And the spring grew in London.
Never before had Julian been so conscious of the growth of the year as
now. The spring stirred inside him, as if he were indeed the Mother
Earth. Tumults of nature shook him. With the bursting of the crocus,
the pointing of its spear of gold to the sun, a life gathered itself
together within him, a life that held, too, a golden shaft within its
colour-stained cup. And the bland scent of the innumerable troops of
hyacinths in Hyde Park was a language to him as he strolled in the sun
towards the Row. Scents speak to the young of the future as they speak
to the old of the past; to the one with an indefinite excitement, to the
other with a vague regret. And especially when he was in the company of
Valentine did Julian become intensely alive to the march of the earth
towards summer, and feel that he was in step with it, dragooned by the
same music. He began to learn, so he believed, what Valentine had called
the lesson of his strength, and of all the strength of the spring. His
wild blood leaped in his veins, and the world was walking with him to a
large prospect, as yet fancifully tricked out in mists and crowned with
clouds.
The spring brought to Valentine an abounding health such as he had never
known before, a physical glory which, without actually changing him, gave
to him a certain novelty of aspect which Julian felt without actually
seeing.
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