In the very early days of her career she had been a very pretty girl.
Her old mother, who believed her dead, had often cried and said to the
neighbours that her beauty had been Cuckoo's undoing. Thus do we lay
blame on the few fine gifts that should gild our lives. But Cuckoo
had been very pretty and had soon learnt the first foul lesson of her
_m?tier_, to wake swift desire. As time went on and she wasted her gift
of beauty along the pavements of London, she found this poor power
failing in strength and in certainty. As to the power of wakening that
slower, deeper, kindred, yet opposed desire of love, Cuckoo had never
known whether she possessed it. She had had many lovers, but nobody to
love her really, and this in days of her beauty, or at any rate her
gracious prettiness. No wonder, then, that now a chill ran over her at
the thought of the task that lay before her if she was to gain her
battle. To break Valentine's influence she had to make Julian love her.
How? Instinctively, and with a sense of horror, she knew that her usual
practised arts, instead of helping, almost fatally handicapped her now.
She loved Julian purely, so purely that she could not endure that he
should meet her degradation as he had met it on that one night she never
thought of but with repentance.
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