CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND SITTING


On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in
his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the
only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once
a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where
building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine
very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea
with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then
there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano.
For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably
that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But
when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke,
he invariably sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the
shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and
seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude.
To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his
usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete
silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when
the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and sound
of one kind or another is as ardently sought as at other times it is
avoided. In this room Valentine could hear the vague traffic of the dim
street outside, the dull tumult of an omnibus, the furtive, flashing