 
 go, nor what I do." 
 
 " How can you tell that ? " 
 
 She laid her chin in the upturned palms of her two hands, plant- 
 ing her elbows on her knees. 
 
 " How can it be ? " she said. " I'm nothin' to you, nor I ain't 
 goin' to be either." 
 
 " That's what you say." 
 
 " And it's God's truth, too ! " she cried again with violence, as the 
 sense of Valentine's inflexible power grew in her. 
 
 " I'm going to smoke if you will allow me," Valentine said.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 229 
 
 Slowly lie drew out and lit a cigarette, Cuckoo neither refusing 
 nor permitting it. With protruding lips lie threw the light smoke 
 round him. Then speaking through it he said : 
 
 " Tell me why you go to Harley Sti-eet." 
 
 " I ain't goin' to talk to you." 
 
 " Tell me why. It lies out of your beat ; it's a respectable 
 thoroughfare." 
 
 The words were said to sting. Cuckoo let them go by. She had 
 been stung too often, and repetition of cruelty sometimes kills what 
 it repeats. She had set her lips to silence, with a look of obstinacy 
 not impressive, but merely mulish and childish. 
 
 " Well ? " Valentine said. 
 
 She made no answer. He did not seem angry, but continued : 
 
 " You find few fish for your net there, I imagine. But perhaps 
 you don't go for fish. What was the name you read upon the door 
 while I watched you ? " 
 
 This time Cuckoo, changing her mind, as she often did, with all 
 the swiftness of a crude nature, answered him : 
 
 " You know well enough ! " 
 
 " It was Dr. Levillier, wasn't it ? " 
 
 She nodded her head silently. 
 
 " Why do you go to his door ? " What do you want with him ? " 
 
 Cuckoo's quick woman's instinct detected a suspicion of something 
 that was like anxiety in his voice as he said the words. In an 
 instant the warm impulse that, in her silent meditation, had led her 
 to buckle on her armour and to think, with a certain courage, that 
 she was to fight one day, stirred and glowed and leapt up, an impulse 
 greater than herself. The fear that had fallen upon her was 
 lessened, for she felt that this man too might, nay did, know fear. 
 
 " What's that to you ? " 
 
 She turned upon him boldly with the question, and he knew her 
 for the first time as an antagonist, who might actively attack as well 
 as passively hate. He leaned forward, and looked into her eyes 
 searchingly, with a sort of rapture of anxiety too. It recalled some- 
 thing to Cuckoo. She tried to remember what, but for a moment 
 could not. Then, as if reassured, he resigned his eager and nervous 
 posture of inquiry. That second movement brought the light that 
 Cuckoo's puzzled mind sought. It was Julian who had looked first 
 into her eyes with that strange watchfulness. These men echoed 
 one another in that glance which she could not understand. What 
 they sought in her eyes she could not tell. If it were the same 
 thing it could not be love. And it seemed to be a thing that they 
 feared to find. 
 
 " Dr. Levillier is a great friend of mine," Valentine said. " He 
 is a famous nerve doctor. Seeing you hovering about his door led
 
 230 FLAMES 
 
 me to suppose you might be ill, and were going to consult him. I 
 hope you are not ill." 
 
 " Not I ! " 
 
 " Because he is away from home at present.'' 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Do you want to see him ? " 
 
 " I suppose I can see him like any one else, if I've a mind to." 
 
 " Well ! He's he doesn't see quite every one. His practice is 
 only among the richest and smartest people in town. Some one else 
 might answer your purpose better." 
 
 He spoke suavely, but the words he said cemented Cuckoo's pre- 
 viously vague thought, of trying, perhaps, to see Dr. Levillier, into 
 a sudden strong determination. She divined that, for some reason, 
 Valentine was anxious that she should not see him. That was enough. 
 She would, at whatever cost, make his acquaintance. 
 
 " I'll see him if I like," she said hastily, lost to any appreciation 
 of wisdom, through the desire of aiming an instant blow at Valentine. 
 
 " Of course ! Why not ? " was his reply. 
 
 " You don't want me to. I can see that," she went on still more 
 unadvisedly. "You needn't think as you can get over me so 
 easily." 
 
 Valentine's smile showed a certain contempt that angered her. 
 
 " I know you," she cried. 
 
 " Do you ? " he said. " I wonder if you would like to know me ? 
 Do you remember Marr ? " 
 
 The lady of the feathers turned cold. 
 
 " Marr ! " she faltered ; " what of him ? " 
 
 " You have not forgotten him." 
 
 "He's dead ! " 
 
 A pause. 
 
 " He's dead, I say." 
 
 " Exactly ! As dead as a strong man who has lived long in the 
 world ever can be." 
 
 " What d'you mean ? I say he's dead and buried and done with." 
 Her voice was rather noisy and shrill. 
 
 " That's just where you make a mistake," Valentine said quite 
 gravely, rather like a philosopher about to embark upon an argu- 
 ment. " He is not done with. Suppose you fear a man, you hate 
 him, you kill him, you put him under the ground, you have not 
 done with him." 
 
 <: I didn't kill him! I didn't, I didn't!" Cuckoo cried out, 
 shrilly, half rising from the sofa. A wild suspicion suddenly came 
 over her that Valentine was pursuing her as an avenger of blood 
 under the mistaken idea that she had done Marr to death in the 
 night.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 231 
 
 "Hush! I know that. He died naturally, as a doctor would 
 say, and he has been, buried ; and by now, probably he is a shell 
 that can only contain the darkness of his grave. Yet, for all that, 
 he's not done with, Miss Bright.'' 
 
 " He is ! he is ! " she persisted. 
 
 The mention of Marr always woke terror in her. She sat, her 
 eyes fixed on Valentine, her memory fixed on Marr. Perhaps for 
 this reason what her memory saw and what her eyes saw seemed 
 gradually to float together, and fuse and mingle, till eyes and 
 memory mingled, too, into one sense, observant of one being only, 
 neither wholly Marr not- wholly Valentine, but both in one. She 
 had linked them together vaguely before, but never as now. Yet 
 even now the clouds were floating round her and the vapours. She 
 might think she saw. but she could not understand, and what she 
 saw was rather a phantom standing in a land of mirage than a man 
 standing in the world of men. 
 
 "Some day, perhaps, I will prove to yon that he is not," Valen- 
 tine said. 
 
 "Eh, how?" 
 
 She had lost all self-consciousness now, and in her eagerness of 
 fear, wonder and curiosity seemed tormented by the veil of yellow 
 hair that was flopping in frizzy strands round her face and over her 
 eyes. She seized it in her two hands, and with a few shooting 
 gestures, in and out, wound it into a dishevelled lump, which she 
 stuck to the back of her head with two or three pins. All 
 the time she was looking at A T alentine for an answer to her 
 question. 
 
 " Perhaps I don't know how yet." 
 
 " Yes, you do though. I can see yon do. What have yon got to 
 do with him, with Marr?" 
 
 " I never said I had anything to do with him." 
 
 11 Ah ! but you have. I always knew it ! " 
 
 " Many men are linked together by thin, perhaps invisible threads, 
 impalpable and impossible to define." 
 
 The lady of the feathers was out of her depth in this sentence, 
 so she only tossed her head and murmured : 
 
 " Oh, I dessay ! " with an effort after contempt. 
 
 But Valentine's mood seemed to change. An abstracted gaiety 
 stole over him. If it was simulated, the simulation was very perfect 
 and complete. Sitting back in his chair, the cigarette smoke curling 
 lightly round him, his large blue eyes glancing gravely now at 
 Cuckoo crumpled up on the horsehair sofa, now meditatively at some 
 object in the little room, or at the ceiling, he spoke in a low, clear, 
 level voice, as if littering his thoughts aloud, careless or oblivious of 
 any listener,
 
 232 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 " Every man who lives, and who has a personality, has something 
 to do with many men whom he has never seen, whom he will never 
 see. Messengers go from him, as carrier pigeons go from a ship. 
 He may live alone, as a ship is alone in mid-ocean, but the mes- 
 sengers are winged, and their wings are strong. They fly high and 
 they fly far, and wherever they pause and rest, that man has left a 
 mark, has stamped himself, has uttered himself, has planted a seed 
 of his will. Have you a religion ? " 
 
 Valentine stopped abruptly after uttering this question, and 
 waited for an answer. It was characteristic enough. 
 
 " What ? " said the lady of the feathers, staring wide-eyed. 
 
 " I say, have you a religion ? ". 
 
 " Not I. How can I when I don't go to no church ? " 
 
 "That is, no doubt, a convincing proof of heathendom. And yet 
 I have a religion that never leads me to a church door. My religion 
 is will, my gospel is the gospel of influence, and my god is power. 
 Will binds the world into a net, whose strands are like iron. Will 
 dies if it is weak, but if it is strong enough it becomes practically 
 immortal. But, though it lives itself, it has the power to kill others. 
 It can murder a soul in a man or a woman, and throw it into the 
 grave to decay and go to dust, and in the man it can create a second 
 soul diametrically opposite to the corpse, and the world will say the 
 man is the same ; but he is not the same. He is another man. Or 
 if the will is not strong enough actually to kill a soul " at this 
 point Valentine spoke more slowly, and there was a certain note 
 of uneasiness, even almost of agitation, in his voice "it can yet 
 expel it from the body in which it resides, and drive it, like a ne\v 
 Ishmael, into the desert, where it must hover, useless, hopeless, 
 degraded and naked, because it has no body to work in. Yes ! yes ! 
 that must be so ! The soul can have no power divoi-ced from the 
 body ! none ! none ! " 
 
 He got up from his chaii*, and began to pace the little room. 
 Cuckoo watched him as a child might watch a wild animal in its 
 cage. His face was hard and thin with deep thought, and hers was 
 contorted under her yellow hair contorted in a frantic effort to 
 gra?p and to understand what he was saying ; for, stupid, ignorant 
 as the lady of the feathers was, she had a sharp demon in her that 
 often told her the truth, and this demon whispered now in her ear, 
 
 " Listen, and you may learn things that you long to know ! " 
 
 And she listened motionless, her eyes bright and eager, her lips 
 shut together, her slim body a-quiver with intensity, mental and 
 physical. 
 
 "How can it?" Valentine went on. "What is a soul without 
 a body ? You cannot see it. You cannot hear it, and if you think 
 you can, that is a vile trick of the mind, an hal}ucjnatipn ? For if
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 233 
 
 one man can see it, why not another ? Here, let me look into your 
 eyes again." 
 
 As he said the last words, he stopped opposite to Cuckoo, suddenly 
 caught her chin in his two hands, which felt hard and cold, and 
 forcibly pushed up her face towards his. She was terrified, beginning 
 now to think him mad, and to fear personal injury. Gazing hard 
 and furtively into her eyes, he said : 
 
 " No ; it's a lie ! It is not there. It never was ! It is dead and 
 finished with, and I won't fear it." 
 
 As if struck by the fatigue of some sudden reaction, he sank down 
 again into his chair, and went on with his apparently fantastic 
 monologue : 
 
 "And if it was ever alive, what could it do? A soul can't work, 
 except through a body ; it must fasten on a body, and bend the body 
 to its will man is such a creature that he can only be influenced 
 through flesh and blood, nerves, sinews, eyes, things he can see, 
 things that he can hear. He is so grovelling that nothing more 
 delicate than these really appeals to him." 
 
 Again, and this time with less abstraction, and with a sort of con- 
 temptuous humour, he turned to the lady of the feathers, and 
 continued, as if once more aware of her presence : 
 
 " Are you imbibing my gospel, the gospel of will and of influence ? 
 I see you are by your pretty attitude and by the engaging face you are 
 making at me. Well, don't get it wrong. A gospel gone wrong in 
 a mind is dangerous and worse than no gospel at all. If you get 
 this gospel wrong you may become conceited, and fancy yourself 
 possessed of a power which you haven't a notion of. To use will, in 
 any really effective way, you must train your body, and take care of 
 it, not ruin it, and let it run to seed, or grow disfigured, or a ghastly 
 tell-tale, a truth- teller, a town crier with a big bell going about and 
 calling aloud all the silly or criminal things you do. Now you have 
 forgotten this, or perhaps you never knew it, and so will could not 
 work in you ; not even, I believe, a malign will to do mischief. You 
 have thrown your body to the wolves, and whoever looks upon you 
 must see the marks of their teeth." 
 
 It was evident that he gloated on this idea that the body of the 
 lady of the feathers was for ever useless for good, and even 
 powerless to do much effective evil. He seemed to revel in the 
 notion that she was simply a thing powerless, negative, and totally 
 vain . 
 
 " I was mad ever to imagine the contrary," he said. Then, 
 glancing away from personality, he exclaimed with more energy : 
 
 " But sometimes a will is so great, so trained, so watchful of 
 opportunities, so acute and ready, that, instead of passing away 
 practically on the passing away of the body in which it has been born
 
 234 FLAMES 
 
 and has lived, and merely living and working through the emana- 
 tions of itself that have clung to men and women in many different 
 places, instead in fact of being diffused you understand me ? " 
 he broke out with an obvious delight in the grossness of her ignorance 
 and the denseness of her bewilderment and misunderstanding of 
 him " which is a sort of death, it seizes, whole as a body with all 
 all the members sound, upon another home. It commits, in effect, 
 a great act of brigandage. It lives on complete, powerful even 
 more powerful than ever before, because to all its original powers 
 it adds a glory of deception, and is a living life. If only you could 
 understand me ! " 
 
 Suddenly he burst into a peal of laughter that was a full stop to 
 his philosophy. His cigarette had gone out. He threw it into the 
 grate and stretched out his arms, still laughing. And Cuckoo gazing 
 at him, as if fascinated, said silently to herself, " If only I could ! " 
 
 For she felt as if Valentine were telling her a great secret, secure 
 in the hideous knowledge that, though she heard it. it must remain 
 a secret from her on account of her ignorance and of her stupidity. 
 There was something in that feeling peculiarly maddening, yet 
 Cuckoo displayed no irritation. The sharp little demon at her elbow 
 whispered to her to be silent, told her that she might learn, might 
 yet understand, if she would play a part, and be no more the wild 
 cat, the foolishly impulsive lady of the feathers. Valentine struck 
 his hand upon the table, and repeated : 
 
 " Why why can't you understand ? " 
 
 The piquancy of the situation evidently delighted his mind and 
 his sense of mischief. He enjoyed playing the philosopher to a fool, 
 and the more the fool became a fool the higher soared his philosophy 
 and his appreciation of it. There is always something paradoxical 
 in wisdom instructing folly, for, after all, folly can never really learn, 
 can never really understand. Valentine hugged that thought. 
 
 " Go on," the lady of the feathers said, apparently in gaping 
 wonderment. 
 
 " Why ? do you mean to tell me you are interested ? " 
 
 " I'm listenin' ! It sounds wonderful ! " 
 
 "It is wonderful!" Valentine cried. "Every living lie is 
 wonderful. But you don't know yet much about will. My gospel is 
 full of secrets and of subtleties, and only a few people are beginning to 
 guess at its far-reaching power, and to aim at learning its truths and 
 sounding its depths. And many unbelievers play with it, and never 
 know that they are playing with fire. A man did this once. Shall 
 I tell you about him ? " 
 
 ' Yes ! " said Cuckoo. 
 
 And her soul cried to the darkness in which she imagined some 
 vague power to dwell, cried aloud for understanding. This silent
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 235 
 
 cry was so intense that she lay back upon the hard sofa, almost 
 exhausted, and, as she lay there, something hot, like fire, seemed to 
 make its nest in her heart, and to flame there, and to be alive, as a 
 flame is alive, and to speak to her, but not aloud, as a flame speaks 
 in the coals to the imagination of the watcher by the hearth. In 
 that moment the lady of the feathers felt as if she were conscious 
 of a new companion, a companion full of some intensity towards her. 
 some anxiety about her, anxious and brilliant as a flame is, vital, 
 keen, blazing, intense. Although she could not define her sensation 
 thus, that lack of analytical power could not deprive her of it. She 
 knew that her vision became clearer, that her mind became brighter, 
 that a light illumined her, that she was, for the moment, greater 
 than herself. But Valentine did not know it. He looked towards 
 the sofa and saw spread upon it a thin, painted, haggard young 
 creature, curled into a position at once passionate, languid and 
 merely awkward, with relentless, thickly-tangled hair, staring eyes 
 and half-opened lips, glowering in rouged stupidity and a coarseness 
 of the gutter. He was a philosopher, with a beauty of the stars and 
 of snows, with a refinement, white in its brilliance. She was an 
 image of Regent Street, a ghastly idol of the town ; and he was 
 telling her strange things that she could never comprehend in a 
 jargon that was to her as Greek or as Hebrew. It was too absurd. 
 Yet he loved to tell her, and he could scarcely tell why he loved it. 
 
 " Go on," said the lady of the feathers. 
 
 " This man," Valentine said, assuming a devout earnestness to 
 trick her more, and watching for the puzzled expression to grow and 
 to deepen in her eyes, " this man had a holy nature, or I will say 
 an unalterable will to do only things pure, i-eserved, refined, things 
 that could not lead his body into difficulties, or his mind into quag- 
 mires. He was a saint without a religion. That is a possibility, I 
 assure you, for a will can be amazingly independent. He had the 
 peculiar grace that is said to belong to angels, a definite repugnance 
 to sin. I know you understand me." 
 
 She nodded bluntly. 
 
 " I know he couldn't go wrong, it was ever so," she ejaculated. 
 
 " If it was ever so as the, housemaids say you put the position 
 of this man in a nutshell, and if this strange will of his had never 
 relented the transformation I am going to describe or " he paused 
 for a moment as if in doubt, then continued " or rather to hint at, 
 would never have taken place. But he grew dissatisfied with his 
 will. It bored him ever so little. He fancied he would like to 
 change it and to substitute for it the will of the world. And the 
 will of the world, as you know well, my lady of the feathers, is to 
 sin. For some time he longed, vaguely enough, to be different, to 
 be, in fact, lower down hi the scale than he was. But his longing
 
 236 FLAMES 
 
 to be able to desire sin did not lead him to desire it actually. One 
 can force oneself to do a thing, you see, but one cannot force oneself 
 to wish to do it, or to enjoy doing it. And this man, being a selfish 
 saint saints are very often very selfish would not sin without 
 desiriii" 1 it. So it seemed that he must remain for ever as he was, 
 a human piece of flawless porcelain, wishing to be cracked and 
 common delft." 
 
 " Whatever did he wish it for ? " asked Cuckoo, with the surprise 
 of a zany. 
 
 " Who can tell why one man wishes for one thing, another for 
 another ? That, too, is a mystery. The point is that he did Avish it, 
 and that he did something more." 
 
 " What was that, eh ? " 
 
 " He deliberately tried to weaken and to deface his will, to alter 
 it. And he chose curious means, acting under suggestion from 
 another will or influence that was more powerful than his own, 
 because it was utterly self-satisfied and desired only to be what it 
 was. I don't think I will tell you what the means were. But his 
 original dissatisfaction with his own goodness was the weapon that 
 brought about his own destruction. His will did not change, as he 
 believed, but what do you think actually happened to it ? I will tell 
 you. It was expelled from his body. He lost it for ever. He lost, 
 in fact, his identity. For will is personality, soul, the ego, the man 
 himself. And this soul, if you choose to call it so, was driven into the 
 air. It went away in the darkness like a bird. Do you see ? " 
 
 He waved his hand upward, and lifted his eyes, as if following 
 with them the flight that he described. 
 
 " It flew away ! " 
 
 " Where did it go ? " ejaculated Cuckoo. 
 
 Valentine seemed suddenly to become fully aware of the depth of 
 her interest. 
 
 "Ah! even you are fascinated by my gospel, you who cannot 
 understand it," he said. " But I cannot tell you where it went. I, 
 too, have wondered." 
 
 He knit his brows rather moodily over this question of location. 
 " I, too, have wondered. But I imagine that it died, that it ceased 
 to be. Divorced from the body that was its home, degraded by dis- 
 satisfaction with itself, of what use could it be to any one ? Even if 
 it still continues to be it is practically dead, for it can work neither 
 harm nor good to any one, and the thing that cannot be good or evil, 
 or turn others towards the one or the other, is dead. It is no more 
 a will. It is no more an influence. It is a heart without a pulse in 
 it ; in fact, it is nothing." 
 
 A sort of joy had leapt into his face as he dwelt on this idea of 
 nothingness, and he added :
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 237 
 
 " It is something like your soul, my lady of the feathers. Do 
 you hear me ? " 
 "Yes. I hear!" 
 
 " But the will that ousted it gained in power by that triumph. 
 Totally self-satisfied, desirous only of being that which it is, having 
 HO enemy of yearning disappointment with itself in its camp, it can 
 do what will never did before. It can lead captive the soul that 
 was formerly the captive of the soul that it drove away to die. Like 
 an enemy it has seized its opponent's camp, and the slave dwelling 
 in that camp is now its slave for ever." 
 
 As Valentine spoke he seemed to become almost intoxicated with 
 the thoughts conjured up by his own words. His blue eyes blazed 
 with a fury of shining excitement. His white cheeks were suffused 
 with blood. 
 
 " I have made myself, my will, a God ! " he exclaimed passion- 
 ately. 
 
 At the words the lady of the feathers moved suddenly forward 
 on the sofa. 
 
 " What you ! " she said. 
 
 The last word was uttered with an intensity that could surely 
 only spring from something near akin to comprehension, if not from 
 actual comprehension itself. It certainly startled Valentine, or 
 seemed to startle him. His face showed an amazement, like the 
 amazement of a man raving to an image of wood, to whom, abruptly, 
 the wood speaks with a tongue. 
 
 " What do you mean ? '' he said, and his voice faltered from its 
 note of triumph and of exultation. 
 Cuckoo resumed her former position. 
 
 " Only was you the will, or the man, or whatever it all is ? " she 
 replied in the voice of one hopelessly muddled. 
 Valentine was reassured as to her stupidity. 
 " That has nothing to do with the story," he said. 
 " There was two of them, was there ? " she persisted, but still 
 with the accent of a hopeless dullard. 
 
 " Oh yes. One will must always work upon another, or else there 
 could be no story worth the telling." 
 " Oh, I see, that's it." 
 Valentine again broke into laughter. 
 
 ''You see, do you?" he said. "You see that, but do you see 
 the truth of what I told you before about the connection of the will 
 with the body ? Do you see why you have no power now, can 
 never have power again ? Do you understand that the wre^k of 
 your body inevitably causes the wreck of your will, so that it really 
 dies and ceases, because it can no more influence others ? Do you 
 understand that ? I'll make you understand it now. Come here."
 
 23 8 FLAMES 
 
 He got up from his chair and seized her two hands in his, dragging 
 her almost violently up from the sofa. Her fear of him, always 
 lurking near, came upon her with a rush at the contact of his hands, 
 and she hung back, moved by an irresistible repulsion. The slight 
 and momentary struggle between them caused her hair, carelessly 
 turned up and loosely pinned, to come down. It fell all round her 
 in a loose shock of unnatural colour. Valentine's hands were strong, 
 and Cuckoo soon felt that resistance was useless. She let her body 
 yield, and he drew her in front of the glass that stood over the 
 mantelpiece. Pushing back the table behind them, he made her 
 stand still in the unwinking glare of the three gas jets, which she 
 had herself turned up earlier in the evening. 
 
 " Look there !" he cried, "look at yourself well! How can you 
 have power over anybody ? " 
 
 Their two faces, set close together as in a frame, stared at them 
 from the mirror, and Cuckoo forced to obedience examined them 
 as if, indeed, they were a picture. She saw the man's face, fair, 
 beautiful, refined, triumphant, full of the courage that is based upon 
 experience of itself and of its deeds and possibilities, full of a strange 
 excitement that filled the face with amazingly vivid expression. She 
 saw the bright blue eyes gazing at her, the red lips of the mouth curved 
 in a smile. There was health in the face as well as thought. And 
 there was power, which is greater than health, more beautiful even 
 than beauty. And then she turned her eyes to the face's companion. 
 Thin, sharp, faded, it met her eyes, half-shrouded in the thick, 
 tumbled hair that shone in the mirror with the peculiar frigid glare 
 that can only be imparted by a chemical dye, and can never be 
 simulated by nature. One cheek was chalk white. The other, 
 which had been pressed against the horsehair of the sofa, showed a 
 harsh scarlet patch. All the varying haggard expressions of the 
 world seemed crowding in the eyes of this scarecrow, and peering 
 beneath the thickly blackened eyelashes that struck a violent discord 
 against the yellow hair. The thin lips of the mouth were pressed 
 together in an expression of pain, fear and weariness. Shadows 
 slept under the eyes where the face had fallen into hollows. To- 
 night there seemed no vestige of prettiness in those peaked features. 
 Nothing of health, youth, gaiety or even girlhood was written in 
 them, but only a terrible, a brutal record of spoliation and of wreck- 
 age, of plunder and of despair. And the gaslight, striking the flat 
 surface of the mirror, made the record glitter with a thin, cheap 
 sparkle, like the tinsel trappings of the life whose story the mirror 
 revealed in its reflection. 
 
 How, indeed, could such a creature have power over fellow man 
 or woman for good or for evil ? If weakness can be written without 
 words it seemed written in that wasted countenance, which Cuckoo
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 239 
 
 examined with a creeping horror that numbed her like frost. As 
 she did so, Valentine was watching the ungraciousness of her face in 
 the glass deepen and glide, moment by moment, into greater ugli- 
 ness, greater degradation. And as the little light there had ever 
 been behind those unquiet eyes faded gradually away, in his reflected 
 eyes the light leaped up into a fuller glare, sparkling to unbridled 
 triumph. And his reflected lips smiled more defiantly, until the 
 smile was no longer touched merely with triumph, but with some- 
 thing more vehement and more malign ! Cuckoo did not see the 
 change. She saw only herself, and her heart cried and wailed, 
 "What good what good to love Julian ? What good to hate 
 Valentine ? What good to fight for the man she loved against the 
 man she loathed ? As well set a doll to move its tense joints 
 against an army, or a scarecrow to defy a god ! Never before had 
 she realised thoroughly the complete tragedy of her life. Hitherto 
 she had assisted at it in fragments, coming in fora scene here, a scene 
 there. Now she sat through the whole of the five acts, and the only 
 thing she missed was the fall of the curtain. That remained up. 
 But why ? There was there could be nothing more to come, 
 unless a dreary recapitulation of such dreary events as had already 
 been displayed. Such a cup could hold no wine that was not foul, 
 thick and poisonous. And she had known herself so little as to 
 imagine that she could really love, and that her love might fulfil 
 itself in protection instead of in sensual gratification. Yes, vaguely 
 she had believed that. She had even believed that she could put on 
 armour and do battle against and at this point in her desperate 
 meditation the lady of the feathers shifted her eyes from her own 
 face mirrored to the face beside it. As she did so, a sudden cry 
 escaped from her lips. For a moment she thought she saw the face 
 of the dead Marr, and the hallucination was so vivid that, when it 
 was gone, and the mirror once more revealed the face of Valentine, 
 Cuckoo had no thought but that she had really seen Marr. She 
 turned sharply round and cast a glance behind her. Then : 
 
 " Did you see him ? " she whispered to Valentine. 
 
 " Whom ? " 
 
 " Him Marr ! He's not dead ; he's here ; he's here, I tell you. 
 I see him in the glass ! " 
 
 She shivered. The room seemed spinning round with her, and the 
 two faces danced and sprang in the mirror, as if a hand shook it up 
 and down, from side to side. 
 
 " If he is here," Valentine said, " it is not in the way you fancy. 
 Your imagination has played you a trick." 
 
 " Didn't you didn't you see him ? Don't you see him now ? " 
 
 " I see only you and myself." 
 
 As if for a joke he bent his head and peered closely at the mirror,
 
 240 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 like a man endeavouring to discern some very pale and dim reflection 
 there. 
 
 " No, he's he's not there ! " he murmured, " but " 
 
 With a harsh exclamation he dashed his fist against the mirrored 
 face of the lady of the feathers. The glass cracked and broke from 
 top to bottom. Cuckoo cried out. Valentine's hand had blood upon 
 it. He did not seem to know this, and swung round upon her with 
 an almost savage fury. 
 
 " Don't don't for God's sake," she cried, fearing an attack. 
 
 But he made no movement against her. On the contrary, an 
 expression of relief chased the anger from his lips and eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, " that's a lying mirror ! It lied to you and to me. 
 I smashed it. Well, I'll give you another that is more truthful, and 
 more ornamental, too." 
 
 " What was it you saw ? " she murmured. 
 
 " A silly vision, power where there is only weakness ; a will, a soul, 
 where there could not be one ! " 
 
 " Eh ? was it that you struck at ? " 
 
 " Why do you ask ? " he said with sudden suspicion. 
 
 "You struck where my face was," she said doggedly. " You did, 
 you did ! " 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 " It ain't 1 Why did you do it then ? " 
 
 A gleam of hope had shot into her eyes, lit by his weird attack 
 upon her mirrored image. After all, despite his sneers at her faded 
 body, his gibes at her faded and decaying soul, he struck at her as a 
 man strikes at the thing he fears. In that faded soul a wild hope 
 and courage leaped up, banishing all the sick despair which had pre- 
 ceded it. The lady of the feathers faced Valentine with a deathless 
 resolution of glance and of attitude. 
 
 "You've been telling lies," she said, "you've been telling me 
 damned lies ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "You said as I was was done with." 
 
 A forced smile came like a hissing snake on Valentine's lips. 
 
 " So you are ! " 
 
 " I ain't ! I ain't ! What's more you know it ? " 
 
 " You have broken yourself to pieces as I have broken that mirror! " 
 
 He spoke with an eft'ort after scathing contempt, but she detected 
 a quiver of agitation in his voice. 
 
 " If I have, I'll break you yet ! " she cried. 
 
 " Me ? What are you talking about ? " 
 
 "You know well enough." 
 
 " But do you know do you know that I I am Marr ? " 
 
 He almost whispered the last words ! A chill of awe fell over tlje
 
 THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE 241 
 
 lady of the feathers. She did not understand what he meant, and 
 yet she felt as if he spoke the truth, as if this inexplicable mystery 
 were yet indeed no fiction, no phantasy, but stern fact, and as if, 
 strangely, she had at the back of her mind divined it, known it 
 when she first knew Valentine, yet only realised it now that he 
 himself told her. She did not speak. She only looked at him, 
 turning white slowly as she looked. 
 
 " I am Marr," he repeated. " Now, do you understand my gospel ? 
 Understand it if you can, for you are bereft of the power that 
 belongs of right only to the woman who is pure. Long ago, perhaps, 
 you might have fought me. Who knows, you might even have 
 conquered me ? But you have thrown yourself to the wolves, and 
 they have torn you till you are only a skeleton. And how can a 
 soul dwell in a skeleton ? Your soul, your will, is as useless as that 
 vagrant soul of Valentine, which I expelled into the air and into 
 the night. It can do nothing ; you can do nothing either. If I 
 have ever feared you, and hated you because I feared you, I have 
 fooled myself. 1 have divined your thoughts. I have known your 
 emnity against me and your love yours ! for Julian. But if the 
 soul and the will of Valentine could not save Julian from my 
 possession, how can yours? You are an outcast of the streets ! Go 
 back to the streets. Live in them. Die in them ! They are your 
 past, your present, your future. They are your hell, your heaven. 
 They are everything to you. I tell you that you are as much of 
 them as are the stones of the pavement that the feet of such women 
 as you tread night after night. And what soul can a street thing 
 have ? What can be the will of a creature who gives herself to 
 every man who beckons, and who follows every voice that calls ? I 
 feared you. I might as well have feared a shadow, an echo, a sigh 
 of the wind, or the fall of an autumn leaf. I might as well have 
 feared that personal devil whom men raise up for themselves as a 
 bogey. Will is God ! Will is the devil ! Will is everything ! And 
 you you, having tossed your will away are nothing." 
 
 He had spoken gravely, even sombrely. On the last word he was gone. 
 
 The lady of the feathers stood alone in the v.gly little room, and 
 heard the clock of the great church close by chime the hour of 
 midnight. Her face was set and white under its rouge, in its frame 
 of disordered canary-coloured hair. Her eyes were clouded with 
 perplexity, with horror, and with awe. Yet she looked undaunted. 
 Staring at the door through which the man men still called 
 Valentine Cresswell had vanished, she whispered : 
 
 " It ain't true ! It ain't ! ISTothin' does for a woman ; not when 
 she loves a man ! Nothin'. Nothin'." 
 
 She fell down against the hard horse-hair sofa, and stretched her 
 arms upon it, and laid her head against them, as if she prayed.
 
 BOOK IV DOCTOR LEVILLIER 
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER 
 
 THE Russian Grand Duke, whose malady was mainly composed of 
 two ingredients, unlimited wealth and almost unlimited power, was 
 slow in recovering, and slower still in making up his mind to part 
 with the little nerve doctor whom he had summoned from England. 
 And so London was beginning to fall into its misty autumn mood 
 before Dr. Levillier was once more established in Harley Street. He 
 had heard occasionally from both Valentine and Julian during 
 his long absence, but their letters had not communicated much, and 
 once or twice when he, in replying to them, had put one or two 
 friendly questions as to their doings, those questions had remained 
 unanswered. The doctor had been particularly reluctant to leave 
 England at the time when the Grand Duke's summons reached him, 
 as his interest and curiosity about Valentine had just been keenly and 
 thoroughly roused. But fate fought for the moment against his 
 curiosity. It remained entirely ungratified. He had not once seen 
 Valentine since the afternoon in Victoria Street, when the lamenta- 
 tion of that thoroughfare's saint had struck consternation into the 
 hearts of musical sinners. Nor had the doctor met any one who 
 could give him news of the two youths over whose welfare his soul 
 had learned to watch. Now, when he returned to London, he found 
 that both Valentine and Julian were abroad. Only Rip, left in 
 charge of Julian's servant, greeted him with joy ; Rip, whose conduct 
 had given the first strong impulse to his wonder and doubt about 
 Valentine. 
 
 Dr. Levillier took up the threads of his long-forsaken practice, 
 and gave himself to his work while autumn closed round London. 
 One day he heard casually from a patient that Valentine and Julian
 
 2 4 j FLAMES 
 
 had returned to town. He wondered that they had not let him 
 know : the omission seemed curious and unfriendly. 
 
 During the day on which the news reached him he was, as usual, 
 busily engaged from morning till evening in the reception of patients. 
 His reputation was very great, and men and women thronged his 
 consulting-rooms. Although his rule was that nobody could ever 
 gain admission to him without an appointment, it was a rule made to 
 be broken. He never had the heart to turn any- one from his door 
 in distress, and so it frequently happened that his working day was 
 prolonged by the admission of people who unexpectedly intruded 
 themselves upon him. Great ladies more especially often came to 
 him on the spur of the moment, prompted to seek his solace by 
 sudden attacks of the nerves. A lover had used them ill, perhaps, or 
 a husband had turned upon them and had rent a long dressmaker's 
 bill into fragments, without paying it first. Or the ennui of an 
 exquisite life of unbridled pleasure had suddenly sprung upon them 
 like a grisly spectre, torn their hearts, shaken them into tears. Or 
 and this happened often a fantastic recognition of the obvious fact 
 that even butterflies must die, had abruptly started into their minds, 
 obtruding a skeleton head above the billowing chiffons, rattling its 
 bones until the dismal sound outvied the frou-fi -ou of silk, the burr of 
 great waving fans, the click of high heels from Paris. Then, in 
 terror, they drove to Dr. Levillier's door and begged to see him, if 
 only for a moment. 
 
 There was no doctor in London so universally sought by the sane 
 lunatics of society as Dr. Levillier. He was no mad doctor. He 
 had no private asylum. He had never definitely aimed at becoming 
 a famous specialist in lunacy. But the pretty lunatics came to him 
 nevertheless ; the lunatics who live at afternoon parties, till the 
 grave yawns at their feet, and they must go down the strange ways 
 of another world, teacup in hand, scandal still fluttering upon their 
 ashy lip ; the lunatics who live for themselves, until their eyes are 
 hollow as tombs, and their mouths fall in from selfishness, and their 
 cheeks are a greenish white from satiety, and lust's gratified flame, 
 like beacons, on their drawn cheeks and along their crawling wrinkles ; 
 the lunatics who seek to be what they can never be, the beauties of 
 this world, the great Queens of the Sun, whose gaze shall glorify, 
 whose smile shall crown and bless, whose touch shall call hearts to 
 agony and to worship, whose word shall take a man from his plough 
 and send him out to win renown, or snatch a leader from his 
 ambition and set him creeping in the dust, like a white mouse 
 prisoned by a scarlet silken thread ; the lunatics who dandle 
 religions like dolls, and play with faiths as a boy plays with marbles, 
 until the moment comes when the game is over, and the player is 
 faced by the terror of a great lesson ; the lunatics who stare away
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEV1LL1ER 245 
 
 their days behind prancing horses in the Park, who worship in the 
 sacred groves of bonnets, who burn incense to rouged and powdered 
 fashions, who turn literature into a " movement," and art into a cult> 
 and humanity into a bogey, and love into an adulterous sensation 
 the lunatics who think that to " live " is only another word for to 
 sin, that innocence is a prison and vice liberty; the lunatics who 
 fill their boudoirs with false gods, and cry everlastingly : " Baal^ 
 hear us ! " till the fire comes down from heaven, which is no painted 
 ceiling presided over by a plaster god. These came to Dr. Levillier, 
 day by day, overtaken by sad moments, by sudden, dreary crises 
 of the soul, that set them impotently wailing, like Job among the 
 potsherds. Many of them did not " curse God " only because they 
 did not believe in Him. 
 
 It is not the fashion in London to believe in God just now. 
 
 Dr. Levillier had always, since he was a youth, walking hospitals 
 and searching the terror of life for all its secrets, felt a deep care, a 
 deep solicitude, for each duet, body and soul, that walked the world. 
 He had never set them apart, never lost sight of one in turning his 
 gaze upon the other. This fact, no doubt, accounted partially for the 
 fact that many looked upon him as the greatest nerve doctor in 
 London. For the nervous system is surely a network lacing the body 
 to the soul, and vice rersa. Every liaison has it connecting links, the 
 links that have brought it into being. One lust stretches forth a hook 
 and finds an eye in another, and there is union. So with faiths, 
 with longings, with fine aspirations, with sordid grovcllings. There 
 is ever the hook seeking the appropriate eye. The body has a hook, 
 the soul an eye. They meet at birth and part only at death. 
 
 Dr. Levillier was constantly, and igrorantly, entreated to adjust 
 the one comfortably in the other. It is a delicate business this 
 adjustment, sometimes an impossible business. Half the Harley 
 Street patients came saying, " Make me well." What they really 
 meant was, " Make me happy." Yet the most of them would have 
 resented a valuable mixed prescription, advice for the hook, and 
 advice for the eye. Such prescriptions had to be very deftly, some- 
 times very furtively, made up. Often the doctor felt an intenes 
 exhaustion steal over him towards the close of day. This tremendous 
 and eternal procession passing onwards through his life, filing before 
 him like a march-past of sick soldiers, saluting him with cries, and 
 with questions, and with entreaties ; this never ceasing progress 
 fatigued him. There were moments when he longed to hide his face, 
 to turn away, to shut his ears to the murmuring voices, and his eyes 
 to the pale, expressive faces, to put his great profession from him, as 
 one puts a beggar into the night. But these were only moments, 
 and they passed quickly. And the little doctor was always bitterly 
 ashamed of them, as a brave man is ashamed of a secret tug of cowardice
 
 246 FLAMES 
 
 at his heart. For it seemed to him the greatest thing in all the 
 world to help to make the unhappy rightly happier. 
 
 And this was, and had always been, his tireless endeavour. Upon 
 this day one of these hated moments of mental and physical ex- 
 haustion had come upon him, and he struggled hard against his 
 enemy. The procession of patients had been long, and more than 
 once in the tiny interval between the exit of one and the entry of 
 another, Dr. Levillier had peeped at his watch. His last appoint- 
 ment was at a quarter to five, then he would be free, and he said to 
 himself that he would take a cab and drive down to Victoria Street. 
 Valentine was often at home about six. The doctor put aside the 
 little devil of pride that whispered " You have been badly treated," 
 and resolved to make the advance to this friend, who seemed to have 
 forgotten him. In times of fatigue and depression he had often 
 sought Valentine in order to be solaced by his music. But this 
 solace was at an end, unless, indeed, the strange burden of musical 
 impotence had been lifted from Valentine, and his talent had been 
 restored to him. 
 
 The last patient came to the doctor's door punctually and was 
 punctually dismissed as the clock chimed the quarter of an hour 
 after five. The last prescription was written. The doctor drew 
 in a deep breath of relief. He touched the bell and his servant 
 appeared. 
 
 " There is no one waiting ? " he asked. 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " I have made no other appointment for to-day, and I am going 
 out almost immediately. If any patients should call casually tell 
 them I cannot possibly see them to-day. Ask them to make an 
 appointment. But I cannot see any one to-day under any circum- 
 stances." 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Dr. Levillier took his way upstairs, made a careful toilet, selected 
 from his absurd array of boots a pair perfectly polished, put them 
 on, took his hat and gloves, sighed once again heavily, almost 
 as a dog sighs preparatory to its sleep, and turned to go down- 
 stairs. He forgot for the moment that he was prepared to watch 
 Valentine. Perhaps, indeed, his long period of absence had dulled 
 in his memory the recollection of any apparent change in his friend. 
 For at this moment of fatigue he only recalled Valentine's expres- 
 sion of purity and high-souled health, and the atmosphere of lofty 
 serenity in which he seemed habitually to dwell. The doctor wanted 
 relief. How Valentine's presence would refresh him after this dreary 
 array of patients, after the continuous murmurs of their plaintive 
 voices ! As he opened his bedroom door he perceived his manservant 
 mounting the stairs.
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER 247 
 
 " Lawlcr, I can't see any one," he said more hastily than usual. 
 " I told you so distinctly. I am going out immediately." 
 
 The man paused. He had been with the doctor for many years, 
 and both adored and understood him. The doctor looked at him. 
 
 " It is a patient, I suppose ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, sir, I can't exactly say." 
 
 " A lady ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir. At least, sir well, no, sir." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " A female, sir." 
 
 " What does she want ? " 
 
 " To see you, sir. I can't get her to go. I asked her to, sir ; then 
 I told her to." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " She only gave me this and said she'd come to see you, and if you 
 were in she'd wait." 
 
 He handed a card to his master. The doctor took it and read : 
 
 " Cuckoo Bright, 400 Maryleboue Road." 
 
 The words conveyed nothing to his mind, for neither Julian nor 
 Valentine had ever talked to him of the lady of the feathers. 
 
 " Cuckoo Bright," he said. "An odd name ! And an odd person, 
 I suppose, Lawler ? " 
 
 Lawler pursed his lips rather primly. 
 
 " Very odd, sir. Not at all a usual sort of patient, sir." 
 
 " H'm. Go and ask her if she conies as a patient or on private 
 business." 
 
 The man retreated and returned. 
 
 "The lady says she's ill and must see yon, sir, if only for a 
 moment." 
 
 This was Cuckoo's ruse to get into the house, and was based upon 
 Julian's long-ago remark that the doctor could never resist helping 
 any one who was in trouble. Standing on the doorstep, she had 
 histrionically simulated faintness for the special benefit of Lawler, 
 who regarded her with deep suspicion. 
 
 " I suppose I must see her," the doctor said with a sigh. " Show 
 her in, Lawler." 
 
 Lawler departed, disapprovingly, to do so, and, after a moment, 
 the doctor followed him. He walked into his consulting-room, where 
 he found the lady of the feathers standing by the writing-table. 
 The autumn day was growing dark, and the street was full of 
 deepening mist. Cuckoo was but a fantastic shadow in the room. 
 Her dress rustled with an uneasy sound as the doctor came in. His 
 first act was to turn on the electric light. In a flash the rustling 
 shadow was converted into substance. Cuckoo and the doctor stood 
 face to face and Cuckoo's tired eyes fastened with a hungry, almost
 
 248 FLAMES 
 
 a wolfish, scrutiny upon this stranger. She wanted so much of him. 
 The look was so full of intense meaning that, coming in a flash with 
 the electric flash, it startled the doctor. Yet he had seen something 
 like it before in the eyes of those who suspected that they carried 
 death within them, and came to ask him if it were true. He was 
 surprised, too, by her appearance. The women of the streets did 
 not come to him, although if they had been able to read the writing 
 in his heart many of them would surely have come. He shook 
 hands with Cuckoo, told her to sit down, and sat down himself 
 opposite to her. 
 
 " What is the matter ? Please tell me your symptoms," he said, 
 gently. 
 
 " Eh ? " was the reply, spoken in a thin and high voice. 
 
 " What has been troubling you ? " 
 
 Cuckoo, who was wholly unaccustomed to answer a doctor's 
 questions, started violently. She fancied from his words that he 
 had divined the lie she had told when she said that she was ill, and 
 knew that she came for a mental reason. Instinctively she con- 
 nected the word " trouble" with the heart, in a way that was oddly 
 and pathetically girlish. Acting upon this impulse she exclaimed : 
 
 " Then you know as I ain't ill ? '' 
 
 Dr. Levillier was still more sarprised. Not understanding what 
 was in her mind, he entirely failed to keep pace with its agility. 
 
 " Why do you come to me then ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh," she returned, with a quickly gathering hesitation, " I 
 thought as perhaps you knew." 
 
 " 1 ! But we have never met before." 
 
 The doctor bent his eyes on her searchingly. For a moment he 
 began to wonder whether his visitor was quite right in her head. 
 Cuckoo shuffled under his gaze. The very kindliness of his face 
 and gentleness of his voice made her feel hot and abashed. A 
 prickly sensation ran over her body, as she cleared her throat and 
 said, monosyllabically : 
 
 "No." 
 
 The doctor waited. 
 
 " What is it ? " he said at length. " Tell me why you have called. 
 If you are not ill, what is it you want of me ? " 
 
 ; ' You'll laugh, p'raps." 
 
 " Laugh ? is it something funny, then ? " 
 
 " Funny ! Not it ! " 
 
 The sound of her voice seemed to give her some courage, for she 
 went on with more hardy resolution : 
 
 "Look here, you can see what I am oh yes you can and you 
 wonder what I'm doin' here. Well, if I tell you, will you promise 
 as you won't laugh at me ? "
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER 249 
 
 This was Cuckoo's way of delicately sounding the doctor's depths. 
 She thought it decidedly subtle. 
 
 " Yes, I'll promise that," the doctor said. 
 
 He looked at her faded young face and felt no inclination to 
 laugh. 
 
 " Well then," Cuckoo said, more excitedly, "you know Ju Mr. 
 Addison, don't you ? " 
 
 The doctor began to see a ray of light. 
 " Certainly I do," he said. 
 " And Mr. Cresswell ? " 
 " He is one of my most intimate friends." 
 
 The words were spoken with an unconscious warmth that chilled 
 Cuckoo. For surely the man who spoke thus of the man she hated 
 must be her enemy. She faltered visibly, and a despairing expression 
 crept into her eyes. 
 
 " I don't know as it's any use my sayin' it," she began as if half 
 to herself. 
 
 The doctor saw that she was much troubled and the kindness of 
 his nature was roused. 
 
 " Don't be afraid of me," he said. " You have come here to tell 
 me something, tell it frankly. I am a friend of both the people you 
 mention." 
 
 " You can't be that," she suddenly cried. " Nobody can't be 
 that ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 " You ought to know." 
 
 She said it fiercely. All her self-consciousness was suddenly gone, 
 swept away by the flood of thought and of remembrance that was 
 surging through her mind. 
 
 " Why can't you see what he is," she exclaimed, " any more than 
 he can, than Julian Mr. Addison, I mean ? Any one'd think you 
 was all mad, they would." 
 
 Dr. Levillier was glad he had admitted the lady of the feathers to 
 his presence. Interest sprang up in him, alive and searching. 
 
 " Tell me what you mean," he said. " Are you talking about Mr. 
 Cresswell ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am; and I say of all the beasts in London he's the 
 greatest." 
 
 Cuckoo did not choose her words carefully. She was highly 
 excited and she wanted to be impressive. It seemed to her that to 
 use strong language was the only way to be impressive. So she used 
 it. The doctor's face grew graver. 
 
 " Surely you hardly know what you're saying," he said very 
 quietly. 
 
 But his thoughts flew to that summer night when his mastiffs
 
 250 FLAMES 
 
 howled against Valentine, and he felt as if a mystery were deepening 
 round him as the autumn mist of evening deepened in the street 
 outside. 
 
 " I do," she reiterated. " I do. But nobody won't see it. And 
 it's no use what I see. How can it be ? " 
 
 The words were almost a wail. 
 
 " Tell me what you see." 
 
 Cuckoo looked into the doctor's sincere eyes, and a sudden rush of 
 hope came to her. 
 
 "That's what I want to. But if you like him you'll only bo 
 angry." 
 
 "No, I shall not." 
 
 " Well, then. I see as he's ruinin' his friend." 
 
 " Ruining Mr. Addison ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 It struck the doctor as very strange that such a girl as Cuckoo 
 obviously was should cry out in such a passionate way against the 
 ruin of any young man. Was it not her fate to ruin others as she 
 herself had been ruined ? He wondered what her connection with 
 the two youths was, and perhaps his face showed something of his 
 wonder, for Cuckoo added, after a long glance at him : 
 
 " It's true, yes it is," as if she read his doubts. 
 
 " How do you come to know it ? " the doctor said, not at all un- 
 kindly, but as if anxious to elucidate matters. 
 
 " Why, I tell you I can see it plain. Besides, 1 ' and here she 
 dropped her voice, " Valentine, as he calls himself though he ain't 
 as good as told me. He did tell me, only I couldn't understand. 
 He knew I couldn't d'you see ? That's why he told me. Oh, if 
 he'd only tell you ! " 
 
 Fragments of Valentine's exposition of his deeds and of his strange 
 gospel were floating through Cuckoo's mind as fragments of broken 
 wood float by on a stream, fragments of broken wood that were part 
 of a puzzle, that should be rescued by some strong hand from the 
 stream, and fitted together into a perfect whole. 
 
 " Valentine ! You say he told you that he was ruining Julian ? " . 
 
 Unconsciously the doctor used the Christian names. His doing so 
 set Cuckoo more at her ease. 
 
 " Yes. Not like that. But he told me. He ain't what you think, 
 nor what Julian thinks. He's somebody else, and you can't tell it. 
 He's laughing at you all." 
 
 Thus the gospel came forth from the painted lips of Cuckoo, crude 
 and garbled, yet true gospel. The doctor was completely puzzled. 
 All he gathered from this announcement was that Valentine seemed 
 in some way to have been confiding in this girl of the streets. Such 
 a fact was sufficiently astounding. That they should ever have been
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER 251 
 
 associated together in any way was almost incredible to any one who 
 knew Valentine. Yet it was quite obvious that they did know each 
 other, and in no ordinary manner. 
 
 " Do you know Mr. Cresswell well ? ".the doctor said. 
 
 He saw that he could only make the tangle clear by being to some 
 extent judicial. Humanity merely excited Cuckoo to something that 
 was violently involved, passionate, and almost hysterical. 
 
 " Well enough." 
 
 " And Mr. Addison ? " 
 
 Cuckoo flushed slowly. 
 
 " Yes, I know him quite well." 
 
 An almost similar answer, but given with such a change of manner 
 as would be only possible in a woman. It told the doctor much of 
 the truth and gave him the first page of a true reading of Cuckoo's 
 character. But he went on with apparently unconscious quietude : 
 
 " And you came here to tell me, who know and like them both, 
 that the one is ruining the other. What made you come to me ? " 
 
 " Why, somethin' Julian said once. He thinks a lot of you. I 
 was afraid to come, but I I thought I would. It's seein' them at 
 least Julian since they got back made me come." 
 
 "I haven't seen them yet," the doctor said, and there was an in- 
 terrogation in the accent with which he spoke. Something in 
 Cuckoo's intense manner roused both wonder and alarm in him. 
 She evidently spoke, driven by a tremendous impulse. What vision 
 had given that impulse life ? 
 
 " Ah ! " she said, and fell suddenly into a dense silence, touching 
 her left cheek mechanically with her hand, which was covered by a 
 long black silk glove. She alternately pressed the fingers of it 
 against the cheek bone and withdrew them, as one who marks the 
 progress of a tune, hummed or played on some instrument. Her 
 eyes were staring downwards upon the carpet. The doctor watched 
 her, and the wonder and fear grew in him. 
 
 " Have you nothing more to tell me ? " he said at last. 
 
 "Eh?"' 
 
 She put down her hand slowly and turned her eyes on him. 
 
 " What do you wish me to do ? " he said. " I do not know yet what 
 
 may " he checked himself and substituted, " I must go and see 
 
 my friends." 
 
 " Yes, go." 
 
 She nodded her head slowly, and then she shivered as she sat in 
 the chair. 
 
 " Go, and do somethin'," she said. "I would I want to but I 
 can't. It's true, I suppose, what he said. I'm nearly done with, I'm 
 spoilt. I say, you're a doctor, aren't you ? You know things ? 
 Tell me then, do, what's the good of goin' on being able to feel
 
 252 FLAMES 
 
 I mean to feel just like anybody, anybody as hasn't gone down, you" 
 know if you can't do anythin' the same as they can, get round any- 
 body to make 'em go right ? I could send him right, I could, as 
 well as any girl, if feelin' 'cl only do it. But feelin' ain't a bit of 
 good. It's looks, I suppose. Everythin' 's looks." 
 
 " No, not everything," the doctor said. 
 
 Cuckoo's speech both interested and touched him. Its confused 
 wistfulness came straight from the heart. And then it recalled to 
 the doctor a conversation he had had with Valentine, when they 
 talked over the extraordinary influence that the mere appearance 
 will working through features of one man or woman can have 
 over another. The doctor could only at present rather dimly 
 apprehend the feeling entertained for Julian by Cuckoo. But as 
 he glanced at her, he understood very well the pathos of the contest 
 at present raging between her heart and the painted shell which 
 held it. 
 
 " Nobody who feels goodness is utterly bereft of the power of 
 bringing good to another," he said. " For we can seldom really 
 feel what we can never really be." 
 
 Light shone through the shadows of the tired face at the words. 
 
 " He said different from that," she exclaimed. 
 
 " He who ? " 
 
 " Him as you call Valentine. That's why he told me all about 
 it, because he knew as I shouldn't understand, and because he thinks 
 I can't do nothin' for any one. But I say, you do somethin' for 
 Julian, will you, will you ? " 
 
 There was a passion of pleading in her voice. She had lost her fear 
 of him, and, stretching out her hand, touched the sleeve of his coat. 
 
 " I don't understand it all," the doctor said. " I don't like to 
 accept what you say about Mr. Cresswell even in thought. But I 
 will go and see him, and Julian. The dogs," he added in a low 
 and secret voice to himself. " There is something terribly strange in 
 all this." 
 
 He fell into a silence of consideration that lasted longer than he 
 knew. The lady of the feathers began to fidget in it uneasily. She 
 felt that her mission was perhaps accomplished and that she ought 
 to go. She looked across at the doctor, pulled her silk gloves up on 
 her thin arms, and kicked one foot against the other. He did not 
 seem to notice. She glanced towards the window. The fog was 
 pressing its face against the glass like a dreary and terrible person 
 looking in upon them with haggard eyes. It was time, she supposed, 
 for her to drift out into the arms that belonged to that dreary and 
 terrible face. She got up. 
 
 " I'll go now," she said. 
 
 The doctor did not hear.
 
 THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER 253 
 
 " I'll go now, please," she repeated. 
 
 This time he heard and got up. He looked at her and said, "I 
 have your address. I will see you again." 
 
 If misery chanced to stand once in his path, he seldom lost sight 
 of it till he had at least tried to bring a smile to its lips, a ray of 
 hope to its eyes. But in the instance of Cuckoo he had other 
 reasons, or might have other reasons, for seeing her in the future. 
 
 " You are sure you have nothing more to say to rne ? " he asked. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No, I don't think," she murmured. 
 
 " Then good-bye." 
 
 He held out his hand. She put hers in it, with an action that was 
 oddly ladylike for Cuckoo. Then she went out, rather awkwardly, 
 in a reaction, to the hall, the doctor following. He opened the door 
 for her, and the mist crawled instantly in. 
 
 " It's a gloomy night," he said. " Very autumnal." 
 
 " Yes, ain't it ? I do hate the nights." 
 
 She spoke the words with an accent that was venomous. 
 
 " C-r-r ! " she said. 
 
 And with that ejaculation, half an uttered shiver, half a muttered 
 curse, she gave herself to the fog, and was gone. 
 
 Dr. Levillier stood for a moment looking into the vague and 
 dreamy darkness. Then he put on his coat and hat, caught up a 
 cab whistle, and, with a breath, sent a shrill and piercing note into 
 the night. Long and mournfully it sounded. And only the moist 
 silence answered like that paradox a voice that is dumb. Again 
 and again the cry went forth, and at last there was an answering 
 rattle. Two bright eyes advanced in the fog very slowly, looking for 
 the sound, it seemed, as for a thing visible. The doctor got into 
 the cab, and set forth in the fog to visit Valentine.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM 
 
 WHEN the doctor arrived at the Victoria Street flat Valentine's man 
 answered his ring. Wade had been with Valentine for many years 
 and was always famous for his great devotion to, and admiration of, 
 his master. Wade was also especially partial as he would have 
 expressed himself to Dr. Levillier, and when he saw who the 
 visitor was, his face relaxed into contentment that strongly suggested 
 a smile. 
 
 " Back at last Wade, you see," the doctor said, cheerfully. " Is 
 Mr. Cresswell in ? " 
 
 " No sir. But I expect him every minute to dress for dinner. 
 He's dining out, and it's near seven now. Will you come in and 
 wait ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The doctor entered and walked into the drawing-room, preceded 
 by Wade, who turned on the light. 
 
 " Why ! what have you been doing to the room ? " the doctor said, 
 looking round in some surprise. " Dear me. It's very much 
 altered." 
 
 In truth, the change in it was marked. The grand piano had 
 vanished, and in its place stood an enormous cabinet made of wood, 
 stained black, and covered with grotesque gold figures, whose un- 
 natural faces were twisted into the expressions of all the vices. 
 Some of these faces smiled, others scowled, others protruded forked 
 tongues like snakes and seemed to hiss along the blackness of the 
 background. The shapes of the figures were voluptuous and yet 
 suggested, rather than fully revealed, deformity, as if the minds of 
 these monsters sought to reveal their distortion by the very lines of 
 their curved and wanton limbs. Upon the top of this cabinet stood 
 a gigantic rose-coloured jar filled with orchids, the Messalinas of the 
 hothouse, whose mauve corruption and spotted faces leered down to 
 greet the gold goblins beneath. It was easy to imagine them 
 whispering to each other soft histories of unknown sins, and jeering 
 at the corrupt respectabilities of London, as they clustered together
 
 THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM 255 
 
 and leaned above the ruddy ramparts of the china, wild flowers as 
 no hedgerow violet, or pale smirking primrose, is ever wild in the 
 farthest wood. 
 
 Glancing from this cabinet, and those that stood upon it, the 
 doctor was aware of a deep and dusty note of red in the room, 
 sounding from carpet and walls, tingling drowsily in the window 
 curtains and in the cushions that lay upon the couches. This was 
 not the crude and cheerful sealing-wax red with which the festive 
 Philistine loves to dye the whiteness of his dining-room walls, cooling 
 its chubby absurdity with panels of that old oak which is for ever 
 new. It was a dim and deep colour, such as a dust-filmed ruby 
 might emit if illuminated by a soft light. And Valentine had 
 shrouded it so adroitly, that though it pervaded the entire room it 
 always seemed distant and remote, a background, vast perhaps, but 
 clouded and shadowed by nearer things. These nearer things were 
 many, for Valentine's original asceticism, which had displayed itself 
 essentially in the slight bareness of his principal sitting-room, had 
 apparently been swept away by a tumultuous greed for ornaments. 
 The room was crowded with furniture, chairs and sofas of the most 
 peculiar shapes, divans and tables, book-stands and settees. One 
 couch was made of wood carved and painted into the semblance of a 
 woman, between whose outstretched arms was placed the pillow to 
 receive the head of one resting there. Another lay on the bent backs 
 of two grinning Indian boys, whose crouching limbs seemed twined 
 into a knot. Upon the tables and cabinets stood a thousand orna- 
 ments, many of them silver toys, sweetmeat boxes, tiny ivory figures, 
 and wriggling atrocities from the East. But what struck the doctor 
 most in the transformation of the room was the panorama presented 
 upon its walls. The pictures that he remembered so well were all 
 gone. The classical figures, the landscapes full of atmosphere and of 
 delicacy had vanished. And from their places leered down jockeys 
 and street-women painted by Jan Van Beers and Degas, Chaplin 
 and Gustave Courbet, while above the mantelpiece, where once had 
 hung " The Merciful Knight," a Cocotte by Leibl smoked a pipe 
 into the room. It seemed incredible that Valentine could be at rest 
 in such a livid chamber, and not even the vague communications of 
 Cuckoo woke in the doctor such a definite and alive sensation of dis- 
 comfort as this vision of outward change that must surely betoken 
 an inward transformation of the most vivid and unusual kind. And 
 everywhere, as a deep and monotonous bell ringing relentlessly 
 through a symphony of discordant and crying passions, there sounded 
 that sinister note of deep and dusty red. Despite his own complete 
 health of mind, and the frantic disquisitions of the morbid Nordau, 
 the little doctor felt as if he heard the colour, as if it spoke from 
 beneath his very feet, as if it sang under his fingers when he laid
 
 256 FLAMES 
 
 them on the brocade of a couch, as if the room palpitated with a 
 heavy music which murmured drowsily in his ears a monotonous 
 song of dull and weary change. oSTo silence had ever before spoken 
 to him so powerfully. He was greatly affected, and did not scruple 
 to show his discomfort to Wade, who waited respectfully by the 
 door. 
 
 " What an alteration ! " he said again, but in a lower and more 
 withdrawn voice. " I cannot recognise the room I once knew and 
 loved." 
 
 " Mr. Valentine has been doing it up, sir." 
 
 " But why, Wade, why ? " 
 
 " I don't know, sir. A fancy, I suppose, sir." 
 
 " An evil one," the doctor murmured to himself. 
 
 He glanced at Wade. It struck him that the man's mind might 
 possibly march with Cuckoo's in detection of his master's transforma- 
 tion, if transformation there were. Wade returned the doctor's 
 glance with calm good breeding. 
 
 " Mr. Valentine is well, I hope, Wade ? " he said. 
 
 " Very well, sir, I believe." 
 
 "And Mr. Addison?" 
 
 " I couldn't quite say, sir, as to that." 
 
