Cuckoo gave a little cry of surprise, then hastily glanced at the coachman's back and pushed her hands under the rug up towards her mouth. "Hush," said the doctor. "Only listen quietly." "Yes, pardon," she said. "But he ain't--oh, he can't be." "I am forced to think it, forced to think it," the doctor said, with pressure. "He has, in great measure, one of the most common, most universal, of the fatuous beliefs of the insane,--a deep-rooted, an almost incredible belief in himself, in his own glory, power, will, personality." Cuckoo tried to throw in some remark here, but he went on without a pause: "There are madmen confined in asylums all over England who think themselves the Messiah--this is the commonest form of religious mania--emperors, kings, regenerators of the human race, doers of great deeds that must bring them everlasting fame. On all other points they are sane, and you might spend hours alone with them and never discover the one crank in their mind that makes the whole mind out of joint. So you have been alone with Mr. Cresswell and have not suspected him. Yet he has a madness, and it is this madness which leads him to this frightful conduct of his towards Julian, conduct which you will never know the extent of." Here Cuckoo succeeded in getting in a remark: "Will," she said, catching hold of that one word and beginning to look eager. "That's what he was at all the time he was talking to me that night. Will, he says, is this and that and the other; will, he says, is everythin', I remember. Will, he says, is my God, or somethin' like it. He did. He did." "Ah! you see; even you have noticed it." "Yes; but he ain't mad, though," Cuckoo concluded, with an echo of that obstinacy which she could never completely conquer. She said what she felt. She could not help it. The doctor was in no wise offended by this unskilled opinion opposed to his skilled one. He even smiled slightly. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "He's too sharp. He's a sight too sharp." "Madmen are very cunning." "So are women," Cuckoo exclaimed. "I could see if a man was mad." She was a little intoxicated with the swift motion, the bright sun, the keen air, the clang of the horse's hoofs on the hard roads, and, most of all, with this conference which the befurred coachman was on no account to hear. This made her hold fast to her opinion, with no thought of being rude or presuming. The doctor, accustomed to have duchesses and others hanging upon his words of wisdom, was whipped into a refreshed humour by this odd attitude of an ignorant girl, and he replied with extreme vivacity: "You will think as I do one day. Meanwhile listen to me. When Mr. Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you say you remember, on the subject of will, did he not show any excitement?" "Eh?"