He looked at Cuckoo with new eyes.
She looked back at him with the old ones of a girl who loves.
As he looked she stopped crying. Perhaps the sudden understanding in his
gaze thrilled her. He put out his hand to touch hers, and again repeated
his negative, but this time with greater conviction.
"I do not think of you in that way. I never shall," he said.
Her face was still full of doubt, and thin with anxiety. She was not
reassured, that seemed apparent; for in her ignorance she had a strange
knowledge of life, and especially a strange intuition which guided her
instincts as to the instinctive proceedings of men.
"They always do," she murmured. "Why should you be different?"
"All men aren't alike," he said, pretending to laugh at her.
"Yes, in some things, though," she contradicted. "They all think dirt of
you for doing what they want."
Seeing how unsatisfied she was, and how restlessly her anxiety paced up
and down, Julian resolved on more plain-speaking.
"Look here, Cuckoo," he said, and his voice had never sounded more
boyish, "last night I was drunk. Last night I woke up, and I'd been
asleep for years."
"Eh?" she interrupted, looking puzzled, but he went on:
"I was emancipated, and I was mad.
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