And absurdly, as he said it, he felt like a man who tosses the dice for
life or death.




CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH SITTING


They turned the light off and sat down in silence. Then Julian said:

"Keep your hands well away from mine, Val."

"I will."

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the
atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery,
with a certain steady and unyielding dreariness hanging round them like a
cloud. They were once again confronted by a strange reality. Surely they
were. Valentine felt it, silently knew it.

In this blackness he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon
the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay
things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness
anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at
least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then,
in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his