"
Valentine took his hand from Julian's shoulder.
"Marr is dead and forgotten," he said almost sternly.
"I can't quite forget him, Val; and I still feel as if he had had
some influence over both of us. We have changed since those days of
the sittings, since that night of your trance and his death."
Julian was looking at Valentine in a puzzled way while he spoke.
Valentine met his eyes calmly.
"If I have changed," he said slowly, "it cannot be in essentials. Look at
me. Is my face altered? Is my expression different?"
"No, Valentine."
Julian said the words with a sort of return to confidence and to greater
happiness. To look into the face of his friend set all his doubts at
rest. No man with eyes like that could ever fall into anything which was
really and radically evil. Valentine perhaps was playing with life as a
boy plays with a dog, making life jump up at him, dance round him, just
to see the strength and grace of the creature, its possibilities of quick
motion, its powers of varied movement. Where could be the harm of that?
And what Valentine could do safely he began to think he might do safely
too. He gave expression to his thought with his usual frankness.
"You mean you are beginning to play with life?" he said.
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