For beyond the
motive power of her love and jealousy, beyond the ordinary woman's desire
to keep the man she admired from sinking to the level of the men she
despised, there was another fiery and strong and urging insistent
influence working upon her, working within her, crying to her, like a
voice, to buckle on her armour and to do battle with the enemy. This
influence came silently from without, and spoke to the lady of the
feathers when she was alone, and never more clearly and powerfully than
to-night. It wrestled with her terror of Valentine, and told her to put
it away, to come into closer relations with him fearlessly, not to flee
from him, but rather to watch him, dog him, learn what he was and what
he was doing or trying to do. Yet fear fought this growing, stirring,
strange warm influence that burned like a fire at Cuckoo's heart. She
flushed and she paled as she lay there, with down-drawn brows and enlaced
hands, her yellow hair falling over the hard, shiny horsehair of the
sofa. She longed for some one to come to her who would give her counsel,
help, courage, that she might fight for Julian, who was too spell-bound
to fight for himself, and who was falling so fast, so terribly fast,
into the abyss where men crawl like insects and women are as poisonous
weeds in the slime of the pit.
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