It looked draggled, and as if it had been up
all night, he thought. The black back of it heaved as Cuckoo sobbed, like
a little black wave. Was the eternal movement of the sea caused by some
horrible, inward grief which, though secret, must come thus to the eye of
God and of the world? Julian found himself wondering in an unreasonable
abstraction as he contemplated the crying girl. Then suddenly his mind
swerved to more normal paths; he was seized by the natural feeling of a
man who has made a woman weep, and had the impulse to comfort.
"Don't cry, Cuckoo," he said, coming over to her and sitting on the edge
of her chair. "You must not. Let us say I was mad last night. Perhaps I
was. Men are often mad, surely. To-day I'm sane, and I want you to
forgive me."
He put his arm round her shoulder. She glanced up at him. Then, with the
odd penetration that so often gilds female ignorance till it dazzles and
distracts, she said quickly:
"You don't mean what you say; you don't really care."
Julian was taken aback by her sharpness, and by the self-revelation that
immediately stabbed him.
"You mustn't say that," he began. But she stopped him on the instant.
"You don't care; you think it's nothing. So it ought to be to me, I
know.
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