stinctive, had, all the time, a secret knowledge
that Julian was keeping something from him, was not being perfectly
frank. The conviction pained him. At last Julian got up to go. He
stood putting on his overcoat.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Julian."

"Now--is this to be our last sitting?"

Valentine hesitated.

"What do you wish?" he asked at length.

"What do you?"

"Well, I--yes, I think I would rather it was the last."

Julian caught his hand impulsively.

"So would I. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Julian went out into the hall, got as far as the front door, opened it,
then suddenly called out:

"Valentine!"

"Yes."

"Come here for a moment."

Valentine went, and found him standing with his hand on the door, looking
flushed and rather excited.

"There is one thing I haven't told you," he began.

"I knew that."

"I guessed you did. The most horrible sensation I have had. During our
sitting to-night--don't be vexed--an extraordinary apprehension of--well,
of you, came over me. There! Now I have told you."

Valentine was greatly astonished.

"Of me?" he said.

"Yes. There was a moment when the idea that I was alone with you made my
blood run cold."

"Good heavens!"

"Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

"No, of course not. But it is so extraordinary, so unnatural."

"It is utterly gone now, thank God. I say, we have resolved that we won't
sit again, haven't we?"

"Yes; and what you have just told me makes me hate the whole thing. The
game seems a game no longer."

When the door had closed upon Julian, Valentine sat down and wrote a
note.

He addressed it to--

"Doctor Hermann Levillier,
"Harley Street, W.,"

and laid it on his writing-table, so that it might be posted early the
next morning.

CHAPTER VI

A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB

Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself
much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's
web of tingling threads which we call the nervous system. The man who
sweeps out the temple, who polishes the marble steps and dusts the
painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars
he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit
which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the
process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism,
Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the
nast