As Valentine spoke he seemed to become almost intoxicated with the thoughts conjured up by his own words. His blue eyes blazed with a fury of shining excitement. His white cheeks were suffused with blood.
"I have made myself, my will, a god!" he exclaimed passionately.
At the words the lady of the feathers moved suddenly forward on the sofa.
"What—you!" she said.
The last word was uttered with an intensity that could surely only spring from something near akin to comprehension, if not from actual comprehension itself. It certainly startled Valentine, or seemed to startle him. His face showed an amazement like the amazement of a man raving to an image of wood, to whom, abruptly, the wood speaks with a tongue.
"What do you mean?" he said, and his voice faltered from its note of triumph and of exultation.
Cuckoo resumed her former position.
"Only was you the will, or the man, or whatever it all is?" she replied in the voice of one hopelessly muddled.
Valentine was reassured as to her stupidity.
"That has nothing to do with the story," he said.