"I ain't goin' to talk to you."
"Tell me why. It lies out of your beat; it's a respectable thoroughfare."
The words were said to sting. Cuckoo let them go by. She had been stung too often, and repetition of cruelty sometimes kills what it repeats. She set her lips to silence, with a look of obstinacy not impressive, but merely mulish and childish.
"Well?" Valentine said.
She made no answer. He did not seem angry, but continued:
"You find few fish for your net there, I imagine. But perhaps you don't go for fish. What was the name you read upon the door while I watched you?"
This time Cuckoo, changing her mind, as she often did, with all the swiftness of a crude nature, answered him:
"You know well enough!"
"It was Dr. Levillier, wasn't it?"
She nodded her head silently.