“What, an action against a husband for gross cruelty, for incredible, unspeakable inhumanity—­some time ago?”

“Yes.  The wife got a judicial separation.”

“And that is the history of Marr?”

“That is, such of his history as is known,” Valentine said in his calm voice.

While he had been speaking his blue eyes had always been fixed on Julian’s face.  When Julian looked up they were withdrawn.

“I always had a feeling that Marr was secretly a wretch, a devil,” Julian said now.  “It seems I was right.  What has become of the wife?”

“I suppose she has gone back to her country home.  Probably she is happy.  Her first mate chastised her with whips.  To fulfil her destiny as a woman she ought now to seek another who is fond of scorpions.”

“Women are strange,” Julian said, voluptuously generalizing after the manner of young men.

Valentine leaned forward as if the sentence stirred some depth in his mind and roused him to a certain excitement.

“Julian,” he exclaimed, “are you and I wasting our lives, do you think?  Since you have been away I have thought again over our conversation before we had our first sitting.  Do you remember it?”

“Yes, Valentine.”

“You said then I had held you back from so much.”

“Yes.”

“And I have been asking myself whether I have not, perhaps, held you back, held myself back, from all that is worth having in life.”

Julian looked troubled.

“From all that is not worth having, old boy,” he said.

But he looked troubled.  When Valentine spoke like this he felt as a man who stands at a garden gate and gazes out into the world, and is stirred with a thrill of anticipation and of desire to leap out from the green and shadowy close, where trees are and flowers, into the dust and heat where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken things lie warm.  Julian was vaguely afraid of himself.  It is dangerous to lean on any one, however strong.  Having met Valentine on the threshold of life, Julian had never learned to walk alone.  He trusted another, instead of trusting himself.  He had never forged his own sword.  When Siegfried sang at his anvil he sang a song of all the greatness of life.  Julian was notably strong as to his muscles.  He had arms of iron, and the blood raced in his veins, but he had never forged his sword.  Mistrust of himself was as a phantom that walked with him unless Valentine drove it away.

“I thought you had got over that absurd feeling, Val,” he said.  “I thought you were content with your soul.”

“I think I have ceased to be content,” said Valentine.  “Perhaps I have stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights in the tentroom.  Since you have been away I have wondered.  An extraordinary sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour, has come to me.  And I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded upon fact.”