For the first time a sinister note rang in his voice.
"I shall go where I like," Cuckoo answered, and this time with some real sturdiness of manner. "It ain't nothin' to you where I go, nor what I do."
"How can you tell that?"
She laid her chin in the upturned palms of her two hands, planting her elbows on her knees.
"How can it be?" she said. "I'm nothin' to you, nor I ain't going to be either."
"That's what you say."
"And it's God's truth too!" she cried again with violence, as the sense of Valentine's inflexible power grew in her.
"I'm going to smoke if you will allow me," Valentine said.
Slowly he drew out and lit a cigarette, Cuckoo neither refusing nor permitting it. With protruding lips he threw the light smoke round him. Then speaking through it he said:
"Tell me why you go to Harley Street."