"
"I think I have ceased to be content," said Valentine. "Perhaps I have
stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights in the
tentroom. Since you have been away I have wondered. An extraordinary
sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour, has come to me. And
I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded upon fact."
He was sitting in a low chair, and as he spoke he slowly stretched his
limbs. It was as if all his body yawned, waking from sleep.
"But how?" Julian asked.
Already he looked rather interested than troubled. At Valentine's words
he too became violently conscious of his own strength, and stirred by the
wonder of youth dwelling in him.
"How? That is what I wish to find out by going into the world with
different eyes. I have been living in the arts, Julian. But is that
living at all?"
Julian got up and stood by the fire. Valentine excited him. He leaned one
arm on the mantelpiece. His right hand kept closing and unclosing as he
talked.
"Such a life is natural to you," he said. "And you have made me love it."
"I sometimes wonder," responded Valentine, "whether I have not trained
my head to slay my heart. Men of intellect are often strangely inhuman.
Besides, what you call my purity and my refinement are due perhaps to my
cowardice.
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