in the question, and he smiled with a cold triumph.  He had intended telling Julian now, once for all, to break with the lady of the feathers, of whom even yet he stood in vague fear.  But the question, the voice of Julian, gave him pause, slid into his soul a new and bizarre desire, child of the strange intoxication of power which was beginning to grip him, and which the doctor had remarked.  If Julian broke with Cuckoo, repulsed her forever into the long street that was her pent and degraded world, would not the sharp salt of Valentine’s triumph be taken from him?  Would not the wheels of his Juggernaut car fail to do their office in his sight—­there was the point!—­upon a precious victim?  The lady of the feathers thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have conquered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to him—­he laughed to himself now, thinking of his fear of it—­he would not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy.  These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an answer that astonished Julian.

“Good-bye!” he said.  “Why should I wish that?”

“You said the other day at the Savoy that she hated you; that you and she must have a battle unless I chose between you.”

“I was laughing.”

The lifelessness left Julian’s voice as he exclaimed: 

“Valentine!  But you were—­”

“Sober, and you were not.  Can you deny it?”

Julian was silent.

“I so little meant that nonsense,” Valentine continued, “that I have conceived a plan.  To-morrow is the last night of the old year.  The doctor asked us to spend it with him.  We refused.  Providence directed that refusal, for now we are at liberty to celebrate the proper occasion for burying hatchets by burying our particular hatchet.  The lady of the feathers, your friend, my enemy, shall see the new year in here, in this tentroom, where long ago we—­you and I—­with how ill success, sought to exchange our souls.”

Julian looked utterly astonished at this proposition.

“Cuckoo wouldn’t come here,” he began.

“So you said once before.  But she came then, and she will come now.”

“And then the doctor!  If he gets to hear of it!  We said we were dining out.”

Valentine’s hard smile grew yet harder, and his eyes sparkled eagerly.

“I’ll arrange that,” he said.  “The doctor shall come here too.”

It seemed indeed as if he meant that his triumph should culminate on this final night of the year, his year.  He laughed Julian’s astonishment at this vagary aside, sat down and wrote the two notes of invitation, and then went out with Julian, saying: 

“Julian, come out with me.  You remember what I said about the greedy man?  Come; Fate shall present you with another course, one more step towards your café noir and—­happiness. Voilà!”