“No.  He can tell himself.  That’s all,” she said.  “Let him find it himself.”

“Each for himself and God for us all, eh?”

“I don’t know about God,” she said, looking towards the doctor as if for assistance.

“Each for another and God for us all is perhaps a better motto,” the doctor interposed.

“Ah, Charity!”

Valentine took out his watch and looked at it.

“Charity!  Midnight is approaching, and, of course, this is Charity’s benefit-night by common consent.  Thank you, doctor, for the hint.  Did the dying old year prompt you with its husky voice full of the wind and of the snow?”

“Possibly.”

“Let us have some more coffee.  Julian, give me Miss Bright’s cup.  You shall have your absinthe presently.  Wade has not forgotten it.”

“Absinthe?” said the doctor.

“Julian drinks it every night.  He has got tired of whiskey.  Doctor, your cup too.”

“We shall not sleep a wink to-night.”

“All the better.  Why should not we see the dawn in, as we did once before?  You recollect.”

“Ah, Val! on the night of your trance.”

“Yes.  You were not here then, lady of the feathers.”

He spoke with a light mockery.

“I fainted, or died—­the doctor was deceived into thinking so—­and was born again in the dawn of the very day on which Julian first met you.”

Cuckoo shivered with the recollection of Marr and her horror of that night.

“Why do you shiver?” Valentine continued.  “Do you find the room cold?”

“No, no.”

Indeed, the heat and the overpowering scent of the hyacinths had previously weighed upon her physique, and increased the malaise into which her curious new dutifulness, and the faint spectre which drew near to her, had brought her.

“Perhaps you shiver in the influence of this little room,” he continued, persistently.  “Julian and I once did so.  Eh, Julian?”

“Yes, in those sittings.”

“I didn’t shiver,” Cuckoo said, bluntly and very obviously lying.

She quickly drank some more coffee.

“If you had, it might not have been astonishing,” said Valentine.  “For this little room has seen marvels, and strange things that happen perhaps stamp their strange impression upon the places in which they happen.  We ought to discuss the occult, doctor, on the last night of the year.”

“By all means.”

“How long ago it seems!” Julian said suddenly, with a sigh.

“Yes,” Valentine answered.  “Because so much has happened in the interval.  The greedy man has eaten so many courses, Julian.”

He seemed to take a delight in throwing out allusions to one and the other of his guests, allusions which nobody but the person addressed could understand rightly.  For he now went on, addressing himself to Cuckoo: 

“In this little room was committed the great act of brigandage of which I once spoke to you.  Do you remember?”