began to have for him a certain friendliness, to be
a little sorry, watching him, pale, trim, and sphinx-like, in her
drawing-room or garden, getting no nearer to the fulfilment of his
desire. He had never again made love to her, but she knew that at the
least sign he would. His face and his invincible patience made him
pathetic to her. Women such as Gyp cannot actively dislike those who
admire them greatly. She consulted him about Fiorsen's debts. There
were hundreds of pounds owing, it seemed, and, in addition, much to Rosek
himself. The thought of these debts weighed unbearably on her. Why did
he, HOW did he get into debt like this? What became of the money he
earned? His fees, this summer, were good enough. There was such a
feeling of degradation about debt. It was, somehow, so underbred to owe
money to all sorts of people. Was it on that girl, on other women, that
he spent it all? Or was it simply that his nature had holes in every
pocket?

Watching Fiorsen closely, that spring and early summer, she was conscious
of a change, a sort of loosening, something in him had given way--as
when, in winding a watch, the key turns on and on, the ratchet being
broken. Yet he was certainly working hard--perhaps harder than ever.
She would hear him, across the garden, going over and over a passage, as
if he never would be satisfied. But his playing seemed to her to have
lost its fire and sweep; to be stale, and as if disillusioned. It was
all as though he had said to himself: "What's the use?" In his face,
too, there was a change. She knew--she was certain that he was drinking
secretly. Was it his failure with her? Was it the girl? Was it simply
heredity from a hard-drinking ancestry?

Gyp never faced these questions. To face them would mean useless
discussion, useless admission that she could not love him, useless
asseveration from him about the girl, which she would not believe,
useless denials of all sorts. Hopeless!

He was very irritable, and seemed especially to resent her music lessons,
alluding to them with a sort of sneering impatience. She felt that he
despised them as amateurish, and secretly resented it. He was often
impatient, too, of the time she gave to the baby. His own conduct with
the little creature was like all the rest of him. He would go to the
nursery, much to Betty's alarm, and take up the baby; be charming with it
for about ten minutes, then suddenly dump it back into its cradle,