Valentine got up and rang the bell.
"The bill, please, waiter."
"Yes, sir."
The man glanced at Julian with the shadow of a pleasing, and apparently
also pleased, smile and withdrew. Valentine stood for a moment looking
at the leaning figure on the chair, relaxed in the first throes of a
drunken slumber. His anger and almost unbridled emotion completely died
away as he looked.
"Can it be called a battle after all?" he said to himself. "They may not
know it, but it is practically won already."
The waiter re-entered. Valentine paid the bill, and the breath of the
frost shortly revived Julian into an attempt at conversation.
"Don't ask me to give her up, Val; don't, don't ask me. Poor girl. Poor,
poor Cuck--Cuck."
The name of the lady of the feathers seemed a good one for a tipsy tongue
to play with.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON
Doctor Levillier grew more puzzled day by day. His observation of
Valentine taught him only one thing certainly, and beyond possibility of
doubt and that was the death of the youth he had once loved, the living
presence of a youth whom he could not love, whom he could only shrink
from and even fear. He held to the theory that this radical and ghastly
change must be caused by some obscure dementia, some secret overturning
of the mind; but he was obliged to confess to himself that he held to
it only because, otherwise, he would be floating helpless, and without a
spar, upon a tide of perplexity and confusion.
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