He was, above all things, sane, both in mind
and in body, full of a lively calm, and a bright power of observation.
Indeed, having made the nervous system his special life study, he was,
perhaps, less liable than most other human beings to be carried away by
the fancies that many people tabulate as realities, or to be governed
by the beings that have no real existence and are merely projected by
the action of the imagination. Half, at least, of his great success in
life had been owing to his self-possession, which never verged on
hardness or fused itself with its near relation, stolidity. No man, in
fact, was less likely to be upset by the creatures of his mind than he.
Yet when Wade had gently closed the drawing-room door and retreated into
his private region, the doctor allowed himself to become the possession
of an influence which, to the end of his life, he believed to proceed
from the empty room in which he sat, not from his mind who sat there.
The electric light shone softly beneath the shades that shrouded it, and
revealed delicately but clearly every smallest detail of the crowded
chamber.
The hour was quiet. No fire danced in the grate. Doctor Levillier
leaned back in his low chair with the intention of composedly awaiting
Valentine's return.
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