Poor, deluded, twisted Valentine! that I should
have to call him, to think of him as an enemy! We begin the fight within
the shadow of our opponent's tent."
Literally that was the fact.
Cuckoo's thoughts were less definite, more tinged with passion, less
shaped by the hands of intellect. They were as clouds, looming large,
yet misty, hanging loose in torn fragments now, and now merging into
indistinguishable fog that yet seemed pregnant with possibilities.
Poor thoughts, vague thoughts; yet they pressed upon her brain until
her tired head ached. And they stole down to her heart, and that ached
too, and hoped and then despaired--then hoped again.
CHAPTER II
CAF? NOIR
Snow fell, melodramatically, on the year's death-night. During the day
Valentine occupied himself oddly in decorating his flat for the evening.
But although he thus seemed to fall in with the consecrated humours of
the season his decorations would scarcely have commanded the approval of
those good English folk who think that no plant is genial unless it is
prickly, and that prickly things represent appropriately to the eye the
inward peace and good will that grows, like a cactus, perhaps within the
heart. He did not put holly rigidly above his doors.
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