“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.