n little girl! Every
movement of her round, sinuous body, of her bare limbs, had the ecstasy
of natural genius, controlled by the quivering balance of a really fine
training. "A dove flying!" So she was. Her face had lost its vacancy,
or rather its vacancy had become divine, having that look--not lost but
gone before--which dance demands. Yes, she was a gem, even if she had a
common soul. Tears came up in Gyp's eyes. It was so lovely--like a
dove, when it flings itself up in the wind, breasting on up, up--wings
bent back, poised. Abandonment, freedom--chastened, shaped, controlled!

When, after the dance, the girl came and sat down beside her, she
squeezed her hot little hand, but the caress was for her art, not for
this moist little person with the lips avid of sugar-plums.

"Oh, did you like it? I'm so glad. Shall I go and put on my
flame-colour, now?"

The moment she was gone, comment broke out freely. The dark and cynical
Gallant thought the girl's dancing like a certain Napierkowska whom he
had seen in Moscow, without her fire--the touch of passion would have to
be supplied. She wanted love! Love! And suddenly Gyp was back in the
concert-hall, listening to that other girl singing the song of a broken
heart.

"Thy kiss, dear love
--Like watercress gathered fresh from cool streams."

Love! in this abode--of fauns' heads, deep cushions, silver dancing
girls! Love! She had a sudden sense of deep abasement. What was she,
herself, but just a feast for a man's senses? Her home, what but a place
like this? Miss Daphne Wing was back again. Gyp looked at her husband's
face while she was dancing. His lips! How was it that she could see
that disturbance in him, and not care? If she had really loved him, to
see his lips like that would have hurt her, but she might have understood
perhaps, and forgiven. Now she neither quite understood nor quite
forgave.

And that night, when he kissed her, she murmured:

"Would you rather it were that girl--not me?"

"That girl! I could swallow her at a draft. But you, my Gyp--I want to
drink for ever!"

Was that true? IF she had loved him--how good to hear!

V

After this, Gyp was daily more and more in contact with high bohemia,
that curious composite section of society which embraces the neck of
music, poetry, and the drama. She was a success, but secretly she felt
that she did not belong to it, nor, in truth, did Fiorsen, who was much