seemed
to spin round in her head. She turned to rush away. Then a kind of
superhuman coolness came to her, and she deliberately looked in. He and
Daphne Wing! His arm was round her neck. The girl's face riveted her
eyes. It was turned a little back and up, gazing at him, the lips
parted, the eyes hypnotized, adoring; and her arm round him seemed to
shiver--with cold, with ecstasy?

Again that something went spinning through Gyp's head. She raised her
hand. For a second it hovered close to the glass. Then, with a sick
feeling, she dropped it and turned away.

Never! Never would she show him or that girl that they could hurt her!
Never! They were safe from any scene she would make--safe in their nest!
And blindly, across the frosty grass, through the unlighted drawing-room,
she went upstairs to her room, locked the door, and sat down before the
fire. Pride raged within her. She stuffed her handkerchief between her
teeth and lips; she did it unconsciously. Her eyes felt scorched from
the fire-flames, but she did not trouble to hold her hand before them.

Suddenly she thought: 'Suppose I HAD loved him?' and laughed. The
handkerchief dropped to her lap, and she looked at it with wonder--it was
blood-stained. She drew back in the chair, away from the scorching of
the fire, and sat quite still, a smile on her lips. That girl's eyes,
like a little adoring dog's--that girl, who had fawned on her so! She
had got her "distinguished man"! She sprang up and looked at herself in
the glass; shuddered, turned her back on herself, and sat down again. In
her own house! Why not here--in this room? Why not before her eyes?
Not yet a year married! It was almost funny--almost funny! And she had
her first calm thought: 'I am free.'

But it did not seem to mean anything, had no value to a spirit so
bitterly stricken in its pride. She moved her chair closer to the fire
again. Why had she not tapped on the window? To have seen that girl's
face ashy with fright! To have seen him--caught--caught in the room she
had made beautiful for him, the room where she had played for him so many
hours, the room that was part of the house that she paid for! How long
had they used it for their meetings--sneaking in by that door from the
back lane? Perhaps even before she went away--to bear his child! And
there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of
outrage--a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb