“Do you propose to give me a fact proving the reasonableness of entertaining a belief that a man, by his own deliberate action of the will, can compass immortality on earth, or even prolong his life in such a way as this, for instance; by the successful domination, or banishment, of any disease recognized as mortal?—­For I acknowledge that the will to live may prolong for a certain time a life threatened merely by the sapping action of old age.—­Do you propose to give me a fact to prove that?”

“I do not say that I intend to give it to you,” Valentine answered, with scarcely veiled insolence.

“But you know of such a fact?” said the doctor, ignoring his host’s tone.

“Possibly.”

The voice of Valentine thrilled with triumph as he spoke the word.  Again he glanced at the lady of the feathers.

“Cannot you convert the doctor?” he asked her, in tones full of sarcastic meaning.  “You know something of my theories, something of their putting into practice.”

“I don’t know—­I don’t understand,” she murmured helplessly.

She looked down at her plate, flushing scarlet with a sense of shame at her own complete mental impotence.

“What’s the matter, Cuckoo?”

The words came slowly from the lips of Julian, whose heavy eyes were now raised and fixed with a stare of lethargic wonder upon Cuckoo.

“What are they saying to you?”

His look travelled on, still slow and unwieldy, to the doctor and to Valentine.

“I won’t have Cuckoo worried,” he said.  And then he relapsed with a mechanical abruptness upon the consideration of his food.  Valentine seemed about to make some laughing rejoinder, but, after a glance at Julian, he apparently resigned the idea as absurd, and, turning again to the doctor, remarked: 

“It is sometimes injudicious to state all that one knows.”

“Still more so all that one does not know.  But I have no desire to press you,” the doctor said, lightly.  “This is wonderful wine.  Where did you get it?”

“At the Cercle Blanc sale,” Valentine answered quickly.

It seemed that he was slightly irritated.  He frowned and cast a glance that was almost threatening upon the doctor.

“Would you assume weakness in every strong man who refuses to take off his coat, roll up his shirt sleeve and display the muscle of his arm?” he said, harshly.

“The case is not analogous.  That muscle exists in the world is a proved fact.  When I was at Eton, I was knocked down by a boy stronger than I was.  Since then I acknowledge the power of muscle.”

“And have you never been knocked down mentally?”

“Not in the way you suggest.”

Valentine shifted in his seat.  It did not escape the doctor that he had the air of a man longing to either say or do something startling, but apparently held back by tugging considerations of prudence or of expediency.