“I often look out here at night,” Valentine said, “generally to wonder why people live as they do.  When I see the soldiers going by, for instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any pleasure in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and languish persistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers.  And I gaze at the policeman on his beat and pity him for the dead routine in which he stalks, seldom varied by the sordid capture of a starving cracksman, or the triumphant seizure of an unmuzzled dog.  The boys selling evening papers seem to me imps of desolation, screaming through life aimlessly for halfpence; and the cabmen, creatures driving for ever to stations, yet never able to get into the wide world.  And yet they are all living, Julian; that is the thing:  all having their experiences, all in strong touch with humanity.  The newspaper-boy has got his flower-girl to give him grimy kisses; and the cabman is proud of the shine on his harness; and the soldier glories in his military faculty of seduction, and in his quick capacity for getting drunk in the glittering gin-palace at the corner of the street; and the policeman hopes to take some one up, and to be praised by a magistrate; and in those houses opposite intrigues are going on, and jealousy is being born, and men and women are quarrelling over trifles and making it up again, and children—­what matter if legitimate or illegitimate?—­are cooing and crying, and boys are waking to the turmoil of manhood, and girls are dreaming of the things they dare not pretend to know.  Why should I be like a bird hovering over it all?  Why should not I—­and you—­be in it?  If I can only cease to be as I have always been, I can recreate London for myself, and make it a live city, fearing neither its vices nor its tears.  I have made you fear them, Julian.  I have done you an injury.  Let us be quiet, and feel the rustle of spring over the gas-lamps, and hear the pulsing of the hearts around us.”

He put his arm through Julian’s as they leaned out on the sill of the window, and to Julian his arm was like a line of living fire, compelling that which touched it to a speechless fever of excitement.  Was this man Valentine?  Julian’s pulses throbbed and hammered as he looked upon the street, and he seemed to see all the passers-by with eyes from which scales had fallen.  If to die should be nothing to the wise man, to live should be much.  Underneath, two drunken men passed, embracing each other by the shoulders.  They sang in, snatches and hiccoughed protestations of eternal friendship.  Valentine watched their wavering course with no disgust.  His blue eyes even seemed to praise them as they went.

“Those men are more human than I,” he slowly said.  “Why should I condemn them?”