As she spoke, in a deep, resonant voice that pulsated through the 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 what 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, _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 dare say. A patient." At this moment a voice, which Dr. Levillier immediately recognized 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 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, there 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, without confronting him with this haggard patient who was entering the pool of Bethesda. CHAPTER IX A SHADOW ON FIRE