"Why--but then, if so, that flame would be _you_. Valentine, the flame
that seemed to haunt me, that I have seen in--"
He looked at Cuckoo again and was silent.
"Yes, Julian?" Valentine said in a hard, thin voice. "Go on, I am
listening."
Julian stared at him with strong excitement.
"And what are you, then, Valentine? Where do you come from?" he said
slowly.
"From Marr."
The words came from the divan, from the dry lips of Cuckoo. Doctor
Levillier knew not why, but he was thrilled to the very soul by them,
as by a revelation throwing strong light upon the depths of things.
Whether it was the influence of this strange scented room, in which
strange things had happened, or the influence of the hour and the
climax and death of the year, or a voice in his heart speaking to him
with authority, he could not tell. Only he knew that on a sudden all
his guiding reason, all his knowledge, all his cool contemplation of
the physician and common sense of the man, were swept entirely away.
His theory of insanity seemed in a moment the theory of a dwarf
intellect trying to stick wretched, absurd pins through angels--white
or black--that it thought butterflies. His conversation with Cuckoo on
the Hampstead Heights seemed the vain babble of a tricked and impotent
observer.
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