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.