An almost similar answer, but given with such a change of manner as would be possible only in a woman. It told the doctor much of the truth and gave him the first page of a true reading of Cuckoo's character. But he went on with apparently unconscious quietude: "And you came here to tell me, who know and like them both, that the one is ruining the other. What made you come to me?" "Why, somethin' Julian said once. He thinks a lot of you. I was afraid to come, but I--I thought I would. It's seein' them--at least Julian--since they got back made me come." "I haven't seen them yet," the doctor said, and there was an interrogation in the accent with which he spoke. Something in Cuckoo's intense manner roused both wonder and alarm in him. She evidently spoke driven by tremendous impulse. What vision had given that impulse life? "Ah!" she said, and fell suddenly into a dense silence, touching her left cheek mechanically with her hand, which was covered by a long, black silk glove. She alternately pressed the fingers of it against the cheek bone and withdrew them, as one who marks the progress of a tune, hummed or played on some instrument. Her eyes were staring downwards upon the carpet. The doctor watched her, and the wonder and fear grew in him. "Have you nothing more to tell me?" he said at last. "Eh?" She put down her hand slowly and turned her eyes on him. "What do you wish me to do?" he said, "I do not know yet what may--" he checked himself and substituted, "I must go and see my friends." "Yes, go." She nodded her head slowly, and then she shivered as she sat in the chair. "Go, and do somethin'," she said. "I would--I want to--but I can't. It's true, I suppose, what he said. I'm nearly done with, I'm spoilt. I say, you're a doctor, aren't you? You know things? Tell me then, do, what's the good of goin' on being able to feel--I mean to feel just like anybody, anybody as hasn't gone down, you know--if you can't do anythin' the same as they can, get round anybody to make 'em go right? I could send him right, I could, as well as any girl, if feelin' 'd only do it. But feelin' ain't a bit of good. It's looks, I suppose. Everythin' 's looks." "No, not everything," the doctor said. Cuckoo's speech both interested and touched him. Its confused wistfulness came straight from the heart. And then it recalled to the doctor a conversation he had had with Valentine, when they talked over the extraordinary influence that the mere appearance--will working through features--of one man or woman can have over another. The doctor could only at present rather dimly apprehend the feeling entertained for Julian by Cuckoo. But as he glanced at her, he understood very well the pathos of the contest raging at present between her heart and the painted shell which held it. "Nobody who feels goodness is utterly bereft of the power of bringing good to another," he said. "For we can seldom really feel what we can never really be."