Now the abrupt development of
that power almost distressed, because it confused him. He had gone
down lower in the interval between the two possibilities of sensation.
"What the devil's come over Cuckoo?" so ran his thought with a schoolboy
gait. That something had come over her he recognized. She was no longer
the girl he had stared at in Piccadilly, the creature he had pitied in
the twilight hour of their first friendly interview. Nor was she the
woman whose soul he had injured by his cruel whim, the woman who had
beaten him with reproaches, and made him for an instant almost ashamed
of his lusts. All these humanities perhaps slept, or woke, in her still.
Yet it was not they which heavily concerned him on his way to the Marble
Arch. There is a vitality about power of whatever kind that makes itself
instantly felt, even when it is not understood, even when it is neither
beloved nor appreciated. Julian was confused by his dull and sudden
recognition of power in Cuckoo. No longer did it flash upon him, a
mystery of flame in her eyes, moving him to the awe and the constraint
that a man may feel at sight of an unearthly thing, a phantom, or a
vision of the night. (He had looked for the flame in her eyes, and he
had not found it.
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