“Do you like driving?” he said.

“What?”

“Driving—­do you like it?”

“Pretty well, if the horse don’t come down,” said Cuckoo, at once concentrated on cabs.

“My horses won’t.”

“Yours!”

“Yes.  I have no more patients to-day.  I have a half-holiday and I want to talk to you.  Shall we go for a drive to Hampstead and talk out in the open air and the sunshine?”

The four ladies, the illustrateds, the cough, dry as Sahara, were instantly forgotten.  Cuckoo became all curves, almost like Jessie in moments of supreme emotion.

“Me and you?” she exclaimed.  “Oh yes!”

The doctor rang the bell.

“Take this lady to the dining-room and give her some lunch,” he said to Lawler.  “And please order the victoria round at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

“While you lunch,” he said to Cuckoo, “I’ll just get through two letters that must be written, and then we’ll start.”

Cuckoo followed Lawler with a sense of airy wonder and delight.

A quarter of an hour later she was seated with the doctor in the victoria, the veil tightly stretched across her face, her poor mode of living up to his trust in her, and deserving the honour now conferred upon her.  The coachman let his horses go, and Harley Street was left behind.  Such a bright day it was.  Even the cold seemed a gay and festive thing, spinning the circulation like a gold coin till it glittered, decorating the poorest cheeks with the brightest rose as if in honour of a festival.  To Cuckoo London, as seen from a private carriage, was a wonder and a dream of novelty, a city of kings instead of a city of beggars, a city of crystal morning instead of a city of dreadful night.  She gazed at it out of a new heart as these horses—­that never came down—­trotted briskly forward.  Through the silk of her gloves her thumbs and fingers felt silently the warm sables of the rug that caressed her knees.  And she thought that this feeling, and the feeling in her heart, must be constituent parts of the emotion called happiness.  If the four ladies could see her now!  If they could see her now, Cuckoo thought, she would take off her veil, just for a moment.  When the aspect of the street began to change, when little gardens appeared, and bare trees standing bravely in the sun behind high walls and iron gates, the doctor said to Cuckoo: 

“Now I will tell you why I telegraphed to you.”

And then Cuckoo remembered that she was in this wonderful expedition for a reason.  The doctor continued speaking in a low voice, with the obvious intention of being inaudible to the coachman, whose large furred back presented an appearance of broad indifference to their two lives.

“You remember what I said to you the other day—­that perhaps you could help Julian from great evil.”

Cuckoo nodded earnestly.

“And you are prepared to do anything you can?”