“You starved for me, sold Jessie for me,” he whispered.  “How I love you!  How I love you!”

And he crushed her close in an embrace that was almost brutal.

The door bell rang.  Julian let Cuckoo go.

“He has come for me,” he said.

She knew it too, and looked at him with a piteous, greedy questioning.

“I hate him now,” he said in answer.

The door of the room opened.  They both turned towards it.  Valentine entered.

“I thought I should find you here,” he said, stopping near the door.  “Are you better, Julian?”

“Better?”

“Last night you were not yourself.”

“I have not been myself for a long time,” Julian replied.

“I had not noticed any change.”

Julian made no reply.  A dogged expression had come into his face.  He was still sitting close to Cuckoo.  Now he took her hand in his.  As he did so, Valentine moved a little nearer, as if urged by a sudden impulse.  He bent down to gaze into Cuckoo’s face, and uttered a short exclamation.

“The battle!” he said.

An expression almost of awe had come into his eyes, and for a moment he hesitated, even half turned as if to slink away.  But then, with a strong effort, he recovered himself and again fixed his eyes on Julian.

“Come, Julian!” he said.

“I will not come.”

“I have a cab here waiting.”  Valentine spoke with an iron calm.  “We had arranged to go to Magdalen’s.”

Julian uttered an oath.

“That devil!” he exclaimed.  “I won’t go to her.  I am half dead.  I am killing myself.”

He pulled himself up short, then cried out savagely, and half despairingly: 

“No, by God, you are killing me!”

He began to tremble, and looked towards Cuckoo as a man looks who seeks for refuge.

“You are treating me very strangely, Julian,” Valentine said frigidly.  “Last night you were drunk.  You seemed to take me for some enemy, and struck me.  Many men would resent your conduct.  I am too much your friend.”

“You—­my friend!” Julian exclaimed bitterly.

“You!”

Abruptly he sprang up, tearing his hand out of Cuckoo’s.  He went over to Valentine and stared with a passion of perplexity and of loathing into his eyes.

“What, in God’s name, are you?” he said, in an uncertain voice.  “Are you man or devil?  You are not Valentine—­not the man I loved.  I’ll swear it.  You are some damned stranger, and I have lived with you”—­he shuddered irrepressibly—­“and never knew it till now.”

“You say I am a stranger?”

“Yes, with the face of my friend.”

“How can that be?”

Again a misery of confusion and of fear swept over Julian.

“Whence did I come, then?” Valentine asked.

He began to have the air of a man bent on some revelation.  An immense power infused itself through him.  His blue eyes were utterly fearless.  The moment of open battle had come at last.  Well, he would not attempt to avoid it, to gain further uneasy peace.  He would strike a final blow, secure of his own victory.