Curiously enough, Rip welcomed Julian’s advances with avidity, nestled into his arms, but when he walked toward Valentine, struggled to escape and trembled in every limb.

“How extraordinary!” Julian said.  “Since your trance he seems to have taken a violent dislike to you.  What can it mean?”

“Oh, nothing probably.  He will get over it.  Put him into the other room.”

Julian did so and returned.

Doctor Levillier was now sitting in an arm-chair.  His light, kind eyes were fixed on Valentine with a scrutiny so intense as to render the expression of his usually gentle face almost stern.  But Valentine appeared quite unconscious of his gaze and mainly attentive to all that Julian said and did.  All this time the doctor had not said a word.  Now he spoke.

“You spoke of a trance?” he said, interrogatively.

Julian looked as guilty as a cribbing schoolboy discovered in his dingy act.

“Doctor, Val and I have to crawl to you for forgiveness,” he said.

“To me—­why?”

“We have disobeyed you.”

“But I should never give you an order.”

“Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor,” said Valentine, with a sudden laugh.

“And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the wall?”

“We have been table-turning again.”

“Ah!”

Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape assumed by one whistling.

“And this has been the result?”

“Yes,” Julian cried.  “Never, as long as I live, will I sit again.  Val, if you go down on your knees to me—­”

“I shall not do that,” Valentine quietly interposed.  “I have no desire to sit again now.”

“You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last,” said the doctor.  “Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said.”

And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine with a light smile.  Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety.  The events of the night had seriously affected him.  He was excited and emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed: 

“Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before you went into your trance?  Were you frightened? or did something—­that hand—­touch you?  Or what was it?”

“A cry?”

“Yes.”

“It was not I.”

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“No.”

Julian turned to the doctor.

“It was an unearthly sound,” he said.  “Like nothing I have ever heard or imagined.  And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that made me believe Valentine was really dead.”

“What was it?”

Julian hesitated.  Then he avoided directly replying to the question.

“Doctor,” he said, “of course I needn’t ask you if you have often been at deathbeds?”

“I have.  Very often,” Levillier replied.