The doctor made a slight sound.  He knew that Rip was dead.  Valentine took the little dog by the scruff of its neck and lifted it up.  Then he, too, saw what he held.  He glanced at the doctor, and there was a glare of defeat in his eyes.  Then he passed across the room to the window, still holding the dog, pulled aside the curtain and thrust up the window.  The ground was white and the snow was falling.  With an angry gesture he flung the body out.  It dropped with a soft noise in the snow and lay there.

Valentine closed the window, but the doctor felt as if he still saw the poor little corpse in the snow.  And he shuddered.

A moment afterwards there was a step in the passage and Julian entered.  He was looking haggard and excited, and ill with dissipation.  His eyes shone in deep hollows that seemed to have been painted with indigo, and his lips were parched and feverish.

“Where have you been, Julian?” said Valentine.

“Oh, with her—­with Molly, of course,” he replied.

“What?  Till now?”

Julian seemed uneasy under his scrutiny.

“Till this morning,” he replied, almost suddenly.

“Well, but since then?”

“With Cuckoo.  Oh! don’t bother me.”

He went over towards the window.

“Oh, how hot it is here,” he said.

He glanced at the bright fire.

“Intolerably!” he murmured.

And he opened the window to the drifting snow.

“Am I mad?” he suddenly cried to them.  “I saw the flame in her eyes again to-day, in Cuckoo’s eyes.  It held me with her.  I’ll swear it held me.  It wouldn’t let me go—­wouldn’t let me—­till now!”

He sank down in a chair by the window, and turning his back on them, pushed his head out to get air.

“I say,” he suddenly called.  “What’s that, that lying there?”

Valentine and the doctor joined him.  He was pointing to the body of Rip, which was already almost covered by the snow.

“That,” Valentine said; “that is—­”

“The body of a creature that died fighting,” the doctor interrupted.  “A fine fashion of dying.  Look at it, Julian.  Its soul was indomitable to the last, and so it won the battle it fought.  It won by its very death even.  Nature is at work on its winding-sheet.”

Valentine said nothing.

CHAPTER V

DOCTOR LEVILLIER VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Julian’s utterance about the flame that held him with the lady of the feathers struck Dr. Levillier forcibly at the time it was made, and remained in his mind.  He could not fail to connect it with his own experience in Valentine’s empty room, and, going further back, with the last sitting of the two young men which was succeeded by the long trance of Valentine.  And as he thought of these things, it suddenly occurred to him that the ghastly change which had taken place in Valentine might well