with authority, he could not tell.  Only he knew that on a sudden all his guiding reason, all his knowledge, all his cool contemplation of the physician and common sense of the man, were swept entirely away.  His theory of insanity seemed in a moment the theory of a dwarf intellect trying to stick wretched, absurd pins through angels—­white or black—­that it thought butterflies.  His conversation with Cuckoo on the Hampstead Heights seemed the vain babble of a tricked and impotent observer.  His mind fell on its knees before the mind of the lady of the feathers.  Reason was stricken by instinct.  The confused feeling of the woman had conquered the logical inferences of the man.  From that moment the doctor secretly abandoned the old landmarks which had guided him all his life, and entered into a new world—­a world in which he would not have dreamed of permitting any of his patients to walk if he could help it.  A strange magic floated round him like a mist blotting out the crude familiarities of the normal world.  The tentroom, with its shadowy tulips, its scented warmth, its pale twilight, its quick silences when voices ceased, was a temple of wonder and a home of the miraculous.  And those gathered in it, what were they?  Men and a woman?  Bodies?  Earthly creatures?  No.  To his mind they were stripped bare of the clothes in which man—­governed by decrees of some hidden power—­must make his life pilgrimage.  They were stripped bare and naked of their bodies.  They were warm, stirring, disembodied things—­they were flames leaping, waving, contending, aspiring.  And he remembered the night when he sat alone in the drawing-room of Valentine, and saw the red walls glow, and the light deepen, and saw the stillness grow to movement, and the shadows come away from their background, and take forms—­the forms of flames.  Was that night a night of prophesy?  Were those flames silent voices speaking to the ear of his mind?  He looked around him like a man in a strange country, who takes a long breath and liberates his soul in wonder.  He looked around, and the shadowy, thin girl leaning forward on the divan, with one arm outstretched as if she gave a message, was among the other flames as a flame upon an altar.  At least his instinct had not played him false with regard to her.  He knew it now.  In the wild and sad streets, where feet of men tread ever, where tears of women flow ever, grow flowers of Paradise, strange flowers, leap flames from the eternal fires of heaven.  And the voice of Cuckoo thrilled him as the voice of revelation.

Valentine turned upon the lady of the feathers, hearing her cry.

“Marr!” he said, “your lover who died!  Ah!”

The brutality of the remark was so unexpected, so savage, that it struck all those who heard it like a whip.  Cuckoo shrank back among her cushions trembling.  Julian made a slight forward movement as if to stop Valentine.  The doctor laid his hands on the arms of his chair and pressed them hard.  He felt a need of physical energy.  In the sudden silence Valentine touched the electric bell.  Before any one spoke it was answered by Wade, who carried a tray on which stood various bottles and glasses.