"Doctor."
Their hands met and their eyes. And then Levillier had an instant
sensation that he shook hands with a stranger. He looked upon the face of
Valentine certainly, but he was aware of a subtle, yet large, change in
it. All the features were surely coarser, heavier. There was a line or
two near the eyes, a loose fullness about the mouth. Yet, as he looked
again, he could not be certain if it were so, or if his memory were at
fault, groping after a transformation that was not there. The words he
now said truthfully expressed his real feeling in the matter.
"You are quite a stranger to me," he said.
Valentine accepted the remark in the conventional sense.
"Yes, quite a stranger. We have not met for an age."
The voice was cool and careless.
"I have been waiting for you," the doctor went on, still unable to feel
at his ease. "By the way, how you have changed your room."
"Yes. Do you like it?"
"Well, frankly, no."
"I am sorry for that," Valentine replied, drawing off his gloves. "Julian
chose a great many of the things in it."
"Julian! Did he devise the colour scheme?"
"That curious red? No, that was my idea. But he had a great deal to do
with the new furniture and the ornaments.
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