He took it and placed it
on a little table beside him, and as he talked he occasionally drank a
little of it, till his glass was empty. Valentine had again looked at his
watch.
"The flame of the year is flickering very low," he said.
This simile of the flame of the year, so ordinary, he had spoken
against his will. He asked himself angrily why he had said flame, and
again the doctor saw the flame of Valentine's soul trying to leap higher,
to aspire to some strange and further region than that in which it seemed
to dwell. Julian sat looking at Valentine with a gaze that was surely
new in his eyes, the dawning gaze of inquiry which a man directs upon
a stranger just come into his life. He had not alluded in any way to
Cuckoo's startling and vehement interposition. Valentine had killed that
conversation with one blow, it seemed. They buried it by deserting it.
Yet the thought of it was obviously with them, making quick interchange
of words on another subject difficult. Valentine had seized again on the
poor, prostrate year; yet he carried even to it the memory of that which
seemed to encompass them as with a ring of fire, and that despite
himself.
"We shall hear the bells directly," he added. "I hate bells at night.
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