 " Do you mean that he looks ill ? " 
 
 " I couldn't say, sir. Mr. Julian don't look quite what he was, to 
 my view, sir." 
 
 " Oh." 
 
 The butler's level voice mingled with the clouded red of the room, 
 and again a prophetic chord of change was struck. 
 
 " Thank you, Wade," said the doctor. 
 
 The man retired, and the doctor was left alone in the empty 
 
 room. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Although he was intensely sensitive, Dr. Levillier was not a man 
 whose nerves played him tricks. He was above all things sane, both 
 in mind and in body, full of a lively calm and a bright power of 
 observation. Indeed, having made the nervous system his special 
 life-study he was perhaps less liable than most other human beings 
 to be carried away by the fancies that many people tabulate as 
 realities, or to be governed by the beings that have no real existence 
 and are merely projected by the action of the imagination. Half at 
 least of his great success in life had been owing to his self-possession, 
 which never verged on hardness, or fused itself with its near relation, 
 stolidity. No man, in fact, was less likely to be upset by the creatures 
 of his mind than he. Yet when Wade had gently closed the drawing- 
 room door, and retreated into his private region, the doctor allowed 
 himself to become the possession of an influence which, to the end of
 
 THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM 257 
 
 his life, he believed to proceed from the empty room in which he sat, 
 not from his mind who sat there. The electric light shone softly 
 beneath the shades that shrouded it, and revealed delicately but 
 clearly every smallest detail of the crowded chamber. 
 
 The hour was quiet. No fire danced in the grate. Dr. Levillier 
 leaned back in his low chair with the intention of composedly await- 
 ing Valentine's return. But the composure which had already been 
 slightly shaken by the visit of the lady of the feathers, and by the 
 words of Wade, was destined to be curiously upset by the motionless 
 vision of the empty room. 
 
 Sitting thus in it alone the doctor examined it with more detail, 
 and with a more definite remembrance of Valentine's habit of mind 
 than before. And he found himself increasingly amazed and con- 
 founded. For not only was the change great, but it was not 
 governed and directed by good taste, or even by any definite taste, 
 either good or bad. A number of people might have devised the 
 arrangement and selection of the mass of furniture and ornaments, 
 and have thrown things clown here and there in sheer defiance of 
 each other's predilections. Only in the setting, the red setting of 
 the picture, was there evidence of the presence of a presiding genius. 
 In that red setting the doctor supposed that he was to read 
 Valentine. He could read nobody in the rest of the room, or 
 perhaps everybody whose taste refused purity and calm as foolish 
 Dead Sea growths. Some of the silver ornaments might have 
 assembled in the garish boudoir of a Parisian fille de joie as the 
 carved woman might have been the couch to which Thais tempted 
 Paphnuce, and the Indian boys the lifeless slaves of Aphrodite. 
 The jockeys on the wall would have been at home on the lid of a 
 cigar-box belonging to any average member of the jeunesse doree of 
 any Continental city, while an etching of Felicien Hops that 
 lounged upon a side-table would have been eminently suitable to the 
 house of a certain celebrity nicknamed the " Queen of Diamonds." 
 The golden figures that sprawled over the huge cabinet must have 
 delighted certain modern artists, whose rickety fingers can only 
 portray in line a fanciful corruption totally devoid of relation to 
 humanity, but such frail spectres would have shrunk with horror 
 from certain robust works of art, over which the most healthy of the 
 beefy brigade might have smacked large lips for hours. The room 
 was in fact one quarrel between the masculine and feminine, the 
 corrupt "modern "and the flagrant Philistine, the vaguely suggestive 
 nineteenth-century Athenian and the larky and unbridled school- 
 boy. A neurotic woman seemed to have been at work here, a sordid 
 youth there. On a side- table the hysterical man of our civilisation 
 fought a duel in taste with some Amazon whose kept vow had evi- 
 dently wrought a cancer in her mind. In every corner there was 
 
 K
 
 358 FLAMES 
 
 the clash of civil war. Yet there was always the cloudy red, visible 
 through the lattice-work of decoration, as the blue sky is visible 
 through the lattice-work of a Tadema interior. In that clouded red 
 the doctor felt himself reading a new yet powerful Valentine, and 
 in the grotesque orchids leaning their mis-shapen chins upon the 
 rosy rim of their vase. Those flowers had evil faces, and they seemed 
 strangely at home in the silent room where no clock ticked and no 
 caged bird twittered. Only the red cloud spoke like a dull voice, and 
 Dr. Levillier sat and listened to it, until he felt as if he began to 
 know a new Valentine. There is an influence that emanates from 
 lifeless things, strong, subtle, and penetrating; an influence in form, 
 in colour, in scent, even in juxtaposition. And such influence is like 
 a voice speaking to the soul. There was a voice in that empty room ; 
 and the words it uttered stirred the doctor to a greater surprise, a 
 greater dread than the words of Cuckoo. Her painted lips related 
 that which might well be a legend of her fancy or of her bate. This 
 voice related a reality and no legend. 
 
 As the doctor sat there he conversed of many strange and evil 
 matters, of many discomforting affairs. He was the interrogator, 
 the perpetual anxious questioner, and tbe voice in the empty room 
 gave vague and sinister answers. That was a terrible catechism, a 
 catechism of the devil, not of God. Question and answer flowed on, 
 and in the doctor's soul the anxiety and the distress ever deepened. 
 Nor could he control their development, although at moments his 
 common sense broke into the catechism like a cool voice from with- 
 out, and sought to interrupt it finally. But the twig could not stay 
 the torrent. And the darkness deepened, darkness in which there 
 was a vision of fire, the vision of a man, fantastic and menacing. 
 He was the genius of this room. This room sang of him. Yes, 
 even now the twisted silver goblins, the curved monstrosities on the 
 cabinet, the crouched Indian boys, the leering pictures, and always 
 the dull red cloud on wall and carpet, cushion and hanging. And 
 then a strange deception overtook the doctor and shook his usually 
 steady nerves. The red cloud seemed to his observing eyes to tremble, 
 like a flame shaken in a breath of wind, and to glow all around 
 him. He looked again, endeavouring to laugh at his delusion. But 
 the glow deepened and there was surely distinct movement. Every- 
 where on walls, floor, hangings, couches, faint, thin shadows took 
 shape, grew more definite. He watched them and saw that they 
 were tiny flames, glowing red relieved against the red. It was as if 
 he sat in the midst of a ghostly furnace ; for these flames had no 
 pleasant crackling voices. Silently they burned, and fluttered up- 
 ward noiselessly. He saw them move this way and that. Some 
 leaped up ; others bent sideways ; others wavered uncertainly, as if 
 their desire were incomplete, and their intention undecided. The
 
 THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM 259 
 
 doctor stared upon them, and listened for the chorus that fires sing 
 to tremble and to murmur from their lips. Yet they sang no chorus, 
 but always, in a ghostly silence, aspired around him. He knew him- 
 self to be the victim of a delusion. He knew what he would have 
 said to a patient seeking his aid against such a deception of the 
 senses. In his common sense he knew this, and yet he gradually 
 lost the notion that he was being deceived, and allowed himself to 
 drift, as he had seen others drift, into the fancy that he was holding 
 strange intercourse with the actual. These flames were real. They 
 had forms. They moved. They enclosed him in a circle. They 
 embraced him. As he watched them he fancied that they longed to 
 be near to him, and and yes so ran his thoughts to communicate 
 something to him, to sigh out their fiery hearts on his. They 
 trembled as if convulsed with emotion, with desire. They tried to 
 escape from the sinister red background that held them in its grasp 
 as in a leash. The doctor was impelled ardently to believe that they 
 yearned to find voices and to utter some word. And then, on a 
 sudden, he recalled Julian's declaration on the night of Valentine's 
 trance that he had seen a flame shine from his friend's lips and fade 
 away in the darkness. He recalled, too, Julian's question about 
 death-beds. Was the soul of man a flame ? And, if so, were these 
 flames many souls, or one soul reproduced on all sides by his excite- 
 ment, and by the intensity of his gaze after them ? 
 
 They burned more clearly. Their forms were more defined. Then 
 suddenly they grew vague, blurred, faint all around him. They 
 faded. They died into the red of the room. And once more the 
 doctor sat alone. 
 
 He listened and heard the click of a key in the front door. And 
 then suddenly the horror that he had felt long ago, on the night 
 when he was followed in Regent Street, once more possessed him. 
 He got on his feet to face it, and, as the drawing-room door was 
 pushed slowly open, faced Valentine.
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE DOCTOR MEETS TWO STRANGERS 
 
 UPON seeing the doctor Valentine paused on the threshold of the 
 door, and, as he paused, the doctor's horror fled. 
 
 *' Valentine," he said, holding out his hand. 
 
 " Doctor." 
 
 Their hands met and their eyes. And then Levillier had an 
 instant sensation that he shook hands with a stranger. He looked 
 upon the face of Valentine certainly, but he was aware of a subtle, 
 yet large, change in it. All the features were surely coarser, 
 heavier. There was a line or two near the eyes, a loose fulness 
 about the mouth. Yet, as he looked again, he could not be certain 
 if it were so, or if his memory were at fault, groping after a 
 transformation that was not there. The words he now said 
 truthfully expressed his real feeling in the matter. 
 
 " You are quite a stranger to me," he said. 
 
 Valentine accepted the remark in the conventional sense. 
 
 " Yes, quite a stranger. We have not met for an age." 
 
 The voice was cool and careless. 
 
 " I have been waiting for you," the doctor went on, still unable to 
 feel at his ease. " By the way, how you have changed your room." 
 
 " Yes. Do you like it ? " 
 
 "Well, frankly, no." 
 
 " I am sorry for that," Valentine replied, drawing off his gloves. 
 " Julian chose a great many of the things in it." 
 
 " Julian ! Did he devise the colour scheme ? " 
 
 " That curious red ? No, that was my idea. But he had a great 
 deal to do with the new furniture and the ornaments." 
 
 " I should have supposed many minds had been at work here." 
 
 Valentine smiled, and the doctor was convinced that both his 
 mouth and eyes had altered in expression. 
 
 " That's true in a way," he answered. " Julian has had various 
 advisers of the feminine gender. The love of the moment is visible 
 all over this room. That is why it amuses me. Those silver 
 ornaments were chosen by a pretty Circassian. A Parisian picked
 
 THE DOCTOR MEETS TWO STRANGERS 261 
 
 out that black cabinet in a warehouse of Boulogne. A little Italian 
 insisted upon that vulgar painted sofa and so on." 
 
 " Why do you allow such people to have any intercourse with a 
 room of yours ? " 
 
 "Oh, it amused Julian, and I was tired of my room as it was. 
 After ' The Merciful Knight ' went to be cleaned, I resolved on a 
 change." 
 
 " For the worse." 
 
 "Is it for the worse ? " 
 
 " Surely." 
 
 The eyes of the two men challenged each other. Valentine's 
 glance was carelessly impudent and hardy. The deference which he 
 had always given to the doctor was gone. If it had been genuine 
 it was dead. If it had only been a mask it had apparently served 
 its purpose and was now contemptuously thrown aside. Dr. 
 Levillier was deeply moved by the transformation. His friend had 
 become a stranger during the interval of his absence. The man he 
 admired was less admirable than of old. He recognised that, 
 although he was not yet fully aware of the transformation of 
 Valentine. Before he left England he vaguely suspected a chaiage. 
 Now the change hit him full in the heart. So acute was it that, in 
 an age of miracles, he could well have believed Cuckoo Bright's 
 disjointed statement. Valentine was, to his mind, even in some 
 strange way to his eye, at this moment no longer Valentine. He 
 was talking with a man whose features he knew certainly, but 
 whose mind he did not know, had never known. And his former 
 resolution to watch Valentine closely was consolidated. It became 
 a passion. The doctor woke in the man. Nor was the old friend 
 and lover of humanity lulled to sleep. 
 
 " How is Julian ? '' the doctor asked, dropping his eyes. 
 
 " Very well, I think. He will be here directly. He's coming to 
 fetch me. We are dining at the Prince's in Piccadilly in the same 
 painty. That reminds me, 1 must dress. But do stay, and have 
 some coffee." 
 
 " No coffee, thank you." 
 
 " But you will stay and see Julian. I dai-esny ho will be here 
 early." 
 
 " Yes, I will stay. I should like to meet him." 
 
 After a word or two moi'e, Valentine vanished to dress, and the 
 doctor was once more alone. He was much perplexed and saddened, 
 but keenly interested too, and, getting up from the chair in which he 
 had been sitting, he moved about the grotesque and vulgar room, 
 threading his way through the graceless furniture with a silent and 
 gentle caution. And as he walked meditatively he remembered a 
 conversation he had held with Valentine long ago, when the latter
 
 2 6 2 FLAMES 
 
 had spoken complainingly of the tyranny of an instinctive purity. 
 The very words he had used came back to him now : 
 
 " The minds of men are often very carefully, very deftly poised, 
 and a little push can send them one way or the other. Remember 
 if you lose heaven, the space once filled by heaven will not be left 
 empty." 
 
 Had not the little push been given ? Had not heaven been lost ? 
 That was the problem. But Dr. Levillier, if he saw a little way 
 into effect, was quite at a loss as to cause. And already he had a 
 suspicion that the change in Valentine was not quite on the lines of 
 one of those strange and dreadful human changes familiar to any 
 observant man. This suspicion, already latent, and roused, perhaps, 
 in the first instance long ago by the mystery of Rip's avoidance of 
 his master, and by the shattering of Valentine's musical powers, 
 was confirmed in the strongest way when Julian appeared a few 
 minutes later. Yet the change in Julian would have seemed to 
 most people far more renwkable. 
 
 He came into the drawing-room rather hastily, in evening dress 
 with a coat over it. Wade had forewarned him of the doctor's 
 presence, and he entered speaking loud words of welcome, and 
 holding out a greeting hand. The too ready voice and almost 
 premature hand betokened his latent uneasiness. Vice makes some 
 people unconscious, some self-conscious. J ulian belonged at present to 
 the latter tribe. Whether he was thoroughly aware of self-altei-ation 
 or not, he evidently stirred uneasily under an expectation of the 
 doctor's surprise. This drove his voice to loud notes and his manner 
 to a boisterous heartiness, belied by the shifting glance of his brown 
 eyes. 
 
 The doctor was astounded as he looked at him. Yet the change 
 here was far less inexplicable than that other change in Valentine. 
 Its mystery was the familiar mystery of humanity. Its horror was 
 the horror that AVO all accept as one of the elements of life. Deteri- 
 oration, however rapid, however complete, does not come upon us 
 like a ghost in the night to puzzle us absolutely. It is not alto- 
 gether out of the range of our experience. Most men have seen a 
 man crumble gradually, through the action of some vice, as a wall 
 crumbles through the action of time, fall into dust and decay, filter 
 away into the weed-choked ditches of utter ruin and degradation. 
 Most women have watched some woman slip from the purity and 
 hope and innocence of girlhood into the faded hunger and painted 
 and wrinkled energies of animalism. Such tragedies are no more 
 unfamiliar to us than are the tragedies of Shakespeare. And such 
 a tragedy not complete yet, but at a third-act point, perhaps now 
 faced Dr. Levillier in Julian. The wall that had been so straight 
 and trim, so finely built and carefully preserved, was crumbling fast
 
 THE DOCTOR MEETS TWO STRANGERS 263 
 
 to decay. A ragged youth slunk in the face, beggared of virtue, of 
 true cheerfulness, of all lofty aspiration and high intent. It was 
 youth still, for nothing can entirely massacre that gift of the gods, 
 except inevitable Time. But it was youth sadder than age, because 
 it had run forward to meet the wearinesses that dog the steps of 
 age but that should never be at home with age's enemy. Julian 
 had been the leaping child of healthy energy. He was now quite 
 obviously the servant of lassitude. His foot left the ground as if 
 with a tired reluctance, and his hands were fidgety yet nerveless. 
 The eyes, that looked at the doctor and looked away by swift turns, 
 burned with a haggard eagerness unutterably different from their 
 former bright vivacity. Beneath them wrinkles crept on the puffy 
 white face as worms about a corpse. Busy and tell-tale, they did 
 not try to conceal the story of the body into which they had prema- 
 turely cut themselves. Nor did Julian's features choose to back up 
 any reserve his mind might possibly feel about acknowledging the 
 consummate alteration of his life. They proclaimed, as from a watch 
 tower, the arrival of enemies. The cheeks were no longer firm, but 
 heavy and flaccid. The mouth was deformed by the down-drawn 
 looseness of the sensualist, and the complexion beaconed with an 
 unnatural scarlet that was a story to be read by every street boy. 
 
 Yet, even so, the doctor, as he looked pitifully and with a gnaw- 
 ing grief upon Julian, felt not the mysterious thrill communicated 
 to him by Valentine. These two men, these old-time friends of his, 
 were both in a sense strangers. But it was as if he had at least 
 heard much of Julian, knew much of him, understood him, compre- 
 heiided exactly why he was a stranger. Valentine was the total 
 stranger, the unknown, the undivined. 
 
 Long ago the doctor had foreseen the possibility of the Julian who 
 now stood before him. He had never foreseen the possibility of the 
 new Valentine. The one change was summed up in an instant. 
 The other walked in utter mystery. The doctor had been swift to 
 notice Julian's furtive glance, and was equally swift in banishing 
 all trace of surprise from his own manner. So they met with a fair 
 show of cordiality, and Julian developed a little of his old cheer- 
 fulness. 
 
 " Val's dressing," he said. " Well, there's plenty of time. By the 
 way, how's your Russian, Doctor?" 
 
 " Better." 
 
 " You've cured him ! Bravo ! " 
 
 " I hope I have pei'suaded him to cure himself." 
 
 Julian looked up hastily. 
 
 " Oh, that sort of complaint, was it ? " 
 
 He laughed, not without a tinge of bitterness, 
 
 " Perhaps he doesn't want to be cured."
 
 264 FLAMES 
 
 11 1 have persuaded him to want to be, I think." 
 
 " Isn't that rather a priest's office ? " Julian asked. 
 
 The doctor noticed that a very faint hostility had- crept into his 
 manner. 
 
 Why ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Such an illness is a matter of temperament, 
 I daresay, and the clergy tinker at our temperaments, don't they, 
 while you doctors tinker at our bodies." 
 
 " A nerve doctor has as much to do with mind as body, and no 
 doctor can possibly do much good if he entirely ignores the mind. 
 But you knoAv my theories." 
 
 " Yes. They make you clergyman and doctor in one, a dangerous 
 man." 
 
 And he laughed again, jarringly, and shifted in his seat, looking 
 around him with quick eyes. 
 
 " What do you think of the room ? " he said abruptly. 
 
 " I think it entirely spoilt and ruined," the doctor answered, 
 gravely. 
 
 " It's altered, certainly." 
 
 " Yes, for the worse. It was a beautiful room, one of the most 
 beautiful in London." 
 
 A momentary change came over Julian. He dropped his hard 
 manner, which seemed an assumption to cover inward discomfort or 
 shame. 
 
 " Yes," he said almost regretfully. " I suppose it was. But it's 
 gayer now, got more things in it. Full of memories this room 
 is." 
 
 The last remark was evidently put forth as a feeler, to find out 
 what Valentine had been talking about Dr. Levillier was habitually 
 truthful, although he could be very reserved if occasion seemed to 
 require it. At present he preferred to be frank. 
 
 " Memories of women," he remarked. 
 
 " Oh, you've heard ? " 
 
 " That several tastes helped to make this room the pandemonium 
 which it is. Yes." 
 
 " You're severe, Doctor." 
 
 " Perhaps you like the room for its memories, Addison." 
 
 Julian looked doubtful. 
 
 " I don't know. I suppose so," he hesitated. 
 
 " By the way, is there among these vagrant memories of Cir- 
 cassians, Greeks, and Italians anything chosen by Cuckoo Bright ? " 
 
 Julian started violently. 
 
 " Cuckoo Bright," he exclaimed, " what do you know of her ? " 
 
 As he spoke Valentine strolled into the room dressed for dinner. He 
 was drawing on a pair of lavender gloves, and looked down sideways
 
 THE DOCTOR MEETS TWO STRANGERS 265 
 
 at his coat to see if his buttonhole of three very pale and very per- 
 fectly matched pink roses was quite straight. 
 
 " Cuckoo Bright ? " he echoed. " Does everybody know her, then ? 
 How came she into your strict life, Doctor? " 
 
 Dr. Levillier noticed that Valentine, like Julian, carefully set him 
 aside as a being in some different sphere, much as a great many 
 people insist on setting clergymen. This fact alone showed that he 
 was talking with two strangers, and seemed to give the lie to long 
 years of the most friendly and almost brotherly intercourse. 
 
 " Is my life so strict, then ? " he asked gently. 
 
 " I think little Cuckoo would call it so, eh, Julian ? " 
 
 He glanced at Julian and laughed softly, still drawing on his 
 gloves. In evening dress he looked curiously young and handsome 
 and facially less altered than the doctor had at first supposed him to 
 be. Still there was a difference even in the face ; but it was so 
 slight that only a keen observer would have noticed it. The almost 
 frigid and glacial purity had floated away from it like a lovely cloud. 
 Now it was unveiled, and there was something hard and staring about 
 it. The features were still beautiful, but their ivory lustre was gone. 
 A line was pencilled, too, here and there. Yet the doctor could 
 understand that even Valentine's o\vn man might not appreciate the 
 difference. The manner, however, was more violently altered. It 
 was that which made the doctor think again and intensely of Cuckoo's 
 vague yet startling statement. 
 
 " Where did you meet Cuckoo, Doctor ? " 
 
 It was Julian who spoke, and the words were uttered with some 
 excitement. 
 
 " I have met her," Levillier replied. 
 
 It was sufficiently evident that he did not intend to say where. 
 
 But Valentine broke in : 
 
 " She has called on you again, then, and this time found you at 
 home. I scarcely thought she would take the ti-ouble." 
 
 " Again ! " the doctor said. 
 
 " Yes. One evening when you were away I saw her at your door 
 and ventured to give her a piece of advice." 
 
 " And that was ? " 
 
 " Not to trouble you. I told her your patients were of a different 
 class." 
 
 " In that case I fear you misrepresented me, Cressvvell. I do not 
 choose my patients. But Cuckoo Bright is no patient of mine." 
 
 " If she's not ill," Julian said, " why should she go to you ? " 
 
 " That is her affair, and mine,'' the doctor answered, in his quietest 
 and most finishing tone. 
 
 Julian accepted the delicate little snub quietly, but Valentine 
 sneered.
 
 266 FLAMES 
 
 " Perhaps she went to seek you in your capacity of a doctor of 
 the mind rather than of the body. Perhaps, after all, she sought 
 your aid." 
 
 As he spoke the doctor could not help having driven into him the 
 conviction that the words were spoken with meaning, that Valentine 
 knew the nature of Cuckoo's mission to Harley Street. There rose 
 in him suddenly a violent sensation of enmity against Valentine. 
 He strove to beat it down, but he could not. Never had he felt 
 such enmity against any man. It was like the fury so obviously felt 
 by Cuckoo. The doctor was ashamed to be so unreasonable, and 
 believed for a moment that the poor street girl had absolutely 
 swayed him, and predisposed him to this animus that surged up over 
 his normal charity and good, clear impulses of tenderness for all that 
 lived. 
 
 " My aid," he said and the turmoil within him caused him to 
 speak with unusual sternness. " And if she did, what then ? " 
 
 " Poor Cuckoo ! " Julian said, and there was a touch of real tender- 
 ness in his voice. 
 
 " Oh, I have nothing to say against it," Valentine replied, button- 
 ing slowly and carefully the last button of the second glove. " Only, 
 Cuckoo Bright is beyond aid. She can neither help herself nor 
 any one else." 
 
 " How do you know, Cresswell ? " 
 
 " Because I have observed, Doctor. Once I, too, thought that 
 even Cuckoo might might well, have some fight in her. I know 
 now that she has not. Her corruption of body has led to worse than 
 corruption of mind, to corruption of will. Cuckoo Bright is as 
 helpless as is a seabird with a shot through its wings upon the sea. 
 She can only drift in the present die in the future." 
 
 The doctor listened silently. But Julian said again : 
 
 " Poor, poor Cuckoo ! " 
 
 The exclamation seemed to irritate Valentine, for he caught up his 
 cloak and cried : 
 
 " Bah ! Let's forget her. Doctor, we must say good-night. We are 
 due at the Prince's. It has been good to meet you again." 
 
 The last words sounded like the bitterest sarcasm.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DEATH OF RIP 
 
 ALTHOUGH Dr. Levillier's visit to Victoria Street had been such a 
 painful one he had no intention whatever of letting the two young 
 men drift away out of his acquaintance. He wanted especially to be 
 with them in public places, and to see for himself, if possible, whether 
 Cuckoo's accusation against Valentine were true. That a frightful 
 fliange had taken place in Julian's life, and that he was rapidly 
 sinking in a slough of wholly inordinate dissipation was clear enough. 
 But did Valentine, this new strange Valentine, lead him or merely 
 go with him, or stand aloof smiling at him and letting him take his 
 own way like a foolish boy ? That question the doctor must decide 
 for himself. He could only decide it satisfactorily by ignoring 
 Valentine's impertinence to himself, and endeavouring to resume his 
 former relations of intimacy with these old friends who were strangers. 
 He began by asking them both to dinner. Rather to his surprise 
 they accepted and came. The mastiffs were shut close in their den 
 below lest they should repeat their performance of the summer. 
 The dinner passed off with some apparent cheerfulness, but it served 
 to show the doctor the gulf that was now fixed between him and his 
 former dear associates. He was on one shore, they on another. 
 Their faces were altered as if by the desolate influence of distance. 
 Even their voices sounded strange and far away. Great spaces had 
 widened between their minds and his. He endeavoured at first to 
 cover those spaces, to bridge that gulf ; but he soon came to learn the 
 vanity of such an attempt. He could not go to them nor would they 
 return to him. He could only pretend to bridge the gulf by the 
 exercise of a suave diplomacy, and by carefully banishing from his 
 manner every trace of that dispraising elderliness which seems to the 
 young the essence of prudery arising, like an appalling Phoenix, from 
 the ashes of past imprudence. In this way he drew a little nearer to 
 J uliau, who obviously feared at first to suffer condemnation at his 
 hands, but, finding only geniality, lost his uneasiness and suffered 
 himself to become more natural. 
 
 But this thawing of Julian, the quick response of humanity to the
 
 268 FLAMES 
 
 adroit treatment of it, only threw into harsher relief the immobility 
 of Valentine, and to him the doctor drew no nearer, but seemed, with 
 each moment, more distant, more absolutely divided from him. And 
 the gulf between them was full of icebergs, which filled the atmosphere 
 with the breath of a deadly frost. This was what the doctor felt. 
 What Valentine, the new Valentine, felt could not be ascertained. 
 He wore a brilliant mask, on whose gay mouth the society smile was 
 singularly well painted. He wore a manner edged with tinkling 
 bells of brilliancy. Happiness and ease beamed in his eyes. Yet 
 his look, his voice, his smile, his gaiety chilled the doctor and set 
 him mentally shivering. And with each bright saying and merry 
 laugh he struck a blow upon the former friendship. The doctor 
 fancied he could actually hear the sound of the hammer at its work. 
 
 The simile of the hammer was peculiarly consonant with his present 
 view of the new Valentine, for, despite the lattev's gaiety, ease, and 
 self -possession, his smiling sociability and expansiveness, the doctor 
 was perpetually conscious of a lurking violence, an incessant and 
 forcible exigence in him. It might be a fancy, but the doctor was 
 not as a rule the prey of fancies. Yet Valentine gave no outward 
 hint of inward turmoil. Rather did the doctor divine it as by a 
 curious intuition that guided him to that which lay in hiding. And 
 it was this apprehension of a deep violence and peculiar, excessive 
 animation in Valentine that woke the doctor's deepest wonder, and 
 set that gulf between them so widely. For all violence had once 
 been so specially abhorred by Valentine. He had so loved and 
 sought all calm. The calm, he had often said, were the true aristo- 
 crats of life. Fury and any wild movements of the passions were of 
 the gutter. 
 
 That dinner was returned. The doctor dined with Valentine and 
 Julian more than once, and accompanied them to the theatre. I !ut 
 he was unable to make certain of Valentine's precise attitude towards 
 Julian, although he saw easily that the influence of the one over the 
 other had rather waxed than waned. This being so, it followed that 
 Julian, having completely changed, the influence that guided him 
 must have completely changed also. The pendulum had swung 
 back. That often happened in the record of men's lives. But not 
 in such a way as this. The doctor, like Cuckoo, recognised the 
 existence of a mystery. But he was by no means prepared to accept 
 her fantastic and ignorantly vague explanation of it. That was a 
 wild fable, a fairy tale for a child, not a reasonable elucidation for a 
 man and a doctor. The most curious thing of all was that she 
 declared that Valentine had actually told her the truth about the 
 matter, knowing that she could not understand it. The doctor 
 resolved to see her later, and to question her more minutely on this 
 point. Meanwhile he began to watch Valentine carefully, and with
 
 THE DEATH OF RIP 269 
 
 the most sedulous attention to every detail and nuaiwe of manner, 
 look, and word. He understood Julian. His sad case was to an 
 extent due to his long happiness and freedom from the bondage in 
 which so many men move,wearily. It was as if his passions had been 
 dammed up by the original influence of Valentine. Through the 
 years, behind the height of the dam, the waters had been rising, 
 accumulating, pressing. Suddenly the dam was removed, and a 
 devastating flood swept forth, uncontrollable, headlong, and furious. 
 Julian needed rescue, but the only way to rescue seemed to lie 
 through Valentine, within whose circle of influence he was so closely 
 bound. The mystery of Valentine must be laid bare. 
 
 And so the doctor watched and wondered, bringing all his know- 
 ledge of the world and of the minds and bodies of men to help him. 
 
 And meanwhile the lady of the feathers was seen nightly in 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 And Julian went his way steadily downwards. 
 
 * -::- *- * * #- * 
 
 One night there was a flicker of snow over London, and the air 
 was chill with the breath of coming winter. The dreary light of 
 snow illumined the faces of all who walked in the streets, painting 
 the brightest cheeks with a murky grey pigment, and making the 
 sweetest eyes hollow and expressive of depression. Heavily the 
 afternoon went by and the evening came sharply, like a blow. 
 
 Dr. Levillier was engaged to dine with Julian and Valentine at 
 the former's room in Mayfair. Of late Valentine had seemed to 
 seek him out, and especially to enjoy seeing him in the company of 
 Julian. And the doctor fancied he detected something of a triumph 
 that was almost blatant in Valentine's manner when they three were 
 together, and when the doctor's eyes rested sorrowfully upon that 
 crumbling wall, which had once been so fair and strong. Of late, 
 too, the doctor, ever watching for the signs of change in Valentine, 
 had grown more and more aware that he was an utterly, through 
 and through, different man from the youth men had called the 
 Saint of Victoria Street. He felt the transformation to be inhuman, 
 and, by slow and reluctant degrees, he was beginning to form an 
 opinion. It was only in embryo as yet, a shadow hesitating in 
 the background of his mind. He shrank from holding it. He 
 shuddered at its coming. Yet, if it were right, it might explain 
 everything, might make what was otherwise incredible clear and 
 comprehensible. 
 
 Was this vile change in his friend caused by a radical distortion 
 of mind ? Was Valentine a madman ? 
 
 Lunacy turns temperaments upside down, transforms the lamb 
 into the tiger, the saint into the murderer. 
 
 Was Valentine then mad, and was the monstrous distortion of his
 
 270 FLAMES 
 
 brain playing upon the life of Julian, who, like the rest of the world, 
 believed him sane ? 
 
 The thought came to the doctor, and once it had been born it was 
 often near to him. Yet he would not encourage it unless he could 
 rest it upon facts. That a man should change was not a proof of 
 his madness, however unaccountable the change might seem. The 
 doctor watched Valentine, and was compelled to admit to himself 
 that in every way Valentine seemed perfectly sane. His cynicism, 
 his love of ordinary life, his toleration of common and wretched 
 people, might seem amazing to one who had known him well years 
 ago, but there were many perfectly sane men of the same habits and 
 opinions, of the same modes of speech and of action. If the doctoi V 
 strange thought were to become a definite belief, much more was 
 needed, something at least of proof, something that would carry 
 conviction not merely to the imagination, but to the cool and search- 
 ing intellect. 
 
 On this night of the first snow the doctor's thought moved a step 
 forward towards conviction. 
 
 When he arrived at Julian's rooms, he was greeted by Valentine 
 alone. 
 
 " Our host has deserted us," he said, leading the doctor in to the 
 tire. 
 
 "What, is he ill?" 
 
 " He has not returned. He went away last night on a quest of 
 a certain pleasure. This afternoon he wired asking me to entertain 
 you. He was unavoidably detained, but hoped to arrive in time for 
 dessert. His present love's arms are very strong. They keep him." 
 
 " Oh ! " the doctor said, slipping cut of his cloak, " we dine here 
 then?" 
 
 " We do, alone. I don't think we've dined alone since Julian and 
 I came back from abroad, and you deserted your Russian." 
 
 " No. I will consider myself your guest." 
 
 It struck the doctor that here was an excellent opportunity for 
 confirming or abandoning his dreary suspicion. Alone with 
 Valentine he would be able to lead the conversation in any direction 
 he chose. He was glad that Julian had not returned, and resolved 
 to use this opportunity. 
 
 They went into the dining-room and sat down to dinner. Valen- 
 tine was apparently rather amused at playing the host in another 
 man's house. It was novel and entertained him. He was obviously 
 in splendid spirits, ate with good appetite and drank the champagne 
 with an elation not unlike the elation of the dancing wine. More 
 than once, too, he alluded to Julian's absence and probable occupa- 
 tion, as if both the one and the other were bouquets in his cap, or 
 laurels in some crown which he alone could wear. Dr. Levillier
 
 THE DEATH OF RIP 271 
 
 noticed it and sought to draw him on in that direction, and to lead 
 him to some open acknowledgment of his share in Julian's rapidly pro- 
 ceeding ruin. But Valentine changed the conversation into another 
 channel without apparently observing his companion's intention, or 
 deliberately frustrating it. He chattered of a thousand things, 
 mostly of topics that are the common converse of London dinner 
 tables. The doctor joined in. To a listening stranger the two men 
 would have seemed old friends, pleasantly at ease and secure with 
 one another. Yet the doctor was doing detective duty all the time. 
 And Valentine ! was he not secretly revelling in that destruction of 
 a human soul that was galloping apace ? 
 
 Course succeeded course. At last dessert was placed upon the 
 table. Valentine raised his glass with a smile : 
 
 " Let us drink the health of Julian's absence," he said. " For 
 you and I get on so perfectly together." 
 
 " Rather a cruel toast in Julian's own rooms," said the doctor. 
 
 " Ah, but he's happy enough where he is." 
 
 " You know where that is ? " 
 
 "No I only suspect," Valentine cried gaily. "In the wilds of 
 South Kensington, in a tiny house, all Morris tapestry and Burne- 
 Jones stained glass, dwells the latest siren who has been calling to 
 our Ulysses. He is there, I suspect. Wait a moment though. His 
 telegram might tell us. Where was it sent from ? " 
 
 He sprang up, went to the writing-table near the window, and 
 caught up the crumpled thin paper that he had flung down there. 
 Smoothing it out, he read, holding the paper close to a wax 
 candle : 
 
 " Handed in at the Marylebone Road, office at 5.50." 
 
 His brow clouded. 
 
 " Marylebone Road," he repeated, looking at the doctor. ""Why 
 should he be there ? " 
 
 His words immediately set the doctor on the track. 
 
 " Does not Cuckoo Bright live there ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes, she does." 
 
 " May he not be with her ? " 
 
 Valentine had dropped the telegram. He was standing at the 
 table, and he pressed his two fists, clenched, upon the white cloth. 
 
 " I have told him he must give Cuckoo up," he said, almost in a 
 snarl. 
 
 The doctor glanced at him quickly. 
 
 " You have told him ? " 
 
 "Advised him, I mean." 
 
 " You dislike her ? " 
 
 " I ! No. How can one dislike a painted rag ? How can one 
 dislike a pink and white shell that holds nothing ? "
 
 272 FLAMES 
 
 11 Every body holds a soul. Every human shell holds its murmur 
 of the great sea." 
 
 " The body of Cuckoo then contains a soul that's cankered with 
 disease, inoth-eaten with corruption, worn away to an atom not 
 bigger than a grain of dust. I would not call it a soul at all." 
 
 He spoke with more than a shade of excitement, and the gay ex- 
 pression of his face had changed to an uneasy anger. The doctor 
 observed it, and rejoined quietly : 
 
 " How can you answer for another person's soul ? We see the 
 body, it is true. But are we to divine the soul from that wholly 
 and solely ? " 
 
 " The soul ! Let us call it the will." 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " The will of man is the soul of man. It is possible to judge the 
 will by the body. The will of such a woman as Cuckoo Bright is a. 
 negative quantity. Her body is the word ' weakness,' written in flesh 
 and blood for all to read." 
 
 "Ah, you speak of her will for herself," the doctor said, thinking 
 of Cuckoo's broken wail to him, as she sat on that autumn evening 
 in his consulting-room. " But what of her will for another, her soul 
 for another ? " 
 
 He had spoken partly at random, partly led by the thought, the 
 suspicion that Cuckoo's abandoned body held a fine love for Julian. 
 He was by no means prepared for the striking effect his remark had 
 upon Valentine. No sooner were the words spoken than a strong 
 expression of fear was visible in Valentine's face, of terror so keen 
 that it killed the anger which had preceded it. He trembled as he 
 stood, till the table shook ; and, apparently noticing this, and wishing 
 to conceal so extreme an exhibition of emotion, he slid hastily into a 
 seat. 
 
 " Her will for another," he repeated, " for another. What do you 
 mean by that ? where's the other then ? who is it ? " 
 The doctor looked upon him keenly. 
 
 " Anybody for whom she has any desire, any solicitude, or any 
 love you, myself, or Julian." 
 
 " Julian ! " Valentine repeated unsteadily. " Julian ! you mean to 
 
 say you " 
 
 He pulled himself together abruptly. 
 
 " Doctor," he said, " forgive me for saying that you are scarcely 
 talking sense when you assume that such a creature us Cuckoo 
 Bright can really love anybody. And even if she did, Julian's the 
 last man oh, but the whole thing is absurd. Why should you and 
 I talk about a street girl, a drab whose life begins and ends in the 
 gutter? Julian will be here directly. Meanwhile let us have 
 coffee."
 
 THE DEATH OF RIP 273 
 
 He pushed his cigarette ease over to the doctor, and touched the 
 bell. 
 
 " Coffee ! " lie said when Julian's man answered it. 
 
 The door stood open, and as the man murmured, " Yes, sir," a dog 
 close by howled shrilly. 
 
 The ncise diverted Valentine's attention, and roused him from the 
 agitation into which he had fallen. He glanced at the doctor. 
 
 " Rip," he said. 
 
 " Howling for his master," said the doctor. 
 
 " Wait a moment," Valentine said to the man, who was preparing 
 to leave the room. Then, to the doctor : 
 
 " I am his master." 
 
 " To be sure," rejoined the doctor, who had in truth for the 
 moment forgotten the fact. 
 
 So long a time had elapsed since the little dog took up his residence 
 with Julian. 
 
 " You think he's howling for me ? " Valentine said. 
 
 " I was thinking of Julian at the moment." 
 
 " And what do you say now ? Still that he is howling for his 
 master ? " 
 
 The dog's voice was heard again. It sounded almost like a shriek 
 of fear. 
 
 " No," the doctor replied, wondering what intention was growing 
 in Valentine's face. 
 
 " Oh ! " Valentine said curtly. 
 
 He turned to the man. 
 
 " Bateman, bring Kip in here to us." 
 
 The man hesitated. 
 
 " I don't think he'll come, sir." 
 
 " I said, bring him to us." 
 
 The man went out, as if with reluctance. Valentine turned to 
 the doctor. 
 
 " We spoke about soul, that is will, just now," he said. " To deny 
 the will is death, despite Schopenhauer. Death ? Worse than death 
 cowardice. To assert the will is life and victory. With each 
 assertion a man steps nearer to a god. With each conquest of 
 another will a man mounts, and if any man wants to enjoy an 
 eternity he must create it for himself, by feeding his will or soul 
 with conquest till it is so strong that it cannot die." 
 
 His eyes shone with excitement, It seemed to the doctor that he 
 was caught in the whirlpool of a violent reaction. He had shown 
 fear, weakness ; he was aware of it and determined to reassert him- 
 self. The doctor answered nothing, neither agreeing with his 
 fantastic philosophy, nor striving to controvert it. And at this 
 moment there was the sound of a struggle and of whining outside. 
 
 s
 
 274 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 The door was pushed open, and Julian's man appeared, hauling Rip 
 along by the collar. The little dog was hanging back with all its 
 force, and striving to get away. Having succeeded in getting it into 
 the room the man quickly retreated, shutting the door hastily 
 behind him. The little dog was left with Valentine and the doctor. 
 It remained shrinking up against the door in a posture that denoted 
 abject fear, its pretty head turned in the direction of Valentine, its 
 eyes glaring, its teeth snapping at the air. The doctor looked at it 
 and at Valentine. His pity for the dog's condition was held in 
 check by a strange fascination of curiosity. He leaned his arms on 
 the table and his eyes were fixed upon Valentine, who got up slowly 
 from his chair. 
 
 " 1 have let Rip be the prey of his absurd fancies long enough, 
 Doctor," he said. " To-night I will make him like me as he used to, 
 or at least come to me." 
 
 And he whistled to the dog and called Rip, standing by the table. 
 Rip howled and trembled in reply, and snapped more fiercely in the 
 direction of Valentine. 
 
 " Do you see that, Doctor ? But he shall come. I will make him." 
 He shut his lips firmly and stared upon the animal. It was very 
 evident that he was exerting himself strongly in some way. Indeed 
 he looked like a man performing some tremendous physical feat. 
 Yet all his limbs were still. The violence of his mind created the 
 illusion. Rip wavered against the door. There was foam on his 
 jaws and his white legs trembled. Valentine snapped his fingers as 
 one summoning or coaxing a dog. The doctor started at the sound 
 and leaned further forward along the table to see the upshot of this 
 strange fight between a man's desire and an animal's fear. Rip 
 scarcely whined now, but turning his head rapidly from one side to 
 the other, with a motion that seemed to become merely mechanical, 
 he made a hoarse noise that was like a terrified and distressed growl 
 half strangled in his throat. But though he wavered against the 
 door he did not obey Valentine and go to him, and the doctor was 
 conscious of a sudden thrill of joy in the dog's obstinacy. This 
 obstinacy angered Valentine greatly. His face clouded. He bent 
 forward. He put out his hands as if to seize Rip. The dog snapped 
 at him frantically, wildly. But Valentine did not recoil. On the 
 contrary, he advanced, bending down over the wretched little 
 creature. Then Rip shrank down on all fours by the door. To the 
 doctor's watching eyes he seemed to wane visibly smaller. He 
 dropped his head. Valentine bent lower. Rip lay right down, 
 pressing himself upon the floor. As Valentine's hand touched 
 him a quiver ran over him, succeeded by a surprising stillness. 
 
 The doctor made a slight sound. He knew that Rip was dead. 
 Valentine took the little dog by the scruff of its neck and lifted it
 
 THE DEATH OF RIP 275 
 
 up. Then he, too, saw what he held. He glanced at the doctor, 
 and there was a glare of defeat in his eyes. Then he passed across 
 the room to the window, still holding the dog, pulled aside the 
 cm^tain and thrust up the window. The ground was white and the 
 snow was falling. With an angry gesture he nung the body out. 
 It dropped with a soft noise in the snow and lay there. 
 
 Valentine closed the window, but the doctor felt as if he still saw 
 the poor little corpse in the snow. And he shuddered. 
 > A moment afterwards there was a step in the passage, and Julian 
 entered. He was looking haggard and excited, and ill with dissipa- 
 tion. His eyes shone in deep hollows that seemed to have been 
 painted with indigo, and his lips were parched and feverish. 
 
 " Where have you been, Julian ?" said Valentine. 
 
 " Oh, with her with Molly, of course," he replied. 
 
 " What ? Till now ? " 
 
 Julian seemed uneasy under his scrutiny. 
 
 " Till this morning," he replied, almost suddenly. 
 
 " Well, but since then ? " 
 
 With Cuckoo. Oh ! don't bother me/' 
 
 He went over towards the window. 
 
 " Oh, how hot it is here," he said. 
 
 He glanced at the bright fire, 
 
 " Intolerably ! " he murmured. 
 
 And he opened the window to the drifting snow. 
 
 " Am I mad ? " he suddenly cried to them. " I saw the flame in 
 her eyes again to-day, in Cuckoo's eyes. It held me with her. I'll 
 swear it held me. It wouldn't let me go wouldn't let me 
 till now ! " 
 
 He sank down in a chair by the window, and, turning his back on 
 them pushed his head out to get air. 
 
 " I say," he suddenly called. " What's that, that lying there ? " 
 
 Valentine and the doctor joined him. He was pointing to the 
 body of Rip, which was already almost covered by the snow. 
 
 " That," Valentine said ; " that is 
 
 " The body of a creature that died fighting," the doctor interrupted. 
 " A iine fashion of dying. Look at it, Julian. Its soul was indomi- 
 table to the last, and so it won the battle it fought. It won by its 
 very death even. Natui'e is at work on its winding-sheet." 
 Valentine said nothing.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY OF THE 
 FEATHERS 
 
 JULIAN'S utterance about the flame that held him with the lady of 
 the feathers struck Dr. Levillier forcibly at the time it was made, 
 and remained in his mind. He could not fail to connect it with his 
 own experience in Valentine's empty room and, going further back, 
 with the last sitting of the two young men which was succeeded by 
 the long trance of Valentine. And as he thought of these tilings, 
 it suddenly occurred to him that the ghastly change which had taken 
 place in Valentine might well date from that night. Since the death 
 of Rip the doctor had formed the opinion that Valentine was no 
 longer perfectly sane. His excitement, the fury of his eyes when 
 he spoke of the triumphs of will, seemed to give the clue to his 
 transformation. The insane perpetually glorify themselves, and are 
 transcendent egoists. Surely the egoism of insanity had peeped out 
 in Valentine's diatribe upon the eternity of a strong man's individual 
 will. The night of the trance had been a strange crisis of his life. 
 He had seemed to recover from it, to come back from that wonderful 
 simulation of death, healthy, calm, reasonable as before. This might 
 have been only seeming. In that sleep the sane and beautiful 
 Valentine might have died, the insane and unbeautiful Valentine 
 have been born. There are many instances of a sudden and acute 
 shock to the nervous system leaving an indelible and dreary writing 
 upon the nature. If Valentine had thus been tossed to madness it 
 was very possible that his dog, an instinctive creature, should recog- 
 nise the change with terror. It was even possible that other in- 
 stinctive creatures should divine the hideous mind of a maniac hidden 
 in the beautiful body of an apparently normal man. And Cuckoo, 
 she too was instinctive, a girl without education, culture, the reading 
 that opens the mind and sometimes shuts the eyes. Cuckoo Bright, 
 she had divined the evil of Valentine. To her he had made confes- 
 sion. In her eyes Julian had seen the mysterious flame. Some 
 influence from her had kept him from his invited guests and from 
 his house. Yes, Cuckoo, the lady of the feathers, the blessed damo/d
 
 DOCTOR LEVILL1ER VISITS THE LADY 277 
 
 of Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus, the painted and possessed, 
 faded and degraded wanderer of the pavements, seemed to become 
 the centre of this wheel of circumstance, as Dr. Levillier reflected 
 upon her. 
 
 It was time for him to go to Cuckoo. Julian's descent must be 
 stayed, before he went down, like a new Orpheus without a mission, 
 into Hades. Valentine's influence, whether mad or sane, must be 
 fought. It was to be a struggle, a battle of wills, of what Valentine 
 chose to consider souls. And some prompting led the doctor to 
 think of Cuckoo as a possible weapon. Why ? Because she had 
 even once held Julian against his will, against the intention of his 
 soul. 
 
 So the doctor at length sought the lady of the feathers. She had 
 been passing through a period of great and benumbing desolation, 
 believing that her last appeal, her great effort for Julian had been 
 a failure. For the doctor had not come to her, and Cuckoo could 
 not tell that he was making observations for himself and that she 
 was often in his mind. She supposed, that he, like all others, laughed 
 at her pretensions to gravity, swept her exhibition of real arid honest 
 emotion away from his memory with a sneer, considered her despair 
 over another's ruin a vile travesty, a grinning absurdity and trick. 
 Never had Cuckoo felt more lonely than in these days, though a vast 
 loneliness is the constant companion of her large sisterhood. Even 
 Jessie failed to comfort her, and she could find little courage within 
 herself. And yet there were moments when the vigour that had 
 led her once to defy Valentine, when the fire that had sprung up in 
 her, as a flame may burst forth in a swamp, seemed to be near to her 
 again. She felt a new possibility within her, stirring, striving. It 
 was at such moments that she longed to see the doctor, and could 
 have cursed him for not coming to her. For at such moments she 
 seemed only waiting for a touch of sympathy, a word of encourage- 
 ment, to perform some great action, some momentous deed. But 
 the touch, the word, were lacking, and her life and experience of 
 constant and monotonous degradation dulled the impulse, stifled the 
 enthusiasm that she could not understand. And she fell again to 
 brooding, and to an ignorant and vague consciousness of impotence. 
 
 She bought a new hair dye, painted her thin cheeks more heavily 
 than ever before, and sought, almost with a wild exultation that 
 swiftly fled away, to sink lower. 
 
 The monotony of sin is one of the scourges of sin. In those days 
 Cuckoo suffered many stripes. Her eyes grew more weary, her smile 
 in Piccadilly more mechanical, her walk more puppet-like than ever. 
 Life was like a moving dream of horror. And yet no day passed 
 without a gleam of that strange sensation of ignorant power, fluttering 
 upward, fading away, pausing, passing, dead.
 
 278 FLAMES 
 
 She did not know what it meant. She could not keep it nor u.se 
 it. She could not unravel its message nor rest upon its strength. 
 It was gone almost while it came, but it did something for the lady 
 of the feathers. It gave to her the little seed of expectation that, 
 quite alone in a weary desert, yet makes of that desert the plot men 
 call a garden. Like a thread of steel it held up this girl from the 
 uttermost abyss, until at last the doctor's hand struck upon her 
 door. 
 
 Julian's occasional visits were as the scourgings of God, giving to 
 Cuckoo a vision of shifting ruin, in which she so she told herself, 
 thinking of the dance of the hours had been the first to have a 
 share. 
 
 It was a wintry afternoon when the doctor came. Frost clung 
 stealthily round the grimy black trees, outlining their naked boughs 
 with meagre lines of white sewn with smuts. Above the frost hung 
 the fog as if in charge of the town, a despondent and gloomy sentinel. 
 During the morning the sun had lain in the fog like a faint blood- 
 red jewel in a thick and awkward sulphur setting, but with the 
 afternoon the jewel faded to a distant dim phantom, from that to 
 blank nothingness. As if satisfied with this piteous exit, the fog 
 drew closer, keeping especially heavy watch upon the long and bleak 
 line of the Marylebone Road, and taking the high and narrow house 
 in which Cuckoo dwelt under its severest protection. Twilight 
 wanted to come as the afternoon drew on, but it had been forestalled 
 and was practically already there. Doubtless it did come, but no one 
 was much the wiser. The lamps had been alight all day, and no pro- 
 cession of gloomy things, advancing from whithersoever, could have 
 added much to the volume of the crowding darkness, or have appre- 
 ciably increased its density. In the darkness the cold gathered, and 
 the frost began to take a harder grip of everything, of desolate, soli- 
 tary pumps in tiny and squalid back-yards, of pipes that crawled like 
 liver-coloured snakes over the unpresentable sides of houses, of pools 
 thick with orange-brown mud, and vagrant bushes creaking above 
 the grimy earth in places that children named gardens. 
 
 Fog and frost had taken a strong grip, too, upon the heart of the 
 lady of the feathers. Somewhere about eleven o'clock in the morning 
 she had stirred Avearily in her bed, had stretched out her arms to the 
 stagnant air of the room, and crouched up on her pillow in a grotesque 
 hump. For awhile the hump remained motionless. Then Cuckoo 
 rolled round and extended a bare thin leg to test the atmosphere. 
 The leg was quickly withdrawn, the atmosphere having been evidently 
 tried in the balance and found wanting. Cuckoo's bell rang and Mrs. 
 Brigg was called for tea and toast, while once more the hump deco- 
 rated the upper part of the disordered bed. Jessie, awakened in her 
 basket at the foot of the bed, joined the hump, whining a greeting,
 
 DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY 279 
 
 and wriggling furiously in an effort to tunnel her way to the ulti- 
 mate depths of sheets and blankets. Then Mrs. Brigg, of yellowish 
 and bleak aspect, beneath a tumbled appurtenance that she called a. 
 cap, appeared with a tray. 
 
 " Going to stop abed ? " she asked, in a husky voice, in which the 
 smuts seemed floating. 
 
 " Yes. What's there to get up for ? " Cuckoo groaned. 
 
 "Nothun' as I know of." 
 
 And Mrs. Brigg was gone about her business. 
 
 All the morning Cuckoo lay staring at the blank square of the 
 window, and Jessie snored under the blankets. The tea was drunk, 
 the toast lay about in fragments. One bit, hard and many cornered 
 as it seemed, somehow gained entrance to the bed, and greeted 
 Cuckoo's every movement with uncompromising grittiness. No 
 shaking of coverlet and sheet, no beating of pillow, no kicks and 
 scufilings could expel it. The bed seemed full of hard bits of toast, 
 and Cuckoo felt as if an additional burden were laid upon her by 
 this slight evil. But, indeed, the horror of her existence reached a 
 culminating point to-day, a point of loneliness, vacant dreariness, 
 squalor and degradation that could riot be surpassed. The preceding 
 night had been peculiarly horrible, and, as Cuckoo now lay on the 
 tumbled bed, in the dim, cold room, with the fog gazing in, the 
 leaden hours of winter crawling by, she felt as if she could bear no 
 more. She could bear no more addition to her sick weariness ; no 
 more addition to her useless hunger of love for Julian, that could 
 never be crowned with anything but despair ; no more addition to 
 her bodily fatigue, born of tramping monotony succeeded by yet 
 more enervating weariness of the fiesh. She could bear no more. 
 Yes, but she must bear more. For Cuckoo knew that she was not 
 dying, was not even ill. She was only tired in body, prostrate in heart, 
 deserted in life, and forced to witness the quick and running ruin of 
 the man she had the farcical absurdity to love. Imaginative, for 
 once, in her morbid fatigue, she began to wish that she could fade 
 away and become part of the fog that lay about London, be drawn 
 into its inurkiness, with all her murky recollections, her fiendish 
 knowledge, her mechanical wiles of the streets, her thin and ghostly 
 despairs and desires. For they seemed thin and ghostly, they too, 
 to-day, fit food for the fog, as indeed the whole of her was. How 
 could such as she evaporate into sweet air, a clear heaven ? 
 
 She caught at the hand-glass, leaning far out on the bed, as the 
 blessed damozel o'er the bright bar of heaven, and tried to see, 
 with staring eyes, how the new hair dye that she was now using 
 became her. Her mind was vagrant, coming and going miserably, 
 from that love of hers which was strangely strong and subtle, to the 
 powder-box with its arsenic green lid, or the rouge-pot of dirty
 
 280 FLAMES 
 
 white china. And by each event it paused and sank, as if benumbed 
 by the increasing frost. Leaning again to put back the hand-glass 
 she fell over too far and dropped it. The glass fell face downwards 
 and was smashed. Cuckoo laughed aloud, revelling feebly in the 
 additional misery a superstitious mind now began to promise her. 
 The fragments of broken glass actually pleased her, and, on a 
 sudden, she resolved to set her feet in them, that she might be cut 
 and wounded, that she might bleed outwardly as she had been 
 bleeding inwardly for so long. She swung her legs over the breadth 
 of the bed, disorganising Jessie, planted her feet in the array of 
 glass and stood up. As she did so the doctor mounted her doorstep, 
 plied the knocker and rang the bell. Cuckoo stood listening. A 
 fragment of glass had really penetrated the bare sole of her foot, 
 which bled a little gently on the carpet. But she scarcely knew it. 
 She heard Mrs. Brigg go by, and then steps sounding in the 
 passage. Then there came to her ears a quiet voice with a very 
 characteristic note of bright calmness in it. (Standing in her frilled 
 night-dress among the bits of glass, Cuckoo flushed scarlet all over 
 her face and neck. She knew who the visitor was. With one dart 
 she reached the wash-stand. Sponges, brushes, combs, all her 
 weapons of the toilet were immediately in commotion, and when 
 Mrs. Brigg opened her door, the room was a whirlpool of quick 
 activities, in the midst of which, as on a frowsy throne, Jessie stood 
 upon the bed barking excitedly. Mrs. Brigg came in and closed the 
 door. Her thin lips were pursed. 
 
 " Light the fire ! " Cuckoo called at her from the basin. 
 
 " What do you want the doctor for ? " 
 
 Mrs. Brigg uttered the words with some suspicion. 
 
 " Hurry up and light the fire ? " 
 
 Cuckoo turned round, her hands darting in her hair, and actually 
 laughed with a touch of merriment. 
 
 " You old owl ! He's not come to doctor me, only to see me." 
 
 Mrs. Brigg looked relieved, but still surprised. 
 
 " Oh," she said. " That's it, is it ? " 
 
 She paused as if in consideration. 
 
 Suddenly Cuckoo sprang on her, twisted her round, and spun her 
 out into the cold passage. " Light the fire I tell you ! " 
 
 She banged the bedroom door and went on with her rapid toilet. 
 
 When she came into the sitting-room an uneasy fire was 
 sputtering in the grate, one gas jet flared, and Dr. Levillier was 
 standing by the window looking out at the fog. He turned to greet 
 her. 
 
 " I thought you'd forgotten or didn't mean to come,'' Cuckoo 
 said '> " they often do people that say they will to me, J mean." 
 
 The doctor held out his hand with a smile.
 
 DOCTOR LEV1LLIER VISITS THE LADY 281 
 
 " No. Am I interrupting you ? " 
 
 " Me ! " said Cuckoo, in amazement, thinking of lier empty days. 
 " Lord 110." 
 
 Her accent was convincing. The little doctor sat down by the lire 
 and put his hat and gloves on the table. 
 
 " Mrs. Brigg thought I was ill you bein' a doctor," Cuckoo 
 iiaid, with an attempt at a laugh. She felt nervous now, and was 
 not sustained to-day by the strung-up enthusiasm which had supported 
 her in Harley Street. " Funny there bein' a fog again this time, 
 ain't it ? " 
 
 " Yes. I hope we shall meet some day in clear weather." 
 
 As the doctor said that, following a tender thought of the girl, he 
 glanced round the room and at Cuckoo. " I hope so," he repeated. 
 Then, rather abruptly : 
 
 " Two or three nights ago 1 went to dine with Mr. Addison. He 
 was out. He was here with you." 
 
 Cuckoo got red. She could still be very sensitive with a few 
 people, and perhaps Mrs. Brigg and her kind had trained her into 
 irritable suspicion of suspicion in others. 
 
 " Only for a friendly visit," she said hastily. " Nothin' else. He 
 would stop." 
 
 " I understand perfectly," the doctor said gently. Cuckoo was 
 reassured. 
 
 " Did he say as he'd been ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Cuckoo looked at the doctor and a world of reproach dawned in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " 1 say," she said, " you haven't done nothiri'. He's worse than 
 ever. He's gettin' oh, he's gettiri' cruel bad." 
 
 Tears came up over the world of reproach. 
 
 " It's all him, all Valentine," she said. 
 
 And Dr. Levillier was moved to cast reticence, the usual loyalty 
 of one man to another who has been his friend, away. Somehow 
 the dead body of Rip lying in the snow put that old friendship far 
 off. And also an inward thrill caught him near to Cuckoo. An 
 impulse, swift and vital, thrust his mind to hei-s. 
 
 " You are right," he answered. " I believe that it is all Valentine." 
 
 " There ! Didn't I tell you ? " Cuckoo cried with eyes of triumph. 
 " It's been him from the first. Oh, get him get Julian away." 
 
 The doctor laid his hand upon Cuckoo's, which was stretched upon 
 the tablecloth, very gently, almost abstractedly. 
 
 " Will you tell me something ? " he said. 
 
 "What's it?" 
 
 "You love Julian?" 
 
 " Me ! " the lady of the feathers said.
 
 282 FLAMES 
 
 Her voice trembled over the word. She stole a hasty, hunted 
 glance at the doctor. Was he too going to jeer at her ? Would no 
 one allow her to have a clean corner in her heart ? 
 
 " You're laughin' at me. What's the good of such as me doiii' a 
 thing like that lovin' a man ? " 
 
 " I think you must love Julian. If you do, perhaps you are meant 
 to protect and save him." 
 
 A secret voice prompted the doctor with the words he spoke, gave 
 them to him, bent him irresistibly to repeat them. Never before had 
 he felt what it is to be between the strong hands of destiny. 
 
 " Me ! Me save any one ! " Cuckoo said, trembling. 
 
 " Yes, you. There is something in you I feel it and 1 cau't tell 
 you why, nor what it is something that has hold of Julian. Tie 
 told us so the other night. Don't you know what it is? " 
 
 " Eh ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he feels that you love him purely, cleanly." 
 
 " I do oh ! I do that ! " Cuckoo cried. 
 
 A wonder as to the relations between Julian and this girl shot 
 through the doctor. He was the last man in the world to think 
 evil of any one, but, just then, as Cuckoo moved, the gas light struck 
 fully on her. The dye on her hair shone crudely. The red and 
 white of her face burned as on the face of a clown. And then 
 even the doctor's good heart wondered. Cuckoo knew it in an 
 instant, and her face hardened and looked older. 
 
 " Oh, go on," she said rudely. " Think as the others do. Damn 
 you men ! Damn you ! Damn you ! " 
 
 And, without warning, she put her head down on the table and 
 broke into a wild passion of tears. She sobbed, and, as she sobbed, 
 she cursed and clenched her hands. She lost herself in fury and in 
 despair. The Fates had stung her too hard this time, and she must 
 blaspheme against them, with her voice of the streets, her language 
 of the streets, her poor heart not quite of the streets. The Fates 
 had stung her too hard, for they had put a flaw even in this one self- 
 respect of hers. That one night accused her whenever she thought 
 of Julian, whenever she saw the dissipation deepen round his eyes. 
 She was not to have even one thing that she could be quite proud 
 of, not one thing of which she could say, " This has been always 
 pure." And then she turned on the doctor and cried : 
 
 " Go on think iWthink it ! Think what you like ! But I'll 
 tell you the truth. , There was only once I did him any harm and 
 that wasn't my fault. I never wanted to. I hated it. I told him 
 1 hated it. I didn't want him to be that, like the others. And 
 that was Valentine too. And now just because of that I'm no use. 
 And you'd said I might be, you'd said I might be." 
 
