"To see you. I have never yet returned your kind call upon me."
"Eh?"
Cuckoo spoke in the tone of one who had become deaf, and she felt as if the agitation of her mind actually clamoured within her like a crowd of human voices, deadening sounds from without. Valentine repeated his remark, adding:
"Won't you ask me to sit down?"
He put his hand on the back of a chair.
"May I?"
Cuckoo gave her body a jerk which brought her feet down to the floor, so that she was sitting upright. She pushed out one of her hands as if in protest.
"You can't sit here," she murmured.
"I? Why not?"
"I can't have you here, nor I won't either."