Flames

Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists.

Julian seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head, which fell on it grotesquely and lay sideways, still smiling horribly at nothing. Then he poured out a glass of brandy and strove to force some of it between Valentine's teeth, dashed water in the glaring eyes, beat the air with a fan which he tore from the mantelpiece. All was in vain. There came no sign of returning life. Then Julian caught Valentine's hands in his and sought to unclench the rigid, cold fingers. He laid his hand on the heart of his friend. No pulsation beat beneath his anxious touch. Then a great horror overtook him. Suddenly he felt a conviction that Valentine had died beside him in the dark, had died sitting up in his chair by the table. The cry he had heard, so thin, so strange and piercing, the attenuated flame that he had seen, were the voice and the vision of the flying soul which he had loved, seeking its final freedom, en route to the distant spheres believers dream of and sceptics deny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then why does he lie like that?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, father looked just like the gentleman."

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

"Hush!" he said.

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

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

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

The boy smiled.

"I like cab-riding," he said.

"And," Julian caught his arm, "that gentleman is not dead. He's alive,

I tell you; only in a faint, and alive."

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

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

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

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

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

"Rip," he cried; "Rip!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He is fainting-unconscious?"

"Unconscious, yes."

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

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

Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step said to

Death, "You are not here. You are not here."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There is-there is-hope?"

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

The little doctor drew him down to his knees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valentine's lips smiled slowly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Rip," he said, holding out his hand and slapping his knee, "come here!

Come along! Rip! Rip! What's the matter with him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julian did so and returned.

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

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

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

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

"To me-why?"

"We have disobeyed you."

"But I should never give you an order."

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

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

"We have been table-turning again."

"Ah!"

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

"And this has been the result?"

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

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

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

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

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

"A cry?"

"Yes."

"It was not I."

"Didn't you hear it?"

"No."

Julian turned to the doctor.

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

"What was it?"

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

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

"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I suspect so. Shut your eyes now."

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

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Nothing," Julian replied.

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

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

"Exactly. You see flame-colour."

He removed his fingers and Julian opened his eyes.

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

"Imitate it."

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

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

Julian obeyed.

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

"Yes."

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

"I heard you clap them then."

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

Julian expressed extreme surprise.

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

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

"I will remember," he said.

He yawned.

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

The doctor got up.

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

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

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

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

"What would you have done?"

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

"Do you know where to find him?"

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

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

"But tell me, what did you feel?"

"Nothing. As if I slept."

"And you really heard, saw, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And that hand?"

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

"I told you I could not feel it."

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

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

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

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

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

Julian stood still.

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

"Death is simply nothing, and nothingness does not excite or terrify one.

I never felt better than I do at this moment."

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

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

"And you never looked better."

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

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

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

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

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

"Good-bye, doctor."

"Good-bye, Valentine."

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

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

"Yes, Valentine."

Valentine added, after a moment of apparent reflection:

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

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

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

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

Doctor Levillier and Julian bade each other good-bye on the doorstep. The doctor hailed a hansom, but Julian preferred to walk. He wished to be alone, to feel the cold touch of the air on his face. The dawn was indeed just breaking, ever so wearily. A strong wind came up with it over the housetops, and Victoria Street looked dreary in the faint, dusky, grey light, which grew as slowly in the cloudy sky as hope in a long-starved heart. Julian lived in Mayfair, and he now walked forward slowly towards Grosvenor Place, making a deliberate detour for the sake of exercising his limbs.

He was glad to be out under the sky, glad to feel the breeze on his face, and to be free from the horror of that little room in which he had kept so appalling a vigil. The dull lines of the houses stretching away through the foggy perspective were gracious to his eyes. His feet welcomed the hard fibre of the pavement. They had learned in that night almost to shudder at the softness of a thick carpet. And all his senses began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the chimneys which they loved.

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

"Want to send a message, sir?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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.

"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 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 anything?"

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 outburst.

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 toward 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 'm. O 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 shooting wonder that the little dog was so completely comfortable with him. That it had 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 Doctor 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! O Gawd!"

Was that the motto of his sleep?

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 slanting 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, or-or-" he looked again, and closely, at the writing,-"or in a temper less delightfully calm and seraphic than usual. Yes, 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 preposterous 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 old woman?"

"Yes."

"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, Val, 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.

Valentine 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 Valentine's voice did not seem to sway Julian. He continued:

"Valentine, 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 Valentine's mood. Indeed, this new anxiety of his was only born in Valentine'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 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 done,-you and I, Valentine,-must have an effect of some sort."

"It will have a very bad effect upon you, I can see," said Valentine, 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.

"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 Rip 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 papers, 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 possession. He was incessantly there, as Julian had had reason to know.

But to-day proved to be an exception. Julian explored the club from end to end without finding the object of his search. Finally he went to the hall-porter.

"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 himself 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 complexion 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 was paying for the dinner, she felt deliriously 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 was perpetually there, apparently on the lookout for you."

"Yes, but to-day he hadn't been in at all. Perhaps he has gone out of town."

"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 Crichton'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 of 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 dare say. I suppose so. Valentine, I can't realize it."

"It must be difficult. A man whom you saw so recently, and I suppose apparently quite well."

"Quite. Absolutely."

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 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 days 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 unconnected."

"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 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 kerbstone, and cried damp matches.

"How horrible London is to-night," Julian said as he and Valentine 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 continuously 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 omnibuses, the everlasting mob of prostitutes 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-hall singer. A gigantic "chucker-out" observed them with the dull gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar-boy whined to them in vain for alms, then fluttered into obscurity. Fixed with corner stones upon the wet pavement of the "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 halfpence 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 other and giggled hysterically. Four fat Frenchmen stood in the porch of the Monico violently gesticulating and talking volubly at the tops of their voices. Two English undergraduates pushed past them with a look of contempt, and went speechlessly into the café 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 playhouse. Julian shuddered at it visibly.

"You are quite unstrung to-night, Julian," Valentine 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 Piccadilly, 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 contemptuously 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 license 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, Val? And it is the prose of sin I realized 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 dare say neither."

"Why not both? The smartest coat has a lining, you know. I dare say there 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 asphalt 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 endless, and endlessly alike.

"I am sure all of them are full of solicitors," said Valentine.

Presently in many fanlights they saw the mystic legend, "Apartments." 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 conscience-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. Occasionally men with dripping 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.