"Ah, but he changed. Dogs are just like women, just like women, never the same two days together. Curse them."
He appeared to have forgotten Cuckoo's presence, and she sat listening eagerly, quite unmoved by the dagger thrust at her sex.
"Dogs don't usually change. Their faithfulness bears everything without breaking."
"Except a trance, then," Julian said, still with a wavering in-and-out stolidity, at the same time mournful and almost ludicrous.
"That trance did for Rip; did for him, I tell you. He never knew poor old
Val again. As if he thought him another man after that, another man."
The doctor's eyes met Cuckoo's. She had a teacup at her rouged lips, and had paused in the act of drinking, fascinated by the words that wound so naturally into the legend of change which she knew and knew not.
"As if Val wasn't just the same," Julian pursued, shaking his head slowly. "Just the same."
"You think so?" the doctor said, quickly.
"Eh?"
"You think that trance made no difference to him?"