For it
gradually became apparent to those who only knew the two young men
slightly that Valentine exerted an extraordinarily powerful influence
over Julian, and that the influence was imperatively evil. At first
many were deceived by the clear beauty of Valentine's face, but that was
beginning to fade. A thin line, pencilled here and there with a fairylike
delicacy, a slight puffiness beneath the blue eyes, a looseness of the
cheeks, a droop of the lips, all very demure, as it were, and furtive,
shed alteration upon his fair beauty. He himself noticed it, as he looked
in a mirror one night, and silently cursed the inevitable effect which
mind produces upon matter. No man's face can forever remain an entirely
deceptive mask. The saintly expression of Valentine's was rapidly
becoming a thing of the past. He wondered whether Julian noticed it.
But Julian was too much preoccupied with his own energies of dreary
action and lacerating fatigues of subsequent thought, or it would be
truer to say moodiness, to notice anything. He was self-centred, as are
all sinners, immersed in his own downfall, like a man in an ocean. He
was unconscious that he was the subject of battle, that four wills were
to contend for his soul's sake.
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