Julian and Valentine were already there.  They turned round as she came in, and stood up to receive her.  Julian took her hand, but Valentine hesitated for a moment.  Then he said: 

“Is it—­can it be really Miss Bright?”

“Sure enough it is,” Cuckoo answered, with an effort after liveliness.

But her eyes were fixed on his.  She had seen a curious expression of mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came in.  Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her?  She was looking horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman.  She was certain of it.  For a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for placing her in such a bitter position.  But he was glowing with a consciousness of successful diplomacy, and was delighted with her neat black aspect, and with her smart, though small, hat.  He was indeed surprised to find how really pretty she still was when she allowed her true face to be seen, and was only wishing that she had made a little less of her hair, which was more vigorously arranged even than usual.  He glanced to see Valentine’s surprise.

“You are so altered,” the latter continued.  “I scarcely recognized you.”

Cuckoo’s lips tightened.

“Altered or not, it’s me, though,” she said.

Valentine did not reply to this.  He only made her come to the front of the box, and placed a chair for her.  She sat down feeling like a dog just whipped.  The young men were on each side of her, and the band played an overture.  Cuckoo peered out over the bar of the box, shifting ever so little away from the side on which Valentine sat.  In his presence all her original and extreme discomfort returned, with an added enmity caused by her secret certainty that he thought her looking her worst.  She peered from the box and strove to interest herself in the huge crowd that thronged the house, and in her own dignified and elevated position in it.  For Valentine had taken one of the big boxes next the stage on the first tier, and Cuckoo had never been in such a situation before.  She could survey the endless rows of heads in the stalls with a completeness of bird’s-eye observation never previously attained.  What multitudes there were.  Endless ranks of men, all staring in the same direction, all smoking, all with handkerchiefs peeping out of their cuffs, and gold rings on their little fingers.  Some of them looked half asleep, others, who had evidently been dining, threw themselves back in their stalls, roaring with laughter, and leaning to tell each other stories that must surely have teemed with wit.  Most of them were young.  But here and there an elderly and lined figure-head appeared among them, a figure-head that had faced many sorts of weather in many shifting days and nights, and that must soon face eternity—­instead of time.  Yet at the gates of death it still sipped its brandy and soda, smiled over a French song with tired lips, and sat forward with a pale gleam dawning in its eyes