"You've got cosey quarters," Julian said, amiably lying.

"Yes, they're not bad, but they do cost money. Sit down, won't you!"

The lady shoved the one arm-chair forward, and after a polite skirmish, Julian was forced to take it. He sat down, disguising from his companion his sudden knowledge that the springs were broken. She, on her part, laid hold of Jessie, dumped the little creature into her lap, and assumed an air of abrupt gentility, pursing her painted lips, and shooting sidelong glances of inquiry at the furniture. Julian could not at once explain his errand. He felt that caution was imperative. Besides, the lady doubtless expected to be entertained at Verrey's or possibly even at Charbonnel's. But Julian had resolved to throw himself upon the lady's hospitality.

"It's an awful day," he said.

The lady assented, adding that she had not been out.

"We are very cosey here," Julian continued, gazing at the small fire that was sputtering in the grate.

The lady looked gratified. She felt that the meagre abode which she must name home had received the hallmark of a "toff's" approval.

"Now I am going to ask you something," Julian said. "Will you let me have tea with you to-day, and—and—come out with me some evening to the Empire or somewhere, instead?"

The lady nodded her fringed head.

"Certainly, my dear," she responded. "Proud to give you tea, I'm sure."

Suddenly she bounced up, scattering Jessie over the floor. She promenaded to the door, opened it and yelled:

"Mrs. Brigg! Mrs. Brigg!"

The expostulating feet of the old person ascended wearily from the lower depths of the house.

"Lord! Lord! Whatever is it now?" she wheezed.

"Please bring up tea for me and this gentleman."

The lady assumed the voice of a sucking dove.

"Tea! Why, I thought you'd be out to—"

The lady shot into the passage and shut the door behind her. After a moment she put her head in and said to Julian:

"I'll be back in a minute. She's in a rare tantrum. I must go down and help her. Pardon."

And she vanished like a flash.

Julian sat feeling rather guilty. To distract himself he got up and looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Most of them were of men, but there were two or three girls in tights, and there was one of a stout and venerable woman, evidently highly respectable, seated in an arm-chair, with staring bead-like eyes, but a sweet and gentle mouth. Her hair was arranged in glossy bands. Her hands held a large book, probably a Bible. Julian looked at her and wondered a little how she chanced to be in this galre. Then he started and almost exclaimed aloud. For there, at the end of the mantelpiece, was a cabinet photograph of Marr. He was right then in his suspicion. The lady of the feathers was also the lady at the "European."

"Sorry to keep you waiting," said a voice behind him.

There was a clatter of crockery. His hostess entered bearing a tray, which held a teapot, cups, a large loaf of bread, and some butter, and a milk-jug and sugar-basin. She plumped it down on the table.

"Mrs. Brigg wouldn't make toast," she explained. "And I didn't like to keep you."

"Let's make some ourselves," said Julian, with a happy inspiration.

He felt that to perform a common and a cosey act must draw them together, and awaken in the lady's breast a happy and progressive confidence. She was evidently surprised at the suggestion.

"Well, I never!" she ejaculated. "You are a queer one. You are taking a rise out of me now!"

"Not at all. I like making toast. Give me a fork. I'll do it, and you sit there and direct me."

She laughed and produced the fork from a mean cupboard which did duty as a sideboard.

"Here you are, then. 'Cut it pretty thick. It ain't so high class, but it eats better. That's it. Sit on this stool, dear."

She kicked an ancient leather one to the hearth, and Julian, tucking his long-tailed frock coat under him, squatted down and thrust forward the bread to the bars of the grate. The lady opened the lid of the teapot and examined the brew with an anxious eye.

"It's drawin' beautiful," she declared. "Well, I'm d—" she caught herself up short. "Well this is bally funny," she said. "Turn it, dearie."

Julian obeyed, and they began to talk. For the ice was broken now, and the lady was quite at her ease, and simple and human in her hospitalities.

"This is better than the bun," Julian said.

"I believe you, dear. And yet that bun did me a deal of good that mornin'."

Her voice became suddenly reflective.

"A deal of good."

"Are you often out at such a time?"

"Not I. But that night I'd—well, I didn't feel like bein' indoors. There's things—well, there, it don't matter. That toast's done, dearie. Bring it here, and let me butter it."

Julian brought it, and cut another slice from the loaf. He toasted while the lady buttered, a fine division of labour which drew them close together. Jessie, meanwhile, attracted by these pleasant preparations, hovered about, wriggling in pathetic anxiety to share the good things of life.

"Anything wrong that night?" Julian said, carelessly.

The lady buttered, like an angry machine.

"Oh no, dearie," she said. "Make haste, or the tea'll be as black as coal. Jessie, you're a pig! I do spoil her."

Julian called the little dog to him. She came voraciously, her minute and rat-like body tense with greed.

"She's a pretty dog," he said.

"Yes," the lady rejoined proudly. "She's a show dog. She was give to me, and I wouldn't part with her for nuts, no, nor for diamonds neither. Would I, Jessie? Ah, well, dogs stick to you when men don't."

She was trying to be arch, but her voice was really quivering to tears, and in that sentence rang all the tragedy of her poor life. Julian looked across at her as she sat by the tray, buttering now almost mechanically. She was naturally a pretty girl, but was growing rapidly haggard, and was badly made up, rouged in wrong places consumptively, powdered everywhere disastrously. Her eyes were pathetic, but above them the hair was dreadfully dyed, and frizzed into a desolate turmoil. She had a thin young figure and anxious hands. As he looked Julian felt a profound pity and a curious manly friendship for her. She had that saddest aspect of a human being about whom it doesn't matter. Only it matters about every living creature so much.

The lady caught his eye, and extended her lips in a forced smile.

"You never know your luck!" she cried. "So it don't do to be down on it. Come on, dearie. Now then for the tea."

She poured it out, and Julian drew up to the table. Already he felt oddly at home in this poor room, with this poor life, into which he longed to bring a little hope, a little safety. Jessie sprang to his knees, and thence, naughtily, to the table, snuffling towards the plate of toast. The lady drew it away and approached it to her nose by turns, playfully.

"She is a funny one," she said. "Is your tea right, dearie?"

"Perfect," said Julian. "Is my toast right?"

"Right as ninepence, and righter."

She munched.

"I like you," she said. "You're a gentleman."

She spoke naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience for her to be treated with that thing some women never know—respect. She warmed under it and glistened.

"We must be friends," Julian said.

"Pals. Yes. Have some more sugar?"

She jumped two lumps into his cup, and laughed quite gaily when the tea spouted over into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed Jessie into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversation round to the photographs. The lady was expansive. She gave short histories of some of the men, summing them up with considerable shrewdness, kodaking their characters with both humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed along the mantelpiece together. Presently they arrived at the old lady with the Bible.

"And this?" Julian said.

The lady's fund of spirits was suddenly exhausted.

"Oh, that," she said, and a sort of strange, suppressed blush struggled up under the rouge on her face. "Well, that's mother."

"I like her face."

"Yes. She thinks I'm dead."

The lady turned away abruptly.

"I'll just carry the tray down to Mrs. Brigg," she said, and she clattered out with it, and down the stairs.

Julian heard her loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, the requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible on her knees. When she returned, her mouth was hard and her eyes were shining ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantelpiece. As she came in he pointed to the photograph of Marr.

"And this?" he asked. "Who's this?"

The lady burst into a shrill laugh of mingled fear and cunning.

"That's the old gentleman!"

"What do you mean?"

"What I say,—the old gentleman, Nick, the devil, if you like it."

"Now you are trying to take a rise out of me."

"Not I, dear," she said. "That's the devil, sure enough."

Either the tea and toast had rendered her exuberant, or the thought of the old woman who believed her to be dead had driven her into recklessness. She continued:

"I'd been with him that night I met you, and I was frightened, I tell you. I'd been mad with fright."

"Why? What had he done to you?"

Julian strove to conceal his eager interest under a light assumption of carelessness.

"Done!—never mind. It don't do to talk about it."

She laid her thin hand on his arm, as if impelled to be confidential.

"Do you believe in people being struck?" she said.

"Struck! I don't understand."

"Struck," she repeated superstitiously. "Down, from up there?"

Her eyes went up to the ceiling, like the child's when it thinks of heaven.

"Was he?" Julian asked.

She nodded, pursing her red lips.

"That's what I think. It came so sudden. Just when I was going to scream somethin' seemed to come over him, like madness it was. He seemed listening. Then he says, 'Now—now!' And he seemed goin' right off. He stared at me and didn't seem to know me. Lord, I was blue with it, I tell you, dear! I was that frightened I just left him and bunked for it, and never said a word to anybody. I ran downstairs and got out of the house, and I daren't go home. So I just walked about till I met you."

