"With what result?" Julian asked with eager curiosity.
"That I understand something I never understood before—the charm of sin."
Julian was greatly surprised at this deliverance of his friend, who uttered it in his coldly pure voice, looking serenely high-minded and even loftily intellectual.
"You find the charm of sin in Piccadilly?"
"I begin to find it everywhere, in every place in which human beings gather together."
"You no longer feel yourself aloof from the average man, then?"
Valentine pressed his right hand slowly upon Julian's shoulder.
"No longer," he answered quietly. "Julian, you and I are emerging together from the hermitage in which we have dwelt retired for so long. I always thought you would emerge some day. I never thought I should. But so it is. Don't think that I am standing still while you are travelling. It is not so."
The strength of his hand's grip upon Julian's shoulder seemed to indicate a violence of feeling which the tones of his voice did not imply. Julian listened, and then said, in a hesitating, irresolute manner:
"Yes, I see, Val; but I say, where are we travelling? or, at least, where shall we travel if we don't pull up, if we keep on? That's the thing, I suppose."