tell you at all."

"Don't, if you would rather not."

"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any
cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted;
and that's not very far, I'm afraid."

"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."

"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."

"But explain."

"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against
all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a
sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted
sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then--just at the
critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."

He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's
gaze.

"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."

"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps
you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood
that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly
in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions,
or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that
sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had,
and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know,
and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what
we might be?"

Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued,
throwing off his original shamefacedness:

"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw
myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion.
Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose.
But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because
you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no
preachers could ever do. There--now you know."

He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.

"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to
live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."

"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and
other men feel."

"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead
calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."

"It's better than a