And as he moved a voice whispered in his ear:
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
Was it Valentine's voice? He turned round hastily, curiously perturbed.
"Val, was that you? Did you speak to me?"
"No."
Julian looked at Cuckoo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shone with
dancing excitement.
"Did you, Cuckoo?"
"Not I, dearie. I say, ain't he funny to-night?"
Then the voice must have spoken in his own brain. He listened for it and
fancied he could hear it again and again, driving him on like a phantom
fate. But the voice was in timbre like the voice of Valentine, and he
felt as if Valentine spoke with a strange insistence and reiteration.
His heart, his whole being, made answer to the whisper.
"To-morrow we die. It is true. Ah, then, let us--let us eat and let us
drink."
The man in the boots wriggled furiously into the wings, and the curtain
rose on the ballet. Wenzel had ascended to the conductor's platform amid
loud applause. The first weary melodies of "Faust" streamed plaintively
from the orchestra, and a gravity came over the rows of faces in the
stalls. Julian's face, too, was grave, but his excitement and his sense
of his own power of youth grew as he looked on. The old Faust appeared,
heavy with the years and with the trouble of useless thought, and Julian
felt that he could sneer at him for his venerable age.
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