But Cuckoo burst into a shrill little laugh. Her head was spinning again.
"I've nothing—nothing to say," she cried out. "Give me some more brandy."
"Very well. Let us all drink to the health of the New Year."
Valentine filled the glasses—Julian's with absinthe—and gave the toast:
"The New Year!"
They all raised their glasses to their lips simultaneously. One fell with a crash to the ground and was broken. It was Julian's.
"I won't drink it," he said, doggedly, looking at Valentine.
There was a silence. Then Valentine said, calmly:
"Have you an animus against the thing you don't yet know?"
It was sufficiently obvious that he alluded to the year just coming in upon London. But the words were taken by the doctor, and apparently by Julian, in a hidden and different sense.