Once it had enchanted Cuckoo, she had put it on with a thrill to go
to music-halls with the young man. But now she gazed upon it with a lack
lustre and a doubtful eye. The flickering flame of the candle lit it up
in patches, and those patches had a lurid aspect. Remembering that Julian
had liked her best in black, she shrank from appearing before him in
anything so determined. Yet it was her only dress for the evening,
and at first she supposed the wearing of it to be inevitable. She put
it on and went in front of the glass. In these days she had become even
thinner than of old, and more haggard. The gown increased her tenuity
and pallor to the eye, and, after a long moment of painful consideration,
Cuckoo resolved to abandon these green glories. Once her mind was
made up, she was out of the dress in an instant; time was short. She
hurriedly extracted her black gown from the wardrobe, caught hold of
a pair of scissors, and in a few minutes had ripped the imitation lace
from its foundations and was transferring it with trembling fingers
to Julian's gift. Never before had she worked at any task with such
grim determination, or with such deftness; inspired by exceptional
circumstances, she might for twenty minutes have been a practised
dressmaker.
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