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Julian prepared the tea, and talked while he prepared it. “It is this way,” he began quietly. “You know what I have always believed; that the will was the man, his soul, his life, everything. Well, in the old days thoughts and ideas commenced to make themselves felt in me, to crop up in my work. I would start on a picture with a clear settled design; when it was finished, I would notice that by some unconscious freak I had introduced a figure, an arabesque, always something which made the whole incongruous and bizarre. I discovered the cause during the week after I received your last letter. The thoughts, the ideas were yours; better than mine perhaps, but none the less death to me.”

Lady Tamworth stirred uneasily under a sense of guilt, and murmured a faint objection. Julian shook off the occupation of his theme and handed her some cake, and began again, standing over her with the cake in his hand, and to all seeming unconscious that there was a strain of cruelty in his words. “I found out what that meant. My emotions were mastering me, drowning the will in me. You see, I cared for you so much–then.”

A frank contempt stressing the last word cut into his hearer with the keenness of a knife. “You are unkind,” she said weakly.

“There’s no reproach to you. I have got over it long ago,” he replied cheerily. “And you showed me how to get over it; that’s why I am grateful. For I began to wonder after that, why I, who had always been on my guard against the emotions, should become so thoroughly their slave. And at last I found out the reason; it was the work I was doing.”

“Your work?” she exclaimed.

“Exactly! You remember what Plato remarked about the actor?”

“How should I?” asked poor Lady Tamworth.

“Well, he wouldn’t have him in his ideal State because acting develops the emotions, the shifty unstable part of a man. But that’s true of art as well; to do good work in art you must feel your work as an emotion. So I cut myself clear from it all. I furnished these rooms and came down here,–to live.” And Julian drew a long breath, like a man escaped from danger.

“But why come here?” Lady Tamworth urged. “You might have gone into the country–anywhere.”

“No, no, no!” he answered, setting down the cake and pacing about the room. “Wherever else I went, I must have formed new ties, created new duties. I didn’t want that; one’s feelings form the ties, one’s soul pays the duties. No, London is the only place where a man can disappear. Besides I had to do something, and I chose this work, because it didn’t touch me. I could throw it off the moment it was done. In the shop I earn the means to live; I live here.”

“But what kind of a life is it?” she asked in despair.

“I will tell you,” he replied, sinking his tone to an eager whisper; “but you mustn’t repeat it, you must keep it a secret. When I am in this room alone at night, the walls widen and widen away until at last they vanish,” and he nodded mysteriously at her. “The roof curls up like a roll of parchment, and I am left on an open platform.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Lady Tamworth.

“Yes, on an open platform underneath the stars. And do you know,” he sank his voice yet lower, “I hear them at times; very faintly of course,–their songs have so far to travel; but I hear them,–yes, I hear the stars.”

Lady Tamworth rose in a whirl of alarm. Before this crazy exaltation, her very desire to pursue her purpose vanished. For Julian’s manner even more than his words contributed to her fears. In spite of his homily, emotion was dominant in his expression, swaying his body, burning on his face and lighting his eyes with a fire of changing colours. And every note in his voice was struck within the scale of passion.