A certain audacity was slowly creeping into his demeanour and growing while he talked. It manifested itself in slight gesticulations, conceited movements of the hand and head, in the colour of the voice and the blunt directness of his glances. "Exactly. Attention and observation directed towards the object of satisfying yourself that the man--myself, let us say--was mad? You don't reply. Let me ask you a question. Why should a profound belief in human power of will indicate madness?" "A belief that is not based on any foundation or proof--that is my point. An extraordinary belief, personal to one person, rejected by mankind in the mass, and founded upon nothing, no fact, no inference even, in the history of mankind, is decidedly a strong indication of dementia." "But suppose it is a belief founded upon a fact?" "Of course that would entirely alter the matter." The two men looked across at one another with a long and direct glance full in the eyes. Cuckoo watched them anxiously. Julian sat with his eyes cast down. He seemed unaware that there was any one near him, any conversation going on around him. Wade moved softly about, ministering to the wants of his master's guests. Course succeeded course. "Do you propose to give me a fact proving the reasonableness of entertaining a belief that a man, by his own deliberate action of the will, can compass immortality on earth, or even prolong his life in such a way as this, for instance; by the successful domination, or banishment, of any disease recognized as mortal?--For I acknowledge that the will to live may prolong for a certain time a life threatened merely by the sapping action of old age.--Do you propose to give me a fact to prove that?" "I do not say that I intend to give it to you," Valentine answered, with scarcely veiled insolence. "But you know of such a fact?" said the doctor, ignoring his host's tone. "Possibly." The voice of Valentine thrilled with triumph as he spoke the word. Again he glanced at the lady of the feathers. "Cannot you convert the doctor?" he asked her, in tones full of sarcastic meaning. "You know something of my theories, something of their putting into practice." "I don't know--I don't understand," she murmured helplessly. She looked down at her plate, flushing scarlet with a sense of shame at her own complete mental impotence. "What's the matter, Cuckoo?" The words came slowly from the lips of Julian, whose heavy eyes were now raised and fixed with a stare of lethargic wonder upon Cuckoo. "What are they saying to you?" His look travelled on, still slow and unwieldy, to the doctor and to Valentine. "I won't have Cuckoo worried," he said. And then he relapsed with a mechanical abruptness upon the consideration of his food. Valentine seemed about to make some laughing rejoinder, but, after a glance at Julian, he apparently resigned the idea as absurd, and, turning again to the doctor, remarked: