“I could race with those boys,” Valentine said.  “But not so long ago I was like the men on the bench.  I only cared to look on at the bathing of others.  Now I could swim myself.”

He sent his horse along at a tremendous pace for a moment, then drew him in, and turned towards Julian.

“We are learning the lesson of the spring,” he said.

As he spoke a light from some hidden place shot for an instant into his eyes and faded again.  Julian laughed gaily.  The ride spurred his spirits.  He was conscious of the recklessness created in a man by exercise.

“I could believe that you were actually growing, Val,” he said, “growing before my eyes.  Only you’re much too old.”

“Yes; I am too old for that,” Valentine said.

A sudden weariness ran in the words, a sudden sound of age.

“The truth is,” he added, but with more life, “my nature is expanding inside my body, and you feel it and fancy you can see the envelope echo the words of the letter it holds.  You are clever enough to be fanciful.  Gently, Raindrop, gently!”

He quieted the mare as they turned into the road.  Just as they were passing under the arch into the open space at Hyde Park corner a woman shot across in front of them.  They nearly rode over her, and she uttered a little yell as she awkwardly gained the pavement.  Her head was crowned with a perfect pyramid of ostrich feathers, and as she turned to bestow upon the riders the contemptuous glance of a cockney pedestrian, who demands possession of all London as a sacred right, Julian suddenly pulled up his horse.

“Hulloh!” he said to the woman.

“What is it?” asked Valentine, who was in front.

“Wait a second, Val.  I want a word with this lady.”

“Rather compromising,” Valentine said, laughing, as his eyes took in with a swift glance the woman’s situation in the economy of the town.

The woman now slowly advanced to the railing, apparently flattered at being thus hailed from horseback.  Her kinsmen doubtless always walked.

“Don’t you remember me?” Julian said.

She was in fact the lady of the feathers, with whom he had foregathered at the coffee-stall in Piccadilly.  The lady leaned her plush arms upon the rail and surveyed him with her tinted eyes.

“Can’t say as I do, my dear,” she remarked.  “What name?”

“Never mind that.  But tell me, have you ever had a cup of coffee and a bun in Piccadilly early in the morning?”

The mention of the bun struck home to the lady, swept the quivering chords of her memory into a tune.  She pushed her face nearer to Julian and stared at him hard.

“So it is,” she said.  “So it is.”

For a moment she seemed inclined to retreat.  Then she stood her ground.  Her nerves, perhaps, had grown stronger.

“I should like to know you,” Julian said.

The lady was obviously gratified.  She tossed her head and giggled.