Julian drank his champagne and looked definitely and increasingly astonished, as Valentine continued: 

“There is to be such a battle.  I have seen it for a long time.  Julian, you may think you know women.  You don’t.  I said just now that a woman like Cuckoo Bright is nothing, but I said it for the sake of uttering a paradox.  No woman is ever nothing in a world that is full of the things called men.  No woman’s ever nothing so long as there is a bottle of hair-dye, a rouge-pot, a dressmaker, and—­a man within reach.  She may be in the very gutter.  That doesn’t matter.  For from the very gutter she can see—­not the stars, but the twinkling vanities of men, and they will light her on her way to Mayfair drawing-rooms, even, perhaps, to Court.  Who knows?  And God—­or the devil—­has given to every woman the knowledge of her possibilities.  Men have only the ignorance of theirs.”

“What has this to do with Cuckoo and me?” Julian said.  “This bottle is empty, Valentine.”

Valentine rang hastily for another.

“And what on earth has it got to do with a battle between you and Cuckoo?”

“Everything.  She hates me.  She has told you so again and again.”

Julian looked expressively uncomfortable.

“I’ve always stood up for you,” he began.

“I believe it.  She hates me not because I am myself, but simply because I am your closest friend.  Hush, Julian.  It’s much better all this should be said once for all.  Many women are intensely jealous of the men friends of men whom they either love, or who they mean shall love them.  Look at the wives who drive their husbands’ old chums from intimacy into the outer darkness of acquaintanceship.  Wedding-days break, as well as bind, faith.  And you have had your wedding-day with Cuckoo.”

“That was an accident.  She loathes to think of it.”

“She may say so.  But it puts a fine edge on her hatred of me, nevertheless.”

“No, Valentine, no.  Her dislike of you is simply silly—­instinctive.”

“She tells you so.  Ah!  I was wrong to call her nothing.  But it is her hatred of me that must bring us to battle unless—­”

“Unless what?”

“You give her up now, once and for all.”

“Give Cuckoo up!”

The words came slowly, and the voice that uttered them sounded startled and even shocked.  Valentine began to gauge the new power of the lady of the feathers from that moment.

“That’s a—­a strong thing to do, Val.”

“It won’t hurt you to do a strong thing for once in your life.”

“Even if it didn’t hurt me I think it would hurt her very much.  For, Valentine, I believe you said the truth when you said to me once, ’That girl loves you.’  Do you remember?”

“Perfectly.  Loves you, your birth, your position, your money, your good looks, perhaps your standpoint above the gutter.  I can well believe that Miss Bright, like all her sisterhood, loves with undying love that combination of flesh-pots, her notion of the ego of a man.”