It shot up,
leaving the naked window, through which the gas-lamps of Victoria Street
stared in the night.
"I wish," he said, "that we, in England, had the flat roofs of the East."
He thrust up the glass, and the night air pushed in.
"Come here, Julian," he said.
Julian obeyed, wondering rather. Valentine leaned a little out on the
sill and made Julian lean beside him. It was early in the night and
the hum of London was yet loud, for the bees did not sleep, but were
still busy in their monstrous hive. There was already a gentleness of
spring among the discoloured houses. Spring will not be denied, even
among men who dwell in flats. The cabs hurried past, and pedestrians
went by in twos and threes or solitary; soldiers walking vaguely, seeking
cheap pleasures, or more gaily with adoring maidens; tired business men;
journeying towards Victoria Station; a desolate shop-girl, in dreary
virtue defiant of mankind, but still unblessed; the Noah's ark figure of
a policeman, tramping emptily, standing wearily by turns, to keep public
order. Lights starred here and there the long line of mansions opposite.
"I often look out here at night," Valentine said, "generally to wonder
why people live as they do. When I see the soldiers going by, for
instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any pleasure
in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and languish
persistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers.
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