Four wills, yet one expressed itself in
no outward form. It was in exile, till the day of its redemption should
dawn.
* * * * *
On the night when Valentine heard Julian babble incoherently the name
of the lady of the feathers, he said to himself that the battle should
be his, and he leaned upon his will to feel its power and its glory.
That night he forgot its fury, the intense emotion that had overtaken
him at the supper-table as he gauged, or strove to gauge, the influence
that Cuckoo was obtaining over Julian. He forgot Doctor Levillier. He
remembered only himself and his own strength, which he was now to test
to its foundations. And when he woke again to thoughts of others, it was
only to laugh at the force arrayed against him. The lady of the feathers
moved, to his fancy, like the most piteous of puppets, a jeering fate
manipulating the strings. This manipulator had kept her long to one set
of motions, stiff pleading arm, anxious head, interrogative joints,
and a strut of wolfish eagerness and hunger. But such a game was now
to be abandoned. And behold the puppet a warrior forsooth, a very
Amazon, hounded to fight by the doctor's voice, the doctor's word of
encouragement, battling with the stiff arms that had abandoned the
pleading gesture, stern in a wooden attitude of defiance.
Pages:
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572