 " And I say you shall be."
 
 DOCTOR LEV1LLIER VISITS THE LADY 283 
 
 The wail died in Cuckoo's throat. The tears were arrested as by 
 a spell. Dr. Levillier had got upon his feet. All the truth and 
 tenderness of his heart was roused and quickened. lie knew real 
 passion, real grief, and from that moment he knew and trusted the 
 lady of the feathers. And by the strength of her bitterness, even 
 by the broken curses that would have shocked so many of the 
 elect of this world, he measured the width and the depth of her 
 possibilities. She had sent to damnation -what ? The vile cruelty, 
 the loathsome, unspeakable, dastardly mercilessness of the world. 
 To damnation with it ! That was the loud echo in his man's 
 heart. 
 
 " That one night is nothing," he said. " Or rather it is something 
 that you must redeem. It is good to have to pay for a thing. It is 
 that makes one work. 'There is a work for you to do, a work which 
 I believe no one else can do. You love Julian. Love him more. 
 Make him love you. My will cannot fight the will of Valentine over 
 him. No man's will can. A woman's may. Yours may, shall." 
 
 His pale, small, delicate face flamed with excitement as he spoke. 
 Few of his patients looking upon him just then would have known 
 their calm little doctor. But Cuckoo had cried to him out of the 
 very depths, and out of the very depths he answered her, still 
 prompted though now he knew it not by that secret voice which 
 sometimes rules a man, at which he wonders ignorantly, the voice of 
 some soul, some great influence, hidden from him in the spaces of 
 the air, the voice of a flame, warm, keen, alive, and power prompt- 
 ing. 
 
 And Cuckoo, as she listened to the doctor, had once again a hint 
 of her own strength, a thrill of hope, a sense that she, even she, was 
 not broken quite in pieces upon the cruel wheel of the world. 
 
 " Whatever can I do ? " she said, " Valentine's got him." 
 
 As she spoke, the doctor, restless, as men are in excitement, had 
 moved over to the mantelpiece, and stood with one foot upon the 
 edge of the fender. Thinking deeply, he glanced over the photo- 
 graphs of Cuckoo's acquaintance, without actually seeing them. But 
 presently one, at which he had looked long and fixedly, dawned upon 
 him, cruelly, powerfully. It was the face of Marr. 
 
 " Who is that ? " he said abruptly to Cuckoo. 
 
 " That ? " She too got up and came near to him, lowering her 
 voice almost to a whisper. " That's really him." 
 
 " Him ? " 
 
 " Valentine." 
 
 The doctor looked at her in blank astonishment. 
 
 " Yes, it is," Cuckoo reiterated, and nodding her head with the 
 obstinacy of a child. 
 
 " That Valentine ! It has no resemblance to him."
 
 284 FLAMES 
 
 The doctor took up the photograph, and examined it closely. 
 " This is not Valentine." 
 
 " He told me it was. It's Marr arid somehow it's him now." 
 " Man 1 ," said the doctor, sharply. " Why, he is dead. Julian 
 told me so. He died he died in the Euston Road on the night of 
 Valentine's trance. Ah, but you know nothing about that. Did 
 you know Marr, then ? " 
 " Yes, I knew him." 
 
 Cuckoo hesitated. But something taught her to be perfectly frank 
 with the doctor. So she added : 
 
 " I'd been with him at that hotel the night he died." 
 " You were the woman ! But then how can you say that this (he 
 touched the photograph with his finger) is Valentine ? " 
 " He says he's really Marr." 
 
 Cuckoo spoke in the most mulish manner, following her habit 
 when she was completely puzzled, but sticking to what she believed 
 to be the truth. 
 
 " Marr and Valentine one man ! He told you that ? " 
 " He says to me I'm Marr." 
 
 Cuckoo repeated the words steadily, but like a parrot. The doctor 
 said nothing, only looked at her and at the photograph. He was 
 thinking now of his suspicion as to Valentine's sanity. Had he, 
 perhaps in his madness, been playing on the ignorance of the lady of 
 the feathers ? She \vent on : 
 
 " It was on the night he told me all that. I couldn't understand 
 what he is and what he's doin'. And he said that the real Valentine 
 had gone. And then he said I am Marr." 
 
 " The real Valentine gone. Yes," said the doctor, gravely, " that 
 
 is true. Does he then know that he is ? " Mad was on his lips, 
 
 but he checked himself. 
 
 "What else did he say that night?" he asked. "Can you re- 
 member ? Can you tell me ? Try to remember. If you succeed, 
 you may help Julian." 
 
 Cuckoo frowned till her long, broad eyebrows nearly met. The 
 grimace gave her the aspect of a sinister boy, bold and audacious. 
 For she protruded her under lip, too, and the graces of ardent feeling, 
 of pain and of passion, died out of her eyes. But this abrupt and 
 hard mask was only caused by the effort she was making after 
 thought, after understanding. She pressed her feet upon the ground, 
 and the toes inside her worn shoes curved themselves inwards. 
 What had Valentine said ? What what ? She stared dully at the 
 doctor under her corrugated brows. 
 
 " What did he say ? " she murmured, in an inward voice, " Well 
 he didn't want me to see you. He came here about that my seein' 
 you."
 
 DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY 285 
 
 Yes." 
 
 "And and Marr's not dead, he says, at least not done with 
 Yes, that was it he says as no strong man who's lived long's done 
 with when he's put away. See ! " 
 
 Her face lighted up a little. She was beginning to trust her 
 memory. 
 
 " The influence of men lives after them," the doctor said. " Marv's 
 too. Yes. He said that ? " 
 
 She nodded. Then with a flash of understanding, a flash of that 
 smouldering power which she had felt in loneliness and longed to 
 tear out from its prison, she cried : 
 
 " That's it. That's how he's Marr then." 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 " Isn't it ? " she said, flushing with the thought that she might bo 
 showing herself a fool. For she scarcely understood what she really 
 meant. 
 
 " A r alentine, no longer himself but endowed with the influence of 
 Marr," the doctor muttered. " She means that he told her something 
 like that. The phantasy of an unsteady brain." " Go on," he added 
 to her. 
 
 But Cuckoo was relapsing into confusion already. 
 
 "And then he talked a lot about will, as he called it. Can't 
 remember what he said." 
 
 " Try to." 
 
 She was silent, knitting her brows. 
 
 " It's no use. I can't," she said despairingly. " But I know he 
 says that he's really Marr and that he's killed Valentine. He said 
 that ; I know he did." 
 
 She glanced eagerly at the doctor, in the obvious hope that his 
 cleverness, which she believed to be unlimited and profound, would 
 in a flash divine all the strange secret from this exposition of her 
 disjointed recollection. With each word she spoke, however, the 
 doctor became more and more convinced that Valentine had only 
 been cruelly amusing himself with her, or weaving for her benefit 
 some intricate web of vain madness. And Cuckoo, noticing this now, 
 and recollecting the momentary clearness of comprehension which 
 had seized her at one point in Valentine's wild sermon to her, was 
 mad with herself for not being able to seize again that current of in- 
 spiration, almost mad with the doctor for not unravelling the mystery. 
 This excess of feeling finally drowned and swept away as a corpse the 
 memory of the gospel of influence. 
 
 " I can't remember no more," she said stolidly. " There was ever 
 such a lot about about some one as was good and didn't want to be 
 good any more, and so it was driven away I don't know. P'raps 
 he was only gamin' me."
 
 286 FLAMES 
 
 She stared moodily at her feet, which she had stuck out from 
 under her dress. The doctor said nothing, but at her last speech his 
 face had lit up with a sort of excitement. For had she not described 
 in those few ill chosen words the very mental position of the former 
 Valentine? A saint at first with his will, a saint at last against his 
 will and now a saint no more. That was, perhaps, the key to the 
 whole matter. A good man prays to be no longer good. His prayer 
 is granted. His grievous desire is fulfilled. And then he may pray 
 in vain for ever to be as he once was. Yet the change in Valentine 
 was more even than this, more than the gliding from white purity to 
 black sin. There was something. 
 
 As Cuckoo and the doctor sat in silence, she staring vacantly and 
 empty of thought, being now utterly and chaotically puzzled, he 
 thinking deeply, the door bell rang. In a moment Mrs. Brigg 
 appeared, went to Cuckoo and muttered in her ear : 
 
 " Mr. Haddison wants to come in. I told him you was busy." 
 
 " Oh," said Cuckoo, " I say wait," and then to the doctor, " It's 
 him. It's Julian." 
 
 " Let him in/' the doctor said quickly. 
 
 To see Cuckoo and Julian together might tell him much. 
 
 Julian came in, stumbling rather heavily at the entrance of the 
 room.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 " DAMN that mat ! " he exclaimed. " I say Cuckoo, who the ? " 
 
 The question faded on his lips as he saw Dr. Levillier, on whom he 
 gazed with a vacant surprise that, added to the unsteadiness of his 
 movement upon them, spoke his condition very plainly. 
 
 " You, doctor ! Well, I'm damned ! What are you here for ? " 
 
 " To see Miss Bright," the doctor said coolly. 
 
 He had pushed forward a chair quickly with his foot. Julian 
 collapsed in it by the table. Beads of the fog lay all over his long 
 greatcoat and upon his hat, which he had not yet taken off. His 
 face was flushed and dull. 
 
 " It's an infernal evening," he said. " You doctoring Cuckoo, 
 eh?" 
 
 " I have been talking to Miss Bright." 
 
 " Oh, all right. I don't mind. Cuckoo, help me off with this coat. 
 There's a good girl." 
 
 She obeyed without a word. When the coat was off Julian threw 
 himself back in the chair and heaved a long sigh. His hat fell on to 
 the floor with a bang, but he did not seem to notice it. His face was 
 moody and miserable. 
 
 " Molly's thrown me over," he said. 
 
 Cuckoo caught her breath sharply and stole a glanee at the 
 doctor. 
 
 " Have some tea ? " she said. 
 
 " No ; a brandy and soda." 
 
 " Haven't got it. You must do with tea." 
 
 She rang the bell and ordered it despite his grumblings. Mrs. 
 Brigg made no difficulty. Julian had long ago soothed her delicate 
 susceptibilities with gold. 
 
 So, Cuckoo, oddly shy and excited, made tea for the doctor and 
 Julian. The tea cleared the latter's fogged brain a little, but he 
 was still morose and self-centred. He had evidently come to pour 
 some woes out to Cuckoo, and was restrained by the presence of 
 the doctor, at whom he looked from time to time with an expression
 
 288 FLA MES 
 
 that was near to disfavour. But the doctor began to chat easily and 
 cordially, and Julian gradually thawed. 
 
 " I suppose you know Rip's dead," he said presently. " Went 
 out the other night and got frozen in the snow. Poor little beggar. 
 Val's awfully cut up about it." 
 
 " Is he ? " said the doctor. 
 
 "Yes. Dear old Val. Dev'lish hard Rip's never making it up 
 with him again, wasn't it ? Rip didn't know a good fellow did he, 
 Doctor ? " 
 
 " He was devoted to Valentine once," the doctor said. 
 
 "Ah, but he changed. Dogs are just like women, just like women, 
 never the same two days together. Curse them." 
 
 He appeared to have forgotten Cuckoo's presence, and she sat 
 listening eagerly, quite unmoved by the dagger thrust at her sex. 
 
 " Dogs don't usually change. Their faithfulness bears everything 
 without breaking." 
 
 " Except a trance then," Julian said, still with a wavering in-and- 
 out stolidity, at the same time mournful and almost ludicrous. 
 
 " That trance did for Rip, did for him I toll you. He never 
 knew poor old Val again. As if he thought him another man after 
 that, another man." 
 
 The doctor's eyes met Cuckoo's. She had a teacup at her rouged 
 lips, and had paused in the act of drinking, fascinated by the words 
 that wound so naturally into the legend of change which she know 
 and knew not. 
 
 " As if Val wasn't just the same," Julian pursued, shaking his 
 head slowly. " Just the same." 
 
 " You think so ? " the doctor said, quickly. 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 " You think that trance made no difference to him <? " 
 
 " Why ; how should it ? " 
 
 Cuckoo drank her tea hastily and put the cup down. 
 
 " How should it ?" Julian repeated, as if with a heavy challenge. 
 
 " It might in many ways, to his health " 
 
 " He's stronger than ever he was." 
 
 " Or to his mind, his nature. You see no change there that might 
 have frightened Rip ? " 
 
 "Not I. He's more of a man, good old Val, even than he was." 
 
 " Ah ! You acknowledge there is a change." 
 
 "Give me some more tea, Cuckoo," Julian said, thrusting his cup 
 towards her. " Make it strong. It's picking me up." Ho sat 
 forward in his chair, and began to light a cigar, keeping his eyes on 
 the doctor. 
 
 "Well, if you call that a change; to get like other men. Old 
 Val was a saint. I loved him then, but I love him ten times more
 
 CLEAR WEATHER 289 
 
 now he's a the other thing, you know. Ten times more. He 
 knows the world now and his advice is worth having. I'd follow 
 him anywhere. He can't go wrong. Takes care of himself and of 
 me too. I might have been anything anything, but for him. 
 Instead of what I am " 
 
 He drew himself up with some pride, and pulled at the cup which 
 Cuckoo pushed towards him. 
 
 " I'm just what Val makes me ; just what he makes me," he said, 
 taking obvious joy in the thought. " Val can make me do anything. 
 You know that, Doctor ? " 
 
 " Yes. Then you have changed with him, become more of a man, 
 as you call it, with him. Is that so Julian ? " 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 Julian was drinking his tea, which had become very strong from 
 standing. 
 
 " And are you happier than you were before ? " 
 
 The doctor spoke insistently and gravely. Cuckoo had taken 
 Jessie on to her lap and now stroked the little dog quickly and 
 softly with a thin, fluttering hand. Julian seemed trying to think, 
 to dive into his mind and discover its real feelings. 
 
 " I suppose so," he said presently. " But who's happy ? I shoujd 
 like to know. Cuckoo isn't. Are you, Cuckoo ? " 
 
 It seemed a cruel question, addressed to that spectre of girlhood. 
 
 " I dunno,"she answered swiftly. "It don't matter much either way." 
 
 "She may be," the doctor said. "And you were happy, Julian." 
 
 The tea had certainly cleared the boy's brain. His manner was 
 more sensible, and the heavy sensuality had gone from his eyes. 
 Though he still looked haggard and wretched, he was no longer the 
 mere wreck of vice he had seemed when he drifted into the little 
 room out of the fog. 
 
 " Was I ? " he said slowly. " It seems a devil of a time ago." 
 
 The doctor's heart warmed to these two young creatures, children 
 to him, yet who had seen so much, gone so far down into the depths 
 that lie beneath the feet of life. He thought in that moment that 
 he could willingly give up all his own peace of mind, success, fame, 
 restfulness of heart, to set them straight up, face to face with 
 strength and purity once more. One was well born, educated, still 
 handsome, the other a so-called lost woman, and originally only a 
 very poor and hopelessly ignorant girl. Yet their community of 
 miseiy and sorrow put them side by side, like two children who 
 gather violets in a lane together, or drown together in some strong, 
 sad river. 
 
 "It is not so long, Julian," he said. " Only before Valentine's 
 trance." 
 
 Julian caught him up quickly. 
 
 T
 
 2 go FLAMES 
 
 " Why d'you say that, Doctor ? " 
 
 " Why ? Simply because it is truth." 
 
 " You're always at that trance. I believe it's just because you 
 told us not to sit again. But there was no harm done." 
 
 " You are sure of that ? " 
 
 As he put the question the doctor's mind was on a hunt round 
 that sleep and waking. He had gradually come to think that night 
 a night of some strange crisis, through which Valentine had passed 
 from what he had been to what he was. Yet his knowledge could 
 not set at the door of that unnatural slumber the blame of all that 
 followed it. His imagination might, but not his knowledge. He 
 wondered whether Julian might not help him to elucidation. 
 
 " Sure ? of course ! Why not ? Valentine's all right. I'm all 
 right. Rip's the only one gone. And if he'd only stayed in the 
 house that night he'd be all right too." 
 
 " No, Addison." 
 
 Julian stared at this flat contradiction. 
 
 " Not ? " 
 
 " Rip never went out of the house." 
 
 " But he died in the snow." 
 
 " No," the doctor said quietly. " He died in your dining-room of 
 fear fear of his old master, Valentine." 
 
 "What?" said Julian, gripping the table with his right hand. 
 " Val had been at him ? " 
 
 In two or three simple, straightforward words, the doctor described 
 the death of Rip. When he had finished Cuckoo gave a little cry, 
 and clasped the astonished and squirming Jessie close in her arms. 
 Julian's brow clouded. 
 
 " He might have left Rip alone," he said. " It's odd dogs can't 
 bear Val now." 
 
 " Again since that trance," the doctor said. 
 
 Julian looked at him with acute irritation, but said nothing. 
 Then, turning his eyes on Cuckoo, who was still hugging Jessie, he 
 snapped his fingers at the little dog and called its name. Cuckoo 
 extended her arms, holding Jessie, to Julian, and he took the small 
 creature gently. And, as he took her, he bent forward and gazed 
 long and deeply into Cuckoo's eyes. She trembled and flushed," half 
 with pleasure, half with a nervous consciousness of the doctor's 
 presence. 
 
 " Oh, why do you ? " she murmured, turning her head away. The 
 action seemed to make Julian aware that perhaps his manner was 
 odd, and his subsequent glance at the doctor was very plainly, and 
 even rudely, explanatory of a wish to be alone with Cuckoo. The 
 doctor read its meaning and resolved to go away. With the quick 
 observation and knowledge of men which long years of training had
 
 CLEAR WEATHER 291 
 
 given to him, he saw that, strangely enough, the only creature 
 whose influence could in any way cope with the influence of Valentine 
 was not himself, who once had been as a seer to the two young men, 
 but the thin, spectral, weary, painted Cuckoo. There, in that small 
 room, with the long murmur of London outside, sat these two human 
 beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the 
 deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate. And he stood 
 strong, faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding 
 them. For some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a 
 helping hand to misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust 
 back vice and degradation. The fallen creature was to be the pro- 
 tector, the unredeemed to be the redeemer. Dr. Levillier knew 
 this when he saw Julian's long glance into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo. 
 And he thrilled with the knowledge It seemed to him a great 
 demonstration of the root, the core, of divine pity which he believed 
 to be the centre of the scheme of the world. Round this centre 
 revolved wheels within wheels of cruelty, of agony, of ruthless 
 passions and of lawless bitterness. Yet they radiated from pity. 
 They radiated from love. How it was so he could not tell, and there 
 the pessimist had him by the throat. But that it was so he felt in 
 his inmost heart, and never more than now, when the tired boy 
 sneered at him, who was an old friend, clean of life, gentle of nature, 
 and turned to this girl, this thing that loathsome men played with 
 and scorned. Cuckoo flushed and trembled ; this divine pity out- 
 painted her rouge, and shook that body which had so "often betrayed 
 itself to destroyers. This divine pity gave to her, who had lost all, 
 the power to find freedom for another soul that lay in bondage. 
 
 The doctor gazed for an instant at the boy and girl, and was deeply 
 moved. His lips breathed a word that was a prayer, for Julian, for 
 the lady of the feathers. 
 
 Then he got up. 
 
 " I have to go," he said. 
 
 Julian said nothing ; Cuckoo flushed again, and accompanied the 
 doctor to the hall door. When she had opened it, and they looked 
 out, it was very cold, but the fog had lifted, and was floating away 
 to reveal a sky full of stars, which always seem to shine more 
 brightly upon frost. The doctor took the girl's hand. 
 
 " I see you in clear weather," he said. 
 
 " You don't you don't think as he'll as I'll " stammered 
 
 Cuckoo, glancing awkwardly towards the lighted doorway of the 
 little sitting-room, and then at the doctor. The church clock striking 
 7.30, pointed the application of the hesitating murmur. It was 
 unconventionally late for an afternoon call. 
 
 " It'll be all right, you know that ? " said the lady of the feathers. 
 
 " Yes, I know that," he answered. " You have to fight, I feel
 
 292 FLA MES 
 
 that ; only you can do it. You have to fight this this " and here 
 
 the doctor's loyalty spoke, for he could not betray even this new 
 Valentine, " this strange madness of Valentine's. Pit your will 
 against his, and conquer for Julian's sake." 
 
 " Will," said Cuckoo. " That's what he says I can't have." 
 
 " Won't you pray to have it given you ? " said the little doctor. 
 
 Cuckoo looked at him wondering. Then she said : 
 
 " I believe I could fight better'n pray." 
 
 " Sometimes battle is the greatest of all prayers," said the doctor. 
 
 The iron gate clicked. He was gone. Cuckoo cast an oblique 
 glance up at the stars before she shut the door, and retraced her 
 steps down the passage.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BATTLE ARRAY 
 
 WHEN Julian left the Murylebone Road that night it was nearly ten 
 o'clock. He was quite sober and looked preternaturally grave as he 
 opened the little gate and stepped out into the frost-bound street. 
 In the lighted aperture of the doorway behind him Cuckoo stood like 
 a shadow half revealed peeping after him, and he turned and waved 
 his hand to her. Then he walked away slowly, meditating. That 
 night the fight for the possession of his will, his soul, had begun in 
 deadly earnest. He did not know it, yet he was vaguely aware that he 
 began to move in the midst of unwonted circumstances. Cuckoo had 
 not been able wholly to conceal from him her strong mental excite- 
 ment. Since her conversation with the doctor she had become a 
 different woman. For the one word had been spoken which could 
 change weakness into strength, utter self -distrust into something that 
 at least resembled self-reliance. The doctor had broken Valentine's 
 spell over Cuckoo with that word. He believed in her. He told 
 her to light. He assumed that she had some power, even more 
 power for Julian than he had. " Only you can do it," he had said. 
 The sentence armed her from head to foot, put weapons in her hands, 
 light in her hollow eyes, a leaping exultation in her heart. The 
 llickering power that she had marvelled at, and then despaired of, 
 burnt up at last into a strong flame. That evening it had dazzled 
 Julian's eyes. He seemed to see a new Cuckoo, and he was thinking 
 of her as he walked along now in the frost under the stars. His 
 meditation was not very intellectual or very profound, for since the 
 change in his life Julian had put his old intellectualities away from 
 him. Passion, so long guarded, so bravely repressed, once it had 
 broken loose stormed all the heights of his nature and drove every 
 sentiment that tried to oppose it into exile. The animalism that is 
 so generally present in a boy physically strong took possession of 
 him, and would not tolerate any divided allegiance. It declined 
 to permit his life to be a thing of mingled enjoyments, now 
 rejoicing in the leaping desires of the body, now disregarding 
 them for the aspirations and clear contentments of the mind. It,
 
 294 FLAMES 
 
 seemed revengeful, like a man long kept fasting against his will, and, 
 having at last come into its empire made that empire an autocracy, 
 a tyranny. Julian had passed at a step from one extreme to 
 another, and had already so lost the habit of following any mental 
 process to a conclusion that he could no longer think clearly with 
 ease, or observe himself with any acuteness. He was for the time 
 all body, knew his muscles, his flesh, his limbs, like intimates ; his 
 mind only distantly, like a stranger. With passion, with greed, he 
 had seized on all those pleasures which he had previously feared and 
 shunned, until his brain was heavy as is the brain of a glutton and a 
 drunkard, and his mind stepped in any direction with a languid 
 lethargy. So to-night he had the face of a man puzzled as he walked 
 in the frost under the stars. 
 
 Once the hint of some power lurking in Cuckoo had thrilled and 
 awed him, as only a certain clearness a certain receptive, appre- 
 ciative clearness can be thrilled and awed. Now the abrupt 
 development of that power almost distressed,, because it confused 
 him. He had gone down lower in the interval between the two 
 possibilities of sensation. 
 
 " What the devil's come over Cuckoo ? " so ran his thought with a 
 schoolboy gait. That something had come over her he recognised. She 
 was no longer the girl he had stared at in Piccadilly, the creature 
 he had pitied in the twilight hour of their first friendly interview. 
 Nor was she the woman whose soul he had injured by his cruel 
 whim, the woman who had beaten him with reproaches, and made 
 him for an instant almost ashamed of his lusts. All these 
 humanities, perhaps, slept, or woke, in her still. Yet it was not 
 they which heavily concerned him on his way to the Marble Arch. 
 There is a vitality about power of whatever kind, that makes itself 
 instantly felt, even when it is not understood, even when it is neither 
 beloved nor appreciated. Julian was confused by his dull and sudden 
 recognition of power in Cuckoo. No longer did it flash upon him, 
 a mystery of flame in her eyes, moving him to the awe and the con- 
 straint that a man may feel at sight of an unearthly thing, a phantom, 
 or a vision of the night. (He had looked for the flame in her eyes, 
 and he had not found it.) But it glowed upon him more steadily, 
 with a warmth of humanity, of something inherent, rooted, not 
 detached and merely for the moment and as if by chance, prisoned 
 in some particular place, from which at a breath it might escape. 
 It drew him to Cuckoo, and, at the same time, it slightly repelled 
 him, the latter though Julian did not know it by the sharp 
 abruptness of its novelty. For the doctor had lit a blaze of strength 
 in the girl by a word. Julian's eyes were dazzled by the blaze. 
 Custom might teach them to face it more calmly. At present he 
 could look at the stars with greater ease. Indeed, as he walked, he
 
 BATTLE ARRAY 295 
 
 did look at them, and thought of the eyes of Cuckoo, and then of the 
 eyes of all women, and of their strange intensities of suggestion and 
 of realisation, of their language of the devil and of the clouds, of 
 their kindling vigours. But the eyes of Cuckoo were no longer as 
 the eyes of any other woman. Julian glanced at a girl who watched 
 him from the corner of the street. He knew that Cuckoo looked 
 each night at men as that girl looked at him. He knew it, yet he 
 felt that he did not believe it. For to him she was dressed, already, 
 in the fillet of some priestess, in the robes of one tending some 
 strange and unnamed altar. She woke in him a little of the uneasy 
 fear and uneasy attraction that a creature whom a man feels to be 
 greater than himself often wakes in him. That evening, while 
 Julian sat with her, he had been seized with curious conflicting 
 desires to fall before her or to strike her, to draw her close or to 
 fend her off from him, all dull, too, and vague as in heaviness of 
 dreaming. Those feelings, vague in the house, were scarcely clearer 
 in the cold and in the open spaces of the night, and Julian was con- 
 scious of a sense of irritation, of anger against himself. He felt as 
 if he were an oaf, a lout. Was it, could it be Cuckoo who had made 
 him feel so ? After all, what was she ? Julian tried to hug and 
 soothe himself in the unworthy remembrance of Cuckoo's monotonous 
 life and piteous deeds, to reinstate himself in contented animalism 
 by thoughts of the animalism of this priestess ! He laughed aloud 
 under the stars, but the laugh rang hollow. He could not reinstate 
 himself. He could only wearily repeat, " What the devil's come 
 over Cuckoo ? " with an iteration of dull, moody petulance. 
 
 A hansom suddenly pulled up beside him and a voice called : 
 
 " Julian ! Julian, where are you coming from ? " 
 
 It was Valentine. He was muffled in a fur coat, and stretched 
 himself over the wooden apron to attract his friend's attention. 
 
 " I have been to your rooms," he continued. " Don't you re- 
 member we had arranged to dine together ? " 
 
 Julian looked at him without animation. 
 
 " I had forgotten it," he answered. 
 
 " Your memory is becoming very treacherous," Valentine said. 
 " Where are you off to ? Get in. I will drive you." 
 
 " I hadn't any plan," Julian said, getting into the cab. 
 
 " Drive to the Savoy," Valentine called to the cabman. " I want 
 some supper," he added. 
 
 " I can't come in. I'm not dressed." 
 
 " We will have a piivate room then. Have you dined ? " 
 
 " I ? No." 
 
 Valentine looked at him narrowly. 
 
 " Have you been in the Marylebone lload again ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes."
 
 296 FLA MES 
 
 " Why ? " 
 " I don't know." 
 
 The answer was the bald truth. In making it Julian experienced 
 a slight feeling of relief. He was putting into words the vagueness 
 that perplexed him. He wondered why he did go to see Cuckoo. 
 " But you must know. You must have a reason," said Valentine. 
 " If I have I don't know what it is. I wish you would tell me, 
 old fellow." 
 
 " I can't supply you with reasons for all your actions." 
 " And I can't supply myself with reasons for any of them," Julian 
 said slowly. The words were leading him to a dawning wonder at 
 his own way of life, a dawning desire to know if there were really 
 any reasons for the things he did. But Valentine did not accept the 
 reply as satisfactory. On the contrarj 7 , it evidently irritated him 
 still more, for he said with unusual warmth : 
 
 " Your reason for dropping your engagements, throwing me over 
 and wasting my evenings is quite obvious. The blessed damozel of 
 the feather's is attractive to you. Her freshness captivates you. 
 Her brilliant conversation entertains you. She is the powdered and 
 painted reason of these irrelevant escapades." 
 " Don't sneer at her, Val." 
 
 The words came quickly, like a bolt. Valentine frowned, and a 
 deepening suspicion flashed in his eyes. 
 
 " I did not think you were so easily flattered," he continued. 
 " Flattered ? " 
 
 " Yes. Cuckoo Bright admires you, and you go to No. 400 to smell 
 the rather rank fumes of the incense which she burns at your shrine." 
 ' Nonsense," Julian cried warmly. 
 
 " What other reason can you have ? She has no beauty ; she has 
 no conversion, no gaiety, no distinction, no manners she has 
 nothing. She is nothing." 
 
 " Ah, it's there you're wrong " 
 " Wrong ! " 
 
 " When you say she is nothing." 
 
 " I say it again," Valentine reiterated almost fiercely. " The lady 
 
 of the feathers is nothing, nothing at all. God and the devil they 
 
 have both completely forgotten her. A creature like that is neither 
 
 good, nor would I call her really evil, for she is evil merely that she 
 
 my go on living, not because she has a fine pleasure in sin But if 
 
 > I your will for bread and butter you slip out of the world, the 
 
 world that must be reckoned with. I say Cuckoo Bright is nothing." 
 
 And 1 tell you she is something extraordinary." 
 As Julian spoke the words the cab stopped at the Savoy. Valen- 
 ie sprang out and paid the man. His face was flushed as if with 
 heat, despite the piercing cold of the night
 
 BATTLE ARRAY 297 
 
 " A private room and supper for two," he said to the man in the 
 vestibule. " Take my coat," and he drew himself with obvious relief 
 from the embrace of his huge coat. Julian and he said nothing more 
 until they were sitting opposite to one another at a small oval table 
 in a small and strongly decorated room, whose windows faced the 
 Thames Embankment. The waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne 
 with the air of one performing a religious rite. The electric light 
 gleamed and a fire chased the frost from recollection. Julian had 
 already forgotten what they had been talking about in the cab. The 
 first sip of champagne swept the heavy meditativeness from him. 
 But Valentine, unfolding his napkin slowly, and with his eyes on 
 the menu, said : 
 
 " In what way is she something extraordinary ? " 
 
 " H'm ? " Julian muttered. 
 
 " Surely you can define it ? " 
 
 " What, Val ? " 
 
 " The peculiarity of Cuckoo Bright that you laid so much stress 
 on just now." 
 
 " Oh, yes, now I remember. No, I can't define it. How good this 
 soup is. The soup here 
 
 " Yes, yes ; our coming here again and again to eat it proves our 
 appreciation. Julian, do endeavour to answer my question. I am 
 really interested to know exactly what it is that has taken you again 
 to Marylebone Road." 
 
 Julian drank some more champagne. His eyes began to sparkle. 
 
 " (Jan you give a reason for everything that you do? " he asked. 
 
 " I think I certainly could for every act that I reiterate." 
 
 " Then you're built differently from me. But I've told you all I 
 can. I like Cuckoo. She's a damned nice girl." 
 
 Valentine's lip curled. 
 
 " I can't agree with you, Julian." 
 
 " You don't know her as I do." 
 
 " Not quite." 
 
 Julian reddened. 
 
 " Come now," he began, and then checked himself and laughed 
 good-naturedly. "You can't play the saint any more, you know, 
 Val," he said. 
 
 " I have no wish to. I discovered long ago that a saint is only the 
 corpse of a man, not a living man at all. But we are talking about 
 this corpse of a woman." 
 
 " Cuckoo's no corpse. By Jove, no. I believe she's got a power 
 that no other woman has." 
 
 " How so ? You haven't been imagining that absurd flame in her 
 eyes again ? " 
 
 Valentine spoke with furtive uneasiness. He was scarcely eating
 
 2g8 FLAMES 
 
 or drinking, but Julian was doing ample justice to the wine and 
 displayed a very tolerable appetite. He lifted his glass to his lips and 
 put it down before he answered : 
 
 " No. It's gone." 
 
 Valentine seemed relieved. 
 
 " Of course. I knew it was an hallucination. You went to satisfy 
 yourself, I suppose. And now " 
 
 " Since it's gone Cuckoo seems to me I don't know changed 
 somehow. Val, there must be a few people in the world with 
 
 great power over others. You are one. Marr was another, and " 
 
 he paused. 
 
 " And what ? " Valentine said rather loudly. 
 
 " Well," Julian paused again, as if conscious that he was about to 
 say something that would seem ridiculous. " Cuckoo " 
 
 " Is a third ! You think it reasonable to bracket me with a 
 woman like that, to compare my will, mine, who have lived the life 
 of thought as well as the life of action, who have trained my powers 
 to the highest point, and offered up sacrifices yes, sacrifices to my 
 will, to that degraded, powerless creature ! Julian ! " 
 
 He stopped, clenching his hand as it lay upon the table. Never 
 before had Julian seen him so profoundly moved. All his normal 
 calm and self-possession seemed deserting him. His lips worked like 
 those of a man in the very extremity of rage, and the red glow in his 
 cheeks faded into the grey of suppressed passion. Julian was utterly 
 taken aback by such an exhibition of feeling. 
 
 " My dear fellow," he stammered, " I didn't mean I had no 
 idea 
 
 " You did mean that. You do. And I I have been fool enough 
 to believe that you relied upon me, on my judgment, that you looked 
 up to me that good God, how absurd ! " 
 
 He lay back in his chair and burst into a paroxysm of loud and 
 mirthless laughter, while Julian, holding his champagne glass 
 between his fingers, and twisting it stealthily round and round, 
 regarded him with a blank stare of utter confusion and perplexity. 
 Valentine continued to laugh so long that it seemed as if he were 
 seized in the grip of a horrible hysteria. But just as the situation 
 was becoming actually intolerable, he suddenly controlled himself 
 with an obvious and painful effort. After remaining perfectly 
 silent for two or three minutes, he said, in a voice that struggled to 
 be calm, and succeeded in being icy : 
 
 " Julian, you have torn the veil of the Holy of Holies from the 
 top to the bottom with a vengeance. But why have you kept up 
 the deception so long, when, after all, there was nothing behind the 
 veil ? That was surely unnecessary." 
 
 " What is the matter with you, Val ? I don't understand you."
 
 BATTLE ARRAY 299 
 
 " Nor I you. And yet we say that we are intimate friends. 
 There's an irony." 
 
 At this point the waiter came in with an omelette and the conver- 
 sation ceased, checked by his peripatetic presence. As soon as he 
 had retreated, with all the hushed activity of a mute rolling on 
 castors, Julian exclaimed : 
 
 " It's not an irony. You choose to make it so. You're not your- 
 self to-night, Valentine. I do not compare you with poor Cuckoo. 
 How could I ? She's down in the dirt and you are far away from 
 the dirt. And of course your power over any one must be a thousand 
 times greater than hers." 
 
 "If it came to a battle ? If it carne to a battle ? " interrupted 
 Valentine, " You say that, Julian ? " 
 
 'A battle! of what?" 
 
 ' Of wills, naturally, Cuckoo Bright's will against mine?" 
 
 ' But what a strange idea 
 
 ' You haven't answered my question." 
 
 ' Because I don't see the force of it." 
 
 ' Answer it nevertheless." 
 
 'Then Cuckoo would be beaten at once," Julian said. But there 
 was no ring of conviction in his voice, and he fell at once into silence 
 after he had spoken the words. Valentine saw by his frowning face 
 and puckered forehead that the idea of such a battle had set in motion 
 a train of thought in his mind. 
 
 "You are wondering, Julian," Valentine said. 
 
 Julian looked up. 
 
 " Who doesn't wonder in this beastly world ? " he said morosely. 
 
 " I never do. I prefer to act. Drink some more champagne." 
 
 He pushed the bottle over and went on : 
 
 " You are wondering why I spoke of a battle between Cuckoo 
 Bright and me. Well, I'll tell you. I spoke because I see that 
 there is to be such a battle." 
 
 Julian drank his champagne and looked definitely and increasingly 
 astonished, as Valentine continued : 
 
 " There is to be such a battle. I have seen it for a long time. 
 Julian, you may think you know women. You don't. I said just 
 now that a woman like Cuckoo Bright is nothing, but I said it for 
 the sake of uttering a paradox. No woman is ever nothing in a 
 world that is full of the things called men. No woman is ever nothing 
 so long as there is a bottle of hair-dye, a rouge pot, a dress- 
 maker, and a man within reach. She may be in the very gutter. 
 That doesn't matter. For from the very gutter she can see not the 
 stars, but the twinkling vanities of men, and they will light her on 
 her way to May fair drawing-rooms, even perhaps to Court. Who 
 knows ? And God or the devil has given to every woman the
 
 3oo 
 
 FLAMES 
 
 knowledge of her possibilities. Men have only the ignorance of 
 theirs." 
 
 l - What has this to do with Cuckoo and me ? " Julian said. "This 
 bottle is empty, Valentine." 
 
 Valentine rang hastily for another. 
 
 " And what on earth has it got to do with a battle between you 
 and Cuckoo ? " 
 
 " Everything. She hates me. She has told you so again and 
 again." 
 
 Julian looked expressively uncomfortable. 
 
 " I've always stood up for you," he began. 
 
 " I believe it. She hates me not because I am myself, but simply 
 because I am your closest friend. Hush, Julian. It's much better 
 all this should be said once for all. Many women are intensely 
 jealous of the men fiiends of men whom they either love, or who 
 they mean shall love them. Look at the wives who drive their hus- 
 band's old chums from intimacy into the outer darkness of acquaint- 
 anceship. Wedding-days break, as well as bind, faith. And you 
 have had your wedding-day with Cuckoo." 
 
 " That was an accident. She loathes to think of it." 
 
 " She may say so. But it puts a fine edge on her hatred of me 
 nevertheless." 
 
 " No, Valentine, no. Her dislike of you is simply silly instinc- 
 tive." 
 
 " She tells you so. Ah ! I was wrong to call her nothing. But 
 it is her hatred of me that must bring us to battle unless " 
 
 "Unless what?" 
 
 " You give her up now, once and for all." 
 
 " Give Cuckoo up ! " 
 
 The words came slowly, and the voice that uttered them sounded 
 startled and even shocked. Valentine began to gauge the new 
 power of the lady of the feathers from that moment. 
 
 " That's a a strong thing to do, Val." 
 
 " It won't hurt you to do a strong thing for once in your life." 
 
 " Even if it didn't hurt me I think it would hurt her very much. 
 For, Valentine, I believe you said truth when you said to me once 
 ' That girl loves you.' Do you remember ? " 
 
 ' Perfectly. Loves you, your birth, your position, your money, 
 your good looks, perhaps your standpoint above the gutter. I can 
 well believe that Miss Bright, like all her sisterhood, loves with un- 
 dying love that combination of flesh-pots, her notion of the e"o of 
 a man." 
 
 " She has never accepted a halfpenny from me.'' 
 
 " Because she means eventually to have twenty-one shillings in 
 the pound. Have some more champagne."
 
 BATTLE ARRAY 301 
 
 " Yes. You are wrong, Yal, utterly wrong. Cuckoo's not mer- 
 cenary. If such a girl could be good, she is good." 
 
 There was just a touch of the maudlin in Julian's voice. He went 
 on, very earnestly, and nodding his head emphatically over even his 
 conjunctions. 
 
 " And if she were what you say, she would have no influence over 
 me, and I should hate her. But to me she is just what a good girl 
 might be. Why, even the doctor " 
 
 " Was he there to-night ? " Valentine cried, with a sudden in- 
 spiration. 
 
 " Of course he was. And you know what a particular little chap 
 he is." 
 
 " Why was he there ? " 
 
 " Just to see Cuckoo, you know, in a friendly way." 
 
 Yalentine realised then that the battle had begun. He divined 
 the meaning of the doctor's visit. He guessed what it had done 
 for the lady of the feathers. And he sat silent while Julian went 
 on drinking more champagne. 
 
 " I believe he likes Cuckoo, Val. I am sure he does. And he 
 behaved quite as if quite as if he you know respected her. And 
 it's all nonsense her hating you, and having a battle, and all that 
 kind of thing, with you. She's only fanciful. She's not " 
 
 " Would you give her up if I asked you to ? Mind, Julian, I 
 don't say I ever shall ask you. But if I do ? " 
 
 " Don't ask me to, don't ask me. Poor Cuckoo, poor girl, she's 
 got no friends, money, or or anything. Poor Cuckoo. Poor 
 Cuck Cuck 
 
 He fell back in his chair, nodding his head, and reiterating his 
 commiseration for the lady of the feathers in a faint and recurring 
 hiccough. Yalentine got up and rang the bell. 
 
 " The bill, please, waiter." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 The man glanced at Julian with the shadow of a pleasing, and 
 apparently also pleased, smile and withdrew. Yalentine stood for a 
 moment looking at the leaning figure on the chair, relaxed in the 
 first throes of a drunken slumber. His anger and almost unbridled 
 emotion completely died away as he looked. 
 
 " Can it be called a battle after all ? " he said to himself. " They 
 may not know it, but it is practically won already." 
 
 The waiter re-entered. Yalentine paid the bill, and the breath of 
 the frost shortly revived Julian into an attempt at conversation. 
 
 " Don't ask me to give her up, Yal, don't, don't ask me. Poor 
 girl. Poor, poor Cuck Cuck." 
 
 The name of the lady of the feathers seemed a good one for a 
 tipsy tongue to play with.
 
 CHAPTER VJII 
 
 THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON 
 
 DR. LEVILLIER grew more puzzled day by day. His observation 
 of Valentine taught him only one thing certainly, and beyond 
 possibility of doubt, and that was the death of the youth he had 
 once loved, the living presence of a youth whom he could not love, 
 whom he could only shrink from and even fear. He held to the 
 theory that this radical and ghastly change must be caused by 
 some obscure dementia, some secret overturning of the mind ; but he 
 was obliged to confess to himself that he held to it only because, 
 otherwise, he would be floating helpless, and without a spar, upon a 
 tide of perplexity and confusion. He could not honestly say that 
 he was able to put his finger upon any definite signs of madness 
 exhibited by Valentine, any that would satisfy a mad doctor. He 
 could only say that Valentine's character had been strangely beautiful 
 and was now strangely evil, and that the soul of Julian was following 
 rapidly the soul of Valentine. The more closely he watched 
 Valentine the more astounded did he become and the more eager to 
 detach Julian from him. But the strangest thing of all, as the 
 doctor allowed in one of his frequent self-communings was that 
 though formerly he had loved Valentine better than Julian it 
 never occurred to him that the work of rescue might be under- 
 taken on behalf of the former. His mind dismissed the new 
 Valentine into a region that was beyond his scope and power. 
 He felt instinctively that here was a soul, a will, that his 
 soul could not turn from its ends or detach from its pursuits. The 
 new Valentine was a law to himself. What moved the doctor to such 
 horror was that the new Valentine was a law to Julian. And there 
 was something peculiarly dreadful in the idea which he held, that 
 Julian, once under the beautiful influence of Valentine's sanity, was 
 now under the baneful influence of his insanity. The doctor had 
 gone the length of deciding, in his own mind, that Valentine's sane 
 period of life and insane period lay one on each side of a fixed gulf, 
 and that fixed gulf was his long trance succeeding the final sitting of 
 the two young men. This conclusion was arrived at with ease, once
 
 THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT 303 
 
 the theory of a subtle lunacy was accepted as a fact. For, on sending 
 his mind back along the ways of recollection, the doctor was able to 
 recall hints of the new Valentine dating from that very night, but 
 never before it. The first hint was Rip's manifested fear, and this 
 led on to others which have been already mentioned. Having made 
 up his mind that this trance was the motive-power of Valentine's 
 supposed madness, the doctor sought in every direction to increase 
 his knowledge on the subject of simulations of death by the human 
 body. He looked up again the cases of innumerable hysterical 
 patients whom he had himself treated, sometimes with success, 
 sometimes with failure. He consulted other doctors, of course with- 
 out mentioning the object of his research. He endeavoured to apply 
 to Valentine's case standards by which he was quickly able to form 
 a satisfactory opinion on the cases of others. He even went so far 
 as to examine as closely as possible into the history of table-turning, 
 the uses ascribed to it by its votaries, and the results obtained from 
 it by credible as opposed to merely credulous witnesses. But he 
 found no case that seemed in any way analogous to the strange case 
 of Valentine. As was only natural, the doctor did not forget the 
 possibility of hypnotism, which had struck him during his second 
 conversation with the lady of the feathers. Her confused declarations 
 on the subject of Valentine and Marr being one person, if they were 
 really a true account of what Valentine had said to her which 
 seemed very doubtful could only be made clear by accepting as a 
 fact that the dead Marr had laid a hypnotic spell upon Valentine, 
 which continued to exist actively long after its weaver slept in the 
 grave. But Marr and Valentine had never met. This fact seemed 
 fully established. Valentine had always denied any knowledge of 
 him before the trance. Julian had always assumed that only he of 
 the two friends had any acquaintance with Marr. And again, when 
 the doctor one day, quite casually, said to Valentine, " By the way, 
 you never did meet Marr, did you ? " Valentine replied, " Never, 
 till I saw him lying dead in the Euston Road." 
 
 The doctor could see no ray of light in the darkness that could 
 guide him to the clue of the mystery. He could only say to himself, 
 " It must be, it must be an obscure and horrible madness," and keep 
 his theory to himself. Sometimes, as he sat pondering over the 
 whole affair, he smiled, half sadly, half sarcastically. For the event 
 brought home to his ready modesty the sublime ignorance of all 
 clever and instructed men, and taught him to wonder as he had 
 often wondered, that there exists in such a world as ours such a 
 fantastic growth as the flourishing weed, conceit. 
 
 Another matter that puzzled him greatly was this. As the days 
 went on, and as Valentine grew and he did grow more certain of 
 his own power for evil over Julian, and as, consequently, he took less
 
 304 FLAMES 
 
 and less pains to hide the truth of his'personality from the knowledge 
 of the doctor, the latter was frequently seized with the appalled 
 sensation which had long ago overtaken him when he was followed in 
 Regent Street and in Vere Street. This recurrence of sensation and 
 the certainty forced gradually upon the doctor that it was caused by 
 the presence of 'Valentine, naturally led him to wonder whether it weiv 
 possible that the man who had dogged his steps, and eventually fled 
 from him, could have been Valentine himself. If that were indeed 
 so, then this madness if it did exist must surely have come upon 
 Valentine before the trance. Nothing but a madness could have led 
 him thus in the night hours to steal out in pursuit of the friend who 
 had but just left his house and company. But the doctor knew of 
 no means by which he could satisfy himself of Valentine's movements 
 on the night in question. To ask Valentine himself would be to 
 court a lie. Once the doctor thought for a moment of having 
 recourse to Wade. Biit then he remembered that the butler did not 
 sleep in the flat, and had no doubt long gone home before the event 
 of the night in question. So, again, he was confronted with a dead 
 wall, beyond which he could see no clear view or comprehensible 
 country. 
 
 About this time there happened an event which struck strongly 
 upon the doctor's mind. He was one day as usual in his consulting- 
 room, receiving a multitude of patients, when his man-servant entered 
 with a card on a salver. 
 
 " A lady, sir, who wishes to see you. She has no appointment." 
 
 The doctor took the card. On it was printed merely " Mrs. 
 Wilson." 
 
 " I cannot see the lady to-day," he said, " unless she can call again 
 after five o'clock. But I can see her then, or to-morrow morning at 
 ten. Ask her which she would prefer." 
 
 After a moment's absence Lawler returned. 
 
 " The lady will come at five o'clock this evening, sir." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 And the doctor bent his mind once more steadily upon his work. 
 
 At five o'clock the door opened, and a tall, square, and strong 
 looking woman, dressed in black, walked quietly into the room. She 
 bowed to the doctor and sat down. 
 
 " I am glad you could see me to-day," she said. I leave London 
 early to-morrow morning. I hate London." 
 
 She spoke in a full and rather rich voice, with a slightly burring 
 accent, and looked the doctor full in the face with a pair of large 
 and sensible grey eyes. Nature had certainly built her to be one of 
 those towers of women, strong for themselves, for their sex, and 
 often for men also, who possess a peculiar power, given in quite full 
 measure to no male creature, of large sympathy and lofty composure.
 
 THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT 305 
 
 But the doctor saw at a glance that some adverse fate had disagreed 
 with the intentions of nature, and fought against them with success. 
 Circumstances must have arisen in this woman's life to break down 
 her unusual equipment of courage and resolution, or, if not to break 
 it down, to dint and batter the shield she carried over her heart and 
 life. For her fine face was lined with care, her naturally firm mouth 
 was tormented by an apparently irresistible quivering, that, once 
 prompted by long and painful emotion, had now become habitual and 
 mechanical, and her eyes, although they met the eyes of the doctor 
 with a peculiar large reception and return of scrutiny, held in their 
 depths that hunted expression which is only developed by long 
 agony, either physical or mental. So much the doctor read in a 
 glance before his patient began to detail her symptoms. She detailed 
 them with a certain obvious shame and a slow conquering of reti- 
 cence that made her speak very deliberately. 
 
 She began by saying, in no insulting manner, that she had kept 
 clear of doctors during almost the whole of her life, that she had 
 meant to keep clear of them till her death. 
 
 " For I was born with a constitution of iron," she said, ' ; andl 
 have always lived on the most sanitary principles, and with the 
 utmost simplicity. So I hoped to go to my grave without much 
 suffering. Certainly I never expected to have to consult any one on 
 the ground of nervous breakdown. Yet that is exactly why I am 
 here with you at this moment. The circumstances of my life have 
 been too much for me, I suppose." 
 
 There was a grave pathos in her voice as she uttered the last words. 
 
 " At any rate," she continued, after a pause, " I would like you to 
 help me if you can. The cause of my breakdown is remote enough, 
 several years old. I had a tremendous burden to bear then, and I 
 bore it, as I thought bravely, for a long time. At last it grew in- 
 tolerable, and then I succeeded at last in getting it removed, in 
 getting rid of it, you understand, altogether. The odd thing is that 
 while I was bearing my burden my strength did not fail me, my 
 courage did not utterly give way. Only when the burden was re- 
 moved did I faint because of it. My trouble was partially physical 
 I had to endure grave physical cruelty at that time but chiefly 
 mental. My agony of mind ran a race with my agony of body, and 
 won easily. It's generally so with women, I believe? " 
 
 She waited as if for a reply. 
 
 " Yes, it is often so," Dr. Levillier answered. 
 
 " Ever since the burden was lifted from my shoulders," she con- 
 tinued, "I have been getting steadily worse. Each month, each 
 year, I become more and more degraded in my cowardice, my fear 
 of tritles, even of things which have no existence at all. All this is 
 perhaps perhaps peculiarly painful to me because I am naturally,
 
 306 FLAMES 
 
 you must understand, what sane people call a strong-minded woman. 
 I had originally complete physical courage, didn't know the meaning 
 of the word fear, despised those who did, I am afraid. So you see 
 this is very bad for me ; it cuts so deep into my mind, you see. 
 It makes me hate and loathe myself so. I sleep badly, and have 
 the usual symptoms of nervous collapse, I believe. I'm strong one 
 moment, feeble, no good at all, the next. My appetite has long been 
 bad, and so on. But it isn't that sort of thing I mind. I could 
 tight with that well enough. It's my horrible deterioration of mind 
 that troubles me, that has brought me here, to you, in spite of my 
 hatred of London, of every city. It was in a city, though not in 
 London, that I bore that burden I told you of. It doesn't seem 
 possible to me, but I'm told, and I read, that my mind diseased 
 may be an effect, and that the cause may lie in my body. That's 
 why I come to you. Doctor Levillier, root out the disease if you 
 can." 
 
 She ended speaking almost with passion, her lips trembling all the 
 time and her eyes never leaving his face. Then she added, with a 
 curious, characteristic abruptness : 
 
 " I will tell you that I've plenty of money. Lack of funds is no 
 weapon against my return to health if my return is in any way 
 possible. 
 
 Dr. Levillier smiled slightly. 
 
 "You are anticipating the usual 'long sea voyage' formula, I 
 see," he said. 
 
 " Possibly." 
 
 " I should not j rescribe it for you off-hand," he said. " Sea air is 
 not a specific for all nervous complaints, as some people stem to think. 
 You have no bodily pain ? " 
 
 " No. I often wish I had." 
 
 " What you tell me about your gradual collapse coming on after 
 the crisis of your troubles was over, and not during it, does not 
 surprise me. Nor am I puzzled by your malady increasing if, as I 
 suppose, you are living idly." 
 
 I am. I have no courage to do anything or see anybody." 
 
 " Exactly. You live in a sort of hiding." 
 
 " Why yes. You see, once I was well-known to a good many 
 people. My troubles became known to them, too. I could not get 
 rid of that burden I told you of except by blazoning them abroad. 
 I shrink from meeting any people now. Therefore I live very 
 quietly. I " 
 
 Suddenly she seemed to grow tired of the half-measures in frank- 
 ness that had so far governed her communications. She spread 
 forth her hands with a very characteristic, ample gesture of sudden 
 confidence.
 
 THE DOCTOR RECEIVES- A VISIT 37 
 
 " I think I'll tell you exactly what it was," she said. " You may 
 have read of me. Long ago, some years at least, I was obliged to 
 take action against my husband, a Mr. Wilson, who afterwards 
 assumed the name of Marr. I charged him with cruelty, won my 
 case, and obtained a judicial separation." 
 
 Then Dr. Levillier knew that he looked on the former wife of 
 the strange, cruel, dead man, whose influence had entered into the 
 lives of his two friends. 
 
 " You may have heard of my case ? " Mrs. Wilson said. 
 
 " Certainly I have." 
 
 " It was bad even from a newspaper point of view, I believe. People 
 congratulated me on getting rid of a brute, and thought I was all 
 right and ought to be happy. But the newspapers and the world 
 never knew what I had gone through, the real horrors, before I 
 insisted on release. You started when I called my husband a brute 
 just now, Doctor Levillier; I noticed it. The phrase hurt you, 
 coming from any wife about any husband. I know why. A boy 
 once told me that his mother was always drunk. He hurt me then 
 into hating him for the rest of my days. But I called a stranger a 
 brute, not the man I loved and married, not the man I loved after I 
 married him. Doctor Levillier, do you believe in possessions ? " 
 
 She had been gradually getting excited while she spoke, and, on 
 the last words, she leaned forward in her chair and struck her hand 
 down in her lap. 
 
 " Do you mean possession by the devil ? " said the doctor, very 
 quietly, opposing a strong calm to her intensity. 
 
 <( Yes. I do. My experience obliges me to. I knew, for a year 
 before I married him, I married, I lived for two years after I 
 married him, with a man who was my conception of what a man 
 should be, strong, gentle, tender, brave, a hero to me. I got rid 
 of a devil, after I had endured two years of torture at his hands. 
 It is no use to tell me those two distinct men I knew were one and 
 the same man. My soul, my heart, declare that it's a lie. There 
 were such differences. My husband loved music ; this man hated 
 it, yet had the power to use it as a means of tormenting me. But I 
 needn't dwell on the evidences of change. Suffice it to say that the 
 thing that crushed me, the thing that has brought me down into 
 the dust where I am, dust of cowardice, and weakness, and impo- 
 tence to do or to be anything, was the horror of awakening to a 
 knowledge of that change, of having to live as wife with this devil, 
 whom I knew not, who was. a stranger to me. Only the features 
 were my husband's, nothing else. 1 got rid of a stranger. The 
 man found dead in the Euston lloacl was a stranger whom I hated, 
 nothing more to me than that." 
 
 As she spoke, in a deep, resonant voice that pulsated through the
 
 3 o8 FLAMES 
 
 room, Dr. Levillier recalled, almost with a thrill, Julian's words to 
 him in Harley Street, on the night of the fracas with the mastiffs, 
 words spoken about the dead Marr : " His face dead was the most 
 absolutely direct contradiction possible to his face alive. He was 
 not the same man." He recalled these words and the thought shot 
 through his mind, " Did the man this woman loved return at the 
 moment of death ? " 
 
 And that change in Valentine ! 
 
 He said to Mrs. Wilson, betraying none of the excitement that 
 he really felt : 
 
 " You spoke of cruelty. You had to endure physical cruelty ? " 
 
 " Worse ; to see it endured by others, dumb, helpless creatures, 
 by my own dog." 
 
 A great shudder ran through her. 
 
 " I can't talk of it," she said. " But it made me what I am. 
 Can you do anything for me ? Why do you look at me like 
 that ? " 
 
 For, at her word about the dog, the doctor had fallen into a tense 
 reverie, looking steadily upon her, yet as one who sees little or 
 nothing. He roused himself quickly. 
 
 " Tell me something of the symptoms of your mental malady," 
 he said. " These fancies that distress you ; of Avhat nature are 
 they ? " 
 
 She told him. Many of them were symptoms well known to all 
 those who have suffered acutely after some great shock, imagined 
 sounds, movements, and so forth. The doctor listened. He had 
 heard such a story many times before. 
 
 " I, / am full of these ghastly, these degrading fancies," Mrs. 
 Wilson cried, with a sort of large indignation against herself, and 
 yet an uncertain terror. " Is it not ? " 
 
 She suddenly stopped speaking. 
 
 " There's some one at your door," she said, after a second or two of 
 apparent attention to some sound without. 
 
 " I daresay. A patient." 
 
 At this moment a voice, which Dr. Levillier immediately recognised 
 as the voice of Valentine, was audible in the hall. 
 
 Mrs. Wilson turned suddenly very pale, and began to tremble and 
 gnaw her nether lip with her teeth in an access of nervous 
 disturbance. 
 
 " In God's name tell me who that is," she whispered, turning her 
 head in the direction of the door. " It can't be it can't be 
 Valentine's voice rose a little louder. " It is his voice." 
 
 " Fancy ! " the doctor said firmly. " It is the voice of a friend of 
 mine, Mr. Valentine Cresswell." 
 
 Mrs. Wilson said nothing. She was trying to force herself to
 
 THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT 309 
 
 believe the evidence of another's sense against her own. Such a task 
 is always difficult. At last she looked up and said : 
 
 "There, doctor, thei-e you have an exhibition of my illness. It's 
 horrible to me. Can you cure it ? " 
 
 " I will try," the doctor answered. 
 
 But he found it very difficult just at that moment to say the three 
 words quietly, to let Valentine go after leaving his message, with- 
 out confronting him with this haggard patient who was entering the 
 pool of Bethesda.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 A SHADOW ON FIRE 
 
 WHEN a naturally calm, clear and courageous mind finds itself 
 besieged by what seem hysterical fancies it is troubled and per- 
 plexed, and is inclined to take drastic measures to restore itself to 
 its normal condition. Dr. Levillier found himself the prey of such 
 fancies after his interview with Mrs. Wilson. He had prescribed 
 for her. He had very carefully considered what way of life would 
 be likely to restore her to health, and to banish the demons which 
 had brought her strength and unusual self-reliance so lo\v. He had 
 received her gratitude, and had dismissed her to the following of his 
 plans for her benefit. All this he had done with calm deliberation, 
 the very cheerful composure which he always practised towards the 
 victims of nervous complaints. But even while he did this his own 
 mind was in a turmoil. For this woman had let fall statements 
 with regard to her dead husband which most curiously bolstered 
 up Cuckoo's fantastic assertion that Valentine and Ma IT were the 
 same man. Marr had been cruel to animals, to dogs, had evidently 
 taken a keen enjoyment in torturing them, and, on hearing Valen- 
 tine's voice, she had turned pale and declared that it was the voice 
 of her husband. Then her strange declaration about her husband's 
 use of music as a mode of cruelty ! These circumstances appealed 
 powerfully to the doctor's mind, or at least to that unscientific side 
 of it which inclined him to romance, and to a certain sympathy with 
 the mysteries of the world. Many Europeans who go to India 
 return to their own continent imbued with a belief in miracles, 
 modern miracles, which no argument, no sarcasm, can shake. But 
 there are miracles in Europe, too. The magicians of the East work 
 wonders in the strange atmosphere of that strange country whose 
 very air is heavy with magic. Yet England, too, has her magicians. 
 London holds in the arms of its yellow fogs and dust-laden clouds 
 miracles. Dr. Levillier found himself assailed by ideas like these 
 as he thought of that transformed Marr, "possessed," as the pale, 
 strongly-built wreck of a grand, powerful woman had named it, as 
 lie thought of the transformed Valentine, the hour of whose trans-
 
 A SHADOW ON FIRE 311 
 
 formation coincided with the hour of Marr's death. Why had this 
 new, horrible, yet beautiful cmituro, risen out of the ashes of the 
 trance that was practically a death ; why had he such amazing 
 points of resemblance to Marr ? Why had the influence of Marr 
 been deliberately intruded into the calm, happy, and safe lives of 
 Julian and Valentine ? Marr was cruel to dogs, and dogs showed 
 rage and terror when the new Valentine approached them. Marr 
 had a hatred, yet a knowledge of music. The new Valentine, when 
 forced to sing, sang like some wild, desolate thing, with reluctant and 
 terrible voice. And at this point the doctor used the curb sud- 
 denly and pulled himself up sharply. He felt that it was useless, 
 that it was unworthy to plunge himself thus in romance, and to hang 
 veils of mystery around these facts which he had to accept and to 
 deal with. A touch of humanity is worth all the unhuman romance 
 in the world. Humanity lay at the doctor's gate, sore distressed, 
 sinking to something that was beyond distress. So, putting his 
 fancies resolutely behind him, Dr. Levillier resolved to right 
 through that frail weapon, the lady of the feathers, the battlo of 
 Julian's will against the will which he now fully and once for all 
 recognised as malign of the man he must still call Valentine. 
 Valentine had said to Julian, at the Savoy, " If it came to a battle 
 Cuckoo Blight's will against mine ! " The doctor had not heard 
 those words. Yet, under the stars on the doorstep of Cuckoo's 
 dwelling he, too, had spoken to the girl of a fight. Thus he had 
 poured a great ardour into her heart. The three souls, Cuckoo's, 
 Dr. Levillier's, Valentine's were thus set in battle array. They 
 understood what they faced, or at least that they faced warfare. 
 Only Julian did not understand yet. He was besotted by the spell 
 of the one he called friend laid upon him, and by the vices in which 
 he had been taught to wallow. His brain was clouded and his eyes 
 were dim, as the brains and eyes of the malades imayinaires who 
 carry on the scheme of sin and of sorrow in the world, and prolong 
 by their deeds the long travail of their race. Julian did not under- 
 stand. For now he seldom thought sincerely. Sincere thoughts 
 and the incessant and violent acts of passion do not often dwell 
 together. 
 
