memory of her martyrdom when the little old man of the many dogs shuffled to the door, bearing from her the friend of her loneliness.  Her eyes were hollow and desolate.  It seemed that she gave heed to the voices and listened to the beautiful legend of the magic and the holiness of sleep.  And as she seemed to give heed, the devil of the egoism of Valentine rose again before the doctor, sharply outlined and distinct, and smiled with the triumph of the egoism—­that modern vampire—­of all the world, terrifically unconquerable.  Would Cuckoo sleep?  The doctor debated this question silently and with an agony of anxiety.  He felt as if the fate of worlds hung upon it, and the destinies of kings.

Would she sleep?

The obstinate spirit stood by her always, and the song of Valentine was a procession of triumph in the night.

* * * * *

Julian’s thoughts broke upon the doctor fiercely, and swept him from his contemplation of Cuckoo.  No drowsy poppy-bed was Julian’s.  The shadowy spirit of sleep strove not to influence him.  No opiates gave him peace.  No veil of gentle forgetfulness descended upon him.  He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds.  He was trembling, stretching out his feeble hands in the blackness for guidance, sick with apprehension, betrayed, deluded.  And now he began to writhe in the grasp of a new terror, for it seemed to the doctor that he, too, was conscious of the obstinate spirit that stood beside Cuckoo, and that he dreaded the approach of his doom in her slumber.  He, too, murmured silently, “Will she sleep?  Will she sleep?” If indeed she slept at the word of Valentine—­Julian’s last hope was gone.  For he had now concentrated himself almost utterly on Cuckoo.  No longer did he draw near to her half in awe, half in derision, led to her by the presence of the flame that flickered, something strangely apart from her, in her sad eyes.  No longer did he set her and the flame apart.  To him she was the flame, the only refuge, the only safety.  For he sought the lost Valentine indeed, but with a strange hopelessness of ever finding him again.  She must not sleep.  She must not sleep.  In her slumber the flame would die down, flicker lower and lower to a spark, to grey, cold ashes.  And Julian in his distraction thought of himself as inevitably lost should the flame die, should Cuckoo sleep, ruled by Valentine.  The fight was between Cuckoo, the flame, and Valentine.  Everything else fell away and left Julian’s world bare of all things save this one contest.  This the doctor learnt in the darkness.  But still the spirit of sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo, and the air grew heavy and full of slumber.