For he
sought the lost Valentine indeed, but with a strange hopelessness of ever
finding him again. She must not sleep. She must not sleep. In her slumber
the flame would die down, flicker lower and lower to a spark, to grey,
cold ashes. And Julian in his distraction thought of himself as
inevitably lost should the flame die, should Cuckoo sleep, ruled by
Valentine. The fight was between Cuckoo, the flame, and Valentine.
Everything else fell away and left Julian's world bare of all things save
this one contest. This the doctor learnt in the darkness. But still the
spirit of sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo, and the air grew heavy and full of
slumber.
The doctor began to feel that his own powers were being strenuously
attacked. Inertia grew in his body. He sat almost like one paralyzed. His
limbs, at first heavy as if loaded with intolerable weights, gradually
became numb, until he was no longer aware of them. He seemed to be merely
a live mind poised there in the darkness, striving against the power that
sought to sweep from its path all those that fought against it or dared,
however feebly, to resist it. But his mind, poised thus in this strange
circle of slumber, came by imperceptible degrees to have a grip upon the
past.
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