She sighed.

"I did enjoy that coffee, I tell you straight, but when you began about seein' things, I couldn't stow it. My nerves was shook. So off I trotted again."

Julian put a question to her.

"Do you know what has become of him?"

"Not I. He'll never get in here again. Mrs. Brigg won't let him. She never could abide him."

She shook her shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I wish he was dead," she said. "I never go out but what I'm afraid I shall meet him, or come back late but what I think I shall find him standin' against the street door. I wish he was dead."

"I knew him. He is dead."

She looked at him, at first questioning, then awe-stricken.

"Then he was struck? Lord!"

Her red mouth gaped.

"It was in the papers," Julian said, "At the European Hotel."

"That was the place. Lord! I never see the papers. Dead is he? I am glad."

Her relief was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and detested the remembrance of him.

"But why do you keep his photograph?" Julian asked at last.

The lady seemed puzzled.

"I dunno," she said at last. "I don't seem as if I could burn it. But if he is gone—dead, I mean—really—"

"He is."

"I know."

She sat thoughtfully. Then she said:

"He didn't look a fellow to die. It seems funny. No; he didn't look it."

And then she dropped the subject, and nothing would induce her to return to it. Presently they heard a church clock strike. It chimed seven. Julian was astonished to find that time had gone so quickly.

"I must be going," he said.

The lady looked at him with an odd, half-impudent, half-girlish, and wistful scrutiny.

"I say," she began, and stopped.

"Yes?"

"I say—why ever did you come?"

The short question that expressed her wondering curiosity might well have driven any thoughtful man into tears. And Julian, young and careless as he often was, felt something of the terror and the pain enshrined in it. But he did not let her see this.

"I wanted to have a talk with you," he answered.

"A talk; you like a talk with me?"

"Yes, surely."

She still stared at him with pathetic eyes. He had stood up.

"Oh," she said. "Well, dearie, I'm glad."

Julian took up his hat.

"I'm going out too," she said.

"Are you?"

"Yes."

She threw a sidelong glance at him, then added hardily, although her painted lips were suddenly quivering:

"I've got to go to work."

"I know," Julian said. "Well, I will wait till you are ready and drive you wherever you want to go."

"Want to go," she began, with a little, shrill, hideous laugh. Then, pulling herself up, she added in a subdued voice:

"Thank you, dearie. I won't be long."

She opened the folding doors and passed into the inner room, accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the piteous battle of the London streets. And then his ears caught the eager patter of Jessie to and fro, and a murmured expostulation from her mistress. Evidently the little dog had got hold of some article of attire and was worrying it. There was a hidden chase and a hidden capture. Jessie was scolded and kissed. Then the sitting-room slowly filled with the scent of cherry-blossom. A toothbrush in action was distinctly audible. This tragedy had its comic relief, like almost all tragedies. Julian sighed and smiled, but his heart was heavy with the desolate and sordid wonder of life, as his mind heard—all over London—a thousand echoes of the bedchamber music of the lady of the feathers.

The folding doors opened wide and she appeared, freshly painted and powdered, crowned once again with the forest of ostrich tips, and holding the struggling Jessie in her arms.

"Jessie must go to basket," she said, and she dropped the dog into a tiny basket lined with red flannel, and held up a warning finger.

"Naughty—go bials!" she cried. "Go bials, Jessie."

"What's that?"

"Bials—by-bye. She don't like bein' left. Well, dearie, we've had a nice time."

Suddenly she put her hands on Julian's shoulders and kissed his mouth.

"I wish there was more like you," she whispered.

He kissed her too, and put his arms around her.

"If I give you something, will you—will you stay at home to-night, just to-night, with Jessie?" he said.

But she drew away and shook her head.

"I won't take it."

"Yes."

"I won't. No—we're pals—not—not the other thing. You're the only one I've got—of that kind. I won't spoil it—no, I won't."

Her decision was almost angry. Julian did not persist.

"I'll come again," he said.

She looked at him wistfully.

"Ah—but you won't," she answered.

"I will."

He spoke with energy. She nodded.

"I'd like you to."

Then they went out into the evening and hailed a hansom.

"Put me down at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street," said the lady of the feathers.



CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE

Julian was curiously touched by his interview in the Marylebone Road, and he did not fail to recount it to Valentine, whose delicate imagination would, he felt certain, feel the pity and the pain of it.

But Valentine did not respond to his generous emotion.

"I thought she looked a very degraded young person," he said, distantly. "And not interesting. The woman who is falling is interesting. The woman who has reached the bottom, who has completely arrived at degradation, is dull enough."

"But she is not utterly degraded, Val. For I know that she can see and understand something of the horror of her own condition."

Valentine put his hand on Julian's shoulder.

"I know what you are thinking," he said.

"What?"

"That you would like to rescue this girl."

A dull blush ran over Julian's face.

"I don't know that I had got quite so far as that," he said. "Would it be absurd if I had?"

"I am not sure that it would not be wrong. Probably this girl lives the life she is best fitted for."

"You surely don't mean—"

"That some human beings are born merely to further the necessities of sin in the scheme of creation? I don't know that. Nature, in certain countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly snakes to live in her bosom. Man demands and obtains female snakes to live in his bosom. Are not such women literally created for this mtier? How can one tell?"

"But if they are unhappy?"

"You think they would be happy in purity?"

"I believe she would."

Valentine smiled and shook his head.

"I expect her sorrows are not caused by the loss of her virtue, but merely by her lack of the luxuries of life. These birds always want their nests to be made of golden twigs and lined with satin."

But Julian remained unconvinced.

"You don't know her," he said. "Why, Valentine, you have never known such a woman! You! The very notion is ridiculous."

"I have seen them in their Garden of Eden, offering men the fruit of the tree of knowledge."

"You mean?"

"At the 'Empire.'"

"Ah! I have half promised to take her there one night."

"Shall I come with you, Julian?"

Julian looked at him to see if he was in earnest as he made this unutterable proposition. Valentine's clear, cold, thoughtful blue eyes met his eager, glowing, brown, ones with direct gravity.

"You mean it, Val?"

"Certainly."

"You will be seen at the 'Empire' with her?"

"Well—would not you?"

"But you are so different."

"Julian, you remember that night when we leaned out over London, when we saw what are called common people having common experiences? I said then that they, at any rate, were living."

"Yes."

"You and I will try to live with them."

"But, Valentine—you—"

"Even I may learn to feel the strength of the spring if I order my life rather differently in the future. We three, you, I, the girl, will go one night to the Garden of Eden, where the birds wear tights and sing comic songs in French, and the scent that comes from the flowers is patchouli, and silk rustles instead of the leaves of the trees. We will go there on boat-race night. Ah, the strength of the spring! On boat-race night it beats with hammering pulses among the groves of the Garden of Eden."

Julian was surprised at this outburst, which sounded oddly deliberate, and was apparently spoken without real impulse. He was surprised, but, on consideration, he came to the conclusion that Valentine, having silently debated the question of his own life, had resolved to make a definite effort to see if he could change the course of it. Julian felt that such an effort must be useless. He knew Valentine so intimately, he thought,—knew the very groundwork of his nature,—that that nature was too strong to be carved into a different, and possibly grotesque, form.

"Are you an experimentalist, Val?" he asked.

Valentine threw a rapid glance on him.

"I? I don't understand. Why should I experiment upon you?"

"No; not on me, but on yourself."

"Oh, I see what you mean. No, Julian; I prefer to let fate experiment upon me."

"At the 'Empire'?"

"If fate chooses."

"I think you ought to know Cuckoo—"

"Is that her name?"

"Yes, Cuckoo Bright, before our meditated expedition."

Valentine seemed struck by this idea.

"So that we may all be at our ease. A capital notion. Julian, sit down, write a note asking her to come to tea on Thursday, in the flat. I will show her my pictures, and you shall talk to her of Huxley and of Herbert Spencer."

Julian regarded Valentine rather doubtfully.

"Are you malicious?" he said, with a hesitating note in his voice.

"Malicious—no!"

"You won't chaff her?"

"Chaff a lady who wears more feathers than ever 'growed on one ostrich,' and who was the intime of the mysterious Marr? Julian, Julian!"

Then, seeing that Julian still looked rather uncomfortable, Valentine added, dropping his mock heroic manner:

"Don't be afraid. We will give the lady one good hour."

"Ah!" Julian cried, struck by the expression, "that's what the doctor wished to give to every poor wretch in London."

"We don't ask the doctor to our tea," Valentine replied, with a sudden coldness.

The invitation was conveyed to the lady of the feathers, and in due course an answer was received, a mosaic of misspelling and obvious gratification.

