.
"Take off your furs. Sit down!"

And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his prominent
brown eyes that rolled easily in their slightly blood-shot whites, under
squared eyelids and cliffs of brow. She had on what Fiorsen called her
"humming-bird" blouse--dark blue, shot with peacock and old rose, and
looked very warm and soft under her fur cap. Monsieur Harmost's stare
seemed to drink her in; yet that stare was not unpleasant, having in it
only the rather sad yearning of old men who love beauty and know that
their time for seeing it is getting short.

"Play me the 'Carnival,'" he said. "We shall soon see!"

Gyp played. Twice he nodded; once he tapped his fingers on his teeth,
and showed her the whites of his eyes--which meant: "That will have to be
very different!" And once he grunted. When she had finished, he sat
down beside her, took her hand in his, and, examining the fingers, began:

"Yes, yes, soon again! Spoiling yourself, playing for that fiddler!
Trop sympathique! The back-bone, the back-bone--we shall improve that.
Now, four hours a day for six weeks--and we shall have something again."

Gyp said softly:

"I have a baby, Monsieur Harmost."

Monsieur Harmost bounded.

"What! That is a tragedy!" Gyp shook her head. "You like it? A baby!
Does it not squall?"

"Very little."

"Mon Dieu! Well, well, you are still as beautiful as ever. That is
something. Now, what can you do with this baby? Could you get rid of it
a little? This is serious. This is a talent in danger. A fiddler, and a
baby! C'est beaucoup! C'est trop!"

Gyp smiled. And Monsieur Harmost, whose exterior covered much
sensibility, stroked her hand.

"You have grown up, my little friend," he said gravely. "Never mind;
nothing is wasted. But a baby!" And he chirruped his lips. "Well;
courage! We shall do things yet!"

Gyp turned her head away to hide the quiver of her lips. The scent of
latakia tobacco that had soaked into things, and of old books and music,
a dark smell, like Monsieur Harmost's complexion; the old brown curtains,
the sooty little back garden beyond, with its cat-runs, and its one
stunted sumach tree; the dark-brown stare of Monsieur Harmost's rolling
eyes brought back that time of happiness, when she used to come week
after week, full of gaiety and importance, and chatter away, basking in
his brusque admiration and in music, all with the glamourous feeling that
she was making hi