It had seen his confidence in his love
for the stranger whom he thought his friend and his protector. In the
pale and delicate dawn, shrouded in the mystery of night and day,
enclosed between the clasping hands of the angels of darkness and of
light, it had hung in the air above the solitary Julian, as he walked
homeward after his vigil by the lifeless body of Valentine. With a
passionate effort it had sought to draw him to a knowledge of the truth,
that he might wake from the dream in which lay his insecurity, at last
his tragic danger. And faintly, even as the first sunbeam it had dawned
upon him, once as he met the lady of the feathers, again as he bent his
gaze upon the theatrical glories that attended the apotheosis of
Margaret. And it had flickered behind the film of the tears in a woman's
eyes, seeking to make itself known through the beauty of the love that
clung inexorably to the heart of Cuckoo in the midst of the degradation
and the corruption of her fate. Cuckoo had given it a home. She was
alone. It approached her. She was an outcast. It stayed with her. She
was beaten by the thongs of a world that teems with Pharisees. It clung
to her. She had, through all her days and nights, been put only to the
black uses of evil.
Pages:
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760