"Well enough."
"And Mr. Addison?"
Cuckoo flushed slowly.
"Yes, I know him—quite well."
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.