"Well?" "I say, you won't laugh at me?" "Of course not." "You won't--honour?" "Honour!" She disappeared. And there was the sound of many waters. Julian listened to it, repeating under his breath that word of many meanings, that panorama-word, honour. Among thieves, among prostitutes, among murderers, rebels, the lost, the damned of this world, still does it not sing, like a bird that is too hopeful of some great and beautiful end ever to be quite silent? Julian waited, while Cuckoo washed away her sin of paint and powder, at first nervously, then with a certain zest that was almost violent, that splashed the water on floor and walls, and sent the shivering Jessie beneath the bed for shelter. Cuckoo scrubbed and scrubbed, then applied a towel, until her skin protested in patches. Finally, and with a disturbed heart, she approached the sitting-room. Her voice came in to Julian while she remained hidden: "I say--" "Yes." "I know you will laugh." "Honour, Cuckoo, honour." "Oh, all right." And she came in to him, hanging her head down, rather like a child among strangers, ashamed, poor thing, of looking respectable. Julian was astonished at the change the water had wrought. Cuckoo looked another woman, or rather girl, oddly young, thin, and haggard certainly, and the reverse of dashing, but pretty, even fascinating, in her shyness. As he looked at her and saw the real red of nature run over her cheeks in waves of faint rose color, Julian understood fully all that the girl gives up when she gives up herself, and the wish--smiled at by Valentine--came to him again, the wish to reclaim her. "Ah!" he said. "Now you are yourself." He took her hand, and drew her in front of the mirror, but she refused to lift up her eyes and look at her reflection. "I'm a scarecrow," she murmured, twisting the front of her gown in her fingers. Her lips began to twitch ominously. Julian felt uncomfortable. He thought she was going to cry. "You are prettier than ever," he said. "Look!" "No, no. It's all gone--all gone." "What?" "My looks, dearie. I could do without the paint once. I can't now." Suddenly she turned to him with a sort of vulgar passion, that suspicion of the hard young harridan, typical of the pavement, which he had observed in her before. "I should like to get the whole lot of men in here," she said, "and--and chew them up." She showed her teeth almost like an animal. Then the relapse, characteristic of the hysterical condition in which she was, came. "Never you treat me like the rest," she said, bursting into sobs; "never you try anythin' on. If you do I'll kill myself."