Why had he such amazing points of resemblance to Marr?  Why had the influence of Marr been deliberately intruded into the calm, happy, and safe lives of Julian and Valentine?  Marr was cruel to dogs, and dogs showed rage and terror when the new Valentine approached them.  Marr had a hatred, yet a knowledge of music.  The new Valentine, when forced to sing, sang like some wild, desolate thing, with reluctant and terrible voice.  And at this point the doctor used the curb suddenly and pulled himself up sharply.  He felt that is was useless, that it was unworthy, to plunge himself thus in romance, and to hang veils of mystery around these facts which he had to accept and to deal with.  A touch of humanity is worth all the unhuman romance in the world.  Humanity lay at the doctor’s gate, sore distressed, sinking to something that was beyond distress.  So, putting his fancies resolutely behind him, Doctor Levillier resolved to fight through that frail weapon, the lady of the feathers, the battle of Julian’s will against the will—­which he now fully and once for all recognized as malign—­of the man he must still call Valentine.  Valentine had said to Julian, at the Savoy, “If it came to a battle—­Cuckoo Bright’s will against mine!” The doctor had not heard those words.  Yet, under the stars on the doorstep of Cuckoo’s dwelling he, too, had spoken to the girl of a fight.  Thus he had poured a great ardour into her heart.  The three souls, Cuckoo’s, Doctor Levillier’s, Valentine’s, were thus set in battle array.  They understood what they faced, or at least that they faced warfare.  Only Julian did not understand—­yet.  He was besotted by the spell of the one he called friend laid upon him, and by the vices in which he had been taught to wallow.  His brain was clouded and his eyes were dim, as the brains and eyes of the malades imaginaires who carry on the scheme of sin and sorrow in the world, and prolong by their deeds the long travail of their race.  Julian did not understand.  For now he seldom thought sincerely.  Sincere thoughts and the incessant and violent acts of passion do not often dwell together.

The progress of Julian towards degradation had now become so rapid that his many acquaintances talked of him openly as of one who had practically “gone under.”  Not that he had ever done any of those few things at which society, whose door is generally ajar, with Mrs. Grundy’s large ear glued to the keyhole, resolutely shuts the door.  He had not forged, or stolen a watch, or killed anybody, or married a grocer’s widow, or anything of that kind.  But he had thrown his life to the pleasures of the body, and made no secret of the fact.  And the pleasures of the body, like eager rats, had gnawed away his power of self-control until he could resist nothing, no wish of the moment, no desire born illegitimately of passing excitement or the prompting of wine.  So he committed many follies, and his follies had loud voices.  They shrieked and shouted.