And Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger.

As he knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy in which he held himself.

Until now he had believed that he was free from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account of his constitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding calms of refinement and of the upper snowfields of the intellect.

The discovery of his mistake irritated him, but the irritation could not conquer its cause, and each day the longing to sit once more grew upon him until it became almost painful.

It was this longing which occasioned Valentine's avoidance of Julian.