He longed to touch the puppet, to see if any quiver would convulse its
limbs, any light flicker into its eyes. And he was so fascinated and
interested that at last he did furtively stop precisely in front of it.
For a second both of them were motionless, he from contemplation of the
outward, she of the inward. Then Cuckoo's thoughtful jealousy came to a
ghastly crisis. Her imagination had shown her frightful things and
herself an utterly helpless and compelled spectator. The puppet opened
its red lips to utter a sob, lifted up its white and heavy eyelids to let
loose tears upon its unnaturally bright cheeks, stirred its hanging hands
to clasp them in a crude gesture of dull fury. The youth started as at a
corpse showing suddenly the pangs of life. His movement shot Cuckoo like
a bullet into her real world. Through her tears she saw a man regarding
her. In a flash, old habit brought to her a smile, a turned head of
coquetry, an entreating hand, a hackneyed phrase that reiteration
rendered parrot-like in intonation. The youth shrank back and fled away
in the darkness. Long afterwards that incident haunted him as an epitome
of all the horrors of cruel London.
And Cuckoo, thus roused and deserted, put aside for the moment her
nightmare, and started once more upon her promenade of the night.
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