"Perhaps one of them did come off." "Did?" "Yes." "How?" "What was Rip barking at?" "There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at shadows." "At shadows--yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?" Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness. "Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed. Valentine looked at him rather gravely. "That is exactly what I felt," he said. "Explain. For I was only joking." "I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey." "To what?" "I felt--to us." "Fancy." "Probably. You didn't feel it?" "I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and--and all the rest of it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val, isn't it?" Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room." "What else can it possibly be?" Julian said with an accent of rather unreasonable annoyance. "I don't know. But I did draw the curtain completely over the door to-night. Julian, I am getting interested in this. Perhaps--who knows?--in the end I shall have your soul, you mine." He laughed as he spoke; then added: "No, no; I don't believe in such an exchange; and, Julian, I scarcely desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excitement to life." "Yes. But it is selfish of you to wish to keep your soul to yourself. I want it. Well, _au revoir_, Val; to-morrow night." "_Au revoir_." After Julian had gone Valentine went back into the drawing-room and stood for a long while before the "Merciful Knight." He had a strange fancy that the picture of the bending Christ protected the room from the intrusion of--what? He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell. CHAPTER V THE THIRD SITTING "Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening, "that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him day after day? While, if--" "You don't meet him, you don't." "No. I mean that if you don't happen to be introduced to him, you probably never set eyes on him at all." "I know. But whom have you met to-day?" "Marr again." "That's odd. He is beginning to haunt you." "I met him at my club. He has just been elected a member." "Did he make any more inquiries into our sittings?" "Rather. He talked of nothing else. He's an extraordinary fellow, extraordinary." "Why? What is he like?"