"You and I must fight with all our forces," he said. "Have you ever thought about this thing will which Cresswell worships insanely? Have you ever felt it in you, Miss Bright?"
"I don't know as I have," Cuckoo said, secretly wondering if it were that strange and fleeting power which had come to her of late, which had made her for a moment fearless of Valentine as she defied him in the loneliness of her room, which had stirred her even to a faith in herself when she spoke with the doctor under the stars upon her doorstep.
"I think you have. I think you will. It must be there, for Julian feels it in you. He—he calls it a flame."
"Eh? A flame?"
"Yes. He sees it in your eyes, and it holds him near you."
So the doctor spoke, partly out of his conviction, partly because he had definitely resolved to put away from him all the things that fought against his reason and that his imagination perhaps loved too much. Such things, he thought, floated like clouds across the clearness of his vision, and drowned the light of his power to do good. So his fancies that had fastened on the mystery of the dead Marr and the living Valentine, connecting them together, and weaving a veil of magic about their strange connection, were banished. He would not hold more commerce with them, nor would he accept the fancies of others as realities. Thus, in his mind, Julian's legend of the flame in this girl's eyes, despite the doctor's own vision of flames, became merely a story of the truth of human will and an acknowledgment of its power.
"Is that why he looks at me so?" Cuckoo asked, in a manner unusually meditative. "But then he, Valentine, did the same! Why, could that be what scared him that night—what he struck at?"
"He too may feel that you have a power for good, to fight against his power for evil. Yes, he does feel it. Make him feel it more. Rely on yourself. Trust that there's something great within you, something placed there for you to use. Never mind what your life has been. Never mind your own weakness. You are the home, the temple, of this power of will. Julian feels it, and it draws him to you, but it is as nothing yet compared with the power of Cresswell. You have to make it more powerful, so that you may win Julian back from this danger."
"Eh? How?"
"Rest on it; trust in it; teach it to act. Show Julian more and more that you have it. Can't you think of a way of showing that you have this power?"