"Ah, but that ain't no make-believe. He told me as he wasn't himself when he says, 'I am Marr.'"
"Yes—yes," said the doctor. Secretly, almost angrily, he said to himself that Valentine, in some access of insanity, had actually confessed to the lady of the feathers that he knew himself to be mad.
"He says he ain't himself," she repeated again, with an eager feeling that perhaps, at last, she had got at the right interpretation of the gospel of Valentine.
"That is practically the same thing as his saying to you that he was mad.
Now you have told me what you feel for Julian."
Cuckoo flushed, and muttered something unintelligible, twining her hands in the sables till she nearly pulled them from Doctor Levillier's knees.
"And you have seen the terrible change that has come over him, and that is fast, fast deepening to something that must end in utter ruin. You have not seen him these last few days, I think."
"No", said Cuckoo, her eyes fixed hungrily on the doctor's face. She began to tug at her veil. "What's it? Is he—is he?"
She collapsed into a nervous silence, still tugging with a futile hand at the veil, which remained implacably stretched across her face. The doctor looked at her, and said steadily:
"He has gone a little further—down. You understand me?"
"I ought to," she said, bitterly.