up!"

But he went on:

"Love me a little, only a little--love me! Oh, Gyp!"

The thought flashed through Gyp: 'To how many has he knelt, I wonder?'
His face had a kind of beauty in its abandonment--the beauty that comes
from yearning--and she lost her frightened feeling. He went on, with his
stammering murmur: "I am a prodigal, I know; but if you love me, I will
no longer be. I will do great things for you. Oh, Gyp, if you will some
day marry me! Not now. When I have proved. Oh, Gyp, you are so
sweet--so wonderful!"

His arms crept up till he had buried his face against her waist. Without
quite knowing what she did, Gyp touched his hair, and said again:

"No; please get up."

He got up then, and standing near, with his hands hard clenched at his
sides, whispered:

"Have mercy! Speak to me!"

She could not. All was strange and mazed and quivering in her, her
spirit straining away, drawn to him, fantastically confused. She could
only look into his face with her troubled, dark eyes. And suddenly she
was seized and crushed to him. She shrank away, pushing him back with
all her strength. He hung his head, abashed, suffering, with eyes shut,
lips trembling; and her heart felt again that quiver of compassion. She
murmured:

"I don't know. I will tell you later--later--in England."

He bowed, folding his arms, as if to make her feel safe from him. And
when, regardless of the rain, she began to move on, he walked beside her,
a yard or so away, humbly, as though he had never poured out those words
or hurt her lips with the violence of his kiss.

Back in her room, taking off her wet dress, Gyp tried to remember what he
had said and what she had answered. She had not promised anything. But
she had given him her address, both in London and the country. Unless
she resolutely thought of other things, she still felt the restless touch
of his hands, the grip of his arms, and saw his eyes as they were when he
was kissing her; and once more she felt frightened and excited.

He was playing at the concert that evening--her last concert. And surely
he had never played like that--with a despairing beauty, a sort of
frenzied rapture. Listening, there came to her a feeling--a feeling of
fatality--that, whether she would or no, she could not free herself from
him.

V

Once back in England, Gyp lost that feeling, or very nearly. Her
scepticism told her that Fiorsen would soon see someone else who seemed