The falling of silence gave an amazing acuteness to his inner sense of hearing. Certain people are so made that they can, under certain conditions, and at certain moments, hear the workings of their neighbours' minds, as you and I can hear the whirr of machinery, or the cry of a child in the street. An ordinary man or woman can only hear a mind when lips, teeth, and tongue utter it with living sounds that set the air in vibration. These abnormal people hear, in these abnormal moments, the silent murmurs of the mind making no effort at all to utter itself through the usual speech apparatus. Till this moment the doctor had supposed himself to be an entirely normal man, but he had been sitting only a very short time before he began to become aware of the silent murmurs of these three minds around him. The darkness set his own mind free from clouds of excitement and from mists of unreason. That was the first step. But it did more. It developed in him this marvellous faculty of the hearing of silence, called by some divination. All his senses were rendered amazingly acute. A perfectly distinct impression of the precise feelings of Cuckoo, of Valentine, and of Julian respectively came to him as he sat there, although he could neither see nor hear them. Each of them seemed to pour his or her thoughts into the doctor's mind. Thus, at first, did his empty room become furnished with the thoughts of his companions. He was sitting in the circle between Julian and Valentine and held their hands. And it was Valentine who forged the first link in this strange chain of unuttered communication. As the darkness cleared the doctor's mind, and set him once more on his feet--although in a new world--an aroma of triumph floated to him softly, like a scent in a damp wood at night. He heard then the mind of Valentine murmuring in the stillness the Litany of its glory, a long and an ornate Litany, deep and full, and he knew that he had been right in supposing that Valentine had invited him to witness that glory. But the doctor became aware, too, that at moments the Litany faltered, hesitated, as if the mind of Valentine grew uncertain or was assailed by vague fears. And these fears ran like little pale furtive things to Valentine from the lady of the feathers. By degrees the doctor could imagine that he actually saw them stealing back and forth. Now one would come alone as if to listen to the Litany, and then another would follow, and another, and, growing brave, they would combine against it. Then Valentine would waver and become uneasy, as one who hears little voices crying against him in the night, and knows not whence they come or from whom. But the Litany would begin again, and Valentine would triumph over the pale fears and they would shrink away. And in the Litany one name recurred again and again--the name of Julian. Over him was the triumph. In his ruin and fall and ultimate destruction the glory lived. To witness the complete possibility of this ruin, the