“You are quite a stranger to me,” he said.

Valentine accepted the remark in the conventional sense.

“Yes, quite a stranger.  We have not met for an age.”

The voice was cool and careless.

“I have been waiting for you,” the doctor went on, still unable to feel at his ease.  “By the way, how you have changed your room.”

“Yes.  Do you like it?”

“Well, frankly, no.”

“I am sorry for that,” Valentine replied, drawing off his gloves.  “Julian chose a great many of the things in it.”

“Julian!  Did he devise the colour scheme?”

“That curious red?  No, that was my idea.  But he had a great deal to do with the new furniture and the ornaments.”

“I should have supposed many minds had been at work here.”

Valentine smiled, and the doctor was convinced that both his mouth and eyes had altered in expression.

“That’s true in a way,” he answered.  “Julian has had various advisers—­of the feminine gender.  The love of the moment is visible all over this room.  That is why it amuses me.  Those silver ornaments were chosen by a pretty Circassian.  A Parisian picked out that black cabinet in a warehouse of Boulogne.  A little Italian insisted upon that vulgar-painted sofa—­and so on.”

“Why do you allow such people to have any intercourse with a room of yours?”

“Oh, it amused Julian, and I was tired of my room as it was.  After ’The Merciful Knight’ went to be cleaned, I resolved on a change.”

“For the worse.”

“Is it for the worse?”

“Surely.”

The eyes of the two men challenged each other.  Valentine’s glance was carelessly impudent and hardy.  The deference which he had always given to the doctor was gone.  If it had been genuine it was dead.  If it had only been a mask it had apparently served its purpose and was now contemptuously thrown aside.  Doctor Levillier was deeply moved by the transformation.  His friend had become a stranger during the interval of his absence.  The man he admired was less admirable than of old.  He recognized that, although he was not yet fully aware of the transformation of Valentine.  Before he left England he vaguely suspected a change.  Now the change hit him full in the heart.  So acute was it that, in an age of miracles, he could well have believed Cuckoo Bright’s disjointed statement.  Valentine was, to his mind, even in some strange way to his eye, at this moment no longer Valentine.  He was talking with a man whose features he knew certainly, but whose mind he did not know, had never known.  And his former resolution to watch Valentine closely was consolidated.  It became a passion.  The doctor woke in the man.  Nor was the old friend and lover of humanity lulled to sleep.

“How is Julian?” the doctor asked, dropping his eyes.

“Very well, I think.  He will be here directly.  He’s coming to fetch me.  We are dining at the Prince’s in Piccadilly in the same party.  That reminds me, I must dress.  But do stay, and have some coffee.”