"
With an almost timid gesture, and growing boyishly red, he indicated the
art decoration, pink and pale, that adorned her face.
Poor Cuckoo looked completely flabbergasted.
"What?" she said uncertainly; "don't you like me with it?"
"No."
"Well, but, I don't know."
Such an experiment evidently struck her as portentous, earth-shaking. She
stared into the dingy glass that stood over the mantelpiece in Marylebone
Road.
"I shall look a hag," she muttered, with conviction. "I shall."
"You never had it, before you started."
Her eyes grew round.
"Ah, that was jolly different, though," she said.
"Try it," he urged. "Go and try it now, then come and show me."
"I don't like to."
The idea reduced her almost to shyness. But she got up falteringly, and
moved towards the bedroom. When she was by the folding door she said:
"I say."
"Well?"
"I say, you won't laugh at me?"
"Of course not."
"You won't--honour?"
"Honour!"
She disappeared. And there was the sound of many waters. Julian listened
to it, repeating under his breath that word of many meanings, that
panorama-word, honour. Among thieves, among prostitutes, among murderers,
rebels, the lost, the damned of this world, still does it not sing, like
a bird that is too hopeful of some great and beautiful end ever to be
quite silent?
Julian waited, while Cuckoo washed away her sin of paint and powder, at
first nervously, then with a certain zest that was almost violent, that
splashed the water on floor and walls, and sent the shivering Jessie
beneath the bed for shelter.
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