Almost at the moment he turned out the light the bells that rang, "_Le roi est mort, vive le roi_," ceased. Cuckoo was directed to lay her hands on the table, and to touch with her fingers the fingers of her companions. She did so, trembling. This was a new experience to her, and her entire lack of knowledge of what was expected to happen filled the darkness with immoderate possibilities, and her soul with awe and with confusion. Then, to sit between the man she loved and the man she loathed, thus in the blackness, was a nerve-shaking experience which her preceding fainting-fit did not deprive of its normal terrors. The hand of Valentine and the hand of Julian were as ice and as fire to her. The darkness seemed crowded with nameless things. She could fancy that she heard it whisper incessantly in her ear. But the real interest of this sitting, to any little demon gifted with a miraculous power of pushing its detective way into the minds of the sitters, would have lain, perhaps, chiefly in the mind of Doctor Levillier. It has been said that, suddenly struck to the soul by the conviction with which the instinctive Cuckoo pronounced those words, "From Marr," Doctor Levillier entered into a new world, abandoning old landmarks. He remained in this new world of the senses certainly, but already he was becoming accustomed to it, clear-headed, keen-sighted, even reasonable in it. Moved by some strange conviction that he was in the presence of an inexplicable mystery, he no longer tried to explain it in some ordinary fashion. He abandoned his theory of insanity, or it abandoned him. In any case, it was dead, buried, whether he would or no. He recognized a mystery at present beyond his capacity to understand or to explain. Having got thus far, and having entered, at Julian's word, into this present circumstance of sitting, table-turning, or rapping, or whatever you may choose to call it, he cleared any ordinary furniture of doctor's prejudices right out of his mind--made a clean sweep of them. That done--and the doing of it required some strong effort--his mind was receptive, ready for anything, odd or ordinary, that might come along. There he sat with his empty room waiting to be filled--the only reasonable way of waiting for that of which we have no knowledge. He did not clamour "I won't," or "I will." He said nothing at all, only waited with the strict desire and intention of recognizing things to be what they truly were, neither dressing them up nor tearing their garments off their backs. When he put out the light and sat down, what he expected--so far as he expected anything--was this, that the addition of darkness would add a cloud to his mind, and endeavour to give various finishing-touches to any spurious excitement created in him, however much against his will, by the enemy's doings. In this expectation he was entirely deceived. The falling of darkness drew a veil from his mind, leaving his mental sight singularly, even preternaturally, clear.