"Is that why he looks at me so?" Cuckoo asked, in a manner unusually
meditative. "But then he, Valentine, did the same! Why, could that be
what scared him that night--what he struck at?"
"He too may feel that you have a power for good, to fight against his
power for evil. Yes, he does feel it. Make him feel it more. Rely on
yourself. Trust that there's something great within you, something placed
there for you to use. Never mind what your life has been. Never mind your
own weakness. You are the home, the temple, of this power of will. Julian
feels it, and it draws him to you, but it is as nothing yet compared
with the power of Cresswell. You have to make it more powerful, so that
you may win Julian back from this danger."
"Eh? How?"
"Rest on it; trust in it; teach it to act. Show Julian more and more that
you have it. Can't you think of a way of showing that you have this
power?"
"Not I. No," Cuckoo murmured.
The doctor lowered his voice still more. Quite at a venture he drew a
bow, and with his first arrow smote the lady of the feathers to the
heart.
"Has Julian ever asked you to do anything?" he said.
Suddenly Cuckoo's face was scarlet.
"Why? How d' you know?" she stammered.
"Anything for him that was not evil?" the doctor pursued, following out
an abstract theory, not as Cuckoo fancied, dealing with known facts. "I
know nothing. I only ask you to try and remember, to search your mind."
There was no need for the lady of the feathers to do that.
"Yes, he did once," she said, looking still confused and furtive.
"Was it difficult?"
She hesitated.
"I s'pose so," she answered at last.
"Did you do it?"
"No."
The doctor had noticed that his questions gave pain.
"I don't want to know what it was and I don't ask," he said. "I have
neither the right to, nor the desire to. But can't you do it, and show
Julian that you have done it? If you do I think he will see that flame,
which he fears and which fascinates him, burn more clearly, more
steadily, in your eyes."
"I'll see," Cuckoo said with a kind of gulp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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