As he sat watching a ballet that glittered
with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found
himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of
the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men
struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.
His morning ride was an active _ennui_, an _ennui_ revolving, like a
horse in a circus, round and round the weariness of the park.
Yet he had made up his mind quite fully that it would be better not
to sit any more. It was not merely Doctor Levillier's urgency that
had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually forced
itself upon him that if anything resulted from such apparently imbecile
proceedings it would certainly not be of an agreeable nature. But, too,
this very sense that a secret danger might be lurking against him and
Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the
united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is
not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those
who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a
maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health,
perils to the mind.
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