 The progress of Julian towards degradation had now become so 
 rapid that his many acquaintances talked of him openly as of one 
 who had practically " gone under." Not that he had ever done any 
 of those few things at which society, whose door is generally ajar, 
 with Mrs. Grundy's large ear glued to the keyhole, resolutely shuts 
 the door. He had not forged, or stolen a watch, or killed anybody, 
 or married a grocer's widow, or anything of that kind. But he had 
 thrown his life to the pleasures of the body, and made no secret of 
 the fact. And the pleasures of the bo;ly, like eager rats, had gnawed
 
 3 i2 FLAMES 
 
 uw.iy his power of self control until lie could resist nothing, no wish 
 of the moment, no desire horn illegitimately of passing excitement or 
 the prompting of wine. So he committed many follies, and his follies 
 had loud voices. They shrieked and shouted. And society heard 
 their cries, held the door a little more ajar, and listened with that 
 passion of attention which virtue accords to vice. But society, having 
 heard a good deal, shook its head over Julian. He had acquired 
 such a taste for low company that he ought to have been born a peer. 
 Certainly he had money. That made his errors chink rather plea- 
 santly, and filled the bosoms of many mothers with an expansive 
 charity towards him. Still the general opinion was that he was 
 sinking very low. In fact, the legend of Julian's shame was now 
 written on his face in such legible and vital characters that the most 
 short-sighted eyes could not fail to read it. The eager beauty of 
 untarnished youth had faded into the dull, and often sulky, languors 
 of the utterly indulged body. Julian was often exhausted and 
 passing through those leaden-footed dreams that fitfully entrance the 
 vicious, those dreams that are colourless and sombre, that press upon 
 all the faculties and yet have no real meaning, that stifle all inten- 
 tions, and put an end, for the moment, to all active desires. People 
 talk of the vicious as " living," but half their time they are curiously 
 dead, for their sins blunt their energies and lull them into a condition 
 that resembles rather paralysis than slumber. 
 
 Since the night on which he had supped with Valentine at the 
 Savoy, Julian had given himself up to the company and influence of 
 his friend more than ever, and London, which had once nicknamed 
 Valentine the Saint of Victoria Street, began to dub him with quite 
 another name. For it gradually became apparent to those who only 
 knew the two young men slightly that Valentine exerted an extra- 
 ordinarily powerful influence over Julian, and that the influence was 
 imperatively evil. At first many were deceived by the clear beauty 
 of Valentine's face, but that was beginning to fade. A thin lino, 
 pencilled here and there with a fairylike delicacy, a slight puffiness 
 beneath the blue eyes, a looseness of the cheeks, a droop of the lips, 
 all very demure, as it were, and furtive, shed alteration upon his fair 
 beauty. He himself noticed it, as he looked in a mirror one night, 
 and silently cursed the inevitable effect which mind produces upon 
 matter. No man's face can for ever remain an entirely deceptive 
 mask. The saintly expression of Valentine's was rapidly becoming a 
 thing of the past. He wondered whether Julian noticed it. But 
 Julian was too much preoccupied with his own energies of dreary 
 action and lacerating fatigues of subsequent thought, or it would be 
 truer to say moodiness, to notice anything. He was self-centred, as 
 are all sinners, immersed in his own downfall like a man in an 
 ocean. He was unconscious that he was the subject of battle, that
 
 A SHADOW ON FIRE 313 
 
 four wills were to contend for his soul's sake. Four wills, yet one 
 expressed itself in no outward form. It was in exile, till the clay of 
 
 its redemption should dawn. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 On the night when Valentine heard Julian babble incoherently the 
 name of the lady of the feathers he said to himself that the battle 
 should be his, and he leaned upon his will to feel its power and its 
 glory. That night he forgot his fury, the intense emotion that had 
 overtaken him at the supper table as he gauged, or strove to gauge, 
 the influence that Cuckoo was obtaining over Julian. He forgot 
 Dr. Levillier. He remembered only himself and his own strength, 
 which he was now to test to its foundations. And when he woke 
 again to thoughts of others it was only to laugh at the force arrayed 
 against him. The lady of the feathers moved, to his fancy, like 
 the most piteous of puppets, a jeering fate manipulating the 
 strings. This manipulator had kept her long to one set of motions, 
 stiff pleading arm, anxious head, interrogative joints, and a strut of 
 wolfish eagerness and hunger. But such a game was now to be 
 abandoned. And behold the puppet a warrior forsooth, a very 
 Amazon, hounded to fight by the doctor's voice, the doctor's word of 
 encouragement, battling with the stiff arms that had abandoned the 
 pleading gesture, stern in a wooden attitude of defiance. And Fate, 
 in fits of laughter at the string holding ! Then Valentine lost his 
 fear, and could have been angry that such a scarecrow was the crea- 
 ture selected by Fate to draw a sword against him. He chose to 
 forget the vision in the mirror when he struck at the staring reflec- 
 tion of the lady of the feathers and shivered under the influence of a 
 cold terror. He chose to remember only the thin and fearful 
 woman who had given her body to the world, and so had 
 surely given her soul to a mill that had long ago ground it to 
 powder. 
 
 There is nothing so terrible to one screwed up to the highest 
 pitch of action as a monotony of waiting. Scourging were better, 
 the hemp or the fire. The lady of the feathers had been stirred to a 
 strange enthusiasm, and to a belief in herself, a faith more 
 wonderful to some, more unaccustomed and remote, than any faith 
 in God or devil. A flood of energy flowed over her, warm as blood, 
 strong as love, keen with the salt of beautiful novelty, turbulent as 
 the seas when the great tides take hold on them. It was to her as 
 if for the moment the world's centre was just there, where she was, 
 in the winter and in the Marylebone Road, within sound of the 
 great church clock, the great church bells, the cries of the street, the 
 very steam panting up from the Baker Street Station. Cuckoo was 
 in the core of things, and the core of things is fierce and hot and 
 action prompting. That half revealed shadow waving good-bye to
 
 314 FLAMES 
 
 Julian as lie stopped into the frost)* night was a shadow on fire. 
 Yet he had scarcely looked back at it. -But Cuckoo was to loarn to 
 the last word the lesson of patience. Inspired by the sympathy of 
 the doctor and by something deep in her own heart, she was, for the 
 moment, all courage, all flame. She was ready to fight. She was 
 ready to do supreme things, to touch the stars. The stars went out 
 and she had not touched them. The morning dawned very chilly, 
 very dark, the morning that brought Mrs. Brigg to her room yellow 
 and complaining. Still Cuckoo was conscious of a high beating 
 courage that made summer in that winter day. She astonished the 
 old keeper of that weary house by the vivacity of her manner, the 
 brightness of her look. For Mrs. Brigg was well accustomed to sad 
 morning moods, to petulant lassitude, and dull grimness of unpainted 
 and unpowdered fatigue, but had long been a stranger to early 
 moods of hope or of gaiety. Mornings, in houses such as hers, arc 
 recurring tragedies, desolating pulses of Time, shaking human hearts 
 with each beat nearer and nearer to the ultimatum of sorrow. She 
 knew not what to make of this new morning mood of Cuckoo, and 
 wagged a heavily pensive head over it, unresponsive and muttering. 
 Jessie, too, was astonished but more pleasantly. The little dog, 
 dwelling ignorantly in the midst of degradation, had learned 
 quickly the swing of its beloved mistress's moods. In the dim 
 morning it was ever the comforter of misery it could not rightly 
 understand, not the playfellow of happiness that stirred it to 
 leaps and barks of wonder and excitement. In the mornings 
 Cuckoo held it long against her thin bosom, sometimes crushed 
 it nearly breathless, pushing its little head down in the nest 
 of her arms and telling it a tale of the world's woe, that sent 
 long and thin whimpers twittering through its body. The flut- 
 tering whisper of morning misery, or the silence of vacant 
 fatigue, these were accustomed things to Jessie. Even if she did 
 not thoroughly understand them she was ready for them, and eagerly 
 responsive as dogs are to emotions along whose verges they tread 
 with the soft feet of sympathy, the sweeter for the ignorance that 
 paints their generosity in such tender colours. But Jessie was 
 bouleversee by this passionate, eager Cuckoo, this shadow on fire, who 
 was alive almost ere London was alive, instead of half dead until 
 half London slept. The shadow on fire snatched her out of her 
 sleep, tossed her in air, spoke to her with a voice that thrilled her 
 to quick barking excitement, played with her till the little dog's 
 flux of emotions threatened to consummate in a canine apoplexy and 
 Mrs. Brigg battered at the door with a shrill, " Keep that beast 
 quiet, can't yer ? " All this was Cuckoo fighting ; battle in the bed- 
 clothes, battle with soap and water, curling-pins, corset, shoes. 
 Each little act was performed with an energy it did not demand.
 
 A SHADOW ON FIRE 3*5 
 
 The sponge was squeezed dry like a live thing being strangled; the 
 tooth-brush played as Maxim guns on an enemy ; buttons went into 
 button-holes with a manner of ramrods going into muskets ; hooks 
 met eyes as one army meets another. Battle in all that morning's 
 common tasks, setting them high, dressing them with chivalry and 
 strong endeavour. Cuckoo went into her sitting-room swiftly, with 
 glowing cheeks and naming eyes, as one ardently expectant. And 
 
 then ? Mrs. Brigg had lit the fire, but it had spluttered out into 
 
 a mass of blackened, ghostly paper and skeleton sticks. A little 
 more battle in the relighting of it. But then the blank day of the 
 girl of the streets. Cuckoo sat down, watched the growing fire, and 
 wondered what she had expected. She was conscious that she had 
 expected something, and something not small. Her mood had 
 demanded it. But our moods are often like disappointed brigands 
 who, having waylaid a pauper, demand with levelled pistols that 
 which the pauper has so vainly prayed for all his life. Moods come 
 from within. They are not evoked to dance valses with suitable 
 partners from without. And so Cuckoo's strong excitement and 
 energy found nothing to dance with. She sat there growing 
 gradually less alive, and wondering why she had hastened to get up, 
 why she was fully dressed, instead of wrapped in the usual staring 
 pink dressing-gown with the chiffon cascades down the front. 
 Mornings were of no use to her, never had been. God might as well 
 never have included them in the scheme of His days, so far as she 
 was concerned. But this morning she had thought, had felt it 
 seemed impossible that she should feel so unusual and that nothing 
 should happen. She was ready, but Fate was in bed and asleep. 
 That was really the gist of the feeling that came over her. She 
 thought of Dr. Levillier, the man who had set a torch at last to 
 her nature and fired it with new ardour. He was at his work in the 
 morning, seeing, speaking to, that passing line of strangers who 
 walked on for ever through his life. His energies were employed. 
 Perhaps he had forgotten Cuckoo and her empty mornings. Almost 
 for the first time in her life the lady of the feathers definitely longed 
 for a legitimate occupation. How she could have flown at it to-day. 
 But already the bright mood was fading. It could not last in such 
 an atmosphere. As Cuckoo had said, she could fight better than she 
 could pray. But it seemed to her, after a while, that there was only 
 room in this cheerless, dark house to pray, no room at all to fight. 
 She tried reading yesterday's evening paper left on the horsehair 
 sofa by Julian. But reading had never been a favourite occupation 
 of hers, and to-day she wanted to save Julian, to make him love her 
 and so to win him from Valentine. She did not want to sit in the 
 twilight of a winter's day reading about people she had never seen, 
 things she did not understand. And she threw the paper down.
 
 316 FLAMES 
 
 To make Julian love her. Cuckoo flushed, yes, even sitting 
 there quite alone, for Jessie had retired to the warmth of the bed- 
 room blankets, as she said it in her mind. The doctor had told her 
 to do it. Her heart had told her to try to do it long ago. But she 
 trusted the doctor and she did not trust her heart. And how could 
 she trust her power to make Julian love her? Cuckoo had once 
 known very well how to make a man desire her. In the very early 
 days of her career she had been a very pretty girl. Her old mother, 
 who believed her dead, had often cried and said to the neighbours 
 that her beauty had been Cuckoo's undoing. Thus do we lay blame 
 on the few fine gifts that should gild our lives. But Cuckoo had 
 been very pretty and had soon learnt the first foul lesson of her 
 metier, to wake swift desire. As time went on and she wasted her 
 gift of beauty along the pavements of London, she found this poor 
 power failing in strength and in certainty. As to the power of 
 wakening that slower, deeper, kindred, yet opposed desire of love, 
 Cuckoo had never known whether she possessed it. She had had 
 many lovers but nobody to love her really, and this in days of her 
 beauty, or at any rate her gracious prettiness. No wonder then 
 that now a chill ran over her at the thought of the task that lay 
 before her if she was to gain her battle. To break Valentino's 
 influence she had to make Julian love her. How? Instinctively, 
 and with a sense of horror, she knew that her usual practised arts, 
 instead of helping almost fatally handicapped her now. She loved 
 Julian purely, so purely that she could not endure that he should 
 meet her degradation as he had met it on that one night she never 
 thought of but with repentance. Yet to her ignorance, to her, 
 rising towards purity now, yet ever steeped in the coarsest know- 
 ledge, it seemed that the thing called love could hardly utter itself 
 save by some threadbare blandishment, or parrot combination of 
 words, used each night by a hundred women of the town. Cuckoo 
 knew no language of love that was not, so to say, bad language, 
 inasmuch as it was used by those whom she hated. And hitherto 
 she had been content to keep her love for Julian a silent love, 
 except on the few occasions when she had obliquely shown it by 
 the anger of jealousy or of reproach. She wished nothing bodily 
 from him, or, if she did, stifled the wish in the nmtely repeated 
 record of her own unworthiness. But now, if she was to draw his 
 soul to hers, she must move forward, she must surely commit some 
 sacrifice, perform some deed. What deed could she perform ? What 
 sacrifice could she make that would win upon him, that would alter 
 his relation towards her from one of eccentric friendship to one of 
 affection that might even be governed ? 
 
 The lady of the feathers did not reason this all out in her mind as 
 she sat before the spluttering fire, but she felt it, a tangled mass of
 
 A SHADOW ON FIRE 317 
 
 thoughts, catching her brain sis in a net, catching her life as in a net, 
 too. How could she make Julian love her ? What could she do ? 
 And all the time, as she asked herself psissionately that question, the 
 hours were gliding by towards the evening refrain of her life. 
 Cuckoo began to consider this evening refrain as she had never 
 considered it before, as it might affect another if he loved her. If 
 she made Julian love her, if she succeeded in this attempt that 
 seemed as if it must be impossible, what of her evening refrain then ? 
 And what would be the conclusion of such a love ? She could not 
 tell, she could only wonder. The strange thing about the lady of 
 the feathers, and about many of her kind, was thsit she never 
 dreamed of such a thing as owing a duty to herself, to her own body, 
 her own soul or nature. Cuckoo knew not the meaning of self- 
 respect. Had you told her that her body was a temple not of the 
 Holy Ghost, but of a wonderful, exquisite thing called womanhood, 
 and for that reason should not be defiled, she would have stared at 
 you under drawn eye-brows, like a fierce boy, and wondered what in 
 heaven or earth you were talking jargon about. To get at her 
 sympathy you must talk to her of duty to another ; and if she had a 
 soft feeling for that other, then she understood you, and then alone. 
 It was the cause of Julian and his safety that made her now consider 
 this evening refrain of her life as she sat there. And her mind ran 
 back to Julian's first visit to her and to his first request. He asked 
 her to stay at home just for one night with Jessie. And she refused. 
 If she had not refused. If she had stayed at home. If she had at 
 that moment, from that moment, given up her life of the street, 
 would Julian have loved her then ? Would she have been able to do 
 something for him ? For hours Cuckoo sat there pondering in her 
 vague, desolate way over questions such as these. But she could 
 give no answer to them. And then she thought of that horrible 
 night when the hours danced to the music of the devil, when she 
 gave Julian that first little impetus which started him on his journey 
 to the abyss. And at that thought she grew white, and she grew 
 hot, and she wondered why she had been born to be the lady of the 
 feathers and the wrecker, not of men's lives she never thought of 
 men tenderly in the mass but of this one life, of this one man, whom 
 she loved in a strange, wild, good-woman way. 
 
 " C-r-r-r ! " she said, her tongue flickering against her teeth. 
 Jessie stirred in the blankets, came to the floor with a "t'bb" and 
 ran into the room with curved attitudes of submission. But 
 Cuckoo would not notice the little dog. She stared at the fire and 
 looked so old, and almost intellectual. But there was nobody to see 
 her. What a long, empty day it had been, this day for which she 
 had risen eagerly as to a day of battle ! What a long, empty day 
 and no deed done in it. And now the hour of the evening refrain
 
 3i8 FLAMES 
 
 was come. Cuckoo hud wanted this day to be a special day, for it 
 was the first of those new days which were to come after the doctor's 
 word of hope. And nothing had happened in it. Nobody had 
 coine. The doctor was with his patients. Julian was ah surely 
 with Valentine. And she, Cuckoo, this poor, pale girl, who wanted 
 to fight and to do battle, was alone. And she had been so eager in 
 the morning. And now the night was falling and she had not 
 struck a blow. The hour chimed. It was the hour of the evening 
 refrain. 
 
 Suddenly Cuckoo got up. She went over to the window and pulled 
 down the blind so sharply that she nearly broke it. She struck a 
 match violently, and lit the gas. She ran into the bedroom, caught 
 her hat, which lay ready for service on the top of the chest of 
 drawers, and cast it with a crash into a cardboard box, jamming the 
 lid down on it. She seized her jacket, which lay on the bed, and 
 s-trung it up on a hook, as if she were hanging a criminal. Then 
 she came back into the sitting-room, sat down in the chair, took up 
 the evening paper of yesterday, and began to read, with eyes that 
 gleamed under frowning brows, about "Foreign Affairs" and 
 " Bimetallism." 
 
 And that night the evening refrain of Cuckoo's life did not follow 
 the verse of her day. 
 
 She sat there all alone. 
 
 It was her way the only way she could devise of beginning to 
 fight the battle for Julian. 
 
 She did not stay at home with any thought of purifying herself 
 by the action. Another day she might go out as usual. But 
 Julian had once asked her not to go. She had gone then. Now 
 she obeyed him, and the obedience seemed to bring him a little 
 nearer to her.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 
 OF THE FEATHERS 
 
 SOME d;iys later Cuckoo received a telegram from Haiiey Street. It 
 came in the morning, and ran as follows : 
 
 " Call here to-day if possible. Important. Levillier." Cuckoo 
 read it, trembling. In her early days telegrams came often to her 
 door " Meet me at Verrey's, four-thirty" ; " Piccadilly Circus, live 
 o'clock to-day." Such messages nickered through her youth, forming 
 gradually a legend of her life. But this summons from the doctor 
 at the same time frightened her and braced her heart. It might 
 mean that Julian was ill, in clanger she knew not what. But, at 
 least, it broke through the appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, 
 of her days. The lady of the feathers had fought, indeed, of late 
 that worst enemy, mental despair, bred of grim patience at last 
 grown weary. That was not the battle she had been inspired to 
 expect, to prepare for. The doctor's telegram at least swept the 
 unforeseen foe from the field, and seemed to set the real enemy full 
 in view. 
 
 " There ain't any answer," the lady of the feathers said to Mrs. 
 Brigg, who waited in an attitude expressive of greedy curiosity. 
 
 " Which of 'em is it ? " demanded that functionary. 
 
 " Shan't tell you," Cuckoo hissed at her. 
 
 The filthy groove in Avhich the landlady's mind for ever ran began 
 to rouse her to an intense animosity. 
 
 " Well, it's all one to me so long as I'm paid regular," muttered 
 Mrs. Brigg, with a swing of her dusty skirts and a toss of her grey 
 head, governed by pomade, since it was a Saturday. Mrs. Brigg must 
 once have held Christian principles, as she always prepared the ground 
 for certain Sabbath curls the day before. 
 
 Cuckoo ran to dress herself. It was seldom indeed that she stirred 
 out in. the morning, so seldom that that alone was an experience. 
 Ariived in the bedroom, she pounced mechanically on rouge and 
 powder, and was about to decorate herself when she suddenly paused 
 with outstretched hands. She was going out into the bright wintry
 
 320 FLAMES 
 
 sunlight, and she was going to the doctor's house, full, perhaps, of 
 those smart patients of whom Valentine had once spoken to her. 
 What sort of an apparition would she be among them ? She dropped 
 her hands hesitating. Then she turned to a cupboard, drew out the 
 one famous black gown and put it on. She crowned her head with 
 Julian's hat, hid her hands in black silk gloves, pulled down her veil 
 and seized an umbrella. Somehow Cuckoo vaguely connected respect- 
 ability with umbrellas, although even the most vicious are fain to 
 carry them in showery London. Then she looked at herself in the 
 glass and wondered if her appearance were deceptive enough to trick 
 the sharp eyes of the patients. The glance reassured her. She 
 seemed to herself an epitome of black propriety, and she set forth 
 with a more easy heart. As she walked her mind ran on before, 
 seeking what this summons meant and debating possibilities without 
 arriving at conclusions. At the end of Harley Street her walk, which 
 had been rapid, achieved a ritardando and nearly came to a full close 
 before she gained the doctor's door. Cuckoo could be a brazen 
 hussy. A year ago she could scarcely be anything else. But that 
 love of hers for Julian had, it seemed, a strange power of under- 
 mining old habits. It laid hands upon so many perceptions, so many 
 emotions with which it should surely have had nothing to do, and 
 made subtle inroads upon every dark corner of the girl's nature. 
 From it came this ritardando. For Cuckoo was filled with a very 
 human dread of exposing Dr. Levillier to misconception by her 
 appearance in the midst of his patients. Had it been late afternoon 
 instead of morning her fortitude would certainly have been greater, 
 and might even have drawn near to impudence. But the clear light 
 of approaching noontide set her mind blinking with rapid eyelids, 
 and when she actually gained the street door her discomfort was 
 acute. 
 
 As she put up her hand to touch the bell the door opened softly 
 and a stout Duchess issued forth. Cuckoo didn't know she was a 
 Duchess, but she quailed before the plethoric glance cast upon her, 
 and her voice was uneven as she asked for the doctor. 
 
 " Have you an appointment, ma'am ? " asked Lawler, who did not 
 recognise her behind her black veil. 
 
 " I was asked to come," Cuckoo murmured. 
 
 " What name, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Cuck Miss Bright." 
 
 She was admitted. The doctor, in the hurry of business, had 
 omitted to give Lawler any instructions in the event of Cuckoo's 
 prompt response to his telegram. So she was shown into the waiting- 
 room, in which three or four people were turning over illustrated 
 papers with an air of watchful idleness and attentive leisure. Cuckoo 
 sat down in a corner as quietly as possible, and Lawler vanished.
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 321 
 
 The leaves of the illustrated papers rustled in the air with a dry 
 sound. To Cuckoo they seemed to be crackling personal remarks 
 about her, and to be impregnated with condemnation. She cast a 
 furtive glance upon the square room and perceived that they were 
 turned by four ladies, and that three of these ladies were looking 
 straight at her. The eight eyes met in a glance of inquiry and were 
 instantly cast down. Again the leaves of the illustrateds rustled, 
 this time, Cuckoo felt convinced, more fiercely than before. The frou- 
 frou of the skirts of one of the ladies joined in the chorus, which was 
 far from crying " Hallelujah ! " Cuckoo began to feel a growing 
 certainty that, despite the black veil and the neat umbrella, feminine 
 instinct had divined her. She was totally unaccustomed to such an 
 atmosphere as that which prevailed in this room, and began to be 
 the victim of an odd, prickly sensation, which she believed to be 
 physical, but which was certainly more than half moral. A Avave of 
 heat ran over her body. It was like the heat which follows on a 
 received slap. One of the illustrateds deleted its voice from the 
 general chorus. Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to 
 find two eyes fixed upon her with an expression of thin distaste 
 that was incapable of misinterpretation. A second illustrated ceased 
 to sing, two heads were inclined towards one another, and the " t'p, 
 t'p, t'p " of a low whisper set the remaining two ladies at their posts 
 as sentinels on the lady of the feathers. 
 
 Cuckoo put her hand to her face to pull her veil a little lower 
 down. By accident she tugged too hard, or it had been badly fastened 
 to her hat, for one side got loose instantly and fell down, revealing 
 her face frankly. 
 
 The "t'p, t'p, t'p" sounded again, multiplied by two. Cuckoo, 
 thrown into confusion by the malign behaviour of her veil, caught 
 awkwardly at the dropped end with an intention of readjusting it, 
 but something in the sound of the whispering suddenly moved her to 
 a different action. She snatched the veil quite off, set her feet firmly 
 against the thick Turkey carpet, raised her eyes and stared with all 
 her might at the four ladies, hurling, as a man hurls a bomb, an 
 expression of savage defiance into her gaze. The whispers stopped ; 
 a thin and repeated cough, dry as Sahara, attacked the silence, and 
 eight eyes were vehemently cast down. Cuckoo continued staring, 
 folding her hands in her lap. The prickly sensation increased, but 
 she considered it now as a thing to be jumped on. Recognising 
 that she was recognised, she was instantly moved to play up to her 
 part, and she longed to stare the four women out into Harley Street. 
 If the energy of a gaze could have achieved that object they must 
 have backed through the doctor's plate glass into the area forthwith. 
 They were in fact most obviously moved, and their attitudes expressed, 
 by a community of lines, virtue rampant and agitation giiles. A
 
 322 FLAMES 
 
 shattering silence endured till Lawler appeared to bid two of these 
 virgins with lit lamps of self-righteousness to the consulting-room. 
 As they rose the two other ladies rose also and followed in their 
 wake. Lawler politely protested, but they were now to proclaim 
 their beauty of character. 
 
 " We should prefer to wait in another room," said the lady who 
 had coughed as a communication with heaven. 
 
 " Yes, another room," added the other, and, as she spoke, she 
 half turned, indicating the corner where Cuckoo sat. 
 
 Without a word Lawler showed them out and closed the door. 
 For another twenty minutes Cuckoo sat alone, glaring at the table 
 by which these members of her sex had sat, and seeing no material 
 objects but only as is the way of humanity her own point of view ; 
 the ladies saw only theirs. In this respect at least they closely 
 resembled the lady of the feathers. When Lawler at length returned 
 with his grave, " This way if you please, ma'am," Cuckoo rose to her 
 feet with the inflexibility of some iron thing set in motion by 
 mechanism, and marched in his wake to the doctor's presence. 
 
 The doctor was standing up by a bright fire ; he looked very 
 grave. 
 
 " I am very sorry to have kept you," he said, "very sorry. I did 
 no!; think you could get here so quickly." 
 Cuckoo cleared her throat. 
 " I wish I hadn't," she answered bluntly. 
 Why ? " 
 
 " It don't matter. I started directly your wire came." 
 " That was good of you. Please sit down." 
 
 Cuckoo sat, with a straight back in the straightest chair she could 
 perceive. The doctor still remained standing by the fire. He 
 appeared to be thinking deeply. His eyes looked downward at his 
 gaily shining boots. After a minute or two he said : 
 
 " I speak to you now in strict confidence, trusting your secrecy 
 implicitly." 
 
 The back of Cuckoo became less straight. Even a gentle curve 
 made it more gracious if less admirable from the dancing mistress 
 point of view. 
 
 " Honour ! " she interjected rapidly, like a schoolboy. 
 The doctor looked up at her and a smile came to his lips. And as 
 he looked up he noticed the neatness of her black gown, the 
 simplicity of her hat, the absence of paint and powder. Being after 
 all only a man, he was surprised at Cuckoo's appearance of propriety. 
 The four ladies had been surprised at her appearance of impropriety. 
 But the doctor seeing her so much better than usual, thought her 
 in looks quite well, as indeed she was in comparison with the tout 
 ensemble of her usual days. He looked from her black gloves, which
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 323 
 
 held the thick black veil, to the winter sunshine sparkling, like a 
 dancing eager child, at the window. 
 
 " Do you like driving?" he said. 
 
 What ? " 
 
 " Driving do you like it ? " 
 
 " Pretty well, if the horse don't come down," said Cackoo, at once 
 concentrated on cabs. 
 
 " My horses won't." 
 
 " Yours ! " 
 
 " Yes. I have no more patients to-day. I have a half-holiday 
 and I want to talk to you. Shall wo go for a drive to ITampstead 
 and talk out in the open air and the sunshine ? " 
 
 The four ladies, the illustrateds, the cough, dry as Sahara, were 
 instantly forgotten. Cuckoo became all curves, almost like Jessie 
 in moments of supreme emotion. 
 
 " Me and you ? " she exclaimed. " Oh ! yes." 
 
 The doctor rang the bell. 
 
 " Take this lady to the dining-room and give her some lunch," he 
 said to Lawler. " And please order the victoria round at once." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " While you lunch," he said to Cuckoo, " 111 just get through two 
 letters that must be written, and then we'll start." 
 
 Cuckoo followed Lawler with a sense of airy wonder and delight. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later she was seated with the doctor in the 
 victoria, the veil tightly stretched across her face, her poor mode of 
 living up to his trust in her, and deserving the honour now con- 
 ferred upon her. The coachman let his horses go, and Harley Street 
 was left behind. Such a bright day it was. Even the cold seemed 
 a gay and festive thing, spinning the circulation like a gold coin till 
 it glittered, decorating the poorest cheeks with the brightest rose as 
 if in honour of a festival. To Cuckoo London, as seen from a 
 private carriage, was a wonder and a dream of novelty, a city of 
 kings instead of a city of beggars, a city of crystal morning instead 
 of a city of dreadful night. She gazed at it out of a new heart as 
 these horses that never came down trotted briskly forward. 
 Through the silk of her gloves her thumbs and fingers felt 
 silently the warm sables of the rug that caressed her knees. And 
 she thought that this feeling, and the feeling in her heart, must be 
 constituent parts of the emotion called happiness. If the four ladies 
 could see her now ! If they could see her now Cuckoo thought 
 she would take off her veil, just for a moment. When the aspect of 
 the street began to change, when little gardens appeared, and bare 
 trees standing bravely in the sun- behind high walls and iron <*ates, 
 the doctor said to Cuckoo : 
 
 (' Now I will tell you why I telegraphed to you "
 
 324 FLAMES 
 
 And then Cuckoo remembered that she was in this wonderful 
 expedition for a reason. The doctor continued speaking in a low 
 voice, with the obvious intention of being inaudible to the coachman, 
 whose large furred back presented an appearance of broad indifference 
 to their two lives. 
 
 " You remember what I said to you the other day that perhaps 
 you could help Julian from great evil." 
 
 Cuckoo nodded earnestly. 
 
 " And you are prepared to do anything you can ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She had forgotten the smart carriage and the horses that never 
 came down now. 
 
 "Good," said the doctor, shortly and decisively. "I will speak to 
 you quite plainly to-day, for something leads me to trust you, and to 
 say to you what I would say to no other person. Something leads 
 me to believe that you can do more for Addison than any one else. 
 Addison once implied it ; but what I have observed for myself in 
 your house leads me to be certain of it." 
 
 " Oh," said Cuckoo. 
 
 She had nothing more to say. She could have said nothing more. 
 The stress of her excitement was too great. 
 
 " Look at that holly tree. What a quantity of berries it has ! " 
 the doctor said. " That's because it is a hard winter. Miss Bright, 
 you are right in your conviction. Valentine Cresswell is has 
 been totally evil, and is deliberately, coldly, but with determination, 
 compassing the utter ruin of the man who trusts him and believes in 
 him of Addison." 
 
 Cuckoo nodded again, this time "with a strangely matter of course 
 air, which assured the doctor in a flash of the long certainty of her 
 knowledge of Valentine. 
 
 "Such a thing seemed to me entirely incredible," the doctor 
 pursued. " I am forced forced to believe it is true. But 
 remember this. I have known Mr. Cresswell for several years 
 intimately. I have been again and again with him and Julian. 
 1 have noticed the extraordinary influence lie had over Julian, and I 
 know that influence used to be a noble influence used solely for good. 
 Mr. Cresswell was a man of extraordinary high-mindedness and 
 purity of life. He had a brilliant intellect," the doctor continued, 
 forgetting to whom he was talking, as his mind went back to the 
 Valentine of the old days. " But far more than that. He was born 
 with a very wonderful and unusual nature. It was written in his 
 face in the grandeur I can call it nothing else of his expression. 
 And it was written in his life, in all his acts. But most of all it was 
 written in all he did for Julian. Ah ! you look surprised ! " 
 
 Indeed Cuckoo's face, such of it as was visible under the black
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 325 
 
 shadow of the veil, was a mask of blank wonderment. She looked 
 upon the doctor as all that was clever and perfect and extraordinary, 
 so this, as it seemed to her, idiocy of his outlook upon Valentine 
 was too much for her manners. 
 
 " Well I never ! Him ! " she could not help ejaculating with a 
 long breath, that was almost like a little puff. 
 
 "Kemember," said Dr. Levillier, "this was before you knew 
 him." 
 
 He had taken the trouble to ascertain from Julian the exact date 
 of Valentine's first introduction to the lady of the feathers. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Cuckoo, still with absolute incredulity of the truth 
 of the doctor's panegyric expressive in voice and look. 
 
 " Men change greatly, terribly." 
 
 " Oh, not like that," she jerked out suddenly, moved by an 
 irresistible impulse to contradict his apparent deduction. 
 
 " No, there you are right," he answered with emphasis. " Sane 
 men do not, can never, I believe, change so utterly." 
 
 " That's what I say. I've seen men go down, lots of 'em, but it 
 ain't like that." 
 
 Cuckoo spoke with some authority, as of one speaking from 
 depths of profound experience. She put her hands under the 
 warm rug with a sensation of something that was like dignity of 
 mind. She and the doctor were talking on equal terms of 
 intellectuality just at this moment. She was saying sensible things 
 and he was obliged to agree with her. 
 
 " Not like that," she murmured again out of the embrace of the 
 rug. 
 
 He turned towards her so that he could see her more distinctly 
 and make his words more impressive. 
 
 " Remember now that what I am going to say to you must not be 
 mentioned to Julian on any account, or to any one," he said. 
 
 " I'll remember. Honour. I'll never tell." 
 
 " I have a very sad theory to explain this great change in Mr. 
 Cresswell, from what he was as I knew him, and you must take his 
 beauty of character from me to what he is as you and I know him 
 now. I believe that he has become mad." For the doctor had 
 resolutely put away from his mind the fancies called up in it by the 
 visit of Marr's wife. 
 
 Cuckoo gave a little cry of surprise, then hastily glanced at the 
 coachman's back and pushed her hands under the rug, up towards 
 her mouth. 
 
 " Hush," said the doctor. " Only listen quietly." 
 
 " Yes, pardon," she said. " But he ain't oh he can't be." 
 
 ' I am forced to think it, forced to think it," the doctor said, with 
 pressure. " He has, in great measure, one of the most common,
 
 326 FLAMES 
 
 most universal, of the fatuous beliefs of the insane, a deep-rooted, an 
 almost incredible belief in himself, in his own glory, power, will, 
 personality." 
 
 Cuckoo tried to throw in some remark here but he went on 
 without a pause : 
 
 "There are madmen confined in asylums all over England who 
 think themselves the Messiah this is the commonest form of 
 religious mania emperors, kings, regenerators of the human race, 
 doers of great deeds that must bring them everlasting fame. On all 
 other points they are sane, and you might spend hours alone with 
 them and never discover the one crank in their mind that makes the 
 whole mind out of joint. So you have been alone with Mr. 
 Cresswell and have not suspected him. Yet he has a madness, and 
 it is this madness which leads him to this frightful conduct of his 
 towards Julian, conduct which you will never know the extent of." 
 Here Cuckoo succeeded in getting in a remark. 
 " Will," she said, catching hold of that one word and beginning to 
 look eager. " That's what he was at all the time he wa.s talkin' to 
 me that night. Will, he s-ays, is this and that and the other ; will, 
 he says, is everything I remember. Will, he says, is my God, or 
 somethin' like it. He did. He did." 
 
 " Ah ! you see even you have noticed it." 
 
 " Yes ; but he ain't mad though," Cuckoo concluded, with an echo 
 of that obstinacy which she could never completely conquer. She 
 said what she felt. She could not help it. The doctor was in 
 nowise offended by this unskilled opinion opposed to his skilled one. 
 He even smiled slightly. 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " he asked. 
 " He's too sharp. He's a sight too sharp." 
 " Madmen are very cunning." 
 
 " So are women," Cuckoo exclaimed. " I could see if a man was 
 mad." 
 
 She was a little intoxicated with the swift motion, the bright sun, 
 the keen air, the clang of the horses' hoofs on the hard roads, and, 
 most of all, with this conference which the befurred coachman was 
 on no account to hear. This made her hold fast to her opinion, with 
 no thought of being rude or presuming. The doctor, accustomed to 
 have duchesses and others hanging upon his words of wisdom, was 
 whipped into a refreshed humour by this odd attitude of an ignorant 
 girl, and he replied with extreme vivacity : 
 
 " You will think as I do one day. Meanwhile listen to me. When 
 Mr. Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you 
 say you remember, on the subject of will, did he not show any 
 excitement ? " 
 " Eh ? "
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 327 
 
 " Did he get excited, very hot and eager ? Did he speak unusually 
 loud, or make any curious gestures with his hands ? Did he do 
 anything that you can remember, such as an ordinay man would 
 not do ? " 
 
 " Why, yes," Cuckoo answered. " So he did." 
 
 " Ah ! "What was it ? What did he do ? " 
 
 " Well, after he'd been talkin' a bit he caught hold of me and 
 pulled me in front of the glass. See ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 "And he made me look into it." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 But at this point Cuckoo got restive. 
 
 " I I can't remember," she murmured, almost sullenly, recall- 
 ing Valentine's bitter sarcasms on her appearance and way of 
 life. 
 
 " Never mind then. Leave that. But after ; what came next?" 
 
 " While we was standing like that he seemed to get frightened or 
 somethin', like he saw somethin' in the glass. He was frightened, 
 scared ; and he hit out all on a sudden, just where my face was in 
 the glass, and smashed it." 
 
 " Smashed the glass ? " 
 
 " Yes. And then he snatched hold of me and looked in my eyes 
 awful queer, and then he burst out laughin' and says as the mirror 
 was tellin' him lies. That's all." 
 
 " He was perfectly sober ? " 
 
 " Oh, he hadn't been on the booze." 
 
 " Sober and did that, and then you can tell me that there is no 
 madness in him." 
 
 The doctor spoke almost in a bantering tone, but Cuckoo stuck to 
 her guns. 
 
 " I don't think it," she said, with her under lip sticking out. 
 
 " Well, Miss Bright, I want you to assume something." 
 
 " What's that ?" 
 
 " To pretend to yourself that you think something, whether you 
 do really think it or not." 
 
 " Make believe ! " cried Cuckoo, childishly. 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " What about ? " 
 
 " I want you to ' make believe ' that Mr. Cresswell is not himself, 
 is not sane." 
 
 " 0-oh-h ! " said Cuckoo, with a long intonation of surprise. 
 
 " I do honestly believe it, you are to pretend to believe it. Now 
 remember that." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 " You are not to contradict any more, you see."
 
 328 FLAMES 
 
 " Oh," began Cuckoo, in sudden distress, " Pardon. I didn't 
 " Hush ! That's all right. Act with me on the make-believe or 
 assumption that Mr. Cresswell is not himself at present." 
 
 " Ah, but that ain't no make-believe. He told ine as he wasn't 
 himself when he says ' I am Marr.' " 
 
 " yes yes," said the doctor. Secretly, almost angrily, he said to 
 himself that Valentine, in some access of insanity, had actually con- 
 fessed to the lady of the feathers that he knew himself to be mad. 
 
 " He says he ain't himself," she repeated again, with an eager 
 feeling that perhaps, at last, she had got at the right interpretation 
 of the gospel of Valentine. 
 
 " That is practically the same thing as his saying to you that he 
 was mad. Now you have told me what you feel for Julian." 
 
 Cuckoo flushed, and muttered something unintelligible, twining 
 her hands in the sables till she nearly pulled them from Dr. 
 Levillier's knees. 
 
 " And you have seen the terrible change that has come over him, 
 and that is fast, fast deepening to something that must end in utter 
 ruin. You have not seen him these last few days I think ? " 
 
 " No," said Cuckoo, her eyes fixed hungrily on the doctor's face. 
 She began to tug at her veil. " What's it ? Is he is he ? " 
 
 She collapsed into a nervous silence, still tugging with a futile 
 hand at the veil which remained implacably stretched across her 
 face. The doctor looked at her, and said steadily : 
 
 " He has gone a little further down. You understand me ? " 
 " I ought to," she said, bitterly. 
 
 " As you are mounting upward," the doctor rejoined, with a kind 
 and firm gravity that seemed indeed to lift Cuckoo, as a sweet wind 
 lifts a feather and sends it on high. 
 
 The bitterness went out of her face but she said nothing, only sat 
 listening attentively while the doctor went on : 
 
 " My belief is this, and, if you hold it, you can perhaps act in 
 this matter with more boldness, more fearlessness, than if you do not 
 hold it. I believe that Mr. Cresswell, who played very foolish tricks 
 with his nerves some time ago, just before he got to know you, has 
 become mad to this extent that he believes himself to have a power 
 of will unlike that possessed by any other man, an inhuman power, in 
 fact. He fancies that he has the will of a sort of God, and he 
 wishes to prove this to himself more especially. Everything is for 
 self in a madman. Now he looks about for a means of proving that 
 his will can do everything. He wants to make it do something 
 extraordinary, uncommon. What does he find for it to do ? This, 
 the ruin of Julian. And now I'll tell you why this ruin of Julian 
 would be a peculiar triumph for his will. Originally, when Cress- 
 well was sane and splendid, his splendour of sanity guarded Julian
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 329 
 
 from all that was dangerous. Julian was naturally inclined to be 
 wild. He has an ardent nature, and five years ago, when he was a 
 mere boy, might have fallen into a thousand follies. Cresswell's 
 influence first kept him from these follies, and at last taught him to 
 loathe and despise them. And Julian, remember this, told Cresswell 
 at last that he had been to him a sort of saviour. You can follow 
 me?" 
 
 '"m," Cuckoo ejaculated with shut mouth and a nod of her 
 head. 
 
 " So that Cresswell knew what his will had been able to do in the 
 direction of lifting Julian high up, almost above his nature. Well, 
 then followed certain foolish practices which I need not describe. 
 Cresswell and Julian joined in a certain trickery, often practised by 
 people who call themselves spiritualists and occultists. It decidedly 
 had an effect upon them at the time, and I advised them earnestly 
 to drop it. They disregarded my advice, and the result was that 
 Mr. Cresswell fell into an extraordinary condition of body. He fell 
 into a trance, became as if he were dead, and remained so for some 
 hours on a certain night I was called in to him, and actually 
 thought that he was dead. But he revived. Now I believe that 
 though he seemed to recover, and did recover in body, he never 
 recovered from that insensibility in mind. I believe he went into 
 that sleep sane and came out of it mad, and that he remains mad to 
 this moment. Certainly ever since then he has been an altered man, 
 the man you know, not at all the man he used to be. Since that 
 night he, who used to be almost unconscious of the wonder of his 
 own will, has become intensely self-conscious, and engrossed with it, 
 and has wished to make it obey him and perform miracles. And 
 what is the special miracle to which he is devoting himself at this 
 moment, as you have observed ? Just this, the ruin of the thing he 
 originally saved. It is like this," he said, noting that Cuckoo was 
 becoming puzzled and confused, " Cresswell, by his influence, made 
 Julian loathe sin. Coming out of this trance, as I believe a madman, 
 he seeks to make his will do something extraordinary. What shall 
 he make it do ? His eyes fall on Julian, who is always with him, as 
 you know. And he resolves to make Julian love Avhat he has taught 
 him to loathe sin, vice, degradation of every kind. So he sets to 
 work with all the cunning of a diseased mind, and hour by hour, day 
 by day, he works for this horrible end. At first he is quiet and 
 careful. But at last he becomes almost intoxicated as he sees his 
 own success. And he allows himself to be led into outbreaks of 
 triumph. One of those outbreaks you yourself seem to have wit- 
 nessed. I have witnessed another on the night I dined alone with 
 Cresswell, when he killed the dog, Rip, and threw him out into the 
 snow. Cresswell is intoxicated with the mental intoxication of
 
 330 FLAMES 
 
 mania, at the degradation into which his will has forced Julian, who 
 had learnt to love him, to think that everything he did must be 
 right. And his intoxication is leading him to excesses. It is my 
 firm belief that he intends to drag Julian down into intolerable 
 abysses of sin, to plunge him into utter ruin, to bring him perhaps ' 
 to prison, and to death." 
 
 Cuckoo was listening now with a white face even her lips looked 
 almost grey. The sunshine still Jay over the winter world. The 
 horses trotted. The sables were warm about her. They had nearly 
 left the city behind them and were gaining the heights, on which 
 the air was keener and more life-giving, and from which the outlook 
 was larger and more inspiring. But the girl's gaiety and almost 
 wild sense of vivacity and protectedness had vanished. For the 
 doctor's face and voice had become grave, and his words were 
 weighty with a conviction, which, added to her own knowledge of 
 Julian and Valentine, made her fears unutterable. As the doctor 
 paused she opened her lips as if to speak, but she said nothing. He 
 could not but perceive the cloud that had settled on her, and his 
 manner quickly changed. A brightness, a hopefulness, illumined his 
 face, and he said quickly : 
 
 " This tragedy is what you and I, but you especially, must pre- 
 vent." 
 
 Then Cuckoo spoke at last : 
 " How ever ? " she said. 
 
 " Remember this," he answered. " If Cresswell is mad we must 
 pity him, not condemn him. But we must above all fight him. 
 Could I prove his madness the danger would be averted. Possibly 
 time will give me the means of proving it. I have watched him. I 
 shall continue to watch him. But as yet, although I see enough to 
 convince me of his insanity, I don't see enough to convince the world, 
 or, above all, to convince Julian. Therefore never give Julian the 
 slightest hint of what I have told you of to-day. His adoration of 
 Valentine is such that even a hint might easily lead him to regard 
 both you and me as his enemies. Keep your own counsel and mine, 
 but act with me on the silent assumption that Cresswell, being a 
 madman, we are justified in fighting him to the bitter end, you and 
 I, with all our forces." 
 
 " I see," Cuckoo said, a burning excitement beginning to wake in her. 
 " Justified in fighting him, but not in hating him." 
 " Oh," she said, with a much more doubtful accent. 
 " Scarcely any human being, if indeed any, is completely hateful. 
 How then can a human being, whose mind is ill and out of control, 
 be hateful ? " said the doctor, gently. 
 
 She felt herself rebuked, and a quick thought of herself, of what 
 she was, rebuked her too.
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 331 
 
 ' I'll try not," she murmured, but with no imvard conviction of 
 success. 
 
 They were on the heath now, and the smoke of London hung in 
 the wintry air beyond arid below them. The sun. was already be- 
 ginning to wear the aspect of a traveller on the point of departure 
 for a journey. His once golden face was sinister with that blood-red 
 hue which it so often assumes on winter afternoons, and which seems 
 to set it in a place more than usually remote, more than usually 
 distant from our world, and in a clime that is sad and strange. 
 Winds danced over the heath like young witches. The horses, 
 whipped by the more intense cold, pulled hard against the bit, and 
 made the coachman's arms ache. The doctor looked away for a 
 moment at the vapours that began to clothe the afternoon in the 
 hollows and depressions, of the landscape, and at the sun, whose 
 gathering change of aspect smote on his imagination as something 
 akin to the change that falls over the faces of men, towards that hour 
 when the sun of their glory makes ready for its setting. Still keep- 
 ing his glance on that sad red sun in its net of radiating vapours, he 
 said, in a withdrawn voice : 
 
 " We must hate nothing except the hatefulness of sin, in ourselves 
 and in others." 
 
 Cuckoo listened as to the voice of some one on a throne, and tears 
 that she could not fully understand rose in her eyes. 
 
 But now the doctor turned from the sun to the lady of the feathers, 
 and there was a bright light in his quiet eyes. 
 
 " You and I must fight with all our forces," he said. " Have you 
 ever thought about this thing, will, which Cresswell worships in- 
 sanely ? Have you ever felt it in you, Miss Bright ? " 
 
 " I don't know as I have," Cuckoo said, secretly wondering if it 
 were that strange and fleeting power which had come to her of late, 
 which had made her for a moment fearless of Valentine as she defied 
 him in the loneliness of her room, which had stirred her even to a 
 faith in herself when she spoke with the doctor under the stars upon 
 her doorstep. 
 
 " I think you have. I think you will. It must be there, for 
 Julian feels it in you. He he calls it a flame." 
 
 "Eh? Aflame?" 
 
 " Yes. He sees it in your eyes, and it holds him near you." 
 
 So the doctor spoke, partly out of his conviction, partly because 
 he had definitely resolved to put away from him all the things that 
 fought against his reason and that his imagination perhaps loved too 
 much. Such things, he thought, floated like clouds across the clear- 
 ness of his vision, and drowned the light of his power to do good. 
 So his fancies that had fastened on the mystery of the dead Marr 
 and the living Valentine, connecting them together, and weaving a
 
 332 FLAMES 
 
 veil of magic about their strange connection, were banished. He 
 would not hold more commerce with them, nor would he accept the 
 fancies of others as realities. Thus, in his mind, Julian's legend of 
 the flame in this girl's eyes, despite the doctor's own vision of flames, 
 became merely a story of the truth of human will arid an acknow- 
 ledgment of its power. 
 
 "Is that why he looks at me so?" Cuckoo asked, in a manner 
 unusually meditative. " But then he, Valentine, did the same ! 
 Why, could that be what scared him that night what he struck 
 at ? " 
 
 " He too may feel that you have a power for good, to fight against 
 his power for evil. Yes, he does feel it. Make him feel it more. 
 Rely on yourself. Trust that there's something great within you, 
 something placed there for you to use. Never mind what your life 
 has been. Never mind your own weakness. You are the home, the 
 temple, of this power of will. Julian feels it, and it draws him to 
 you, but it is as nothing yet compared with the power of Cresswell. 
 You have to make it more powerful, so that you may win Julian 
 back from this danger." 
 
 " Eh ? How ? " 
 
 " Rest on it ; trust in it ; teach it to act. Show Julian more and 
 more that you have it. Can't you think of a way of showing that 
 you have this power ? " 
 
 " Not I. No," Cuckoo murmured. 
 
 The doctor lowered his voice still more. Quite at a venture he 
 drew a bow, and with his first arrow smote the lady of the feathers 
 to the heart. 
 
 " Has Julian ever asked you to do anything ? " he said. 
 
 Suddenly Cuckoo's face was scarlet. 
 
 " Why ? How d'you know ? " she stammered. 
 
 " Anything for him that was not evil ? " the doctor pursued, 
 following out an abstract theory, not as Cuckoo fancied, dealing 
 with known facts. " I know nothing. 1 only ask you to try and 
 remember, to search your mind." 
 
 There was no need for the lady of the feathers to do that. 
 
 "Yes, he did once," she said, looking still confused and furtive. 
 
 " Was it difficult ? " 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 " I s'pose so," she answered at last. 
 
 " Did you do it ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 The doctor had noticed that his questions gave pain. 
 
 " I don't want to know what it was and I don't ask," he said. " I 
 have neither the right to, nor the desire to. But can't you do it, 
 and show Julian that you have done it ? If you do I think he will
 
 THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY 333 
 
 see that flame, which he fears and which fascinates him, burn more 
 clearly, more steadily in your eyes." 
 
 " I'll see," Cuckoo said with a kind of gulp. 
 
 " .Do more than this. This is only a part, one weapon in the fight, 
 Oresswell is always near Julian ; you must be near him. Cresswell 
 pursues Julian ; you must pursue him. Use your woman's wit, use all 
 your experience of men ; use your heart. Wake up and throw your- 
 self into this battle, and make yourself worthy of fighting. Only you 
 can tell how. But this is a fact. Our wills, our powers of doing 
 things, are made strong, or made weak by our own lives. Each time 
 we do a degradingly-low, beastly thing" he chose the words most 
 easily comprehended by such a woman as she was " we weaken our 
 will, and make it less able to do anything good for another. If you 
 commit loveless actions from to-day though Julian has nothing to 
 do with them with each loveless action you will lose a point in the 
 battle against the madness of Cresswell. And you must lose no 
 points. Remember you are fighting a madman, as I believe, for the 
 safety of the man you love. If I could tell you what " 
 
 The doctor pulled himself up short. 
 
 " No," he said, " no need to tell you more than that, within these 
 last few days, I have found that all you said about Cresswell's present 
 diablerie " lie shook his head impatiently at the language he 
 was using to the lady of the feathers " Cresswell's present impulse 
 for evil is less horribly true than the truth. I shall watch him, day 
 by day, from now. And, if I can act, I shall do so. If his insanity 
 is too sharp for me, as it may well be, I shall be checkmated in any 
 effort forcibly to keep him from doing harm. In that case I can only 
 trust to you, and hope that some chance circumstance may lead to 
 the opening of Julian's eyes. But they are closed closed fast. In 
 any case you will help me and I will help you. You shall have 
 opportunities of meeting Julian often. I will arrange that. And 
 Cresswell " 
 
 He paused as if in deep thought. 
 
 " How to do it," he murmured, almost to himself. " How to bring 
 this battle to the issue ! " 
 
 Then he turned his eyes on Cuckoo. 
 
 She was sitting bolt upright in the carriage. Her cheeks were 
 flushed. Her hollow eyes were sparkling. She had drawn her 
 hands out from under the rug and clasped them together in her lap. 
 
 "Oh, I'll do anythin' I can," she said, " any thin'. And and 1 
 can do that one thing ! " 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor. " Which ? " 
 
 " The thing what he asked me once, and what I said no to," she 
 answered, but in such a low murmur that the doctor scarcely caught 
 the words.
 
 334 FLAMES 
 
 He leaned forward in the carriage. 
 
 " Home now, Grant," he said to the coachman. "Or no drive 
 first to 400 Marylebone Road." 
 
 The doctor turned again towards Cuckoo. She was looking away 
 from him, so much that he was obliged to believe that she wished to 
 conceal her face, which was towards the sunset. 
 
 The sky over London glowed with a dull red like a furnace. It 
 deepened, while they looked, passing rapidly through the biting cold 
 of the late winter afternoon. 
 
 The red cloud near the fainting sun broke and parted. 
 
 Spears of gold were thrust forth. 
 
 " Flames," the doctor whispered to himself. " Flames ! The will, 
 the soul of God in nature."
 
 BOOK V FLAMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 VALENTINE INVITES HIS GUESTS 
 
 VALENTINE and Julian sat together in the tent-room at night, as 
 they sat together many months ago, when Julian confessed his secret 
 and Valentine expressed his strange desire to have a different soul. 
 Now it was deep winter. The year was old. In three days it must 
 die. It lay in the snow like some abandoned beggar waiting for the 
 inevitable end. Some, who were happy, would fain have succoured it 
 and kept it with them. Others, who were sad, said, " Let it go this 
 beggar. Already it has taken too many alms from us." But neither 
 the happy nor the sad could affect its fate. So it lay in the snow 
 and in the wind upon its deathbed. 
 
 The tent-room had not been altered. Still the green draperies, 
 veiled walls, windows and door, meeting in a point at the ceiling. 
 The fire danced and shone. The electric moons gleamed with a 
 twilight softness. Only Rip was gone from the broad and cushioned 
 divan upon which he had loved to lie, half sleeping, half awake, 
 while his master talked and Julian listened or replied. The room 
 was the same, and this very fact emphasised the transformation of 
 the two men who sat in it. They leaned in their low chairs on each 
 side of the fire, thinly veiled from time to time in cigarette smoke. 
 Xo sound of London reached them in this small room. Even the 
 voice of the winter wind whispered and sang in vain. Stifled by the 
 thick draperies, it failed in its effort to gain their attention, and 
 sighed among the chimney-tops the chagrin of its soul. The face of 
 Julian was drawn and heavy. His eyes were downcast. His arms 
 hung over the cushioned elbows of his chair, in which he sat very 
 low, in the shrivelled posture of one desperately fatigued. From 
 time to time he opened his lips in a sort of dull gape, then shut his
 
 336 FLAMES 
 
 teeth tightly as if he ground them together. The drooping lids of 
 his eyes were covered with little lines and there were deeper lines at 
 the corners of his mouth. The colour of his face was the colour of 
 the misty cloud that haunts the steps of evening on an autumn day, 
 grey, as if it clothed processes of decay and of desolation. Years 
 seemed to crouch upon him like lean dogs upon a doorstep. Within 
 a few months he had stepped from boyhood to the creaking threshold 
 of premature age. 
 
 The change in Valentine was far less marked to a careless eye. 
 There was still a peculiar clearness in his large) blue eyes, a white 
 delicacy in his features. The lips of his mouth were red and soft, 
 not dry, as were the lips of Julian. The crisp gold of his hair caught 
 the light, and his lithe figure rested in his chair in a calm posture 
 of pleasant ease. Yet he, too, was changed. Expression of a new 
 nature now no longer lurked furtively in his face, but boldly, even 
 triumphantly, asserted itself. It did not shrink behind a soft smile, 
 or glide and pass in a fleeting gaiety, but stared upon the world with 
 something of the hard and fixed immobility of a mark. Every mask, 
 whatever expression be painted upon it, wears a certain aspect of 
 shamelessness. Valentine's was a hard and shameless face, although 
 his features, if coarser than of old, were still noble and, in line, a 
 silent legend of almost priestly intellectuality. 
 
 He was looking across at Julian, who held idly between his lax 
 fingers a letter written with violet ink upon pink paper, which had 
 a little bird stamped in the left hand corner. 
 
 " When did you get it ? " he said. 
 
 " Two or three days ago, I think. I can't remember. I can't 
 remember anything now," Julian answered heavily. 
 
 " And you have had two since ? " 
 
 " Yes. And to-day she called." 
 
 " You were out ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " She shows herself very exigent all of a sudden. She is afraid 
 of losing you. I told you long ago she cherished absurd ambitions 
 with regard to you. Do you intend to answer her notes ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," Julian said. " Cuckoo has always been very fond of 
 me ; very fond." 
 
 He glanced at the absurdly vulgar little bird in the corner of the 
 letter. " And that's something," he added slowly. 
 
 "You are weighed down with gratitude? No wonder. Are you 
 grateful to others who have always cared for you in a different 
 way unselfishly, that is ? " 
 
 " I don't seem to feel very much about anybody now," Julian 
 said. " I do such a lot. The more you do the less you feel. 
 Damnable life ! All cruelty. I can't feel satisfied. But there
 
 VALENTINE INVITES HIS GUESTS 337 
 
 must be something ; something I haven't tried. I must find it," 
 he said, almost fiercely, and stirring in a sudden energy, " I must 
 find it or curse you, Val, why don't you find it for me? " 
 
 Valentine laughed. 
 
 " The last novelty has failed ? You are a very discontented 
 sinner, Julian. And yet London begins to think you too enter- 
 prising. I hear that Lady Crichton is the last person to shut her 
 doors against you. What did she hear of ? " 
 
 u How should I know ? " 
 
 He laughed bitterly. 
 
 "She oughtn't to be particular. She used to receive Marr. 1 
 met him first in her yellow drawing-room.'' 
 
 " London had not discussed him, perhaps. You are rapidly 
 becoming a legend and a warning. That is fame. To be the 
 accepted warning for others." 
 
 " Or infamy ; which is much the same thing." 
 
 " But you are only at the first posting-station of your journey," 
 Valentine continued, looking at him with a smile. " If you are 
 dissatisfied, it is because you have nob tasted yet half that strength 
 of the Spring we once talked of. You have riot completely thrown 
 oft' the foolish yoke of public opinion. The chains still jangle about 
 you. Cast them away and you will yet be happy." 
 
 " Shall I ? Shall I, Valentine ? ;; ' 
 
 The exhausted, worn, and weary figure leaned abruptly forward in 
 its chair. Julian's tired eyes glittered greedily. 
 
 " To be happy I'd commit any crime," he said. 
 
 " Crime is merely opinion," Valentine answered. " Everything is 
 opinion. You will commit crimes probably. Most brave men do." 
 
 " But shall I be happy ? " 
 
 "You are greedy, Julian, greedy of everything, of knowledge of 
 life, lust, joy. You are never satisfied. That is because you and I 
 fasted for so long. And the greedy man is never quite happy while 
 he is eating, for he is always anticipating the next course. And, let 
 philosophers say what they will, happiness does not lie in anticipa- 
 tion, tic on eating. Pass on from course to course. At last there 
 will come a time, a beautiful time, when your appetite will be satis- 
 fied and you will rest content. But, remember, not till you have 
 journeyed through the whole menu, played with your dessert and 
 even drunk your black coffee. Go on, only go on. Men and women 
 are unhappy. They think it is because they have done too much. 
 They reproach themselves for a thousand things that they have 
 done. Fools ! They are unhappy because they have not done 
 enough. The text which will haunt me on my deathbed will be : 
 ' I have left undone those things which I ought to have done.' Yes, 
 during my long cursed years of inaction, when I was called the 
 
 Y
 
 33 8 FLAMES 
 
 Saint of Victoria Street. Ah ! Julian, you and I slept ; we are 
 awake now. You and I were dead ; we are now alive. But we are 
 only at the beginning of our lives. We have those years, those 
 white and empty years, to drown in the waters of Lethe. They are 
 like monstrous children that should have been strangled almost eie 
 they were born, white, vacant children. And now, day b}' day we 
 are pressing them down in the waters with our hands. At last they 
 will sink. The waves will flow over their haggard faces. The waves 
 will sweep them away. Then we shall be happy. We shall redeem 
 those years on which the locust fed and we shall be happy." 
 
 " Yes, by God, we shall be happy, we will we will be happy. 
 Only teach me to be happy, Valentine, anywhere, anyhow." 
 
