She had even, carried away by cupidity
and passion, striven to drive Cuckoo out to her night's work. A physical
struggle had taken place between them, ending in the landlady's
hysterics. Other lodgers had been drawn by the noise from their floors
to witness the row. Two of them had come, on the scene accompanied by
men, and to them Mrs. Brigg had shrieked her wrongs and explanations of
this swindling virtue of a woman who had formerly paid her way honestly
from the street. The lodgers and their men had provided an accompaniment
of jeering laughter to the Brigg solo, and Cuckoo, her clothes nearly
torn from her back, had flung at last into her sitting-room and locked
the door. That was last night--the past which she now reviewed in the
morning twilight. What was she to do? She was without food. She was in
debt, must leave Mrs. Brigg, no doubt, but must pay her first, had no
means to pay for another lodging. She might apply to Doctor Levillier.
What held her back from taking that road was mainly this. She had the
dumb desire to make a sacrifice for Julian, and the doctor had given her
the idea of the only sacrifice she could make--retention of herself from
the degradation that kept her free of debt. If she asked the doctor to
pay the expenses of the sacrifice, whose would it be? His, not hers.
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