hat story if you were not YOU.
But you know much--by instinct. What is your Christian name--forgive
me!"

"Ghita."

"Ghita? Not soft enough."

"I am always called Gyp."

"Gyp--ah, Gyp! Yes; Gyp!"

He repeated her name so impersonally that she could not be angry.

"I told your father I have had the pleasure of meeting you. He was very
polite."

Gyp said coldly:

"My father is always polite."

"Like the ice in which they put champagne."

Gyp smiled; she could not help it.

And suddenly he said:

"I suppose they have told you that I am a mauvais sujet." Gyp inclined
her head. He looked at her steadily, and said: "It is true. But I could
be better--much."

She wanted to look at him, but could not. A queer sort of exultation had
seized on her. This man had power; yet she had power over him. If she
wished she could make him her slave, her dog, chain him to her. She had
but to hold out her hand, and he would go on his knees to kiss it. She
had but to say, "Come," and he would come from wherever he might be. She
had but to say, "Be good," and he would be good. It was her first
experience of power; and it was intoxicating. But--but! Gyp could never
be self-confident for long; over her most victorious moments brooded the
shadow of distrust. As if he read her thought, Fiorsen said:

"Tell me to do something--anything; I will do it, Miss Winton."

"Then--go back to London at once. You are wasting yourself here, you
know. You said so!"

He looked at her, bewildered and upset, and muttered:

"You have asked me the one thing I can't do, Miss--Miss Gyp!"

"Please--not that; it's like a servant!"

"I AM your servant!"

"Is that why you won't do what I ask you?"

"You are cruel."

Gyp laughed.

He got up and said, with sudden fierceness:

"I am not going away from you; do not 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