"By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum." "It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again." He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said: "You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And don't ask Valentine to go away with you." The last remark surprised Julian. "But why not?" he asked. "Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself, two people only, Marr and Cresswell." "Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed, like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round. That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because--well--" "Yes." "Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could--could its exercise cause injury to his health?" But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete and self-possessed manner. "Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away to-morrow." "I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?" "Your friendship, my boy."