Can't remember
what he said."
"Try to."
She was silent, knitting her brows.
"It's no use. I can't," she said, despairingly. "But I know he says that
he's really Marr and that he's killed Valentine. He said that; I know he
did."
She glanced eagerly at the doctor, in the obvious hope that his
cleverness, which she believed to be unlimited and profound, would
in a flash divine all the strange secret from this exposition of her
disjointed recollection. With each word she spoke, however, the doctor
became more and more convinced that Valentine had only been cruelly
amusing himself with her, or weaving for her benefit some intricate
web of vain madness. And Cuckoo, noticing this now, and recollecting the
momentary clearness of comprehension which had seized her at one point in
Valentine's wild sermon to her, was mad with herself for not being able
to seize again that current of inspiration, almost mad with the doctor
for not unravelling the mystery. This excess of feeling finally drowned
and swept away as a corpse the memory of the gospel of influence.
"I can't remember no more," she said stolidly. "There was ever such a lot
about--about some one as was good and didn't want to be good any more,
and so it was driven away--I don't know.
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