And Cuckoo sat watching silently.  She remembered the night on which Valentine had half revealed the mystery to her, who could not understand it.  Was he about to reveal it now to Julian?  Her eyes flamed with eagerness, and again Valentine looked into them and faltered for a moment.  Then he turned resolutely away from her, as if he gave his whole heart and soul to the business before him, to this Julian who at last began to shrink from him, to feel terror at his approach, even to repudiate him.

“From what have I come, then?” he repeated.

Julian paused, as if he sought an answer, looking backwards into the past.  Suddenly he cried: 

“From that trance!  Yes; it was then.  That flame going away, it was—­it must have been—­Valentine.”

“You talk like a madman.”

But Julian did not heed the sneer.  He was passionately engrossed by the flood of thoughts that had come to him.  He was struggling to wake finally from the dreary and infamous dream in which he had been walking—­deceived, tricked, tyrant-ridden—­for so long.

“But then Valentine is dead,” he cried.

His face went white.  He sank down, clinging suddenly to Cuckoo.

“Dead!” he repeated in a whisper.

The girl’s touch was strangely warm on his hands, like fire.  He looked up into her eyes, seeking passionately for that flame that now he began vaguely to connect with the Valentine he had lost.

“Or is he—?”

Julian hesitated, still gazing at the white and weary face of Cuckoo.  Suddenly Valentine said loudly: 

“You are right.  He is dead.”

He laughed aloud.

“I killed him,” he said, “when I took his place.  Julian, you shall know now, what the lady of the feathers knows already, what a human will can do, when it is utterly content with itself, when it is trained, developed, perfected.  I came through Marr to Valentine.  I was Marr.”

“Marr!” Julian said slowly.  “You!”

“And Marr, too, was my prey.  Like Valentine he was not content with himself.  His weakness of discontent was my opportunity.  I expelled his will, for mine was stronger than his.  I lived in his body until the time came for me to be with you.  Have you ever read of vampires?”

Julian muttered a hoarse assent.  He seemed bound by a strange spell, inert, paralysed almost.

“There are vampires in the modern world who feed, not upon bodies, but upon souls, wills.  And each soul they feed upon gives to them greater strength, a longer reign upon the earth.  Who knows?  One of them in time may compass eternity.”

He seemed to tower up in the little room, to blaze with triumph.

“When you see a man go down, sink into the mire, and you say, ’He is weak—­he has come under a bad influence’—­it is a vampire who feeds upon his soul, who sucks the blood of his will.  Sometimes the vampire comes in his own form, sometimes he wears a mask—­the mask of a friend’s form and face.  The influences that wreck men are the vampires of the soul at work, Julian, at work.”