"Tragically or comically?"
"I don't know that I could say truly either. Calmly or contemptuously would rather be the word."
"You are always a philosopher. I can't be a philosopher when I see those hordes of women standing hour after hour in the rain, and those boys searching among them. I should be one of those boys probably but for you."
"If you were, I doubt whether I should feel horrified."
"Not morally horrified, I dare say, but intellectually disgusted. Eh?"
"I am not sure whether I shall permit my intellect quite so much license in the future as I have permitted it in the past," Valentine said thoughtfully.
His blue eyes were on Julian, but Julian was gazing out on Oxford Street, which they were crossing at that moment. Julian, who had apparently continued dwelling on the train of thoughts waked in him by the sight of the painted cross, ignored this remark and said:
"It is not my moral sense which shuddered just now, I believe, but my imagination. Sin is so full of prose, although many clever writers have represented it as splendidly decorated with poetry. Don't you think so, Val? And it is the prose of sin I realized so vividly just now."
"The wet flowers on the waiting hats, the cold raindrops on the painted faces, the damp boots trudging to find sin, the dark clouds pouring a benediction on it. I know what you mean. But the whole question is one of weather, I think. Vanity Fair on a hot, sweet summer night, with a huge golden moon over Westminster, soft airs and dry pavements, would make you see this city in a different light. And which of the lights is the true one?"
"I dare say neither."