"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. Valentine 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. Valentine 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. Valentine 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, Val; 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 VIII THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON Doctor 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 undertaken 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