"And to agree with what I was saying?"
Valentine still spoke quite gravely and earnestly, and Julian began to be puzzled.
"You know I can never help agreeing with you when you really mean anything," he began. "I have proved so often that you are always right in the end. So your real theory of life must be the true one: but your real theory, I know, is to reject what most people run after."
"No longer that, I fancy, Julian."
"But, then, what has changed you?"
Valentine met his eyes calmly.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"
"I? How should I?"
"Perhaps this change has been growing within me for a long while. It is difficult to say; but to-night my nature culminates. I am at a point, Julian."
"Then you have climbed to it. Don't you want to stay there?"