"Have they been chaffing you, Cuckoo?" he said, striking a match on the heel of his shoe and lighting a cigarette. "Have they been worrying you? Never mind. It's only Val's fun. He doesn't mean anything by it. I say, how awfully pale you look to-night, and thin."
He paused, considering her with a glance that was almost severe.
"I'm all right," said Cuckoo, trying to repress the agitation she always felt now when speaking to Julian. "I ain't ill. Why don't you come to see me now?" she added. "You don't never come."
Julian glanced over to Valentine, who was standing by the hearth talking to the doctor, who sat in an armchair.
"I've been busy," he said. "I've had a lot of things to do. Do you miss me, Cuckoo, when I don't come?"
"Yes," she replied, but without softness. Then she added, lowering her voice almost to a whisper:
"Don't he want you to come?"
Julian did not reply, but puffed rather moodily at his cigarette, glancing towards Valentine. He was thinking of the conversation at the Savoy and of the antagonism between Valentine and Cuckoo. Suddenly there came into his mind a dull wish to reconcile these two on the last night of the year, to—in Valentine's own words—bury the hatchet. He sat meditating over his plan and trying to revolve different and dramatic methods of accomplishing it. Presently he said:
"Cuckoo, you and Val have got to be friends from to-night."
She started, stirring uneasily on the great cushions that were heaped at her back.