Do you mind turning it out?"
The doctor obeyed, felt his way to the chair opposite Cuckoo and sat
down.
Almost at the moment he turned out the light the bells that rang,
"_Le roi est mort, vive le roi_," ceased. Cuckoo was directed to lay
her hands on the table, and to touch with her fingers the fingers of her
companions. She did so, trembling. This was a new experience to her, and
her entire lack of knowledge of what was expected to happen filled the
darkness with immoderate possibilities, and her soul with awe and with
confusion. Then, to sit between the man she loved and the man she
loathed, thus in the blackness, was a nerve-shaking experience which her
preceding fainting-fit did not deprive of its normal terrors. The hand of
Valentine and the hand of Julian were as ice and as fire to her. The
darkness seemed crowded with nameless things. She could fancy that she
heard it whisper incessantly in her ear.
But the real interest of this sitting, to any little demon gifted with
a miraculous power of pushing its detective way into the minds of the
sitters, would have lain, perhaps, chiefly in the mind of Doctor
Levillier. It has been said that, suddenly struck to the soul by the
conviction with which the instinctive Cuckoo pronounced those words,
"From Marr," Doctor Levillier entered into a new world, abandoning old
landmarks.
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