Cuckoo
reviewed these ghosts, and no longer prayed, but cursed. So long as she
had Jessie--she knew it now--she had never been really quite hopeless,
often as she had thought herself hopeless. She had never even been
utterly without self-respect, because Jessie had always deeply respected
her and had thus given her little moments of clean and cheering
confidence. And she had never been absolutely alone. Now she was alone,
and felt like Judas, a betrayer. By turns she thought of Julian lost and
of Jessie sold to strange hands, strange hearts, in a cruel and a bitter
world. But even now she did not think much or often of herself, for
Cuckoo was no egotist. Her very lack of egotism must have been the
despair of any good woman trying to rescue her. She sat at home and
starved and betrayed now, not because her egoism shrank from the touch of
the men of the street, not because she had any idea of the great duty a
woman owes to herself--to keep herself pure--but simply moved by the
dogged determination to do something for Julian. Were Julian dead Cuckoo
would have gone out into Piccadilly again as of old, and earned the rent
for Mrs. Brigg, and food for herself, and a sovereign or two to buy back
Jessie. The circumstances of her life had stuffed cotton wool into the
ears of her soul and rendered it deaf to the voices that govern good
women.
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