Light and the absence of light can
divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship
to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into
an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian
and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically,
considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as
many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their
lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed
in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious
climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.
And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern
intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a
Steinway grand piano.
They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him.
Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his
head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute
injunction, Julian now did so.
Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and
his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture
of "The Merciful Knight.
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