to touch the stars.  The stars went out and she had not touched them.  The morning dawned very chilly, very dark, the morning that brought Mrs. Brigg to her room yellow and complaining.  Still, Cuckoo was conscious of a high, beating courage that made summer in that winter day.  She astonished the old keeper of that weary house by the vivacity of her manner, the brightness of her look.  For Mrs. Brigg was well accustomed to sad morning moods, to petulant lassitude, and dull grimness of unpainted and unpowdered fatigue, but had long been a stranger to early moods of hope or of gaiety.  Mornings in houses such as hers are recurring tragedies, desolating pulses of Time, shaking human hearts with each beat nearer and nearer to the ultimatum of sorrow.  She knew not what to make of this new morning mood of Cuckoo, and wagged a heavily pensive head over it, unresponsive and muttering.  Jessie, too, was astonished, but more pleasantly.  The little dog, dwelling ignorantly in the midst of degradation, had learned quickly the swing of its beloved mistress’s moods.  In the dim morning it was ever the comforter of misery it could not rightly understand, not the playfellow of happiness that stirred it to leaps and barks of wonder and excitement.  In the mornings Cuckoo held it long against her thin bosom, sometimes crushed it nearly breathless, pushing its little head down in the nest of her arms and telling it a tale of the world’s woe that sent long and thin whimpers twittering through its body.  The fluttering whisper of morning misery, or the silence of vacant fatigue, these were accustomed things to Jessie.  Even if she did not thoroughly understand them, she was ready for them, and eagerly responsive, as dogs are, to emotions along whose verges they tread with the soft feet of sympathy, the sweeter for the ignorance that paints their generosity in such tender colours.  But Jessie was bouleversée by this passionate, eager Cuckoo; this shadow on fire, who was alive almost ere London was alive, instead of half dead until half London slept.  The shadow on fire snatched her out of her sleep, tossed her in air, spoke to her with a voice that thrilled her to quick barking excitement, played with her till the little dog’s flux of emotions threatened to consummate in a canine apoplexy, and Mrs. Brigg battered at the door with a shrill, “Keep that beast quiet, can’t yer?” All this was Cuckoo fighting; battle in the bedclothes, battle with soap and water, curling-pins, corset, shoes.  Each little act was performed with an energy it did not demand.  The sponge was squeezed dry like a live thing being strangled; the toothbrush played as Maxim guns on an enemy; buttons went into button-holes with a manner of ramrods going into muskets; hooks met eyes as one army meets another.  Battle in all that morning’s common tasks, setting them high, dressing them with chivalry and strong endeavour.  Cuckoo went into her sitting-room swiftly, with glowing cheeks and flaming eyes, as one ardently