The summer days went
heavily by, and the sultry summer nights. No rain fell, and London was
veiled in dust. The pavements were so hot that they burned the feet that
trod them. Sometimes they seemed to burn Cuckoo's very soul, and to sear
her heart as she stood upon them for hours in the night, while the crowds
of Piccadilly flitted by like shadows in an evil dream. She stared
mechanically at the faces of those passing as she strolled with a lagging
footstep along the line of houses. She turned to meet the eyes of the
pale-faced loungers in the lighted entrance of the St. James's
restaurant, "Jimmy's," as she called it. But her mind was preoccupied. A
problem had fastened upon it with the tenacity of some vampire or strange
clinging creature of night. Cuckoo was wrestling with an angel; or was it
a devil? And often, when she stopped on the pavement and exchanged a word
or two with some casual stranger, she scarcely knew what she said, or to
what kind of man she was speaking. She was possessed by one thought, the
thought of Julian and of his danger. Valentine, in her thoughts, was
strangely a pale shadow, incredibly evil, incredibly persistent, luring
Julian downwards, beckoning him with the thin hand of a saint to depths
unpierced by the gaze of even the most sinful.
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