“Oh dear, no!  He calls himself an occultist.  He goes out in society a great deal, apparently.  I met him at dinner first.  Since then he has taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine.”

“Indeed!  You know him, Cresswell?”

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

“The fun of it is that Marr doesn’t wish to know Valentine,” he said.

“Why?” the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and gave a fairly minute description of Marr’s attitude towards their proceedings.  Levillier listened with great attention.

“Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?” he said when Julian had finished.

“Scarcely that.  But he certainly seems anxious that we should.”

“You have both resolved to give them up, haven’t you?”

“Certainly, doctor,” Valentine replied.

“Does Marr know that?” Levillier asked of Julian.

“No.  I haven’t seen him to speak to since our final sitting.”

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.  Then he remarked, with abruptness: 

“Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a piece of advice?”

“You—­doctor!  Of course not.  What is it?”

“Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of the moment.  But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to force.  The world doesn’t completely recognize this.  The law doesn’t recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it.  Some call it hypnotism.  I call it suggestion.”

He paused, as if he had finished.

“But your advice, doctor?” Julian said, wondering.

“Oh, h’m!  I don’t mean to give it to you, after all.”

“Why?”

Doctor Levillier became enigmatic.

“Because I have just remembered that to warn is often to supply a cause of stumbling,” he said.

Dr. Levillier and Julian drove together as far as the latter’s chambers that evening, and, after bidding Julian good-night, the doctor dismissed the cab and set out to walk to Harley Street.  He proceeded at a leisurely pace along Piccadilly, threading his way abstractedly among the wandering wisps of painted humanity that dye the London night with rouge.  Occasionally a passing man in evening dress would bid him good-night, for he was universally known in the town.  But he did not reply.  With his firm round chin pressed down upon his fur coat, and his eyelids lowered, he moved thoughtfully.  The problem of the relations existing between youth and life eternally fascinated him.  He pondered over them now.  What a strange, complicated liaison it was, sometimes so happy, sometimes so disastrous, always, to him, pathetic.  Youth sets up house with life