will can do everything.  He wants to make it do something extraordinary, uncommon.  What does he find for it to do?  This, the ruin of Julian.  And now I’ll tell you why this ruin of Julian would be a peculiar triumph for his will.  Originally, when Cresswell was sane and splendid, his splendour of sanity guarded Julian from all that was dangerous.  Julian was naturally inclined to be wild.  He has an ardent nature, and five years ago, when he was a mere boy, might have fallen into a thousand follies.  Cresswell’s influence first kept him from these follies, and at last taught him to loathe and despise them.  And Julian, remember this, told Cresswell at last that he had been to him a sort of saviour.  You can follow me?”

“’M,” Cuckoo ejaculated with shut mouth and a nod of her head.

“So that Cresswell knew what his will had been able to do in the direction of lifting Julian high up, almost above his nature.  Well, then followed certain foolish practices which I need not describe.  Cresswell and Julian joined in a certain trickery, often practised by people who call themselves spiritualists and occultists.  It certainly had an effect upon them at the time, and I advised them earnestly to drop it.  They disregarded my advice, and the result was that Mr. Cresswell fell into an extraordinary condition of body.  He fell into a trance, became as if he were dead, and remained so for some hours on a certain night.  I was called in to him, and actually thought that he was dead.  But he revived.  Now, I believe that though he seemed to recover, and did recover in body, he never recovered from that insensibility in mind.  I believe he went into that sleep sane and came out of it mad, and that he remains mad to this moment.  Certainly, ever since then he has been an altered man, the man you know, not at all the man he used to be.  Since that night he, who used to be almost unconscious of the wonder of his own will, has become intensely self-conscious, and engrossed with it, and has wished to make it obey him and perform miracles.  And what is the special miracle to which he is devoting himself at this moment, as you have observed?  Just this:  the ruin of the thing he originally saved.  It is like this,” he said, noting that Cuckoo was becoming puzzled and confused, “Cresswell, by his influence, made Julian loathe sin.  Coming out of this trance, as I believe, a madman, he seeks to make his will do something extraordinary.  What shall he make it do?  His eyes fall on Julian, who is always with him, as you know.  And he resolves to make Julian love what he has taught him to loathe—­sin, vice, degradation of every kind.  So he sets to work with all the cunning of a diseased mind, and hour by hour, day by day, he works for this horrible end.  At first he is quiet and careful.  But at last he becomes almost intoxicated as he sees his own success.  And he allows himself to be led into outbreaks of triumph.  One of those outbreaks you yourself seem to have witnessed.  I have witnessed