the trouble of useless thought, and Julian felt that he could sneer at him for his venerable age.  As he watched the philosopher’s grandiloquent pantomime of gesture, like a mist there floated over him the keen imagination of the hell of regret in which the old age, that never used to the full its irrevocable youth, must move, and a passion of desire to use his own youth rushed over him as fire rushes over a dry prairie.  Even a sudden anger against Valentine came to him,—­against Valentine for the protection he had given through so many years.  For had he not been protecting Julian against joy? and does not the capacity for joy pass away with a tragic swiftness?  As Faust was transformed into youth, and the ballet danced in the market-place, Julian turned to Valentine and said: 

“We will live to-night.”

Valentine laughed.

“You look excited.”

“I feel excited.  Don’t you?”

Valentine answered: 

“I may presently.  We mustn’t stay in here all the evening.”

There was a knock at the door of the box.  An attendant appeared to ask their orders.  Valentine spoke some words to him, and in a few minutes he brought three long drinks to the box.  Julian drank his mechanically.  His eyes were always on the ballet.  The betrayal of poor Margaret had now been accomplished and the soldiers were returning from the wars.  Beyond the wall of the garden the tramp of their feet was heard, a vision of the tops of their passing weapons was seen.  The orchestra played the fragment of a march.  Cuckoo sipped her brandy and soda, and gazed sometimes at the stage indifferently, often at the audience eagerly, and then at Julian.  When her eyes were on Julian’s face a light came into them that made her expression young, and even pure.  A simplicity hovered about her lips, and a queer dawning of something that was almost refinement spoke in her attitude.  But if she chanced to meet the eyes of Valentine her face was full of fear.

And now the last great scene of the pageant approached, and the two schoolboys leant forward in their stalls in a passion of greedy excitement.  Julian happened to see them, and instead of smiling at their frankly lustful attitudes with the superiority of the drilled man over the child, he was conscious of an eager sympathy with their vigour of enjoyment and of desire.  His nature retrograded and became a schoolboy’s nature, with the whole garden of life flowering before its feet.  Suddenly there came to him the need of touching something human.  He stole his arm closely around Cuckoo’s waist.  She glanced at him surprised.  But his eyes were turned away to the stage.  Valentine pushed his chair a little backwards.  He was watching them, and when he saw the movement of Julian’s arm, he laughed to himself.  The classical Sabbath sprang into view, and it seemed to be just then that the feet of the hours first began to move in the opening steps of their great dance of that night.  Was it the magnificent