"My dear," ran the missive, "I will com. I shall be pleased to see you agane, but I thorght I shoold not. Men say—oh yes, I shall com back—but not many does, and I thorght praps you was like the all the rest. Your friend is very good to assk me, and I am,

"Yr loving, "Cuckoo."

Valentine read the letter without comment and ordered an elaborate tea. Julian read it, and wondered whether he was a fool because he felt touched by the misspelt words, as he had sometimes felt touched when he saw some very poor woman attired in her ridiculous "best" clothes.

The tea-time had been fixed for five o'clock, and Julian intended, of course, to be in Victoria Street with Valentine to receive the expected guest, but Cuckoo Bright threw his polite plans out of gear, and Valentine was alone when, at half-past four, the electric bell rang, and, a moment later, Wade solemnly showed into the drawing-room a striking vision, such as had never "burst into that silent sea" of artistic repose and refinement before.

The lady undoubtedly wore what seemed to be her one hat, and the effect of it, at all times remarkable, was amazingly heightened by its proximity to the quiet and beautiful surroundings of the room. As a rule, it merely cried out. Now it seemed absolutely to yell bank-holiday vulgarity and impropriety at the silent pictures. But her gown decidedly exceeded it in uproar, being of the very loudest scarlet hue, with large black lozenges scattered liberally over it. From her rather narrow shoulders depended a black cape, whose silk foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill scent of cherry-blossom ran with her like a crowd, and in her hand she carried an umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the midst of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it was with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine standing alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably about in obvious quest of an acquaintance and protector.

"I am sorry that Mr. Addison has not come yet," Valentine said, holding out his hand. "I expect him every minute. Won't you come and sit down?"

An ironical courtesy vibrated in his voice. The lady grew more obviously nervous. She looked at Valentine through the veil which was drawn tightly across her face. His appearance seemed to carry awe into her heart, for she stood staring and attempted no reply, allowing him to take her hand without either protest or response.

"Won't you sit down?" he repeated, smiling at her with humourous contemplation of her awkward distress.

The lady abruptly sat down on a sofa.

"Allow me to put a cushion at your back," Valentine said. And he passed behind her to do so. But she quickly shifted round, almost as if in fear, and faced him as he stood with his hand on the back of the sofa.

"No," she said, in a hurry; "I don't know as I want one, thanks."

She half got up.

"Have I come right?" she asked uneasily. "Is this the house?"

"Certainly. It's so good of you to come."

The words did not seem to carry any comfort to the lady. She passed the tip of her tongue along her painted lips and looked towards the door.

"Pray, don't be alarmed," Valentine said, sitting down on a chair immediately opposite to her.

"I ain't. But—but you're not the friend, are you?"

"I am; and the ami des femmes too, I assure you. Be calm."

He bent forward, looking closely into her face. The lady leaned quickly back and uttered a little gasp.

"What is the matter?" Valentine asked.

"Nothin', nothin'," the lady answered, returning his glance as if fascinated into something that approached horror. "When's he comin'? When's he comin'?"

"Directly. But I trust you will not regret spending a few minutes alone in my company. What can I do to make you happy?"

"I'm all right, thank you," she said, almost roughly. "Don't bother about me."

"Who could help bothering about a pretty woman?" Valentine answered suavely, and approaching his chair a little more closely to her. "Do you know that my friend Addison can talk of nobody but you?"

"Oh!"

"Nobody. He raves about you."

"You're laughing," the lady said, still uncomfortably.

"Not at all. I never laugh."

As he made this last remark, Valentine slowly frowned. The effect of this change of expression upon the lady was most extraordinary. She leaned far back upon the sofa as if in retreat from the face that stared upon her, mechanically thrusting out her hands in a faltering gesture of self-defence. Then, planting her feet on the ground and using them as a lever, she succeeded in moving the sofa backwards upon its castors, which ran easily over the thick carpet. Valentine, on his part, did not stir, but with immovable face regarded her apparent terror as a man regards some spectacle neither new nor strange to him, silently awaiting its eventual closing tableau. What this would have been cannot be known, for at this moment the bell rang and the butler was heard moving in the hall. The frown faded from Valentine's face, and the lady sprang up from the sofa with a violent, almost a passionate, eagerness. Julian entered hastily.

"Why was you late?" Cuckoo Bright cried out, hastening up to him and speaking almost angrily. "Why was you late? I didn't think—I didn't—oh!"

Her voice sounded like the voice of one on the verge of tears. Julian looked astonished.

"I am very sorry," he began. "But I didn't know you would be here so soon."

He glanced from the lady to Valentine inquiringly, as much as to say:

"How have you been getting on?"

Valentine's expression was gay and reassuring.

"I have been entertaining your friend, Julian," he said. "But she has been almost inconsolable in your absence. She was standing up because I was just about to show her the pictures. But now you are here, we will have tea first instead. Ah, here is tea. Miss Bright, do come and sit by the fire, and put your feet on this stool. We will wait upon you."

Since the entrance of Julian, his manner had entirely changed. All the irony, all the mock politeness, had died out of it. He was now a kind and delicately courteous host, desirous of putting his guests upon good terms and gilding the passing hour with a definite happiness. Cuckoo Bright seemed struck completely dumb by the transformation. She took the chair he indicated, mechanically put her feet up on the stool he pushed forward, and with a rather trembling hand accepted a cup of tea.

"Do you take sugar?" Valentine said, bending over her with the sugar-basin.

"No, no," she said.

"Oh, but I thought you loved sweet things," Julian interposed. "Surely—"

"I won't have none to-day," she ejaculated, adding with an endeavour after gentility; "thank you, all the same," to Valentine.

He offered her some delicious cakes, but she was apparently petrified by the grandeur of her surroundings, or by some hidden sensation of shyness or of shame, and was refusing to eat anything, when Julian came to the rescue.

"Oh, but you must," he said. "Have some of these sugar-biscuits."

She took some from him and began to sip and munch steadily, but still in silence. Julian began to fear that the festival must be a dire failure, for her obvious and extreme constraint affected him, and he was also seized with an absurd sense of shyness in the presence of Valentine, and, instead of talking, found himself immersed in a boyish anxiety as to Valentine's attitude of mind towards the girl. He looked at Cuckoo in the firelight as she mutely ate and drank, and was all at once profoundly conscious of the dreary vulgarity of her appearance, against which even her original prettiness and her present youth fought in vain. Her hat cast a monstrous shadow upon the wall, a shadow so distorted and appalling that Julian almost grew red as he observed it, and felt that Valentine was probably observing it also. He wished poor Cuckoo had left the crying scarlet gown at home, and those black lozenges, which were suited to the pavement of the hall of a financier. Everything she had on expressed a mind such as Valentine must become acquainted with in amazement, and have intercourse with in sorrow. The pathetic side of this preposterous feathered and bugled degradation he would fail to see. Julian felt painfully certain of this. All the details of the woman would offend him, who was so alive to the value of fine details in life. He must surely be wondering with all his soul how Julian could ever have contemplated continuing the intercourse with Cuckoo which had been begun for a definite purpose already accomplished. Yet Julian's feeling of friendship towards this rouged scarecrow with the pathetic eyes and the anxious hands did not diminish as he blushed for her, but rather increased, fed, it seemed, by the discordant trifles in which her soul moved as in a maze. He was so much in the thrall of thought that he had become quite unconscious of the awkwardness of the brooding silence, when he heard Valentine's voice say:

"Are you fond of art, Miss Bright?"

The question sounded as if addressed to some society woman at home in Melbury Road. Addressed to Cuckoo it was entirely absurd, and Julian glanced at Valentine to deprecate the gay sarcasm which he suspected. But Valentine's face disarmed him, it was so gravely and serenely polite.

"Eh?" said Cuckoo.

"Are you fond of art? or do you prefer literature?"

"I don't know," she said nervously.

"Or perhaps music?"

"I like singing," she said. "And the organs."

"Do sing us something, Val," Julian said, to create a diversion.

But Valentine shook his head.

"Not to-day. I have got a cold in my throat."

"Well, then, play something."

But Valentine did not seem to hear the last request. He had turned again to Cuckoo, who visibly shied away from him, and clattered the teacup and saucer, which she held like one alarmed.

"Music is a great art," he said persuasively. "And appeals essentially to one's emotions. I am certain now that you are emotional."

"I don't know, I'm sure," she said, with an effort at self-confidence.

"You feel strongly, whether it be love or hate."

This last remark seemed to reach her, even to stir her to something more definite than mere mauvaise honte. She glanced quickly from Julian to Valentine.

"Love and hate," she responded. "Yes, that's it; I could feel them both. You're right there, my d—, I mean yes."

