Slowly she walked along. Piccadilly bats fly slowly. The moon went up.
She had not met her fate. In the throng she saw Valentine pass. He looked
at her with a smile. She turned her eyes hastily away. She had met him on
several evenings of late, but had never told Julian so, for she began to
understand now his reverence for Valentine, and a new-born, ladylike
instinct taught her not to hurt that reverence. Valentine disappeared.
He had not tried to speak with her. Once, on encountering her, he had
paused, but Cuckoo glided behind two large Frenchwomen and escaped with
the adroitness of a snake in the grass. Apparently he recognized her
movement as one of retreat, and was resolved to leave her alone, for he
had never followed her since that day, although he always lifted his hat
when he saw her. The crowd grew thicker. It was very heterogeneous, but
Cuckoo did not thread it with the attention of a psychologist, or examine
it with the pains of a philosopher of the dark hours. She stared
listlessly at the faces of the men, and if they stared back at her,
smiled mechanically with a thin and stereotyped coquetry, moving on
vacantly the while in a sort of dream, such as a tired journalist may
fall into as he drives his pen over the paper, leaving a train of
familiar words and phrases behind it.
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