* * * * *
"I am going to write to Cuckoo," Julian said a day later. "What shall I
say?"
Valentine hesitated.
"What have you thought of saying?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know. First one thing, then another. Good-bye among the
number. That's what you wish me to say, Val, isn't it?"
He spoke in a listless voice, monotonous in inflection and lifeless
in timbre. The dominion of Valentine over him since the supper at the
Savoy had increased, consolidating itself into an undoubted tyranny,
which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to the internal
degradation of his mind. Once he had only been nobly susceptible, a fine
power. Now he was drearily weak, an ungracious disability. But with his
weakness came, as is usual, a certain lassitude which even resembled
despair, an indifference peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the
indifference peculiar to the autocrat. Valentine recognized in the voice
the badge of serfdom, even more than in the question, and he smiled with
a cold triumph. He had intended telling Julian now, once for all, to
break with the lady of the feathers, of whom even yet he stood in vague
fear. But the question, the voice of Julian, gave him pause, slid into
his soul a new and bizarre desire, child of the strange intoxication of
power which was beginning to grip him, and which the doctor had remarked.
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