And he drew from a nook, guarded by some large ferns, a pot of red hyacinths.

Cuckoo sat up and drank a little brandy, which the doctor gave to her.  Some colour came into her pale and thin cheeks.

“I’m as right as ninepence now,” she said, with an effort after brightness.

The bells began again.

“What’s that?” she asked.  “Not New Year, is it?”

“Yes,” answered Valentine.  “A happy New Year to you, lady of the feathers.”

Julian was struck by a sudden thought.

“Val,” he said, “Cuckoo, I want you to be real friends this year.”

He caught hold of Valentine’s hand and placed it in Cuckoo’s.  But then, again, a bewilderment seemed to take hold of him, for even as he touched Valentine’s hand he looked at him askance, and the eagerness died away from his face.

“I don’t know,” he muttered to himself, and getting up from the end of the divan, where he had been sitting, he moved away towards the fire, leaving Cuckoo’s hand in the hand of Valentine.

Valentine smiled coldly on Cuckoo.

“Lady of the feathers,” he said, “we are to be allies.”

“What’s that?” she asked, pulling her hand away, directly Julian had turned his back upon them.

“When people fight together against a common enemy they are allies.”

“Then we ain’t,” she whispered, “New Year or not.”

“You defy me,” he said, raising his voice so that the doctor might hear the words.

“Yes,” she said.

“Doctor, do you hear?”

He seemed suddenly bent on forcing a quarrel.  Doctor Levillier felt again that sense of dread and horror which had attacked him now more than once of late in Valentine’s presence.  This time the sensation was so acute that he could scarcely combat it sufficiently to reply.

“I hear,” he murmured.

“Julian!” Valentine called.  “Julian, come here.  Miss Bright wishes to tell you something.”

Julian turned round.

“Now, lady of the feathers!”

But Cuckoo burst into a shrill little laugh.  Her head was spinning again.

“I’ve nothing—­nothing to say,” she cried out.  “Give me some more brandy.”

“Very well.  Let us all drink to the health of the New Year.”

Valentine filled the glasses—­Julian’s with absinthe—­and gave the toast: 

“The New Year!”

They all raised their glasses to their lips simultaneously.  One fell with a crash to the ground and was broken.  It was Julian’s.

“I won’t drink it,” he said, doggedly, looking at Valentine.

There was a silence.  Then Valentine said, calmly: 

“Have you an animus against the thing you don’t yet know?”

It was sufficiently obvious that he alluded to the year just coming in upon London.  But the words were taken by the doctor, and apparently by Julian, in a hidden and different sense.