o garments, no preparations of any kind. Why make what might never
be needed? She played for Fiorsen a great deal, for herself not at all,
read many books--poetry, novels, biographies--taking them in at the
moment, and forgetting them at once, as one does with books read just to
distract the mind. Winton and Aunt Rosamund, by tacit agreement, came
on alternate afternoons. And Winton, almost as much under that shadow as
Gyp herself, would take the evening train after leaving her, and spend
the next day racing or cub-hunting, returning the morning of the day
after to pay his next visit. He had no dread just then like that of an
unoccupied day face to face with anxiety.

Betty, who had been present at Gyp's birth, was in a queer state. The
obvious desirability of such events to one of motherly type defrauded
by fate of children was terribly impinged on by that old memory, and a
solicitude for her "pretty" far exceeding what she would have had for
a daughter of her own. What a peony regards as a natural happening to
a peony, she watches with awe when it happens to the lily. That other
single lady of a certain age, Aunt Rosamund, the very antithesis to
Betty--a long, thin nose and a mere button, a sense of divine rights and
no sense of rights at all, a drawl and a comforting wheeze, length and
circumference, decision and the curtsey to providence, humour and none,
dyspepsia, and the digestion of an ostrich, with other oppositions--Aunt
Rosamund was also uneasy, as only one could be who disapproved heartily
of uneasiness, and habitually joked and drawled it into retirement.

But of all those round Gyp, Fiorsen gave the most interesting display.
He had not even an elementary notion of disguising his state of mind.
And his state of mind was weirdly, wistfully primitive. He wanted Gyp
as she had been. The thought that she might never become herself again
terrified him so at times that he was forced to drink brandy, and come
home only a little less far gone than that first time. Gyp had often to
help him go to bed. On two or three occasions, he suffered so that he
was out all night. To account for this, she devised the formula of a
room at Count Rosek's, where he slept when music kept him late, so as
not to disturb her. Whether the servants believed her or not, she never
knew. Nor did she ever ask him where he went--too proud, and not feeling
that she had the right.

Deeply conscious of the unaesthetic nature of her condition, s