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 a man a flame? And, if so, were these flames many souls, or one soul reproduced on all sides by his excitement, 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. CHAPTER 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 fullness 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.