bbing stopped, and the girl said brokenly:

"Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I do love him so!" At those naive words, a painful
wish to laugh seized on Gyp, making her shiver from head to foot. Daphne
Wing saw it, and went on: "I know--I know--it's awful; but I do--and now
he--he--" Her quiet but really dreadful sobbing broke out again. And
again Gyp began stroking and stroking her shoulder. "And I have been so
awful to you! Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, do forgive me, please!"

All Gyp could find to answer, was:

"Yes, yes; that's nothing! Don't cry--don't cry!"

Very slowly the sobbing died away, till it was just a long shivering, but
still the girl held her hands over her face and her face down. Gyp felt
paralyzed. The unhappy girl, the red and green room, the smell of
mutton--creeping!

At last, a little of that white face showed; the lips, no longer craving
for sugar-plums, murmured:

"It's you he--he--really loves all the time. And you don't love
him--that's what's so funny--and--and--I can't understand it. Oh, Mrs.
Fiorsen, if I could see him--just see him! He told me never to come
again; and I haven't dared. I haven't seen him for three weeks--not
since I told him about IT. What shall I do? What shall I do?"

His being her own husband seemed as nothing to Gyp at that moment. She
felt such pity and yet such violent revolt that any girl should want to
crawl back to a man who had spurned her. Unconsciously, she had drawn
herself up and pressed her lips together. The girl, who followed every
movement, said piteously:

"I don't seem to have any pride. I don't mind what he does to me, or
what he says, if only I can see him."

Gyp's revolt yielded to her pity. She said:

"How long before?"

"Three months."

Three months--and in this state of misery!

"I think I shall do something desperate. Now that I can't dance, and
THEY know, it's too awful! If I could see him, I wouldn't mind anything.
But I know--I know he'll never want me again. Oh, Mrs. Fiorsen, I wish I
was dead! I do!"

A heavy sigh escaped Gyp, and, bending suddenly, she kissed the girl's
forehead. Still that scent of orange blossom about her skin or hair, as
when she asked whether she ought to love or not; as when she came,
moth-like, from the tree-shade into the moonlight, spun, and fluttered,
with her shadow spinning and fluttering before her. Gyp turned away,
feeling that she must relieve the strain and pointing to the bowl, said:

"YOU