Lawler departed, disapprovingly, to do so, and after a moment the doctor followed him.  He walked into his consulting-room, where he found the lady of the feathers standing by the writing table.  The autumn day was growing dark, and the street was full of deepening mist.  Cuckoo was but a fantastic shadow in the room.  Her dress rustled with an uneasy sound as the doctor came in.  His first act was to turn on the electric light.  In a flash the rustling shadow was converted into substance.  Cuckoo and the doctor stood face to face, and Cuckoo’s tired eyes fastened with a hungry, almost a wolfish, scrutiny upon this stranger.  She wanted so much of him.  The look was so full of intense meaning that, coming in a flash with the electric flash, it startled the doctor.  Yet he had seen something like it before in the eyes of those who suspected that they carried death within them, and came to ask him if it were true.  He was surprised, too, by her appearance.  The women of the streets did not come to him, although if they had been able to read the writing in his heart many of them would surely have come.  He shook hands with Cuckoo, told her to sit down, and sat down himself opposite to her.

“What is the matter?  Please tell me your symptoms,” he said gently.

“Eh?” was the reply, spoken in a thin and high voice.

“What has been troubling you?”

Cuckoo, who was wholly unaccustomed to answer a doctor’s questions, started violently.  She fancied from his words that he had divined the lie she had told when she said that she was ill, and knew that she came for a mental reason.  Instinctively she connected the word “trouble” with the heart, in a way that was oddly and pathetically girlish.  Acting upon this impulse she exclaimed: 

“Then you know as I ain’t ill?”

Doctor Levillier was still more surprised.  Not understanding what was in her mind, he entirely failed to keep pace with its agility.

“Why do you come to me, then?” he asked.

“Oh,” she returned, with a quickly gathering hesitation, “I thought as perhaps you knew.”

“I!  But we have never met before.”

The doctor bent his eyes on her searchingly.  For a moment he began to wonder whether his visitor was quite right in her head.  Cuckoo shuffled under his gaze.  The very kindliness of his face and gentleness of his voice made her feel hot and abashed.  A prickly sensation ran over her body as she cleared her throat and said, monosyllabically: 

“No.”

The doctor waited.

“What is it?” he said at length.  “Tell me why you have called.  If you are not ill, what is it you want of me?”

“You’ll laugh, p’r’aps.”

“Laugh?  Is it something funny, then?”

“Funny!  Not it!”

The sound of her voice seemed to give her some courage, for she went on with more hardy resolution: 

“Look here, you can see what I am—­oh yes, you can—­and you wonder what I’m doin’ here.  Well, if I tell you, will you promise as you won’t laugh at me?”