“Is that why he looks at me so?” Cuckoo asked, in a manner unusually meditative.  “But then he, Valentine, did the same!  Why, could that be what scared him that night—­what he struck at?”

“He too may feel that you have a power for good, to fight against his power for evil.  Yes, he does feel it.  Make him feel it more.  Rely on yourself.  Trust that there’s something great within you, something placed there for you to use.  Never mind what your life has been.  Never mind your own weakness.  You are the home, the temple, of this power of will.  Julian feels it, and it draws him to you, but it is as nothing yet compared with the power of Cresswell.  You have to make it more powerful, so that you may win Julian back from this danger.”

“Eh?  How?”

“Rest on it; trust in it; teach it to act.  Show Julian more and more that you have it.  Can’t you think of a way of showing that you have this power?”

“Not I. No,” Cuckoo murmured.

The doctor lowered his voice still more.  Quite at a venture he drew a bow, and with his first arrow smote the lady of the feathers to the heart.

“Has Julian ever asked you to do anything?” he said.

Suddenly Cuckoo’s face was scarlet.

“Why?  How d’ you know?” she stammered.

“Anything for him that was not evil?” the doctor pursued, following out an abstract theory, not as Cuckoo fancied, dealing with known facts.  “I know nothing.  I only ask you to try and remember, to search your mind.”

There was no need for the lady of the feathers to do that.

“Yes, he did once,” she said, looking still confused and furtive.

“Was it difficult?”

She hesitated.

“I s’pose so,” she answered at last.

“Did you do it?”

“No.”

The doctor had noticed that his questions gave pain.

“I don’t want to know what it was and I don’t ask,” he said.  “I have neither the right to, nor the desire to.  But can’t you do it, and show Julian that you have done it?  If you do I think he will see that flame, which he fears and which fascinates him, burn more clearly, more steadily, in your eyes.”

“I’ll see,” Cuckoo said with a kind of gulp.

“Do more than this.  This is only a part, one weapon in the fight.  Cresswell is always near Julian; you must be near him.  Cresswell pursues Julian; you must pursue him, use your woman’s wit, use all your experience of men; use your heart.  Wake up and throw yourself into this battle, and make yourself worthy of fighting.  Only you can tell how.  But this is a fact.  Our wills, our powers of doing things, are made strong, or made weak by our own lives.  Each time we do a degradingly low, beastly thing”—­he chose the words most easily comprehended by such a woman as she was—­“we weaken our will, and make it less able to do anything good for another.  If you commit loveless actions from to-day—­though Julian has nothing to do with them—­with each loveless action you will lose a point in the battle against the madness of Cresswell.  And you must lose no points.  Remember you are fighting a madman, as I believe, for the safety of the man you love.  If I could tell you what—­”