And all his senses
began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only
now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable
slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible
within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be
necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now
gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had
somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He
could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of
prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as
they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that
clung round the chimneys which they loved.
And yet he had been communing with death, had for the first time
completely realized the fact and the meaning of death. What a demon
of the world it was, sly, bitter, chuckling at its power, the one
thing, surely, that has perfect enjoyment of all the things in the
scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on
Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind he
found himself on the pavement by the chemist's shop that is opposite to
the underground railway station of Victoria.
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