And then Julian thought of the great wheeling army of the bats, whose evolutions every night of creation witnesses. In the day they do not sleep, but they are hidden. Their wings are folded so closely as to be invisible. Nobody could tell that they ever flew through shadowy places, seeking that which never satiates, although it may transform, the appetite. Nobody could tell how the twilight affects them when it comes; how, in their obscurity, they have to keep a guard lest the involuntary fluttering of a half-spread pinion betray them. And then when the twilight, the blessed one of the twin twilights, one in course towards day, one in course towards night, has deepened and has died, they can dare to be themselves, to spread their short wings, and to flutter on their vagrant and monotonous courses. It is a great though secret army—the army of the bats. It scours through cities. No weather will keep it quite restful in camp. No darkness will blind it into immobility. The mainspring of sin beats in it as drums beat in a Soudanese fantasia, as blood beats in a heart. The air of night is black with the movement of the bats. They fly so thickly round some lives that those lives can never see the sky, never catch a glimpse of the stars, never hear the wings of the angels, but always and ever the wings of the bats. Nor can such lives hear the whisper of Nature and of the sirens who walk purely with Nature. The murmur of the bats drowns all other sounds, and makes a hoarse and monotonous music. And the eyes of the bats are hungry, and the breath of the bats is poisonous, and the flight of the bats is a charade of the tragedy of the flight of the devils in hell.
How could Valentine be one of the bats? It seemed to Julian that if Valentine tried to join them they would fall upon him, as certain birds will fall upon one who is not of their tribe, and kill him. And yet?
Yet Julian began to know that he had been aware of a change in Valentine. He had believed it to be momentary. Perhaps it was not momentary. Perhaps Valentine was concealing his new mode of life from some strange idea of chivalry towards Julian. As Julian pondered he grew excited. He began to long to tell Valentine now what he had not liked to tell him before. Suddenly he got up and hastened out of the club. He drove to Victoria Street. But Valentine was not at home.
"I suppose Mr. Cresswell goes out every night Wade?" he asked the man, after a moment of hesitation.
Wade looked very much astonished at such a question coming from Julian.
"Yes, sir. At least, most nights," Wade answered.
"I see," Julian said.
He stood a minute longer. Then he turned away, after an abrupt:
"Say I called, will you?"
Wade looked after him as he went down the stairs, with the raised eyebrows of the confidential butler.