"I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor
optimist--just myself, and I believe happy."

"And what is this change? and what has it led to?"

"It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night."

They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Passing through the
hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books.
Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar.
When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small
feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head
reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued,
answering his attentive silence.

"It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first,
the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me,
perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became
conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse
to sin--to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It
seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is
said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity
you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against
impulses."

"I understand."

"And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian."

"To Addison?" the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding