And their circle is
joined by many who are but recruits, or as camp-followers, treading in
the track of those whose names are on the roll-call.
The lady of the feathers rarely failed to join the evening flight of the
bats. Her acquaintance with Julian, even her curious passion for his
respect and distant treatment, had not won her to different evenings, or
to a new mode of life. But her feeling for Julian led her to ignore now
the fact of this fate of hers. She chose to set him aside from it, to
keep him for a friend, as an innocent peasant-girl might keep some
recluse wandering after peace into her solitude. Julian was to be the
one man who looked on her with quiet, habitual eyes, who touched her
with calm, gentle hand, who spoke to her with the voice of friendship,
demanding nothing, and thought of her with a feeling that was neither
greed nor contempt. And that one fatal night in which Cuckoo's private
and secluded heart was so bitterly wounded she put out of her
recollection with a strength of determination soldier-like and almost
fierce. It lay in the past, but she did not treat the past as a woman
treats a drawer full of old, used things, opening it in quiet moments
and turning over its contents with a lingering and a loving hand.
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