 " Not with the lady of the feathers. She will not make you 
 happy." 
 
 " Cuckoo ? No ! For she's terribly unhappy herself. Poor old 
 Cuckoo. I wonder what she's doing now." 
 
 " Searching in the snow for her fate," Valentine said, with a 
 
 sneer. 
 
 ******* 
 
 It was not so. Cuckoo was sitting alone in the little room of the 
 Marylebone Road looking a new spectre in the face, the spectre of 
 hunger, only shadowy as yet, scarcely defined, scarcely visible. And 
 the lady of the feathers wondered, as she gazed, if she and the 
 spectre must become better acquainted, clasp hands, kiss lips, be day 
 fellows and night fellows. 
 
 " I am going to write to Cuckoo," Julian said a day later. " What 
 shall I say ? " 
 
 Valentine hesitated. 
 
 " What have you thought of saying " he asked. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. First one thing, then another. Good-bye 
 among the number. That's what you wish me to say, Val, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 He spoke in a listless voice, monotonous in inflection and lifeless 
 in timbre. The dominion of Valentine over him since the supper at 
 the Savoy had increased, consolidating itself into an undoubted 
 tyranny, which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to 
 the internal degradation of his mind. Once he had only been 
 nobly susceptible, a fine power. Now he was drearily weak, an 
 ungracious disability. But with his weakness came, as is usual, a 
 certain lassitude which even resembled despair, an indifference 
 peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the indifference peculiar to the 
 autocrat. Valentine recognised in the voice the badge of serfdom, 
 even more than in the question, and he smiled with a cold triumph. 
 He had intended telling Julian now, once for all, to break with the
 
 VALENTINE INVITES HIS GUESTS 339 
 
 lady of the feathers, of whom, even yet he stood in vague fear. 
 But the question, the voice of Julian gave him pause, slid into his 
 soul a new and bizarre desire, child of the strange intoxication of 
 power which was beginning to grip him, and which the doctor had 
 remarked. If Julian broke with Cuckoo, repulsed her for ever into 
 the long street that was her pent and degraded world, would not the 
 sharp salt of Valentine's triumph be taken from him ? Would not 
 the wheels of his Juggernaut car fail to do their office p in his sight 
 there was the point ! upon a precious victim ? The lady of the 
 feathers thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps 
 almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would 
 have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have con- 
 quered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to 
 him he laughed to himself now thinking of his fear of it he would 
 not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy. 
 
 These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an 
 answer that astonished Julian. 
 
 Good-bye ! " he said. Why should I wish that ? M 
 
 " You said the other day, at the Savoy, that she hated you., that 
 you and she must have a battle unless I chose between you." 
 
 " I was laughing." 
 
 The lifelessness left Julian's voice as he exclaimed .: 
 
 " Valentine ! But you were 
 
 " Sober and you were not. Can you deny it ? " 
 
 Julian was silent. 
 
 " I so little meant that nonsense," Valentine continued, " that I 
 have conceived a plan. To-morrow is the last night of the old 
 year. The doctor asked us to spend it with him. We refused. 
 Providence directed that refusal, for now we are at liberty to 
 celebrate the proper occasion for burying hatchets by burying our 
 particular hatchet. The lady of the feathers, your friend, my 
 enemy, shall see the new year in here, in this tent-room where, long 
 ago we you and I, with how ill success, sought to exchange our 
 souls." 
 
 Julian looked utterly astonished at this proposition. 
 
 " Cuckoo wouldn't come here," he began. 
 
 " So you said once before. But she came then and she will come 
 now." 
 
 " And then the doctor ! If he gets to hear of it ! We said wo 
 Were dining out." 
 
 Valentine's hard smile grew yet harder, and his eyes .sparkled 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I'll arrange that," he said. " The doctor shall come here too." 
 
 It seemed indeed as if he meant that his triumph should culminate 
 on this final night of the year, his year. He laughed Julian's
 
 340 FLAMES 
 
 astonishment at this vagary aside, sat down and wrote the two notes 
 of invitation, and then went out with Julian, saying : 
 
 " Julian, come out with me. You remember what I said about 
 the greedy man ? Come ; Fate shall present you with another 
 course, one more step towards your cafe noir and happiness. 
 Voila! 
 
 Valentine was right in his supposition that both the lady of the 
 feathers and the doctor would accept his invitation, but he did not 
 understand the precise motive which prompted their acceptance. 
 Nor did he much care to understand it. Cuckoo, Dr. Levillier ! 
 After all, what were they to him now ? Spectators of his triumph. 
 Interesting, therefore, to a certain extent, as an unpaying audience 
 may be interesting to an actor. Interesting, insomuch as they could 
 contribute to swell the bladder of his vanity, and follow in procession 
 behind his chai'iot wheels. But he no longer cared to divine the 
 shades of their emotions, or to busy himself in fathoming their exact 
 mental attitudes in relation to himself. So he thought, touched, 
 perhaps, with a certain delirium, though not with the delirium of 
 insanity attributed to him by Dr. Levillier. 
 
 The doctor had intended celebrating the last night of the year in 
 Harley Street with Cuckoo and the two young men. The refusal of 
 the latter put an end to the opening of his plan of campaign in this 
 strange battle, and he was greatly astonished when he received 
 Valentine's invitation. Still he had no hesitation in accepting it. 
 
 "So," he said to himself, as he read the note, "we join issue 
 within the very walls of the enemy poor, deluded, twisted Valen- 
 tine ! that I should have to call him, to think of him as an enemy ! 
 We begin the fight within the shadow of our opponent's tent." 
 
 Literally that was the fact. 
 
 Cuckoo's thoughts were less definite, more tinged with passion, 
 less shaped by the hands of intellect. They were as clouds, looming 
 large, yet misty, hanging loose in torn fragments now, and now 
 merging into indistinguishable fog that yet seemed pregnant with 
 possibilities. Poor thoughts, vague thoughts ; yet they pressed 
 upon her brain until her tired head ached. And they stole down to 
 her heart, and that ached too, and hoped and then despaired then 
 hoped again.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CAFE NOIR 
 
 SNOW fell, melodramatically, on the year's death night. During the 
 day Valentine occupied himself oddly in decorating his flat for the 
 evening. But although he thus seemed to fall in with the con- 
 secrated humours of the season his decorations would scarcely have 
 commanded the approval of those good English folk who think that 
 no plant is genial unless it is prickly, and that prickly things 
 represent appropriately to the eye the inward peace and goodwill 
 that grows, like a cactus perhaps, within the heart. He did not put 
 holly rigidly above his doors. No mistletoe drooped from the apex 
 of the tent-room. Instead he filled his flat with flowers, brought 
 from English conservatories or from abroad. Crowds of strange 
 and spotted orchids stood together in the drawing-room, staring 
 upon the hurly-burly of furniture and ornaments. In the corners 
 of the room were immense red flowers, such as hang among the 
 crawling green jungles of the West Indies. They gleamed, like 
 flames, amid a shower of cunningly arranged green leaves, and 
 palms sheltered them from the electric rays of the ceiling. The 
 tent-room was a maze of tulips, in vases, in pots, in china bowls that 
 hung by thin chains from the sloping green roof. Few of these 
 tulips were whole coloured. They were slashed, and striped, and 
 spotted with violent hues. Some were of the most vivid scarlet 
 streaked with black. Others were orange coloured with livid pink 
 spots, circus pink such as you see round the eyes of horses bred 
 specially for the ring. There were white tulips stained as if with 
 blood, pale pink tulips tipped with deepest brown, rose-coloured 
 tulips barred with wounds whose edges were saffron hued, tulips of 
 a warm wallflower tint dashed with the stormy yellow of an evening 
 sky. And hidden among these scentless flowers, in secret places 
 cunningly contrived, were great groups of hyacinths, which poured 
 forth their thick and decadent scent, breathing heavily their hearts 
 into the small atmosphere of the room, and giving a strange and 
 unnatural soul to the tulips who had spent all their efforts in the 
 attainment of form and daring combinations of colour. As if
 
 34 2 FLAMES 
 
 relapsing into sweet simplicity, after the vagaries of a wayward 
 nature had run their course, Valentine had filled his hall and dining- 
 rooni with violets, purple and white, and a bell of violets hung from 
 the ceiling over the chair which the lady of the feathers was to 
 occupy at dinner. These were white only, white and virginal, 
 flowers for some sweet woman dedicated to the service of God, or to 
 the service of some eternal altar flame burning, as the zeal of nature 
 burns, through all the dawning and fading changes of the world. 
 
 Thus Valentine passed his day among flowers, and only when the 
 last twilight of the year fell had he fixed the last blossom in its 
 place. Then he rested, as after six days of creation, and from the 
 midst of his flowers saw the snow falling delicately upon London. 
 Lights began to gleam in the tall houses opposite his drawing-room 
 windows. He glanced at them, and they brought him thoughts at 
 which he smiled. Behind those squares of light he imagined peace 
 and goodwill in enormous white waistcoats and expansive shirt-fronts, 
 red faced, perhaps even whiskered, getting ready for good temper 
 and turkey, journalistic geniality and plum pudding. And holly 
 everywhere, with its prickly leaves and shining, phlegmatic surfaces. 
 
 Peace and goodwill ! 
 
 He glanced at his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and 
 he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should 
 have come, and smiled gently. 
 
 Peace and goodwill ! 
 
 He went to dress. 
 
 #****** 
 
 Meanwhile in the Marylebone Road the lady of the feathers 
 achieved her toilet, assisted by Jessie. The only evening dress that 
 Cuckoo possessed had been given to her long ago by a young man 
 in the millinery department of a large London shop. For a week he 
 had adored Cuckoo. During that week he had presented her with 
 this tremendous gift. She went into her bedroom now, took it out 
 and looked at it. The gown rustled a great deal whenever it was 
 moved ; this had been the young man's idea. He considered that 
 the more a gift rustled the more aristocratic it was, and, being well 
 acquainted with all the different noises made by different fabrics, he 
 had selected one with a voice as of many waters. Cuckoo heard it 
 now as in a dream. She laid it down upon the bed and regarded it 
 by candle-light. The young man's taste in sound found its equivalent 
 in his taste in colour. The hue of the gown was also very loud, the 
 brighest possible green, trimmed with thick yellow imitation lace. 
 Once it had enchanted Cuckoo. She had put it on with a thrill to go 
 to music-halls with the young man. But now she gazed upon it with 
 a lack-lustre and a doubtful eye. The flickering flame of the candle 
 lit it up in patches, and those patches had a lurid aspect. Remember-
 
 CAF& NOIR 343 
 
 ing that Julian had liked her best in black she shrank from appearing 
 before him in anything so determined. Yet it was her only dress for 
 the evening, and at first she supposed the wearing of it to be inevit- 
 able. She put it on and went in front of the glass. In these days 
 she had become even thinner than of old, and more haggard. The 
 gown increased her tenuity and pallor to the eye, and, after a long 
 moment of painful consideration, Cuckoo resolved to abandon these 
 green glories. Once her mind was made up she was out of the dress 
 in an instan. Time was short. She hurriedly extracted her black 
 gown from the wardrobe, caught hold of a pair of scissors, and in a 
 few minutes had ripped the imitation lace from its foundations and 
 was transferring it with trembling fingers to Julian's gift. Never 
 before had she worked at any task with such grim determination, or 
 with such deftness ; inspired Jby exceptional circumstances, she might 
 for twenty minutes have been a practised dressmaker. Certainly 
 pins were called in as weapons to the attack, but what of that ? Com- 
 promises are often only stuck together with pins. In any case 
 Cuckoo was not entirely in despair with the new aspect of an old 
 friend, and when she was ready was able at least to hope that things 
 might have been worse. 
 
 Putting on over the dress a black jacket, she went out into the 
 passage and called down to Mrs. Brigg, Avho, as usual, was wandering 
 to ^and fro in her kitchen, like an uneasy shade in nether-most 
 Hades. 
 
 " Mrs. Brigg ! Mrs. Brigg, I say ! " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Where's the whistle ? " 
 
 Mrs. Brigg came to the bottom of the kitchen stairs. 
 
 " What d'yer want it for ? " 
 
 " A. cab, of course," cried Cuckoo, in the narrow voice of one in a 
 hurry. 
 
 "A cab ! " rejoined Mrs. Brigg, ascending the dark stairs all the 
 time she was speaking. " And what do you want with cabs, I should 
 like to know ? Who pays for 'em, that's what I say ; who's to 
 do it?" 
 
 Her grey head hove in sight. 
 
 " Where are you going ? Piccadilly ? " 
 
 " No ; get the whistle." 
 
 " What and no hat ! " 
 
 She was evidently impressed. 
 
 " A toff is it ? " she ejaculated, obviously appeased. " Well ! so 
 long as I get the rent I 
 
 With a white glare Cuckoo seized the whistle from her claw, and 
 in a moment was driving away through the snow. 
 
 Mrs. Brigg trotted back to the kitchen decidedly relieved. Cuckoo's
 
 344 FLAMES 
 
 suddenly altered mode of life had tried her greatly. The girl had 
 taken to going out in the day and staying at home at night. 
 Simultaneously with this changed regime her funds had evidently 
 become low. She had begun to live less well, to watch more keenly 
 than of old the condition in which her commons went down to the 
 kitchen and returned from it on the advent of the next meal. By 
 various little symptoms the landlady knew that her lodger was getting 
 hardup. Yet no amount of badgering and argument would induce 
 Cuckoo to say why she sat indoors at night. She acknowledged 
 that she was not ill. Mrs. Brigg had been seriously exercised. But 
 now her old heart was glad. Cuckoo was, perhaps, mounting into 
 higher circles, circles in which hats were not worn during the 
 evening. And as Mrs. Brigg entered her nethermost hell she broke 
 into a thin, quavering song : 
 
 " In 'er 'air she wore a white cam-eelyer, 
 Dark blue was the colour of 'er heye." 
 
 It was her song of praise. She always sang it on great occasions. 
 
 When the lady of the feathers reached Victoria Street she found 
 the little party already assembled. Valentine met her ceremoniously 
 in the violet-scented hall and helped her to slide out of her jacket. 
 His glance upon the imitation lace was quick and gay, but Cuckoo 
 did not see it. She was gazing at the flowers, and when she entered 
 the drawing-room and found herself in the midst of the orchids, the 
 West Indian flowers and the palms, her astonishment knew no 
 bounds. 
 
 " I. never ! " she murmured under her breath. 
 
 Then she forgot the flowers, having only time to remember to be 
 shy. Dinner was immediately announced by Wade, whose years of 
 trained discretion could not banish a faint accent of surprise from 
 his voice. He was, in fact, bouhverse by this celebration of the 
 death of the old year. Valentine offered Cuckoo his arm. She took 
 it awkwardly, with a shooting glance of question at the doctor, who 
 seemed her only spar in this deep social sea. Valentine placed her 
 beneath the bell of violets, and took his seat beside her. Julian was 
 on her other hand, the doctor exactly opposite. Wade presented her 
 with hors d'ceuvres. Cuckoo selected a sardine. She understood 
 sardines, having met them at the Monico. Valentine and the doctor 
 began to talk. Julian ate slowly, and Cuckoo stole a glance at him. 
 His aspect startled her so much that she with difficulty repressed a 
 murmur of astonishment. He had the appearance of one so com- 
 pletely exhausted as to be scarcely alive. Most people, however 
 stupid, however bored, have some air, when in society, of listening 
 even when they do not speak, of giving some sort of attention to 
 those about them or to the place in which they find themselves.
 
 CAF& NOIR 345 
 
 They glance this way and that, however phlegmatically. They bend 
 in attention or lean back in observation. It is seen that they are 
 conscious of their environment. But Julian was engrossed with 
 fatigue. The lids drooped over his eyes. His face wore a leaden 
 hue. Even his lips were colourless. He ate slowly and mechanically 
 till his plate was empty. Then he laid down his fork and remained 
 motionless, his eyes still cast down towards the tablecloth, his two 
 hands laid against the table edge, while the fingers were extended 
 upon the cloth on either side of his plate. Cuckoo looked at him 
 with terror, wondering if he were ill. Then, glancing up, she met 
 the eyes of the doctor. They seemed to bid her take no heed of 
 Julian's condition, and she did not look at him again just then. 
 Trying to control her fears, she listened to Valentine's conversation 
 with the doctor. 
 
 " Doctor's are sceptics by profession," she heard him say. 
 
 " I believe in individualism too firmly to allow that any beliefs or 
 unbeliefs can be professional, Cresswell." 
 
 " Possibly you are right," Valentine answered lightly. " What a 
 pity it is that there is no profession of which all the members at 
 least believe in themselves." 
 
 " Ah ; would you enter it ? " 
 
 " I scarcely think it would be necessary." 
 
 He glanced first at the doctor, then at Cuckoo as he spoke. 
 
 " I am thankful to say," he added in his clear, cool voice, " that I 
 have no longer either the perpetual timidity of the self-doubter or 
 even the occasional anxiety of the egoist." 
 
 " You have passed into a region which even egoism cannot 
 enter ? " 
 
 " Possibly the average egoism." 
 
 " The average egoism of the end of the century moves in a very 
 rarefied air." 
 
 " Its feet touch ground nevertheless." 
 
 " And yours ? " 
 
 Valentine only laughed, as if he considered the question merely 
 rhetorical or jocose. 
 
 " But we are getting away from the question, which was not per- 
 sonal," he said. " I contend that doctors as a body are bound to 
 combat these modern Athenians who are inclined to attribute every- 
 thing to some obscure action of the mind. For, if their beliefs are 
 founded on rock, and if they can themselves sufficiently, by asceti- 
 cism, or by following any other fixed course of life which they may 
 select as the right one, train their minds to do that which they 
 believe can be done, the profession of doctors may in time be abol- 
 ished. Mind will be the universal medicine, Will not simply the 
 cure, but the preventive of disease,"
 
 3-^' FLAMES 
 
 " And of death ? " the doctor asked quietly. " Will man be able 
 to think himself into an eternity on earth ? " 
 
 Valentine looked at him very strangely. 
 
 " You ask that question seriously ? " he said. 
 
 " I ask seriously whether you think so." 
 
 It was evident that the doctor meant to make the question above 
 all things a personal one. This time Valentine accepted that con- 
 dition. He sat for a moment twisting his champagne glass about in 
 his long fingers and glancing rapidly from the doctor to Cuckoo, who 
 heard this conversation without very well understanding it. Indeed, 
 she sat beneath her bell of violets in much confusion, distraite in her 
 desire to command intellectual faculties which she did not possess. 
 Valentine watched her narrowly, though he seemed inattentive to 
 her. Perhaps he thought of his delivery of his gospel to her, and 
 wondered if she recalled it at this moment ; or perhaps once more he 
 began to rejoice in her mental distress and alienation. 
 
 " Wade," he said, ":the champagne to Mr. Addison. Well, doctor, 
 suppose I acknowledged that I did think so mind, I don't acknow- 
 ledge it ! you might, on your side, think something too that I am 
 mad, for instance. Ah ! Miss Bright has knocked over her glass ! " 
 
 Cuckoo murmured a stumbling apology, gazing with nervous 
 intentness at Valentine. It seemed to her that he had a gift of 
 divination. Dr. Levillier laughed gently. 
 
 " I am not inclined to suppose all my opponents in thought mad," 
 he said. " Still, such a belief would certainly indicate in the holder 
 of it the possession of a mind so uncommon, so unique, I may say, 
 that it would naturally rouse one to very close attention and obser- 
 vation of it." 
 
 " Exactly," Valentine rejoined. 
 
 A certain audacity was slowly creeping into his demeanour and 
 growing while he talked. It manifested itself in slight gesticula- 
 tions, conceited movements of the hand and head, in the colour of 
 the voice and the blunt directness of his glances. 
 
 " Exactly. Attention and observation directed towards the 
 object of satisfying yourself that the man myself, let us say was 
 mad ? You don't reply. Let me ask you a question. Why should 
 a profound belief in human power of will indicate madness ? " 
 
 " A belief that is not based on any foundation of proof that is 
 my point. An extraordinary belief, personal to one person, rejected 
 by mankind in the mass, and founded upon nothing, no fact, no 
 inference even, in the history of mankind, is decidedly a strong 
 indication of dementia." 
 
 " But suppose it is a belief founded upon a fact ? " 
 
 " Of course that would entirely alter the matter." 
 
 The two men looked across at one another with a long and direct
 
 CAFti NOIR 347 
 
 glance full in the eyes. Cuckoo watched them anxiously. Julian 
 sat with his eyes cast down. He seemed unaware that there was 
 any one near him, any~conversation going on around him. Wade 
 moved softly about, ministering to the wants of his master's guests. 
 Course succeeded course. 
 
 " Do you propose to give me a fact proving the reasonableness of 
 entertaining a belief that a man, by his own deliberate action of the 
 will, can compass immortality on earth, or even prolong his life in 
 such a way as this, for instance ; by the successful domination, or 
 banishment, of any disease recognised as mortal ? I acknowledge 
 that the will to live may pi'olong for a certain time a life threatened 
 merely by the sapping action of old age. Do you propose to give me 
 a fact to prove that ? " 
 
 " I do not say that I intend to give it to you," Valentine answered, 
 with scarcely veiled insolence. 
 
 " But you know of such a fact ? " said the doctor, ignoring his 
 host's tone. 
 
 " Possibly." 
 
 The voice of Valentine thrilled with triumph as he spoke the 
 word. Again he glanced at the lady of the feathers. 
 
 " Cannot you convert the doctor? " he asked her, in tones full of 
 sarcastic meaning. " You know something of my theories, some- 
 thing of their putting into practice." 
 
 " I don't know I don't understand," she murmured helplessly. 
 
 She looked down at her plate, flushing scarlet with a sense of 
 shame at her own complete mental impotence. 
 
 " What's the matter Cuckoo ? " 
 
 The words came slowly from the lips of Julian, whose heavy 
 eyes were now raised and fixed with a stare of lethargic wonder 
 upon Cuckoo. 
 
 " What are they saying to you ? " 
 
 His look travelled on, still slow and unwieldy, to the doctor and 
 to Valentine. 
 
 " I won't have Cuckoo worried," he said. And then he relapsed 
 with a mechanical abruptness upon the consideration of his food. 
 Valentine seemed about to make some laughing rejoinder, but, after 
 a glance at Julian, he apparently resigned the idea as absurd, and, 
 turning again to the doctor, remarked : 
 
 " It is sometimes injudicious to state all that one knows." 
 
 " Still more so all that one does not know. But I have no desire 
 to press you," the doctor said, lightly. " This is wonderful wine. 
 Where did you get it ? " 
 
 " At the Cercle Blanc sale," Valentine answered quickly. 
 
 It seemed that he was slightly irritated. He frowned and cast a 
 glance that was almost threatening upon the doctor,
 
 348 FLAMES 
 
 " Would you assume weakness in every strong man who refuses to 
 take off his coat, roll up his shirt sleeve and display the muscle of 
 his arm ? " he said, harshly. 
 
 " The case is not analogous. That muscle exists in the world is a 
 proved fact. When I was at Ebon, I was knocked down by a boy 
 stronger than I was. Since then I acknowledge the power of 
 muscle." 
 
 "And have you never been knocked down mentally? " 
 
 " Not in the way you suggest." 
 
 Valentine shifted in his seat. It did not escape the doctor that he 
 had the air of a man longing either to say or do something startling, 
 but apparently held back by tugging considerations of prudence or 
 of expediency. 
 
 " Some day you may be," he said at last, obviously conquered by 
 this prompting prudence. 
 
 " When I am, the ' Christian scientist,' who once declared to me 
 that she cured a sprained ankle by walking on it many miles a day, 
 and thinking it was well while she walked, shall receive my respectful 
 apologies," the doctor answered, laughing. 
 
 Valentine handed the lady of the feathers some strawberries. On 
 her nervous refusal of them he exclaimed : 
 
 " I see you have finished your wine, doctor. No more ? Really ? 
 Nor you, Julian ? " 
 
 Julian made no reply. He simply pushed his glass a little away 
 from him. 
 
 " Then shall we accompany Miss Bright into the tent-room ? I 
 thought we would have coffee there. You have never seen the 
 tent-room," he added to Cuckoo, getting up from his seat as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " I usually sit iu it when I am alone or with Julian. You will not 
 mind our cigarettes, I know," 
 
 He led the way down the scented corridor, scented with the thin, 
 gently bright scent of violets. 
 
 "The tent-room has a history," he continued to Cuckoo, opening a 
 door on the left. " It was once the scene of an an absurd experi- 
 ment. Eh, doctor ? " 
 
 They entered the room. As they did so the hot, sticky scent of 
 the hidden hyacinths poured out to meet them. For a moment it 
 seemed overwhelming, and Cuckoo hung back with an almost uncon- 
 querable sensation of aversion and even of fear. The aspect of this 
 small room astonished her ; she had never seen any chamber so 
 arranged. Certainly it looked very unusual to-night. The small 
 fire was hidden by a large screen of white wood, with panels of dull 
 green brocade. Only one of the electric lamps was turned on, and 
 that was shaded, so that the diffused light was faint, a mere \ui-
 
 CAFE N01R 349 
 
 flickering twilight. The masses of tulips hung like quantities of 
 monotonously similar shadows from the tented ceiling, and tho 
 flood of scent caused the room to seem even smaller than it really 
 was, a tiny temple dedicated to the uncommon, perhaps to the 
 sinister. 
 
 " We will see the Old Year out and drink our cafe noir here," 
 said Valentine. " Where will you sit, Miss Bright ? " 
 
 " I don't mind. It's all one to me," murmured Cuckoo. " What 
 a funny room though ! " she could not help adding. " It ain't like 
 a room at all." 
 
 " Imagine it an Arab tent, the home of a Bedaween Sheik in a 
 desert of Nubia," said Valentine. " This divan is very comfortable. 
 Let me arrange the cushions for you." 
 
 As he bent over her to do so, he murmured in her ear : 
 
 " And you, having tossed your will away, are nothing ! " 
 
 They had been the last words of his gospel, proclaimed to her 
 that night on which she prayed ! 
 
 The lady of the feathers looked up at him with a new knowledge, 
 the knowledge of her recent lonely nights, of which he knew nothing 
 as yet ; the knowledge of that glancing spectre of want whom, by her 
 own action, she summoned while she feared its gaunt presence; the 
 knowledge of the doctor's trust in her; the knowledge of her great 
 love for Julian ; the knowledge, perhaps, that leaning her arms 
 upon the slippery horsehair sofa in her little room, she had once 
 thrown a muttered prayer, incoherent, unfinished, yet sincere, out 
 into the great darkness that encompasses the beginning, the progress, 
 and the ending of all human lives with mystery. She looked up at 
 him with this world of mingling knowledge in her eyes, and Valen- 
 tine drew away from her with a stifling sensation of frigid awe. 
 
 " What what ? " he began. Then, recovering himself, he turned 
 suddenly away. 
 
 " Sit down, doctor. Do you like my flowers ? Julian, are you 
 still tired ? The coffee will wake you up. A cigarette doctor, or a 
 cigar ? Here are the matches." 
 
 Julian came over heavily and sat down on the divan by Cuckoo. 
 His unnatural lethargy was gradually passing away into a more 
 explicable fatigue, no longer speechless. Leaning on his elbow, he 
 looked into her faco with his weary eyes, in which to-night there 
 was a curious dim pathos. It seemed that the only thing which 
 had so far struck him during the evening was still Cuckoo's 
 confusion over her own misunderstanding at dinner, for he now 
 again referred to it. 
 
 " Have they been chafling you, Cuckoo ? " he said, striking a 
 match on the heel of his shoe and lighting a cigarette, " have they 
 been worrying you ? Never mind. It's only Val's fun. He doesn't
 
 350 FLAMES 
 
 mean anything by it. I say, how awfully pale you look to-night, 
 and thin." 
 
 He paused, considering her with a glance that was almost severe. 
 
 " I'm all right," said Cuckoo, trying to repress the agitation she 
 always felt now when speaking to Julian. " I ain't ill. Why 
 don't you come to see me now ? " she added. " You don't never 
 come." 
 
 Julian glanced over to Valentine, who was standing by the hearth 
 talking to the doctor, who sat in an arm-chair. 
 
 " I've been busy," he said. " I've had a lot of things to do. Do 
 you miss me, Cuckoo, when I don't come ? " 
 
 " Yes," she replied, but without softness. Then she added, lowering 
 her voice almost to a whisper : 
 
 " Don't he want you to come ? " 
 
 Julian did not reply, but puffed rather moodily at his cigarette, 
 glancing towards Valentine. He was thinking of the conversation at 
 the Savoy and of the antagonism between Valentine and Cuckoo. 
 Suddenly there came into his mind a dull wish to reconcile these 
 two on the last night of the year in Valentine's own words 
 to bury the hatchet. He sat meditating over his plan and trying 
 to revolve different, and dramatic, methods of accomplishing it. 
 Presently he said : 
 
 " Cuckoo, you and Val have got to be friends from to-night." 
 
 She started, stirring uneasily on the great cushions that were 
 heaped at her back. 
 
 " We are," she said. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " Not real friends." 
 
 " Oh, we are all right." 
 
 " D'you hate him still?" 
 
 " He don't like me," she answered, evasively. 
 
 " Yet he invites you here," Julian said. " Why does he do that ? " 
 
 " I dunno," Cuckoo said. 
 
 She wondered why. Not so the doctor, to whom it had become 
 evident that Valentine had asked his guests out of vanity, and with 
 a view to some peculiar and monstrous display of his power over 
 Julian. While Cuckoo and Julian talked together on the divan 
 Valentine came over to the doctor. His eyes still held an expression 
 of awe created in him by the strange new glance of the lady of the 
 feathers. He sought to conquer this sensation of awe, which fought 
 fiercely against his intended blatant triumph of to-night. 
 
 " Your cigarette all right, doctor ? " he said, in a quick voice. 
 
 " A delicious one, thanks." 
 
 Valentine began touching the ornaments on the mantelpiece with' 
 nervous fingers.
 
 CAFE NO1R 35 1 
 
 " We didn't quite finish our conversation at dinner," he said. 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " I did not give you a reason for my belief." 
 
 A deep interest woke in the doctor, but he did not show it. He 
 thought : 
 
 " So, he must insanely return to this one subject, round which his 
 brain makes an eternal tour." 
 
 " No," he said aloud, " you have a reason then? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 His voice vibrated with arrogance. His hand still darted to and 
 fro on the mantelpiece while he stood looking down at the doctor. 
 There was something in his manner that suggested a mixture of 
 triumph and of fighting anxiety in his mind. But, as he continued 
 to speak, the former got the upper hand. 
 
 " A reason that might convince even you if you knew it." 
 
 " Convince me of exactly what ? " the doctor asked, indifferently. 
 
 His indifference seemed to pique Valentine, who replied with 
 energy : 
 
 "That human will can be cultivated, has been developed, until it 
 has moved the mountain, achieved the thing men call a miracle." 
 
 " By whom has it been so developed ? " 
 
 Valentine hesitated almost like one who fears to be led into a 
 trap. The doctor could see " By me ! " trembling upon his lips. 
 He did not actually utter it, but instead exclaimed, with a laugh : 
 
 " Some day you will discover." 
 
 And, as he spoke, he looked at Julian and the lady of the feathers. 
 The doctor was anxious to lead him on, and, leaning easily back in 
 his comfortable chair, occupied himself with his cigarette for a 
 minute, as a man calmly at ease. Between his whiffs he presently 
 threw out carelessly : 
 
 " This man has compassed eternity by his own will ? " 
 
 " Oh, I did not say that." 
 
 " He has contented himself with curing a sprained ankle by walking 
 upon it, like my Christian scientist ? " 
 
 " Now you fly to the other extreme, from the very great to the 
 very little. Take a middle course." 
 
 " Where would that lead me ? " 
 
 Valentine threw a glance round the dim, hot, scented little room, 
 then once more his eyes rested on Julian and Cuckoo. 
 
 " What if I said To this little room, to Julian and that girl, to 
 myself ? " he answered in a low voice. 
 
 " And the miracle ? " said the doctor. 
 
 The door opened. Wade appeared with coffee.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR 
 
 VALENTINE turned quickly with an air of mingled irritation and 
 relief at the interruption. 
 
 " We must all take coffee/' he cried. " It will give us impetus, 
 vitality, so that as the old year dies we may live more swiftly, more 
 strongly. I like to feel that my life is increasing while that of 
 another the old year for instance is decreasing." 
 
 But the doctor noticed that his eyes had rested with a curiously 
 significant expression upon Julian as he spoke the last sentence. 
 
 " Leave the coffee pot on that little table," he added to Wade, 
 when the man had filled all four cups. " We may want it." 
 
 Wade obeyed him and disappeared. 
 
 " Your man makes wonderful coffee," the doctor said, sipping. 
 
 " Yes. Julian, have you reached that cafe noir I spoke of the 
 other day ? " Valentine asked laughingly, returning to his simile of 
 the greedy man and happiness. 
 
 "I don't know. Not yet, Val, I think," Julian answered. This 
 coffee seemed to give him life at last. The heavy weariness 
 disappeared from his face. His eyes gleamed with something of 
 their old youthfulness and ardour. 
 
 " If so, I must be close on happiness," he added. 
 
 As he spoke he looked into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo, seeming, 
 strangely, to seek in them the will-o-the-wisp of which he spoke. 
 
 "Never look for it in unfurnished rooms," Valentine exclaimed 
 with sudden violence. 
 
 This glance of Julian, so the doctor judged, precipitated his 
 curious and subtle insanity towards an outburst. 
 
 " You will find it in the thing that is most definite, not in the 
 thing that is most indefinite. Isn't it so, doctor ? Happiness lien 
 in the positive, not in the negative ? " 
 
 " Happiness lies in many places. Each finds it in a different 
 house." 
 
 "Perhaps you can't tell where I should find it, Val," Julian 
 interposed, with a certain sturdinofs of manner.
 
 THE HEALTH OF TtiE NEW YEAR 353 
 
 " No," said Cuckoo, eagerly. 
 
 The coffee, it appeared, had an effect upon her too. There was a 
 life, a keen intentness in her thin, white face, not visible there 
 before. Valentine turned round upon her. He was holding his 
 coffee-cup in his right hand. With the other he put his cigarette to 
 his lips. 
 
 " Can you tell us where Mr. Addison is likely to find happiness ? " 
 he said. " Can you tell us, lady of the feathers ? " 
 
 "No. He can tell himself. That's all," she said. "Let hinl 
 find it himself." 
 
 " Each for himself and God for us all, eh?" 
 
 " I don't know about God," she said, looking towards the doctor 
 as if for assistance. 
 
 " Each for another .and God for us all is, perhaps, a better 
 motto," the doctor interposed. 
 
 " Ah, Charity ! " 
 
 Valentine took out his watch and looked at it. 
 
 " Charity ! Midnight is approaching, and, of course, this is 
 Charity's benefit night by common consent. Thank you, doctor, for 
 the hint. Did the dying old year prompt you with its husky voice 
 full of the wind and of the snow ? " 
 
 " Possibly." 
 
 " Let us have some more coffee. Julian, give me Miss Bright's cup 
 You shall have your absinthe presently. Wade has not forgotten it. 
 
 " Absinthe ? " said the doctor. 
 
 " Julian drinks it every night. He has got tired of whisky. 
 Toctor, your cup, too." 
 
 " We shall not sleep a wink to-night." 
 
 " All the better. Why should not we see the dawn in, as we did 
 cnce before ? You recollect." 
 
 " Ah Val ! on the inght of }-our trance." 
 
 " Yes. You were not here, then, lady of the feathers." 
 
 He spoke with a light mockery. 
 
 " I fainted, or died the doctor was deceived into thinking so 
 and was born again in the dawn of the very day on which Julian 
 fiist met you." 
 
 Cuckoo shivered with the recollection of Marr and her horror of 
 that night. 
 
 "Why do you shiver? " Valentine continued. " Do you find the 
 rcom cold ? " 
 
 " No, no." 
 
 Indeed, the heat and the over-powering scent of the hyacinths had 
 previously weighed upon her physique, and increased the malaise 
 into which her curious new dutif ulness, and the faint spectre which 
 diew near to her, had brought her. 
 
 8
 
 354 FLAMES 
 
 " Perhaps you shiver in the influence of this little room," he 
 continued, persistently. " Julian and I once did so. Eh, Julian ? " 
 
 " Yes, in those sittings." 
 
 " I didn't shiver," Cuckoo said, bluntly and very obviously lying. 
 
 She quickly drank some more coffee. 
 
 " If you had it might not have been astonishing," said Valentine. 
 " For this little room has seen marvels, and strange things that 
 happen perhaps stamp their strange impression upon the places in 
 which they happen. We ought to discuss the occult, doctor, on the 
 last night of the year." 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 " How long ago it seems ! " Julian said suddenly, with a sigh. 
 
 " Yes," Valentine answered. " Because so much has happened in 
 the interval. The greedy man has eaten so many courses, Julian." 
 
 He seemed to take a delight in throwing out allusions to one and 
 the other of his guests, allusions which nobody but the person 
 addressed could understand rightly. For he now went on, addressing 
 himself to Cuckoo : 
 
 " In this little room was committed the great act of brigandage of 
 which I once spoke to you. Do you remember ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Never mind. But, though you cannot remember, that might 
 make you shiver." 
 
 " What act of brigandage, Valentine ? " Julian asked. 
 
 "Oh, the attempt my attempt to seize upon a different soul." 
 
 " But you failed." 
 
 " Did I ? Do you think so, doctor ? " 
 
 His apparent audacity seemed to increase. In the twilight of the 
 scented room he drew himself up as he stood by the brocaded screen 
 that hid the fire. He closed and unclosed rapidly his left hand 
 which hung at his side. His foot tapped the thick carpet gently. 
 
 " Did you not ? " the doctor answered quietly. 
 
 But Julian was roused to vivacity. 
 
 " What do you mean, Valentine ? " he said. " Of course you may 
 have changed, or developed, or whatever you like to call it, since 
 then. But to say you have got a different soul ! " 
 
 " Is absurd ? Yes, you are right. Because if I had got a different 
 soul the original < I,' that was dissatisfied with itself, must have 
 ceased to be. Since the soul of a man his will to do things, 
 his will to feel things is the man himself, if I had a different 
 soul I should be another man. The former man would have ceased 
 to be." 
 
 " Or would be elsewhere." 
 
 _ It was the doctor who spoke, and he spoke without special interest, 
 simply expressing his thought of what might happen in so whimsical
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR 355 
 
 an event as that harped upon by Valentine. But Valentine seemed 
 painfully struck by the almost idle words. 
 
 ' Elsewhere ! " he exclaimed, with a lowering expression. " What 
 do you mean, doctor ? What do you imply ? " 
 The doctor looked at him surprised. 
 
 " Merely that a thing expelled is not necessarily a thing slain. 
 If you turn me out of this room I am not certain to expire on the 
 door-mat." 
 
 Valentine broke into a nervous and uneasy laugh and cast a quick 
 glance all around him, and especially on Cuckoo, who sat listening 
 silently with her eyebrows drawn together in a pent frown of 
 puzzled attention. 
 
 " I see, I see," he said hastily. And here Julian broke in. 
 ' But the whole thing's impossible," he said with a laugh. 
 ' You would say so, doctor ? " 
 
 Valentine addressed this question to Dr. Levillier in a very 
 marked and urgent manner. 
 
 " You would say so, since the will of man cannot perform 
 miracles ? " 
 
 " Certainly I should say so, despite the triumphs of hypnotism. 
 A man may change greatly through outside influence, or perform 
 occasional acts foreign to his nature under the influence of ' sugges- 
 tion ' or hypnotism. But I do not believe he can change radically and 
 permanently, except from one cause." 
 
 The last words were spoken after a moment of hesitation. Valen- 
 tine rejoined quickly. 
 
 " What ? What ? One cause, you say ! You allow that wait 
 though ! What is the cause ? " 
 
 Dr. Levillier was silent. He was asking himself should he play 
 this forcing card, make this sharp, cutting experiment. He resolved 
 that he would make it. 
 
 "A man may change radically," he said, "if he becomes 
 insane." 
 
 A short breath, like a sigh, came from Cuckoo. Valentine stood 
 quite still, regarding the doctor closely for a moment. Then he said 
 contemptuously : 
 
 " Mad ! Oh, madmen don't interest me." 
 
 The doctor had gained nothing from his experiment. It was im- 
 possible to gather from Valentine's manner that he was in any way 
 struck by this suggestion, and indeed he abandoned all allusion to it 
 with careless haste, and returned to that other suggestion of which 
 the doctor himself had thought nothing. 
 
 " Supposing that soul of a man to be expelled," he said, abruptly, 
 ' where where do you suppose it would go, would be ? " 
 - It was obvious that he endeavoured to speak lightly, but there was
 
 356 FLAMES 
 
 a most peculiar anxiety visible in his manner. The doctor wondered 
 from what cause it sprang. 
 
 " I have never formed a supposition on that matter," he said. 
 
 "Well well try to form one now. Yes, and you Julian, too." 
 
 He did not address himself to the lady of the feathers, hut he 
 looked at her long and narrowly. The doctor lit another cigarette. 
 He seemed to be seriously considering this odd question. Julian, 
 whose lethargy was changing into an almost equally pronounced 
 excitement, was not so hesitating. As if struck by a sudden flashing 
 idea, he exclaimed : 
 
 " How if it was in the air ? How if it was wandering about from 
 place to place ? By God, Val ! " he cried, with emphasis, " do you 
 know what I read in a book I took up from your shelves the other 
 day something about souls being like flames ? It was in Ifossetti : 
 Flames ! " 
 
 He turned to Cuckoo and stared into her eyes. 
 
 " I was half asleep when I read it," he said. " Why should T 
 remember it now ? That flame I saw that flame months ago." He 
 seemed like a man puzzling something out, trying to trace a way 
 through a tangled maze of thought that yet might be clear. "Jt 
 came from you, Val, that night, with a cry like a lost thing. A soul 
 expelled, did you say ? " 
 
 Suddenly his face was set in an awe-struck gravity. 
 
 " Why but then, if so, that flame would be you, Valentine, that 
 flame which seemed to haunt me, which I have seen in 
 
 He looked at Cuckoo again and was silent. 
 
 " Yes. Julian ? " Valentine said, in a hard, thin voice. " Go on, I 
 am listening." 
 
 Julian stared at him with a strong excitement. 
 
 " And what are you then, Valentine ? Where do you come from ? " 
 he said slowly. 
 
 " From Marr." 
 
 The words came from the divan, from the dry lips of Cuckoo. 
 Dr. Levillier knew not why, but he was thrilled to the very soul by 
 them as by a revelation throwing strong light upon the depths of 
 things. Whether it was the influence of this strange scented room 
 in which strange things had happened, or the influence of the hour 
 and the climax and death of the year, or a voice in his heart speak- 
 ing to him with authority, he could not tell. Only he knew that on 
 a sudden all his guiding reason, all his knowledge, all his cool con- 
 templation of the physician and common sense of the man were 
 swept entirely away. His theory of insanity seemed in a moment 
 the theory of a dwarf intellect trying to stick wretched, absurd pins 
 through angels white or black that it thought butterflies. His 
 conversation with Cuckoo on the Hampstead Heights seemed the
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR 357 
 
 vain babble of a tricked and impotent observer. His mind fell on 
 its knees before the mind of the lady of the feathers. Reason was 
 stricken by instinct. The confused feeling of the woman had con- 
 quered the logical inferences of the man. From that moment the 
 doctor secretly abandoned the old landmarks which had guided him 
 all his life, and entered into a new world a world in which he 
 would not have dreamed of permitting any of his patients to walk if 
 he could help it. A strange, magic iloated round him like a mist 
 blotting out the crude familiarities of the normal world. The tent- 
 room, with its shadowy tulips, its scented warmth, its pale twilight, 
 its quick silences when voices ceased, was a temple of wonder and a 
 home of the miraculous. And those gathered in it, what were they ? 
 Men and a woman ? Bodies ? Earthly creatures ? No. To his 
 mind they were stripped bare of the clothes in which man governed 
 by decrees of some hidden power must make his life pilgrimage. 
 They were stripped bare and naked of their bodies. They were 
 warm, stirring, disembodied things they were flames leaping, 
 wavering, contending, aspiring. And he remembered the night when 
 he sat alone in the drawing-room of Valentine, and saw the red 
 walls glow, and the light deepen, and saw the stillness grow to 
 movement, and the shadows come away from their background, and 
 take forms the forms of flames. Was that night a night of pro- 
 phesy ? Were those flames silent voices speaking to the ear of his 
 mind ? He looked around him like a man in a strange country, who 
 takes a long braath and liberates his soul in wonder. He looked 
 around, and the shadowy, thin girl leaning forward on the divan, 
 with one arm outstretched as if she gave a message, was among the 
 other flames as a flame upon an altar. At least his instinct had not 
 played him false with regard to her. He knew it now. In the wild 
 and sad streets, where feet of men tread ever, where tears of women 
 flow ever, grow flowers of Paradise, strange flowers, leap flames from 
 the eternal fires of heaven. And the voice of Cuckoo thrilled him 
 as the voice of revelation. 
 
 Valentine turned upon the lady of the feathers, hearing her cry. 
 
 " Marr ! " he said, " your lover who died ! Ah ! " 
 
 The brutality of the remark was so unexpected, so savage, that it 
 struck all those who heard it like a whip. Cuckoo shrank back 
 among her cushions trembling. Julian made a slight forward move- 
 ment as if to stop Valentine. The doctor laid his hands on the arms 
 of his chair and pressed them hard. He felt a need of physical 
 energy. In the sudden silence Valentine touched the electric bell. 
 Before any one spoke it was answered by Wade who carried a tray on 
 which stood various bottles and glasses. 
 
 " We must countei'act the exciting effects of our cafe noir" 
 Valentine said, addressing his guests in a group. " Otherwise we
 
 358 FLAMES 
 
 shall be strung up to a pitch of tension that will make us think the 
 requiem of church bells, which we shall hear in a few minutes, the 
 voices of spirits or of spectres. Julian, here is your absinthe. What 
 will you drink, Miss Bright ? Brandy, lemonade, whisky ? " 
 " Lemonade, please," Cuckoo said, almost in a whisper. 
 The tears were crowding in her eyes. She dared not look Julian 
 in the face. Never before had her past risen up before her painted 
 in such grim and undying colours. The reprise of Valentine had 
 been as the reprise of a Maxim gun to a volley fired by a child from 
 an air tube. So Cuckoo felt. But how greatly was she deceived ! 
 Perhaps physical conditions played a subtle part in the terrible 
 desolation that seized her now, after her outburst of daring and of 
 excitement. The warmth and smallness of the room, the penetrating 
 scent that filled it, even the movements of her companions, the 
 sound of their voices, suddenly became almost insupportable to 
 Cuckoo. She was the victim of a reaction that was so swift and 
 so intense as to be unnatural. And in it both her mind and body 
 were bound in chains. Then she was petrified. Her very heart felt 
 cold and cramped and then hard, icy, inhuman. Her tears did not 
 fall but were dried up in her eyes like dew by a scorching sun. 
 She looked at Julian, and felt as indifferent towards him as if he had 
 been a shadow on the grass in the evening time. Then he became 
 remote, with a removedness attained by no shadow even. For a 
 shadow is in the world and Julian seemed beyond the world to 
 Cuckoo. She thought, even repeated, with tiny lip movements, the 
 cruel words of Valentine, and they seemed to her no longer cruel, or 
 of any meaning bad or good. 1'or they came from too far away. 
 They were as a cry of shrill music from a cave leagues onward behind 
 the caves of any winds. 
 
 Valentine poured out some lemonade and gave it to her. She 
 accepted it mechanically. She even put it to her lips and drank 
 some of it. But her palate was aware of no flavour, no coolness of 
 liquid. And she continued sipping without tasting anything. 
 Meanwhile Julian was saying to Valentine : 
 
 " I don't think I'll take any absinthe to-night. Give me some 
 lemonade too." 
 
 "Lemonade for you? Nonsense. I ordered the absinthe 
 specially. You must have some. Here it is." 
 
 As he spoke he poured some of the opalescent liquid into a tumbler 
 and handed it to Julian. While he did so his eyes were on the 
 doctor and they gleamed again with a sort of audacity or triumph . 
 He seemed recovering himself, returning to his former mood and 
 veiled intentions. And Dr. Levillier thought he saw the flame of 
 Valentine's soul glow more deeply and fiercely. The three men, 
 as if with one accord, ignored the lady of the feathers at this period
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR 359 
 
 of the evening. Valentine, having shot his bolt, left his victim to 
 shudder in the dust. Julian and the doctor, full of pity or of 
 wonder, were drawn instinctively to leave her for the moment out- 
 side of the circle of intimacy, lest the conflict should be renewed. 
 They did not know how far outside of it she felt, how dim the twilight 
 was becoming to her eyes, how dim the voices to her eai'S. She lay 
 back on her pillows in the shadow of the divan, and they supposed 
 her to be listening as before to what they said, to be drawing into 
 her nosti-ils the scent of the hyacinths and into her soul it might 
 be some fragments of their uttered thoughts. But for the moment 
 they seemed to put her outside the door. 
 
 Julian did not protest against the absinthe. He took it and 
 placed it on a small table beside him, and as he talked, he occasionally 
 drank a little of it, till his glass was empty. Valentine had again 
 looked at his watch. 
 
 " The flame of the year is flickering very low," he said. 
 
 This simile of the flame of the year, so ordinary, he had spoken 
 against his will. He asked himself angrily why he had said flame, 
 and again the doctor saw the flame of Valentine's soul trying to leap 
 higher, to aspire to some strange and further region than that in 
 which it seemed to dwell. Julian sat looking at Valentine with a 
 gaxe that was surely new in his eyes, the dawning gaze of inquiry 
 which a man directs upon a stranger just come into his life. He had 
 not alluded in any way to Cuckoo's startling and intense interposition. 
 Valentine had killed that conversation with one blow it seemed. 
 They buried it by deserting it. Yet the thought of it was obviously 
 with them, making quick interchange of words on another subject 
 difficult. Valentine had seized again on the poor, prostrate year, 
 yet he had carried even to it the memory of that which seemed 
 to encompass them as with a ring of fire. And that despite 
 himself. 
 
 " We shall hear the bells directly," he added. "I hate bells at 
 night. They will sound odd in this room." 
 
 " Very odd," the doctor said. 
 
 " We ought to sit reviewing our past year," Valentine went on. 
 
 " Our past year and all it has done for us." 
 
 " Do you think it has done much for you, Addison ? " the doctor 
 asked. And, despite his intention, there was a certain significance 
 in his tone. 
 
 Julian looked rather grave and moody, yet excited too, like a 
 man who might burst into either gaiety or anger at a moment's 
 notice. 
 
 " I suppose it has," he answered. " Yes, more than any year since 
 I was quite a boy." 
 
 " It has taught you how T to live," Valentine said quickly.
 
 360 FLAMES 
 
 " Or how to die," the doctor could not resist saying. 
 
 " Why do you say that, doctor ? " Valentine asked sharply. " Julian 
 is neither sick nor sad, are you, Julian ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Don't bother about me." 
 
 But Valentine seemed suddenly determined that Julian should 
 state in precise terms his contentment with his present fate. 
 
 "You are making your grand tour towards happiness," he ex- 
 claimed. " Dessert, cafe noir then the cigarette and contentment." 
 
 " I have had the cafe noir," Julian said, indicating his empty cup, 
 which Wade had, by accident, omitted to clear away. " I have had 
 the cigarette." 
 
 " Well. What then ? Are you unhappy ? " 
 
 " I tell you I don't know. Give me some more absinthe." 
 
 The doctor watched his excitement growing as he drank. It seemed 
 an excitement adverse to Valentine. 
 
 " One may have too much black coffee," he suddenly said. 
 
 " And that exerts a very depressing effect upon the nerves," said 
 the doctor, taking him literally. " Neither you nor I are likely to 
 sleep well to-night, Addison." 
 
 " I never sleep well now, doctor," Julian said. 
 
 All this time he continued to regard Valentine in the peculiar, 
 observant manner of a stranger who is trying to make up his mind 
 about the unfamiliar man at whom he looks. 
 
 " Then you should not drink black coffee." 
 
 As he spoke a very faint sound of bells penetrated to the tent- 
 room. 
 
 " The psychological moment ! " said Valentine. 
 
 And then they were all silent, listening. 
 
 To the doctor, the prey of magic art since the soft cry of the lady 
 of the feathers, the bells seemed magical and strange to-night, thin 
 and dreamy and remote. They rang outside the circle of the flames, 
 yet they too had an eerie meaning. Nor did their music come, he 
 thought, from any church tower, from any belfry, summoned by the 
 tugging hands of men. Very softly they rang. Their sound was 
 deadened by the thick draperies. They ceased. 
 
 " My year is born," Valentine said. 
 
 " Your year ? " the doctor repeated. 
 
 " Yes. I feel that in this year I shall culminate, I shall touch a 
 point, I shall put the corner-stone to the temple of my ambition. 
 No one can prevent me now, no one. Look, she has fainted ! " 
 
 He had been watching Cuckoo, and had seen her posture of mere 
 rest change, almost imperceptibly, to the prostration of insensibility. 
 
 The doctor sprang up from his chair. Julian uttered an exclama- 
 tion. Valentine only smiled. The door was opened. A fan was used. 
 Air was let into the room. Presently Cuckoo stirred and sat up.
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR 361 
 
 The three men were gathered round her, and suddenly Valentine 
 said : 
 
 " My trance over again. The lady of the feathers imitates me." 
 
 Julian turned round to him with abrupt irritation. 
 " That's not so," he said. " Cuckoo is herself always." He 
 turned again to her. 
 
 " Are you better ? " he asked, touching her hand gently, 
 
 " Yes, I'm all right. It was them them." 
 
 She glanced vaguely round at the tulips, as if searching for the 
 cause of the scent which filled the room. 
 
 " There are hyacinths somewhere," the doctor said. 
 
 " Yes, they are hidden ! " said Valentine. " A hidden power is 
 the greatest power. But now you may see them." 
 
 And he drew from a nook guarded by some large ferns a pot of 
 red hyacinths. 
 
 Cuckoo sat up and drank a little brandy, which the doctor gave 
 to her. Some colour came into her pale and thin cheeks. 
 
 " I'm as right as ninepence now," she said, with an effort after 
 brightness. 
 
 The bells began again. 
 
 " What's that ? " she asked. " Not New Year, is it ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Valentine. " A happy New Year to you, lady 
 of the feathers." 
 
 Julian was struck by a sudden thought. 
 
 " Val," he said, " Cuckoo, I want you to be real friends this 
 year." 
 
 He caught hold of Valentine's hand, and placed it in Cuckoo's. 
 But then again a bewilderment seemed to take hold of him, for even 
 as he touched Valentine's hand he looked at him askance, and the 
 eagerness died away from his face. 
 
 " I don't know," he muttered to himself, and getting up from the 
 end of the divan where he had been sitting, he moved away towards 
 the fire, leaving Cuckoo's hand in the hand of Valentine. 
 
 Valentine smiled coldly on Cuckoo. 
 
 " Lady of the feathers," he said, " we are to be allies." 
 
 " What's that ? " she asked, pulling her hand away directly Julian 
 had turned his back upon them. 
 
 " When people fight together against a common enemy they are 
 allies." 
 
 " Then we ain't," she Avhispered, " New Year or not." 
 
 ' ; You defy me?" he said, raising his voice so that the doctor 
 might hear the words. 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 "Doctor, do you hear?" 
 
 He seemed suddenly bent on forcing a quarrel. Dr. Levillier
 
 362 FLAMES 
 
 felt again that sense of dread and horror which had attacked him 
 now more than once of late in Valentine's presence. This time the 
 sensation was so acute that he could scarcely combat it sufficiently 
 to reply. 
 
 " I hear," he murmured. 
 
 " Julian ! " Valentine called. " Julian, come here. Miss Bright 
 wishes to tell you something." 
 Julian turned round. 
 " Now, lady of the feathers ! " 
 
 But Cuckoo hurst into a shrill little laugh. Her head was spin- 
 ning again. 
 
 " I've nothing nothing to say," she cried out. " Give me some 
 more brandy." 
 
 " Very well. Let us all drink to the health of the New Year." 
 Valentine filled the glasses Julian's with absinthe and gave the 
 toast. 
 
 " The New Year ! " 
 
 They all raised their glasses to their lips simultaneously. One fell 
 with a crash to the ground and was broken. It was Julian's. 
 " I won't drink it," he raid, doggedly, looking at Valentine. 
 There was a silence. Then Valentine said, calmly : 
 " Have you an animus against the thing you don't yet know? " 
 It was sufficiently obvious that he alluded to the year just coming 
 in upon London. But the words were taken by the doctor, and 
 apparently by Julian, in a hidden and different sense. 
 
 " Perhaps because I don't yet know it thoroughly, and had thought 
 I did," Julian answered, staring him full in the face still with that 
 strange glance of mingled interrogation and bewilderment. 
 Valentine watched him. 
 
 " You are treating the poor thing and my carpet scurvily, 
 Julian," he said. "And you have startled Miss Bright." 
 Cuckoo's eyes were shining. 
 " No," she ejaculated. 
 
 Valentine rang the bell and directed Wade to collect the fragments 
 of glass. While the man was doing so silence again reigned, and the 
 little room seemed full of uneasiness. Only Valentine either was or 
 affected to be nonchalant. As goon as Wade had gone he said to the 
 doctor : 
 
 " This room is destined to be dedicated to strange uses, and to 
 influence those who come within it. Julian is not himself to-night." 
 " Are you ? " Julian asked. 
 " Myself ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 " My dear Julian, we shall be forced to think the absinthe has 
 been at work too busily in your brain. What is the matter ? "
 
 THE HEALTH OF THE XEIl' YEAR 363 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " One would think we had been having a sitting. You are so 
 excited." 
 
 Julian suddenly drew his breath sharply, as if struck by a shot of 
 an idea. 
 
 " Let us have one," he cried. 
 
 The distant bells rang faintly. The doctor thrilled to the sugges- 
 tion, still bound by magic surely. For now, since the inspiring 
 exclamation of Cuckoo, which had broken his theories on the wheel 
 and swept his reason like a dead flower along the wind, he no longer 
 condemned as a danger only that which had produced the trance 
 from which, as from a strange prison, had come the new Valentine. 
 The former sitting had, it seemed, beckoned 'that trance, and with 
 the trance had beckoned an incredibly evil and powerful thing. 
 What if that which had the power to give had also the power to take 
 away ? Often it is so in ordinary conditions of life. Why not also 
 in extraordinary conditions ? So his thoughts ran, fantastically 
 enough, to the sound of the far-off bells. 
 
 " A good notion," he said on the spur of the moment and this quick 
 reflection. 
 
 " You think so ? " said Valentine. " You who condemned us, even 
 wrung a promise from us against sitting.'' 
 His regard was suspicious. 
 
 " Perhaps I have changed my mind. Perhaps I take the matter 
 less seriously," said the doctor. 
 
 He had never been more near lying, nor was he ashamed of his 
 dissimulation. There are creatures against which we must, whatever 
 our principles, take up the nearest weapon that comes to hand. The 
 doctor looked at Julian and at Valentine, and could have perjured 
 himself a thousand times to wrest the one from the other. 
 " But Miss Bright is ill," said Valentine. 
 " No 1 ain't. I'm all right now," Cuckoo said. 
 She did not understand what was being proposed, but she gathered 
 that the doctor desired it. That was enough for her. Valentine 
 looked at them all three with eyes that plainly betokened a busy 
 mind. Then a smile nickered over his lips. It was the smile of one 
 in power watching his slaves creeping at their work for him. He 
 touched the point of which he had spoken earlier in the evening 
 in that smile, a point of delirium. 
 
 " Let them try to break me," his mind said within itself. " Their 
 very trial shall consolidate my empire." 
 
 And then his eyes left the others and rested only on Julian. 
 ' Very well, we will sit," he said.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FIFTH SITTING 
 
 JULIAN was painfully excited, but he strove to repress all evidences 
 of his inward turmoil as he began to pull out a table and arrange it 
 in the centre of the room. This act threw him with a jerk back into 
 the days of the past, recalling so vividly the former life of himself and 
 Valentine that he could not help saying : 
 
 "This is like last year." 
 
 " Like the year that the locust hath eaten," Valentine answered. 
 " We must push our empty white years down into the water, 
 Julian." 
 
 Julian made no reply. The table was soon arranged. The screen 
 was drawn more closely round the fire which had been allowed to 
 burn low. Four chairs were set. Valentine turned to Cuckoo who 
 sat hunched on the divan staring with wide open eyes at these pre- 
 parations. 
 
 " Will you come ? " he said, with his hands on the back of one of 
 the chairs. 
 
 " Whatever are we goin' to do ? " she asked nervously. 
 
 " Something very simple and perhaps very foolish," said the 
 doctor, wondering, indeed, now the moment for beginning the 
 phantasy was arrived, whether he was not to blame for encouraging 
 a thing that in his under-mind he so thoroughly disapproved of. 
 " We are going to sit round that table in the dark with our hands 
 upon it, and wait." 
 
 " Whatever for ? " 
 
 Her simple and blatant question caused the doctor actually to blush. 
 His confusion was quite obvious, but it was covered by Julian, who 
 exclaimed, rather roughly : 
 
 " Now, Cuckoo, don't chatter, but come here and sit quiet," 
 
 He drew her from the divan into a chair and sat down beside her. 
 Valentine glided swiftly into the chair on her other side and said : 
 
 " Oh, doctor, I forgot the light. Do you mind turning it out ? " 
 
 The doctor obeyed, felt his way to the chair opposite Cuckoo and 
 sat down,
 
 THE FIFTH SITTING 365 
 
 Almost at the moment he turned out the light the bells that rang 
 " Le roi est mort, vive Ic roi " ceased. Cuckoo was directed to lay 
 her hands on the table and to touch with her fingers the fingers of 
 her companions. She did so, trembling. This was a new experience 
 to her, and her entire lack of knowledge of what was expected to 
 happen filled the darkness with immoderate possibilities, and her 
 soul with awe and with confusion. Then to sit between the man 
 she loved and the man she loathed, thus in the blackness, was a 
 nerve-shaking experience which her preceding fainting fit did not 
 deprive of its normal terrors. The hand of Valentine and the hand 
 of Julian were as ice and as fire to her. The darkness seemed 
 crowded with nameless things. She could fancy that she heard it 
 whisper incessantly in her ear. 
 
