She quickly drank some more coffee. "If you had, it might not have been astonishing," said Valentine. "For this little room has seen marvels, and strange things that happen perhaps stamp their strange impression upon the places in which they happen. We ought to discuss the occult, doctor, on the last night of the year." "By all means." "How long ago it seems!" Julian said suddenly, with a sigh. "Yes," Valentine answered. "Because so much has happened in the interval. The greedy man has eaten so many courses, Julian." He seemed to take a delight in throwing out allusions to one and the other of his guests, allusions which nobody but the person addressed could understand rightly. For he now went on, addressing himself to Cuckoo: "In this little room was committed the great act of brigandage of which I once spoke to you. Do you remember?" She shook her head. "Never mind. But, though you cannot remember, that might make you shiver." "What act of brigandage, Valentine?" Julian asked. "Oh, the attempt--my attempt to seize upon a different soul." "But you failed." "Did I? Do you think so, doctor?" His apparent audacity seemed to increase. In the twilight of the scented room he drew himself up as he stood by the brocaded screen that hid the fire. He closed and unclosed rapidly his left hand which hung at his side. His foot tapped the thick carpet gently. "Did you not?" the doctor answered quietly. But Julian was roused to vivacity. "What do you mean, Valentine?" he said. "Of course you may have changed, or developed, or whatever you like to call it, since then. But to say you have got a different soul!" "Is absurd? Yes, you are right. Because if I had got a different soul the original 'I,' that was dissatisfied with itself, must have ceased to be. Since the soul of a man--his will to do things, his will to feel things--is the man himself, if I had a different soul I should be another man. The former man would have ceased to be." "Or would be elsewhere." It was the doctor who spoke, and he spoke without special interest, simply expressing his thought of what might happen in so whimsical an event as that harped upon by Valentine. But Valentine seemed painfully struck by the almost idle words. "Elsewhere!" he exclaimed, with a lowering expression. "What do you mean, doctor? What do you imply?" The doctor looked at him surprised. "Merely that a thing expelled is not necessarily a thing slain. If you turn me out of this room I am not certain to expire on the doormat." Valentine broke into a nervous and uneasy laugh, and cast a quick glance all around him, and especially on Cuckoo, who sat listening silently with her eyebrows drawn together in a pent frown of puzzled attention. "I see, I see," he said hastily. And here Julian broke in. "But the whole thing's impossible," he said with a laugh. "You would say so, doctor?" Valentine addressed this question to Doctor Levillier in a very marked and urgent manner.