“Now you fly to the other extreme—­from the very great to the very little.  Take a middle course.”

“Where would that lead me?”

Valentine threw a glance round the dim, hot, scented little room, then once more his eyes rested on Julian and Cuckoo.

“What if I said—­To this little room, to Julian and that girl, to myself?” he answered in a low voice.

“And the miracle?” said the doctor.

The door opened.  Wade appeared with coffee.

CHAPTER III

THE HEALTH OF THE NEW YEAR

Valentine turned quickly, with an air of mingled irritation and relief at the interruption.

“We must all take coffee,” he cried.  “It will give us impetus, vitality, so that as the old year dies we may live more swiftly, more strongly.  I like to feel that my life is increasing while that of another—­the old year for instance—­is decreasing.”

But the doctor noticed that his eyes had rested with a curiously significant expression upon Julian as he spoke the last sentence.

“Leave the coffee-pot on that little table,” he added to Wade, when the man had filled all four cups.  “We may want it.”

Wade obeyed him and disappeared.

“Your man makes wonderful coffee,” the doctor said, sipping.

“Yes.  Julian, have you reached that café noir I spoke of the other day?” Valentine asked laughingly, returning to his simile of the greedy man and happiness.

“I don’t know.  Not yet, Val, I think,” Julian answered.  This coffee seemed to give him life at last.  The heavy weariness disappeared from his face.  His eyes gleamed with something of their old youthfulness and ardour.

“If so, I must be close on happiness,” he added.

As he spoke he looked into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo, seeming, strangely, to seek in them the will-o’-the-wisp of which he spoke.

“Never look for it in unfurnished rooms,” Valentine exclaimed with sudden violence.

This glance of Julian, so the doctor judged, precipitated his curious and subtle insanity towards an outburst.

“You will find it in the thing that is most definite, not in the thing that is most indefinite.  Isn’t it so, doctor?  Happiness lies in the positive, not in the negative.”

“Happiness lies in many places.  Each finds it in a different house.”

“Perhaps you can’t tell where I should find it, Val,” Julian interposed, with a certain sturdiness of manner.

“No,” said Cuckoo, eagerly.

The coffee, it appeared, had an effect upon her too.  There was a life, a keen intentness in her thin, white face, not visible there before.  Valentine turned round upon her.  He was holding his coffee cup in his right hand.  With the other he put his cigarette to his lips.

“Can you tell us where Mr. Addison is likely to find happiness?” he said.  “Can you tell us, lady of the feathers?”