Valentine made no reply.  His face was rather grave.  Julian did not repeat the question.  He felt instinctively that Valentine did not wish to be obliged to answer it.  Oddly enough, during the short silence which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had certainly never felt with Valentine before.  His gaiety seemed dropping from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor.  The rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing half furtively at his friend.

“Valentine,” he presently said, “shall we really sit to-night?”

“Yes, surely.  You meant to when you came here, didn’t you?”

“I don’t believe there is anything in it.”

“We will find out.  Remember that I want to get hold of your soul.”

Julian laughed.

“If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you,” he said.

“I will risk that,” Valentine answered.

And then he added: 

“But, come, don’t let us waste time.  I will go and send away Wade.  Clear that little table by the piano.”

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it, while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time.  At last Julian said: 

“Val!”

“Well?”

“Let us go back into the tentroom.”

“Why?”

“Nothing will ever happen here.”

“Why should anything happen there?”

“I don’t know.  Let us go.  The fire is burning too brightly here.  We ought to have complete darkness.”

“Very well, though I can’t believe it will make the slightest difference.”

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless with its fireless grate.

“I know this will be better,” Julian said.  “We’ll have the same table as last night.”

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and called Julian’s attention to the fact that he had done so.  Then they sat down again.  Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him, so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete.  They were absolutely isolated from the rest of the world.  They were in darkness and the silence might almost be felt.  As Julian said, they were safe from trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm voix d’or, they were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously called “manifestations.”