“This man,” Valentine said, assuming a devout earnestness to trick her more, and watching for the puzzled expression to grow and to deepen in her eyes,—­“this man had a holy nature, or I will say an unalterable will to do only things pure, reserved, refined—­things that could not lead his body into difficulties, or his mind into quagmires.  He was a saint without a religion.  That is a possibility, I assure you; for a will can be amazingly independent.  He had the peculiar grace that is said to belong to angels, a definite repugnance to sin.  I know you understand me.”

She nodded bluntly.

“I know—­he couldn’t go wrong, if it was ever so,” she ejaculated.

“If it was ever so—­as the housemaids say—­you put the position of this man in a nutshell, and if this strange will of his had never relented, the transformation I am going to describe, or—­” he paused for a moment as if in doubt, then continued—­“or rather to hint at, would never have taken place.  But he grew dissatisfied with his will.  It bored him ever so little.  He fancied he would like to change it, and to substitute for it the will of the world.  And the will of the world, as you know well, my lady of the feathers, is to sin.  For some time he longed, vaguely enough, to be different, to be, in fact, lower down in the scale than he was.  But his longing to be able to desire sin did not lead him to desire it actually.  One can force one’s self to do a thing, you see, but one cannot force one’s self to wish to do it, or to enjoy doing it.  And this man, being a selfish saint—­saints are very often very selfish—­would not sin without desiring it.  So it seemed that he must remain forever as he was, a human piece of flawless porcelain, wishing to be cracked and common delft.”

“Whatever did he wish it for?” asked Cuckoo, with the surprise of a zany.

“Who can tell why one man wishes for one thing, another for another?  That, too, is a mystery.  The point is, that he did wish it, and that he did something more.”

“What was that, eh?”

“He deliberately tried to weaken and to deface his will; to alter it.  And he chose curious means, acting under suggestion from another will or influence that was more powerful than his own, because it was utterly self-satisfied and desired only to be what it was.  I don’t think I will tell you what the means were.  But his original dissatisfaction with his own goodness was the weapon that brought about his own destruction.  His will did not change, as he believed; but what do you think actually happened to it?  I will tell you.  It was expelled from his body.  He lost it forever.  He lost, in fact, his identity.  For will is personality, soul, the ego, the man himself.  And this soul, if you choose to call it so, was driven into the air.  It went away in the darkness, like a bird.  Do you see?”

He waved his hand upward, and lifted his eyes, as if following with them the flight that he described.