And now, in the darkness and in the silence, the doctor heard the mind of Julian.  Another scent floated through that imagined damp and breathing wood from another—­but how different—­soul-flower.  No Litany of triumph murmured in the blackness where Julian sat, but a hoarse and broken solo, part despair, part fear, part anger, and all perplexed and flooded with bewilderment and with excitement.  The doctor drew into him the murmur of Julian’s mind until it seemed to become, for the time, the murmur of his own mind.  He was conscious of a dreadful turmoil of doubt, and dread and perplexity, so strong, so painful, that it lay upon him like a dense and a suffocating burden.  In that moment he knew utterly that the greatest load in the world laid on any man is the load of his own, perhaps beloved, sin.  He was staggering wearily with Julian away from the light.  His eyes were dim—­with the eyes of Julian.  His ears, like Julian’s, were assailed with the dastard clamour of the calling sin.  “Listen!  Listen! you want me.  I am here.  Take me!  Take me!” And the weltering seas of heavy flooding impotence rolled round him as they rolled round Julian.  He grew numb and vacant and inert, then—­alive ever to the murmur of Julian’s mind—­caught a glimpse, through the waters of that whelming sea, of far-away light, and heard that the voices of the importunate sins grew fainter.  But whether the voices were loud or low, whether the seas flowed above his head or sank and failed, he was always conscious of the dominating mood of almost wild perplexity and a madness of bewilderment.  For Julian stirred under the yoke that Valentine had laid upon him, as if at last conscious distinctly that it was indeed a yoke, and that it galled him; as if at last conscious, too, that without that yoke was freedom.  And he shot against Valentine in the darkness arrows of inquiry.  But always he lived in doubt and almost in terror.

And then, detaching himself from the triumph, touched with anxiety, of Valentine, and from the wild turmoil of Julian, Dr. Levillier opened the door of his mind wide, and the lady of the feathers entered in.

He heard the thoughts of a woman.

That was strangest of all—­the most fantastic, eerie, wayward, wonderful music the doctor had dreamed of.

Have you listened to far-off and mingling melodies at night—­melodies of things opposed and differing, yet drawn together, in strange places far from your home?  Have you heard a woman wailing over some abominable sorrow in a dark house, and an organ—­before which filthy children dance fantastically—­playing a merry Neapolitan tune in front of it, while the mutter of scowling men comes from the blazing corner where the gin-palace faces the night?  There you have sorrow, sunshine, crime, singing together in a great city.  Or have you stood in a land not your own, and gleaned the whisper of an ancient river, the sough of a desert wind, the hoarse and tuneless song of a black man