ad been walking with him, and was conscious that he
followed her with his eyes.

And then a certain Baroness von Maisen, a cosmopolitan friend of Aunt
Rosamund's, German by marriage, half-Dutch, half-French by birth, asked
her if she had heard the Swedish violinist, Fiorsen. He would be, she
said, the best violinist of the day, if--and she shook her head. Finding
that expressive shake unquestioned, the baroness pursued her thoughts:

"Ah, these musicians! He wants saving from himself. If he does not halt
soon, he will be lost. Pity! A great talent!"

Gyp looked at her steadily and asked:

"Does he drink, then?"

"Pas mal! But there are things besides drink, ma chere."

Instinct and so much life with Winton made the girl regard it as beneath
her to be shocked. She did not seek knowledge of life, but refused to
shy away from it or be discomfited; and the baroness, to whom innocence
was piquant, went on:

"Des femmes--toujours des femmes! C'est grand dommage. It will spoil
his spirit. His sole chance is to find one woman, but I pity her;
sapristi, quelle vie pour elle!"

Gyp said calmly:

"Would a man like that ever love?"

The baroness goggled her eyes.

"I have known such a man become a slave. I have known him running after
a woman like a lamb while she was deceiving him here and there. On ne
peut jamais dire. Ma belle, il y a des choses que vous ne savez pas
encore." She took Gyp's hand. "And yet, one thing is certain. With
those eyes and those lips and that figure, YOU have a time before you!"

Gyp withdrew her hand, smiled, and shook her head; she did not believe in
love.

"Ah, but you will turn some heads! No fear! as you English say. There is
fatality in those pretty brown eyes!"

A girl may be pardoned who takes as a compliment the saying that her eyes
are fatal. The words warmed Gyp, uncontrollably light-hearted in these
days, just as she was warmed when people turned to stare at her. The
soft air, the mellowness of this gay place, much music, a sense of being
a rara avis among people who, by their heavier type, enhanced her own,
had produced in her a kind of intoxication, making her what the baroness
called "un peu folle." She was always breaking into laughter, having that
precious feeling of twisting the world round her thumb, which does not
come too often in the life of one who is sensitive. Everything to her
just then was either "funny" or "lovely." And the baroness, consc