“Some day you may be,” he said at last, obviously conquered by this prompting prudence.

“When I am, the ‘Christian scientist’ who once declared to me that she cured a sprained ankle by walking on it many miles a day, and thinking it was well while she walked, shall receive my respectful apologies,” the doctor answered, laughing.

Valentine handed the lady of the feathers some strawberries.  On her nervous refusal of them he exclaimed: 

“I see you have finished your wine, doctor.  No more?  Really?  Nor you, Julian?”

Julian made no reply.  He simply pushed his glass a little away from him.

“Then shall we accompany Miss Bright into the tentroom?  I thought we would have coffee there.  You have never seen the tentroom,” he added to Cuckoo, getting up from his seat as he spoke.

“I usually sit in it when I am alone or with Julian.  You will not mind our cigarettes, I know.”

He led the way down the scented corridor, scented with the thin, gently bright scent of violets.

“The tentroom has a history,” he continued to Cuckoo, opening a door on the left.  “It was once the scene of an—­an absurd experiment.  Eh, doctor?”

They entered the room.  As they did so the hot, sticky scent of the hidden hyacinths poured out to meet them.  For a moment it seemed overwhelming, and Cuckoo hung back with an almost unconquerable sensation of aversion and even of fear.  The aspect of this small room astonished her; she had never seen any chamber so arranged.  Certainly, it looked very unusual to-night.  The small fire was hidden by a large screen of white wood, with panels of dull green brocade.  Only one of the electric lamps was turned on, and that was shaded, so that the diffused light was faint, a mere unflickering twilight.  The masses of tulips hung like quantities of monotonously similar shadows from the tented ceiling, and the flood of scent caused the room to seem even smaller than it really was, a tiny temple dedicated to the uncommon, perhaps to the sinister.

“We will see the old year out and drink our café noir here,” said Valentine.  “Where will you sit, Miss Bright?”

“I don’t mind.  It’s all one to me,” murmured Cuckoo.  “What a funny room, though!” she could not help adding.  “It ain’t like a room at all.”

“Imagine it an Arab tent, the home of a Bedouin Sheik in a desert of Nubia,” said Valentine.  “This divan is very comfortable.  Let me arrange the cushions for you.”

As he bent over her to do so, he murmured in her ear: 

“And you, having tossed your will away, are nothing!”

They had been the last words of his gospel, proclaimed to her that night on which she prayed!