The doctor’s heart warmed to these two young creatures, children to him, yet who had seen so much, gone so far down into the depths that lie beneath the feet of life.  He thought in that moment that he could willingly give up all his own peace of mind, success, fame, restfulness of heart, to set them straight up, face to face with strength and purity once more.  One was well born, educated, still handsome, the other a so-called lost woman, and originally only a very poor and hopelessly ignorant girl.  Yet their community of misery and sorrow put them side by side, like two children who gather violets in a lane together, or drown together in some strong, sad river.

“It is not so long, Julian,” he said.  “Only before Valentine’s trance.”

Julian caught him up quickly.

“Why d’you say that, doctor?”

“Why?  Simply because it is truth.”

“You’re always at that trance.  I believe it’s just because you told us not to sit again.  But there was no harm done.”

“You are sure of that?”

As he put the question the doctor’s mind was on a hunt round that sleep and waking.  He had gradually come to think that night a night of some strange crisis, through which Valentine had passed from what he had been to what he was.  Yet his knowledge could not set at the door of that unnatural slumber the blame of all that followed it.  His imagination might, but not his knowledge.  He wondered whether Julian might not help him to elucidation.

“Sure? of course!  Why not?  Valentine’s all right.  I’m all right.  Rip’s the only one gone.  And if he’d only stayed in the house that night he’d be all right too.”

“No, Addison.”

Julian stared at this flat contradiction.

“Not?”

“Rip never went out of the house.”

“But he died in the snow.”

“No,” the doctor said quietly.  “He died in your dining-room, of fear—­fear of his old master, Valentine.”

“What?” said Julian, gripping the table with his right hand.  “Val had been at him?”

In two or three simple, straightforward words, the doctor described the death of Rip.  When he had finished Cuckoo gave a little cry, and clasped the astonished and squirming Jessie close in her arms.  Julian’s brow clouded.

“He might have left Rip alone,” he said.  “It’s odd dogs can’t bear Val now.”

“Again since that trance,” the doctor said.

Julian looked at him with acute irritation, but said nothing.  Then, turning his eyes on Cuckoo, who was still hugging Jessie, he snapped his fingers at the little dog and called its name.  Cuckoo extended her arms, holding Jessie, to Julian, and he took the small creature gently.  And as he took her he bent forward and gazed long and deeply into Cuckoo’s eyes.  She trembled and flushed, half with pleasure, half with a nervous consciousness of the doctor’s presence.