How could Valentine be one of the bats? It seemed to Julian that if Valentine tried to join them they would fall upon him, as certain birds will fall upon one who is not of their tribe, and kill him. And yet? Yet Julian began to know that he had been aware of a change in Valentine. He had believed it to be momentary. Perhaps it was not momentary. Perhaps Valentine was concealing his new mode of life from some strange idea of chivalry towards Julian. As Julian pondered he grew excited. He began to long to tell Valentine now what he had not liked to tell him before. Suddenly he got up and hastened out of the club. He drove to Victoria Street. But Valentine was not at home. "I suppose Mr. Cresswell goes out every night Wade?" he asked the man, after a moment of hesitation. Wade looked very much astonished at such a question coming from Julian. "Yes, sir. At least, most nights," Wade answered. "I see," Julian said. He stood a minute longer. Then he turned away, after an abrupt: "Say I called, will you?" Wade looked after him as he went down the stairs, with the raised eyebrows of the confidential butler. That night was warm and gentle, with a full moon riding in clear heavens. The season was growing towards its full height, and the streets were thronged with carriages till a late hour. There is one long pavement that is generally trodden by many feet at every time of the year, and in almost every hour of the wheeling twenty-four. It is the pavement on which the legend of London's disgrace is written in bold characters of defiance. Men from distant lands, having made the pilgrimage to our Mecca, the queen, by right of magnitude at least, of the world's cities, stare aghast upon the legend, almost as Belshazzar stared upon the writing on the wall. Colonists seeking for the first time the comfortable embrace of that mother country which has been the fable of their childhood and the dream of their laborious years of maturity, gaze with withering hearts at this cancer in her bosom. Pure women turn their eyes from it. Children seek it that they may learn in one sharp moment the knowledge of good and evil. The music of the feet on that pavement has called women to despair and men to destruction; has sung in the ears of innocence till they grew deaf to virtue, and murmured round the heart of love till it became the heart of lust. And that pavement is the camping-ground of the army of the bats. On wet nights they flit drearily through the rain. In winter they glide like shadows among the revealing snows. But in the time of flowers and of soft airs, when the moon at the full swims calmly above the towers of Westminster, and the Thames rests rocked in a silver dream among the ebony wharves and barges, the flight of the bats is gay and their number is legion. And their circle is joined by many who are but recruits, or as camp-followers, treading in the track of those whose names are on the roll-call.