a love?  She could not tell; she could only wonder.  The strange thing about the lady of the feathers, and about many of her kind, was, that she never dreamed of such a thing as owing a duty to herself, to her own body, her own soul, or nature.  Cuckoo knew not the meaning of self-respect.  Had you told her that her body was a temple—­not of the Holy Ghost, but of a wonderful, exquisite thing called womanhood, and for that reason should not be defiled, she would have stared at you under drawn eyebrows, like a fierce boy, and wondered what in heaven or earth you were talking jargon about.  To get at her sympathy you must talk to her of duty to another; and if she had a soft feeling for that other, then she understood you, and then alone.  It was the cause of Julian and his safety that made her now consider this evening refrain of her life as she sat there.  And her mind ran back to Julian’s first visit to her and to his first request.  He asked her to stay at home just for one night with Jessie.  And she refused.  If she had not refused.  If she had stayed at home.  If she had at that moment, from that moment, given up her life of the street, would Julian have loved her then?  Would she have been able to do something for him?  For hours Cuckoo sat there pondering in her vague, desolate way over questions such as these.  But she could give no answer to them.  And then she thought of that horrible night when the hours danced to the music of the devil, when she gave Julian that first little impetus which started him on his journey to the abyss.  And at that thought she grew white, and she grew hot, and she wondered why she had been born to be the lady of the feathers, and the wrecker, not of men’s lives—­she never thought of men tenderly in the mass—­but of this one life, of this one man, whom she loved in a strange, wild, good-woman way.

“C-r-r-r!” she said, her tongue flickering against her teeth.  Jessie stirred in the blankets, came to the floor with a “t’bb” and ran into the room with curved attitudes of submission.  But Cuckoo would not notice the little dog.  She stared at the fire and looked so old, and almost intellectual.  But there was nobody to see her.  What a long, empty day it had been, this day for which she had risen eagerly as to a day of battle!  What a long, empty day, and no deed done in it.  And now the hour of the evening refrain was come.  Cuckoo had wanted this day to be a special day, for it was the first of those new days which were to come after the doctor’s word of hope.  And nothing had happened in it.  Nobody had come.  The doctor was with his patients.  Julian was—­ah, surely—­with Valentine.  And she, Cuckoo, this poor, pale girl, who wanted to fight and to do battle, was alone.  And she had been so eager in the morning.  And now the night was falling and she had not struck a blow.  The hour chimed.  It was the hour of the evening refrain.