Part 19 (1/2)
”Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor,” said Valentine, with a sudden laugh.
”And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the wall?”
”We have been table-turning again.”
”Ah!”
Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape a.s.sumed by one whistling.
”And this has been the result?”
”Yes,” Julian cried. ”Never, as long as I live, will I sit again. Val, if you go down on your knees to me--”
”I shall not do that,” Valentine quietly interposed. ”I have no desire to sit again now.”
”You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last,” said the doctor. ”Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said.”
And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety.
The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed:
”Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before you went into your trance? Were you frightened? or did something--that hand--touch you? Or what was it?”
”A cry?”
”Yes.”
”It was not I.”
”Didn't you hear it?”
”No.”
Julian turned to the doctor.
”It was an unearthly sound,” he said. ”Like nothing I have ever heard or imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that made me believe Valentine was really dead.”
”What was it?”
Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.
”Doctor,” he said, ”of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at deathbeds?”
”I have. Very often,” Levillier replied.
”I have never seen any one die,” Julian continued, still with excitement.
”But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost, comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they say that flame is the soul going out of the body.”
”I have never seen that,” Levillier said. ”And I have watched many deaths.”