The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flames, by Robert Smythe Hichens

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Title: Flames

Author: Robert Smythe Hichens

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14253]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FLAMES

BY ROBERT HICHENS

AUTHOR OF THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, ETC.

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

This edition published July, 1906, by Duffield & Company

BOOK I--VALENTINE

CHAPTER I

THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET

Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than
religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held
him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age
has its special sins. Each age passes them, like troops in review, before
it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to
join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled
with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the
barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he
heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder
at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor
creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old
age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of
his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted
women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at
which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire.
Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis
of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the
roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled cell, a deliberate and
rejoicing prisoner. For a long time he loved to watch them. And he
thought that it must always be so, for he was not greatly given to moods,
and therefore scarcely appreciated the thrilling meaning of