“Perhaps.  But the oddest thing is, that while you were insensible Rip lay with his head upon your arm as contented as possible.  It was only just as you began to show signs of life that he seemed to turn against you.  I can’t understand it.”

“Nor I. Have you seen Marr to-day?”

“No.  I haven’t been to the club.  I am so glad you don’t know him.”

Valentine laughed.  He was lying back in a big chair, smoking a cigarette.  His face was unclouded and serene, and he had never looked more entirely healthy.  Indeed, he appeared much more decisively robust than usual.  Julian noticed this.

“Your trance seems positively to have done you good,” he said.

“It certainly has not done me harm.  My short death of the senses has rested me wonderfully.  I wonder if I am what is called a medium.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if you are,” Julian said.  “But I don’t think I could be surprised at anything to-day.  Indeed, I have found myself dwelling with childish pleasure upon the most preposterous ideas, hugging them to my soul, determining to believe in them.”

“Such as—­what?”

“Well, such as this.”

And then Julian told Valentine of his curious notion that some wandering soul was beginning to companion him, and described how he had thought he saw it when he was gazing at the old woman in Grosvenor Place, and again when he was with the lady of the feathers.

“But,” Valentine said, “you say you were staring very hard at the old woman?”

“Yes.”

“That might account for the matter of the first appearance of the flame in daylight.  If you look very steadily at some object, a kind of slight mirage will often intervene between you and it.”

“Perhaps.  But I have seen this shadow of a flame when I was not thinking of it or expecting it.”

“When?”

“Just now.  As you came into the room I saw it float out at that door.”

“You are sure?”

“I believe so.  Yes, I am.”

“But why should this soul, if soul it be, haunt you?”

“I can’t tell.  Perhaps, Val, you and I ought not to have played at spiritualism as we should play at a game.  Perhaps—­”

Julian paused.  He was looking anxious, even worried.

“Suppose we have not stopped in time,” he said.

Valentine raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t understand.”

Julian was standing exactly opposite to him, leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down at him.

“We ought never to have sat again after our conversation with the doctor,” Julian said.  “I feel that to-day, so strongly.  I feel that perhaps we have taken just the one step too far,—­the one step in the dark that may be fatal.”

“Fatal!  My dear Julian, you are unstrung by the events of the night.”

But the calm of Valentine’s voice did not seem to sway Julian.  He continued: