"Did he get excited, very hot and eager? Did he speak unusually loud, or make any curious gestures with his hands? Did he do anything, that you can remember, such as an ordinary man would not do?" "Why, yes," Cuckoo answered. "So he did." "Ah! What was it? What did he do?" "Well, after he'd been talkin' a bit he caught hold of me and pulled me in front of the glass. See?" "Yes, yes." "And he made me look into it." "What for?" But at this point Cuckoo got restive. "I--I can't remember," she murmured, almost sullenly, recalling Valentine's bitter sarcasms on her appearance and way of life. "Never mind, then. Leave that. But after; what came next?" "While we was standin' like that he seemed to get frightened or somethin', like he saw somethin' in the glass. He was frightened, scared, and he hit out all on a sudden, just where my face was in the glass, and smashed it." "Smashed the glass?" "Yes. And then he snatched hold of me and looked in my eyes awful queer, and then he burst out laughin' and says as the mirror was tellin' him lies. That's all." "He was perfectly sober?" "Oh, he hadn't been on the booze." "Sober and did that, and then you can tell me that there is no madness in him." The doctor spoke almost in a bantering tone, but Cuckoo stuck to her guns. "I don't think it," she said, with her under lip sticking out. "Well, Miss Bright, I want you to assume something." "What's that?" "To pretend to yourself that you think something, whether you do really think it or not." "Make believe!" cried Cuckoo, childishly. "Exactly." "What about?" "I want you to 'make believe' that Mr. Cresswell is not himself--is not sane." "O-oh-h!" said Cuckoo, with a long intonation of surprise. "I do honestly believe it; you are to pretend to believe it. Now, remember that." "All right." "You are not to contradict any more, you see." "Oh," began Cuckoo, in sudden distress. "Pardon. I didn't--" "Hush! That's all right. Act with me on the make-believe or assumption that Mr. Cresswell is not himself at present." "Ah, but that ain't no make-believe. He told me as he wasn't himself when he says, 'I am Marr.'" "Yes--yes," said the doctor. Secretly, almost angrily, he said to himself that Valentine, in some access of insanity, had actually confessed to the lady of the feathers that he knew himself to be mad. "He says he ain't himself," she repeated again, with an eager feeling that perhaps, at last, she had got at the right interpretation of the gospel of Valentine. "That is practically the same thing as his saying to you that he was mad. Now you have told me what you feel for Julian." Cuckoo flushed, and muttered something unintelligible, twining her hands in the sables till she nearly pulled them from Doctor Levillier's knees. "And you have seen the terrible change that has come over him, and that is fast, fast deepening to something that must end in utter ruin. You have not seen him these last few days, I think."