The doctor saw two flames
float up together through the darkness. They passed before the face of
Cuckoo and were lost in the air above her. Two happy flames.
She stirred suddenly and murmured.
The thing that sat by the doctor sprang up. Light flashed through the
room.
As it flashed the doctor leaned towards Julian, who lay forward with his
arms stretched along the table.
He was dead.
Valentine--the spirit, at least, that had usurped the body of
Valentine--stood looking down upon Julian, dead, in silence.
Then it turned upon the doctor. The doctor stood up as one that nerves
himself to meet a great horror.
He watched the light fade out of the eyes of this horror, the expression
slink from the features, the breath remove from the lips, the pulses
cease in the veins and arteries, until an image, some lifeless and
staring idol, stood before him.
It swayed. It tottered. It fell, crumpling itself together like things
that return to dust. The flesh, formerly kept alive by the spirit, now
deserted finally by that which had dwelt within it and sought to use it
for destruction, went down to death.
Then the lady of the feathers awoke at last from her sleep. The doctor
bent over her and took her hands in his.
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