But this thawing of Julian, the quick response of humanity to the adroit treatment of it, only threw into harsher relief the immobility of Valentine, and to him the doctor drew no nearer, but seemed, with each moment, more distant, more absolutely divided from him. And the gulf between them was full of icebergs, which filled the atmosphere with the breath of a deadly frost. This was what the doctor felt. What Valentine, the new Valentine, felt could not be ascertained. He wore a brilliant mask, on whose gay mouth the society smile was singularly well painted. He wore a manner edged with tinkling bells of brilliancy. Happiness and ease beamed in his eyes. Yet his look, his voice, his smile, his gaiety chilled the doctor and set him mentally shivering. And with each bright saying and merry laugh he struck a blow upon the former friendship. The doctor fancied he could actually hear the sound of the hammer at its work. The simile of the hammer was peculiarly consonant with his present view of the new Valentine, for, despite the latter's gaiety, ease, and self-possession, his smiling sociability and expansiveness, the doctor was perpetually conscious of a lurking violence, an incessant and forcible exigence in him. It might be a fancy, but the doctor was not, as a rule, the prey of fancies. Yet Valentine gave no outward hint of inward turmoil. Rather did the doctor divine it as by a curious intuition that guided him to that which lay in hiding. And it was this apprehension of a deep violence and peculiar, excessive animation in Valentine that woke the doctor's deepest wonder, and set the gulf between them so widely. For all violence had once been so specially abhorred by Valentine. He had so loved and sought all calm. The calm, he had often said, were the true aristocrats of life. Fury and any wild movements of the passions were of the gutter.