As Doctor Levillier leaned forward, moved by an irresistible impulse, and stretched out his hand to enforce silence from this blare of deplorable melody, Valentine looked up at him, into his eyes, and began to sing.  The doctor’s movement was arrested, his hand dropped to his side, he remained tense, frigid, his eyes fastened on Valentine’s like a man mesmerised.  At first he knew that he was wondering whether his brain was playing him a trick, whether his sense of hearing had, by some means, become impaired, so that he heard a voice, not dimly, as is the case with the partially deaf, but wrongly, as may be the case with the mad, or with those who have suffered under a blow or through an injury to the brain.  For this voice was not Valentine’s at all, but the voice of a stranger, powerful, harsh, and malignant.  It rang through the room noisily.  A thick hoarseness dressed it as in disease, and at moments broke it and crushed it down.  Then it would emerge as in a sigh or wail, pushing its way up with all the mechanical power of the voice of a wild animal, and mounting to a desperate climax, sinister and alarming.  So unlike ordinary singing was the performance of this voice that, after the first paralysis of surprise and disgust had passed away from the doctor and Julian, they both felt the immediate necessity of putting a period to this deadly song, to which no words gave the faintest touch of humanity.  They knew that it must attract and rivet the attention of others in the mansions, even possibly of passers-by in the street.  The doctor withdrew his gaze from Valentine’s at length, and turned hastily to Julian, whom he found regarding him with a glance almost of horror.

“Stop him,” Julian murmured.

“You!” answered Levillier.

And then each knew that the other was in some nervous crisis that rendered action almost an impossibility.  And while they thus hesitated there came a loud, repeated, and unsteady knock at the door.  Julian opened it.  Valentine’s man was standing outside, pale and anxious.

“Good God, sir,” he ejaculated.  “What is it?  What on earth is the matter?”

The man’s exclamation broke through Julian’s frost of inaction.  He whispered to Wade: 

“It’s all right,” pushed him out and shut the door.  Then he went straight up to the piano, seized Valentine’s hands and dragged them from the keyboard.

The silence was like a sweet blow.

“I said my voice was out of order,” Valentine said, simply and with a smile.

“You did not say you had another voice, the voice of—­of a devil,” Julian said, almost falteringly, for he was still shaken by his distress of the senses, into a mental condition that was almost anger.

Dr. Levillier said nothing.  More sensitive to musical sounds than Julian, he dared not speak, lest he should say something that might stand like a fixed gulf to eternally separate him from Valentine.  He knew the future that stretches out like a spear beyond one word.  So he sat quietly with his eyes on the ground.  His lips were set firmly together.  Valentine turned to observe him.