She shook her head.

“Never mind.  But, though you cannot remember, that might make you shiver.”

“What act of brigandage, Valentine?” Julian asked.

“Oh, the attempt—­my attempt to seize upon a different soul.”

“But you failed.”

“Did I?  Do you think so, doctor?”

His apparent audacity seemed to increase.  In the twilight of the scented room he drew himself up as he stood by the brocaded screen that hid the fire.  He closed and unclosed rapidly his left hand which hung at his side.  His foot tapped the thick carpet gently.

“Did you not?” the doctor answered quietly.

But Julian was roused to vivacity.

“What do you mean, Valentine?” he said.  “Of course you may have changed, or developed, or whatever you like to call it, since then.  But to say you have got a different soul!”

“Is absurd?  Yes, you are right.  Because if I had got a different soul the original ‘I,’ that was dissatisfied with itself, must have ceased to be.  Since the soul of a man—­his will to do things, his will to feel things—­is the man himself, if I had a different soul I should be another man.  The former man would have ceased to be.”

“Or would be elsewhere.”

It was the doctor who spoke, and he spoke without special interest, simply expressing his thought of what might happen in so whimsical an event as that harped upon by Valentine.  But Valentine seemed painfully struck by the almost idle words.

“Elsewhere!” he exclaimed, with a lowering expression.  “What do you mean, doctor?  What do you imply?”

The doctor looked at him surprised.

“Merely that a thing expelled is not necessarily a thing slain.  If you turn me out of this room I am not certain to expire on the doormat.”

Valentine broke into a nervous and uneasy laugh, and cast a quick glance all around him, and especially on Cuckoo, who sat listening silently with her eyebrows drawn together in a pent frown of puzzled attention.

“I see, I see,” he said hastily.  And here Julian broke in.

“But the whole thing’s impossible,” he said with a laugh.

“You would say so, doctor?”

Valentine addressed this question to Doctor Levillier in a very marked and urgent manner.

“You would say so, since the will of man cannot perform miracles?”

“Certainly, I should say so, despite the triumphs of hypnotism.  A man may change greatly through outside influence, or perform occasional acts foreign to his nature under the influence of ‘suggestion’ or hypnotism.  But I do not believe he can change radically and permanently, except from one cause.”

The last words were spoken after a moment of hesitation.  Valentine rejoined quickly: 

“What?  What?  One cause, you say!  You allow that—­wait, though!  What is the cause?”

Doctor Levillier was silent.  He was asking himself should he play this forcing card, make this sharp, cutting experiment.  He resolved that he would make it.