Yet to her ignorance, to her, rising
towards purity now, yet ever steeped in the coarsest knowledge, it
seemed that the thing called love could hardly utter itself save by some
threadbare blandishment, or parrot combination of words, used each night
by a hundred women of the town. Cuckoo knew no language of love that was
not, so to say, bad language, inasmuch as it was used by those whom she
hated. And hitherto she had been content to keep her love for Julian a
silent love, except on the few occasions when she had obliquely showed
it by the anger of jealousy or of reproach. She wished nothing bodily
from him, or if she did, stifled the wish in the mutely repeated record
of her own unworthiness. But now, if she was to draw his soul to hers,
she must move forward, she must surely commit some sacrifice, perform
some deed. What deed could she perform? What sacrifice could she make
that would win upon him, that would alter his relation towards her from
one of eccentric friendship to one of affection that might even be
governed?
The lady of the feathers did not reason this all out in her mind as
she sat before the spluttering fire, but she felt it, a tangled mass
of thoughts, catching her brain as in a net, catching her life as in
a net too.
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