“As if Val wasn’t just the same,” Julian pursued, shaking his head slowly.  “Just the same.”

“You think so?” the doctor said, quickly.

“Eh?”

“You think that trance made no difference to him?”

“Why, how should it?”

Cuckoo drank her tea hastily and put the cup down.

“How should it?” Julian repeated, as if with a heavy challenge.

“It might in many ways, to his health—­”

“He’s stronger than ever he was.”

“Or to his mind, his nature.  You see no change there that might have frightened Rip?”

“Not I. He’s more of a man, good old Val, even than he was.”

“Ah!  You acknowledge there is a change.”

“Give me some more tea, Cuckoo,” Julian said, thrusting his cup towards her.  “Make it strong.  It’s picking me up.”  He sat forward in his chair and began to light a cigar, keeping his eyes on the doctor.

“Well, if you call that a change; to get like other men.  Old Val was a saint.  I loved him then, but I love him ten times more now he’s—­a—­the other thing, you know.  Ten times more.  He knows the world now, and his advice is worth having.  I’d follow him anywhere.  He can’t go wrong.  Takes care of himself, and of me too.  I might have been anything—­anything, but for him.  Instead of what I am—­”

He drew himself up with some pride, and pulled at the cup which Cuckoo pushed towards him.

“I’m just what Val makes me; just what he makes me,” he said, taking obvious joy in the thought.  “Val can make me do anything.  You know that, doctor?”

“Yes.  Then you have changed with him, become more of a man, as you call it, with him.  Is that so, Julian?”

“I suppose so.”

Julian was drinking his tea, which had become very strong from standing.

“And are you happier than you were before?”

The doctor spoke insistently and gravely.  Cuckoo had taken Jessie onto her lap and now stroked the little dog quickly and softly with a thin, fluttering hand.  Julian seemed trying to think, to dive into his mind and discover its real feelings.

“I suppose so,” he said presently.  “But who’s happy?  I should like to know.  Cuckoo isn’t.  Are you, Cuckoo?”

It seemed a cruel question, addressed to that spectre of girlhood.

“I dunno,” she answered swiftly.  “It don’t matter much either way.”

“She may be,” the doctor said.  “And you were happy, Julian.”

The tea had certainly cleared the boy’s brain.  His manner was more sensible, and the heavy sensuality had gone from his eyes.  Though he still looked haggard and wretched, he was no longer the mere wreck of vice he had seemed when he drifted into the little room out of the fog.

“Was I?” he said slowly.  “It seems a devil of a time ago.”