"How to do it," he murmured, almost to himself. "How to bring this battle to the issue!"
Then he turned his eyes on Cuckoo.
She was sitting bolt upright in the carriage. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hollow eyes were sparkling. She had drawn her hands out from under the rug and clasped them together in her lap.
"Oh, I'll do anything I can," she said, "anything. And—and I can do that one thing!"
"Yes," said the doctor. "Which?"
"The thing that he asked me once, and what I said no to," she answered, but in such a low murmur that the doctor scarcely caught the words.
He leaned forward in the carriage.
"Home now, Grant," he said to the coachman. "Or—no—drive first to 400
Marylebone Road."
The doctor turned again towards Cuckoo. She was looking away from him, so much that he was obliged to believe that she wished to conceal her face, which was towards the sunset.
The sky over London glowed with a dull red like a furnace. It deepened, while they looked, passing rapidly through the biting cold of the late winter afternoon.