Encouraged by the sound of her mistress's voice, Jessie stepped from her basket and gingerly approached, snuffling round Cuckoo's feet, and wriggling her body in token of anxious humility. Cuckoo picked her up and stroked her mechanically, but still with her eyes on the photograph. Two tears swam in them. She dashed the photograph down. It lay on the carpet, and was still there when a knock at the door was succeeded by the entrance of Julian. He, too, looked pale and rather weary, but excited. "Cuckoo," he said. She sat still in the chair, looking at him. "Well?" she said, and closed her lips tightly. He came a step or two forward into the little room, and put his hat and stick down on the table. "You expected me to come, didn't you?" "I don't know as I did." Her eyes were on Jessie now, and she stroked the little dog's back steadily up and down, alternately smoothing and ruffling its short coat. Julian came over and stood by the mantelpiece. "I told you I should come." "Did you?" "Don't you remember?" She shifted round in the chair till he could only see her shoulder, and the side of her head and neck, on which the loose hair was tumbling in ugly confusion. Sitting thus she threw back at him the sentence: "I don't want to remember nothing. I don't want to remember." Julian stood hesitating. He glanced at Cuckoo's hair and at the back of her thin hand moving to and fro above the little contented dog. "Why not?" he said. At first she made no answer to this question, and seemed as if she had not heard it, but presently it appeared that her silence had been caused by the effect of consideration, for at length she said, still retaining her aloof attitude: "I don't want to remember, because it's like a beastly dream, and when I remember I know it ain't a dream." Julian said nothing, and suddenly Cuckoo turned round to him, and took her hand from Jessie's back. "I say. You were mad last night. Now, weren't you?" The words came from her almost pleadingly, and her eyes rested on Julian's insistently, as if demanding an affirmative. "He'd made you mad," she continued. "He," said Julian. "Who?" "Your friend." "Valentine! He had nothing to do with it." "It was all his doing." Her voice grew shrill with feeling. "He's a devil," she said. "I hate him. I hate him worse than I hate that copper west side of Regent Street. And I hate you, too,--yes, I do,--to-day." The tears gathered in her eyes and began to fall, tears of rage and shame and regret, tears of one who had lost a great possession. Julian looked embarrassed and pained, almost guilty, too. He put out his hand and tried to take Cuckoo's. But she drew hers away and went on crying. She spoke again with vehemence. "I told you what I wanted you to be; yes, I did," she exclaimed. "Yes, I told you. You said you only come here to talk to me." "It was true." "No; it wasn't. You're just like all the others. And I did so want to have a pal. I've never had one."