He had never been more near lying, nor was he ashamed of his dissimulation. There are creatures against which we must, whatever our principles, take up the nearest weapon that comes to hand. The doctor looked at Julian and at Valentine, and could have perjured himself a thousand times to wrest the one from the other.
"But Miss Bright is ill," said Valentine.
"No, I ain't. I'm all right now," Cuckoo said.
She did not understand what was being proposed, but she gathered that the doctor desired it. That was enough for her. Valentine looked at them all three with eyes that plainly betokened a busy mind, then a smile flickered over his lips. It was the smile of one in power watching his slaves creeping at their work—for him. He touched the point—of which he had spoken earlier in the evening—in that smile, a point of delirium.
"Let them try to break me," his mind said within itself. "Their very trial shall consolidate my empire."
And then his eyes left the others and rested only on Julian.
"Very well, we will sit," he said.
CHAPTER IV
THE SIXTH SITTING
Julian was painfully excited, but he strove to repress all evidences of his inward turmoil as he began to pull out a table and arrange it in the centre of the room. This act threw him with a jerk back into the days of the past, recalling so vividly the former life of himself and Valentine that he could not help saying: