"I fainted, or died--the doctor was deceived into thinking so--and was
born again in the dawn of the very day on which Julian first met you."
Cuckoo shivered with the recollection of Marr and her horror of that
night.
"Why do you shiver?" Valentine continued. "Do you find the room cold?"
"No, no."
Indeed, the heat and the overpowering scent of the hyacinths had
previously weighed upon her physique, and increased the _malaise_
into which her curious new dutifulness, and the faint spectre which
drew near to her, had brought her.
"Perhaps you shiver in the influence of this little room," he continued,
persistently. "Julian and I once did so. Eh, Julian?"
"Yes, in those sittings."
"I didn't shiver," Cuckoo said, bluntly and very obviously lying.
She quickly drank some more coffee.
"If you had, it might not have been astonishing," said Valentine. "For
this little room has seen marvels, and strange things that happen perhaps
stamp their strange impression upon the places in which they happen.
We ought to discuss the occult, doctor, on the last night of the year."
"By all means."
"How long ago it seems!" Julian said suddenly, with a sigh.
"Yes," Valentine answered. "Because so much has happened in the interval.
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