The flame above the head of Julian grew brighter.  The flame of Marr, striving with the fury of despair, flickered lower.

Doctor Levillier held his breath and prayed.  Again he thought of Rip.  Would Julian too die rather than yield to the final grip of evil?  Would he die fighting?

* * * * *

A strange thin cry broke through the silence.  The doctor saw two flames float up together through the darkness.  They passed before the face of Cuckoo and were lost in the air above her.  Two happy flames.

She stirred suddenly and murmured.

The thing that sat by the doctor sprang up.  Light flashed through the room.

As it flashed the doctor leaned towards Julian, who lay forward with his arms stretched along the table.

He was dead.

Valentine—­the spirit, at least, that had usurped the body of
Valentine—­stood looking down upon Julian, dead, in silence.

Then it turned upon the doctor.  The doctor stood up as one that nerves himself to meet a great horror.

He watched the light fade out of the eyes of this horror, the expression slink from the features, the breath remove from the lips, the pulses cease in the veins and arteries, until an image, some lifeless and staring idol, stood before him.

It swayed.  It tottered.  It fell, crumpling itself together like things that return to dust.  The flesh, formerly kept alive by the spirit, now deserted finally by that which had dwelt within it and sought to use it for destruction, went down to death.

Then the lady of the feathers awoke at last from her sleep.  The doctor bent over her and took her hands in his.  It seemed to him that she had won a great battle.  He felt awestruck as he looked into her eyes.  He tried to speak to her, but no words came to him except these, which he murmured at last below his breath: 

“Your victory.”

Cuckoo looked up at him.  Her eyes were still lightly clouded with sleep, but they were smiling, as if they had been gazing upon the face of beauty.

For how long had Cuckoo slept?  Surely through all the length of her life, through all the tears that she had shed, through all the sad deeds that she had committed!  Now, at last, she woke.

Her slumber had been as the deep slumber of death.

And from death do we not awake to a new understanding and to a new world?