“Why not?” he said.

At first she made no answer to this question, and seemed as if she had not heard it, but presently it appeared that her silence had been caused by the effect of consideration, for at length she said, still retaining her aloof attitude: 

“I don’t want to remember, because it’s like a beastly dream, and when I remember I know it ain’t a dream.”

Julian said nothing, and suddenly Cuckoo turned round to him, and took her hand from Jessie’s back.

“I say.  You were mad last night.  Now, weren’t you?”

The words came from her almost pleadingly, and her eyes rested on Julian’s insistently, as if demanding an affirmative.

“He’d made you mad,” she continued.

“He,” said Julian.  “Who?”

“Your friend.”

“Valentine!  He had nothing to do with it.”

“It was all his doing.”

Her voice grew shrill with feeling.

“He’s a devil,” she said.  “I hate him.  I hate him worse than I hate that copper west side of Regent Street.  And I hate you, too,—­yes, I do,—­to-day.”

The tears gathered in her eyes and began to fall, tears of rage and shame and regret, tears of one who had lost a great possession.  Julian looked embarrassed and pained, almost guilty, too.  He put out his hand and tried to take Cuckoo’s.  But she drew hers away and went on crying.  She spoke again with vehemence.

“I told you what I wanted you to be; yes, I did,” she exclaimed.  “Yes, I told you.  You said you only come here to talk to me.”

“It was true.”

“No; it wasn’t.  You’re just like all the others.  And I did so want to have a pal.  I’ve never had one.”

With the words the sense of her desolation seemed to strike her with stunning force.  She leaned her head against the back of the chair, and cried bitterly, catching at the horsehair with violent hands, as if she longed to hurt something, to revenge her loss even upon an object without power of feeling.  Julian sprang up and went over to the window.  He looked out onto the road and watched the people moving by in the fitful sunshine beyond the dirty railings.  That day, he, too, was in a tumult.  He felt like a monk who had suddenly thrown off his habit, broken his vows, and come forth into the world.  The cell and the cloister were left behind, were things to be forgotten, with the grating of the confessional and the dim routine of service and of asceticism.  He had been borne on by the wave of a brilliant, a violent hour, away from them.  Let the angelus bell ring; he no longer heard it.  Let the drone of prayers and praises rise in a monotonous music by day and by night; he no longer had the will to heed them.  For there was another music in his ears.  Soon it would be in his heart.  Imagine a Trappist suddenly transported from the desert of his long silence to a gay plage on which a brass band was playing.  Julian was that Trappist in mind.  And though