And again she looked from one young man to the other. She had put up her veil, which was stretched in a bunched-up mass across her powdered forehead, and Julian had an odd fancy that in the firelight he saw upon her haggard young face the rapid and fleeting expression of the two violently opposed emotions of which she spoke. Her face, turned upon him, seemed to shine with a queer, almost with a ludicrous, vehemence of yearning which might mean passion. This flashed into the sudden frown of a young harridan as her eyes travelled on to Valentine. But the frown died quickly, and she looked downcast, and sat biting her thin lips, and crumbling a biscuit into the tiny blue and white china plate upon her knee.

"And do you give way to your impulses?" Valentine continued, still very gravely.

"What?"

"Do you express what you feel?"

A flash of childish cunning crept into her eyes and mouth, giving her the aspect of a gamin.

"No; I ain't such a fool," she answered. "Men don't like to be told the truth. Do they, now?"

The question went to Julian.

"Why not?" he asked

"Oh, they like to be fooled. If you don't fool them, they fool you."

"A sufficiently clear statement of the relations of the sexes through all time," said Valentine. "Have you ever studied Schopenhauer?"

"Ah, now, you're kiddin' me!" was her not inappropriate answer.

She was getting a little more at her ease, but she still stole frequent furtive glances at Valentine from time to time, and moved with an uncomfortable jerk if he bent forward to her or seemed about to come near to her. He seemed now really interested in her personality, and Julian began to wonder if its very vulgarity came to him with a charm of novelty.

"Kidding?" Valentine said, interrogatively.

"Gettin' at me! Pullin' my leg! Oh, I know you!" cried Cuckoo. "I'm up to all them games. You don't get a rise out of me."

"The lady speaks in parables," Valentine murmured to Julian. "I assure you," he added aloud, "I am speaking quite seriously."

"Oh, seriously be hanged!" said Cuckoo, recklessly. "You're a regular funny feller. Oh yes. Only don't try to be funny with me, because I'm up to all that."

She seemed suddenly bent on turning the tables on one whom she apparently regarded as her adversary. Some people, when they do make an effort of will, are always carried forward by the unwonted exertion into an almost libertine excess. Miss Bright's timidity was now developing into violent impudence. She tossed her head till the gigantic shadow of the sarcophagus that crowned it aspired upon the wall almost to the ceiling. She stuck her feet out upon the stool aggressively, and her arms instinctively sought the akimbo position that is the physical expression of mental hardihood in vulgar natures.

"Go along!" she said.

Valentine pretended to take her at her word. He got up.

"Where shall I go? I am your slave!"

She laughed shrilly.

"Go to blazes if you like."

Valentine crossed to the door, and, before Julian had time to speak, opened it and quietly vanished. Julian and Cuckoo were left staring at one another. The latter's impudence had suddenly evaporated. Her face was working as if she was astonished and afraid.

"What's he after? What's he after, I say?" she ejaculated. "Go and see."

But Julian shook his head.

"It's all right. He has only done it for a joke. He will be back directly."

"Yes, but—but."

She seemed really frightened. Julian supposed she realized her rudeness vaguely, and imagined she had made an abominable faux pas. Acting on this supposition, he said reassuringly:

"He didn't mind your chaff. He knew you were only joking."

"Lord, it isn't that," she rejoined with trembling lips. "But what's he goin' to do?"

"Do?"

"Yes. Go and see. Hark!"

She held up her hand and leaned forward in a strained attitude of attention. But there was no sound in the flat. Then she turned again to Julian and said:

"And he's your friend. Well, I never!"

The words were spoken with an extraordinary conviction of astonishment that roused Julian to keen attention.

"Why, what do you mean?" he asked.

"He's a wicked fellow," she said with a snatch of the breath. "A real downright wicked fellow, like Marr. That's what he is."

Julian was amazed.

"You don't know what you are saying," he answered.

But she stuck to her guns with the animation of hysteria.

"Don't I, though? Don't I? A girl that lives like me has to know, I tell you. Where should I be if I didn't? Tell me that, then. Why, there's men in the streets I wouldn't speak to; not for twenty pounds, I wouldn't. And he's one of them. Why didn't you come? Why ever did you let me be on my own with him? He's a devil."

"Nonsense," Julian said brusquely.

She laid her hand on his, and hers was trembling.

"Well, then, why's he gone off all sudden like that?"

"Only for a joke. Wait, I'll fetch him back."

Cuckoo Bright looked frankly terrified at the idea.

"No," she cried; "don't. I'm goin'. I'm off. Help me on with my cloak, dearie. I'm off."

Julian saw that it was useless to argue with her. He put the cloak round her shoulders. As he did so he was standing behind her, with his face to the fireplace. The leaping flames sprang from the coals in the grate, and their light was reflected on the wall, near the door, but only, of course, to a certain height. Julian's eyes were attracted to these leaping flames on the wall, and he saw one suddenly detach itself from the shadows of its brethren, take definite shape and life, develop while he looked from shadow into substance, float up on the background of the wall higher and higher, reach the ceiling and melt away. As it faded the drawing-room door opened and Valentine reappeared.

Miss Bright started violently, and caught at her cloak with both hands. Valentine came forward slowly.

"You are not going already, surely," he said.

"I must, I must," she ejaculated, already in movement towards the hall.

"But I have just been to get you a box of sugar plums."

He held a satin box in his hand and began to open it. But she hurried on with a nod.

"Good-bye. Sorry, but I can't stop."

She was in the hall and out of the flat in the twinkling of an eye, followed by Julian. Valentine remained in the drawing-room.

"Lord, I am glad to be out of it," said the lady when she had gained the street and stood panting on the pavement.

Julian hailed a hansom and put her into it. She gazed at him as if she was almost afraid to part from him.

"You'll—you'll come and see me again," she said, wistfully.

"Yes, I'll come," he answered.

"For God's sake, don't bring him, dearie," she said, with an upward lift of her feathered head towards the block of mansions.

Then she drove off into the darkness.



CHAPTER IX

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE

It was at this point in his career that Julian, just for a time, began keenly to observe Valentine, and to wonder if there were hidden depths in his friend which he had never sounded. The cause of the dawning of this consideration lay in Cuckoo's strange assertion and fear of Valentine, primarily, but there were other reasons prompting him to an unusual attitude of attention, although he might not at first have been able to name them. He could not believe that there was any change in Valentine, but he fancied that there might be some side of Valentine's nature which he did not fully understand, which others vaguely felt and wrongly interpreted. For it was the instinctive creatures in whom Valentine's presence now seemed to awake distrust, and surely an instinct may be too violent, or move in a wrong direction, and yet be inspired by some subtlety in the character that awakens it, and prompts it, and drives it forward. Julian thought that he found a reason for Cuckoo's aversion in Valentine's lofty refinement, which would naturally jar upon her nature of the streets. For her pathos, her better impulses, which had touched him and led him to sympathy with her, were perhaps only stars in a mind that must be a dust-heap of horrible memories and coarse thoughts. To protect Valentine from even the most diminutive shadow of suspicion, Julian was ready silently to insist that Cuckoo was radically bad, although he really knew that she was rather a weak sacrifice than an eager sinner.

Her declaration that Valentine was evil carried complete conviction of its sincerity. Indeed, her obvious fear of him proved this. And this fear of a woman reminded Julian of the fear exhibited towards Valentine by Rip, a terror which still continued, to such an extent, indeed, that the little dog was now never permitted to be in the presence of its master.

"You are rather an awe-inspiring person, Valentine," Julian said one day.

Valentine looked surprised.

"I never knew it," he answered. "Who is afraid of me?"

"Oh, I don't know—well, Rip, for one, and—and that girl, Cuckoo, for another."

"Why is she afraid?"

"I can't imagine."

"I could soon put her at her ease, and I will do so."

He went over to the mantelpiece and took up an envelope that was lying there. From it he drew a slip of coloured paper.

"This will be the talisman," he said. "Have you forgotten that Saturday is boat-race day?"

"What, you have really got a box for the 'Empire'?"

"Yes; and I mean to invite Miss Bright."

Julian exclaimed with his usual frankness:

"Why the devil do you think of asking her?"

"Because I am certain she will be amusing company on such an occasion."

"That's your real reason?"

"Yes. She will come, of course?"

Julian looked rather doubtful.

"I don't know," he said. "She may."

"She must, Julian. Here is a note I have written to her. Do give it to her yourself. I can't be thought a bogey. She must come and learn that I am harmless."

As he said this Valentine's fingers unconsciously twisted the note they held so strongly that it was torn to shreds.

"Why, you have torn it up," Julian said, in surprise.

"Oh yes."

Valentine paused, then added:

"You had better ask her by word of mouth. Persuade her to come."

"I will try."

The lady of the feathers did indeed require a good deal of persuasion. When first Julian made the proposition her face shone with gratification, for he gave the invitation without mentioning Valentine's name. But then the clouds came down. The lady remembered him suddenly, and said:

"Are we two going alone, dearie?"

"Well—it's a big box, you see. We should be lost in it."

"Oh."

She waited for further explanation, an obvious anxiety in her eyes.

"My friend Cresswell is coming with us. It's his box."

The gratification died away from the painted face. Cuckoo shook her head and pursed her lips in obvious and absurd disapprobation.

"Then I don't think I'll go. No; I won't."

And upon this Julian had to launch forth over a sea of expostulation and protest. Cuckoo possessed all the obstinacy of an ignorant and battered nature, taught by many a well-founded distrust, to rely upon its own feebleness, rather than upon the probably brutal strength of others. She was difficult to move, although she had no arguments with which to defend her assumption of the mule's attitude. At last Julian grew almost angry in defence of Valentine.

"Half the women in London would be proud to go with him," he said hotly.

"Not if they knew as much about men as I do," she answered.

"But you know nothing whatever about him. That's just the point."

"Ah, but I feel a lot," she said, with an expressive twist of her thin, rather pretty face. "He's bad, rank bad. That's what he is."

Julian was suddenly seized with a desire to probe this outrageous instinct to its source, believing, like many people, that the stream of instinct must flow from some hidden spring of reason.

"Now, look here," he said, more quietly. "I want you to try to tell me what it is in him that you dislike so much."

"It's everything, dearie."

"No; but that's absurd. For instance, it can't be his looks."

"It is."

"Why, he's wonderfully handsome."

"I don't care. I hate his face; yes, I do."

Julian impatiently pitied her as one pities a blind man who knocks up against one in the street. But he thought it best to abandon Valentine's appearance to its unhappy fate of her dislike, and sailed away on another tack.

"My friend likes you," he said, as he thought, craftily.

Cuckoo tossed her head without reply.

"He said he would rather go with you on Saturday than with any one in London."

This last remark seemed to produce a considerable effect upon the girl.

"Did he, though?" she asked, one finger going up to her under lip, reflectively. "Really, truly?"

"Really, truly."

"What should he want with me? He's—he's not one of the usual sort."

"Valentine usual! I should think not."

"And he wants me to go?"

Certainly she was impressed and flattered.

"Yes, very much."

Julian found himself again wondering, with Cuckoo, mightily at Valentine's vagary of desire. She touched his hand with her long, thin fingers.

"You'll stay with me all the time?"

"Why, of course."

"You won't leave me? Not alone with him, I mean."

"No; don't be so absurd."

A new hesitation sprang into her face.

"But what am I to go in?" she said. "He—he don't like my red."

So her awe and dislike prompted her to a desire of pleasing Valentine after all, and had led her shrewdly to read his verdict on her poorly smart gown. Julian, pleased at his apparent victory, now ventured on a careful process of education, on the insertion of the thin edge of the wedge, as he mutely named it.

"Cuckoo," he said, "let me give you a present,—a dress. Now," as she began to shake her tangled head, "don't be silly. I have never given you anything, and if we are to be pals you mustn't be so proud. Can you get a dress made in three days,—a black dress?"

"Yes," she said. "But black! I shall look a dowdy."

"No."

"Oh, but I shall," she murmured, dismally. "Colours suits me best. You see I'm thin now; not as I was when I—well, before I started. Ah, I looked different then, I did. I don't want to be a scarecrow and make you ashamed of me."

Julian longed to tell her that it was the rouge, the feathers, the scarlet skirt, the effusive bugles, that made a scarecrow of her. But he had a rough diplomacy that taught him to refrain. He stuck to his point, however.

"I shall give you a black dress and hat—"

"Oh, my hat's all right now," she interposed. "Them feathers is beautiful."

"Splendid; but I'll give you a hat to match the dress, and a feather boa, and black suede gloves."

"But, dearie, I shall be a trottin' funeral, that I shall," she expostulated, divided between excitement and perplexity.

"No; you'll look splendid. And Cuckoo—"

He hesitated, aware that he was treading on the divine quicksand of woman's prejudices.

"Cuckoo, I want you to make a little experiment for my sake."

"Whatever is it, dearie?"

"Just on that one night take—take all that off."

With an almost timid gesture, and growing boyishly red, he indicated the art decoration, pink and pale, that adorned her face.

Poor Cuckoo looked completely flabbergasted.

"What?" she said uncertainly; "don't you like me with it?"

"No."

"Well, but, I don't know."

Such an experiment evidently struck her as portentous, earth-shaking. She stared into the dingy glass that stood over the mantelpiece in Marylebone Road.

"I shall look a hag," she muttered, with conviction. "I shall."

"You never had it, before you started."

Her eyes grew round.

"Ah, that was jolly different, though," she said.

"Try it," he urged. "Go and try it now, then come and show me."

"I don't like to."

The idea reduced her almost to shyness. But she got up falteringly, and moved towards the bedroom. When she was by the folding door she said:

"I say."

"Well?"

"I say, you won't laugh at me?"

"Of course not."

"You won't—honour?"

"Honour!"

She disappeared. And there was the sound of many waters. Julian listened to it, repeating under his breath that word of many meanings, that panorama-word, honour. Among thieves, among prostitutes, among murderers, rebels, the lost, the damned of this world, still does it not sing, like a bird that is too hopeful of some great and beautiful end ever to be quite silent?

Julian waited, while Cuckoo washed away her sin of paint and powder, at first nervously, then with a certain zest that was almost violent, that splashed the water on floor and walls, and sent the shivering Jessie beneath the bed for shelter. Cuckoo scrubbed and scrubbed, then applied a towel, until her skin protested in patches. Finally, and with a disturbed heart, she approached the sitting-room. Her voice came in to Julian while she remained hidden:

"I say—"

"Yes."

"I know you will laugh."

"Honour, Cuckoo, honour."

"Oh, all right."

And she came in to him, hanging her head down, rather like a child among strangers, ashamed, poor thing, of looking respectable. Julian was astonished at the change the water had wrought. Cuckoo looked another woman, or rather girl, oddly young, thin, and haggard certainly, and the reverse of dashing, but pretty, even fascinating, in her shyness. As he looked at her and saw the real red of nature run over her cheeks in waves of faint rose color, Julian understood fully all that the girl gives up when she gives up herself, and the wish—smiled at by Valentine—came to him again, the wish to reclaim her.

"Ah!" he said. "Now you are yourself."

He took her hand, and drew her in front of the mirror, but she refused to lift up her eyes and look at her reflection.

"I'm a scarecrow," she murmured, twisting the front of her gown in her fingers. Her lips began to twitch ominously. Julian felt uncomfortable. He thought she was going to cry.

"You are prettier than ever," he said. "Look!"

"No, no. It's all gone—all gone."

"What?"

"My looks, dearie. I could do without the paint once. I can't now."

Suddenly she turned to him with a sort of vulgar passion, that suspicion of the hard young harridan, typical of the pavement, which he had observed in her before.

"I should like to get the whole lot of men in here," she said, "and—and chew them up."

She showed her teeth almost like an animal. Then the relapse, characteristic of the hysterical condition in which she was, came.

"Never you treat me like the rest," she said, bursting into sobs; "never you try anythin' on. If you do I'll kill myself."

This outburst showed to Julian that she was capable of a curious depth of real sentiment that gave to her a glimpse of purity and the divinity of restraint. He tried to soothe her and quickly succeeded. When she had recovered they went out together to see about the making of the new black dress, and before they parted he had persuaded Cuckoo to face the "Empire" multitude on the fateful evening without her panoply of paint and powder. She pleaded hard for a touch of black on the eyes, a line of red on the lips. But he was inexorable. When he had gained his point he comforted her anxiety with chocolates, a feat more easy than the soothing of her with reasoning could have been.

When he told Valentine of the success of his embassy, Valentine simply said:

"I am glad."

Julian did not mention the episode of the washing, the preparation of the black gown, or the promise wrung from the lady of the feathers. The result springing from these three events was to come as a surprise to Valentine on boat-race night.



CHAPTER X

THE DANCE OF THE HOURS

Even so huge a city as London, full of so many varying personalities and clashing interests, assumes upon certain days of the year a particular and characteristic aspect, arising from a community of curiosity, of excitement, or of delight felt by its inhabitants. Such days are Derby day and boat-race day. On the latter more especially London is leavened by a huge mob of juveniles from the universities, and their female admirers from the country, who cast a pleasant spell over the frigid indifference of town-bred dullards, and wake even the most vacuous of the Piccadilly loungers into a certain vivacity and boyishness. The cabmen blossom cheerily in dark and light blue favours. The butcher-boys are partisans. Every gamin in the gutter is all for one boat or for the other, and dances excitedly to know the result. London, in fact, loses several wrinkles on boat-race day, and smiles itself into a very pleasant appearance of briskness and of youth. As a rule, Julian went to see the race and to lunch with his friends at Putney or elsewhere, without either abnormal experience of excitement or any unusual vivacity. He was naturally full of life, and had hot blood in his veins, loved a spectacle, and especially a struggle of youth against youth. But no boat-race day had ever stirred him as this one did—found him so attentive to outside influence, so receptive of common things. For Julian had recently been half-conscious that he was progressing, and with increasing rapidity, though he knew not in what exact direction. Simply, he had the feeling of motion, of journeying, and it seemed to him that he had been standing comparatively still for years. And this boat-race day came to him like a flashing milestone upon the road of life. He felt as if it held in its hours a climax of episodes or of emotions, as if upon it either his body or his mind must prepare to undergo some large experience, to meet the searching eyes of a face new and unfamiliar.

Possibly the reason of his own excitement lay in the excitement of another, in the curious preparations, which he had oddly shared, for the transformation of the unmistakable into the vague. For the transformation of Cuckoo Bright had been preparing apace, and Julian was looking forward like a schoolboy to the effect which her novel respectability of appearance would have upon Valentine. The rouge-box lay lonely and untouched in a drawer. Even the powder-puff suffered an unaccustomed neglect. The black gown had been tried on and taught to fit the thin young figure, and a hat—with only one feather—kept company with the discarded sarcophagus which had given to Cuckoo her original nickname. And Cuckoo herself was almost as excited as Francine when she received her muff. She had not seen Valentine since the day of the tea-party, yet her attitude of mind had undergone a change towards him, bent to it probably by her vanity. Ever since Julian had given her the invitation to the Empire she had displayed a furtive desire to meet him again, and was perpetually talking of him and asking questions about him. Nevertheless her fear of him had not died away. Even now she sometimes exclaimed against him almost with vehemence, and made Julian renew his promise not to leave her during the evening. But Julian could see that she longed, as well as dreaded, to meet him again. After all, had he not picked her out from all the girlhood of London as one to whom he wished, to do honour? Had he been the Minotaur, such a fact must have made her look upon him with desirous interest.

When the great day arrived poor Cuckoo had to struggle with a keen and a sore temptation. She longed to deck herself out in her usual borrowed plumage, to take the habitual brilliant complexion out of the accustomed drawer, to crown her frizzed head with feathers, and to look noisily dashing—her only idea of elegance and grace. Never before had she so desired to create an impression. Yet she had given Julian her most solemn promise, and she intended to keep it. As she slowly attired herself, however, she wondered very much why he was so set upon denuding her of her accustomed magnificence. Her mind was entirely unable to grasp his conception of beauty and of attractiveness. She thought all men preferred the peony to the violet. To-night it was very certain that she would be no peony, scarcely even a violet. Her new gown had been expensive, but it was terribly simple, and the skirt hung beautifully, but was surely most direfully sombre. Nevertheless, it rustled with a handsome sound, a melody of wealth, when she had put it on and promenaded about her dingy bedroom, with Jessie at her heels, pretending to worry it playfully. The black bodice had some trimming. But it was all black. Cuckoo wished it had been scarlet, or, at the least, orange—something to catch the eye and hold it. When she was fully attired, and was staring into her glass, between two boldly flaring gas-jets, she nearly resolved to break her promise to Julian. She even went so far as to paint her lips and eyes, and was charmed with the effect against the black. But then with a sudden fury she sponged her pale face clean, threw the new feather boa round her throat, and, without daring to glance again at her funereal image, turned out the gas, and went into the sitting-room. As usual, her last act was to ensconse the pensive Jessie in the flannel-lined basket, and to give her a kiss. To-night, as she did so, she let a tear fall on the little dog's head. She scarcely knew why she cried. Perhaps the quiet gown, the lack of paint and powder, the prospect of kind and even respectful treatment from at least Julian, if not from Valentine, gave to her heart a vision of some existence in which Piccadilly Circus had no part.

Jessie shivered as she felt the tear, and licked the face of her mistress eagerly. Then Cuckoo rustled forth, avoiding Mrs. Brigg, who might be heard laboriously ascending the kitchen stairs to view her in her gala attire. In the twinkling of an eye she was out in the street, and Mrs. Brigg returned, swearing gustily, to the lower regions.

Cuckoo was to join the young men in their box, of which she had received the number. She took a cab to the Empire, and was there in excellent time. As she paid the man, she saw several women going noisily in, dressed in bright colours and gigantic hats. She looked at them, and felt terribly mean and poor, and it was with no trace of her usual airy impudence that she asked her way of the towering attendant in uniform who stood at the bottom of the carpeted staircase.

Julian and Valentine were already there. They turned round as she came in, and stood up to receive her. Julian took her hand, but Valentine hesitated for a moment. Then he said:

"Is it—can it be really Miss Bright?"

"Sure enough it is," Cuckoo answered, with an effort after liveliness.

But her eyes were fixed on his. She had seen a curious expression of mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came in. Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her? She was looking horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman. She was certain of it. For a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for placing her in such a bitter position. But he was glowing with a consciousness of successful diplomacy, and was delighted with her neat black aspect, and with her smart, though small, hat. He was indeed surprised to find how really pretty she still was when she allowed her true face to be seen, and was only wishing that she had made a little less of her hair, which was more vigorously arranged even than usual. He glanced to see Valentine's surprise.

"You are so altered," the latter continued. "I scarcely recognized you."

Cuckoo's lips tightened.

"Altered or not, it's me, though," she said.

