There was a slight hoarse cry in the night.
"What is that?" Valentine said, sharply.
There was no reply. The doctor could have told him that the cry came from Julian, and that the lady of the feathers, leaning low in her chair, had passed from consciousness into insensibility.
The spirit of sleep stole away. His work was accomplished. Julian sank forward upon the table with a gesture of utter abnegation. He thought that Cuckoo was dead. He felt that she was dead, as long ago he had felt that his loved friend, that Valentine who had protected him and taught him the right way of life, was dead in the night.
Doctor Levillier seemed to see Rip crouching down against the wall.
And now Valentine's will prepared to assert itself finally. It rose up to triumph as it had risen up to triumph over Rip. Was that struggle going to be repeated? Nothing had intruded upon it except the marvellous tenacity of the dog, who had died rather than yield obedience, died fighting. That tenacity surely did not dwell in the nerveless Julian, utterly despairing, utterly wrecked.
The doctor trembled, feeling that the close of the strange mystery was at hand. And as he trembled he seemed to see in the dense darkness a tiny flame. It shivered up in the blackness where Cuckoo slept, moved away from her, like a thing blown on a light wind, and flickered above the bowed, despairing head of Julian. And, as he watched it, wondering, the doctor was conscious once more that there was a new presence in the room, something mysterious, intent, vehement, yet touched with a strange and pathetic helplessness, something that cried against itself, something that had suffered a martyrdom unknown, unequalled, in all the pale history of the martyrdoms of the world. The doctor recalled the sitting of the former night and his impression then--and again he was governed by the tragedy of this unknown soul. Its despair laid upon him cold hands.
Its impotence crushed him. He could have wept and prayed for it. This was for a moment. Then a new wonder grew in him. His eyes were on the flame which burned above the bowed head of Julian, and presently, while he gazed, he seemed to see, beyond and through it--as one who peers through a lit window--the face of Valentine, the beautiful, calm, lofty Valentine whom once he had loved. The face was white with a soft glory of endurance, and the eyes smiled like the eyes of a great king. And the doctor knew comfort. For this face, although marred by the shadow intense suffering ever leaves behind it, was instinct with the majesty of triumph. And the eyes were bent on Julian. Then Julian moved in the darkness and looked upward, despair seeking hope.
The man who sat by the doctor, and who was now nameless to him, was filled with a passionate fury. The doctor heard the Litany of his glory cease, and the long pulse of his heart throbbing with effort. His soul rose up, as the cruel spectre of the new Valentine had risen up to seize upon Rip, and moved towards Julian to dominate him finally, to draw him into its own eternal evil and pride and passion of degraded power. But Julian stretched his arms towards the flame which drew its brightness and its force from Cuckoo sleeping. That was a last battle of souls, and the allegory of it came clearly to the doctor's mind.
He divined, as in a vision, or as in a dream that is more real than reality, the story of his friend, the true Valentine, whom he had loved.
He remembered Valentine's dissatisfaction with the glory of his own beautiful nature, his mad desire to change it. That dissatisfaction, that desire, had been the opportunity of the enemy. The soul that sighed in sorrow as it contemplated its own loveliness had been expelled by the soul that was completely satisfied with its own hatefulness. The weakness of the flame of purity had built up the strength of the flame of impurity. And so beauty was driven out to wander in the wilderness of the air, and ugliness dwelled in its body, its temple swept and garnished, like the seven devils of the Scripture. For how long a time had the wandering flame or soul of beauty been helpless, impotent, tortured by the appalling deception of the soul of Julian, whom it could no longer protect! Unable to be at rest, it had stayed to contemplate the dreary legend of Julian's gradual fall. It had seen his confidence in his love for the stranger whom he thought his friend and his protector. In the pale and delicate dawn, shrouded in the mystery of night and day, enclosed between the clasping hands of the angels of darkness and of light, it had hung in the air above the solitary Julian, as he walked homeward after his vigil by the lifeless body of Valentine. With a passionate effort it had sought to draw him to a knowledge of the truth, that he might wake from the dream in which lay his insecurity, at last his tragic danger. And faintly, even as the first sunbeam it had dawned upon him, once as he met the lady of the feathers, again as he bent his gaze upon the theatrical glories that attended the apotheosis of Margaret. And it had flickered behind the film of the tears in a woman's eyes, seeking to make itself known through the beauty of the love that clung inexorably to the heart of Cuckoo in the midst of the degradation and the corruption of her fate. Cuckoo had given it a home. She was alone. It approached her. She was an outcast. It stayed with her. She was beaten by the thongs of a world that teems with Pharisees. It clung to her. She had, through all her days and nights, been put only to the black uses of evil. It sought to use her only for good. And now at last it drew strength and power from the soul of the lady of the feathers. And the doctor knew that the secret of Cuckoo's grand influence to succour lay in her completeness. Degraded, wretched, soiled, ignorant, pent within the prison-house of lust--yet she loved completely. And because she loved completely, the sad, wandering, driven soul of Valentine chose her from all the world to help him in the rescue of Julian. For she, like the widow, had given her all to feed the poor. Her starvation had set her on high, more than the starvation and the mortification of saints and hermits. For they crucify the flesh for the good of their own souls.
Cuckoo thought ever and only of another. She had betrayed Jessie and touched the stars. Now in her slumber, physical allegory of her abnegation of self, she fought in this battle of the souls.
The flame above the head of Julian grew brighter. The flame of Marr, striving with the fury of despair, flickered lower.
Doctor Levillier held his breath and prayed. Again he thought of Rip.
Would Julian too die rather than yield to the final grip of evil? Would he die fighting?
A strange thin cry broke through the silence. The doctor saw two flames float up together through the darkness. They passed before the face of Cuckoo and were lost in the air above her. Two happy flames.
She stirred suddenly and murmured.
The thing that sat by the doctor sprang up. Light flashed through the room.
As it flashed the doctor leaned towards Julian, who lay forward with his arms stretched along the table.
He was dead.
Valentine--the spirit, at least, that had usurped the body of Valentine--stood looking down upon Julian, dead, in silence.
Then it turned upon the doctor. The doctor stood up as one that nerves himself to meet a great horror.
He watched the light fade out of the eyes of this horror, the expression slink from the features, the breath remove from the lips, the pulses cease in the veins and arteries, until an image, some lifeless and staring idol, stood before him.
It swayed. It tottered. It fell, crumpling itself together like things that return to dust. The flesh, formerly kept alive by the spirit, now deserted finally by that which had dwelt within it and sought to use it for destruction, went down to death.
Then the lady of the feathers awoke at last from her sleep. The doctor bent over her and took her hands in his. It seemed to him that she had won a great battle. He felt awestruck as he looked into her eyes. He tried to speak to her, but no words came to him except these, which he murmured at last below his breath:
"Your victory."
Cuckoo looked up at him. Her eyes were still lightly clouded with sleep, but they were smiling, as if they had been gazing upon the face of beauty.
For how long had Cuckoo slept? Surely through all the length of her life, through all the tears that she had shed, through all the sad deeds that she had committed! Now, at last, she woke.
Her slumber had been as the deep slumber of death.
And from death do we not awake to a new understanding and to a new world?