"What, in God's name, are you?" he said, in an uncertain voice. "Are you man or devil? You are not Valentine—not the man I loved. I'll swear it. You are some damned stranger, and I have lived with you"—he shuddered irrepressibly—"and never knew it till now."
"You say I am a stranger?"
"Yes, with the face of my friend."
"How can that be?"
Again a misery of confusion and of fear swept over Julian.
"Whence did I come, then?" Valentine asked.
He began to have the air of a man bent on some revelation. An immense power infused itself through him. His blue eyes were utterly fearless. The moment of open battle had come at last. Well, he would not attempt to avoid it, to gain further uneasy peace. He would strike a final blow, secure of his own victory.
And Cuckoo sat watching silently. She remembered the night on which Valentine had half revealed the mystery to her, who could not understand it. Was he about to reveal it now to Julian? Her eyes flamed with eagerness, and again Valentine looked into them and faltered for a moment. Then he turned resolutely away from her, as if he gave his whole heart and soul to the business before him, to this Julian who at last began to shrink from him, to feel terror at his approach, even to repudiate him.
"From what have I come, then?" he repeated.
Julian paused, as if he sought an answer, looking backwards into the past. Suddenly he cried: