Suddenly Cuckoo got up.  She went over to the window and pulled down the blind so sharply that she nearly broke it.  She struck a match violently and lit the gas.  She ran into the bedroom, caught her hat, which lay ready for service on the top of the chest of drawers, and cast it with a crash into a cardboard box, jamming the lid down on it.  She seized her jacket, which lay on the bed, and strung it up on a hook, as if she were hanging a criminal.  Then she came back into the sitting-room, sat down in the chair, took up the evening paper of yesterday and began to read, with eyes that gleamed under frowning brows, about “Foreign Affairs” and “Bimetallism.”

And that night the evening refrain of Cuckoo’s life did not follow the verse of her day.

She sat there all alone.

It was her way—­the only way she could devise—­of beginning to fight the battle for Julian.

She did not stay at home with any thought of purifying herself by the action.  Another day she might go out as usual.  But Julian had once asked her not to go.  She had gone then.  Now she obeyed him, and the obedience seemed to bring him a little nearer to her.

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Some days later Cuckoo received a telegram from Harley Street.  It came in the morning, and ran as follows: 

“Call here to-day if possible.  Important.  Levillier.”

Cuckoo read it, trembling.  In her early days telegrams came often to her door—­“Meet me at Verrey’s, four-thirty”; “Piccadilly Circus, five o’clock to-day.”  Such messages flickered through her youth, forming gradually a legend of her life.  But this summons from the doctor at the same time frightened her and braced her heart.  It might mean that Julian was ill, in danger—­she knew not what.  But at least it broke through the appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, of her days.  The lady of the feathers had fought indeed, of late, that worst enemy, mental despair, bred of grim patience at last grown weary.  That was not the battle she had been inspired to expect, to prepare for.  The doctor’s telegram at least swept the unforeseen foe from the field, and seemed to set the real enemy full in view.

“There ain’t any answer,” the lady of the feathers said to Mrs. Brigg, who waited in an attitude expressive of greedy curiosity.

“Which of ’em is it?” demanded that functionary.

“Shan’t tell you,” Cuckoo hissed at her.

The filthy groove in which the landlady’s mind forever ran began to rouse her to an intense animosity.

“Well, it’s all one to me so long as I’m paid regular,” muttered Mrs. Brigg, with a swing of her dusty skirts and a toss of her grey head, governed by pomade, since it was a Saturday.  Mrs. Brigg must once have held Christian principles, as she always prepared the ground for certain Sabbath curls the day before.