Jessie had learned much about Julian in these latter days.  Into her pricked and pointed ear, leaf-shaped and the hue of India-rubber, had been whispered a strange tale of the dawning of love in a battered heart, of the blossoming of respect in a warped mind.  She had heard of the meeting in Piccadilly, of the meal at the Monico, of the farewell on the kerbstone.  And she alone knew—­or ought to have known—­the mingling of intense jealousy and of a grander feeling that burned in Cuckoo’s breast whenever she thought of Julian’s life, the greater part of it that lay beyond her knowledge, her sight, or keeping.

For the lady of the feathers, in most things a strange mixture, had never driven two more contrasted passions in double harness than those which she drove around the circle of which Julian was the core, the centre.  One was a passion of jealousy; the other a curious passion of protection.  Each backed up the other, urged it to its work.  It would have been a hard task, indeed, to tell at first which was the greater of the two.  Cuckoo neither knew nor cared.  She did not even differentiate the two passions or say to herself that there were two.  That was not her way.  She felt quickly and strongly, and she acted on her feelings with the peculiar and almost wild promptitude that such a life as hers seems to breed in woman’s nature.  It is the French lady of the feathers who scatters vitriol in the streets of Paris, the Italian or Spanish lady of the feathers who snatches the dagger from her hair to stab an enemy.  The wind of Cuckoo’s feelings blew her about like a dancing mote, and the feelings awakened by Julian were the strongest her nature was capable of.

Only Jessie knew that at present, unless indeed Valentine had divined it, as seemed possible from his words to Julian.

And these twin passions were fed full by the peculiar circumstances of Cuckoo’s relation to Julian, and by the depth of her knowledge concerning a certain side of life.

She went home, that night of their meeting, very late, and in the weariness of the morning succeeding it, and of many following mornings, she began to brood over the change in Julian that she had intuitively divined.  Her street-woman’s instinct could not be at fault with a boy.  For Julian was little more than a boy.  She knew that when she first met him, when they made toast together on the foggy afternoon that she could never forget, Julian was unshadowed by the darkness that envelopes the steps of so much human nature.  Lively, bright, full of youth, strength, energy, as he was, Cuckoo knew that then he had been free from the bondage of sense which demands and obtains the sacrifice of so many lives like hers.  And she knew that now he was not free from that bondage, and that she, by an irony of fate, had, with her own hands, fastened the first fetter upon him.

Valentine had plotted that.

Cuckoo’s belief said so; but surely her curious instinct against
Valentine must have tricked her here!