anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought
to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest
difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless
with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as
last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and
called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they
sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him,
so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth
and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely
isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the
silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from
trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm _voix d'or_, they
were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously
called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on
the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his
cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another
twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had
scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been
suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening
attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that,
but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the
silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have
declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more
grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which
handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting
and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive,
consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent,
fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from
himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a
mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the
merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it se