Valentine did not reply to this. He only made her come to the front of the box, and placed a chair for her. She sat down feeling like a dog just whipped. The young men were on each side of her, and the band played an overture. Cuckoo peered out over the bar of the box, shifting ever so little away from the side on which Valentine sat. In his presence all her original and extreme discomfort returned, with an added enmity caused by her secret certainty that he thought her looking her worst. She peered from the box and strove to interest herself in the huge crowd that thronged the house, and in her own dignified and elevated position in it. For Valentine had taken one of the big boxes next the stage on the first tier, and Cuckoo had never been in such a situation before. She could survey the endless rows of heads in the stalls with a completeness of bird's-eye observation never previously attained. What multitudes there were. Endless ranks of men, all staring in the same direction, all smoking, all with handkerchiefs peeping out of their cuffs, and gold rings on their little fingers. Some of them looked half asleep, others, who had evidently been dining, threw themselves back in their stalls, roaring with laughter, and leaning to tell each other stories that must surely have teemed with wit. Most of them were young. But here and there an elderly and lined figure-head appeared among them, a figure-head that had faced many sorts of weather in many shifting days and nights, and that must soon face eternity—instead of time. Yet at the gates of death it still sipped its brandy and soda, smiled over a French song with tired lips, and sat forward with a pale gleam dawning in its eyes to reconnoitre the charms of a ballet. And if it looked aside at youth and was pierced by the sword of tragedy, yet it was too well bred or too conventional to let even one of the world around witness the wound. There is much secret bravery in social life. But these elderly figure-heads were fewer than usual to-night. Youth seemed to have usurped the playing-grounds of pleasure, to have driven old age away into the shadows. With flag flying, with trumpet and drum, it gaily held the field. The lady of the feathers, Valentine, and Julian leaned out from their box as from the car of a balloon and saw below them a world of youth hand in hand with the world of pleasure the gods offer to youth as wine. It was yet early in the evening, and the hours were only tripping along, as women trip in the pictures of Albert Moore. They had not begun to dance, although the band was playing a laughing measure from an opera of Auber that foams with frivolity. Men kept dropping in, cigar in mouth, walking to their seats with that air of well-washed and stiff composure peculiar to British youth, grim with self-consciousness, but affecting the devil-may-care with a certain measure of success. Some of them escorted ladies, but by far the greater number were in couples, or in parties of three or four. The rose of health, or, in many cases, of repletion, sat enthroned upon their cheeks; on the upper lips of many the moustaches were budding delicately. These were just getting up on the box and gripping the reins for the great coach-drive. Little wonder if the veins in their eager hands stood out. Little wonder if they flourished the whip with an unnecessary vehemence. But for them, too, so far the hours were only tripping, a slow and a dainty measure, a formal minuet. And they were but watching. Only later would they rise up and join the great dance of the hours, large, complicated, alluring, through whose measures the feet of eventual saints have trod, whose music rings in the ears of many who, long after, try to pray and to forget. Some who were with women made conversation jocosely, putting on travesties of military airs, and a knowingness of expression that might have put the wisdom of the Sphinx to shame. Nor did they hesitate to appear amorous in the public eye. On the contrary, their attitudes of attention were purposely assumed silently to utter volumes. They lay, to all intents and purposes, at the feet of their houris, as Samson lay shorn at the feet of Delilah. In loud young voices they told the secrets of their hearts, until even the clash of the music could scarcely keep them hidden. And Delilah, who had shorn the locks of so many Samsons, and who had heard so many secrets, gave ear with a clever affectation of interested surprise that deceived these gay deceivers and set them high on the peaks of their own estimation. Two or three family parties, one obviously French, seemed out of place, indecently domestic in the midst of such a throng, in which matrimony was a Cinderella before the ball, cuffed in curl-papers rather than kissed in crystal slippers. They sat rather silent. One consisted of a father, a mother and two daughters, the latter in large flowered hats. The father smoked. The mother looked furtive in a bonnet, and the two daughters, with wide open eyes, examined the flirtations around them as a child examines a butterfly caught in a net. One of them blushed. But she did not turn away her eyes. Nor were her girlish ears inactive. Family life seemed suddenly to become dull to her. She wondered whether it were life at all. And the father still smoked domestically. He knew it all. That was the difference. And perhaps it was his knowledge that made him serenely content with domesticity and the three women who belonged to him. Two boys, who had come up from a public school for the race, and had forgotten to go back, sat at the end of a row in glistening white collars and neat ties, almost angrily observant of all that was going on around them. For them the dance of the hours was already begun, and already become a can-can. They watched it with an eager interest and excitement, and the calm self-possession with which some of the men near them made jokes to magnificently dressed women with diamond earrings struck them dumb with admiration. Yet, later on, they too were fated to join in the dance, when the stars affected to sleep on the clouds and the moon lay wearily inattentive to the pilgrims of the night, like an invalid in a blue boudoir. On the thick carpet by the wall attendants stood loaded with programmes. One of them, very trim and respectable, in a white cap, was named Clara and offered a drink by an impudent Oxonian. She giggled with all the vanity of sixteen, happily forgetful of her husband and of the seven children who called her mother. Yet the dance of the hours was a venerable saraband to her, and she often wished she was in bed as she stood listening to the familiar music. In the enclosure set apart for the orchestra the massed musicians earned their living violently in the midst of the gaily dressed idlers, who heard them with indifference, and saw them as wound-up marionettes. The drummer hammered on his blatant instrument with all the crude skill of his tribe, producing occasional terrific noises with darting fists, while his face remained as immovable as that of a Punchinello. A flautist piped romantically an Arcadian measure, while his prominent eyes stared about over the chattering audience as if in search of some one. Suddenly he gave a "couac." He had seen his sweetheart in the distance with a youth from Christ Church. The conductor turned on the estrade in the centre of the orchestra and scowled at him, and he hastened to become Arcadian once again, gazing at his flute as if the devil had entered into it. In a doorway shrouded with heavy curtains two acting managers talked warily, their hands in retreat behind their coat-tails. They surveyed the house and mentally calculated the amount of money in it, raising their eyes to the more distant promenade, at the back of which large hats covered with flowers and feathers moved steadily to and fro. One of them curled his lips and murmured the word "Chant." Then they both laughed and strolled out to the bar. More men passed in. Many could not get seats, and these stood, smoking and exchanging remarks in the broad space between the stalls and the wall. Some of them leaned nonchalantly against it and criticised the appearance of the seated audience, or nodded to acquaintances. Others gathered round the bar, and a few looked at the drop-curtain as if they thought their ascetic glances would cause it to roll up and disappear. The overture at length ended. The stage was disclosed, and a man came forward with a smirk, and a wriggle of gigantic feet, to sing a song.

But Cuckoo Bright, Valentine, and Julian, from their balloon-car, still surveyed the world. Cuckoo had heard the man before. She was no stranger to the upper regions of the Empire, but the fascination of knowing herself watched and commented on from the stalls was a new experience, and she wished to make the most of it. Forgetting that she was not painted and powdered, she stretched herself into view and believed she was creating a sensation. So absorbed was she in the grand effort of being seen, that when Valentine drew his chair a little closer to her she did not notice it. One of her hands lay on her lap, the other being on the ledge of the box supporting her chin. She returned eagerly the glances of the stalls. The hand that was in her lap felt another hand close on it. Instinctively Cuckoo turned towards Julian, ready to smile. But Julian was gazing absorbed at the crowd, and half abstractedly listening to the song of the man in the huge, distorted boots. It was Valentine who held her hand. She tried to draw it away. He merely tightened his grip on it and continued sitting in silence, not even looking towards her. And as he held her hand a sense of helplessness came over Cuckoo. Even through his kid glove she could feel the burning heat of his palm, of the fingers that clutched hers with the strength of an athlete. She gazed towards him through the new black veil that was drawn over her face, and it seemed even to her limited intelligence that the man who was so brutally holding her against her will could not be the man at whom she was now looking. For Valentine, whose profile was set towards her, was pale, calm, almost languid in appearance. His blue eyes were glancing quietly over the multitude, with an air of indifferent observation. His lips were slightly parted in a sort of dawning smile, and his whole attitude was that of a man lazily at ease and taking his pleasure in a desultory mood. Yet the hand on Cuckoo's knees was vicious in its grasp. This startling and silent contradiction threw her into a complete panic, but she did not dare to say anything in protest. She sat silently trembling, and drawing her lips together in growing perturbation, till Julian happened to turn towards them. Then Valentine's fingers relaxed their grasp quietly, and slipped away. At the same time he moved with an air of energy, and broke into gay conversation. His languor vanished. His blue eyes sparkled. Julian was astonished at his intense vivacity. He laughed, made jokes, became absolutely boyish.

"Why, Val, how gay you are!" Julian said.

"Every one is gay to-night."

He was interrupted by a roar of laughter. The man in the boots was becoming immoderately whimsical. His feet seemed to have escaped from control, and to be prancing in Paradise while he looked on in Purgatory.

"Every one is gay."

As Valentine repeated the words, and the huge theatre laughed like one enormous person, Julian felt again the strange thrill of overmastering excitement that had shaken him on the night when he and Valentine had leaned out of the Victoria Street window. The strength of the spring and of his long tended and repressed young instincts stirred within him mightily. Scales fell from his eyes. From the car of the balloon he gazed down, and it seemed to him that they—Valentine, Cuckoo, and himself—were drifting over a new country, of which all the inhabitants were young, gay, careless, rightly irresponsible. The rows of open-mouthed, laughing faces called to him to join in their mirth,—more, to join in their lives, and in the lives of the pirouetting hours. He moved in his chair as if he were impelled to get up and leave his seat. And as he moved a voice whispered in his ear:

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Was it Valentine's voice? He turned round hastily, curiously perturbed.

"Val, was that you? Did you speak to me?"

"No."

Julian looked at Cuckoo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shone with dancing excitement.

"Did you, Cuckoo?"

"Not I, dearie. I say, ain't he funny to-night?"

Then the voice must have spoken in his own brain. He listened for it and fancied he could hear it again and again, driving him on like a phantom fate. But the voice was in timbre like the voice of Valentine, and he felt as if Valentine spoke with a strange insistence and reiteration. His heart, his whole being, made answer to the whisper.

"To-morrow we die. It is true. Ah, then, let us—let us eat and let us drink."

The man in the boots wriggled furiously into the wings, and the curtain rose on the ballet. Wenzel had ascended to the conductor's platform amid loud applause. The first weary melodies of "Faust" streamed plaintively from the orchestra, and a gravity came over the rows of faces in the stalls. Julian's face, too, was grave, but his excitement and his sense of his own power of youth grew as he looked on. The old Faust appeared, heavy with the years and with the trouble of useless thought, and Julian felt that he could sneer at him for his venerable age. As he watched the philosopher's grandiloquent pantomime of gesture, like a mist there floated over him the keen imagination of the hell of regret in which the old age, that never used to the full its irrevocable youth, must move, and a passion of desire to use his own youth rushed over him as fire rushes over a dry prairie. Even a sudden anger against Valentine came to him,—against Valentine for the protection he had given through so many years. For had he not been protecting Julian against joy? and does not the capacity for joy pass away with a tragic swiftness? As Faust was transformed into youth, and the ballet danced in the market-place, Julian turned to Valentine and said:

"We will live to-night."

Valentine laughed.

"You look excited."

"I feel excited. Don't you?"

Valentine answered:

"I may presently. We mustn't stay in here all the evening."

