Cuckoo got up.

“Come on,” she said, abruptly.

Julian followed her out of the café.

The dream of the moon was with them as they came to the entrance, clear as a quiet soul, directly above them in a clear sky.  Julian looked up at it, but Cuckoo looked, with eyes that were almost sullen, at the night panorama of the Circus.  They waited a moment on the step.  Julian was lighting a cigar, and many other voluble men, most of them French or Italian, were doing likewise.  Having lighted it, and given a strong puff or two, Julian said to Cuckoo: 

“Shall I drive you home?”

“I ain’t going home yet,” she replied doggedly.  “Are you?”

He hesitated.

“Are you, or aren’t you?” she reiterated.

While she spoke, in her voice that was often a little hoarse, a young voice with a thread in it, he realized that somehow she—­painted sinner as she was—­had managed to make him ashamed of himself.  Or was it that an awe had come to his soul with that strange flame?  In any case his mood had risen from the old night mood of a young man to something higher, something that could not be satisfied in the sordid way of the world.

“I think I shall go home,” he said.

“Right,” she answered, and for the first time there was an accent of pleasure in her voice.

“But I’ll walk a little way with you first,” he added.

Together they crossed the Circus and mingled with the humming mob at the corner of Regent Street.  They pushed their way towards Piccadilly with difficulty, for numbers of people at this hour do not attempt to walk, but stand stock still, despite the cry of the policeman, staring at the passers-by, or talking and laughing with the women who throng the pavement.  Having elbowed their way along as far as the St. James restaurant, they began to move with a little more ease, and could have talked as they went, but apparently neither of them felt conversational.  Julian was comparing the vision of the moon with the vision of the street, a comparison no doubt often made even by young men in London on still nights of summer, suggestive to most people, perhaps, of much the same thoughts—­yet a comparison to thrill, as all the wild and eternal contrasts of life thrill.  And Julian was thinking, too, rather sombrely of himself.  Cuckoo walked on beside him, looking straight before her.  Quite unconsciously, with the unconsciousness of a mechanical toy, expressive at the turning of a key in its interior, she had assumed her thin, invariable, professional smile.  It came to her face in a flash when the pavement of Piccadilly came to her feet.  She did not know it was there.

The moon looked down on it, yet, if Julian had been able to see, perhaps the little flame still flickered in those eyes which had been full of tears.  But a little beyond St. James’s Hall their silent progress was arrested, for they both saw Valentine pass them swiftly in the crowd.  He saw them, too, but did not attempt to speak to them.  With a smile at Julian he walked on.  Julian gazed after him, then turned to Cuckoo.