He found there an apparent strange humanity
which, as he grew accustomed to it, warmed him. The curious refined
saintliness of Valentine, almost chilly in its elevation, thawed gently
as the days went by, but so gently that Julian scarcely knew it, could
scarcely define the difference which nevertheless led him to alter his
conduct almost unconsciously. One great sameness, perhaps, gave him a
sensation of safety and of continuity. Valentine's face still kept its
almost unearthly expression of intellectuality and of purity. When Julian
looked at him no passions flamed in his blue eyes, no lust ever crawled
in the lines about his mouth. His smooth cheeks never flushed with
beaconing desire, nor was his white forehead pencilled with the shadowy
writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And yet his speech about
the spring that night, as they leaned out over Victoria Street, had
evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It had held a meaning and
was remembered. In Valentine there seemed to be flowering a number of
faint-hued wants, such wants as had never flowered from his nature
before. The fig-tree that had seemed so exquisitely barren began to put
forth leaves, and when the warm showers sang to it, it sang in tremulous
reply.
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