“What shall we do to-night?  It is only a quarter past nine.  Shall we go anywhere?”

“Oh no, I think not—­wait—­yes, we will.”

Julian drank his coffee off at a gulp, in a way that would have made him the despair of an epicure.

“Where shall we go, then?”

Julian answered: 

“To the Euston Road.  To the ‘European.’”

“The ’European’!”

“Yes, Valentine; I must see Marr once more, even dead.  And I want you to see him.  It was he who made the strangeness in our lives.  But for him these curious events of the last days would not have happened.  And isn’t it peculiar that he must have died just about the time you were in your trance?”

“I do not see that.  The two things were totally unconnected.”

“Perhaps.  I suppose so.  But I must know how he died.  I must see what he looks like dead.  You will come with me?”

“If you wish it.  But we may not be admitted.”

“I will manage that somehow.  Let us go.”

Valentine got up.  He showed neither definite reluctance nor excitement.  They put on their coats in the vestibule and went out into the street.  While they had been dining the weather, fine during the day, had changed, and rain was falling in sheets.  They stood in the doorway while the hall-porter called a cab.  Piccadilly on such a night as this looked perhaps more decisively dreary than a rain-soaked country lane, or storm-driven sand-dunes by the sea.  For wet humanity, with wispy hair and swishing petticoats, draggled with desire for shelter, is a piteous vision as it passes by.

Valentine and Julian regarded it, turning up their coat collars and instinctively thrusting their hands deep into their pockets.  Two soldiers passed, pursued by a weary and tattered woman, at whom they laughingly jeered as they adjusted the cloaks over their broad shoulders.  They were hurrying back to barracks, and disregarded the woman’s reiterated exclamation that she would go with them, having no home.  A hansom went by with the glass down, a painted face staring through it upon the yellow mud that splashed round the horse’s feet.  Suddenly the horse slipped and came down.  The glass splintered as the painted and now screaming face was dashed through it.  A wet crowd of roughs and pavement vagabonds gathered and made hoarse remarks on the woman’s dress as she was hauled out in her finery, bleeding and half fainting, her silk gown a prey to the mud, her half-naked shoulders a hostage to the wind.  Two men in opera-hats, walked towards their club, discussing a divorce case, and telling funny stories through the rain.  A very small, pale, and filthy boy stood with bare feet upon the kerbstone, and cried damp matches.

“How horrible London is to-night,” Julian said as he and Valentine got into their cab.

“Yes.  Why add to our necessary contemplation of its horrors?  Why go on this mad errand?”