“Yes, I knew him.”

Cuckoo hesitated.  But something taught her to be perfectly frank with the doctor.  So she added: 

“I’d been with him at that hotel the night he died.”

“You were the woman!  But, then, how can you say that this (he touched the photograph with his finger) is Valentine?”

“He says he’s really Marr.”

Cuckoo spoke in the most mulish manner, following her habit when she was completely puzzled, but sticking to what she believed to be the truth.

“Marr and Valentine one man!  He told you that?”

“He says to me—­’I’m Marr.’”

Cuckoo repeated the words steadily, but like a parrot.  The doctor said nothing, only looked at her and at the photograph.  He was thinking now of his suspicion as to Valentine’s sanity.  Had he, perhaps in his madness, been playing on the ignorance of the lady of the feathers?  She went on: 

“It was on the night he told me all that.  I couldn’t understand what he is and what he’s doing.  And he said that the real Valentine had gone.  And then he said—­’I am Marr.’”

“The real Valentine gone.  Yes,” said the doctor, gravely, “that is true.  Does he then know that he is—?” “Mad” was on his lips, but he checked himself.

“What else did he say that night?” he asked.  “Can you remember?  If you succeed, you may help Julian.”

Cuckoo frowned till her long, broad eyebrows nearly met.  The grimace gave her the aspect of a sinister boy, bold and audacious.  For she protruded her under lip, too, and the graces of ardent feeling, of pain and of passion, died out of her eyes.  But this abrupt and hard mask was only caused by the effort she was making after thought, after understanding.  She pressed her feet upon the ground, and the toes inside her worn shoes curved themselves inwards.  What had Valentine said?  What—­what?  She stared dully at the doctor under her corrugated brows.

“What did he say?” she murmured in an inward voice, “Well—­he didn’t want me to see you.  He came here about that—­my seeing you.”

“Yes.”

“And—­and Marr’s not dead, he says, at least not done with.  Yes, that was it—­he says as no strong man who’s lived long’s done with when he’s put away.  See?”

Her face lighted up a little.  She was beginning to trust her memory.

“The influence of men lives after them,” the doctor said.  “Marr’s too.  Yes.  He said that?”

She nodded.  Then with a flash of understanding, a flash of that smouldering power which she had felt in loneliness and longed to tear out from its prison, she cried: 

“That’s it.  That’s how he’s Marr, then.”

She hesitated.

“Isn’t it?” she said, flushing with the thought that she might be showing herself a fool.  For she scarcely understood what she really meant.

“Valentine, no longer himself, but endowed with the influence of Marr,” the doctor muttered; “she means that he told her something like that.  The phantasy of an unsteady brain.”—­“Go on,” he added to her.