They dined at a corner table and the room was rather empty.  A few men chatted desultorily of burlesques, horses, the legs of actresses, the chances of politics.  The waiters moved quietly about with pathetic masks of satisfied servitude.  Valentine and the doctor conversed earnestly.

At first they spoke of a new symphony composed by a daring young Frenchman, who had striven to reproduce vices in notes and to summon up visions of things damnable by harmonic progressions which frequently defied the laws of harmony.  Levillier gently condemned him for putting a great art to a small and degraded use.

“His very success makes me regret the waste of his time more deeply, Cresswell,” he said.  “He is a marvellous painter in sound.  He has improved upon Berlioz, if it is improvement to cry sin with a clearer, more determinate voice.  Think what a heaven that man could reproduce in music.”

“Because he has reproduced a hell.  But do you think that follows?  Can the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and originality too?”

“I believe he could learn to.  The main thing is to possess genius in any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that seize upon the minds of men.  But to possess genius is only a beginning.  We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be obedient.”

“Genius and obedience.  Don’t the two terms quarrel?”

“They should not.  Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent thing.”

“Yes,” Valentine answered, thoughtfully.  “I believe you are right.  But, if you are right, I have missed a great deal.”

“How do you deduce that?”

“In this way.  I have never had to be obedient.  I have never had to struggle.”

“Surely the latter,” the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind eyes on Valentine’s face.  “I don’t think, in all my experience, that I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the bayonet and using the sword at moments.  There must be an occasional mêlée.”

“Indeed not; that is to say,” Valentine rather hastily added, “as regards the pure life.  For I cannot lay claim to anything fine.  But I assure you that my life has been pure without a struggle.”

“Without one?  Think!”

“Without one.  Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the completeness of my coldness.  Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied.”

“I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction, that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the very tissues of the body.”

“I have been, until quite lately.  I have been neither pessimist nor optimist—­just myself, and I believe happy.”

“And what is this change? and what has it led to?”