What was the cause of it? Each found it
in a curious hesitation that enveloped him, and impelled him to avoidance
of the other. Valentine went about as usual. He looked in at White's,
dined out, rode in the park, visited two theatres, lived the habitual
London life which contents so many and disgusts not a few. But he did
not ask Julian to share any of these well-worn doings, and at first he
did not acknowledge to himself why he did not do so. He sought, more
definitely than ever before, to gain amusement from amusements, and
this definite intention, of course, frustrated his purpose. His power
of pleasure was, in fact, clogged by an abiding sense of dissatisfaction
and depression. And it was really his eventual knowledge of this
depression's cause that led him to bar Julian out from these few days
of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because
he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even
excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in
fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of
Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire,
and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find
distraction, lacked savour.
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