She looked up at him with this world of mingling
knowledge in her eyes, and Valentine drew away from her with a stifling
sensation of frigid awe.
"What--what?" he began. Then, recovering himself, he turned suddenly
away.
"Sit down, doctor. Do you like my flowers? Julian, are you still tired?
The coffee will wake you up. A cigarette, doctor, or a cigar? Here are
the matches."
Julian came over heavily and sat down on the divan by Cuckoo. His
unnatural lethargy was gradually passing away into a more explicable
fatigue, no longer speechless. Leaning on his elbow, he looked into
her face with his weary eyes, in which to-night there was a curious dim
pathos. It seemed that the only thing which had so far struck him during
the evening was still Cuckoo's confusion over her own misunderstanding
at dinner, for he now again referred to it.
"Have they been chaffing you, Cuckoo?" he said, striking a match on the
heel of his shoe and lighting a cigarette. "Have they been worrying you?
Never mind. It's only Val's fun. He doesn't mean anything by it. I say,
how awfully pale you look to-night, and thin."
He paused, considering her with a glance that was almost severe.
"I'm all right," said Cuckoo, trying to repress the agitation she always
felt now when speaking to Julian.
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