Nineteenth Century Athenian and the larky and unbridled schoolboy.  A neurotic woman seemed to have been at work here, a sordid youth there.  On a sidetable the hysterical man of our civilization fought a duel in taste with some Amazon whose kept vow had evidently wrought a cancer in her mind.  In every corner there was the clash of civil war.  Yet there was always the cloudy red, visible through the lattice-work of decoration, as the blue sky is visible through the lattice-work of a Tadema interior.  In that clouded red the doctor felt himself reading a new yet powerful Valentine, and in the grotesque orchids leaning their misshapen chins upon the rosy rim of their vase.  Those flowers had evil faces, and they seemed strangely at home in the silent room where no clock ticked and no caged bird twittered.  Only the red cloud spoke like a dull voice, and Doctor Levillier sat and listened to it, until he felt as if he began to know a new Valentine.  There is an influence that emanates from lifeless things, strong, subtle, and penetrating; an influence in form, in colour, in scent, even in juxtaposition.  And such influence is like a voice speaking to the soul.  There was a voice in that empty room; and the words it uttered stirred the doctor to a greater surprise, a greater dread than the words of Cuckoo.  Her painted lips related that which might well be a legend of her fancy or of her hate.  This voice related a reality and no legend.

As the doctor sat there he conversed of many strange and evil matters, of many discomforting affairs.  He was the interrogator, the perpetual anxious questioner, and the voice in the empty room gave vague and sinister answers.  That was a terrible catechism, a catechism of the devil, not of God.  Question and answer flowed on, and in the doctor’s soul the anxiety and the distress ever deepened.  Nor could he control their development, although at moments his common sense broke into the catechism like a cool voice from without, and sought to interrupt it finally.  But the twig could not stay the torrent.  And the darkness deepened, darkness in which there was a vision of fire, the vision of a man, fantastic and menacing.  He was the genius of this room.  This room sang of him.  Yes, even now the twisted silver goblins, the curved monstrosities on the cabinet, the crouched Indian boys, the leering pictures, and always the dull red cloud on wall and carpet, cushion and hanging.  And then a strange deception overtook the doctor and shook his usually steady nerves.  The red cloud seemed to his observing eyes to tremble, like a flame shaken in a breath of wind, and to glow all around him.  He looked again, endeavouring to laugh at his delusion.  But the glow deepened and there was surely distinct movement.  Everywhere on walls, floor, hangings, couches, faint, thin shadows took shape, grew more definite.  He watched them and saw that they were tiny flames, glowing red relieved against the red.  It was as if he sat in the midst