Doctor Levillier made an exception to his rule of being in bed by twelve o’clock that night, and accepted Valentine’s invitation to sup in Victoria Street.  He had always been greatly drawn to Valentine, attracted by the latter’s exceptional clarity of character, and he was scarcely less interested in Julian.  Nor did the considerable difference between his age and the ages of the two youths in any way interfere with their pleasant intercourse.  For Levillier had a heart that was ageless.  The corroding years did not act as acid upon it.  All his sympathies were as keen, all his power of enjoyment was as great, as when he had been a delightfully gay and delightfully pleasant boy at school.  Youth always loved him, and age always respected him.  He possessed the great secret of a beautiful life.  He was absolutely genuine, and he meant nothing but good to all with whom he was brought into contact.

The three friends spoke but little as they went back to the flat, but when they had sat down to supper, and Dr. Levillier had expressed his complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valentine’s butler had politely insinuated into his glass, the silence took to itself wings and lightly departed.  They talked of the play, and it appeared that they were all impressed by it, but in slightly different ways, and for different reasons.  Valentine, who was intensely, but sometimes almost coldly, artistic, appreciated it, he said, because it did not obviously endeavour to work out a problem or to teach a lesson.  It simply, with a great deal of literary finish and dramatic force, stated a curiously human character, showed the nature of a man at work, and left him, after some scenes of his life, still at work upon his own salvation or destruction, not telling the audience what his end would be, scarcely even trying to imply his innate tendency one way or the other.  This satisfied Valentine.  This had made him feel as if he had seen a block cut out of life.

“I do not want to learn what becomes of that man,” he said.  “I have known him, good and bad.  That is enough.  That satisfies me more than the sight of a thousand bombastic heroes, a thousand equally bombastic villains.  Life is neither ebony nor ivory.  That man is something to my mind forever, as Ibsen’s ‘Master Builder’ is something.  I can never forget the one or the other.”

“Your life is ivory, Val,” Julian said.

He had liked the play because the violent struggle between good and evil woke up many responsive memories in his mind.  The hero of the play had been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt.  That was enough.  He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had remarked with so much pleasure.  He did not specially note the peculiar effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness of the dialogue.  He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature was akin to his own nature, although placed in different, perhaps more dramatic, circumstances.