“Poor Cuckoo!” Julian said, and there was a touch of real tenderness in his voice.

“Oh, I have nothing to say against it,” Valentine replied, buttoning slowly and carefully the last button of the second glove.  “Only, Cuckoo Bright is beyond aid.  She can neither help herself nor any one else.”

“How do you know, Cresswell?”

“Because I have observed, doctor.  Once I, too, thought that even Cuckoo might—­might—­well, have some fight in her.  I know now that she has not.  Her corruption of body has led to worse than corruption of mind, to corruption of will.  Cuckoo Bright is as helpless as is a seabird with a shot through its wings, upon the sea.  She can only drift in the present—­die in the future.”

The doctor listened silently.  But Julian said again: 

“Poor, poor Cuckoo!”

The exclamation seemed to irritate Valentine, for he caught up his cloak and cried: 

“Bah!  Let’s forget her.  Doctor, we must say good-night.  We are due at the Prince’s.  It has been good to meet you again.”

The last words sounded like the bitterest sarcasm.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF RIP

Although Dr. Levillier’s visit to Victoria Street had been such a painful one, he had no intention whatever of letting the two young men drift away out of his acquaintance.  He wanted especially to be with them in public places, and to see for himself, if possible, whether Cuckoo’s accusation against Valentine were true.  That a frightful change had taken place in Julian’s life, and that he was rapidly sinking in a slough of wholly inordinate dissipation was clear enough.  But did Valentine, this new, strange Valentine, lead him, or merely go with him, or stand aloof smiling at him and letting him take his own way like a foolish boy?  That question the doctor must decide for himself.  He could only decide it satisfactorily by ignoring Valentine’s impertinence to himself, and endeavouring to resume his former relations of intimacy with these old friends who were strangers.  He began by asking them both to dinner.  Rather to his surprise they accepted and came.  The mastiffs were shut close in their den below, lest they should repeat their performance of the summer.  The dinner passed off with some apparent cheerfulness, but it served to show the doctor the gulf that was now fixed between him and his former dear associates.  He was on one shore, they on another.  Their faces were altered as if by the desolate influence of distance.  Even their voices sounded strange and far away.  Great spaces had widened between their minds and his.  He endeavoured at first to cover those spaces, to bridge that gulf; but he soon came to learn the vanity of such an attempt.  He could not go to them, nor would they return to him.  He could only pretend to bridge the gulf by the exercise of a suave diplomacy, and by carefully banishing from his manner every trace of that dispraising elderliness which seems to the young the essence of prudery arising, like an appalling Phoenix, from the ashes of past imprudence.  In this way he drew a little nearer to Julian, who obviously feared at first to suffer condemnation at his hands, but, finding only geniality, lost his uneasiness and suffered himself to become more natural.