“She has never accepted a halfpenny from me.”

“Because she means eventually to have twenty-one shillings in the pound.  Have some more champagne.”

“Yes.  You are wrong, Val, utterly wrong.  Cuckoo’s not mercenary.  If such a girl could be good, she is good.”

There was just a touch of the maudlin in Julian’s voice.  He went on very earnestly, and nodding his head emphatically over even his conjunctions.

“And if she were what you say, she would have no influence over me, and I should hate her.  But to me she is just what a good girl might be.  Why, even the doctor—­”

“Was he there to-night?” Valentine cried, with a sudden inspiration.

“Of course he was.  And you know what a particular little chap he is.”

“Why was he there?”

“Just to see Cuckoo, you know, in a friendly way.”

Valentine realized then that the battle had begun.  He divined the meaning of the doctor’s visit.  He guessed what it had done for the lady of the feathers.  And he sat silent while Julian went on drinking more champagne.

“I believe he likes Cuckoo, Val.  I am sure he does.  And he behaved quite as if—­quite as if he—­you know—­respected her.  And it’s all nonsense her hating you, and having a battle, and all that kind of thing, with you.  She’s only fanciful.  She’s not—­”

“Would you give her up if I asked you to?  Mind, Julian, I don’t say I ever shall ask you.  But if I do?”

“Don’t ask me to, don’t ask me.  Poor Cuckoo, poor girl, she’s got no friends, money, or—­or anything.  Poor Cuckoo.  Poor Cuck—­Cuck—­”

He fell back in his chair, nodding his head, and reiterating his commiseration for the lady of the feathers in a faint and recurring hiccough.  Valentine got up and rang the bell.

“The bill, please, waiter.”

“Yes, sir.”

The man glanced at Julian with the shadow of a pleasing, and apparently also pleased, smile and withdrew.  Valentine stood for a moment looking at the leaning figure on the chair, relaxed in the first throes of a drunken slumber.  His anger and almost unbridled emotion completely died away as he looked.

“Can it be called a battle after all?” he said to himself.  “They may not know it, but it is practically won already.”

The waiter re-entered.  Valentine paid the bill, and the breath of the frost shortly revived Julian into an attempt at conversation.

“Don’t ask me to give her up, Val; don’t, don’t ask me.  Poor girl.  Poor, poor Cuck—­Cuck.”

The name of the lady of the feathers seemed a good one for a tipsy tongue to play with.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON