think it." Bending with the utmost
swiftness, he took her hand, put his lips to it, and turned on his heel.

Gyp, uneasy and astonished, stared at her hand, still tingling from the
pressure of his bristly moustache. Then she laughed again--it was just
"foreign" to have your hand kissed--and went back to her book, without
taking in the words.

Was ever courtship more strange than that which followed? It is said
that the cat fascinates the bird it desires to eat; here the bird
fascinated the cat, but the bird too was fascinated. Gyp never lost
the sense of having the whip-hand, always felt like one giving alms, or
extending favour, yet had a feeling of being unable to get away, which
seemed to come from the very strength of the spell she laid on him.
The magnetism with which she held him reacted on herself. Thoroughly
sceptical at first, she could not remain so. He was too utterly morose
and unhappy if she did not smile on him, too alive and excited and
grateful if she did. The change in his eyes from their ordinary
restless, fierce, and furtive expression to humble adoration or wistful
hunger when they looked at her could never have been simulated. And
she had no lack of chance to see that metamorphosis. Wherever she went,
there he was. If to a concert, he would be a few paces from the door,
waiting for her entrance. If to a confectioner's for tea, as likely as
not he would come in. Every afternoon he walked where she must pass,
riding to the Neroberg.

Except in the gardens of the Kochbrunnen, when he would come up humbly
and ask to sit with her five minutes, he never forced his company, or
tried in any way to compromise her. Experience, no doubt, served him
there; but he must have had an instinct that it was dangerous with one
so sensitive. There were other moths, too, round that bright candle, and
they served to keep his attentions from being too conspicuous. Did she
comprehend what was going on, understand how her defences were being
sapped, grasp the danger to retreat that lay in permitting him to
hover round her? Not really. It all served to swell the triumphant
intoxication of days when she was ever more and more in love with
living, more and more conscious that the world appreciated and admired
her, that she had power to do what others couldn't.

Was not Fiorsen, with his great talent, and his dubious reputation,
proof of that? And he excited her. Whatever else one might be in his
moody, vivid company, one