"And I'll share my power with you. We are friends and comrades. We ought to share everything." "Yes," exclaimed Julian, carried away. "Yes, by Jove, yes!" "And as to this flame--" "Ah!" "We'll soon know if it's a vision or a reality. But it's a vision. You saw it in a woman's eyes." "I'll swear I did." "Then that proves it's a fraud. The flame in a woman's eyes never burnt true yet--never, Julian, since the days of Delilah." CHAPTER V JULIAN FEARS THE FLAME Although Cuckoo knew well that Julian carried out his intention of going home after he left her in Piccadilly, the fact of his being there, of his making one of that crowd, that slowly-moving crowd, troubled her. Valentine and Julian had argued the question of her real feeling about the matter. Cuckoo did not argue it. She never deliberately thought to herself, "I feel this or that. Why do I feel it?" She knew as much about astronomy as introspection, and that was simply nothing at all. Instead of diving into the depths of her mind and laboriously tracing every labelled and tabulated subtlety to its source, she sat in the squalid Marylebone Road sitting-room, with the folding doors open into the bedroom to temper the heat of summer with draughts from the frigid zone of the back area, and babbled her sensations to Jessie, who riggled in response to every passing shadow that stole across the heart of her mistress. Jessie had learned much about Julian in these latter days. Into her pricked and pointed ear, leaf-shaped and the hue of India-rubber, had been whispered a strange tale of the dawning of love in a battered heart, of the blossoming of respect in a warped mind. She had heard of the meeting in Piccadilly, of the meal at the Monico, of the farewell on the kerbstone. And she alone knew--or ought to have known--the mingling of intense jealousy and of a grander feeling that burned in Cuckoo's breast whenever she thought of Julian's life, the greater part of it that lay beyond her knowledge, her sight, or keeping.