“I don’t even say that.”

“No; but of course you must wonder at me.”

Julian spoke almost wistfully, and as if he wanted Valentine to sweep away the suggestion.  Last night they had been comrades.  To-day, in the light and in the calm of afternoon, Valentine seemed much more remote, and Julian felt for the first time a sense of degradation.  He was uneasily conscious that he might have fallen in Valentine’s esteem.  But Valentine reassured him.

“I don’t wonder at you, either, Julian; I simply envy you, and metaphorically sit at your feet.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Not quite; and I may not always be sitting there, for I believe I have really got a little bit of your soul.  Last night I seemed to feel it stirring within me, and I liked its personality.”

“You did seem different last night,” Julian said, looking at Valentine with a keen interest.  “Can it be possible that those sittings of ours have really had any effect?”

“On me they have; not on you.  You haven’t caught my coldness, but I have gained something of your warmth.  Doesn’t that perhaps show that mine was, after all, the wrong nature?”

“I don’t know,” Julian said doubtfully; “you look the same.”

“Do I?  Exactly?”

Valentine spoke with a sort of whimsical defiance, as if almost daring Julian to answer, Yes.  And Julian, too, seemed suddenly doubtful whether he had stated what was the fact.  He looked closely at Valentine.

“Do you think your face has changed?  Do you mean to say that?” he asked.

“I only fancied there might be a little more humanity in it, that was all.”

“Once or twice I have thought I noticed something,” Julian said, still doubtfully; “but I believe it’s imagination.  It doesn’t stay.”

“When it does, I suppose I shall be able thoroughly to appreciate all your temptations.  Don’t you begin to think now it’s good to have them.”

“I don’t know,” Julian said.  But he was conscious that there had come a change in his attitude of mind towards temptation.  Some men glory in resisting temptation, others in yielding to it.  Hitherto Julian had not been able to range himself in either of these two opposed camps.  He had merely hated his faculty for being tempted.  Did he entirely hate it now?  He could not say so to himself, whatever he might say to others, but something kept him from making confession of the truth to Valentine.  So he professed ignorance of his own exact state of feeling; really, had he analyzed his reticence, it sprang from a fine desire to give forth no breath that might tarnish the clear mirror of Valentine’s nature.  He would not admit a change that might make his friend again fall into the absurd dissatisfaction which he had combated on the night of their first sitting in the tent-room.  While they talked the afternoon had fallen into a creeping twilight.  In the twilight the front door bell rang.