This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.

“Valentine!” Julian cried at last.

Valentine looked up.

And in an instant the spell was removed.  Julian saw his friend and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved.  The death-chamber no longer contained a phantom.  His eyes were no longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.

“Oh, Valentine, come here,” Julian said.

Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.

Julian examined him narrowly.

“Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine.”

“Opposite to you!  Why not?”

“Nothing, nothing.  Or—­everything.  What is the matter with this room? and me? and you?  And why is Marr so changed?”

“How is he changed?  You know I have never seen his face before.”

“You do not see it now.  He has gone out of it.  All that was Marr as I knew him has utterly gone.  Death has driven it away and left something quite different.  Let us go.”

Julian got up.  Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier.  He had turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others when Julian checked him.

“No; leave them.  Let the landlord put them out.  Leave him in the light.”

They went out of the room, treading softly.  A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them.  Julian beckoned to her.

“You showed the gentleman—­the gentleman who is dead—­to his room last night?”

“Yes, sir.  Oh, sir, I can’t believe he’s really gone so sudden like.”

“Then you saw the lady with him?”

“Yes, of course.  Oh—­”

“Hush!  What was she like?”

The housemaid’s nose curled derisively.

“Oh, sir, quite the usual sort.  Oh, a very common person.  Not at all like the poor gentleman, sir.”

“Young?”

“Not to say old, sir.  No; I couldn’t bring that against her.  She wore a hat, sir, and feathers—­well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I’ll be bound.”

“Feathers!”

A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn.  He put several rapid questions to the housemaid.  But she could only say again that Marr’s companion had been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she—­the housemaid—­would care to go out of a Sunday.  Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing.  Then he and Valentine descended the stairs.  The landlord was waiting in the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall.  He seemed taken unawares by