He spoke rather harshly and flippantly, and apparently put the question without desire of an answer, and rather with the intention of ridicule than for any other reason. But Julian took it seriously and replied to it. "Somehow I felt as if, perhaps, it did wish to speak some message to me, and that the message came, or might come, through her." He spoke slowly, for indeed it was this action of words that was beginning to make clear to himself his own impression, so vague and so unpresentable before. As he thus traced it out, like a man following the blurred letters of an old inscription with the point of his stick, and gradually coming at their meaning, his excitement grew. He said, speaking with a rising emphasis of conviction: "I'm not a mere fool. There is--there is something in all this; I feel it; I cannot be simply imagining. There is something. But I'm like a man in the dark. I can't see what it is; I can't tell. But you, Valentine, you, with your nature, so much better than I am, with so much deeper an insight, how is it you don't see this flame? Unless,"--and here Julian struck his hand violently on the table,--"unless it comes, as it seemed to come that night in the darkness, from you. If it's part of yourself--but then"--and his manner clouded again--"how can that be?" "How indeed?" said Valentine, who had been watching him all through this outburst with a scrutiny that seemed almost uneasy, so narrow and so determined was it. "Julian, listen to me; you trust me, don't you, and think my opinion worth something?" "Worth everything." "Well, I believe you're getting into an unnatural, if you weren't a man I should say a hysterical--habit of mind. If you can't throw it off by yourself, I must help you to do so." "Perhaps you're right. But how will you help me?" Valentine seemed to think and consider for a moment. Then he exclaimed: "I'll tell you. By making you join with me in putting this life, this old life--new enough to both of us--through its paces. Why should each of us do it alone? We are friends. We can trust one another. You know me through and through. You know the--chilliness I'll call it--of my nature, my natural bookishness--my bias towards contemning people too readily, and avoiding what all men ought to know. And I know you. Without you I believe I should never go any distance. Without me you might go too far. Together we will strike the happy medium. For us life shall go through all his paces, but he shall never lame us with a kick, like a vicious horse, or give us a furtive bite when we're not looking. Men carry such bites and kicks, the wounds from them, to their graves. We'll be more careful. But we'll see the great play in all--all its acts. And, when we've seen it, we'll be as we were, only we'll be no longer blind. And we'll never forget our grand power of rejecting and refusing." "Ah!" said Julian. "Perhaps I haven't that power." "But I have." "Yes, you have."