“Why haven’t you been near me?” Julian said.

“Why haven’t you been near me?”

“Oh—­well—­do you want to know really?”

“Yes; if you have got a definite reason.”

“To tell the truth, I have; but it is such an absurd one.”

Julian looked at Valentine and then added, with a decidedly forced laugh: 

“You’ll be awfully surprised when I tell you what it is, Val.  I want to sit again.”

“Now I know why I stopped undressing just now,” said Valentine.  “I must have had a sense that you were coming.  Were you thinking very hard of me to-night and of our sittings?”

“Rather!  It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I’ve been perfectly miserable.  I haven’t enjoyed a single thing I’ve done since that night.”

“Nor I,” said Valentine.

“What! you have been as bad?  And without having Marr continually at your elbow!”

“Marr again!”

“Again!  Yes, I should think so.  That chap has taken a fancy to me, I suppose.  Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or night, up he comes.  He must live there.  And the first thing he says is, ‘Have you gone on with your sittings?  You should, you should.’  To-day he changed his formula and said, ‘You must,’ and when I was going away, he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless voice, ‘You will.’  I declare I almost think he must have a sort of influence over me, for I couldn’t go to bed for the life of me, and here I am.  By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination.  Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors, and, by Jove, didn’t he abuse them!  He says they stand more in the way of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body of people.  He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the tinkering of the flesh.  ‘What does the flesh matter?’ he said.  ’It is nothing.  It is only an envelope.  And the more tightly it is fastened together, the more it stifles the spirit.  I would like to catch hold of some men’s bodies and tear them in pieces to get at their souls.’  Val, as he made that cheerful remark, he looked more like a homicidal maniac than anything I ever saw.”

“I suppose you didn’t stand up for the doctors?”

“But I did—­for our little man.  D’you think I wasn’t going to say a word for him?”

“What! you mentioned his name to this chap?”

“Certainly.  Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Valentine said, hesitatingly.

“What objection could there possibly be?”

“None, of course—­none.  I simply had a quite unreasonable feeling that I wished you hadn’t.  That is all.”

And then Valentine relapsed into silence, the silence some men keep when they are needlessly, uselessly irritated.  The mention of Marr’s name had effected him oddly.  He now felt a perverse desire not to sit, not comply with the rather impertinent prediction of this dark-featured prophet whom he had never seen.  To carry out this prediction would seem like an obedience to a stranger, governing, unseen, and at a distance.  Why did this man concern himself in the affairs of those over whom he had no sovereignty, with whom he had no friendship?