“Oh, why do you?” she murmured, turning her head away.  The action seemed to make Julian aware that perhaps his manner was odd, and his subsequent glance at the doctor was very plainly, and even rudely, explanatory of a wish to be alone with Cuckoo.  The doctor read its meaning and resolved to go away.  With the quick observation and knowledge of men which long years of training had given to him, he saw that, strangely enough, the only creature whose influence could in any way cope with the influence of Valentine was not himself, who once had been as a seer to the two young men, but the thin, spectral, weary, painted Cuckoo.  There, in that small room, with the long murmur of London outside, sat these two human beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate.  And he stood strong, faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding them.  For some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a helping hand to misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust back vice and degradation.  The fallen creature was to be the protector, the unredeemed to be the redeemer.  Doctor Levillier knew this when he saw Julian’s long glance into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo.  And he thrilled with the knowledge.  It seemed to him a great demonstration of the root, the core, of divine pity which he believed to be the centre of the scheme of the world.  Round this centre revolved wheels within wheels of cruelty, of agony, of ruthless passions and of lawless bitterness.  Yet they radiated from pity.  They radiated from love.  How it was so he could not tell, and there the pessimist had him by the throat.  But that it was so he felt in his inmost heart, and never more than now, when the tired boy sneered at him, who was an old friend, clean of life, gentle of nature, and turned to this girl, this thing that loathsome men played with and scorned.  Cuckoo flushed and trembled; this divine pity outpainted her rouge, and shook that body which had so often betrayed itself to destroyers.  This divine pity gave to her, who had lost all, the power to find freedom for another soul that lay in bondage.

The doctor gazed for an instant at the boy and girl, and was deeply moved.  His lips breathed a word that was a prayer, for Julian, for the lady of the feathers.

Then he got up.

“I have to go,” he said.

Julian said nothing; Cuckoo flushed again, and accompanied the doctor to the hall door.  When she had opened it, and they looked out, it was very cold, but the fog had lifted, and was floating away to reveal a sky full of stars, which always seem to shine more brightly upon frost.  The doctor took the girl’s hand.

“I see you in clear weather,” he said.

“You don’t—­you don’t think as he’ll—­as I’ll—­” stammered Cuckoo, glancing awkwardly towards the lighted doorway of the little sitting-room, and then at the doctor.  The church clock striking 7:30 pointed the application of the hesitating murmur.  It was unconventionally late for an afternoon call.