“Let them try to break me,” his mind said within itself.  “Their very trial shall consolidate my empire.”

And then his eyes left the others and rested only on Julian.

“Very well, we will sit,” he said.

CHAPTER IV

THE SIXTH SITTING

Julian was painfully excited, but he strove to repress all evidences of his inward turmoil as he began to pull out a table and arrange it in the centre of the room.  This act threw him with a jerk back into the days of the past, recalling so vividly the former life of himself and Valentine that he could not help saying: 

“This is like last year.”

“Like the year that the locust hath eaten,” Valentine answered.  “We must push our empty white years down into the water, Julian.”

Julian made no reply.  The table was soon arranged, the screen was drawn more closely round the fire, which had been allowed to burn low.  Four chairs were set.  Valentine turned to Cuckoo, who sat hunched on the divan staring with wide open eyes at these preparations.

“Will you come?” he said, with his hands on the back of one of the chairs.

“Whatever are we going to do?” she asked nervously.

“Something very simple—­and perhaps very foolish,” said the doctor, wondering, indeed, now the moment for beginning the phantasy was arrived, whether he was not to blame for encouraging a thing that in his under mind he so thoroughly disapproved of.  “We are going to sit round that table in the dark with our hands upon it, and wait.”

“Whatever for?”

Her simple and blatant question caused the doctor actually to blush.  His confusion was quite obvious, but it was covered by Julian, who exclaimed, rather roughly: 

“Now, Cuckoo, don’t chatter, but come here and sit quiet.”

He drew her from the divan into a chair and sat down beside her.  Valentine glided swiftly into the chair on her other side and said: 

“Oh, doctor, I forgot the light.  Do you mind turning it out?”

The doctor obeyed, felt his way to the chair opposite Cuckoo and sat down.

Almost at the moment he turned out the light the bells that rang, “Le roi est mort, vive le roi,” ceased.  Cuckoo was directed to lay her hands on the table, and to touch with her fingers the fingers of her companions.  She did so, trembling.  This was a new experience to her, and her entire lack of knowledge of what was expected to happen filled the darkness with immoderate possibilities, and her soul with awe and with confusion.  Then, to sit between the man she loved and the man she loathed, thus in the blackness, was a nerve-shaking experience which her preceding fainting-fit did not deprive of its normal terrors.  The hand of Valentine and the hand of Julian were as ice and as fire to her.  The darkness seemed crowded with nameless things.  She could fancy that she heard it whisper incessantly in her ear.