with the reverence of earth for the distant wonder of the sky.  He saw it now without fear, but with a passion of desire, a sharp consciousness of his degradation, that swept over him like a storm.  And even yet, in this new knowledge, this rapture of awakening, he was still a bond slave, or feared he was, to this stranger with the face of a friend, this enemy with the presence of his former guardian angel.  Only Cuckoo could save him, he said to himself, if indeed the day of salvation were not long ago past—­only Cuckoo.  For despite her many sins, the flame shone in her eyes.  And where the flame shone there alone was even the shadow of help, a shadow within the shadow of those eyes.

In the silence that had come upon his guests, Valentine turned to them, and said: 

“We are supposed to be here for a sitting.  Well, shall we have it?”

“Yes—­yes,” Julian said, “a last sitting.”

“Why—­last?”

Julian sat up on the divan, and his hands were clenched on the cushions.

“Because if nothing happens to-night I’ll give it up.  I’ll never sit again.  And if Cuckoo sleeps—­”

He paused.

“She will sleep,” Valentine said.  “I have the power to make her.”

“No,” said Cuckoo.

“Don’t you think so, doctor?”

“It seemed so the other night,” the doctor answered.

“And with each sitting my power will increase.  Do you hear, Julian?”

“You’re very fond of talking about your power,” Julian said, roughly.

“No.  But I may be very fond of exercising it.  Why help me, then, by sitting?”

He spoke in a bantering tone.  Julian began to look doubtful.  Could it be that all was changed, that there was only danger in this act, that to grope thus in the darkness for lost hope, lost safety, a lost Valentine, with love, trust, beauty, still clinging about him, was to stumble further into a deepening night?  It might be so.  And if Cuckoo slept—!

Valentine smiled at this wavering approach of indecision.  But Doctor Levillier said, decisively: 

“I wish to sit.  It interests me.  Send me to sleep, too, if you can, Cresswell.”

“I will,” Valentine answered, lightly.  “Come.”

The doctor saw him standing for a moment in the light, with a glory of power and of triumph upon his face, and remembered that glory, even seemed to see it, a clear vision, when darkness filled the room.

Out of the darkness came the murmur of a voice.

“The last sitting,” it said.

Julian was the speaker.  Nobody replied.  Silence followed.  As before, the doctor sat between Julian and Valentine and touched their hands.  As before, the darkness, and this mutual act in it, developed in him the faculty of hearing, or of thinking he heard, the voices of the thoughts of his companions.  So far this night echoed the last night of the year.  Would it echo that night farther still to the ultimate notes of this music of minds?  The doctor wondered.  He was soon to know.