But Cuckoo was relapsing into confusion already.

“And then he talked a lot about will, as he called it.  Can’t remember what he said.”

“Try to.”

She was silent, knitting her brows.

“It’s no use.  I can’t,” she said, despairingly.  “But I know he says that he’s really Marr and that he’s killed Valentine.  He said that; I know he did.”

She glanced eagerly at the doctor, in the obvious hope that his cleverness, which she believed to be unlimited and profound, would in a flash divine all the strange secret from this exposition of her disjointed recollection.  With each word she spoke, however, the doctor became more and more convinced that Valentine had only been cruelly amusing himself with her, or weaving for her benefit some intricate web of vain madness.  And Cuckoo, noticing this now, and recollecting the momentary clearness of comprehension which had seized her at one point in Valentine’s wild sermon to her, was mad with herself for not being able to seize again that current of inspiration, almost mad with the doctor for not unravelling the mystery.  This excess of feeling finally drowned and swept away as a corpse the memory of the gospel of influence.

“I can’t remember no more,” she said stolidly.  “There was ever such a lot about—­about some one as was good and didn’t want to be good any more, and so it was driven away—­I don’t know.  P’rhaps he was only gamin’ me.”

She stared moodily at her feet, which she had stuck out from under her dress.  The doctor said nothing, but at her last speech his face had lit up with a sort of excitement.  For had she not described in those few ill-chosen words the very mental position of the former Valentine?  A saint at first with his will, a saint at last against his will—­and now a saint no more.  That was, perhaps, the key to the whole matter.  A good man prays to be no longer good.  His prayer is granted.  His grievous desire is fulfilled.  And then he may pray forever in vain to be as he once was.  Yet the change in Valentine was more even than this, more than the gliding from white purity to black sin.  There was something.

As Cuckoo and the doctor sat in silence, she staring vacantly and empty of thought, being now utterly and chaotically puzzled, he thinking deeply, the door bell rang.  In a moment Mrs. Brigg appeared, went to Cuckoo and muttered in her ear: 

“Mr. Haddison wants to come in.  I told him you was busy.”

“Oh,” said Cuckoo, “I say—­wait,” and then to the doctor, “It’s him.  It’s Julian.”

“Let him in,” the doctor said quickly.

To see Cuckoo and Julian together might tell him much.

Julian came in, stumbling rather heavily at the entrance of the room.

CHAPTER VI

CLEAR WEATHER

“Damn that mat!” he exclaimed.  “I say, Cuckoo, who the—?” The question faded on his lips as he saw Doctor Levillier, on whom he gazed with a vacant surprise that, added to the unsteadiness of his movement upon them, spoke his condition very plainly.