“Look there!”

The lady of the feathers stopped crying abruptly, as if her tears were suddenly frozen at their source.

“Where, dearie?” she said jerkily.  “Whatever do you mean?”

“There where the cups are hung up.  Don’t you see anything?”

But the lady was looking at him, and she now dropped her cup with a crash to the pavement.

“There’s a go,” said the sharp-featured youth.  “You’re a nice one, you are!”

Without regarding his protest, the lady violently wrenched her arm from Julian’s grasp and recoiled from the stall.

“Le-go my arm,” she babbled hysterically.  “Le-go, I say.  I can’t stand any more—­no, I can’t.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Julian, astonished at her outburst.

But she only repeated vehemently: 

“Let go, let me go!”

Backing away, she trod the fallen coffee-cup to fragments on the pavement, and began to drift down Piccadilly, her face under the feathers set so completely round over her shoulder, in observation of Julian, that she seemed to be promenading backwards.  And as she went she uttered deplorable wailing sounds, which gradually increased in volume.  Apparently she considered that her life had been in imminent danger, and that she saved herself by shrieks; for, still keeping her face toward the coffee-stall, she faded away in the morning, until only the faint noise of her retreat betokened her existence any longer.

The sharp-featured youth winked wearily at Julian from the midst of his grove of coffee-cups.

“Nice things, women, sir,” he ejaculated.  “Good ayngels the books calls ’m.  O Gawd!”

Julian paid him and walked away.

And as he went he found himself instinctively watching for the fleeting shadow of a flame, trying to perceive it against the grey face of a house, against the trunk of a tree, the dark green of a seat.  But the light of the mounting morning grew ever stronger and the flame-shaped shadow did not reappear.

Julian reached his chambers, undressed abstractedly and went to bed.  Before he fell asleep he looked at Rip reposing happily at the foot of the bed, and had a moment of shooting wonder that the little dog was so completely comfortable with him.  That it had flown at its master, who had always been kind to it, whom it had always seemed to love hitherto, puzzled Julian.

But then so many things had puzzled him within the last few days.

He stroked Rip with a meditative hand and lay down.  Soon his mind began to wander in the maze whose clue is sleep.  He was with Valentine, with Doctor Levillier, with the sharp-featured youth and the lady of the feathers.  They sat round a table and it was dark; yet he could see.  And the lady’s feathers grew like the beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer towards heaven and the land of ogres.  Then Julian climbed up and up till he reached the top of the ladder.  And it seemed to him that the feather ladder ended in blue space and in air, and that far away he saw the outline of a golden bar.  And on this bar two figures leaned.  One seemed an angel, one a devil.  Yet they had faces that were alike, and were beautiful.  They faded.