And these fears ran like
little pale furtive things to Valentine from the lady of the feathers. By
degrees the doctor could imagine that he actually saw them stealing back
and forth. Now one would come alone as if to listen to the Litany, and
then another would follow, and another, and, growing brave, they would
combine against it. Then Valentine would waver and become uneasy, as one
who hears little voices crying against him in the night, and knows not
whence they come or from whom. But the Litany would begin again, and
Valentine would triumph over the pale fears and they would shrink away.
And in the Litany one name recurred again and again--the name of Julian.
Over him was the triumph. In his ruin and fall and ultimate destruction
the glory lived. To witness the complete possibility of this ruin, the
complete sovereignty of this glory, the doctor and the lady of the
feathers were there. And the doctor grew to feel that only some outside
circumstance, alarming Valentine to anxiety and waking Julian to a new
observation, had hindered the intended triumph. What circumstance was
that? He looked back along the past evening and found it in himself, in
his theory that a soul expelled was not necessarily a soul dead.
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