There was a knock at the door of the box. An attendant appeared to ask their orders. Valentine spoke some words to him, and in a few minutes he brought three long drinks to the box. Julian drank his mechanically. His eyes were always on the ballet. The betrayal of poor Margaret had now been accomplished and the soldiers were returning from the wars. Beyond the wall of the garden the tramp of their feet was heard, a vision of the tops of their passing weapons was seen. The orchestra played the fragment of a march. Cuckoo sipped her brandy and soda, and gazed sometimes at the stage indifferently, often at the audience eagerly, and then at Julian. When her eyes were on Julian's face a light came into them that made her expression young, and even pure. A simplicity hovered about her lips, and a queer dawning of something that was almost refinement spoke in her attitude. But if she chanced to meet the eyes of Valentine her face was full of fear.

And now the last great scene of the pageant approached, and the two schoolboys leant forward in their stalls in a passion of greedy excitement. Julian happened to see them, and instead of smiling at their frankly lustful attitudes with the superiority of the drilled man over the child, he was conscious of an eager sympathy with their vigour of enjoyment and of desire. His nature retrograded and became a schoolboy's nature, with the whole garden of life flowering before its feet. Suddenly there came to him the need of touching something human. He stole his arm closely around Cuckoo's waist. She glanced at him surprised. But his eyes were turned away to the stage. Valentine pushed his chair a little backwards. He was watching them, and when he saw the movement of Julian's arm, he laughed to himself. The classical Sabbath sprang into view, and it seemed to be just then that the feet of the hours first began to move in the opening steps of their great dance of that night. Was it the magnificent Cleopatra that gave them the signal? Or did Venus herself whisper in their ears that the time for their fte was come at length, that the paid vagaries of the stage demanded companionship, and that the audience, too, must move in great processions, whirl in demon circles, rise up in heart to the clash of cymbals, bow down before the goddesses of the night, the women who gave to modern men the modern heaven that they desire in our days? The stage was a waving sea of scarlet, through which one white woman floated, like a sin with pale cheeks in the midst of the rubicund virtues. She was, perhaps, not beautiful, but she was provocative and alluring, and her whiteness made her as voluptuous as innocence is when it moves through the habitations of the wicked. Julian watched her come to Faust and win him from the scarlet dancers and from the arms of Cleopatra, and the strange rejuvenation of this philosopher who had been old, and known decaying faculties, and the flight of the heart from the warm closes of the summer to the white and iron winter plains, filled him with sympathy. It must be easy to use your youth after you have known the enforced reserve of age. For age is a bitter lesson. The dance grew more wild and rattling. The frou-frou of the swinging scarlet skirts filled the great house with sound as the glitter of spangles filled it with a shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by fluttering women moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of reckless devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers, and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, vagrant desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen sensual sensation. They danced to fire a real Faust, and he was Faust for the moment. His arm closed more firmly round the waist of Cuckoo, and he could feel the throbbing of her heart against the palm of his hand. He did not look at her, and so he did not see the dawning anxiety with which she was beginning furtively to regard him. Entirely engrossed with the stage spectacle, the movement of his arm had been entirely mechanical, prompted by the hardening pressure of excitement in his mind. If he had actually crushed Cuckoo and hurt her he would have been unconscious that he was doing it.

And Valentine all this time leaned back in his chair, that stood in the shadow of the box, and looked at the enlaced figures before him with an unvarying smile.

Contrast and surprise are the essence of the successful "spectacle." Just as the scarlet dervish whirl was at its height the character of the music changed, slackened, softened, died from the angrily sensuous into an ethereal delicacy. The stage filled with clouds that faded in golden light, and a huge and glittering stairway rose towards the painted sky. On either side of it hung in the blue ether guardian angels with outstretched wings, and between their attentive ranks stood the radiant figure of the purified Margaret, at whose white feet the red crowd of women, even the majestic Cleopatra and pale voluptuous Venus, sank abashed. Harps sounded frostily, suggesting that crystal heaven of St. John, in which the beauties we know in nature are ousted by unbreathing jewels, the lifeless pearl and chrysolite. The air filled with thin and wintry light, that deepened, and began to glow, through lemon to amber and to rose. The angels swam in it, and then the huge stairway leading up to heaven shone with the violence of a gigantic star. Faust fell in repentance before the girl he had ruined and failed to ruin, the girl who bent as if to bless him upon this fiery ascent to heaven. And Julian, absorbed, devoured the wide and glowing scene with his eyes, which were attracted especially by the living flames that were half veiled and half revealed beneath the feet of Margaret. The music of the orchestra rippled faintly, and then it seemed to Julian that, as if in answer, there rippled up from the golden stairs and from the hidden company of flames that faint, thin riband of shadowy fire which had already so strangely been with him in the dawn and in the dusk. It came from beneath the pausing feet of the girl who blessed Faust, and trembled upwards slowly above her glittering hair. Julian felt a burning sensation at his heart, as if the tiny fire found its way there. He turned round sharply, withdrawing his arm from Cuckoo's waist with an abruptness that startled her.

"Valentine!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "There; now you see it."

Valentine leaned to him.

"See what?"

"The flame. It's no fancy. It's no chimera. Look, it is mounting up behind Margaret. Watch it, Valentine, and tell me what it is."

"I see nothing."

Julian stared into his eyes, as if to make certain that he really spoke the truth. Then Valentine asked of Cuckoo:

"Miss Bright, can you see this flame of which Julian speaks?"

Cuckoo answered, with the roughness that always came to her in the company of alarm:

"Not I. There ain't nothing, no more than there was that day when I had the coffee."

She added to Julian, reproachfully:

"You've been drinkin'. Now, dearie, you have."

Suddenly his two companions became intolerable to Julian. He thought them stupid, boorish, dense, devoid of the senses of common humanity, not to see what he saw, not to feel as he felt,—that this vague flame had a meaning and a message not yet interpreted, perhaps not even remotely divined. With an angry exclamation he sprang to his feet, turning once more to the stage. And as the curtain fell, he distinctly saw the flame glowing like a long and curiously shaped star above the head of Margaret.

And this man and woman would not see it! A sudden enmity to them both came to him in that moment. He abruptly opened the door of the box, and went out without another word to either of them. Cuckoo's voice shrilly calling to him to stop did not affect his resolution and desire to escape from them if only for a moment.

Out in the corridor at the back of the dress circle people were beginning to circulate, relieved from the tension of examining the ballet. Julian was instantly swallowed up in a noisy crowd, hot, flushed, loud-voiced, bright-eyed. Masses of excited young men lounged to and fro, smoking cigarettes, and making fervent remarks upon the gaily dressed women, who glided among them observantly. From the adjoining bar rose the music of popping corks and flowing liquids. The barmaids were besieged. Clouds of smoke hung in the air, and the heat was terrific. Julian felt it clinging to him as if with human arms as he slowly walked over the thick carpet, glancing about him. Humanity touched him on every side. At one moment an elderly woman, with yellow hair and a fat-lined face, enveloped him in her skirts of scarlet and black striped silk. The black chiffon that swept about her neck and heaving shoulders fluttered against his face. Her high-heeled boots trod on his. He seemed one with her. Then she had vanished, and instantly he was in the arms of a huge racing-man, who wore gigantic pink pearls in his shirt front, and bellowed the latest slang to a thin and dissipated companion. It seemed to Julian that he was kicked like a football from one life to another, and that from each life he drew away something as he bounded from it, the fragment of a thought, the thrill of a desire, the indrawn breath of a hope. Like a machine that winds in threads of various coloured silks, he wound in threads from the various coloured hearts about him,—red, white, coarse, and fine. And, half-unconsciously, was he not weaving them into a fabric? Never before had he understood the meaning of a crowd, that strange congregation of passions and of fates which speaks in movements and is melodious in attitudes, which quarrels in all its parts, silently, yet is swayed through and through by large impulses, and as an intellect far more keen and assertively critical than the intellect of any one person in it. And now, when Julian began to feel the meaning of this surging mob of men and women, the hours danced, and he and all the crowd danced with them. And the music that accompanied and directed the feet through the figures of that night's quadrille was the music of words and of laughter, of hissing enticements and of whispered replies. Irresistible was the performance of the hours and of the crowd that lived in them. Julian knew it when the dance began, marvelled at it for a little when the dance was ended. There was contagion in the air, furtive, but strong as the contagion of cholera,—the contagion of human creatures gathered together in the night. Only the youth who dwells—like Will-o'-the-Mill—forever by the lonely stream in the lonely mountain valley escapes it entirely. Aged saints look backward on their lives, and remember at least one night when it seized them in its embrace; and even the purest woman, through its spell, has caught sight of the vision behind the veil of our civilization, and although she has shrunk from it, has had a moment of wonder and of interest, never quite effaced from her memory.