A few of the men looked at her.  More especially did those observe her who love vice that is quiet, sedate, demure, and unobtrusive.  To these her pale, unpainted cheeks, her unconscious demeanour, her downcast eyes, and severely plain black dress and hat appealed with emphasis.  One or two of them turned to follow her.  She never heard their footsteps.  One spoke to her.  She did not reply.  He persisted.  When at last she was obliged to heed him she only shook her head.  He fell away, abashed by the dull glance of her eyes, and wondering discontentedly why she was there and what she was doing.

Forgetting him instantly, she walked on.

Some one she had known in old days met her.  It was the young man in the millinery establishment who had loved her for a week, and given her the green evening dress trimmed with the imitation lace.  Since those days he had become strictly respectable, had married an assistant in the shop, rented a tiny villa at Clapham, added two childish lives to the teeming word, and developed on Sundays into a sidesman at a suburban church.  Now he was on his way to Charing Cross from a solemn supper given by his employers at a restaurant to some of their staff.  He recognized Cuckoo and the spirit moved him to speak to her.  He touched her arm.

“Miss-er-Miss Bright,” he said.

Cuckoo stopped.

“Miss Bright, you remember me?  Alf Heywood!”

He was a little man, with a whitish face and wispy light brown hair.  Now his pale brown eyes glanced up at Cuckoo rather nervously under rapidly winking lids.  She stared at him.

“Alf Heywood?” she repeated, without meaning.

“Yes, yes; Alf Heywood, as was in Brenton’s millinery establishment, top of Regent Street.  Him as give you that green dress.  Don’t you recall?”

Cuckoo shook her head.

“Green, with white lace on it,” he continued, with nervous emphasis.

Suddenly Cuckoo said: 

“White; no, it was yellow.”

Mr. Heywood was delighted at this evidence of recollection.

“So it was, so it was,” he said.  “But what I wanted to say was, that I’m sorry to see you here still.”

“Eh?”

“Sorry to see you here.  I’m married, you know, turned over a new leaf, with two children of my own, and come to see the error of my ways.  I hoped as you—­”

Cuckoo walked on.

Her dream of despair was not to be broken by Mr. Heywood and his new-found respectability.  Fate shattered it to fragments in very different fashion.  A sudden thrill ran through the crowd, coming from a distance.  People began to pause, to turn their heads, to murmur to one another, then to press forward in one direction, craning their necks as if to catch sight of something.  The street was almost blocked, and Cuckoo was entangled in this seething excitement, of which at first she could not divine the cause.  Presently she heard shouts.  The crowd swayed.  Then a man’s fierce yell cut the general murmur with the sharpness of a knife.  Suddenly Cuckoo’s dream fled.  She pushed her way forward in the direction of the cry; she struggled; she crept under arms and glided through narrow spaces with extraordinary dexterity and swiftness.