 But the real interest of this sitting, to any little demon gifted 
 with a miraculous power of pushing its detective Avay into the minds 
 of the sitters, would have lain, perhaps, chiefly in the mind of Dr. 
 Levillier. It has been said that, suddenly struck to the soul by the 
 conviction with which the instinctive Cuckoo pronounced those 
 words, " From Marr," Dr. Levillier entered into a new world, 
 abandoning old landmarks. He remained in this new world of the 
 senses certainly, but already he was becoming accustomed to it, 
 clear-headed, keen-sighted, even reasonable in it. Moved by some 
 strange conviction that he was in the presence of an inexplicable 
 mystery, he 110 longer tried to explain it in some ordinary fashion, 
 He abandoned his theory of insanity, or it abandoned him. In any 
 case it was dead, buried, whether he would or no. He recognised a 
 mystery at present beyond his capacity to understand or to explain. 
 Having got thus far, and having entered, at Julian's word, into this- 
 present circumstance of sitting, table-turning, or -rapping, or what- 
 ever you may chcose to call it, he cleared any ordinary furniture of 
 doctor's prejudices right out of his mind made a clean sweep of 
 them. That done and the doing of it required some strong effort 
 his mind was receptive, ready for anything, odd or ordinary, that 
 might come along. There he sat with his empty room waiting to be- 
 filled the only reasonable way of waiting for that of which we have' 
 no knowledge. He did not clamour " I won't," or " I will." He 1 
 said nothing at all, only waited with the strict desire and intention 
 of recognising things to be what they truly were, neither dressing 
 them up nor tearing their garments off their backs. When he put 
 out the light and sat down, what he expected so far as he expected 
 anything was this, that the addition of darkness would add a cloud 
 to his mind, and endeavour to give various finishing touches to any 
 sj urious excitement created in him, however much against his will r 
 by the enemy's doings. In this expectation he was entirely deceived 1 . 
 The falling of darkness drew a veil from his mind, leaving his mental!
 
 366 FLAMES 
 
 sight singularly, even preternaturally clear. The falling of silence 
 gave an amazing acuteness to his inner sense of hearing. Certain 
 people are so made that they can, under certain conditions, and at 
 certain moments, hear the workings of their neighbours' minds, as 
 you and I can hear the whirr of machinery, or the cry of a child in 
 the street. An ordinary man or woman can only hear a mind when 
 lips, teeth, and tongue utter it with living sounds that set the air in 
 vibration. These abnormal people hear, in these abnormal moments, 
 the silent murmurs of the mind making no effort at all to utter itself 
 through the usual speech apparatus. Till this moment the doctor 
 had supposed himself to be an entirely normal man, but he had been 
 sitting only a very short time before he began to become aware of 
 the silent murmurs of these three minds around him. The darkness 
 set his own mind free from clouds of excitement and from mists 
 of unreason. That was the first step. But it did more. It deve- 
 loped in him this marvellous faculty of the hearing of silence, called 
 by some divination. All his senses were rendered amazingly acute. 
 A perfectly distinct impression of the precise feelings of Cuckoo, of 
 Valentine, and of Julian respectively came to him as he sat there, 
 although he could neither see nor hear them. Each of them seemed 
 to pour his or her thoughts into the doctor's mind. Thus, at first, 
 did his empty room become furnished with the thoughts of his com- 
 panions. He was sitting in the circle between Julian and Valentine 
 and held their hands. And it was Valentine who forged the first 
 link in this strange chain of unuttered communication. Asthe dark- 
 ness cleared the doctor's mind, and set him once more on his feet 
 although in a new world an aroma of triumph floated to him softly, 
 like a scent in a damp wood at night. He heai'd then the mind of 
 Valentine murmuring in the stillness the Litany of its glory, a long 
 and an ornate Litany, deep and full, and he knew that he had been 
 right in supposing that Valentine had invited him to witness that 
 glory. But the doctor became aware too, that at moments the Litany 
 faltered, hesitated, as if the mind of Valentine grew uncertain or was 
 assailed by vague fears. And these fears ran like little pale furtive 
 things to Valentine from the lady of the feathers. By degrees the 
 doctor could imagine that he actually saw them stealing back and 
 forth. Now one would come alone as if to listen to the Litany, and then 
 another would follow, and another, and growing brave, they would 
 combine against it. Then Valentine would waver and become uneasy, 
 as one who hears little voices crying against him in the night, and 
 knows not whence they come or from whom. But the Litany would 
 begin again and Valentine would triumph over the pale fears and they 
 would shrink away. And in the Litany one name recurred again and 
 again the name of Julian. Over him was the triumph. In his ruin 
 and fall and ultimate destruction the glory lived. To witness the com-
 
 THE FIFTH SITTING 367 
 
 plete possibility of this ruin, the complete sovereignty of this glory, 
 the doctor and the lady of the feathers were there. And the doctor 
 grew to feel that only some outside circumstance, alarming Valentine 
 to anxiety, and waking Julian to a new observation, had hindered the 
 intended triumph. What circumstance was that ? He looked back 
 along the past evening and found it in himself, in his theory that a soul 
 expelled was not necessarily a soul dead. The rift in the glory of the 
 Litany came with that. Valentine was trying to close it by this act 
 of sitting, to impress the strength of his will upon his companions in 
 the darkness. The doctor felt his effort like a continually repeated 
 blow, stealthy and hard and merciless. 
 
 And now in the darkness and in the silence the doctor heard the 
 mind of Julian. Another scent floated through that imagined 
 damp and breathing wood from another but how different soul 
 flower. No Litany of triumph murmured in the blackness where 
 Julian sat, but a hoarse and broken solo, part despair, part fear, part 
 anger, and all perplexed and flooded with bewilderment and with 
 excitement. The doctor drew into him the murmur of Julian's 
 mind until it seemed to become, for the time, the murmur of his 
 own mind. lie was conscious of a dreadful turmoil of doubt, and 
 dread and perplexity, so strong, so painful, that it lay upon him 
 like a dense and a suffocating burden. In that moment he knew 
 utterly that the greatest load in the world laid on any man is the 
 load of his own, perhaps beloved, sin. He was staggering wearily 
 with Julian away from the light. His eyes were dim with the 
 eyes of Julian. His ears, like Julian's, were assailed with the 
 dastard clamour of the calling sins. "Listen! Listen ! you want 
 me. I am here. Take me ! Take me ! " And the weltering seas 
 of heavy flooding impotence rolled round him as they rolled round 
 Julian. He grew numb and vacant and inert, then alive ever to 
 the murmur of Julian's mind caught a glimpse, through the waters 
 of that whelming sea, of far-away light, and heard that the voices of 
 the importunate sins grew fainter. But whether the voices were 
 loud or low, whether the seas flowed above his head or sank and 
 failed, he was always conscious of the dominating mood of almost 
 wild perplexity and a madness of bewilderment. For Julian stirred 
 under the yoke that Valentine had laid upon him as if at last con- 
 scious distinctly that it was indeed a yoke, and that it galled him ; 
 as if at last conscious, too, that without that yoke was freedom. 
 And he shot against Valentine in the darkness arrows of inquiry. 
 But always he lived in doubt and almost in terror. 
 
 And then, detaching himself from the triumph, touched with 
 anxiety of Valentine, and from the wild turmoil of Julian, Dr. 
 Levillier opened the door of his mind wide, and the lady of the 
 feathers entered in.
 
 368 
 
 He heard the thoughts of a woman. 
 
 That was strangest of all the most fantastic, eerie, wayward, 
 wonderful music the doctor had dreamed of. 
 
 Have you listened to far-off and mingling melodies at night ? 
 melodies of things opposed and differing, yet drawn together, in strange 
 places far from your home ? Have you heard a woman wailing over 
 some abominable sorrow in a dark house, and an organ before which 
 filthy children dance fantastically playing a merry Neapolitan tune 
 in front of it, while the mutter of scowling men comes from the 
 blazing corner where the gin-palace faces the night ? There you 
 have sorrow, sunshine, crime, singing together in a great city. Or 
 have you stood in a land not your own, and gleaned the whisper of 
 an ancient river, the sough of a desert wind, the hoarse and tuneless 
 song of a black man at a water-wheel, the soprano ballad of a warbling 
 hotel English lady, and the remote and throbbing roar of a savage 
 Soudanese hymn and beaten drums from the golden eastern night ? 
 There you have nature, toil, shrill civilisation and war claiming you 
 with one effort in a sad and sweet country. Or have you, in a bright 
 and dewy morning, heard the " murmur of folk at their prayers," 
 the drone of a church organ, and, beyond the hedgerow, two graceless 
 lovers quarrelling, and an atheist, leaning over the church gate, 
 sneering to his fellow at the devotion of deluded Sabbath-keepers ? 
 There you have love of the hidden and faith, love of the visible and 
 distrust, hatred of hidden love and faithlessness, making a symphony 
 for you. Such mingled music is strange strange as life. But to the 
 doctor the music of this girl, Cuckoo, in the dark seemed stranger 
 and more eerie far. Her mind sang to him of a thousand things in 
 a moment, as is the fashion of women. Only men normally hear but 
 one, at most two or three, of the many feminine melodies. And now 
 Dr. Levillier heard them all, as a man may hear those differing 
 songs already recounted, simultaneously and clearly. Degradation 
 and the hopelessness that catches it by the hand, passion and the 
 strength and purity of passion, hatred, fear, physical fatigue, ignorant 
 nervousness, grossness of the gutter, which will cling even to a soul 
 capable of great devotion and noble effort, and accompany it on the 
 upward journey, very fat and very high, resolve and shrinking, mere 
 street boy virulence of enmity, and mere angel tenderness of pity all 
 these sang their song from the mind and heart of Cuckoo to the mind 
 and heart of the doctor. It was a choius of women in one woman, 
 as it so often is in the dearest women we know. In that choir an 
 outcast sat, hating, by girl who was all love and reverence. And they 
 sang out of the same hymn-book ; Jenny joining her voice with 
 Susannah, Mary Magdalene and Mary Mother, so near together in 
 one thing, so far apart in another, alike in this that both were sing- 
 ing. And in that choir celestial and infernal sang the jealous
 
 THE FIFTH SITTING 369 
 
 woman with grey cheeks and haggard eyes, and the timorous woman, 
 and she of the fearless face, and the woman who could scale the 
 stars for the creature she worshipped, and the woman who could lie 
 down in the mud and let the world see her there, and the woman 
 who had sold her soul for food, and a thin woman, such a thin, 
 almost transparent, wistful creature, who was facing the thing men 
 call with bated breath starvation. She sang too, but, of all these 
 women, she was the only one the doctor could not rightly hear nor 
 rightly see. For she, as yet, was remote, far down the level line of 
 that choir, hardly perhaps one with it yet, faint of voice, dim of 
 outline. 
 
 The doctor heard the choir sing, and then 
 
 His mind, as the time of the darkness grew longer, continued to 
 grow more and move clear, until he felt thoroughly, and was able to 
 try to analyse its unnatural condition. Scales had fallen from him 
 and from his companions for him. Their bodies were clothed, their 
 souls, their names, seemed stripped bare and offered to him naked. 
 He had examined them with this greedy, yet sane, attention and 
 curiosity. He had led them into the empty room and stayed with 
 them there. He had heard the Litany of the Glory of Valentine, 
 and the suffocation, and the anger, and the stirring beneath his yoke 
 of Julian. He had heard the many women sing in the heart of the 
 lady of the feathers. But all this seemed leading him forward and 
 onward, step by step, as to a threshold beyond which was some 
 greater, some more importunate thing. And he took the last step 
 with Cuckoo. It was as if he was handed on from one room to 
 another, as is the fashion in the palace of a great king, his name 
 being called in each, and sent before, like a voice sent on the Avind, 
 and as if Cuckoo was in the last ante-room that gave upon the 
 audience chamber. Now he had arrived, and suddenly a great wave 
 of mysterious expectation ran over him and filled the cup of his soul. 
 He felt that he stood still and waited. The sense of Cuckoo, of all 
 she felt and thought in the darkness, gradually dropped away from 
 him, like leaves from a tree, till every branch was leafless. And this 
 autumnal ravishment, like the ravishment of nature, was but a 
 preparation surely for a future Spring. 
 
 The doctor waited outside that door, beyond which, perhaps, 
 Spring blossomed and sang. He lost at last all sense of being in a 
 company of people, and felt as one feels who is entirely alone, ex- 
 pectant, calm, ready. And still only the darkness and the silence. 
 Nothing more at first. But presently what seemed to him a marvel. 
 
 He had by this time grown at ease with his power of thought- 
 reading, at ease with this new sense of the hearing of silence. The 
 differing scents of these three flowers hidden in the night had been 
 breathed out to him. With infallible certainty he had recognised 
 
 2 A
 
 370 FL.1MES 
 
 each one, differentiated the one from the other. And as the scent 
 of one flower had failed, the scent of another had risen upon him, 
 until he had known the heart of each of the three. Then for awhile 
 Avas the night scentless, silent, blank, empty. But presently the 
 doctor was aware of an uneasiness and of an anxiety stealing upon 
 him. Whence it came he could not tell. Only this he knew, that 
 he received it from something, but that it came neither from the 
 lady of the feathers, from Valentine, nor from Julian. From whom 
 then could it emanate, this weird eagerness, this fluttering, pulsing 
 fear and hope and intention ? From himself only ? He asked 
 himself that question. Was he communing in the dark with his own 
 soul ? He knew that he was not. The scent of this knew and un- 
 known flower grew stronger in the night, more penetrating and 
 intentional. Yet was it vaguer, more distant, than that emitted by 
 those other three flowers. The exact impression received by the 
 doctor at this moment was very subtle. Precisely it was this. It 
 seemed to him that he was gradually coming into communication 
 with a fourth mind, or soul, that this soul was actually more strong, 
 more vehement, even more determined, than the souls of his three 
 companions, but that some barrier removed it from him, set it very 
 far off. The flame of a match held to a man's eyes may dazzle 
 him more than the flame of a great fire on the horizon. This new 
 flame was as the latter in comparison to match flames that had 
 been flaring in the doctor's eyes. And this great and distant flame 
 burned slowly in a smoke of mystery and upon the verge of dense 
 darkness. 
 
 Never had the doctor known so peculiar, and even awe-striking, 
 an experience as that which now he underwent. What utterly be- 
 wildered him was the circumstance of this undoubted new and 
 deBnite personality enclosed in this tiny room with him and with 
 his three companions. He was receiving the impression of the 
 thoughts of a stranger. Yet there was no stranger in the chamber. 
 And he was vexed and curiously irritated by the fact of the impres- 
 sion being at the same time very vague and very violent, like the 
 cry of a man which reaches you faintly from a very long distance, 
 but which you feel instinctively to have been uttered with the frantic 
 force of death or of despair. And the mind of this stranger was 
 tugging at the doctor's mind, anxiously, insistently. There was a 
 depth of distress in it that was as no mere human distress, and that 
 moved the doctor to a mood beyond the mood of tears or of prayers. 
 There came over him an awful sense of pity for this stranger soul. 
 What had it done? How was it circumstanced ? In what ghastly 
 train of events did it move ? It was surely powerful and helpless at 
 the same time; a cripple with a mind on tire with fight; Samson 
 blind. He felt that it wanted something of him, or of his com-
 
 THE FIFTH SITTING 371 
 
 panions, some light in its severe desolation. Deeper and deeper grew 
 his horror and pity for it, deeper and deeper his sense of its ill fate. 
 The woe of it was unearthly, yet more than earthly woe. Similes 
 came to the doctor to compare with its dreadful circumstance : A 
 child motherless in a world all winter ; a saint devoted to hell by 
 some great error of God ; even one more blasphemous, and more 
 terrible still : God worsted by humanity, and, at the last, helpless to 
 reclaim the souls to which He had Himself given being ; lonely God 
 in a lonely heaven, seeing far-off hell bursting with the countless 
 multitudes of the writhing lost, This last simile stayed with him. 
 
 o > 
 
 He fancied he felt not heard the voice of this frustrate God 
 calling to him : " Do what I could not do. Strive to help My impo- 
 tence. A little a little and even yet hell would stand empty, the 
 vacant courts of heaven be filled. Act act act." 
 
 " Doctor, why are you trembling ? Why are you trembling ? " 
 
 It was the voice of Valentine that spoke. The doctor, by an effort 
 so painful that the memory of it remained with him to the end of 
 his life, recalled his mind from its journey. 
 
 " Trembling ! " he said. " What do you mean ? I am all right. 
 I am quietly in my place. How long have we been sitting ? " 
 
 " An immense time I fancy. It seems fruitless. Julian ! " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Julian's voice sounded heavy and weary. 
 
 " Don't you think we had better stop ? " 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 Valentine got up and turned on the light. 
 
 Then they saw that the lady of the feathers, leaning back in her 
 chair, was fallen asleep, no doubt from sheer weariness. Her face 
 was very white, and in sleep its expression had become ethereal and 
 purified. Her thin hands still rested nervelessly upon the table. 
 She seemed like a little child that had known sorrow early, and 
 sought gently to lose the sense of it in rest. 
 
 " Cuckoo," Julian said, leaning over her, " Cuckoo ! " 
 
 She stirred and woke. 
 
 "I'm awfully done," she murmured, in her street voice. 
 "Pardon!" 
 
 She sat up. 
 
 " I seemed as if I was put to sleep," she said. 
 
 "You were," Valentine answered her. " I willed that you should 
 s^ep." 
 
 He looked at the doctor, and his eyes said : 
 
 " I have had my triumph. You witness it." 
 
 Cuckoo reddened with anger, but she said nothing. 
 
 " Did you feel anything Julian ? " Valentine asked. 
 
 Julian was looking strangely hopeless.
 
 372 FLA MES 
 
 "Nothing," he said. "It's all different from what it was, like a 
 dead thing that used to be alive." 
 
 It seemed as if the sitting had filled him with a dogged despair. 
 
 " A dead thing," he repeated. 
 
 Then he went over to the spirit-stand and poured himself out 
 more absinthe. 
 
 " And you doctor ? " said Valentine. " What did you feel ? " 
 
 The doctor met his glance with a careful calm. 
 
 " I was thinking all the time," he said, " of other things. Not of 
 the table or of table-turning." 
 
 When he and Cuckoo left the flat that night, or rather in the chill 
 first morning of the New Year, they left Julian with Valentine. 
 
 He said he would stay, speaking in the voice of a man drugged 
 almost into uncertainty of his surroundings.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVES 
 
 DOWN in her dreary kitchen, among her dingy pots and pans, Mrs. 
 Brigg was rilled with an anger that seemed to her as righteous as 
 the anger of a Puritan against Museum opening on Sunday. Her 
 ground-floor lodger was going to the bad. Analysed, reduced to its 
 essence, that was her feeling about the lady of the feathers. Cuckoo 
 had lived at No. 400 for a considerable time. Being, in some ways, 
 easy-going, or, perhaps one should say rather, reckless, she had 
 given herself with a good enough grace to be plucked by the claws 
 of the landlady. She had endured being ruthlessly rooked, with but 
 little murmuring, as do so many of her patient class, accustomed to 
 be the prey of each unit in the large congregation of the modern 
 Fates. For months and years she had paid a preposterous price 
 for her badly furnished little rooms. She had been overcharged 
 habitually for every morsel of food she ate, every drop of beer, or of 
 tea, she drank, every fire that was kindled in her badly cleaned 
 grate, every candle that lighted her, almost every match she struck. 
 She and Mrs. Brigg had had many rows, had, times without 
 number, lifted up their respective voices in vituperation, and shown 
 command of large and vile vocabularies. But these rows had not 
 been on the occasion of the open cheating of the former by the 
 latter. Fallen women, as they are called, seldom resent being 
 cheated by those in whose houses they live. Rather do they expect 
 the bleeding process as part of the penalty to be paid for a lost 
 character. The landlord of the leper is owed for his charity and 
 tolerance good hard cash. The landlady of the Pariah puts down 
 mentally in each added up bill this item : " To loss of character so 
 much." And the Pariah understands and pays. Such is the 
 recognised dispensation. Mrs. Brigg had had a fine time of robbery 
 during the stay of Cuckoo in her ugly house, and, in consequence, a 
 certain queer and slow respect for her lodger had very gradually 
 grown up in her withered and gnarled old nature. She had that 
 feeling towards Cuckoo that a bad boy, too weak to steal apples, has 
 towards a bad boy not too weak to steal them. It could hardly be
 
 374 FLAMES 
 
 called an actual liking. Of that the old creature in her nethermost 
 Hades was nearly incapable. But she enjoyed seeing apples off the 
 tree lying in her kitchen, and so could have patted any hands that 
 had gathered them nefariously. So far as she looked into the future 
 she saw there always Cuckoo, and herself robbing Cuckoo comfort- 
 tably, faithfully, unblamed and unrepentant, while the years rolled 
 along, the leech ever at its sucking profession. 
 
 Now this agreeable vision was abruptly changed. This slide of 
 the magic lantern was smashed to fragments. And Mrs. Brigg was 
 filled with the righteous anger of a baulked and venerable robber. 
 As a mother, dependent upon the earnings of her child in some godly 
 profession might feel on the abrupt and reasonless refusal of that 
 child to continue in it, so did Mrs. Brigg feel now. 
 
 The lady of the feathers had, for the moment, at least, given up 
 her profession. She sat at home with folded hands at night. It 
 was earth-shaking. It stirred the depths of the Brigg being. 
 Quakings of a world in commotion were as nothing to it. And the 
 sweet Brigg dream that had dawned on the last night of the old 
 year, dream of a rich "toff" in love with Cuckoo and winding her 
 up to gilded circles, in which the fall of night set gay ladies bare- 
 headed, and scattered all feathered hats to limbo, died childless and 
 leaving no legacies. Certainly Cuckoo was not making money on 
 the quiet enough in one night to keep her as seven or fourteen 
 nights would formerly have supplied. Mrs. Brigg questioned, 
 remonstrated, stormed, sulked, was rude, insinuating, artful, blunt, 
 and blackguardly all to no purpose. Cuckoo would give no 
 explanation of her conduct. In the day she went out, but Mrs. 
 Brigg was not to be deceived by that. She based her observations 
 and conclusions on weighty matters connected with the culinary art 
 and with things about which her trained, disgraceful intelligence 
 could not be deceived. Cuckoo was falling into poverty. In the 
 eyes of Brigg she had formerly been in touch with riches, that is to 
 say, she had so the landlady considered lived well. She had got 
 along without falling into debt. The exorbitant rent, regularly 
 earned, had been as regularly paid. The Brigg perquisites had not 
 been disputed. No watchful eye had been directed upon the claws 
 that grabbed and clung, the fingers that filched and retained. 
 
 But now was come a devastating change. Cuckoo grown, or 
 growing, poor was no longer easy-going. Living much less well, she 
 also began to keep a sharp eye on all she had. If it went mysteri- 
 ously, without explanatory action of her own, she called loudly on 
 Brigg for enlightenment. Where had it gone? The old lady, 
 disgusted to be brought to subterfuge, a thing to which she was 
 frankly unaccustomed, lied freely and with a good courage. But 
 her lies did not stand her in much stead with Cuckoo, who had, from
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVES 375 
 
 the start, no intention whatever of believing any word she might 
 say. So war of a novel kind came about between them. Mrs. 
 Brigg was forced to live and hear herself named thief, a distressing 
 circumstance which she could scarcely surmount with dignity, what- 
 ever she might manage in the way of fortitude. Denial only armed 
 forces for the attack. Battles were numerous and violent. Cuckoo, 
 who had in some directions no perception at all of what was 
 humiliating, took to measuring proportions of legs of mutton going 
 down to Hades and re-measuring them on their return. If the 
 inches did not tally, Mrs. Brigg knew it. Her soul revolted against 
 such surveyor's work on meat that her own hands had cooked. She 
 called Cuckoo names, and was called worse names in reply. But 
 still the measurings went on, and still Cuckoo spent her evenings 
 within doors, sometimes without a fire in the winter cold. 
 
 Mrs. Brigg therefore said within herself that Cuckoo had gone to 
 the bad, and beheld, with fancy's agitated eye, a time in the near 
 future when not only perquisites would be no more, but the very 
 rent itself would be in jeopardy. Fury sparkled in her heart. 
 
 Meanwhile the situation of Cuckoo above stairs was becoming at 
 once sordid and tragic. Starvation is always sordid. It exposes 
 cheek-bones, puts sharp points on elbows, writes ugliness over a face, 
 and sets a wolf crouching in the heart. Tragic it must always be, for 
 a peculiar sorrow walks with it ; but when it is obstinate, and springs 
 from the mule in a human being, the tragedy has a lustre, a colour 
 of its own. The lady of the feathers was for ever obstinate. She 
 had been obstinate in vice, she was now obstinate in virtue. In the 
 old days Julian had said to her, " Take some of my money and let 
 the streets alone even for one night." She had refused. Now 
 Dr. Levillier had said to her, " Prove your will. Lean on it. Do 
 something for Julian." She could only do this one thing. She 
 could only leave the street ! With frowning, staring obstinacy she 
 left it. There was always something pathetically blind about Cuckoo's 
 proceedings. She, was not lucid. But once she had grasped an idea 
 hhe was like the limpet on the rock. So now she sat at home. Out 
 of her earnings she had managed to save a very little money. One 
 or two men had made her small presents from time to time. For a 
 little while she could exist. As she sat alone on those strange new 
 evenings she did much mental arithmetic, calculating how long, with 
 these reduced expenses, which brought Mrs. Brigg's so low, she could 
 live without earning. Sad sums were these, whether rightly or 
 wrongly worked out. The time must be short. And afterwards? 
 This question drove Cuckoo out in the mornings, vaguely seeking an 
 occupation. She knew that London was full of "good" girls, who 
 went forth to work while she lay in bed in the morning, and came 
 home to tea, and one boiled egg and watercress, when she started out
 
 376 FLAMES 
 
 in the evening. So she put on her hat and jacket and went forth to 
 find out what work they did, and whether she could join in it. 
 Those were variegated pilgrimages full of astonishment. Cuckoo 
 would stroll along the road till she saw, perhaps, a girl who looked 
 good that is, as unlike herself as possible descend into the frost, 
 or the mud from a 'bus. Then she would dog the footsteps of this 
 girl, find out where she went, with a view of deducing from it what 
 she did. In this manner she once came to a sewing-machine shop in 
 Praed Street, on the trail of a bright looking stranger, who walked 
 gaily as to pleasant toil. Cuckoo remained outside while the stranger 
 went in and disappeared. She examined the window rows of 
 sewing-machines, beyond them the dressed head of a woman in a 
 black silk gown. What did the stranger do here to gain a living, 
 and that bright smile of hers? Suddenly Cuckoo walked into the 
 shop and up to the lady with the dressed head. 
 
 " A machine, ma'am ? " said the lady, with a very female look at 
 Cuckoo. 
 
 Cuckoo shook her head. 
 
 " What can I do for you ? " 
 
 " I'd like some work." 
 
 " Work ! " said the lady, her voice travelling from the contralto to 
 the soprano register. 
 
 " I ain't got nothing to do. I want something ; I'll do anything, 
 like she does," this, with a nod in the direction of a door through 
 which the pleasant stranger had vanished. 
 
 " Miss King ; our bookkeeper ! You know her ? " 
 
 " No. I only see her in the street." 
 
 " Good morning," came from the lady, and a back confronted 
 Cuckoo. 
 
 The pilgrimages were resumed. Cuckoo visited dressmakers, 
 bonnet-shops, ABC establishments, with no sxiccess. Her face, 
 even when unpainted, told its tale. Nature can write down 
 the truth of a sin better than art. Cuckoo learnt that fact by her 
 Avalks. But still she trudged, learning each day more truths, one 
 of which a finale to the long sermon, it seemed was that there is 
 no army on earth more difficult to enlist in, under certain en-emu- 
 s' ances, her own, than the army of good working girls. The day 
 she thoroughly understood that finale Cuckoo went home and had a 
 violent row with Mrs. Brigg. A cold scragg of mutton was supposed 
 to be the bone of contention, but that was only supposition. Cuckoo 
 was really cursing Mrs. Brigg because the Avorld is full of close 
 boroughs, not at all because cold mutton has not learnt how to 
 achieve eternal life, while at the same time fulfilling its duties as an 
 edible. Not understanding this subtlety of emotion, Mrs. Brigg let 
 herself loose in sarcasm.
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVES 377 
 
 " Why don't yer go out of a night ? .she screamed, battering with 
 one hand on a tea-tray, held perpendicularly, to emphasise her 
 words. " What's come to yer ? Go out ; go out of a night." 
 
 " Shan't." 
 
 " Turned pious 'ave yer ? " sneered the landlady. " Or waitin' for 
 a 'usband ? Which is it to be ? Mr. Haddison, I dessey ! Hee, 
 hee, hee." 
 
 She burst into a bitter snigger. Cuckoo flushed scarlet and 
 uttered words of the pavement. Any one hearing her then must 
 have put her down as utterly unredeemed and irredeemable, a 
 harridan to bandy foul language with a cabman, or to outvie a 
 street urchin bumped against by a rival in the newspaper trade. 
 She covered Mrs. Brigg with abuse, prompted by the gnawings at 
 her heart, the hunger of mind and body, fear of the future, wonder 
 at the impossibilities of life. Her own greatness for her love and 
 following obstinate unselfishness, without religious prompting or 
 self-respect, as it was, might be called great turned sour within 
 her heart at such a moment. Her very virtue became as vinegar. 
 Mrs. Brigg was drowned in epithets and finally pushed furiously out 
 into the passage. Cuckoo turned from the door to Jessie yelping, 
 and directed a kick at the little dog. Jessie wailed, as only a toy 
 dog can, like the " mixture " stop of an organ, wailed and ran as one 
 that runs to meet an unknown future. Then Cuckoo pursued, 
 caught her, and burst into tears over her. The little creature's 
 domed skull and india-rubber ears were wet with the tears of her 
 mistress. And she whimpered, too, but with much relief, for she 
 was back in her world of Cuckoo's lap, and could not be quite 
 unhappy there. But in what a world was Cuckoo ! 
 
 It will be said that Dr. Levillier knew of her circumstances ; but 
 anxiously kind and thoughtful though he was, he did not yet realise 
 the effect of his advice given to the lady of the feathers during the 
 drive on the Hampstead heights. He had told her to prove her 
 will by doing the thing that Julian had asked of her. But he did cot 
 know what Julian had asked. And he did not comprehend the 
 bitter fruit that her following of his further advice to keep from 
 low and loveless actions must bring to the ripening. When he 
 spoke, as the sun Avent down on London, he was carried on by 
 excitement, and was thinking rather of the fate of Julian, the 
 diablerie, of Valentine, than of the individual life of the girl at his 
 side. He was arming her for the battle. But he dreamed of 
 weapons, not of rations, like many an enthusiast. He forgot that 
 the soldier must be fed as well as armed. He said to Cuckoo, 
 " Fight ! Use your woman's wit ; use your heart ; wake up, and 
 throw yourself into this battle." And she, filled with determina- 
 tion, and with a puzzled, pent ardour to do something, did not know
 
 3?8 FLAMES 
 
 what to do except starve. So she began to starve for Julian's sake, 
 and because the doctor had fired her heart. He had said, " Do what 
 Julian asked you to do, and show Julian that you have done it." 
 But something within Cuckoo forbade her to fulfil this last injunc- 
 tion. She could give up the street, but an extraordinary shyness, 
 false shame and awkwardness had so far prevented her from letting 
 Julian know it. If he knew it, he would understand what it meant 
 for her, and would force money on her, and Cuckoo, having 
 once made up her mind that money and Julian should never 
 be linked together in her relations with him, stuck to secrecy 
 011 this subject with her normal dull pertinacity. So matters 
 move slowly towards a deadlock. The lady of the feathers did 
 not neglect the pawnshop. Her few trinkets went there very 
 soon. Then things that were not trinkets, that green evening 
 dress, for instance, the imitation lace, and one day a sale took 
 place. Cuckoo disposed, for an absurd sum, of her title-deed, 
 the headgear that had given birth to her nickname. She was no 
 longer the lady of the feathers. The hat that had seen so much of 
 her life reposed upon the head of virtue and knew Piccadilly no 
 more. But Julian's present remained with her, and indeed came 
 into every day use. And still Jessie sported her yellow riband. 
 Later thei'e came a terrible time when the eyes of Cuckoo apprais- 
 ing everything on which they looked fell, with that fateful expres- 
 sion not merely upon Jessie's yellow riband, but upon Jessie herself. 
 But that time was not quite yet. 
 
 While Cuckoo endured this fate, Dr. Levillier was in a per- 
 plexity of another kind. The first round of that battle had ended 
 in apparent decisive defeat of Valentine's accusers. During the 
 evening the fortunes of war had certainly wavered to the doctor's 
 side. Julian had displayed sudden and strong signs of an awakening ; 
 but the sitting had thrown him back into his dream, had pushed him 
 more firmly beneath the yoke of his master. The doctor did not 
 understand why. Although he recognised the fact, he could not divine 
 the exact eft'ect that disappointment would have upon sudden 
 suspicious eagerness. Julian had been waked to wonder, to observe 
 Valentine for an instant with new eyes, to look the mystery of the 
 great change in him in the face, and know it as a mystery. Yes, he 
 had even thought of Valentine as a stranger, and said to himself, 
 " Where then is my friend ? " The new Valentine had risen out of 
 the ashes of sleep. Julian pressed forward the sitting as a means, 
 the only one, of searching among these ashes. In the old days each 
 sitting had quickened his senses into a strange life, as the last sitting 
 quickened the senses of the doctor. But to Julian this last sitting 
 brought nothing but disappointment ; the thing which had been alive 
 was dead, and so the sudden hope which had come with the new
 
 THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVES 379 
 
 wonder died too. He supposed that he had been the prey of an 
 absurd fancy created by the idle words of the doctor, or by an idiotic 
 movement of his mind, which had cried to him on a sudden : "If 
 the Valentine you love and revere is really gone away, what are you 
 worshipping now ? " Now, in his heavy disappointment he thought 
 of this cry as a mad exclamation, and he sought to drown all memory 
 of it, and every memory in fresh vices, and in his fatal habit of 
 absinthe drinking. He lay down under the yoke beneath which he 
 had previously crept, and so succeeded in going still lower. So that 
 night Valentine had won his intended triumph, although for a while 
 it had been in jeopardy. 
 
 Dr. Levillier was in perplexity ; he had been brought to the 
 very threshold of revelation, and then thrust back into an everyday 
 world of thwarted hopes and broken ambitions. But ihe memory of 
 magic was still with him, and gave him a feeling of unrest, and a 
 pertinacity that was not to be without reward for ever. Valentine's 
 triumph held for the conqueror a poison-seed from which a flower 
 was to spring. The doctor's determination to continue the fight was 
 frustrated at this time by Julian rather than by Valentine. Julian's 
 disappointment plunged him in a deep sea of indifference, from 
 which he declined to be rescued. The doctor's invitations to him 
 remained unanswered. If he called, Julian was never at home. 
 Several times the doctor met Valentine, who, with a deprecating 
 smile, told him that Julian was away on some mad errand. 
 
 " I seldom see him now," he even added upon one occasion. " He 
 has gone beyond me. Julian is living so fast, that my poor agility 
 cannot keep pace with him." 
 
 It seemed as if the whole affair was going completely out of the 
 doctor's knowledge, and that even Cuckoo had no longer any power 
 of attraction for Julian. The doctor wrote to her and received an 
 ill-spelt answer, telling him that Julian had not been near her since 
 the last night of the year. In this event the doctor's only hope lay 
 in keeping closely in touch with Valentine. To do this proved an 
 easy matter. Valentine responded readily to his invitations, asked 
 him out in return, seemed glad to be with him. The doctor believed 
 he read the reason of this joy in Valentine's anxiety to prove the 
 depth of Julian's degradation. He had now begun to play devilishly 
 upon a pathetic stop, and sought every occasion to descant upon the 
 social ruin that was overtaking Julian, and his deep concern in the 
 matter. This hypocrisy was so tran?parent and so offensive that 
 there were moments when it stank in the doctor's nostrils, and he 
 could scarcely repress his horror and disgust. Yet to show them 
 would be not only impolitic, but would only add fuel to the flames of 
 Valentine's pyre of triumph. So the doctor, too, sought to play his 
 part, and never wearied in seeking Julian, although his quest was in
 
 380 FLAMES 
 
 vain. From Valentine he gathered that Julian was now dropped 
 even by the gay world, that his clubs looked askance at him, that 
 men began to shun him, and to whisper against him. 
 
 " The stone is going down in the sea," Valentine said. 
 
 " Who threw it into the sea ? " the doctor asked. " Tell me that." 
 
 Valentine shrugged whimsical shoulders. 
 
 " Fate, I suppose," he answered. " Fate is a mischievous boy, 
 and is always throwing stones. Is the lady of the feathers disconso- 
 late ? " 
 
 The doctor did not trust himself to reply, but was silent, plotting 
 another meeting to sit. For he had begun, still magic bound perhaps, 
 to divine some possible salvation in that act which he had once con- 
 demned, led, as he thought, by knowledge and by experience, of the 
 nervous system forsooth ! Now he was led unscientifically by pure 
 feeling, like a child by a warm, close hand. The instinct that had 
 guided Cuckoo seemed to stretch out fingers to him. He must 
 respond. But how to reach Julian ? While he strove to solve this 
 problem it was solved for him in a manner utterly surprising to him, 
 although engineered by words of his. 
 
 Cuckoo wrought a strange work with the skeleton hands of hunger 
 and of pain.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SELLING OF JESSIE 
 
 ONE chill morning of earliest February, a stirring of Jessie at the 
 foot of her bed wakened Cuckoo from a short and uneasy sleep. She 
 opened her eyes to the faint light that filtered through the green 
 Venetian blind. Jessie moved again, slowly rotating like a drowsy 
 top, then suddenly dropped into the warm centre of a nest of bed- 
 clothes, breathing a big-dog sigh of satisfaction that shook her tiny 
 frame. She slept. But she had wakened her mistress, who lay with 
 her head resting on one hand, deep in thought while the day grew 
 outside. Cuckoo, having directed her steps down a blind alley had, 
 not unnaturally, reached a dead wall, blotting out the horizon. 
 Lying there, she faced it. She stared at the wall, and the wall 
 seemed to stare back at her. Perhaps for that reason a dull blank- 
 ness flowed over and filled her mind, and made her widely opened 
 eyes almost as expressionless as the eyes of a corpse. Fora long time 
 she lay in this alive stupor. Then Jessie stirred again, and Cuckoo, 
 as she had been before spurred into wakefulness, was stirred into 
 thoughtfulness. She began to pass the near past, the present, even- 
 tually the future in review. The past was a crescendo, solitude 
 growing louder each night, poverty growing louder, obstinacy grow- 
 ing louder, Mrs. Brigg growing louder. What an orchestra ! Cuckoo 
 had not seen Julian once. She had seen the doctor, to be told of his 
 baffled efforts, of Julian's escape from all his friends, of Valenfine's 
 declaration of the stone going down in the sea, of utter deadlock, 
 utter stagnation. For the doctor treated Cuckoo frankly as a brave 
 woman, not deceitfully as a timid child to be buoyed on the waves of 
 ill circumstance with gas-filled bladders. Cuckoo knew the worst of 
 things, and by the knowledge was confirmed in her mule's attitude 
 which so distracted Mrs. Brigg. Her hands were tied in every 
 direction except one. She could only dumbly prove that Valentine 
 was wrong, that her will was not dead, by exercising it to the detri- 
 ment of her worldly situation. Doggedly then she put her whole 
 past behind her, despite the ever-increasing curses of the landlad}\ 
 She had given up her pilgrimages in search of honest work. They
 
 382 FLAMES 
 
 were too hopeless. She had pawned everything she could pawn, and 
 sold every trifle that was saleable. Even Jessie's broad band of 
 yellow satin had been included in a heterogeneous parcel of odds and 
 ends purchased by a phlegmatic German with eyes like marbles and 
 the manner of a stone image. Living less and le>s well, doing with- 
 out tires, sitting often in the dark at night to save the expense of gas, 
 Cuckoo had managed to pay her rent until a week ago. Then money 
 had failed, and the great earthquake had at length tossed and swallowed 
 the wretched Mrs. Brigg. The scene had been tropical. Mrs. Brigg 
 was really moved to the very depihs of her being. For days she had 
 been, as it were, eating and drinking apprehension. Now apprehen- 
 sion choked her. She was shot up in the air by the cannon of climax. 
 Limbs and mind were in the extreme of commotion. From her point 
 of view it must be acknowledged that the situation was unduly ex- 
 asperating. For Cuckoo would give no reason whatever for her 
 reiterated formula of refusal to earn any money. And now she 
 could not pay her week's rent, plunging Mrs. Brigg into the furthest 
 depths of despair, and yet sat within doors day after day. Mrs. 
 Brigg approached apoplexy by way of persuasion, was by turns 
 pathetic and paralytic with passion. She coaxed with the ardour of 
 an executioner inveigling the victim's neck to the noose and in haste 
 to be off to breakfast. She thi-eatened like Jove in curl-paper.s. 
 Cuckoo was inexorable. 
 
 "Then out you go ! " said Mrs. Brigg at last. " Out of my house 
 you pack, you Nameless words followed. 
 
 Cuckoo got up from her chair with no show of emotion and moved 
 towards her bedroom stonily to pack her box. She didn't care. She 
 was in a mood to lie down in the gutter and wait the last blow of 
 Fate, living only in her one obstinate determination to do what the 
 doctor had told her, the one thing Julian had asked of her. She did 
 not any longer war with words against the pxirple and hard-breathing 
 landlady. And her silence and her movement of obedience awed Mrs. 
 Brigg for the moment into another mood. She shuffled after Cuckoo 
 into the bedroom. 
 
 ' Eh ? What is it ? " she ejaculated. " What are you a-doing of ?" 
 Goin'," Cuckoo threw at her. 
 Now ? " 
 Yes." 
 ; Where to ? " 
 
 No answer. Cuckoo was thrusting the few things still left to her 
 into the only box she now possessed in the world. Mrs. Brigg stood 
 in the folding doorway watching, and making mouths, as is the 
 fashion of the elderly when emotional. 
 
 " What are you going for ? " she said presently, as Cuckoo, bending 
 down, stuffed a white petticoat into the depths.
 
 THE SELLING OF JESSIE 383 
 
 " Can't pay," snarled Cuckoo. 
 
 ' ; It don't matter for a day or two,'' said Mrs. Brigg, reluctantly. 
 She stumped downstairs torn by conflicting emotions. She had 
 got accustomed to Cuckoo, and then both Julian and Valentine, 
 Cuckoo's visitors, had taught her the colour of the British sovereign. 
 They had not been near 400 lately, but they might come again. 
 And then Dr. Levillier ! Cuckoo had some fine friends, who would 
 surely do something for her. Mrs. Brigg had no other possible 
 lodger in her eye. On the whole, prudence dictated a day or 
 two's patience, just a day or two's, or a week's, not more, not a 
 moment more. Thus it came about that Cuckoo had now been 
 another week beneath the roof of Mrs. Brigg without paying hard 
 cash for the asylum. The previous evening the landlady had burst 
 out again into fury, refusing to get in any more food for Cuckoo and 
 demanding the fortnight's rent. She had even, carried away by 
 cupidity and passion, striven to drive Cuckoo out to her night's work. 
 A physical struggle had taken place between them, ending in the 
 landlady's hysterics. Other lodgers had been drawn by the noise 
 from their floors to witness the row. Two of them had come on the 
 scene accompanied by men, and to them Mrs. Brigg had shrieked her 
 wrongs and explanations of this swindling virtue of a woman who had 
 formerly paid her way honestly from the street. The lodgers and 
 their men had provided an accompaniment of jeering laughter to the 
 Brigg solo, and Cuckoo, her clothes nearly torn from her back, had 
 flung at last into her sitting-room and locked the door. That was 
 last night the past which she now reviewed in the morn ing twilight. 
 What was she to do ? She was without food. She was in debt, 
 must leave Mrs. Brigg no doubt, but must pay her first, had 
 no means to pay for another lodging. She might apply to Dr. 
 Levillier. What held her back from taking that road was mainly 
 this. She had the dumb desire to make a sacrifice for Julian, and 
 the doctor had given her the idea of the only sacrifice she could make 
 retention of herself from the degradation that kept her free of 
 debt. If she asked the doctor to pay the expenses of the sacrifice, 
 whose would it be ? His, not hers. So there was no banker in the 
 world for Cuckoo. The dead wall faced her. The horizon was shut 
 out. She lay there and tried to think and tried to think. How to 
 get some money ? Something the devil perhaps prompted the 
 sleeping Jessie to stir again at the bottom of the bed. Cuckoo felt 
 the little dog's back shift against her stretched out toes, and suddenly 
 a bitter flood of red ran over her thin, half -starved face, and she hid 
 it in the tumbled pillow, pressing it down. The movement was the 
 attempted physical negation of an abominable, treacherous thought 
 which had just stabbed her mind. How could it have come to her, 
 when she hated it so ? She burrowed further into the pillow, at the
 
 3^4 FLAMES 
 
 same time caressing the back of Jessie with little movements of her 
 toes. Horrible, horrible thought ! It brought tears which stained 
 the pillow. It brought a hard beating of the heart. And these 
 manifestations showed plainly that Cuckoo had not dismissed it yet. 
 She tried to dismiss it, shutting her eyes up tightly, shaking her 
 head at the black, venomous thing. But it stayed and grew larger 
 and more dominant. Then she took her head from the pillow, faced 
 it, and examined it. It was a clear cut, definite thought now, per- 
 fectly finished, coldly complete. 
 
 Jessie was embodied money, an embodied small sum of money. 
 Long ago Cuckoo had said to Julian with pride : 
 " She's a show dog. I wouldn't part with her for nuts." 
 Now she remembered those words and knew, could not help know- 
 ing, that a show dog was worth more than nuts. At that moment 
 she wished Jessie were worthless. Then the sting would be drawn 
 from her horrible thought. Meanwhile Jessie slept calmly on, warm 
 and cosy. 
 
 Cuckoo was cold and trembling. She knew that she was on the 
 verge of starvation. The doctor had said that one day she could 
 help Julian, only she. So she must not starve. Love alone would 
 not let her do that. Between her and starvation lay Jessie, curved 
 in sleep, unconscious that her small future Avas being debated with 
 tears and with horror. 
 
 Long ago the little dog had entered Cuckoo's heart to be cherished 
 there. Many wretched London women own such a little dog, to 
 whom they cling with a passion such as more fortunate women 
 lavish upon their children. A great many subtleties combine to 
 elevate companions with tails to the best thrones the poor, the 
 wicked, and the deserted can give them. A dog has such a rich 
 nature to give to the woman who is poor, so much innocence at hand 
 for the woman who is wicked, such completeness of attachment 
 ready for the woman who is lonely. It is so beautifully humble 
 upon its throne, abased in its own eyes before the shrine of its 
 mistress, on whom it depends entirely for all its happiness. A little 
 king, perhaps, it lias the pretty manners of a little servitor. And 
 even when it presumes to be determined in the expressed desire for 
 the dryness of a biscuit or the warmth of a lap, with how small a 
 word or glance can it be laid upon its back, in the abject renuncia- 
 tion of every pretension, anxious only for the forgiveness that nobody 
 with a touch of tenderness could withhold. Ah, there is much to be 
 thankful for in a companion with a tail ! Jessie had winning ways, 
 the deep heart of a dog. A toy dog she was, no doubt, but hers was 
 no toy nature. Cuckoo could not have shed such tears as those she 
 now shed over any toy. For she began to cry weakly at the mere 
 thought that had come to her, although it was not yet become a
 
 THE SELLING OF JESSIE 385 
 
 resolve. Life with Jessie had been very sordid, very sad. What 
 would life be without her ? What would such a morning as this be 
 for instance ? Cuckoo's imagination set tempestuously to work, 
 with physical aids such as the following. She drew away her feet 
 from the bottom of the bed where they touched the little dog's back. 
 Doing this she said to her.-:elf, " Now, Jessie is gone." Curled up, she 
 set herself to realise the lie. And perhaps she might have succeeded 
 thoroughly in the sad attempt had not Jessie, in sleep missing the 
 contact of her mistress, wriggled lazily on her side up the bed after 
 Cuckoo's feet, discovering which, she again composed herself to 
 slumber. The renunciation was not to be complete in imagination. 
 Jessie's love, when present, was too frustrating. And Cuckoo, 
 casting away her horrible thought in a sort of hasty panic, caxight 
 her companion with a tail in her arms, and made her rest beside her, 
 close, close. Jessie was well content, but still sleepy. She reposed 
 her tiny head upon the pillow, lengthened herself between the sheets 
 and dreamed again. And while she dreamed the black thought 
 about her came back to Cuckoo. It was assertive, and Cuckoo began 
 to fear it. The fear of a thought is a horrible tiling ; sometimes it is 
 worse than the fear of death. This one made Cuckoo think herself 
 more cruel than any woman since the world began. Yet she could 
 not exorcise it. On the contrary, she grew familiar with it as the 
 day marched on, until it put on a fatal expression of duty. All that 
 clay she revolved it. Mrs. Brigg attacked her again. Food was 
 lacking. Cuckoo's case became desperate. She turned over carefully 
 all her few remaining possessions to see if there was any inanimate 
 thing that she had omitted to turn into money. Jessie, poor innocent, 
 assisted with animation at the forlorn inventory, nestling among the 
 tumbled garments, leaping on and off the bed. Her ingenuous 
 nature supposed some odd game to be in progress and was anxious to 
 play a principal and effective part in it. Yet she was quieted by the 
 look Cuckoo cast upon her when the wardrobe had been passed in 
 review and no saleable thing was to be found. She shrank into a 
 corner ready for whimpering. That night Cuckoo did not sleep, and 
 through all the long hours she held Jessie in her arms, and heard, 
 as so often before, the regular breathing of this little companion of 
 hers. And each drawn breath pierced her heart. 
 
 Next morning she got up early. She was faint with hunger and 
 with a resolve that she had made. She dressed herself, then 
 carried Jessie to the flannel-lined basket, put her into it and kissed 
 her. 
 
 " Go bials, Jessie," she said, with a raised finger. " Go bials." 
 Jessie winked her eyes pathetically, her chin resting on the basket 
 edge. Cuckoo went out into the passage and called down to Mrs. 
 Brigg. 
 
 2 B
 
 386 FLAMES 
 
 " What is it ? " cried Hades. 
 
 " I'm goin' out. I'm goin' to get some money." 
 
 Mrs, Brigg ran. 
 
 " Money ! " she said in a keen treble. " Where are yon going to 
 git it?" 
 
 " Never you mind," said Cuckoo, in a dull voice. 
 
 She turned from Mrs. Brigg's flooding ejaculations and was gone. 
 In her peregrinations about London she had sometimes encountered 
 in a certain thoroughfare a broad old man with a face marked with 
 small-pox, who wore a fur cap and leggings. This individual con- 
 veyed upon his thickset person certain clinging rats, which crawled 
 about him in the public view while he walked, and he led in strings 
 three or four terriers, sometimes a pup or two. Cuckoo had seen 
 him more than once in conversation with some young swell, even 
 with gaily-dressed women, had noticed that his terriers here to-day 
 were often gone to-morrow, replaced by other dogs, pugs perhaps, or 
 a waddling, bow-legged Dachshund. She drew her own conclusions. 
 A.nd she had seen that the old man's eyes, in his poacher face, weiv 
 kindly, that his trotting dogs often aimed their sharp, or blunt, 
 noses at his hands and seemed to claim his notice. Her morning 
 errand was to him. 
 
 She walked a long time in search of him, trembling with the fear 
 of finding him, inconsistently. Her mind, reacting on her ill-fed 
 body, planted a ci'awling weariness there, and at last she had to stop 
 and examine her pockets. She came upon two or three pence, went 
 into a shop, bought a bun and ate it sitting by a marble-topped 
 table. It nearly choked her. Yet she knew she needed it badly. 
 With one penny the less she resumed her pilgrimage. But nowhere 
 could she see the old man in his leggings, and suddenly a sort of 
 joyful spasm shook her superstitiously. Fate opposed her cruel 
 resolution. In a rush of eager contrition she started for home, 
 walking as quickly as her abnormal fatigue would allow her. She 
 had left the street in which the old man generally walked, and took 
 care, as she turned its corner, not to cast one last glance behind her. 
 She passed through the next street, and the next, and was far away 
 from his neighbourhood, rejoicing, when suddenly she saw him 
 coming straight towards her slowly, the rats resting on his shoulders, 
 various small dogs in strings pattering on each side of him. 
 
 Cuckoo's heart gave a great thump, and then for an appreciable 
 fragment of time stopped beating. She muttered a bad word under 
 her breath and had an impulse to flee as from an enemy. She did 
 not flee, but stood still like one condemned, while the old man 
 stolidly approached with his menagerie. When he reached her she 
 lifted her head and looked him in the face. The little dogs were 
 jumping to reach his hands. Evidently they loved him.
 
 THE SELLING OF JESSIE 387 
 
 " I say," Cuckoo said huskily. 
 
 The old gentleman stopped, lifted a rat from his shoulder, placed 
 it on his breast, like a man who arranges his necktie, clicked his 
 tongue against his teeth, and remarked : 
 
 " Parding lydy." 
 
 Cuckoo swallowed. She felt as if she had a ball in her throat 
 shifting up and down. 
 
 " I say," she repeated. " You buy toy dogs, eh ? " 
 
 " I buys 'em and I sells 'em," answered the old man, with a large 
 accent on the conjunction. " Buys 'em dear and sells 'em cheap. 
 There's a wy to mike a living, lydy ! " 
 
 His small eyes twinkled with humour as he spoke. 
 
 Cuckoo swallowed again. The ball in her throat was getting 
 larger. 
 
 " Want to buy one this morning ? " she asked. " A show little 
 dog, eh ? " 
 
 She choked. 
 
 The old man did not appear to notice it. He looked at her with 
 sharp consideration. 
 
 " Oh, you means selling ! " he remarked. " Where is it then ? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The show little dawg ? " 
 
 Cuckoo gulped out her address. All this time the old man had 
 been summing her up, and drawing his own conclusions from her 
 thin figure and haggard face. He scented a possible bargain. 
 
 " Trot along, lydy," he said, turning on his heels with all his little 
 dogs in commotion. " Trot along. I'm with yer." 
 
 Cuckoo heard muffled drums of a dead march as she walked. 
 She, who had lived a life so shameless, shivered with shame at the 
 thought of what she was going to do. Her treachery laid her heart 
 out in its winding-sheet. The old man tried to entertain her, as 
 they went, by chatting about his profession, declaiming the merits of 
 his rats, and spreading before her mind a verbal panorama of the 
 canine life that had defiled through his changeful existence. Cuckoo 
 did not hear a word. They turned into the Marylebone Road. She 
 walked slower and slower, yet never had the street in which she 
 lived seemed so short. At length the iron gate of No. 400 was 
 reached. Cuckoo stopped. 
 
 " In 'ere, lydy ? " said the old man. 
 
 She nodded, unable to speak. He turned in with his crowd of 
 pattering dogs, and proceeded jauntily up the narrow path. Cuckoo 
 followed slowly and with a furtive step. She longed to open the 
 front door, let him in, and then run away herself. Anywhere, 
 anywhere, only to be away, out of sight and hearing of the' cruel 
 scene that was coming.
 
 3 88 FLA MES 
 
 Now they were on tho dootstep. The old man waited. She 
 fumbled for her latch-key, found it, thrust it into the door. 
 Instantly the shrill hark of Jessie was heard. Cuckoo's guilty 
 shining eyes met the twinkling eyes of the old man. 
 
 " That she a-barkin' ? " he inquired, with a professional air. 
 
 Cuckoo nodded again. 
 
 " A nice little pype," he rejoined. " This wy, is it ? " 
 
 The patter of feet in the oil-clothed passage roused Jessie to a 
 frenzied excitement. When Cuckoo opened the door of the sitting- 
 room, the little creature, planted tree-like upon her four tiny feet, 
 was barking her dog life into the air. Cuckoo, entering first, 
 snatched her up and gave her a sudden, vehement kiss. 
 
 It was good-bye. 
 
 Then she turned and faced the old man, who had paused in the 
 doorway. She held Jessie silently towards him. Transferring the 
 strings held in his right hand to his left, he took the wriggling dog 
 from Cuckoo, lifted her up and down as if considering her weight, 
 ran his eyes over her points with the quick decision of knowledge. 
 
 " 'Ardly a show dawg, lydy," he said. 
 
 Cuckoo flamed at him. 
 
 " She is, she is, then," she cried vehemently, all her passion 
 trying to find a vent in the words. "You shan't have her, you shan't 
 if " 
 
 " Neow, neow ; I ain't sying nothink agin 'er," he interposed. 
 " She's a pretty dawg, a very pretty dawg. 'Ow much do yer sy, 
 lydy?" 
 
 Cuckoo sickened. She looked away. She could not have met the 
 eyes of Jessie at that moment. 
 
 " 'Ow much, then ? " repeated the old man, still weighing the 
 whining Jessie up and down. 
 
 " I dunno ; you say." 
 
 The old man mentioned a price. It was bigger than Cuckoo had 
 expected. She nodded, moving her tongue across her lips. Then 
 she looked away out of the window. She heard the chink of 
 money. 
 
 " Put it on the table," she murmured. 
 
 He did so, looking steadily at her. 
 
 " You feels the parting, lydy," he began. " Very nat'ral, very. I 
 knows what it is." 
 
 He extended Jessie, now whining furiously, towards Cuckoo. 
 
 " Want to sy good-bye, lydy ? " he said. 
 
 Cuckoo shook her head. The old man popped Jessie into one of 
 the capacious side-pockets of his coat and buttoned the flap down. 
 
 " Mornin', lydy," he said, turning towards the door. 
 
 Cuckoo made no reply. Her chest was heaving and her lips were
 
 THE SELLING OF JESSIE 389 
 
 working. The old man went out. Cuckoo heard the pattering feet 
 of the little army of clogs on the oilcloth of the passage. The hall 
 door opened and shut. A pause. The iron gate clicked. She had 
 never moved. The money lay on the table. At last Cuckoo wenb 
 out into the passage and called, in a strange voice : 
 
 " Mrs. Brigg." ' 
 
 The landlady came with hasty alacrity. 
 
 " Come here," said Cuckoo, leading the way into the sitting-room. 
 " There there's some money for you." 
 
 Mrs. Brigg pounced on it with a vulture's eagerness. 
 
 " 'Owever did yer " she began. 
 
 But Cuckoo had rushed into the bedroom. The landlady stood 
 with the money lying in her hand, and heard the key turned in the 
 lock of the door.
 
 A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS 
 
 Now aii awful loneliness, like the loneliness of the grave, fell round 
 Cuckoo. Like Judas, she could have gone out and hanged herself, 
 but for one thing, the love in her heart that seemed, so useless. In 
 her muddled, illogical way, and to stifle gnawing thoughts of the 
 betrayed Jessie, she dwelt upon this love of hers for Julian. What 
 had it ever brought her ? What had it brought him ? To her it 
 had given many sorrows, humiliations. She remembered them one 
 by one, and they looked at her like ghosts. Her dawning recognition 
 of her own degradation, never yet come to sunrise ; her tearing 
 jealousy when Julian went out to do as other men did, preceded by, 
 and linked with, the knowledge of that dreary incident in which she 
 played the part of accomplice, that incident which she always 
 believed had started him on his journey to destruction ; her 
 acquaintance with Valentine and the arrows planted in her heart by 
 him ; her despair when she learned from him her own impotence, 
 not yet counterbalanced by full trust in herself or in her power 
 for good, despite the faith of the doctor ; her vision of the constantly 
 falling Julian, of the stone going down in the deep sea ; her 
 desperate adherence to the doctor's request to prove her will, 
 rewarded now by an apparently useless starvation, and by this 
 treacherous sale of Jessie, her truest, trustiest friend. Cuckoo 
 reviewed these ghosts and no longer prayed but cursed. So long as 
 she had Jessie she knew it now she had never been really quite 
 hopeless, often as she had thought herself hopeless. She had never 
 even been utterly without -self -respect, because Jessie had always 
 deeply respected her and had thus given her little moments of clean 
 and cheering confidence. And she had never been absolutely alone. 
 Now she was alone, and felt like Judas, a betrayer. By turns she 
 thought of Julian lost and of Jessie sold to strange hands, strange 
 hearts, in a cruel and a bitter world. But even now she did not 
 think much or often of herself, for Cuckoo was no egoist. Her 
 very lack of egoism must have been the despair of any good woman 
 trying to rescue her. She sat at home and starved and betrayed
 
 A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS 391 
 
 now, not because her egoism shrank from the touch of the men of 
 the street, not because she had any idea of the great duty a woman 
 owes to herself to keep herself pure ; but simply moved by the 
 dogged determination to do something for Julian. Were Julian dead 
 Cuckoo would have gone out into Piccadilly again as of old, and 
 earned the rent for Mrs. Brigg, and food for herself, and a sovereign 
 or two to buy back Jessie. The circumstances of her life had stuffed 
 cotton wool into the ears of her soul and rendered it deaf to the 
 voices that govern good women. Cuckoo was pathetically incompre- 
 hensible to most people, because she was pathetically twisted in mind. 
 But her heart grew straight and surely towards heaven. 
 
 The sale of Jessie had brought in enough money to keep Mrs. 
 Brigg quiet for a little while, but not enough to satisfy her claim 
 against Cuckoo or to give Cuckoo food. It went as an instalment 
 towards the rent. Now the landlady began to clamour again, and 
 Cuckoo was literally starving. One night her despair reached a 
 point of cruelty which drove her out into the street, not for the old 
 reason, not at all for that. Cuckoo was sheathed in armour from 
 head to foot against sin and its wages. Her obstinacy seemed to 
 her the only thing that really lived in her miserable body, her 
 miserable soul. It was surely obstinacy which pulsed in her heart, 
 which shone in her hollow eyes, tingled in her tired limbs, flushed 
 her thin cheeks with blood, gave her mind a thought, her will the 
 impetus to mark time in this desolation. Cuckoo was like a hollow 
 shell containing the everlasting murmur, " I'll starve for him." 
 Whether her starvation was useless or not did not concern her at 
 this moment. She no longer even saw those ghosts. She seemed 
 blind and deaf and dull in a fashion, yet driven by an active despair. 
 Had Jessie been with her still she could have stayed within doors. 
 The little dog's faint and regular breathing, her occasional rustling 
 movements had made just enough music to keep Cuckoo still faintly 
 singing even when her heart was saddest. Now her room and her 
 life were empty of all song, and Jessie's untenanted basket in 
 which the red flannel seemed to Cuckoo like blood was a spectre 
 and a vision of hell. 
 
 So on this night, Cuckoo put on her hat and jacket. She meant 
 to go out, to walk anywhere, just to move, to be in the open air. As 
 she went into the passage she ran against Mrs. Brigg. The gas jet 
 was alight, and the landlady could see how she was dressed. Suddenly 
 Mrs. Brigg fell on Cuckoo and began slobbering her with kisses. 
 
