"Eh?"
She put down her hand slowly and turned her eyes on him.
"What do you wish me to do?" he said, "I do not know yet what may—" he checked himself and substituted, "I must go and see my friends."
"Yes, go."
She nodded her head slowly, and then she shivered as she sat in the chair.
"Go, and do somethin'," she said. "I would—I want to—but I can't. It's true, I suppose, what he said. I'm nearly done with, I'm spoilt. I say, you're a doctor, aren't you? You know things? Tell me then, do, what's the good of goin' on being able to feel—I mean to feel just like anybody, anybody as hasn't gone down, you know—if you can't do anythin' the same as they can, get round anybody to make 'em go right? I could send him right, I could, as well as any girl, if feelin' 'd only do it. But feelin' ain't a bit of good. It's looks, I suppose. Everythin' 's looks."
"No, not everything," the doctor said.
Cuckoo's speech both interested and touched him. Its confused wistfulness came straight from the heart. And then it recalled to the doctor a conversation he had had with Valentine, when they talked over the extraordinary influence that the mere appearance—will working through features—of one man or woman can have over another. The doctor could only at present rather dimly apprehend the feeling entertained for Julian by Cuckoo. But as he glanced at her, he understood very well the pathos of the contest raging at present between her heart and the painted shell which held it.
"Nobody who feels goodness is utterly bereft of the power of bringing good to another," he said. "For we can seldom really feel what we can never really be."
Light shone through the shadows of the tired face at the words.