"
This last remark was so preposterously unlike Valentine that Julian could
not for a moment accept it as uttered seriously. His mood changed, and he
burst out suddenly into a laugh.
"You have been taking me in all the time," he exclaimed, "and I actually
was fool enough to think you serious."
"And to agree with what I was saying?"
Valentine still spoke quite gravely and earnestly, and Julian began to be
puzzled.
"You know I can never help agreeing with you when you really mean
anything," he began. "I have proved so often that you are always right
in the end. So your real theory of life must be the true one: but your
real theory, I know, is to reject what most people run after."
"No longer that, I fancy, Julian."
"But, then, what has changed you?"
Valentine met his eyes calmly.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"
"I? How should I?"
"Perhaps this change has been growing within me for a long while. It
is difficult to say; but to-night my nature culminates. I am at a point,
Julian."
"Then you have climbed to it. Don't you want to stay there?"
"No mere man can face the weather on a mountain peak forever, and life
lies rather in the plains."
Valentine went over to the window and touched the blind.
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