How, indeed, could such a creature have power over fellow man or woman
for good or for evil? If weakness can be written without words, it seemed
written in that wasted countenance, which Cuckoo examined with a creeping
horror that numbed her like frost. As she did so, Valentine was watching
the ungraciousness of her face in the glass deepen and glide, moment by
moment, into greater ugliness, greater degradation. And as the little
light there had ever been behind those unquiet eyes, faded gradually
away, in his reflected eyes the light leaped up into fuller glare,
sparkling to unbridled triumph. And his reflected lips smiled more
defiantly, until the smile was no longer touched merely with triumph,
but with something more vehement and more malign! Cuckoo did not see
the change. She saw only herself, and her heart cried and wailed, What
good--what good to love Julian? What good to hate Valentine? What good
to fight for the man she loved against the man she loathed? As well set
a doll to move its tense joints against an army, or a scarecrow to defy
a god! Never before had she realized thoroughly the complete tragedy of
her life. Hitherto she had assisted at it in fragments, coming in for
a scene here, a scene there.
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