"Have they been chaffing you, Cuckoo?" he said, striking a match on the heel of his shoe and lighting a cigarette. "Have they been worrying you? Never mind. It's only Val's fun. He doesn't mean anything by it. I say, how awfully pale you look to-night, and thin." He paused, considering her with a glance that was almost severe. "I'm all right," said Cuckoo, trying to repress the agitation she always felt now when speaking to Julian. "I ain't ill. Why don't you come to see me now?" she added. "You don't never come." Julian glanced over to Valentine, who was standing by the hearth talking to the doctor, who sat in an armchair. "I've been busy," he said. "I've had a lot of things to do. Do you miss me, Cuckoo, when I don't come?" "Yes," she replied, but without softness. Then she added, lowering her voice almost to a whisper: "Don't he want you to come?" Julian did not reply, but puffed rather moodily at his cigarette, glancing towards Valentine. He was thinking of the conversation at the Savoy and of the antagonism between Valentine and Cuckoo. Suddenly there came into his mind a dull wish to reconcile these two on the last night of the year, to--in Valentine's own words--bury the hatchet. He sat meditating over his plan and trying to revolve different and dramatic methods of accomplishing it. Presently he said: "Cuckoo, you and Val have got to be friends from to-night." She started, stirring uneasily on the great cushions that were heaped at her back. "We are," she said. He shook his head. "Not real friends." "Oh, we are all right." "D'you hate him still?" "He don't like me," she answered, evasively. "Yet he invites you here," Julian said. "Why does he do that?" "I dunno," Cuckoo said. She wondered why. Not so the doctor, to whom it had become evident that Valentine had asked his guests out of vanity, and with a view to some peculiar and monstrous display of his power over Julian. While Cuckoo and Julian talked together on the divan Valentine came over to the doctor. His eyes still held an expression of awe created in him by the strange new glance of the lady of the feathers. He sought to conquer this sensation of awe, which fought fiercely against his intended blatant triumph of to-night. "Your cigarette all right, doctor?" he said, in a quick voice. "A delicious one, thanks." Valentine began touching the ornaments on the mantelpiece with nervous fingers. "We didn't quite finish our conversation at dinner," he said. "No?" "I did not give you a reason for my belief." A deep interest woke in the doctor, but he did not show it. He thought: "So, he must insanely return to this one subject, round which his brain makes an eternal tour." "No," he said aloud; "you have a reason then?" "Yes."