 The old wretch even began to whimper. She had been sore 
 tried, and must have had a fragment of affection for Cuckoo 
 somewhere about her nature. For she did not want to part with 
 her, and the tears she now let fall were prompted not only by a 
 prospect of money coming into her, but also of pleasure in the
 
 392 FLAMES 
 
 thought that Cuckoo had not entirely gone to the bad. She wept 
 like the mother who sees her child return from its evil way. 
 
 Cuckoo thrust her away without a word, violently. Mrs. Brigg 
 did not resent the action, but fell against the passage wall subbing 
 and murmuring, " My precious, my chickabiddy ! " while Cuckoo 
 banged the hall door and went out into the night. Then the land- 
 lady, moved by a sacred impulse of pardon, bolted down to her 
 kitchen and began to rummage enthusiastically in her larder. She 
 knew Cuckoo had been near to starving, and had supported the 
 knowledge with great equanimity while this prodigal daughter chose 
 to Avander in \vicked Avays of idleness. But now she killed the fatted 
 calf Avith trembling hands, and made haste to set out a reverend 
 supper in Cuckoo's parlour to Avelcome her on her return. The cold 
 bacon, the pot of porter, the bread, the butter, all Avere Mrs. Brigg's 
 symbols of pardon and of peace ! And as she laid them on the table 
 she sang : 
 
 " In 'er 'air (whimper) she wore a white cam-eclyer, 
 Dark blue (whimper) was the colour of 'er heye." ( Whimper.} 
 
 It Avas like a religious service Avith one devout Avorshipper. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 Meanwhile Cuckoo walked slowly along. It Avas a dark night, 
 very still and very damp. The frost had gone. The stars were 
 spending their brightness on clouds that were a carpet to them, a 
 roof to poor human beings Avho could not see them. In the air Avas 
 the unnatural, and so almost unpleasant, warmth that, coming 
 suddenly out of due season, strikes at the health of many people, and 
 exhausts them as it would never exhaust them in time of summer. 
 Cuckoo, faint Avith hunger, fainter yet with sorrow, felt intensely 
 fatigued. She did not consider where she Avas going, but just 
 Avalked on sloAvly and heavily ; but the habit of her life, profiting by 
 her unconsciousness, led her towards that long street in which she 
 had passed hours which, if added together, Avould have made a large 
 part of her existence. Piccadilly drew her to it, as the Avhirlpool draws 
 the thing which inadvertently touches even the furthest outpost of 
 its influence. Presently she Avas at the Circus. The little boys 
 upon the kerb, crying newspapers, greeted her with excited comments 
 and with laughter. They had missed her for so long that they had 
 imagined her ill, perhaps dead. Seeing her turn up again, they were 
 full of greedy ardour for her news. They put to her searching and 
 opprobrious questions. She did not hear them. Soon she Avas in 
 the midst of the croAvd. Yet she scarcely realised that she Avas not 
 alone. No mechanical smile came to her face. It seemed as if she 
 had forgotten the old wiles of the streets, put oft" for ever tin- frigid 
 mask of vice, that freezes young blood yet makes old blood sometimes
 
 A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS 393 
 
 run strangely faster. What was the street to Cuckoo now, or 
 Cuckoo to the street ? Once it had at least been much, almost 
 everything, to her. And she had been perhaps as much to it as one 
 of the paving-stones on which the feet of its travellers trod. Now 
 things were changed. The human wolf was in the snow still, but it 
 no longer feared starvation. Bather did it live in starvation with a 
 fervour that was untouched by anything animal. 
 
 Cuckoo walked on. 
 
 The crowd flowed up and down, in two opposed and gliding 
 streams. The warm heaviness of this premature air of Spring had 
 brought many people out, and had even induced some of the women 
 to assume costumes of mid-summer. There were great white hats 
 floating on the stream like swans. Bright and light coloured dresses 
 touched the black gown of Cuckoo as with lingers of contempt. She 
 did not see them. Many women who knew her by sight murmured 
 to each other their surprise at her reappearance. One, a huge 
 negress in orange colours, ejaculated a loud and guttural, " My 
 sakes ! " 
 
 Unheeding, Cuckoo walked on. 
 
 A few of the men looked at her. More especially did those 
 observe her who love vice that is quiet, sedate, demure, and unob- 
 trusive. To these her pale, unpainted cheeks, her unconscious 
 demeanour, her downcast eyes, and severely plain black dress and 
 hat appealed with emphasis. One or two of them turned to follow 
 her. She never heard their footsteps. One spoke to her. She did 
 not reply. He persisted. When at last she was obliged to heed 
 him she only shook her head. He fell away, abashed by the dull 
 glance of her eyes, and wondering discontentedly why she was there 
 and what she was doing. 
 
 Forgetting him instantly, she walked on. 
 
 Some one she had known in old days met her. It was the young 
 man in the millinery establishment who had loved her for a week, 
 and given her the green evening dress trimmed with the imitation 
 lace. Since those days he had become strictly respectable, had 
 married an assistant in the shop, rented a tiny villa at Clapham, 
 added two childish lives to the teeming world, and developed on 
 Sundays into a sidesman, at a suburban church. Now he was on his 
 way to Charing Cross station from a solemn supper given by his 
 employers at a restaurant to some of their staff. He recognised 
 Cuckoo and the spirit moved him to speak to her. He touched her 
 arm. 
 
 "Miss-er-Miss Bright," he said. 
 
 Cuckoo stopped. 
 
 " Miss Bright, you remember me ? Alf . Hey wood ! " 
 
 He was a little man, with a whitish face and wispy light brown
 
 394 FLAMES 
 
 hair. Now his pale brown eyes glanced up at Cuckoo rather 
 nervously under rapidly winking lids. She stared at him. 
 
 " Alf. Heywood ? " she repeated, without meaning. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; Alf. Heywood, as was in Breiiton's millinery establish- 
 ment, top of Regent Street. Him as give you that green dress. 
 Don't you recall ? " 
 
 Cuckoo shook her head. 
 
 " Green with white lace on it," he continued, with nervous 
 emphasis. 
 
 Suddenly Cuckoo said : 
 
 " White ; no, it was yellow." 
 
 Mr. Heywood was delighted at this evidence of recollection. 
 
 " So it was, so it was," he said. " But what I wanted to say was 
 that I'm sorry to see you here still." 
 
 Eh ? " 
 
 " Sorry to see you here. I'm married, you know, turned over 
 a new leaf, with two children of my own, and come to see the error 
 of my ways. I hoped as you- 
 
 Cuckoo walked on. 
 
 Her dream of despair was not to be broken by Mr. Heywood and 
 his new-found respectability. Fate shattered it to fragments in very 
 different fashion. A sudden thrill ran through the crowd, coming 
 from a distance. People began to pause, to turn their heads, to 
 murmur to one another, then to press forward in one direction, 
 craning their necks as if to catch sight of something. The street 
 was almost blocked and Cuckoo was entangled in this seething excite- 
 ment, of which at first she could not divine the cause. Presently 
 she heard shouts. The crow T d swayed. Then a man's fierce yell cut 
 the general murmur with the sharpness of a knife. Suddenly 
 Cuckoo's dream fled. She pushed her way forward in the direction 
 of the cry ; she struggled ; she crept under arms and glided 
 through narrow spaces with extraordinary dexterity and swiftness. 
 
 " He's mad," she heard a voice say. 
 
 " No ; only drunk." 
 
 " He'll kill the other fellow if he gets at him." 
 
 " The coppers will be on him in a minute." 
 
 Cuckoo was panting with her effort, but she passed the voices and 
 came upon the core of the crowd, the man who had yelled Julian. 
 She saw in a moment that he was mad with drink. His hat was off ; 
 his coat was torn ; his evening clothes were covered with mud. 
 Apparently he had fallen while getting out of a cab. Two men 
 strangers of the street were holding him forcibly back while he 
 struggled furiously to attack another man, who faced him calmly on 
 the pavement with a smile of keen contempt. This man was Valen-
 
 A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS 395 
 
 tine. Julian was screaming incoherent curses at him and wild 
 threats of murder. The crowd listened and jeered. 
 
 Cuckoo caught Julian by the arm. He turned on her to strike 
 her. Then his arm fell by his side. It seemed as if he recognised 
 her even through the veil of his excess. The drunken man looked 
 on the starving woman, and the curses died upon his lips. He began 
 to shiver and to tremble from head to foot. Valentine made a step 
 towards him, but some in the crowd interposed. 
 
 " Let him alone," they said. " You'll only make him worse. 
 Leave him to her." 
 
 The cab from which Julian had apparently just alighted was 
 drawn up by the kerb-stone. Cuckoo, who had not uttered a word 
 as yet, drew Julian towards it. He staggered after her in silence, 
 stumbled into the cab and collapsed in a heap in the corner, half on 
 the floor, half on the seat. She got in after him, watched by the 
 crowd, who seemed awed by the abrupt silence of this yelling mad- 
 man at the touch of this spectral girl in black. Cuckoo gave her 
 address to the cabman. Just as he was whipping up his horse to 
 drive away, she leaned forward out of the cab as if to the croAvd 
 really to one man in it. 
 
 " lie's my man ! " she said, drawing her thick eyebrows together, 
 and with a nod of her head. " He's my man. I'll see to him." 
 
 The cab drove off into the darkness.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THAT drive in the night was taken in silence. Julian, a crumpled 
 heap of degraded humanity, slept. Cuckoo watched over him, half 
 supporting him with one thin arm. Exultation shone in her eyes 
 and beat in her heart. The glory of being alone with this drunken 
 creature, his protector, his guide, lay round the gii'l like a glory of 
 heaven. As she looked at his white face, and pressed her hand- 
 kerchief against the blood that trickled from his forehead, wild tears 
 of triumph, passionate tears of joy and determination, swam in her 
 eyes. She felt at last the pride and the self-respect of one who 
 possesses a will, and who has exercised it. That was a justification 
 of life to her mind. Something had given even to her the power to 
 snatch this man to herself from the jaws of dark London, to carry 
 him off, a succoured prey, from that world laughing at his degrada- 
 tion. She bent over him in the rattling cab and touched his face 
 with her lips. Was that a kiss ? She, who had known so many 
 kisses, wondered. It was the going forth of her soul to purify with 
 flame the thing it loved. 
 
 The cab stopped; Cuckoo shook Julian. He stirred uneasily, 
 opened his eyes and shut them again, relapsing into something that 
 seemed rather a sort of fit than a slumber. She called to the cabman 
 to come and help her. Between them they carried Julian into the 
 house and laid him out upon the horse-hair sofa. 
 
 " He'll come to all right, lady," said the cabby, with a pleasant 
 giin of knowledge. " There's a many it takes like that. It ain't 
 nothing." 
 
 He paused for his payment, and then Cuckoo remembered that 
 she had no money. The thought did not worry her ; it seemed too 
 far off. 
 
 " I ain't got no money," she said. 
 
 Cabby's jaw dropped. 
 
 " Wait a second," she added. " Go out, I'll get some." 
 
 The man withdrew doubtfully, then Cuckoo robbed Julian. She, 
 who had never yet taken money from him, stole the price of his fare
 
 AN AWAKENING 397 
 
 to her protection. Then she let the cabman out, locked the street 
 door nnd returned. She sat down by Julian, who still appeared to 
 sleep. And now suddenly she felt that she was starving. She 
 looked round the room, there was nothing upon the table. Mrs. 
 Brigg, an hour after her song of praise, had been seized in the claws of 
 reaction, and had repented of her generosity. Suspicions and doubts 
 obscured the previous rapture of her mind. She bethought herself 
 that Cuckoo might chance to return alone, still penniless ; she 
 remembered the rent still owing. Her impulse to kill fatted calves 
 suddenly struck her as the act of a madwoman. As locusts clear a 
 smiling country of all that nourishes, she swept the table of Cuckoo 
 clear, impounding to her larder with trembling, eager hands the food 
 that might never have been paid for. Thereupon she went to bed, 
 nodding her old head, and muttering to herself with pursed lips. 
 
 So the eyes of Cuckoo looked in vain for something to stay the 
 bodily misery that stole upon her as she watched by Julian. 
 Starvation stripped away all the mists from her soul and left it 
 naked with the burdened soul it loved. Despite her increasing 
 pain of body, Cuckoo was conscious gradually of a light and airy 
 delicacy of sensation that was touched with something magical. 
 This awful hunger made her feel strangely pure, as if her deeds, 
 which for years had clung round her like a brood of filthy vampires, 
 were falling away from her one by one. They dropped down into 
 the night ; she was mounting into freedom. And, despite faint 
 agonies which at moments threatened to overwhelm her, she had 
 never felt so happy. Instinct led her to get away from the 
 consciousness of her body by leaning utterly upon her mind. She 
 sat down by Julian, bent over him, absorbed herself in him. One of 
 his hands she took gently in her own. The little act baptized him 
 hers in her mind, and she was aware of a great rush of happiness 
 never known before. For she had him there in her nest, she alone. 
 And she loved him. Even in his drunken sleep, even in his 
 massacred condition of ugliness and hatefulness, he was so beautiful 
 to her that she could have wept from thankfulness. The world, that 
 had taken from her everything, the very' little that she had ever 
 possessed, the purity that every creature has once, the innocence 
 that she had never understood, left her this tipsy, degraded, 
 abandoned, tragic atom of evil. And a great glory was hers. 
 She could have fallen upon her knees in blessing and thank- 
 fulness, forgetful of all her tribe of sorrows, conscious only that she 
 was a woman crowned and throned. By degrees she forgot that 
 she was starving, forgot everything in an ecstasy of pure passion 
 and pride, an ecstasy that brought food, rest, calm to her. 
 
 In the dawn Julian stirred and murmured incoherent words. 
 Cuckoo bent down to hear them. But he slept again. And as the
 
 3 g8 FLAMES 
 
 dawn grow, the light and airy feeling within her grew, with it, till 
 she seemed to be floating in the air and among soft billowing clouds. 
 At first there was light through them, light of the sun, strong and 
 beautiful. But then it faded. And darkness came, and strange 
 sounds like far-off voices, and a murmur as of waters deepening in 
 volume and rushing upon her. They reached her. She put out 
 her hands and thought she cried out. 
 
 The waters swept her away. 
 
 ****** 
 
 : Cuckoo ! Cuckoo ! What is it ? Cuckoo ! " 
 
 " She's a comin' she's a comin' to." 
 
 " Give me some more water then." 
 
 Cuckoo felt it very cold upon her face, and fancied at first that it 
 was those rushing waters of her dream. But the darkness parted, 
 showing her two faces close together, one old and withered and 
 yellow, one young but white and lined. At first she looked at them 
 without recognition. Again she felt the cold drops of water dashing 
 against her cheeks and lips, and then she knew Mrs. Brigg and 
 Julian, and she saw her little room and that it was morning and light. 
 They helped her to sit up. She glanced wearily towards the table. 
 
 " What is it Cuckoo ? " Julian said. 
 
 " Food ; I'm starving," she whispered, faintly. 
 
 Horror was written on his face. 
 
 " Starving ! What the devil does she mean ? " 
 
 He turned on Mrs. Brigg, who suddenly shrank away muttering : 
 
 " I'll get something ; breakfast I'll get it." 
 
 Julian looked dazed. He was only recovering gradually from his 
 drunken stupor. 
 
 " Starving starving," he repeated vacantly, staring at Cuckoo, 
 who said nothing more, only lay back, trying to understand things 
 and to emerge from the mists and noises in which she still seemed 
 to be floating. Presently Mrs. Brigg returned and shuffled about 
 the table with a furtive, contorted face, laying breakfast. The teapot 
 smoked. 
 
 " Come along my dearey," began the old creature. 
 
 But Julian thrust her out of the room. He brought Cuckoo tea 
 and food, fed her, put the cup to her lips. At first she had scarcely 
 the strength to swallow, but presently she began to revive and then 
 ate and drank so ravenously that Julian, even in his vague condition, 
 was appalled. 
 
 " Good God, it's true ! " he said. " Cuckoo starving ! 
 
 He sat by her turning this piercing matter over in his mind. Its 
 strangeness helped to sober him. 
 
 " You eat too," she said. 
 
 He shook his head.
 
 AN AWAKENING 399 
 
 " Yes, yes," she insisted feverishly. 
 
 To pacify her he made ;i sort of attempt at breakfast, and felt 
 the better for it. Together they progressed slowly towards the 
 normal. At last the meal was over. Cuckoo lay back, feeling 
 wonderfully better and calm and happy. Bat Julian's eyes were 
 searching hers insistently. 
 
 "What have you been doing Cuckoo?" he said. "You've got 
 to tell me. Starving ! What's the meaning of it ? " 
 
 His voice sounded almost angry and threatening. 
 
 " I ain't got any money/' she said. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 She didn't answer. 
 
 " Why I say ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Because I've give up the street," she said simply. 
 
 " Given up the street Cuckoo ! " 
 
 He laid his hand down heavily upoii one of hers. 
 
 " Since when ? " 
 
 Oh a little while. It don't matter how long." 
 
 He sat glancing about the room. 
 
 " Where's Jessie ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 Cuckoo burst out crying. 
 
 " I had to I had to," she sobbed. 
 
 " To do what ? " 
 
 " To part with her." 
 
 " What ! You've sold Jessie ! " 
 
 Julian stood up. This last fact struck right home to him, banish- 
 ing all his vagueness, setting his mind on its feet firmly. 
 
 " Jessie~sold ! " he exclaimed again, in a loud voice. " Cuckoo, 
 why have you done this ? Tell me tell me at once." 
 
 She strove to control her sobs. 
 
 " I didn't know what to do to get you away from him," she said 
 presently, flushing scarlet. " I didn't never see you ; I didn't know 
 where you was. I knew as you didn't like me goin' on the street. 
 Once you asked me not to. Remember ? " 
 
 Julian nodded, with a piercing gaze on her. 
 
 " So so thinks I I'll keep away ; p'raps it'll get him back." 
 
 "Me?" 
 
 He sat down with a white face. All about him there was flame. 
 He seemed to understand what he had never understood before, the 
 wonder of the lady of the feathers, the mystery that had drawn him 
 so strangely to her. He caught her in his a-rms. 
 
 " Oh Cuckoo, Cuckoo," he said, brokenly. " You love me." 
 
 He laid his lips on hers, and pressed her mouth in a passion of 
 emotion that was almost an assault. And still the fire was about 
 him. She clung to him with her thin arms.
 
 4 oo FLAMES 
 
 " That's it ! " she whispered, in reply to his words. 
 Julian held her in silence, felt her heart beating, the piteous 
 tenuity of her little body, the weak giasp of her arms round him. 
 These things broke upon him one by one with a crescendo of mean- 
 ing that came like a great revelation, came to him shod with flame, 
 winged with flame, moving in flame, warm like flame. 
 
 "You starved for me, sold Jessie for me," he whispered. " How 
 I love you ! How I love you ! " 
 
 And he crushed her close in an embrace that was almost brutal. 
 The door-bell rang. Julian let Cuckoo go. 
 " He has come for me," he said. 
 
 She knew it too, and looked at him with a piteous, greedy ques- 
 tioning. 
 
 " I hate him now," he said in answer. 
 
 The door of the room opened. They both turned towards it. 
 Valentine entered. 
 
 " I thought I should find you here," he said, stopping near the 
 door. " Are you better, Julian ? " 
 " Better ? "" 
 
 " Last night you were not yourself." 
 
 " I have not been myself for a long time," Julian replied. 
 " I had not noticed any change." 
 
 Julian made no reply. A dogged expression had come into his 
 face. He was still sitting close to Cuckoo. Now he took her hand 
 in his. As he did so, Valentine moved a little nearer, as if urged 
 by a sudden impulse. He bent down to gaze into Cuckoo's face, and 
 uttered a short exclamation. 
 "The battle! "he said. 
 
 An expression almost of awe had come into his eyes, and for a 
 moment he hesitated, even half turned as if to slink away. But 
 then, with a strong effort, he recovered himself and again fixed his 
 eyes on Julian. 
 
 " Come, Julian ! " he said. 
 " I will not come." 
 
 " I have a cab here waiting." (Valentine spoke with an iron 
 calm.) " We had arranged to go to Magdalen's." 
 Julian uttered an oath. 
 
 " That devil ! " he exclaimed. " I won't go to her. I am half 
 dead. I am killing myself." 
 
 He pulled himself up short, then cried out savagely, and half 
 despairingly : 
 
 " No, by God, you are killing me ! " 
 
 He began to tremble, and looked towards Cuckoo as a man looks 
 who seeks for refuge. 
 
 "You are treating me very strangely, Julian," Valentine said
 
 AN AWAKENING 401 
 
 frigidly. " Last night you were drunk. You .seemed to take me 
 for some enemy, and struck nie. Many men would resent your 
 conduct. I am too much your friend." 
 
 " You my friend ! " Julian exclaimed bitterly. " You ! " 
 
 Abruptly he sprang up, tearing his hand out of Cuckoo's. He 
 went over to Valentine and stared, with a passion of perplexity and 
 of loathing, into his eyes. 
 
 " What, in God's name are you ?" he said, in an uncertain voice. 
 " Are you man or devil ? You are not Valentine not the man I 
 loved. I'll swear it. You are some damned stranger, and I have 
 lived with you " he shuddered iiTepressibly " and never knew it 
 till now." 
 
 " You say I am a stranger ? " 
 
 " Yes, with the face of niy friend." 
 
 " How can that be ?" 
 
 Again a misery of confusion and of fear swept over Julian. 
 
 " Whence did I come then ? " Valentine asked. 
 
 He began to have the air of a man bent on some revelation. An 
 immense power infused itself through him. His blue eyes were 
 utterly fearless. The moment of open battle had come at last. 
 Well, lie would not attempt to avoid it, to gain further uneasy 
 peace. He would strike a final blow, secure of his own victory. 
 
 And Cuckoo sat watching silently. She remembered the night 
 on which Valentine had half revealed the mystery to her, who could 
 not understand it. Was he about to reveal it now to Julian ? Her 
 eyes flamed with eagerness, and again Valentine looked into them 
 and faltered for a moment. Then he turned resolutely away from 
 her, as if he gave his whole heart and soul to the business before him, 
 to this Julian who at last began to shrink from him, to feel terror at 
 his approach, even to repudiate him. 
 
 " From what have I come, then ?" he repeated. 
 
 Julian paused, as if he sought an answer, looking backwards into 
 the past. Suddenly he cried : 
 
 " From that trance ! Yes ; it was then. That flame going away 
 it was it must have been Valentine." 
 
 " You talk like a madman." 
 
 But Julian did not heed the sneer. He was passionately 
 engrossed by the flood of thoughts that had come to him. He was 
 struggling to wake finally from the dreary and infamous dream in 
 which he had been walking deceived, tricked, tyrant ridden for so 
 long. 
 
 " But then Valentine is dead," he cried. 
 
 His face went white. He sank down, clinging suddenly to 
 Cuckoo. 
 
 " Dead ! " he repeated in a whisper. 
 
 2 C
 
 402 FLAMES 
 
 The girl's touch was strangely warm on his hands, like fire. He 
 looked up into her eyes, seeking passionately for that flame that now 
 he began vaguely to connect with the Valentine he had lost. 
 
 "Or is he ?" 
 
 Julian hesitated, still gazing at the white and weary face of 
 Cuckoo. Suddenly Valentine said loudly : 
 
 " You are right. He is dead." 
 
 He laughed aloud. 
 
 " I killed him," he said, " when I took his place. Julian, you 
 shall know now, what the lady of the feathers knows already, what 
 a human will can do, when it is utterly content with itself, when it 
 is trained, developed, perfected. I came through Marr to Valentine. 
 I was Marr." 
 
 " Marr ! " Julian said slowly. " You ! " 
 
 "And Marr, too, was my prey. Like Valentine he was not 
 content with himself. His weakness of discontent was my oppor- 
 tunity. I expelled his will, for mine was stronger than his. I lived 
 in his body until the time came for me to be with you. Have you 
 ever read of vampires ? " 
 
 Julian muttered a hoarse assent. He seemed bound by a strange 
 spell, inert, paralysed almost. 
 
 "There are vampires in the modern world who feed not upon 
 bodies but upon souls, wills. And each soul they feed upon gives to 
 them greater strength, a longer reign upon the earth. Who knows? 
 One of them in time may compass eternity." 
 
 He seemed to tower up in the little room, to blaze with triumph. 
 
 " When you see a man go down, sink into the mire, and you say : 
 'he is weak he has come under a bad influence' it is a vampire 
 who feeds upon his soul, who sucks the blood of his will. Sometimes 
 the vampire comes in his own form, sometimes he wears a mask the 
 mask of a friend's form and face. The influences that wreck men 
 are the vampires of the soul at work, Julian, at work." 
 
 His face was terrible. Julian shrank from it. He turned to 
 Cuckoo. 
 
 "They feed on women, too," he said. "On the souls of women. 
 Men say that magic is a dream and a chimera. Women say that 
 miracles are past, or that there never were such things. But the 
 power of sin is magical. The death of beauty and of innocence in a 
 soul is a miracle. My power over you, Julian, is magic. The bondage 
 of your soul to mine is a miracle. Come with me." 
 
 " I will riot come." 
 
 But Julian's face, his whole attitude, betokened the most piteous 
 and degraded irresolution. This man, this creature, governed him 
 despite himself. He felt once more for the hand of Cuckoo, and, 
 finding it, spoke again more firmly :
 
 AN AWAKENING 403 
 
 " I'll not come," he said. " I'll stay with her. I love her." 
 
 Valentine cast a malign glance upon Cuckoo, but again fear 
 seemed to draw near to him. He made no answer. 
 
 " Only once I'll come," Julian said. " At night I lost Valentine 
 in the dark. In the dark I'll seek for him, I'll find him again. 
 Cuckoo shall come too, and the doctor. That flame it went into the 
 air. I'll find it I'll find it again." 
 
 " Come then seek it seek Valentine. But I, too, was with you 
 in the dark. And in the dark I will destroy you. Till to-night 
 then, Julian ! '' 
 
 He turned and went out.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "THE LAST SITTING" 
 
 THAT evening Julian drove Cuckoo down to Victoria Street. On 
 the way they scarcely spoke. The doctor, summoned by a mes- 
 senger, was there before them. He, although ignorant of what had 
 passed between Julian and Valentine, was deeply expectant. 
 Cuckoo was exhausted by the sleepless night of her vigil over Julian 
 and by the severe joy, almost like pain, that had burst upon her with 
 his avowal and with his savage embrace. 
 
 When she entered the tent-room followed by Julian, she looked 
 like a shadow gliding wearily through twilight. The doctor was 
 there with Valentine. Valentine's face was gay. His manner was 
 ardent, almost tempestuous. The clear calmness so generally chai'ac- 
 teristic of him had vanished, swept away by the flood of his triumph 
 perhaps. Julian seemed nervoxis, and his appearance was so haggard 
 as to be engrossing to any one who was observant. There was a 
 hunted, fearful look in his eyes. His hands were never for a moment 
 still. He kept close to Cuckoo. He even held her hands as he sat 
 by her, and she felt that his were burning hot. He scarcely noticed 
 the doctor, who observed him closely. Valentine watched his 
 feverish excitement with laughing eyes. Of those four people he 
 alone seemed entirely untouched by any deep emotion, entirely 
 master of himself. For even Dr. Levillier was curiously moved 
 that night, and was unable to suppress every trace of abnormal 
 emotion. 
 
 They sat down. There were no flowers in the room. Valentine 
 explained that he had remembered Cuckoo's fainting fit and feared 
 its renewal. 
 
 " I am afraid you are still scarcely yourself," he added, with a 
 solicitude that was too elaborate to be agreeable. " You are looking 
 pale and tired. You are sure to sleep again." 
 
 " I'll not sleep to-night," she answered, showing none of her usual 
 fear of him. 
 
 The assertion of her will, her momentary rescue of Julian, Julian's 
 avowed love for her, his clinging to her as to a refuge all these
 
 THE LAST SITTING" 405 
 
 things, so Cuckoo thought, built up in her a great fearlessness. In 
 her bodily weakness she felt strong. Her faded, weakly frame held 
 now a large spirit of which she was finely conscious. And she 
 attributed this leaping spirit, so brave, so intense to these things, 
 these facts of which she could make a list. She did not know that 
 behind them all there was a motive power inspiring her, through 
 them perhaps, but of itself. How often is the power behind the 
 throne unsuspected, unheeded. Cuckoo did not recognise it in this 
 crisis, although there had been moments in the past when the 
 murmur of its voice had stolen upon her and stirred her to wonder 
 and to perturbation. And Valentine, to whom the combat came, 
 saw not his real foe. And Julian looked only into Cuckoo's faded 
 
 eyes for refuge, for comfort. And Dr. Levillier ? At present he 
 
 could only wait patiently in the hope, doubtful, fragmentary of 
 revelation. 
 
 Conversation that night was uneasy and disjointed. Cuckoo's 
 defiance of Valentine was fully apparent. Julian's fear, obviously 
 grown up to hatred of his former friend, shone clearly. There was 
 a nakedness about the manners of both tired woman and shattered 
 man that was disquieting and unusual. Valentine did not seem 
 to notice it or to be moved by it. Indeed it might be supposed 
 to add to his pleasure an unnatural revelry in being hated. Dr. 
 Levillier, glancing from him to Julian, found himself involved in 
 remembrances of Hip and Valentine. The terror and the hate of 
 the dog seemed to be reproduced vividly in the terror and the hate 
 of the man. Valentine watched both with smiling eyes and drew 
 draughts of power from that fountain of horror. 
 
 At last conversation failed entirely. Jxilian was half stretched on 
 the divan, gazing at Cuckoo as one who aspires to salvation. It was 
 apparent that he was fully awake to the terror of his own situation, 
 that he pierced the depths of the abyss into which he had fallen, in 
 which he lay crippled, prisoned, ruined. Yet a hope had dawned on 
 him with the dawning of the full knowledge of his fall, of his fan- 
 tastic self-deception. The great love in this woman's eyes shone 
 down into the abyss, shone from that face pinched by starvation. 
 There was Heaven in it. There was the flame. Yes, he saw it now, 
 not literally as in the past days, when its mystery had plunged him 
 in awe, when its presence had touched him with a great fear, but 
 imaginatively, as men see flames of help, and of faith, and of purity, 
 shining in the eyes of the good women they worship, with the 
 reverence of earth for the distant wonder of the sky. He saw it 
 now, without fear, but with a passion of desire, a sharp consciousness 
 of his degradation, that swept over him like a storm. And even 
 yet, in this new knowledge, this rapture of awakening, he was still 
 a bond-slave, or feared he was, to this stranger with the face of a
 
 4 o6 FLAMES 
 
 friend, this enemy with the presence of his former guardian angel. 
 Only Cuckoo could save him, he said to himself, if indeed the day of 
 salvation were not long ago past only Cuckoo. For despite her 
 many sins, the flame shone in her eyes. And where the llaine shone 
 there alone was even the shadow of help, a shadow within the shadow 
 of those eyes. 
 
 In the silence that had come upon his guests Valentine turned to 
 them, and said : 
 
 "We are supposed to be here for a sitting. Well, shall we 
 have it ? " 
 
 " Yes yes," Julian said, " a last sitting." 
 Why last ? " 
 
 Julian sat up on the divan, and his hands were clenched on the 
 cushions. 
 
 " Because if nothing happens to-night, I'll give it up. I'll never 
 sit again. And if Cuckoo sleeps 
 He paused. 
 
 " She will sleep," Valentine said. " I have the power to make 
 her." 
 
 " No," said Cuckoo. 
 " Don't you think so, doctor? " 
 
 "It seemed so the other night," the doctor answered. 
 " And with each sitting my power will increase. Do you hear, 
 Julian ? " 
 
 " You're very fond of talking about your power," Julian said 
 roughly. 
 
 " No. But I may be very fond of exercising it. Why help me, 
 then, by sitting ? " 
 
 He spoke in a bantering tone. Julian began to look doubtful. 
 Could it be that all was changed, that there was only danger in this 
 act, that to grope thus in the darkness for lost hope, lost safety, a 
 lost Valentine, with love, trust, beauty still clinging about him, 
 was to stumble further into a deepening night ? It might be so. 
 
 And if Cuckoo slept ! 
 
 Valentine smiled at this wavering approach of indecision. But 
 Dr. Levillier said decisively : 
 
 " I wish to sit. It interests me. Send me to sleep, too, if you 
 can, Cresswell." 
 
 " I will," Valentine answered lightly. " Come." 
 The doctor saw him standing for a moment in the light, with a 
 glory of power and of triumph upon his face, and remembered that 
 glory, even seemed to see it, a clear vision, when darkness filled the 
 room. 
 
 Out of the darkness came the murmur of a voice. 
 "The last sittinjr," it said.
 
 ''THE LAST SITTING" 407 
 
 Julian was the speaker. Nobody replied. Silence followed. As 
 before, the doctor sat between Julian and Valentine and touched 
 their hands. As before the darkness, and this mutual act in it, 
 developed in him the faculty of hearing, or of thinking he heard, the 
 voices of the thoughts of his companions. So far this night echoed 
 the last night of the year. Would it echo that night farther still to 
 the ultimate notes of this music of minds ? The doctor wondered. 
 He was soon to know. 
 
 Once again the notes of Valentine's Litany stole upon his heart. 
 And to-night they seemed to him louder, more strident than before, 
 as if blared from a soul that held a veritable brass band of shrill 
 egoism within it. The doctor listened. He remembered presently 
 that the former Litany had been broken sometimes, hesitating, that 
 Valentine had been assailed by vague fears that stole upon him like 
 ghosts from the lady of the feathers. To-night those little ghosts 
 were laid. They came not. It seemed that Valentine had con- 
 quered them. No longer did they crowd to hear the bold fury of 
 the Litany. No longer dared even one to creep along alone to bend 
 and to listen. The doctor knew then that this night was not 
 destined to be a mere echo of its forerunner. It was at first as if 
 Valentine had closed the rift in his lute, had bridged the gulf 
 between his trial and his triumph. A tremendous sadness came 
 upon the doctor with this thought, enveloping him in a cloud of 
 cold. His heart fainted within him, as at some great catastrophe. 
 He could have wept like a man who finds the trust of his life ill- 
 founded, the faith in which he has dwelt bnilded upon the quicksand. 
 He fancied that Valentine instantly became aware of his distress and 
 that the- knowledge swelled the mighty tide of the music of the 
 Litany. And this thought struck him and roused the man in him, 
 like the call of circumstance on valour, crying : " Will a man say 
 that anything is irrevocable, while there is breath in him to give the 
 battle-cry, strength in him to stir a limb ? " Then the faintness left 
 him with the demeanour of that which is ashamed. The cold cloud 
 evaporated. He heard the Litany without fear, but with a great 
 desire to strike a lightning silence through it, with a fine hatred that 
 destroyed his former hopelessness. This blatant will that sang ever 
 the song of self, that had no desire but to itself, no glory but in its 
 own deeds, no aim but to impress itself upon some slave, some 
 Julian of this world, stood before the doctor's imagination like a 
 personality, a devil embodied, more, like the devil of whom men and 
 women speak, against whom, religion prays, and strives and rears 
 great churches, and consecrates priests. Egoism developed to the 
 utmost limits, is that the Devil ? The doctor asked himself the 
 question, and the great shadow that dogs the steps of life went by 
 him on its black mission in the likeness of Valentine singing. And
 
 408 FLAMES 
 
 all the modern world stood still to hear and whispered : " Hark ! It 
 is an angel singing ! If we but echo the song we touch the stars. 
 If we but echo the song we, who ai-e weary of time, shall know 
 eternity. If we but echo the song we shall lay grief to rest beneath 
 many roses, and draw from its sculptured sepulchre the radiant form 
 of joy. We shall sing and we shall be great." And the modem 
 world lifted up its voice, and when it sang harmony was slain by 
 discord. 
 
 The doctor shuddered. Yet the coward in him did not rise again. 
 There was the gleam of a distant light upon him, unquenchable and 
 serene. He doubted the eternity of the triumph of this Valentino, 
 though he knew not why he doubted, nor upon what his doubts 
 were based. 
 
 And as this doubt, which was a faith, blossomed within him he 
 had a fancy that the music of the Litany wavered, faltered that 
 through it ran a thrill like a faint shadow of some dull despair. 
 At this moment Valentine spoke in the darkness. 
 ' What are you doing, Julian ? " he asked, quickly. 
 ' Nothing," Julian answered. 
 I heard you whisper." 
 I only said something to Cuckoo." 
 
 We must not talk. Let us link our fingers instead of only 
 touching each other." 
 
 They all did so and were silent once more. 
 
 ***** 
 
 And now a fear seized the doctor. He became aware that a 
 drowsy spirit like the little sandman who throws the dust of slumber 
 into the eyes of the children, stole round the circle. In his hands 
 were poppy seeds and opiates, and his touch was magical with sloop. 
 Valentine had surely evoked him by a strange effort of will. He 
 came, and his feet were shod so that he moved without noise. He 
 filled the atmosphere with heaviness, and with a murmurous melody, 
 like the melody of the drooping streams that hang their silver 
 ribands over the hills of the far Lotus land. Passing the doctor he 
 stole to the place where Cuckoo sat between Julian and Valentine. 
 And there he paused. The doctor divined his mission, to weave a 
 veil and cast a cloud of sleep around the lady of the feathers. The 
 weariness of Cuckoo's life lay like a burden upon her, a heavy burden 
 to-night, despite the wild wakef ulness of her spirit, the passion of 
 her answered love, the strength of her resolution, the purity that 
 drew near to her at last with ivory wings along the miry ways. 
 She, who was at last awake, and conscious of the glory of a woman's 
 will to rescue and to shelter, was to sleep again. The sentinel was 
 to be overcome at her post that the enemy might penetrate the 
 lines and seize the citadel. How heavv the air was ! To the doctor
 
 "THE LAST SITTING" 409 
 
 it seemed alive with sleep, as the waters of the great sea are alive 
 with death for the sailor who sinks down in them. He saw the 
 weaving of the veil that was dropping gently round Cuckoo. He 
 saw the cloud shrouding her in a scarcely palpable mist. Or was it 
 his dream ? Or was it his fancy ? For it was dark. There stood 
 the tiny, obstinate spirit by Cuckoo's side. His hands touched her fore- 
 head, and touched her white and weary eyelids, and the doctor knew 
 that all the fatigues of her life trooped together, as at a word of com- 
 mand, and came upon her to conquer her. They pressed round, name- 
 less wearinesses induced by acts which had made Cuckoo that which 
 she was. And they seemed to whisper to her : " You cannot fight. 
 You cannot protect it is all over. You can only sleep you can 
 only sleep. Sleep ! You are so weary. Sleep, for life which has 
 taken everything else from you has left you that." Cuckoo's face 
 was white with the story of her life, and with the wonder of her 
 recent self-denial, and with the memory of her martyrdom when the 
 little old man of the many dogs shuffled to the door, bearing from 
 her the friend of her loneliness. Her eyes were hollow and desolate. 
 It seemed that she gave heed to the voices and listened to the 
 beautiful legend of the magic and the holiness of sleep. And as she 
 seemed to give heed the devil of the egoism of Valentine rose again 
 before the doctor, sharply outlined and distinct, and smiled with the 
 triumph of the egoism that modern vampire of all the world, 
 terrifically unconquerable. Would Cuckoo sleep ? The doctor 
 debated this question silently and with an agony of anxiety. He 
 felt as if the fate of worlds hung upon it, and the destinies of kings. 
 
 Would she sleep ? 
 
 The obstinate spirit stood by her always, and the song of Valentine 
 was. a procession of triumph in the night. 
 
 * 
 
 Julian's thoughts broke upon the doctor fiercely, and swept him 
 from his contemplation of Cuckoo. No drowsy poppy-bed was 
 Julian's. The shadowy spirit of sleep strove not to influence him. 
 No opiates gave him peace. No veil of gentle forgetfulness descended 
 upon him. He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of 
 fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds. 
 He was trembling, stretching oxit his feeble hands in the blackness 
 for guidance, sick with apprehension, betrayed, deluded. And now 
 he began to writhe in the grasp of a new terror, for it seemed to the 
 doctor that he, too, was conscious of the obstinate spirit that stood 
 beside Cuckoo, and that he dreaded the approach of his doom in her 
 slumber. He too, murmured silently, " Will she sleep ? Will she 
 sleep ? " If indeed she slept at the word of Valentine Julian's last 
 hope was gone. For he had now concentrated himself almost utterly 
 on Cuckoo. No longer did he draw near to her half in awe, half in
 
 4 io FLAMES 
 
 derision, led to her by the presence of the flame that flickered, some- 
 thing strangely apart from her, in her sad eyes. No longer did he 
 set her and the flame apart. To him she was the flame, the only 
 refuge, the only safety. For he sought the lost Valentine indeed, 
 but with a strange hopelessness of ever finding him again.' She must 
 not sleep. She must not sleep. In her slumber the flame would 
 die down, flicker lower and lower to a spark, to grey, cold ashes. 
 And Julian in his distraction thought of himself as inevitably lost 
 should the flame die, should Cuckoo sleep, ruled by Valentine. The 
 fight was between Cuckoo, the flame, and Valentine. Everything 
 else fell away and left Julian's world bare of all things save this one 
 contest. This the doctor learnt in the darkness. But still the spirit 
 ef sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo, and the air grew heavy and full of 
 slumber. 
 
 The doctor began to feel that his own powers were being 
 strenuously attacked. Inertia grew in his body. He sat almost 
 like one paralysed. His limbs, at first heavy as if loaded with in- 
 tolerable weights, gradually became numb, until he was no longer 
 aware of them. He seemed to be merely a live mind poised there 
 in the darkness, striving against the power that sought to sweep 
 from its path all those that fought against it or dared, however 
 feebly, to resist it. But his mind, poised tlms in this strange circle 
 of slumber, came by imperceptible degrees to have a grip upon the 
 past. Imitating the mind that is enclosed within a drowning body 
 it gazed upon the wildly flitting pictures of the years that were 
 gone. Regent Street by night rose up before it. The doctor saw, 
 painted upon the background of the dense gloom in which they sat, 
 the huge and vacant thoroughfare in the last watch of the night. 
 Faint figures wandered here and there, or paused beneath the shadow 
 of the tall blind houses, assuming postures of fatigue or of leering 
 and attentive evil. But one moved onward steadily, scarcely glancing 
 to the right or to the left. The doctor's mind, watching, knew that 
 this moving figure was himself, and, as if with bodily eyes, ho 
 mai'ked its course down the long vista of the dim street until it 
 passed into more private ways of the town. It passed into more 
 private ways, but not alone. A shadow followed it, and the face of 
 the shadow was turned away. The doctor could not see it, but there 
 rose in him the horror and the fear which had attacked him long 
 ago, when he turned to pursue the thing that dogged him in the 
 darkness. And he saw the shadow waver, pause, then turn to flee. 
 Ahd as it turned he thotight that it had the soul, though not the 
 face of the new Valentine. Then suddenly a great anger against 
 himself was born in him. Why had he been so blind, so deceived ( 
 He might have protected Julian. But he, too, had been a foolish 
 victim of outward beauty, the prey of the glory of a face. He had
 
 "THE LAST SITTING" 411 
 
 not read the book of the heart. And other pictures succeeded this 
 vision of the streets and of the shadows that walk in them by night. 
 He saw Valentine singing while he and Julian listened. And the 
 eyes of Valentine wore as the eyes of a saint, but now he knew that 
 behind them crouched a soul that was filled with evil. Slowly the 
 air grew heavy. Slumber paced in the tiny room. The doctor 
 struggled against it. But the colours of the brain pictures faded. 
 He saw them still, but only as one sees the world in a fog ; looming 
 forms that have lost their true character, that have assumed a vague- 
 ness of mystery, outlines at once heavy and remote, suggestive yet 
 
 indefinite. And still the spirit of sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo. 
 * * ' * * * 
 
 There was a slight hoarse cry in the night. 
 
 " What is that ? " Valentine said, sharply. 
 
 There was no reply. The doctor could have told him that the cry 
 came from Julian, and that the lady of the feathers, leaning low in 
 her chair, had passed from consciousness to insensibility. 
 
 The spirit of sleep stole away. His work was accomplished. 
 Julian sank forward upon the table with a gesture of utter abnega- 
 tion. He thought that Cuckoo was dead. He felt that she was dead, 
 as long ago he had felt that his loved friend, that Valentine who had 
 protected him and taught him the right way of life, was dead in 
 the night. 
 
 Dr. Levillier seemed to see Rip crouching down against the wall. 
 
 And now Valentine's will prepared to assert itself finally. It rose 
 up to triumph, as it had risen up to triumph over Rip. Was that 
 struggle going to be repeated ? Nothing had intruded upon it except 
 the marvellous tenacity of the dog, who had died rather than yield 
 obedience, died fighting. That tenacity surely did not dwell in the 
 nerveless Julian, utterly despairing, utterly wrecked. 
 
 The doctor trembled, feeling that the close of the strange mystery 
 was at hand. And as he trembled he seemed to see in the dense 
 darkness a tiny flame. It shivered up in the blackness where Cuckoo 
 slept, moved away from her, like a thing blown on a light wind, and 
 flickered above the bowed, despairing head of Julian. And, as he 
 watched it, wondering, the doctor was conscious once more that there 
 was a new presence in the room, something mysterious, intent, 
 vehement, yet touched with a strange and pathetic helplessness, some- 
 thing that cried against itself, something that had suffered a 
 martyrdom unknown, unequalled, in all the pale history of 
 the martyrdoms of the world. The doctor recalled the sitting 
 of the former night and his impression then and again he was 
 governed by the tragedy of this unknown soul. Its despair laid 
 upon him cold hands. Its impotence crushed him. He could 
 ha\ f wept and prayed for it. This was for a moment. Then a new
 
 4 i2 FLAMES 
 
 wonder grew in him. His eyes were on the flame which burned 
 above the bowed head of Julian, and presently while he gazed, he 
 seemed to see, beyond and through it as one who peers through a 
 lit window the face of Valentine, the beautiful, calm, lofty 
 Valentine whom once he had loved. The face was white with a soft 
 glory of endurance, and the eyes smiled like the eyes of a great king. 
 And the doctor knew comfort. For this face, although marred by 
 the shadow intense suffering ever leaves behind it, was instinct with 
 the majesty of triumph. And the eyes were bent on Julian. Then 
 Julian moved in the darkness and looked upward, despair seeking 
 hope. 
 
 The man who sat by the doctor, and who was now nameless to 
 him, was filled with a passionate fury. The doctor heard the Litany 
 of his glory cease, and the long pulse of his heart throbbing Avith 
 effort. His soul rose up, as the cruel spectre of the new Valentine 
 had risen up to seize upon Rip, and moved towards Julian to 
 dominate him finally, to draw him into its own eternal evil and pride 
 and passion of degraded power. But Julian stretched his arms 
 towards the flame which drew its brightness and its force from 
 Cuckoo sleeping. That was a last battle of souls, and the allegory 
 of it came clearly to the doctor's mind. 
 
 He divined, as in a vision, or as in a dream that is more real than 
 reality, the story of his friend, the true Valentine, whom he had 
 had loved. He remembered Valentine's dissatisfaction with the 
 glory of his own beautiful nature, his mad desire to change it. That 
 dissatisfaction, that desire, had been the opportunity of the enemy. 
 The soul that sighed in sorrow as it contemplated its own loveliness 
 had been expelled by the soul that was completely satisfied with its 
 own hatefulness. The weakness of the flame of purity had built Tip 
 the strength of the flame of impurity. And so beauty was driven 
 out to wander in the wilderness of the air and ugliness dwelled in its 
 body, its temple swept and garnished, like the seven devils of the 
 Scripture. For how long a time had the wandering flame or soul of 
 beauty been helpless, impotent, tortured by the appalling deception 
 of the soul of Julian whom it could 110 longer protect ! Unable to 
 be at rest it had stayed to contemplate the dreary legend of Julian's 
 gradual fall. It had seen his confidence in, his love for, the stranger 
 whom he thought his friend and his protector. In the pale and 
 delicate dawn, shrouded in the mystery of night and day, enclosed 
 between the clasping hands of the angels of darkness and of light, it 
 it had hung in the air above the solitary Julian, as he walked 
 homeward after his vigil by the lifeless body of Valentine. With 
 a passionate effort it had sought to draw him to a knowledge of 
 the truth that he might wake from the dream in which lay his 
 insecurity, at last his tragic danger. And faintly, even as the first
 
 "T//E LAST SITTING" 413 
 
 sunbeam it had dawned upon him, once as he met the lady of the 
 feathers, again as he bent his gaze upon the theatrical glories that 
 attended the apotheosis of Margaret. And it had flickered behind 
 the film of the tears in a woman's eyes, seeking to make itself known 
 through the beauty of the love that clung inexorably to the heart of 
 Cuckoo in the midst of the degradation and the corruption of her 
 fate. Cuckoo had given it a home. She was alone. It approached 
 her. She Avas an outcast. It stayed with her. She was beaten by 
 the thongs of a world that teems with Pharisees. It clung to her. 
 She had, through all her days and nights been put only to the 
 black uses of evil. It sought to use her only for good. And now at 
 last it drew strength and power from the soul of the lady of the 
 feathers. And the doctor knew that the secret of Cuckoo's grand 
 influence to succour lay in her completeness. Degraded, wretched, 
 soiled, ignorant, pent within the prison house of lust ytt she loved 
 completely. And because she loved completely the sad, wandering, 
 driven soul of Valentine chose her from all the world to help him in 
 the rescue of Julian. For she, like the widow, had given her all to 
 feed the poor. Her starvation had set her on high more than the 
 starvation and the mortification of Saints and hermits. For they 
 crucify the flesh for the good of their own souls. Cuckoo thought 
 ever and only of another. She had betrayed Jessie and touched the 
 stars. Now in her slumber, physical allegory of her abnegation of 
 self, she fought in this battle of the souls. 
 
 The flame above the head of Julian grew brighter. The dame of 
 Marr, striving with the fury of despair, flickered lower. 
 
 Dr. Levillier held his breath and prayed. Again he thought of 
 Rip. Would Julian, too, die rather than yield to the final grip of 
 evil ? Would he die fighting ? 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 A strange thin cry broke through the silence. The doctor saw 
 two flames float up together through the darkness. They passed 
 before the face of Cuckoo and were lost in the air above her. Two 
 happy ilaines ! 
 
 She stirred suddenly and murmured. 
 
 The thing that sat by the doctor sprang up. Light flashed through 
 the room. 
 
 As it flashed the doctor leaned towards Julian, who lay forward 
 with his arms stretched along the table. 
 
 He was dead. 
 
 Valentine the spirit, at least, that had usurped the body of 
 Valentine stood looking down upon Julian, dead, in silence. 
 
 Then it turned upon the doctor. The doctor stood up as one that 
 nerves Irimself to meet a great horror. 
 
 He watched the light fade out of the eyes of this horror, the
 
 414 FLAMES 
 
 expression slink from the features, the breath remove from the lips, 
 the pulses cease in the veins and arteries, until an image, some life- 
 less and staring idol, stood before him. 
 
 It swayed. It tottered. It fell, crumpling itself together like 
 things that return to dust. The flesh, formerly kept alive by the 
 spirit, now deserted finally by that which had dwelt within it and 
 sought to use it for destruction, went down to death. 
 
 Then the lady of the feathers awoke at last from her sleep. The 
 doctor bent over her and took her hands in his. It seemed to him 
 that she had won a great battle. He felt awestruck as he looked 
 into her eyes. He tried to speak to her, but no words came to him 
 except these, which he murmured at last below his breath : 
 
 " Your victory." 
 
 Cuckoo looked up at him. Her eyes were still lightly clouded with 
 sleep, but they were smiling, as if they had been gazing upon the 
 face of beauty. 
 
 For how long had Cuckoo slept ? Surely through all the length of 
 her life, through all the tears that she had shed, through all the sad 
 deeds that she had committed ! Now, at last, she woke. 
 
 Her slumber had been as the deep slumber of death. 
 
 And from death do we not awake to a new understanding and to 
 a new world ? 
 
 Printed l>y KALLANTYNE, HANSON &> Ct>; 
 London and Edinburgh
 
 THE MANXMAN 
 
 BY HALL CAINE 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times.' With the exception of The Scapegoat, this is unquestion- 
 ably the finest and most dramatic of Mr. Hall Caine's novels . . . The 
 Manxman goes very straight to the roots of human passion and emotion. It 
 is a remarkable book, throbbing with human interest.' 
 
 The Guardian. 'A story of exceptional power and thorough originality. 
 The greater portion of it is like a Greek tragic drama, in the intensity of its 
 interest, and the depth of its overshadowing gloom. . . . But this tragedy is 
 merely a telling background for a series of brilliant sketches of men and 
 manners, of old-world customs, and forgotten ways of speech which still 
 linger in the Isle of Man.' 
 
 The Standard. ' A singularly powerful and picturesque piece of work, 
 extraordinarily dramatic. . . . Taken altogether, The Manxman cannot fail 
 to enhance Mr. Hall Caine's reputation. It is a most powerful book.' 
 
 The Morning Post. 'If possible, Mr. Hall Caine's work, The Manx- 
 man, is more marked by passion, power, and brilliant local colouring than its 
 predecessors. ... It has a grandeur as well as strength, and the picturesque 
 features and customs of a delightful country are vividly painted. ' 
 
 The World. ' Over and above the absorbing interest of the story, which 
 never flags, the book is full of strength, of vivid character sketches, and 
 powerful word-painting, all told with a force and knowledge of local colour. ' 
 
 The Queen. ' The Manxman is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable 
 books of the century. It will be read and re-read, and take its place in the 
 literary inheritance of the English-speaking nations.' 
 
 The St James's Gazette. ' The Manxman is a contribution to litera- 
 ture, and the most fastidious critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness 
 of that deciduous trash which our publishers call fiction. ... It is not possible 
 to part from The Manxman with anything but a warm tribute of approval. 1 
 EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 The Christian World. ' There is a great fascination in being present, 
 as it were, at the birth of a classic ; and a classic undoubtedly The Manxman 
 is ... He who reads The Manxman feels that he is reading a book which 
 will be read and re-read by very many thousands with human tears and 
 human laughter.' 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in the 'Sun.' 'This is a very fine and great 
 story one of the finest and greatest of our time. . . . Mr. Hall Caine reaches 
 heights which are attained only by the greatest masters of fiction. ... I think 
 of the great French writer, Stendhal, at the same moment as the great 
 English writer. ... In short, you feel what Mr. Howells said of Tolstoi, 
 "This is not like life ; it is life." ... He belongs to that small minority of 
 the Great Elect of Literature.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' It is not too much to say that it is the most powerful 
 story that has been written in the present generation. . . . The love of Pete, 
 his simple-mindedness, his sufferings when he has lost Kate, are painted with 
 a master-hand. ... It is a work of genius.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STKSBT, W.C, 
 
 A
 
 THE BONDMAN 
 
 BY HALL CAINE 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author. 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone. ' The Bondman is a work of which I recognise the 
 freshness, vigour, and sustained interest, no less than its integrity of aim. ' 
 
 The Times. ' It is impossible to deny originality and rude power to this 
 saga, impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal 
 grandeur of its leading characters. ' 
 
 The Academy. 'The language of The Bondman is full of nervous, 
 graphic, and poetical English ; its interest never flags, and its situations and 
 descriptions are magnificent. It is a splendid novel.' 
 
 The Speaker. 'This is the best book that Mr. Hall Caine has yet 
 written, and it reaches a level to which fiction very rarely attains. . . . We 
 are, in fact, so loth to let such good work be degraded by the title of 
 "novel" that we are almost tempted to consider its claim to rank as a prose 
 epic.' 
 
 The Scotsman. 'Mr. Hall Caine has in this work placed himself 
 beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day. He has produced a story 
 which, for the ingenuity of its plot, for its literary excellence, for its delinea- 
 tions of human passions, and for its intensely powerful dramatic scenes, is 
 distinctly ahead of all the fictional literature of our time, and fit to rank with 
 the most powerful fictional writing of the past century.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'Crowded with incidents.' 
 
 The Observer. 'Many of the descriptions are picturesque and power- 
 ful. ... As fine in their way as anything in modern literature.' 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. 'A story which will be read, not by his con- 
 temporaries alone, but by later generations, so long as its chief features high 
 emotion, deep passion, exquisite poetry, and true pathos have power to 
 delight and to touch the heart. ' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' It is the product of a strenuous and sustained 
 imaginative effort far beyond the power of any every-day story-teller.' 
 
 The Scots Observer. ' In none of his previous works has he approached 
 the splendour of idealism which flows through The Bondman. ' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. 'A remarkable story, painted with vigour 
 and brilliant effect.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. 'A striking and highly dramatic piece of 
 fiction.' 
 
 The Literary World. 'The book abounds in pages of great force and 
 beauty, and there is a touch of almost Homeric power in its massive and 
 grand simplicity.' 
 
 The Liverpool Post. 'Graphic, dramatic, pathetic, heroic, full of 
 detail, crowded with incident and inspired by a noble purpose.' 
 
 The Yorkshire Post. ' A book of lasting interest.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE SCAPEGOAT 
 
 BY HALL CAINE 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone writes: 'I congratulate you upon The Scapegoat as a work 
 of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of Israel. ' 
 
 Mr. Walter Besant, in 'The Author.' 'Nearly every year there stands 
 out a head and shoulders above its companions one work which promises to 
 make the year memorable. This year a promise of lasting vitality is distinctly 
 made by Mr. Hall Caine's Scapegoat. It is a great book, great in conception 
 and in execution ; a strong book, strong in situation and in character ; and 
 a human book, human in its pathos, its terror, and its passion. ' 
 
 The Times. 'In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all the Author's 
 previous efforts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which 
 any romancist in the world might be proud to have created, and the tale of 
 her parents' despair and hopes, and of her own development, confers upon 
 The Scapegoat a distinction which is matchless of its kind.' 
 
 The Guardian. 'Mr. Hall Caine is undoubtedly master of a style which 
 is peculiarly his own. He is in a way a Rembrandt among novelists. His 
 figures, striking and powerful rather than beautiful, stand out, with the 
 ruggedness of their features developed and accentuated, from a background 
 of the deepest gloom. . . . Every sentence contains a thought, and every word 
 of it is balanced and arranged to accumulate the intensity of its force.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. ' It is a delightful story to read.' 
 
 The Academy. ' Israel ben Oliel is the third of a series of the most 
 profoundly conceived characters in modern fiction.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. 'This is the best novel which Mr. Caine has 
 yet produced.' 
 
 The Literary World. 'The lifelike renderings of the varied situations, 
 the gradual changes in a noble character, hardened and lowered by the 
 world's cruel usage, and returning at last to its original grandeur, can only 
 be fully appreciated by a perusal of the book as a whole.' 
 
 The Anti-Jacobin. ' It is, in truth, a romance of fine poetic quality. 
 Israel Ben Oliel, the central figure of the tale, is sculptured rather than drawn : 
 a character of grand outline. A nobler piece of prose than the death of 
 Ruth we have seldom met with.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' The new story will rank with Mr. Hall Caine's previous 
 productions. Nay, it will in some respects rank above them. It will take 
 its place by the side of the Hebrew histories in the Apocrypha. It is nobly 
 and manfully written. It stirs the blood and kindles the imagination.' 
 
 The Scottish Leader. ' The Scapegoat is a masterpiece.' 
 
 Truth. ' Mr. Hall Caine has been winning his way slowly, but surely, 
 and securely, I think also, to fame. You must by all means read his 
 absorbing Moorish romance, The Scapegoat.' 
 
 The Jewish World. 'Only one who had studied Moses could have 
 drawn that grand portrait of Israel ben Oliel.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDroRD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE HEAVENLY TWINS 
 
 BY SARAH GRAND 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'It is so full of interest, and the characters are so 
 eccentrically humorous yet true, that one feels inclined to pardon all its 
 faults, and give oneself up to unreserved enjoyment of it. ... The twins 
 Angelica and Diavolo, young barbarians, utterly devoid of all respect, con- 
 ventionality, or decency, are among the most delightful and amusing children 
 in fiction.' 
 
 The Academy. 'The adventures of Diavolo and Angelica the 
 "heavenly twins are delightfully funny. No more original children were 
 ever put into a book. Their audacity, unmanageableness, and genius for 
 mischief in none of which qualities, as they are here shown, is there any 
 taint of vice are refreshing ; and it is impossible not to follow, with very 
 keen interest, the progress of these youngsters.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. ' Everybody ought to read it, for it is an inex- 
 haustible source of refreshing and highly stimulating entertainment.' 
 
 The World. 'There is much powerful and some beautiful writing in 
 this strange book. ' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'Sarah Grand . . . has put enough obser- 
 vation, humour, and thought into this book to furnish forth half-a-dozen 
 ordinary novels.' 
 
 Punch. 'The Twins themselves are a creation : the epithet "Heavenly" 
 for these two mischievous little fiends is admirable.' 
 
 The Queen. 'There is a touch of real genius in The Heavenly Twins.' 
 
 The Guardian. ' Exceptionally brilliant in dialogue, and dealing with 
 modern society life, this book has a purpose to draw out and emancipate 
 women.' 
 
 The Lady. 'Apart from its more serious interest, the book should take 
 high rank on its literary merits alone. Its pages are brimful of good things, 
 and more than one passage, notably the episode of "The Boy and the 
 Tenor," is a poem complete in itself, and worthy of separate publication.' 
 
 The Manchester Examiner. 'As surely as Tea of the <? Urbervilles 
 swept all before it last year, so surely has Sarah Grand's Heavenly Twins 
 provoked the greatest attention and comment this season. It is a most 
 daringly original work. . . . Sarah Grand is a notable Woman's Righter, 
 but her book is the one asked for at Mudie's, suburban, and seaside libraries, 
 and discussed at every hotel table in the kingdom. The episode of the 
 " Tenor and the Boy " is of rare beauty, and is singularly delicate and at the 
 tame time un-English in treatment.' 
 
 The New York Critic. 'It is written in an epigrammatic style, and, 
 besides its cleverness, has the great charm of freshness, enthusiasm, and 
 poetic feeling. ' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 IDEALA 
 
 A STUDY FROM LIFE 
 BY SARAH GRAND 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Morning Post. 'Sarah Grand's Ideala. ... A clever book in 
 itself, is especially interesting when read in the light of her later works. 
 Standing alone, it is remarkable as the outcome of an earnest mind seeking 
 in good faith the solution of a difficult and ever present problem. . . . Ideala 
 is original and somewhat daring. . . . The story is in many ways delightful 
 and thought-suggesting. ' 
 
 The Literary World. 'When Sarah Grand came before the public in 
 1888 with Ideala, she consciously and firmly laid her finger on one of the 
 keynotes of the age. . . . We welcome an edition that will place this minute 
 and careful study of an interesting question within reach of a wider circle of 
 readers.' 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. ' The book is a wonderful one an evangel 
 for the fair sex, and at once an inspiration and a comforting companion, to 
 which thoughtful womanhood will recur again and again. ' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'Ideala has attained the honour of a fifth 
 edition. . . . The stir created by The Heavenly Twins, the more recent 
 work by the same authoress, Madame Sarah Grand, would justify this step. 
 fdeala can, however, stand on its own merits.' 
 
 The Yorkshire Post. 'As a psychological study the book cannot fail to 
 be of interest to many readers. ' 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette. ' Madame Sarah Grand thoroughly deserves 
 her success. Ideala, the heroine, is a splendid conception, and her opinions 
 are noble. . . . The book is not one to be forgotten.' 
 
 The Woman's Herald. 'One naturally wishes to Know something of 
 the woman for whose sake Lord Downe remained a bachelor. It must be 
 confessed that at first Ideala is a little disappointing. She is strikingly 
 original. ... As the story advances one forgets these peculiarities, and can 
 find little but sympathy and admiration for the many noble qualities of a 
 very complex character.' 
 
 The Englishman. 'Madame Sarah Grand's work is far from being a 
 common work. Ideala is a clever young woman of great capabilities and 
 noble purposes. . . . The orginality of the book does not lie in the plot, but 
 in the authoress's power to see and to describe the finer shades of a character 
 which is erratic and impetuous, but above all things truly womanly.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINLMANN 21 BEDFORD STREET, W C.
 
 OUR MANIFOLD NATURE 
 
 BY SARAH GRAND 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Daily Telegraph.' Six stories by the gifted writer who still chooses 
 to be known to the public at large by the pseudonym of "Sarah Grand." 
 In regard to them it is sufficient to say that they display all the qualities, 
 stylistic, humorous, and pathetic, that have placed the author of Ideala and 
 The Heavenly Twins in the very front rank of contemporary novelists. ' 
 
 The Globe. ' Brief studies of character, sympathetic, and suggesting that 
 ' ' Sarah Grand " can do something more than startle by her unconventionality 
 and boldness.' 
 
 The Ladies' Pictorial. 'If the volume does not achieve even greater 
 popularity than Sarah Grand's former works, it will be a proof that fashion, 
 and not intrinsic merit, has a great deal to do with the success of a book.' 
 
 The Pal! Mall Gazette. 'All are eminently entertaining.' 
 
 The Spectator. ' Insight into, and general sympathy with widely 
 differing phases of humanity, coupled with power to reproduce what is seen, 
 with vivid distinct strokes, that rivet the attention, are qualifications foi 
 work of the kind contained in Our Manifold Nature which Sarah Grand 
 evidently possesses in a high degree. . . . All these studies, male and female 
 alike, are marked by humour, pathos, fidelity to life, and power to recognise 
 in human nature the frequent recurrence of some apparently incongruous 
 and remote trait, which, when at last it becomes visible, helps to a com- 
 prehension of what might otherwise be inexplicable." 
 
 The Speaker. 'In Our Manifold Nature Sarah Grand is seen at her 
 best. How good that is can only be known by those who read for them- 
 selves this admirable little volume. In freshness of conception and originality 
 of treatment these stories are delightful, full of force and piquancy, whilst 
 the studies of character are carried out with equal firmness and delicacy.' 
 
 The Guardian. ' Our Manifold Nature is a clever book. Sarah Grand 
 has the power of touching common things, which, if it fails to make them 
 " rise to touch the spheres," renders them exceedingly interesting." 
 
 The Morning Post ' Unstinted praise is deserved by the Irish story, 
 "Boomellen," a tale remarkable both for power and pathos." 
 
 The Court Journal. Our Manifold Nature is simply full of good things, 
 and it is essentially a book to buy as well as to read.' 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette. ' Mrs. Grand has genuine power. She 
 analyses keenly. . . . Her humour is good, and her delineation of character 
 one of her strongest points. The book is one to be read, studied, and acted 
 upon." 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINBMANN, 21 BEDFORD STRKKT, W.C.
 
 THE EBB-TIDE 
 
 BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 AND 
 
 LLOYD OSBOURNE 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' This is a novel of sensation. But the episodes and 
 incidents, although thrilling enough, are consistently subordinated to sensa- 
 tionalism of character. . . . There is just enough of the coral reef and the 
 palm groves, of cerulean sky and pellucid water, to indicate rather than to 
 present the local colouring. Yet when he dashes in a sketch it is done to 
 perfection. . . . We see the scene vividly unrolled before us. ' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. 'The story is full of strong scenes, depicted 
 with a somewhat lavish use of violet pigments, such as, perhaps, the stirring 
 situations demand. Here and there, however, are purple patches, in which 
 Mr. Stevenson shows all his cunning literary art the description of the 
 coral island, for instance. . . . Some intensely graphic and dramatic pages 
 delineate the struggle which causes, and a final scene . . . concludes this 
 strange fragment from the wild life of the South Sea.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. ' The book takes your imagination and 
 attention captive from the first chapter nay, from the first paragraph and it 
 does not set them free till the last word has been read.' 
 
 The Standard. ' Mr. Stevenson gives such vitality to his characters, 
 and so clear an outlook upon the strange quarter of the world to which he 
 takes us, that when we reach the end of the story, we come back to civilisa- 
 tion with a start of surprise, and a moment's difficulty in realising that we 
 have not been actually away from it.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' We are swept along without a pause on the 
 current of the animated and vigorous narrative. Each incident and adven- 
 ture is told with that incomparable keenness of vision which is Mr. Stevenson's 
 greatest charm as a story-teller.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' It is brilliantly invented, and it is not less 
 brilliantly told. There is not a dull sentence in the whole run of it. And 
 the style is fresh, alert, full of surprises in fact, is very good latter-day 
 Stevenson indeed.' 
 
 The World. 'It is amazingly clever, full of that extraordinary know- 
 ledge of human nature which makes certain creations of Mr. Stevenson's pen 
 far more real to us than persons we have met in the flesh. Grisly the book 
 undoubtedly is, with a strength and a vigour of description hardly to be 
 matched in the language. . . . But it is just because the book is so extra- 
 ordinarily good that it ought to be better, ought to be more of a serious whole 
 than a mere brilliant display of fireworks, though each firework display has 
 more genius in it than is to be found in ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 books supposed to contain that rare quality.' 
 
 The Morning Post. ' Boldly conceived, probing some of the darkest 
 depths of the human soul, the tale has a vigour and breadth of touch which 
 have been surpassed in none of Mr. Stevenson's previous works. . . . We 
 do not, of course, know how much Mr. Osbourne has contributed to the tale, 
 but there is no chapter in it which any author need be unwilling to acknow- 
 ledge, or which is wanting in vivid interest.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE MASTER 
 
 BY I. ZANGWILL 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 Morning Post ' The merits of the book are great. Its range of observa- 
 tion is wide ; its sketches of character are frequently admirably drawn. . . . 
 It is extremely refreshing, after a surfeit of recent fiction of the prevalent type, 
 to welcome a really clever work by a writer who is certainly not hampered 
 by conventional prejudice.' 
 
 The Queen. ' It is impossible to deny the greatness of a book like The 
 Master, a veritable human document, in which the characters do exactly as 
 they would in life. ... I venture to say that Matt himself is one of the most 
 striking and original characters in our fiction, and I have not the least doubt 
 that The Master will always be reckoned one of our classics.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' It is a powerful and masterly piece of work. . . 
 Quite the best novel of the year.' 
 
 Literary World. ' In The Master, Mr. Zangwill has eclipsed all his 
 previous work. This strong and striking story of patience and passion, of 
 sorrow and success, of art, ambition, and vain gauds, is genuinely powerful 
 in its tragedy, and picturesque in its completeness. . . . The work, thoroughly 
 wholesome in tone, is of sterling merit, and strikes a truly tragic chord, which 
 leaves a deep impression upon the mind.' 
 
 Jewish World. ' For a novel to be a work that shall live, and not merely 
 please the passing taste of a section of the public, it must palpitate with the 
 truth of human experience and human feeling. . . . Such a novel is The 
 Master, Mr. Zangwill's latest, and assuredly one of his best works. Interest 
 in the story is sustained from beginning to end. From the first page to the 
 last we get a series of vivid pictures that make us feel, as well as understand, 
 not only the personality and environment of his characters, but the motives 
 that compel, like fate, their words and actions.' 
 
 Leeds Mercury. ' The Master is impassioned and powerful, and, in our 
 judgment, is vastly superior to Children of the Ghetto. From the first page to 
 the last the book is quick with life, and not less quick surprises. . . . The 
 impression which the book leaves is deep and distinct, and the power, from 
 start to finish, of such a delineation of life is unmistakable.' 
 
 Liverpool Mercury. 'The accomplished author of Children of the Ghetto 
 has given us in The Master a book written with marvellous skill, and charac- 
 terised by vivid imaginative power. It is not a volume to be taken up and 
 despatched in a leisure evening, but one to be studied and enjoyed in many 
 an hour of quiet, or to be read aloud in the family circle, when the toils of 
 the day have given place to retirement and peace.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STRKBT, W.C
 
 CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO 
 
 A Study of a Peculiar People 
 
 BY I. ZANGWILL 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' From whatever point of view we regard it, it is a remark- 
 able book.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'The chief interest of the book lies in the wonderful 
 description of the Whitechapel Jews. The vividness and force with which 
 Mr. Zangwill brings before us the strange and uncouth characters with which 
 he has peopled his book are truly admirable. . . . Admirers of Mr. Zangwill's 
 fecund wit will not fail to find flashes of it in these pages.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' Altogether we are not aware of any such minute, 
 graphic, and seemingly faithful picture of the Israel of nineteenth century 
 London. . . . The book has taken hold of us.' 
 
 The Spectator. ' Esther Ansell, Raphael Leon, Mrs. Henry Goldsmith, 
 Reb Shemuel, and the rest, are living creations.' 
 
 The Speaker. ' A strong and remarkable book.' 
 
 The National Observer. 'To ignore this book is not to know the East 
 End Jew.' 
 
 The Guardian. 'A novel such as only our own day could produce. A 
 masterly study of a complicated psychological problem in which every factor 
 is handled with such astonishing dexterity and intelligence that again and 
 again we are tempted to think a really good book has come into our hands.' 
 
 The Graphic. 'Absolutely fascinating. Teaches how closely akin are 
 laughter and tears. ' 
 
 Black and White. 'A moving panorama of Jewish life, full of truth, full 
 of sympathy, vivid in the setting forth, and occasionally most brilliant. Such 
 a book as this has the germs of a dozen novels. A book to read, to keep, to 
 ponder over, to remember.' 
 
 W. Archer in 'The World.' 'The most powerful and fascinating book 
 I have read for many a long day. ' 
 
 Land and Water. 'The most wonderful multi-coloured and brilliant 
 description. Dickens has never drawn characters of more abiding indi- 
 viduality. An exceeding beautiful chapter is the honeymoon of the Hyams. 
 Charles Kingsley in one of his books makes for something of the same sort. 
 But his idea is not half so tender and faithful, nor his handling anything like 
 so delicate and natural.' 
 
 Andrew Lang in 'Longman's Magazine.' 'Almost every kind of 
 reader will find Children of the Ghetto interesting.' 
 
 T. P. O'Connor in 'The Weekly Sun.' 'Apart altogether from its 
 great artistic merits, from its clear portraits, its subtle and skilful analysis of 
 character, its pathos and its humour, this book has, in my mind, an immense 
 interest as a record of a generation that has passed and of struggles that are 
 yet going on.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. 'The best Jewish novel ever written.' 
 
 LONDON; WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C. 
 
 ' A 2
 
 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS 
 
 Grotesques and Fantasies 
 BY I. ZANGWILL 
 
 With over Ninety Illustrations by PHIL MAY and Others 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'Several of Mr. Zangwill's contemporary Ghetto char- 
 acters have already become almost classical ; but in The King of Schnorrers 
 he goes back to the Jewish community of the eighteenth century for the 
 hero of his principal story ; and he is indeed a stupendous hero . . . anyhow, 
 he is well named the king of beggars. The i'lustrations, by Phil May, add 
 greatly to the attraction of the book. ' 
 
 The Saturday Review. 'Mr. Zangwill has created a new figure in 
 fiction, and a new type of humour. The entire series of adventures is 
 triumphant progress. . . . Humour of a rich and active character pervades 
 the delightful history of Manasses. Mr. Zangwill's book is altogether very 
 good reading. It is also very cleverly illustrated by Phil May and other 
 artists.' 
 
 The Literary World. 'Of Mr. Zangwill's versatility there is ample 
 proof in this new volume of stories. . . . More noticeable and welcome to 
 us, as well as more characteristic of the author, are the fresh additions he has 
 made to his long series of studies of Jewish life.' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. ' The King of Schnorrers is a very fascinating 
 story. Mr. Zangwill returns to the Ghetto, and gives us a quaint old-world 
 picture as a most appropriate setting for his picturesque hero, the beggar- 
 king. . . . Good as the story of the arch-schnorrer is, there is perhaps an 
 even better "Yiddish" tale in this book. This is "Flutter-Duck." . . . 
 Let us call attention to the excellence, as mere realistic vivid description, of 
 the picture of the room and atmosphere and conditions in which Flutter-Duck 
 and her circle dwelt ; there is something of Dickens in this.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph.' The King of Schnorrers, like Children of the 
 Ghetto, depicts the habits and characteristics of Israel in London with pains- 
 taking elaborateness and apparent verisimilitude. The King of Schnorrers is 
 a character-sketch which deals with the manners and customs of native and 
 foreign Jews as they "lived and had their being" in the London of a century 
 and a quarter ago.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' It is a beautiful story. The King of Schnorrers 
 is that great rarity an entirely new thing, that is as good as it is new.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' On the whole, the book does justice to Mr. 
 Zangwill's rapidly-growing reputation, and the character of Manasseh ought 
 to live.' 
 
 The World. * The exuberant and even occasionally overpowering 
 humour of Mr. Zangwill is at his highest mark in his new volume, Tht 
 King tf Schnorrers.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STRBET, W.C.
 
 THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER 
 
 BY I. ZANGWILL AND LOUIS COWEN 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Cambridge (University) Review. ' That the book will have 
 readers in a future generation we do not doubt, for there is much in it that is 
 of lasting merit.' 
 
 The Graphic. 'It might be worth the while of some industrious and 
 capable person with plenty of leisure to reproduce in a volume of reasonable 
 size the epigrams and other good things witty and serious which The Premier 
 and the Painter contains. There are plenty of them, and many are worth 
 noting and remembering.' 
 
 St. James's Gazette. ' The satire hits all round with much impartiality ; 
 while one striking situation succeeds another till the reader is altogether 
 dazzled. The story is full of life and "go" and brightness, and will well 
 repay perusal.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. ' In spite of its close print and its five hundred pages 
 The Premier and the Painter is not very difficult to read. To speak of it, 
 however, is difficult. It is the sort of book that demands yet defies quotation 
 for one thing ; and for another it is the sort of book the description of which 
 as "very clever" is at once inevitable and inadequate. In some ways it is 
 original enough to be a law unto itself, and withal as attractive in its 
 whimsical, wrong-headed way, as at times it is tantalising, bewildering, even 
 tedious. The theme is politics and politicians, and the treatment, while for 
 the most part satirical and prosaic, is often touched with sentiment, and 
 sometimes even with a fantastic kind of poetry. The several episodes of the 
 story are wildly fanciful in themselves and are clumsily connected ; but the 
 streak of humorous cynicism which shows through all of them is both curious 
 and pleasing. Again, it has to be claimed for the author that as is shown 
 to admiration by his presentation of the excellent Mrs. Dawe and her cook- 
 shop he is capable, when he pleases, of insight and observation of a high 
 order, and therewith of a masterly sobriety of tone. But he cannot be 
 depended upon for the length of a single page ; he seeks his effects and his 
 material when and where he pleases. In some respects his method is not, 
 perhaps, altogether unlike Lord Beaconsfield's. To our thinking, however, 
 he is strong enough to go alone, and to go far.' 
 
 The World. 'Undeniably clever, though with a somewhat mixed and 
 eccentric cleverness.' 
 
 The Morning Post 'The story is described as a "fantastic romance," 
 and, indeed, fantasy reigns supreme from the first to the last of its pages. It 
 relates the history of our time with humour and well-aimed sarcasm. All the 
 most prominent characters of the day, whether political or otherwise, come in 
 for notice. The identity of the leading politicians is but thinly veiled, while 
 many celebrities appear in propria persona. Both the "Premier" and 
 "Painter" now and again find themselves in the most critical situations. 
 Certainly this is not a story that he who runs may read, but it is cleverly 
 original, and often lightened by bright flashes of wit.' 
 
 LOMDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BEDFORD STKBBT, W.C.
 
 THE COUNTESS RADNA 
 
 BY W. E. NORRIS 
 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' He is a remarkably even writer. And this novel is almost 
 as good a medium as any other for studying the delicacy and dexterity of 
 his workmanship. 1 
 
 The National Observer. 'Interesting and well written, as all Mr. 
 Norris's stories are. ' 
 
 The Morning Post. 'The fidelity of his portraiture is remarkable, and 
 it has rarely appeared to so much advantage as in this brilliant novel.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. ' The Countess Radna, which its author not 
 unjustly describes as " an unpretending tale," avoids, by the grace of its style 
 and the pleasant accuracy of its characterisation, any suspicion of boredom.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' The Countess Radna contains many of the qualities 
 that make a story by this writer welcome to the critic. It is caustic in style, 
 the character drawing is clear, the talk natural ; the pages are strewn with 
 good things worth quoting.' 
 
 The Speaker. 'In style, skill in construction, and general "go," it is 
 worth a dozen ordinary novels. ' 
 
 The Academy. 'As a whole, the book is decidedly well written, while 
 it is undeniably interesting. It is bright and wholesome : the work in fact 
 of a gentleman and a man who knows the world about which he writes.' 
 
 Black and White. 'The novel, like all Mr. Norris's work is an ex- 
 cessively clever piece of work, and the author never for a moment allows his 
 grasp of his plot and his characters to slacken.' 
 
 The Gentlewoman. 'Mr. Norris is a practised hand at his craft. He 
 can write bright dialogue and clear English, too. 
 
 The Literary World. 'His last novel, The Countess Radna, is an ex 
 cellent sample of his style. The plot is simple enough. But the story 
 holds the attention and insists upon being read ; and it is scarcely possible 
 to say anything more favourable of a work of fiction.' 
 
 The Scotsman. 'The story, in which there is more than a spice of 
 modern life romance, is an excellent study of the problem of mixed marriage. 
 The book is one of good healthy reading, and reveals a fine broad view of life 
 and human nature.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'This is an unusually fresh and well-written 
 story. The tone is thoroughly healthy ; and Mr. Norris, without being in 
 the least old-fashioned, manages to get along without the aid of pessimism, 
 psychology, naturalism, or what is known as frank treatment of the relations 
 between the sexes.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'Mr. Norris writes throughout with much 
 liveliness and force, saying now and then something that is worth remember- 
 ing. And he sketches his minor characters with a firm touch.' 
 
 LONDON -. WILLIAM HBINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD ST&BBI, W,C
 
 A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK 
 
 BY W. E. NORRIS 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Speaker. 'A Victim of Good Luck is one of those breezy stories of 
 his in which the reader finds himself moving in good society, among men 
 or women who are neither better nor worse than average humanity, but who 
 always show good manners and good breeding. . . . Suffice it to say that the 
 story is as readable as any we have yet had from the same pen.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. 'A Victim of Good Luck is one of the brightest 
 novels of the year, which cannot but enhance its gifted author's well-deserved 
 fame and popularity.' 
 
 The World. 'Here is Mr. Norris in his best form again, giving us an 
 impossible story with such imperturbable composure, such quiet humour, 
 easy polish, and irresistible persuasiveness, that he makes us read A Victim 
 of Good Luck right through with eager interest and unflagging amusement 
 without being aware, until we regretfully reach the end, that it is just a 
 farcical comedy in two delightful volumes.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. 'It has not a dull page from first to last. Any 
 one with normal health and taste can read a book like this with real pleasure. ' 
 
 The Globe. 'Mr. W. E. Norris is a writer who always keeps us on 
 good terms with ourselves. We can pick up or lay down his books at will, 
 but they are so pleasant in style and equable in tone that we do not usually 
 lay them down till we have mastered them ; A Victim of Good Luck is a 
 more agreeable novel than most of this author's.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'A Victim of Good Luck is in Mr. Norris's 
 best vein, which means that it is urbane, delicate, lively, and flavoured 
 with a high quality of refined humour. Altogether a most refreshing book, 
 and we take it as a pleasant reminder that Mr. Norris is still very near 
 his highwater mark. ' 
 
 The Spectator. 'Mr. Norris displays to the full his general command of 
 narrative expedients which are at once happily invented and yet quite natural 
 which seem to belong to their place in the book, just as a keystone belongs 
 to its place in the arch. . . . The brightest and cleverest book which Mr. 
 Norris has given us since he wrote The Rogue. ' 
 
 The Saturday Review. ' Novels which are neither dull, unwholesome, 
 morbid, nor disagreeable, are so rare in these days, that A Victim of Good 
 Luck . . . ought to find a place in a book-box filled for the most part with 
 light literature. . . . We think it will increase the reputation of an already 
 very popular author.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' A Victim of Good Luck, like others of this author's 
 books, depends little on incident and much on the conception and drawing of 
 character, on clever yet natural conversation, and on the working out, with 
 masterly ease, of a novel problem of right and inclination.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE POTTER'S THUMB 
 
 BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Pall Mall Budget' For this week the only novel worth mentioning 
 is Mrs. Steel's The Potter's Thumb. Her admirable From the Five Rivers, 
 since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared with Mr. 
 Kipling's stories. In The Potter's Thumb the charm which came from the 
 freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is convincing, and 
 some of them excellent to a degree. ' 
 
 The Globe. 'This is a brilliant story a story that fascinates, tingling 
 with life, steeped in sympathy with all that is best and saddest.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' The impression left upon one after reading 
 The Potter's Thumb is that a new literary artist, of very great and unusual 
 gifts, has arisen. ... In short, Mrs. Steel must be congratulated upon having 
 achieved a very genuine and amply deserved success.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'A clever story which, in many respects, brings 
 India very near to its readers. The novel is certainly one interesting alike to 
 the Anglo-Indian and to those untravelled travellers who make their only 
 voyages in novelists' romantic company.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' It is a capital story, full of variety and movement, which 
 brings with great vividness before the reader one of the phases of Anglo- 
 Indian life. Mrs. Steel writes forcibly and sympathetically, and much of the 
 charm of the picture which she draws lies in the force with which she brings 
 out the contrast between the Asiatic and European world. The Potters 
 Thumb is very good reading, with its mingling of the tragedy and comedy 
 of life. Its evil woman par excellence ... is a finished study. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'A very powerful and tragic story. Mrs. 
 Steel gives us again, but with greater elaboration than before, one of those 
 strong, vivid, and subtle pictures of Indian life which we have learnt to expect 
 from her. To a reader who has not been in India her books seem to get 
 deeper below the native crust, and to have more of the instinct for the Oriental 
 than almost anything that has been written in this time.' 
 
 The Leeds Mercury. ' The Potter's Thumb is a powerful story of the 
 mystical kind, and one which makes an instant appeal to the imagination of 
 the reader. . . . There is an intensity of vision in this story which is as re- 
 markable as it is rare, and the book, in its vivid and fascinating revelations of 
 life, and some of its limitations, is at once brilliant and, in the deepest and 
 therefore least demonstrative sense, impassioned. ' 
 
 The National Observer. 'A romance of East and West, in which the 
 glamour, intrigue, and superstition of India are cunningly interwoven and 
 artfully contrasted with the bright and changeable aspects of modern European 
 society. " Love stories," as Mr. Andrew Lang once observed, "are best done 
 by women " ; and Mrs. Steel's treatment of Rose Tweedie's love affair with 
 Lewis Gordon is a brilliant instance in point. So sane and delightful an 
 episode is rare in fiction now-a-days.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BHDFORD STREET, W.C,
 
 FROM THE FIVE RIVERS 
 
 Bv FLORA ANNIE STEEL 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. 'Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society 
 would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently 
 remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the "dumb millions" ol 
 India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. 
 They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. Mrs. Steel has 
 evidently been brought into close contact with the domestic life of all classes, 
 Hindu and Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their 
 customs and superstitions. . . . Mrs. Steel's book is of exceptional merit 
 and freshness.' 
 
 Vanity Fair. ' Stories of the Punjaub evidently the work of one who 
 has an intimate knowledge of, and a kindly sympathy for, its people. It is 
 to be hoped that this is not the last book of Indian stories that Mrs. Steel 
 will give us. ' 
 
 The Spectator. 'Merit, graphic force, and excellent local colouring are 
 conspicuous in Mrs. Steel's From the Five Rivers, and the short stories of which 
 the volume is composed are evidently the work of a lady who knows what 
 she is writing about.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' This is a collection of sketches of Hindu life, full 
 for the most part of brilliant colouring and cleverly wrought in dialect. The 
 writer evidently knows her subject, and she writes about it with unusual 
 skill.' 
 
 The North British Daily Mail. 'In at least two of the sketches in Mrs. 
 Steel's book we have a thoroyghly descriptive delineation of life in Indian, or 
 rather, Hindoo, villages. " Ganesh Chunel " is little short of a masterpiece, 
 and the same might be said of " Shah Sujah's Mouse." In both we are made 
 the spectator of the conditions of existence in rural India. The stories are 
 told with an art that conceals the art of story-telling.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'They possess this great merit, that they reflect the 
 habits, modes of life, and ideas of the middle and lower classes of the popula- 
 tion of Northern India better than do systematic and more pretentious works. 1 
 
 The Leeds Mercury. ' By no means a book to neglect. . . . It is written 
 with brains. . . . Mrs. Steel understands the life which she describes, and she 
 has sufficient literary art to describe it uncommonly well. These short 
 stories of Indian life are, in fact, quite above the average of stories long or 
 short. . . . There is originality, insight, sympathy, and a certain dramatic 
 instinct in the portrayal of character about the book." 
 
 The Globe. ' She puts before us the natives of our Empire in the East as 
 they live and more and speak, with their pitiful superstitions, their strange 
 fancies, their melancholy ignorance of what poses with us for knowledge and 
 civilisation, their doubt of the new ways, the new laws, the new people. 
 " Shah Sujah's Mouse," the gem of the collection a touching tale of 
 unreasoning fidelity towards an English " Sinny Baba" is a tiny bit of 
 perfect writing." 
 
 LONDON* WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BBDFORD STREET, W.C
 
 THE LAST SENTENCE 
 
 BY MAXWELL GRAY 
 
 Author of ' The Silence of Dean Maitland, 1 etc. 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Standard . ' The Last Sentence is a remarkable story ; it abounds 
 with dramatic situations, the interest never for a moment flags, and the 
 characters are well drawn and consistent.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. 'There is a great deal as well as a great variety 
 of incident in the story, and more than twenty years are apportioned to it ; but 
 it never seems over-crowded, nor has it the appearance of several stories rolled 
 into one. The Last Sentence is a remarkable novel, and the more so because 
 its strong situations are produced without recourse to the grosser forms of 
 immorality. ' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. ' One of the most powerful and adroitly-worked- 
 out plots embodied in any modern work of fiction runs through The Last 
 Sentence. . . . This terrible tale of retribution is told with well -sustained force 
 and picturesqueness, and abounds in light as well as shade.' 
 
 The Morning Post. 'Maxwell Gray has the advantage of manner that is 
 both cultured and picturesque, and while avoiding even the appearance of the 
 melodramatic, makes coming events cast a shadow before them so as to excite 
 and entertain expectation. ... It required the imagination of an artist to 
 select the kind of Nemesis which finally overtakes this successful evil-doer, and 
 which affords an affecting climax to a rather fascinating tale.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' This is a very strong story. ... It contains much 
 rich colouring, some striking situations, and plenty of thoroughly living 
 characters. The interest is of a varied kind, .and, though the hero is an 
 aristocrat, the pictures of human life are by no means confined to the upper 
 circles. ' 
 
 The Leeds Mercury. 'It shows a command of the resources of the 
 novelist's art which is by no means common, and it has other qualities which 
 lift it far above the average level of the circulating library. It is written with 
 a literary grace and a moral insight which are seldom at fault, and from first 
 to last it is pervaded with deep human interest. ' 
 
 The Queen. 'Maxwell Gray has a certain charm and delicacy of style. 
 She has mastered the subtleties of a particular type of weak character until 
 she may be almost called its prophet.' 
 
 The Lady's Pictorial. 'The book is a clever and powerful one. . . . 
 Cynthia Marlowe will live in our memories as a sweet and noble woman ; one 
 of whom it is a pleasure to think of beside some of the 'emancipated ' heroines 
 o common in the fiction of the day.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 'The author of The Silence of Dean Maitland 
 gives to the reading world another sound and magnificent work. ... In both 
 these works Maxwell Gray has taken " Nemesis " as his grand motif. In each 
 work there sits behind the hero that atra cura which poisons the wholesome 
 draught of human joy. In each is present the corroding blight that comes 
 of evil done and not discovered.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BBDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE NAULAHKA 
 
 A Tale of West and East 
 
 BY RUDYARD KIPLING AND WOLCOTT BALESTIER 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his 
 readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East ; and in this book 
 (if we except the description of Tarvin's adventures in the deserted city of 
 Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed 
 himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its 
 queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.' 
 
 The Academy. ' The Naulahka contains passages of great merit. 
 There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr. 
 Kipling could have written. . . Whoever reads this novel will find much of 
 it hard to forget . . . and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank 
 among the best passages in modern fiction.' 
 
 The Times. 'A happy idea, well adapted to utilize the respective ex- 
 perience of the joint authors. . . . An excellent story. . . . The dramatic train 
 of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between Sitabhai 
 and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the 
 susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his 
 alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance 
 with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of 
 the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night's hunt the whole 
 forms a scene not easily effaced from the memory.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'An entrancing story beyond doubt . . . The 
 design is admirable to bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely 
 differing forces of the Old World and the New and while, of course, it 
 could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a 
 wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one, and 
 it has been boldly carried out. . . . The interest is not only sustained through- 
 out, it is at times breathless. . . . The Maharajah, the rival queens, the 
 pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling's own, and some of the 
 Indian chapters are in his best style.' 
 
 The Speaker. ' In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the 
 old Kiplingesque glamour ; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one must 
 go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at Rhatore. 
 ... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful and most 
 wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting ; that Sitabhai is well created ; and that 
 the chapter which describes her secret meeting with Tarvin is probably the 
 finest and the most impressive in the book. ' 
 
 The Bookman. ' The real interest of the book is in the life behind the 
 curtains of the Maharajah's palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the 
 forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of Indiar 
 life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.' 
 
 I.ONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 CORRUPTION 
 
 BY PERCY WHITE 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Speaker. 'In his first book, Mr. Bailey-Martin, Mr. White gave 
 us a remarkable picture of the sordidness of life in a suburban household. In 
 the present volume he rises to a higher social level, and treats of rising members 
 of Parliament, of political leaders, and even of Prime Ministers. . . . The 
 sketches of types are both forcible and true. ' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' None can travel over his brightly-written 
 pages without being gladdened by the little flashes of epigram which light up 
 the scene for us, or stirred by the shrewdness and worldly wisdom which he 
 has put into the mouths of his characters. One of the charms of the book 
 lies in the conviction that its author knows the world, and is full of a broad, 
 full knowledge, and therefore sympathy with the foibles, passions, and sins 
 with which it abounds. ... It is a sermon preached on the old jEschylian 
 text, that the evil doer must always suffer. The book is a drama of biting 
 intensity, a tragedy of inflexible purpose and relentless result.' 
 
 The Daily News. 'Will appeal to many tastes. There is intrigue 
 enough in it for those who love a story of the ordinary kind, and the political 
 part is perhaps rather more attractive in its sparkle and variety of incident 
 than the real thing itself.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. ' Corruption more than fulfils the brilliant pro- 
 mise of Mr. Bailey -Martin. ... As its title indicates, it deals with the political 
 and social cankers of the day, which it lays bare with a fearless and unerring 
 touch." 
 
 The Standard. ' The scenes in the South of France are particularly well 
 done ; without any attempt at local colour Mr. White has caught the atmos- 
 phere skilfully, and there are one or two clever touches of which he appears 
 unconscious. Taking the book as a whole, it is written with ease and know- 
 ledge, and has about it nothing of the amateur.' 
 
 The Graphic. ' A very able piece of work.' 
 
 Black and White. 'The risque 1 situation is wrought with brilliance and 
 subtilty. . . . Mrs. Mannering recalls Becky Sharp ; and Carew is a typical 
 man of the day. . . . Mr. Percy White assuredly takes rank with the foremost 
 of the society writers.' 
 
 The Globe. 'A graphic picture of social life.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' The characters are well conceived and cleverly 
 portrayed ; the dialogue is crisp and sparkling. There is not a dull moment 
 in the volume.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BBDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 MR. BAILEY-MARTIN 
 
 BY PERCY WHITE 
 
 With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' Mr. White has written an audacious book.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. ' Mr. White, with the aid of the necessary qualities 
 dry humour and delicate irony succeeds nearly all the time. . . . The char- 
 acter is one exceedingly difficult to portray. . . . Mr. White has resisted the 
 temptation to force and exaggerate the note, and this is probably the secret of 
 his success.' 
 
 The Speaker. 'There is cleverness enough in Mr. Bailey- Martin to 
 furnish forth a dozen novels. ... It shows not only a remarkable knowledge 
 of contemporary life, but a keen insight into character, and a considerable 
 degree of literary power.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. 'The book teems with smart sayings and graphic 
 characterisations, and cannot fail to make a mark among the cleverest novels 
 of the year.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' The book must be pronounced a well-nigh un- 
 qualified triumph.' 
 
 The Literary World. ' Mr. Bailey-Martin is one of those books whose 
 opportune arrival serves to reconcile the critic to his task. . . . Bright, fresh, 
 vigorous in action, and told with a wealth of incident and humour.' 
 
 The New Budget, in a criticism on Mr. Percy White as a novelist, says: 
 ' In my opinion, you are by far the cleverest of the^ younger or shall I say, 
 youngest ? generation of writers, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Street. 
 . . . Your prose possesses in a high degree what I may call the lyrical note. 
 At times you write like a poet rather than a writer of prose. . . . You serve 
 in no school, and imitate no man. ... In Mr. Bailey- Martin, though you 
 write with an affectation of wholly dispassionate observation of your snob and 
 his set, there is underlying that attitude a measureless contempt for your hero 
 (if I may call him so) and his friends, which bites like an acid.' 
 
 The National Observer. ' Admirably clever, and deserving to be read by 
 those who are bored with the average novel.' 
 
 The Bookman. ' One of the cleverest novels we have seen for many a 
 day. . . . Take away from the average man a little of his affectation, and all 
 his responsibilities ; add some impudence, and the production of a Bailey- 
 Martin is highly probable. We congratulate Mr. White on the vigour and 
 vitality of his novel.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' When it is remembered that this story is told by Mr. 
 Bailey-Martin himself, and with a great air of verisimilitude, it will be seen 
 how able the book is as a piece of literature. ... It will interest and enter- 
 tain every one who takes it up.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 TERMINATIONS 
 
 BY HENRY JAMES 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' All the stories are told by a man whose heart and soul are 
 in his profession of literature.' 
 
 The Morning Post 'The discriminating will not fail to recognise in 
 the tales composing this volume workmanship of a very high order and a 
 wealth of imaginative fancy that is, in a measure, a revelation.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. ' The appearance of Terminations will in no way shake 
 the general belief in Mr. Henry James's accomplished touch and command of 
 material. On the contrary, it confirms conclusions long since foregone, and 
 will increase the respect of his readers. . . . With such passages of trenchant 
 wit and sparkling observation, surely in his best manner, Mr. James ought to 
 be as satisfied as his readers cannot fail to be.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' Mr. James is a critic of life rather than a maker of 
 stories ; his appeal is more to the intellect than to the imagination. Termina- 
 tions is a collection of four stories written with that choiceness and conciseness 
 of phrase that distinguishes the work of the literary artist. . . . The Altar of 
 the Dead is more mystic and imaginative. Mr. James finds phrases that 
 express incomparably well the more spiritual longings of our nature, and this 
 story is full of tender suggestiveness.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' What strikes one, in fact, in every corner of 
 Mr. James's work is his inordinate cleverness. These four tales are so clever, 
 that one can only raise one's hands in admiration. The insight, the sympathy 
 with character, the extraordinary observation, and the neat and dexterous 
 phrasing these qualities are everywhere visible.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' All the stories are peculiar and full of a rare interest.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian.'. . . But with The Altar of the D^ad 
 it is far otherwise. To attempt to criticise a creation so exquisite, so instinct 
 with the finest and purest human feeling, so penetrated with the fastidious 
 distinction of a sensitive spirit, would indeed be superfluous, if not impertinent 
 On its own lines, we know of no more beautiful, truer prose poem in the 
 English language, and to have written it is to have formulated a claim to 
 recollection which we do not think will be lightly set aside.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STRBET, W.C.
 
 HERBERT VANLENNERT 
 
 BY C. F. KEARY 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The National Observer. ' Clever characterisation, natural dialogue, 
 moral sanity, and keen observation and knowledge of the world. . . . The 
 minor characters are as diverse as they are numerous, and there is not a lay 
 figure in the book.' 
 
 The Daily News. ''Herbert Vanlennert is good throughout. The 
 analysis of the hero's character is excellent. The story is crowded with minor 
 characters, all clearly individualised and seen in nice relation to their sur- 
 roundings. There is much power of observation, much knowledge of life and 
 art displayed throughout.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette.' A piece of life and a work of art. ... Mr. 
 Keary's men and women are solid all through. He is as honest in his presen- 
 tation of life as Mr. Gissing, but he is more pointed and wittier ; he is less 
 witty than Mr. Meredith, but he is more responsible. . . . Mr. Keary's work 
 stands out as a very brilliant piece of honest, knowledgable, wise artistry. We 
 say it deliberately, that there are very few novels of our time that bear so 
 unmistakably the grip of the master-hand as Herbert Vanlennert? 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. 'A novel like this helps us at once to under- 
 stand, to judge, and to enjoy life ; and that is to say that he has written a 
 novel of the kind that only the great novelists write. From time to time there 
 comes a new novel marked by a kind and degree of excellence that compels 
 praise of an emphatic kind. There need be no hesitation about deciding that 
 Herbert Vanlennert is such a book.' 
 
 The Review of Reviews. 'In Herbert Vanlenneri indeed is a whole 
 little world of living people friends and acquaintances whom it is not easy to 
 forget.' 
 
 The Sketch. ' Full of cleverness and a legitimate realism. Of two of the 
 most strongly marked and skilfully drawn characters, one is Maynard, the 
 artist of genius ; the other, a striking contrast to Maynard, is Bernard, who 
 passes a serene existence in the study of metaphysics. Very charming and 
 interesting are Mr. Keary's bright and vivid descriptions of English country 
 life and scenery in Derbyshire.' 
 
 St. Paul's. ' The book contains much clever writing, and is in many 
 respects a strong one.' 
 
 Black and White. 'There is abundance of skilfully drawn characters 
 and brilliantly sketched incidents, which, once read, cannot be forgotten.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' Mr. Keary, even when he is treading on delicate 
 ground, writes with circumspection and cleverness.' 
 
 The Bradford Observer. ' It is a fine piece of art, and should touch its 
 readers to fine issues.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. ' The book is most interesting, and embodies 
 a great deal of careful work, besides some very plain speaking.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 THE YEARS THAT THE LOCUST 
 HATH EATEN 
 
 BY ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 
 In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Literary World. 'The novel is marked by great strength, which 
 is always under subjection to the author's gift of restraint, so that we are made 
 to feel the intensity all the more. Pathos and humour (in the true sense) go 
 together through these chapters ; and for such qualities as earnestness, insight, 
 moral courage, and thoughtfulness, Tht Years that the Locust hath Eaten 
 stands out prominently among noteworthy books of the time.' 
 
 The Daily News. ' Bears out to the full the promise given by Joanna 
 Traill, Spinster. The author has a genuine sense of humour and an eye for 
 character, and if she bids us weep at the tragedy of life and death, she makes 
 us smile by her pleasant handling of human foible and eccentricities.' 
 
 The Standard. ' A worthy successor to Joanna Traill, Spinster. It is 
 quite as powerful. It has insight and sympathy and pathos, humour, and 
 some shrewd understanding of human nature scattered up and down its pages. 
 Moreover, there is beauty in the story and idealism. . . . Told with a humour, 
 a grace, a simplicity, that ought to give the story a long reign. . . . The 
 charm of the book is undeniable ; it is one that only a clever woman, full of 
 the best instincts of her sex, could have written." 
 
 The Review of Reviews. ' It has all the charm and simplicity of treat- 
 ment which gave its predecessor (Joanna Traill, Spinster) its vogue.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' The book should not be missed by a fastidious 
 novel -reader. ' 
 
 The Court Journal. ' The moral of the book is excellent ; the style 
 strong and bold. 
 
 The Scotsman. 'The story is well told, and a vein of humour serves to 
 bring the pathos into higher relief.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' It is sincere and conscientious, and it 
 shows appreciation of the value of reticence.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. ' The book is full of delicate touches of 
 characterisation, and is written with considerable sense of style.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald.' Worked out with great skill and success. . . . 
 The story is powerfully told.' 
 
 The Liverpool Mercury. 'The story is told with sympathy and pathos, 
 and the concluding chapters are touching in the extreme.' 
 
 The Birmingham Gazette. ' A sad story beautifully written, containing 
 pure thoughts and abundant food for reflection upon the misery which exists in 
 the world at the present day. The tale is particularly pathetic, but it is true 
 in character. It will be read with interest' 
 
 The Leeds Mercury. ' Full of powerful situations.' 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BEDFORD STRBBT, W.C
 
 IN HASTE AND AT LEISURE 
 
 BY E. LYNN LINTON 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Speaker. ' Mrs. Lynn Linton commands the respect of her readers 
 and critics. Her new story, In Haste and at leisure, is as powerful a piece 
 of writing as any that we owe to her pen.' 
 
 The St. James's Budget 'A thorough mistress of English, Mrs. Lynn 
 Linton uses the weapons of knowledge and ridicule, of sarcasm and logic, with 
 powerful effect; the shallow pretences of the "New Woman" are ruthlessly 
 torn aside.' 
 
 The Literary World. ' Whatever its exaggerations may be, In Haste and 
 at Leisure remains a notable achievement. It has given us pleasure, and we 
 can recommend it with confidence.' 
 
 The Court Journal. ' The book is a long but brilliant homily and series 
 of object-lessons against the folly and immorality of the modern craze of the 
 most advanced women, who rail against men, marriage, and maternity. The 
 book is immensely powerful, and intensely interesting.' 
 
 The Daily Graphic. ' It is an interesting story, while it is the most 
 tremendous all-round cannonade to which the fair emancipated have been 
 subjected.' 
 
 The World. ' It is clever, and well written.' 
 
 The Graphic. ' It is thoroughly interesting, and it is full of passages that 
 almost irresistibly tempt quotation. ' 
 
 The St. James's Gazette. ' It is a novel that ought to be, and will be, 
 widely read and enjoyed.' 
 
 The Globe. ' It is impossible not to recognise and acknowledge its great 
 literary merit.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. ' In Haste and at Leisure is a striking and even 
 brilliant novel.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. ' In this cruelly scientific analyses of the 
 " New Woman," Mrs. Lynn Linton writes with all the bitterness of Dean 
 Swift. The book is one of remarkable power.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STKEST, W.C.
 
 CHIMERA 
 
 BY F. MABEL ROBINSON 
 In On* Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Saturday Review. ' Every page of it is worth reading. The author 
 sets herself to write a fascinating book, and, in our opinion, has undoubtedly 
 succeeded. ' 
 
 The World. ' There are good things in this novel ; excellent character- 
 drawing, some forcibly realistic chapters in the life of a common soldier.' 
 
 The Daily News. 'The story is skilfully constructed, and will certainly 
 add to Miss Robinson's reputation.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' Miss Robinson writes but little, and writes that 
 little carefully. . . . Herein also is Miss Robinson true to life, and not false 
 to art' 
 
 The Realm. 'The story is powerfully written. It is worth reading.' 
 
 The Standard. 'All the vicissitudes of Treganna's career are interesting, 
 and are vividly told." 
 
 The Lady. ' A story of exceptional power and absorbing interest, earnest, 
 forcible, intensely human, and of high literary merit.' 
 
 The Observer. 'The book is very ably written, and it is well worth 
 reading. ' 
 
 The Globe. ' There are in this book much power of observation, a relent 
 less truthfulness, and a recognition of the value of detail. It should enchain 
 the attention of the most callous reader.' 
 
 The Sunday Times. ' A remarkably clever sketch of a man's life and 
 character. . . . The literary workmanship is good without being laboured. 
 . . . We wish it the appreciation, not only of those who can distinguish good 
 literature, but of those who prefer the good from the bad.' 
 
 Black and White. 'An original plot vigorously treated.' 
 
 The Daily Graphic ' The whole story of the relations between Joseph 
 Treganna and Fanny Star is very human, and handled with a breadth and 
 understanding which very few women novelists of the day could hope to rival, 
 while the gradual abandonment by the man of the outposts whereon he has 
 planted his colours is admirable in its inevitableness.' 
 
 Woman. 'A superb novel, strong and full of life, packed with observation 
 and humour of the deep subcutaneous sort.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.G
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 A MODERN WOMAN 
 
 BY ELLA HEPWORTH DIXON 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. 'Miss Dixon shows herself no ineffective satirist of the shams 
 and snobbishness of society.' 
 
 The Academy. ' No one who reads The Story of a Modern Woman will 
 be likely to gainsay the excellence of its writing, and the genuine talent shown 
 by Miss Dixon.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. ' A subtle study, written by a woman, about a 
 woman, and from the point of view of a distinctly clever and modern woman 
 herself. . . . Miss Dixon has scored a great success in the treatment of her 
 novel.' 
 
 Vanity Fair. ' The main thread of the story is powerful and pathetic; but 
 there are lighter touches, wit and humour, and here and there what seem like 
 shadows of people we have seen and known. ... In a word, a book to buy, 
 to read, and to enjoy.' 
 
 Black and White. ' The social sketches, with which this little story of 
 modern, literary, fashionable, and Bohemian London is full, are very cleverly 
 touched in.' 
 
 The Graphic ' Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon has inherited no small share 
 of her father's literary gifts, and she adds to it a faculty of observation, and a 
 constructive and narrative skill, which are of considerable promise.' 
 
 The National Observer. ' She writes well, and shows not a little power 
 of drawing character, and even of constructing a story.' 
 
 The Sketch. ' Miss Dixon's style excels in delicate vignettes, full of 
 suggestion, and marked, above all, by that artistic restraint which is such an 
 agreeable contrast to the fluency of the average woman-novel. ' 
 
 St. James's Gazette. ' Miss Hepworth Dixon knows how to write. . . . 
 She can say what she wants to say in a sound, clear style, which (especially 
 in the descriptive passages) is occasionally very felicitous and expressive. 
 Altogether, A Modem Woman is a work which will better repay reading than 
 most of the novels of the season.' 
 
 Illustrated London News. 'A story of which so much can truthfully be 
 said is a contribution to art as well as to the circulating library, a conjunction 
 which, in ihese days of British fiction, is surprising.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BBDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 A SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE 
 
 BY M. HAMILTON 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'The characters are exceptionally distinct, the move- 
 ment is brisk, and the dialogue is natural and convincing.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'Joanna Con way is on distinctly new lines, 
 and it has given us pleasure to follow her spicy, attractive personality through 
 all the phases of her carefully, finely-depicted evolution.' 
 
 The National Observer. 'A remarkably life-like picture of English 
 society. The author is a keen observer. The writing is above the average.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' An excellent novel. Joanna Conway is one of 
 the most attractive figures in recent fiction. It is no small tribute to the 
 author's skill that this simple country girl, without beauty or accomplishments, 
 is from first to last so winning a personality. The book is full of excellent 
 observation.' 
 
 Black and White. ' Some pleasant hours may be passed in following the 
 fortunes of Joanna, the charming heroine of M. Hamilton's A Self-Denying 
 Ordinance. The book is well written, and holds the attention from start to 
 finish. The characters are true to life.' 
 
 The Methodist Times. ' The story retains its interest throughout. It 
 contains some vividly-drawn delineations of character.' 
 
 Woman. 'Contains the finest, surest, subtlest character drawing that 
 England has had from a new writer for years and years past.' 
 
 Public Opinion. 'A well written and fascinating novel, It is a clever 
 sketch of life in its different phases. . . . "Every personage strikes one as 
 being richly endowed with individuality." ' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 'A decided success. There are such women 
 as Joanna Conway in the world, though, unfortunately, not so many as are 
 required; but there are few writers of the present day who can do justice to 
 such a character, so poetical, and yet so practical. . . . There is humour in 
 the book : the scene is chiefly in Ireland, and who can truly write of Ireland 
 without humour? but the greatest charm is in the wonderful tenderness, in 
 the womanly chivalry which renders so true the title of a self-denying- 
 ordinance. 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 ELDER CONKLIN 
 
 BY FRANK HARRIS 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' Ably conceived, and ably-written stories. . . . Mr. Frank 
 Harris has proved himself at once a subtle and effective writer of fiction.' 
 
 The National Observer. ' Mr. Harris's work leaves on the mind a vivid 
 impression. All the stories in the volume are well written and admirably 
 constructed.' 
 
 The Academy. 'Page after page glows with masterly invention, tender 
 pathos, excellent wit : attributes belonging to the magicians of fiction. Its 
 cleverness is often near akin to absolute genius ; the dexterity of the writer 
 evokes not only surprises, but rare pleasure.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'The characters are clearly defined and com- 
 bined with great skill ; they breathe genuineness and truth. There is force 
 and pathos, too, in the story of Bancroft and Loo Conklin.' 
 
 The Review of Reviews. 'There is a force and a charm, a vividness 
 and an originality about these tales which give them a high, if not the highest, 
 place in the literature of that kind which has been produced in the last few 
 years. Not only is there a genius in the presentation of the human types 
 which are described, but they display a closeness of observation and a keenness 
 of insight into the heart of things which only those who have studied western 
 civilisation in the making can appreciate.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'The stories are masterpieces. They grip 
 like life. And they live with one after, as living realities.' 
 
 The Sketch. ' There is good workmanship in Mr. Harris's volume, shown 
 not merely in the vigorous story-telling. The inner idea in the tales is carefully 
 wrought, and it will find a response among all readers who love sincerity.' 
 
 The Bookman. 'Elder Conklin is a masterly picture of heroism and 
 paternal love, of rare intensity and refinement, co-existing with capacities for 
 hideous selfishness and cruelty.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'Mr. Harris's excellent stories may be heartily 
 recommended to all.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA 
 
 BY W. J. LOCKE 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' In a sense this novel is belated, being a straggler from the 
 procession of books more or less directly concerned with the New Woman. 
 This is a pity, for it is perhaps the best of the novels that have vindicated or 
 mocked at that tiresome female. . . . Still it may be allowed that here we 
 meet with less cant, less rancour, less prurience, less affectation of omniscience, 
 more genuine philosophy, and a more careful style and more real literary 
 power than in any other novel of the same school.' 
 
 The Athenaeum. ' The character-drawing is distinctly good. All the 
 personages stand out well defined with strongly marked individualities.' 
 
 The Morning Post 'Clytie is made undeniably sympathetic, while the 
 author's pictures of Bohemian life are bright and graphic.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'The merit of the book lies in the description 
 of the life of Clytie Davenant (the heroine) as an artist in London, of her 
 friendship with Kent, her wooing by Thornton Hammerdyke, and the struggles 
 of her married life. All this is portrayed, not in the grand style, but soberly, 
 truthfully, and on the whole effectively.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' This clever and somewhat audacious story. . . . 
 We congratulate W. J. Locke, and shall be surprised if the reception accorded 
 to his book is not such as to cause him to congratulate himself.' 
 
 The Review of Reviews. ' Here is a tale of women's life in London in the 
 present year, of varied societies, of a husband's brutality, and of a woman's 
 fidelity, told with restraint, power, and originality. It is certainly one of the 
 novels which mark a beginner out for attention.' 
 
 Vanity Fair. 'After a long course of flaccid, nerveless books that seem 
 to have no raison d'ltre, it is refreshing to find a well-written novel whose 
 characters seem "hewn from life," and act as men and women really act.' 
 
 The Scotsman. 'The story never drags, and can be read from end to 
 end. It seems to be a first work, and in its strength and vigour gives good 
 promise for the future. The workmanship is careful and conscientious, while 
 the characterisation is broad, human, and natural' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' In depicting the friendship between 
 Clytie and Kent the author shows both power and subtlety, and may fairly 
 claim to have given us something new, for the portrayal of such a relationship 
 between a man and a woman standing on an equal intellectual level has not 
 been successfully attempted before.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, zi BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 AN IMAGINATIVE MAN 
 
 BY ROBERT HICHENS 
 AUTHOR OF "THE GREEN CARNATION " 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Saturday Review. ' The powerfully dramatic scene in the dancing- 
 rooms at Cairo would alone make the book worth reading. The humour, too, 
 peculiar to himself is not lacking in Mr. Hichens's novel. It is undoubtedly 
 an artistic success. ' 
 
 The Guardian. ' There is no possible doubt as to the cleverness of the 
 book. The scenes are exceeding powerful.' 
 
 The Graphic. 'The story embodies a study of remarkable subtlety and 
 power, and the style is not only vivid and picturesque, but in those passages 
 of mixed emotion and reflection, which strike what is, perhaps, the charac- 
 teristic note of late nineteenth century prose literature, is touched with some- 
 thing of a poetic charm.' 
 
 The Standard. ' The setting of the book is vivid, and the effect of silence 
 well imagined, so that the strange little drama goes on, and the reader watches 
 it with an interest that does not suffer him to consider its absurdity.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' It treats an original idea with no little skill, and 
 it is written with a distinction which gives Mr. Hichens a conspicuous place 
 amongst the younger story-tellers who are really studious of English diction. 
 ... It is marked out with an imaginative resource which has a welcome note 
 of literature. ' 
 
 The Daily Graphic. ' A profoundly impressive study in psychology. 
 The descriptions of the shadier side of Egyptian life are fresh and vivid ; 
 indeed, Mr. Hichens has a rare power of stimulating the reader's imagination 
 until it fills in what no one can write, and thus helps to create a vivid picture." 
 
 The Scotsman. ' It is no doubt a remarkable book. If it has almost 
 none of the humour of its predecessor ( The Green Carnation), it is written 
 with the same brilliancy of style, and the same skill is shown in the drawing 
 of accessories. Mr. Hichens's three characters never fail to be interesting. 
 They are presented with very considerable power, while the background of 
 Egyptian life and scenery is drawn with a sure hand." 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, ai BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 A DRAMA IN DUTCH 
 
 BY 'Z Z' 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Spectator. ' Several of his types are painted in with a 6ne combina- 
 tion of breadth of effect and wealth of significant detail. . . . Certainly a book 
 which has not merely cleverness, but real vitality.' 
 
 The Speaker. ' A novel of such remarkable merit, and written with such 
 easy mastery of style. From first to last this striking and powerful story 
 maintains a high level of excellence, betokening no 'prentice hand. It is a 
 story teeming with humour and pathos, instinct with the irony of human fate, 
 and quick to apprehend the subtle twists and inconsistencies of human 
 character. Above all, it is deliciously original . . . and told with great spirit, 
 humour, and dramatic vigour. A vivid picture of a side of life upon which 
 little light has been cast by our novelists since Dickens laid down his pen.' 
 
 The Morning Post 'On the whole realistic; this presentment of 
 Holland in London has certain impressionist touches that are decidedly 
 effective. . . . All the tragedy of the book centres in the figure of Peter van 
 Eijk, a creation which says much for the author's imaginative powers.' 
 
 The Daily Telegraph. ' A singular little novel, which has so undeniable 
 a power of its own.' (Mr. W. L. COURTNEY.) 
 
 The Globe. 'The literary treatment is fresh and impressive. . . . The 
 author shows skill in all its characterisations, his mastery of Dutch idiosyncrasy 
 being obviously complete.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. 'One does not care to put the book down till the 
 last page is turned.' 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. 'Vivid in portraiture, vivacious in manner. 
 . . . The combination of close observation and grim sardonic humour gives 
 the book a decided charm. . . . The pathetic figure of Peter is drawn with a 
 tenderness which indefinitely enlarges our impression of the author's dramatic 
 possibilities.' 
 
 The Weekly Sun. ' Has the great merit of introducing us to a new 
 world. . . . What a delightful creation Mrs. de Griendt is. Indeed, I should 
 personally have been glad if we had had more of her. Whenever she appears 
 on the stage she fills it with her presence, and you can see her, hear her, watch 
 her with fascination and incessant interest. ... I think the reader will agree 
 with me that I have not exaggerated the literary merit of this exquisitely- 
 described scene.' (T. P. O'CONNOR, M.P.) 
 
 The Review of Reviews. ' You will enjoy reading it.' 
 
 The Glasgow Herald. 'A striking and amusing novel. . . . The author 
 has a pleasant gift of humour, and has shown distinct originality. 1 
 
 The Aberdeen Daily Free Press. ' In the publication of this and 
 kindred works, Mr. Heinemann is doing much to maintain the freshness and 
 vigour of our English fiction. ... He has seldom provided a pleasanter and 
 jret more bracing work than the Drama now before us. ... As a mere story 
 it will carry delight to even the most unthinking.' 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C
 
 MISS GRACE OF ALL SOULS 1 
 
 BY W. E. TIREBUCK 
 
 In One Volume, price 6s. 
 
 The Times. ' Since Mrs. Gaskell wrote her Mary Barton we have seen 
 no more interesting novel on the condition of the working classes. Mr. 
 Tirebuck is thoroughly master of his subject ... A vivid and impressive 
 narrative of the great coal strike of a couple of years ago.' 
 
 The Literary World. ' Every reader anxious to hear of a work that is full 
 of brains and vigour may unhesitatingly enter Miss Grace of All Souls' upon 
 his list of books worthy to be perused. . . . Mr. Tirebuck, not content with 
 providing " Grace" for our admiration, has made another claim upon our love 
 oy presenting us to Nance Ockleshaw. For her sake alone M\\i Graa of All 
 Souls 1 should be read, and we hope that the novel will make its way into many 
 a home, there to be considered with all the care that is due to it.' 
 
 The World. ' The most remarkable contribution made by fiction to the 
 history of the working classes since Mary Barton, and it has a wider range 
 and import of deeper gravity. It appeals directly to the thoughtful among 
 readers, those who care to learn, on the object-lesson plan, the facts and 
 aspects of life among the multitudes, with whom they are brought into actua! 
 contact. The girl who is its central figure is an original and very attractive 
 character.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. 'An uncommonly well-told story, interesting from 
 first to last. Mr. Tirebuck has drawn a truly delightful character in the 
 miner's wife ; indeed, the whole family might well have been sketched straight 
 from the life. It is difficult to make a work of fiction at once instructive and 
 entertaining, but Mr. Tirebuck has done it in Miss Grace of AH Souls'.' 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. 'An admirable piece of work. Here is realism 
 in its proper proportions : the rude, harsh, Methody life of the northern miner 
 engraved in all its essentials. Mr. Tirebuck manages to illustrate the con- 
 ditions of miners' lives for us with complete fidelity. Not a touch of the 
 humour, the pathos, the tragedy, the grime, the sin, and the ideals is lacking. 
 . . . Mr. Tirebuck has done his work to perfection. The story is not a moral 
 tract, but a work of art of great significance.' 
 
 The British Weekly. ' Mr. Tirebuck is a practised and powerful novelist, 
 and in this story he has taken us right inside the heart of the poor. His 
 description of the collier's wife is wonderful work.' 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. ' As a picture of working men and women, 
 instinct as it is with knowledge, sympathy, passion, and conviction, we have 
 seldom, if ever, read anything so good.' 
 
 The Manchester Courier. 'The character of Miss Grace reminds the 
 reader of the heroine of Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho? 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C
 
 OUT OF DUE SEASON 
 
 BY ADELINE SERGEANT 
 'In One Volume^ price 6s. 
 
 The Athenaeum. 'Told with a force and directness that hold the reader's 
 attention throughout. ... A stirring and interesting novel.' 
 
 The Academy. ' As a study of character, the work is admirable.' 
 
 The Saturday Review. 'A finely conceived study. The book is true 
 without being sordid realistic in the better meaning of the word ; and we 
 have read it with the greatest interest and some stirrings of emotion. ' 
 
 The National Observer. 'The strong and true spirit of the husband 
 gives an ennobling study of humanity worth many plots. Miss Sergeant has 
 risen to her earlier level in this book, a fine study of character, and it is only- 
 just to say that it is also strong in detail.' 
 
 The World. 'A work to which the much-used adjective "beautiful" 
 may be applied with full intention and strict justice.' 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. ' Miss Sergeant has given her best matter, treated 
 in her best manner.' 
 
 The Daily News. 'A moving story. In the delineation of the softening 
 of the man's spirit, and of the mental struggles by which he reaches to for- 
 giveness of his wife, Miss Sergeant shows a fine imagination. This is the best 
 book of Miss Sergeant's that has come under our notice for some time.' 
 
 The Globe. ' Miss Sergeant follows her hero with a rare grasp of descrip- 
 tive detail. The concluding chapters of the book reach a high level of pathos, 
 dignity, and convincing humanity." 
 
 Black and White. ' Gideon Blake is a fine creation ; and the record of 
 his devotion to the unworthy Emmy, and his attempted expiation of her sins, 
 is forcibly wrought. The closing tragedy, simply treated, is impressive.' 
 
 The Literary World. ' The story is well put together, and has points of 
 more than passing interest and importance.' 
 
 The Scotsman. ' It is in the development of the great theme of a man's 
 undying constancy to his erring partner, and his eventual forgiveness of her 
 offence, that the author rises to a height of true dramatic power seldom attained 
 in the modern novel. On its merits the story is worthy of a high place in 
 contemporary fiction.' 
 
 Birmingham Daily Post 'The character of Gideon Blakej the intense 
 and strong-minded husband of the fragile Emmy, is a fine creation, based on 
 the harder types of moral grandeur.' 
 
 Bradford Observer. 'The tale is sincerely and touchingly written. Its 
 characters are veritable flesh and blood.' 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
 
 A 000139145 7