"Let us have one," he cried.
The distant bells rang faintly. The doctor thrilled to the suggestion,
still bound by magic, surely. For now, since the inspiring exclamation of
Cuckoo, which had broken his theories on the wheel and swept his reason
like a dead flower along the wind, he no longer condemned, as a danger
only, that which had produced the trance from which, as from a strange
prison, had come the new Valentine. The former sitting had, it seemed,
beckoned that trance, and with the trance had beckoned an incredibly evil
and powerful thing. What if that which had the power to give had also the
power to take away? Often it is so in ordinary conditions of life. Why
not also in extraordinary conditions? So his thoughts ran, fantastically
enough, to the sound of the far-off bells.
"A good notion," he said on the spur of the moment and this quick
reflection.
"You think so?" said Valentine. "You who condemned us, even wrung a
promise from us against sitting."
His regard was suspicious.
"Perhaps I have changed my mind. Perhaps I take the matter less
seriously," said the doctor.
He had never been more near lying, nor was he ashamed of his
dissimulation. There are creatures against which we must, whatever
our principles, take up the nearest weapon that comes to hand.
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