It was the cause of Julian and
his safety that made her now consider this evening refrain of her life as
she sat there. And her mind ran back to Julian's first visit to her and
to his first request. He asked her to stay at home just for one night
with Jessie. And she refused. If she had not refused. If she had stayed
at home. If she had at that moment, from that moment, given up her life
of the street, would Julian have loved her then? Would she have been able
to do something for him? For hours Cuckoo sat there pondering in her
vague, desolate way over questions such as these. But she could give no
answer to them. And then she thought of that horrible night when the
hours danced to the music of the devil, when she gave Julian that first
little impetus which started him on his journey to the abyss. And at that
thought she grew white, and she grew hot, and she wondered why she had
been born to be the lady of the feathers, and the wrecker, not of men's
lives--she never thought of men tenderly in the mass--but of this one
life, of this one man, whom she loved in a strange, wild, good-woman way.
"C-r-r-r!" she said, her tongue flickering against her teeth. Jessie
stirred in the blankets, came to the floor with a "t'bb" and ran into the
room with curved attitudes of submission.
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