JULIAN
Call it anything you please.—Yes, it was a flight, just as good and just as bad, just as precipitate and just as cowardly as any other—with all the horrors of being pursued and all the joys of escaping. I am hiding nothing from you, Felix. You are still young, and it is even possible that you may understand it better than I can understand it myself to-day. Nothing pulled me back. No remorse stirred within me. The sense of being free filled me with intoxication.... At the end of the first day I was already far away—much farther than any number of milestones could indicate. On that first day her image began to fade away already—the image of her who had waked up to meet painful disillusionment, or worse maybe. The ring of her voice was passing out of my memory.... She was becoming a shadow like others that had been left floating much farther behind me in the past.
FELIX
Oh, it isn't true! So quickly could she not be forgotten. So remorselessly could you not go out in the world. All this is meant as a sort of expiation. You make yourself appear what you are not.
JULIAN
I am not telling you these things to accuse or defend myself. I am simply telling you the truth. And you must hear it. It was your mother, and I am the man who deserted her. And there is something more I am compelled to tell you. On the very time that followed my flight I must look back as the brightest and richest of any I have ever experienced. Never before or after have I reveled to such an extent in the splendid consciousness of my youth and my freedom from restraint. Never have I been so wholly master of my gifts and of my life.... Never have I been a happier man than I was at that very time.
FELIX (calmly)
And if she had killed herself?
JULIAN
I believe I should have thought myself worth it—in those days.