some sweet woman dedicated to the service of God, or to the service of some eternal altar-flame burning, as the zeal of nature burns, through all the dawning and fading changes of the world. Thus Valentine passed his day among flowers, and only when the last twilight of the year fell had he fixed the last blossom in its place. Then he rested, as after six days of creation, and from the midst of his flowers saw the snow falling delicately upon London. Lights began to gleam in the tall houses opposite his drawing-room windows. He glanced at them, and they brought him thoughts at which he smiled. Behind those squares of light he imagined peace and good will in enormous white waistcoats and expansive shirt-fronts, red-faced, perhaps even whiskered, getting ready for good temper and turkey, journalistic geniality and plum pudding. And holly everywhere, with its prickly leaves and shining, phlegmatic surfaces. Peace and good will! He glanced at his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have come, and smiled gently. Peace and good will! He went to dress. * * * * * Meanwhile, in the Marylebone Road the lady of the feathers achieved her toilet, assisted by Jessie. The only evening dress that Cuckoo possessed had been given to her long ago by a young man in the millinery department of a large London shop. For a week he had adored Cuckoo. During that week he had presented her with this tremendous gift. She went into her bedroom now, took it out and looked at it. The gown rustled a great deal whenever it was moved; this had been the young man's idea. He considered that the more a gift rustled, the more aristocratic it was, and, being well acquainted with all the different noises made by different fabrics, he had selected one with a voice as of many waters. Cuckoo heard it now as in a dream. She laid it down upon the bed and regarded it by candle-light. The young man's taste in sound found its equivalent in his taste in colour. The hue of the gown was also very loud, the brightest possible green, trimmed with thick yellow imitation lace. Once it had enchanted Cuckoo, she had put it on with a thrill to go to music-halls with the young man. But now she gazed upon it with a lack lustre and a doubtful eye. The flickering flame of the candle lit it up in patches, and those patches had a lurid aspect. Remembering that Julian had liked her best in black, she shrank from appearing before him in anything so determined. Yet it was her only dress for the evening, and at first she supposed the wearing of it to be inevitable. She put it on and went in front of the glass. In these days she had become even thinner than of old, and more haggard. The gown increased her tenuity and pallor to the eye, and, after a long moment of painful consideration, Cuckoo resolved to abandon these green glories. Once her mind was