Her decision was almost angry.  Julian did not persist.

“I’ll come again,” he said.

She looked at him wistfully.

“Ah—­but you won’t,” she answered.

“I will.”

He spoke with energy.  She nodded.

“I’d like you to.”

Then they went out into the evening and hailed a hansom.

“Put me down at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street,” said the lady of the feathers.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE

Julian was curiously touched by his interview in the Marylebone Road, and he did not fail to recount it to Valentine, whose delicate imagination would, he felt certain, feel the pity and the pain of it.

But Valentine did not respond to his generous emotion.

“I thought she looked a very degraded young person,” he said, distantly.  “And not interesting.  The woman who is falling is interesting.  The woman who has reached the bottom, who has completely arrived at degradation, is dull enough.”

“But she is not utterly degraded, Val.  For I know that she can see and understand something of the horror of her own condition.”

Valentine put his hand on Julian’s shoulder.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said.

“What?”

“That you would like to rescue this girl.”

A dull blush ran over Julian’s face.

“I don’t know that I had got quite so far as that,” he said.  “Would it be absurd if I had?”

“I am not sure that it would not be wrong.  Probably this girl lives the life she is best fitted for.”

“You surely don’t mean—­”

“That some human beings are born merely to further the necessities of sin in the scheme of creation?  I don’t know that.  Nature, in certain countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly snakes to live in her bosom.  Man demands and obtains female snakes to live in his bosom.  Are not such women literally created for this métier?  How can one tell?”

“But if they are unhappy?”

“You think they would be happy in purity?”

“I believe she would.”

Valentine smiled and shook his head.

“I expect her sorrows are not caused by the loss of her virtue, but merely by her lack of the luxuries of life.  These birds always want their nests to be made of golden twigs and lined with satin.”

But Julian remained unconvinced.

“You don’t know her,” he said.  “Why, Valentine, you have never known such a woman!  You!  The very notion is ridiculous.”

“I have seen them in their Garden of Eden, offering men the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

“You mean?”

“At the ‘Empire.’”

“Ah!  I have half promised to take her there one night.”

“Shall I come with you, Julian?”

Julian looked at him to see if he was in earnest as he made this unutterable proposition.  Valentine’s clear, cold, thoughtful blue eyes met his eager, glowing, brown, ones with direct gravity.